Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes (8 page)

Nita snapped, “Why does everyone keep saying that? How does every
one know what I look forward to? For all y'all know I might have looked forward to being the president of the United States.”

Eadie raised one eyebrow and looked at Lavonne, who frowned and shook her head slightly. Nita dropped her face in her hands. “I'm sorry,” she said. “It's just nerves, is all.”

Nita's mother, Loretta, saw them and came over to say hello. “She's nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” she said, nodding at Nita. “She's making us all jumpy.” Loretta was an upright little woman who hailed originally from a little farming town just east of Ithaca. She had a sweet face and a bad temper, and around town she was known as a good person not to mess with. She and Nita were about as much alike as a pit bull and a poodle.

Lavonne grinned. “You got your hair done, Loretta.”

“My nails, too,” she said, holding up ten coral-colored fingers that matched her dress perfectly. “It ain't every day your only daughter gets married, and to the right man this time, too. Praise the Lord.”

“I'll drink to that,” Eadie said.

“Well, from the looks of you girls, I'd say you been doing just that. You look a little wet around the gills, if you know what I mean.”

“There's no fooling you, Loretta.”

Loretta grinned. Her blue-black hair shone in the sunlight. She put her arm around Nita and kissed her on the cheek. “Come on, baby doll,” she said. “Let's get you dressed for your wedding.”

“I'll be right in, Mama. I've got to check on a few things first.”

Loretta put her hand on her hip. Her coral dress fluttered in the breeze. “Check on what?”

“Check on whether or not Jimmy Lee got the rest of those lanterns hung.”

Loretta waved her hand and stuck her chin out. “I'll take care of all that,” she said. “You leave that to me.” She sailed off across the yard like a bantam rooster attempting flight, her coral dress fluttering about her shoulders and her blue-black hair glistening in the sunlight.

Nita sighed, watching her go. “Whatever you do,” she said to Lavonne and Eadie. “Don't tell her I invited Virginia to the wedding.”

Loretta had disliked Virginia for nearly forty years. She had tolerated her when Nita was married to Charles, but now that the divorce was final, she was under no further obligation to be nice.

“Don't worry, I won't,” Eadie said.

“We're not crazy,” Lavonne said.

“I'm hoping Virginia won't show,” Nita said despondently.

“There's no reason why she should.”

“She probably just wanted to hear you ask her,” Eadie said. “You know how she is. Everything's a game to Virginia.”

Nita sighed again but didn't say anything. They watched Loretta across the yard, giving directions to Nita's tall, stoop-shouldered daddy, Eustis, who followed her around with a box of lanterns in his arms. “I told her to get Jimmy Lee to hang the lanterns,” Nita said, frowning.

“How's your daddy doing?” Eadie asked.

“He's fine. Whatever he's got, it isn't Parkinson's but something a little milder. It doesn't slow him down much. Mama, of course, thinks it's all in his head. She begins every day with, ‘Are you going to shake today, Eustis? It's up to you. Just make up your mind.’”

“Loretta missed her calling,” Lavonne said. “She should have been a nurse.”

“The funny thing is, when she's around, Daddy doesn't shake much.”

“A nurse or maybe a hypnotist,” Lavonne said.

Eadie lifted one arm and pointed behind them. “Oh my God,” she said, “is that Whitney?”

She was crossing the yard, dressed in a long flowing skirt and a pair of high-heeled boots. Nita looked at her daughter and blushed with pleasure, nodding her head slightly.

“She's gotten so tall,” Eadie said. “She's gotten so lovely.”

“They grow up fast,” Lavonne said.

“Whitney,” Nita called. “Come say hello to Lavonne and Eadie.”

Whitney scowled at her, hesitating. She could ignore her mother easily, but ignoring other adults was a bit trickier. She put her head down and plodded toward them. Nita tried to put her arm around her daughter's shoulders but Whitney stepped aside with a smooth practiced movement. “Hello, Mrs. Boone,” she said, smiling. “Hello, Mrs. Zibolsky.”

“My God,” Eadie said, taking both Whitney's hands and looking her over from head to foot. “You look like a supermodel. Why are you wasting your time in this little backwoods place? You should be in New York.”

Whitney gave her mother an icy smile. “Funny you should say that,” she said.

No one spoke. Nita looked across the yard to where Loretta stood
shouting orders like Napoleon on the eve of Waterloo. Otis had managed to crawl under the fence and escape, running around the yard and barking at Little Moses and Maureen as they tried to set the tables.

“Stupid dog,” Whitney said. “I'll put him in the house.”

They watched her walk away and Eadie said, “Did I say something wrong?”

Nita shook her head sadly. “Whitney was shopping with some friends in New York and some guy came up to her and gave her a card for some modeling agency. Ever since then she's been after me to let her move to New York and try to make it as a model.”

“Oh, right,” Lavonne said. “Like you're going to let a twelve-year-old move to New York.”

“That's just crazy,” Eadie said.

“So y'all are in agreement with me?” Nita said, her eyes shifting from one to the other. “You think I did the right thing saying no?”

Their response was thunderous and unanimous. Nita sighed, watching Whitney corral Otis and drag him by his collar toward the house. “She hates me for it.”

“She'll get over it,” Eadie said. Her own mother had never said no to her. She'd been like a big kid herself, forcing Eadie to act like the parent, a role she'd always resented and spent the second half of her life trying to forget. Eadie supposed it was one of the reasons she had decided not to have children herself.

“They go through these phases,” Lavonne said. “But they outgrow them. They go off to college and when they come home they've learned enough about life to know that you were right about a lot of things. They've learned that their parents aren't so stupid after all. They get a lot easier to talk to when they've learned that little lesson.”

Jimmy Lee had come out on the back porch to look for Nita. When he saw them standing there, he waved and shouted, “There's trouble waiting to happen.”

Eadie shouted back, “Well you should know what it looks like by now.”

He grinned as he walked toward them, dressed in a pair of khakis and a blue-striped dress shirt. Eadie thought how any bride alive would give her left nipple to stand beside Jimmy Lee at the altar. Lavonne thought how love was fleeting but financial stability was forever. She hoped Nita had made him sign a prenup.

Nita thought how life was unpredictable, and she hoped the happiness
and love she and Jimmy Lee had shared over the past year and a half would sustain them through the treacherous waters of matrimony she knew lay just ahead.

S
OMEWHERE AROUND ONE O'CLOCK THE YARD BEGAN TO LOOK
like a place where a wedding might actually occur, and Nita went into the house to dress. Her mother insisted on helping her, although Nita would have preferred that she had not. Loretta's brisk, forthright manner, far from calming Nita's nerves, made her feel like she was being poked and prodded everywhere with hot needles. She waited until Loretta took a breath, and then Nita went down the guest list, reminding Loretta she expected her to be on her best behavior.

Loretta frowned, and raised her little chin in the air. She put one hand on her hip. “What's that supposed to mean?” she said. “My best behavior.”

“Well, Mama, it means I've invited some people you might not appreciate seeing but I still want you to be nice.”

“Juanita Sue,” Loretta said. “I am always
nice
.”

“People like Clarissa Derryberry,” Nita said. “And that poor little boy of hers.”

“Oh good Lord,” Loretta said.

Clarissa Swaney Derryberry was a wealthy young widow who was known around town as the Pest Control Heiress. She was the daughter of Curtis Swaney, who had had the foresight to look into the future and see the proliferation of DEET-resistant strains of ants, fleas, ticks, aphids, centipedes, palmetto bugs, and termites. He had started his pest control company, Bugs Be Gone, in the sixties, and forty years later it had grown into a profitable business employing ten full-time sprayers and a bookkeeper, all due in no small part to Curtis's secret and highly carcinogenic blend of various illegal pesticides. Curtis and his wife had produced only one sickly child, Clarissa, who married one of Curtis's senior sprayers, a rascally red- neck known around town as “that-fat-ass-Harry-Derryberry.” Harry and Clarissa had one child, a boy named Harry Junior who had Tourette's. Harry Junior was prone to nervous tics and episodes where he would fling one hand into the air like an SS officer giving a Nazi salute and yell “Whoop!” at periodic intervals.

“I volunteer down at the library with Clarissa and I want you to be nice to her,” Nita said, looking at her mother nervously in the mirror.

Loretta pushed the final pins into Nita's upswept hair. She put her fingers under Nita's chin and turned her head back and forth, appraising her handiwork. “I've got no problem with Clarissa as long as she doesn't make a spectacle of herself. After all, this is your wedding.”

That-fat-ass-Harry-Derryberry died soon after Harry Junior was born— of some rare but lethal form of leukemia—leaving Clarissa a wealthy young widow. She took her role as an heiress seriously. She had grown up watching
Dynasty
and assorted daytime soaps and she believed there was a certain dress code every young heiress should adhere to. No matter what the occasion, no matter what time of year it was, no matter how hot or humid it might be, Clarissa Derryberry went everywhere dressed in a blazer and a scarf. In addition to her eccentric dress, Clarissa was a hypochondriac with enough money to indulge a series of modern but obscure ailments. Over the years she had been treated for fibromyalgia, hormonal imbalance, chronic fatigue syndrome, chemical sensitivity, allergies, yeast overgrowth, and restless leg syndrome. Only recently she had discovered she had an extra bone in her foot and now went everywhere in a wheelchair pushed by Harry Junior, attired in her usual blazer and scarf.

Loretta helped Nita slide her wedding dress over her head and said, “As long as Clarissa keeps her medical complaints to herself, me and her'll get along fine.”

Loretta had had a double mastectomy some years back and she had little sympathy for other people's minor medical maladies. The news that she had “the cancer” had been delivered by a cheerful, fresh-faced young doctor who made Doogie Howser look like a retiree. “We can put you through six rounds of chemo and radiation, but I can't promise you much more than three to five years of survival, tops,” the young doctor had said cheerfully, checking his watch. He had a golf game scheduled for two o'clock. Fourteen years later he dropped dead of a massive coronary at the age of forty-eight. Loretta sat on the front row at his funeral and tried not to smirk.

Having survived cancer through sheer obstinacy and her own tenacious refusal to obey male authority figures, Loretta had little sympathy for whiners, slackers, hypochondriacs, and women who couldn't get through their stressful days of bridge, shopping, and lunches at the club without the help of Xanax or Prozac. Other than that, she was real supportive.

“I know Clarissa can be a little irritating,” Nita began. She thought,
If Virginia Redmon shows up, Clarissa Derryberry will be the least of your
worries
. Nita could only hope that Virginia would have the good sense and moral restraint to stay home. “But she means well. I think she's just lonely is all.” Nita frowned, looking down at her dress and hoping it wasn't too plain. It was a cream-colored silk with a tight, V-neck bodice and narrow skirt that fell to her feet. It looked a little young, Nita realized now, like something a barefoot girl might wear to a May Day dance. Why hadn't she realized this before? Why hadn't anyone told her the dress looked too virginal and sweet for a forty-year-old woman to wear, much less be married in? Why hadn't … She looked up suddenly, realizing the silence in the room had grown heavy.

Her mother stood in the doorway, leaning against her father, who had tears in his eyes. Whitney stood just behind them, peeking around his shoulder. “Oh, Mommy,” she said. “You look so pretty.”

“Do I?” Nita said, in genuine surprise, turning to check her appearance in the mirror. She had worn her hair up, with a gardenia tucked behind one ear.

“Just like a princess,” Whitney said, coming into the room and looking less like a surly teenaged Lolita and more like the wide-eyed child who used to play in Nita's jewelry box. Nita leaned to kiss her, and Whitney put her arms around her and kissed her back.

“Just look at our little girl, Daddy,” Loretta said in a quavering voice. “All grown up and ready to go out into the big old world.”

“Mama, I've been out in the big old world for almost twenty years now,” Nita said. “I'm getting married, not moving to Alaska.”

“Well, he's a good man and you have my blessing,” Eustis said, trying his best to stand up straight and not shake.

“Who's a good man?” Jimmy Lee said, behind them. He saw Nita and stopped, staring like a man in the midst of a religious experience. “Damn,” he said finally.

“Okay, Whitney, let's go on outside and see if the guitar player's all set up to play the wedding march.” Loretta, all business again, motioned for her granddaughter to follow her outside.

Nita blushed at Jimmy Lee's expression. “I told you, Mama, there will be no wedding march,” she said. “He's singing ‘Till There Was You.’”

Loretta shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. “It's your wedding,” she said. “If you want to hippie it up, go right ahead. No one's stopping you.”

Jimmy Lee chuckled as he strolled into the room. He had put on a tie and a blue blazer that showed off his shoulders to full advantage. “Funny, I never took you for a hippie girl,” he said.