Summer in the South (24 page)

“You were up at Sewanee in the twenties? Did you know Allen Tate and the other Fugitive Poets?”

“They were at Vanderbilt, not Sewanee. They were a little before my time but yes, I knew Tate. And Robert Penn Warren, of course. They were too studious for me, those Fugitives, with their New Criticism and constant harping on the classical forms of poetry.” He grinned, his red face shining. He reminded her a little of W. C. Fields when he drank. She smiled, remembering how much trouble she’d had understanding him when she first came to Woodburn. Now she found his manner of speaking genteel and soothing. “A poet, I was not,” he said. “I preferred more leisurely pursuits.”

“Josephine told me the girls at Vanderbilt used to go around carrying teddy bears with hollow metal stomachs filled with gin.”

“Vanderbilt was quite the Babylon in those days. A hotbed of radical thought, illegal booze, and jazz.”

“Yes, but do you think it was worse than the nineteen-sixties, with the draft marches and the Summer of Love and LSD?”

Maitland’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “Child’s play,” he said, raising his glass.

Ava laughed. Across the hall, Clara stood and gave a report on last month’s meeting. They listened for a few minutes, then Maitland said, “Are you Russian or Polish or both?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your toast.
Na zdorovie.
”

“Oh. I don’t know where I got that,” Ava said. “The movies probably. Or maybe Russian literature. I read a lot of Russian literature.”

“Fanny and I always wanted to see St. Petersburg. Such a beautiful city. The architecture is fantastic. We always wanted to go but it was impossible to visit once the communists took over.”

“It’s never too late. Why don’t you go now?”

He shook his head, staring thoughtfully at the liquor in his glass. “We’re too old for travel. We like our comforts, our soft bed, our American food.”

“But you traveled during your younger years?”

“Oh, yes, everywhere except Russia. Egypt, Europe, Japan. Africa was my favorite.” Ava thought of the Ernest Hemingway photograph in the breakfast room, the three of them behind a downed water buffalo, Maitland looking every inch the brawny, big-game hunter. “We were always hurrying off to some exotic place or another in those days. Always stepping onto a train, or a motorcar, or a camel. Hurrying, hurrying.”

“Making up for lost time,” Ava said and instantly regretted it. Maitland looked past her at the crowd of women in the parlor, who all seemed to be talking at once. She could hear distant music playing, Ravel’s “Boléro.” Someone had left the radio on in the kitchen. Standing beside Maitland, Ava was suddenly aware of the size and strength of the man, of his wide shoulders and well-muscled arms, gone to fat now, but in his youth thick and sturdy as an Olympian wrestler. He was tall, and would have been an imposing figure back then, although it was easy to forget that now, looking at his wide, cheerful face and portly physique.

As if to remind her of this harmless geniality, he grinned suddenly and said, “Another dividend?” It was his way of asking if she wanted another drink.

“Yes, thank you.” She sipped her cocktail, then added, “And by the way, I’m not Russian. I’m Irish on my mother’s side and Polish on my father’s. He died in an ice-fishing accident on the Detroit River when I was ten.” There. She’d done it again. Told the same old lie. Only now she knew it was a lie.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

She hesitated, then said, “Not really. My mother told me he died, and it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I found out he hadn’t but had simply remarried and started another family. They live in Garden City. My father and his new family. It’s a little blue-collar suburb of Detroit.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth about Frank Dabrowski, the fact that she had no idea who her real father was. She couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone about that.

Maitland was obviously at a loss as to what to say. He busied himself mixing another shaker, then topped off Ava’s glass and poured himself another one. “We used to drink these on hunting trips. My father owned a plantation in the Delta, and we used to go down there to hunt and play cards with some of his Mississippi friends.”

Ava gave him a cynical look. “Mississippi friends? Let me guess. Faulkner?”

Maitland sipped his drink and made a wry face.

She’d said it as a joke but the truth gradually dawned on her. “Oh, my God!” she said. “You drank Singapore Slings with William Faulkner?”

Maitland grinned and shook his head. “Count Faulkner was a whiskey man,” he said, tilting his glass. “I never knew him to drink gin.”

L
ater, Ava helped Maitland serve finger sandwiches and appetizers to the club members while they talked business.

The investment club had been started ten years earlier by a schoolteacher named Mary Beckham, who’d moved south from Philadelphia and married a local attorney. The members contributed $90 a month in dues, and stocks were picked by unanimous approval. Their unorthodox method of picking stocks based on “gut feelings” and gossip had given them a respectable 15.6% return rating. They were an odd assortment of professional women and old-money dowagers, newcomers and descendants of founding fathers.

Mary Beckham started the new business with a joke.

“What do you call a Yankee water-skiing behind an Alabama fishing boat?” She rolled her eyes and looked around the room. “Bait.” She waited until the giggling had died down. “And I can say that,” she said, grinning at Ava. “Because I’m a Yankee.”

“We try not to hold that against you,” Josephine said. She was drinking a Gin Rickey, as were Alice and Fanny. They left the blush wine to the Presbyterians.

Louise Singleton stood up first and gave her report on The Gap. “Y’all, retail is down,” she said. “The Gap lost forty percent in one month, and Skechers wasn’t much better. It went from $21.85 to $18.50.”

“Well, no wonder. Have you been in The Gap and seen the clothes?”

“The colors are terrible! Tell me who can wear lime green and get away with it?”

“Or sherbet.”

“You mean orange?”

“Do you know what orange does to my face? It makes me look all puffy and pasty.”

“Well, those clothes aren’t really for women like us,” Josephine reminded them. “They aren’t really geared for the mature crowd.”

“Who’re you calling mature?” Fanny said and everyone laughed.

“I tell you, the designs this year are just terrible. I took my girls in there and they didn’t buy a thing. Not one single thing. And anytime the Truett girls go into a Gap store and don’t buy a thing, you know it’s not good.”

“Lord, that
is
a bad sign.”

“Armageddon,” Josephine said mildly.

Mary leaned to touch Susan Truett lightly on the arm. “I’m so glad Mattie decided to go ahead and be presented at the Gardenia Ball.”

“What a fight that was,” Susan said, rolling her eyes. She sipped her wine, then set it down on the coffee table. “It almost killed her daddy when she said she didn’t want any part of that old pagan ritual, that throwback to virgin sacrifice.” Susan shrugged and settled her plate on her lap, glancing around the room. “You know how it is. They’re so sweet as girls and then you send them off to college and they come back all educated and too cynical to participate in the old traditions.”

Mary said, “That’s funny, because in my house, I was the one pushing Katie to be presented. Evan, who was born and raised here, didn’t want her to have anything to do with it.”

“His mama must be rolling over in her grave,” Weesie Hartman said. “Because she was the Gardenia Queen back in nineteen fifty-two or fifty-three, I think it was.”

“Back in our day it really wasn’t an option,” Alice said, swirling the remnants of her cocktail in her rocks glass. “You just did it because it was expected of you. You didn’t have a choice, and even if you did, you wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint your mama and papa. I don’t think young girls today know anything of self-sacrifice.”

The room got quiet. Ava had the uncomfortable feeling they were all thinking about her. She was obviously the youngest woman in the room.

“What exactly are the criteria for being a debutante?” she asked politely.

“Well,” Alice answered promptly, as if she found this a valid question. “In the old days, of course, you wouldn’t have been invited to attend the Gardenia Ball unless your mother or grandmother had been presented. But things have changed now. They’ve become more—
democratic.
Girls are selected by committee vote.”

“Was Darlene Haney presented?” Ava asked. She smiled as Maitland took the empty tray from her and hurried off to the kitchen.

The two women nearest Ava turned their heads to look at her.

“No,” Alice murmured quietly, touching her mouth daintily with her napkin. “No, I don’t believe she was.”

Ava imagined that that must have been devastating for someone like Darlene. She felt a sudden twinge of pity for her. Ava hadn’t spoken to her since the party at Longford—she’d been ignoring her calls—but she remembered Darlene’s face that day in the Debs and Brides Shoppe as she helped young debutantes choose ball gowns. She remembered Darlene’s grimace of cheerful and hopeless resignation.

Debutante balls, sororities, and Junior League meetings had never appealed to Ava. She had always avoided large groups of women who had the power to blackball her.

The room was quiet except for the dull hum of the air-conditioning system. Fanny smiled and raised her chin. “Well, I’m glad the world has become more democratic than it used to be. The old ways weren’t always best, you know.”

“History is all about perspective,” Josephine agreed.

“You got that right,” Clara said.

Ava smiled at her.

Boofie Crenshaw cleared her throat. “I say we sell the Gap stock and buy Harley Davidson,” she said, trying to get them back on track.

Josephine cocked one eyebrow. “You mean the motorcycle company?”

Ava began to wander about the room, quietly replenishing everyone’s wine.

“I think we should buy Harley Davidson and I’ll tell you why,” Boofie said, lifting her chin defiantly. She looked around the room then ducked her head and said in a more confidential tone, “You know Baxter Bell left his wife for a younger woman.” Everyone stared at her, trying to make the connection. Boofie held her glass up to Ava. “I saw Celeste Bell in the grocery store last week, and she told me Baxter came to her last Christmas saying he wanted a Harley Davidson. I guess all the other anesthesiologists in town had one and he had to have one, too, and she said, ‘No, you’ll kill yourself on one of those things.’ Next thing she knows, she goes to Destin with her tennis team and when she comes home he’s moved out of the house and in with his twenty-six-year-old medical assistant. Celeste thinks now that it was one of those midlife crisis things men go through, and if she’d just said yes to the Harley Davidson, he’d still be sleeping in his own bed at night. Now I ask you,” she said, looking boldly around the room. “How many men do we know on the verge of a midlife crisis?”

Her logic was irrefutable. Josephine asked for a show of hands of all in favor of dumping the Gap stock in order to purchase Harley Davidson. The vote was unanimous.

Karen Ashton stood up next, holding a small clipping from
The Wall Street Journal
in her hand. “It says here that AOL Time Warner is looking to buy out AT&T’s cable unit. That would make AOL the largest cable Internet provider, so even though the stock has dropped from $30.55 to $24.19, I say we hold on to it and see if the merger happens.”

“I second that,” Boofie said, and Josephine asked for a show of hands.

Cheryl Ponsler said, “I know we talked last time about keeping Wachovia but I have to tell you, Mother has been dumping every bit of her Wachovia stock.”

This got everyone’s attention. Cheryl’s mother, Lucille, lived out at the Suck Creek Retirement Village. She was hard of hearing and forgetful when it came to names and car keys, but she had an uncanny ability to pick stocks. “Mother was getting her hair done down at the House of Hair and she ran into Milly Stokes. Y’all remember Milly, her son, Buddy, was in my class at school. Anyway, Buddy works for Citigroup now—he’s some kind of bigwig—and Milly told Mother that the bonuses were so big this year that Buddy is putting in a pool and taking the family to Europe for Christmas. So Mother is buying up every share of Citigroup she can get her hands on, and y’all know she usually does better than the brokers at picking winning stocks.” She looked around the room as if challenging anyone to refute this, but no one did. It was Lucille who had urged them to buy Krispy Kreme two years earlier but they had instead heeded the advice of a broker friend who had advised them to buy tech stocks. When Krispy Kreme went public, it doubled within a few weeks and shortly thereafter issued a two-for-one split. No one liked to be reminded of the money they’d lost on that deal.

“If Lucille recommends Citigroup that’s good enough for me,” Susan said.

“Always listen to your mother,” Boofie said. “I say we dump Wachovia in favor of Citigroup.”

They all voted in favor. Ava finished pouring wine, then sat down next to Clara on the sofa.

“Now isn’t this a pretty sight?”

At the sound of a deep masculine voice they all turned to find Will standing in the doorway. He grinned, his eyes seeking Ava in the crowded room.

“Oh, Will, do come and join us,” Fanny said, rising and hurrying across the room to take his arm.

“Yes, we need a male perspective,” Josephine said.

“You ladies seem to do just fine on your own,” he said, smiling in that charming manner he had so that all the women in the room brightened instinctively and leaned toward him. He seemed so tall and straight standing there, the lamplight catching in his hair. “I just came to ask Ava if she minded me playing poker tonight.”

The women seemed amused by this. Ava felt a creeping warmth in her face, wondering why he’d thought it necessary to ask her. Their evenings together had tapered off considerably since the party at Longford.

“I’m sure Ava wouldn’t mind!” Fanny said, rising on her toes to kiss his cheek.