The Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess (29 page)

I wanted to be left alone to grow old and die in solitude, cut off from the outside world in this tumbledown 1920s Tudor,
the symbol of my wretched post-divorce existence. I could keep drifting from room to room, looking glassy-eyed out the windows
at my overgrown backyard with a cup of cold coffee in my hand. The drone of late-night infomercials would keep me company
during the long, sleepless nights I spent flipping through photo albums of the life I had lost. I could depend on the stray
tabby cat that pawed through my garbage can for my social interaction. But if I didn’t replenish my food supply soon, I was
going to grow old and die much more quickly than I’d planned.

“I made pound cake. To welcome you to the neighborhood.” Her temptress’s voice, along with the scent of vanilla, slid through
the cracks around the edge of the door. My new neighbor was scarily persistent. I had simply ignored her earlier visits, but
now I didn’t have the luxury. Who would ever have believed it would come to this?

Once, I’d been Mrs. Eleanor Johnston, wife of a successful surgeon and pillar of the Junior League. Now I was nothing but
another high-end Nashville divorcée who’d been banished from her 37205 life by her husband’s wandering eye. I had become nothing
but a cliché, and not a very interesting one at that.

“I think you’ll feel better if you eat some of this,” the voice said through the door. God, but this woman was not going to
give up, was she?

And she did have pound cake.

My hand shook as I reached for the doorknob. The warped wood stuck tight, and I had to give it a strong yank before it gave
way, revealing the perky middle-aged woman standing on my front porch.

“There you are.” The woman’s bright blond hair competed with her paper-white teeth for brilliance. With a start, I recognized
her from her advertisements on bus stops all over town. She owned one of the big real estate firms and I had probably even
met her at one fund-raiser or another, but I couldn’t remember her name.

“I was beginning to worry about you.” Uninvited, she stepped across the threshold and into my inner sanctum with the same
determination that must have gotten her to the top of the Nashville real estate market. I had the grace to blush at the state
of the living room. Twinkie wrappers and empty Coke cans littered the scarred coffee table. The sagging couch that once had
done duty in our bonus room—I’d considered it fit only for small children and teenagers—was now the centerpiece of my living
room suite. Sadly, it classed up the joint, a strong indication of the general condition of the house.

“I knew you’d open the door eventually,” the woman trilled as she brushed past me and headed toward the kitchen as unerringly
as if she’d traipsed through the house a million times before. “My pound cake never fails.”

I stood rooted to the spot, mouth gaping for several
long moments, before I realized I was supposed to follow her size-2 frame. By the time I caught up with her in the kitchen,
she had placed the cake on my cutting board, unwrapped the cloth like a priest preparing the host for the congregation, and
was using a lethal-looking knife to slice off a wedge of the promised ambrosia.

“Got milk?” she chirped.

My mouth watered so heavily I had to swallow twice before I could form a reply.

“Um, no. I’m out.”

“That’s okay. We can have coffee instead.”

I paused and cleared my throat. “Well, I don’t actually have any coffee either.”

Her eyebrow arched. “You’ve gone through it all, then?”

My stomach twisted. I feigned ignorance. And hauteur. “What do you mean, I’ve gone through it all?”

Her laugh was like silverware clanking in a drawer. “Honey, I know how it goes when you’re newly on your own. Eating your
way through the refrigerator is practically a rite of passage.”

“I haven’t—” A flush crept up my neck.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, honey.” She placed a hunk of cake on a paper napkin from the stack on the counter and thrust
it toward me. “And you look like you need this.”

My hand froze, fingertips an eyelash away from the cake. For a moment, I saw myself through my nosy neighbor’s eyes. Greasy
hair that hadn’t seen shampoo in a week. Dressed in my son’s cast-off sweat pants and
a paint-stained Vanderbilt sweatshirt. Had I even brushed my teeth that morning?

With a laugh that was two parts humor and ten parts shame, I ran a hand over my hair to smooth down the inevitable bed head.
“I don’t really … That is, I’m sure…”

The other woman smiled, this time with no condescension at all. “It’s okay, honey. We’ve all been there.”

That got my back up. Because,
pardon me,
not everyone had been where I was now. Not everyone was eating off Chinet while a DD-cup tramp ate off her Haviland china
and drank from her Waterford crystal.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Indignation kept me from reaching for the cake.

“It’s no secret, sugar. News travels fast on the Wood-lawn Avenue grapevine. We’re practically psychic.”

Years of good Southern upbringing kept me from making a sharp retort. I didn’t need the final humiliation of a public airing
of my dirty laundry in my new neighborhood. Wasn’t it enough that I could never hold my head up again in Belle Meade? I’d
lost everything. My husband. My beautiful home. My place in society. And now I was nothing more than fodder for gossip over
the backyard fences of Woodlawn Avenue?

My neighbor remained undaunted by my silence. “I’m Jane, by the way. Jane Mansfield.” She laughed, showing off her blinding
teeth again. “I know, I know. But you can’t pick the last name of the man you fall in love with. Or out of love with, for
that matter.”

Jane Mansfield. Now I remembered. Her publicity photo on the bus stop ads showed her dressed in fifties attire with a matching
bouffant hairdo. She was ten
years or so older than me, but at the moment, she looked a decade younger. She probably felt that way, too. Because right
then, I must have looked at least a hundred and five.

“It’s my birthday,” I said, the words falling from my lips of their own volition.

The woman nodded. “Good thing I showed up. Every woman deserves a cake on her birthday.”

I nodded, my throat too tight for speech. When was the last time I’d had a birthday cake I hadn’t made with my own two hands?
Jim had been good with presents but bad with remembering to order something from Becker’s Bakery, and none of my children
had inherited my homemaking gene. As I’d learned over the years, there was something inherently sad about providing one’s
own cake.

“I’m Ellie,” I finally rallied enough to blurt out. “Ellie Johnston. I mean, Hall. Ellie Hall.” Another change that was going
to take some adjustment.

One of Jane’s perfectly waxed eyebrows arched. “It’s final, then, your divorce?”

A lump formed in my throat. “I signed the papers yesterday.”

“Hell of a birthday present.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the irony of it all. “Yes. Yes, it was a hell of a present.”

Jane stood up straight, all ninety-eight or so pounds of her. “So today’s the day you start over. New house, new life, new
you.”

That point of view had never occurred to me. I’d been so focused on what was coming to an end, I hadn’t given
much thought to what might be beginning. The very idea made me queasy, so I took a bite of pound cake.

A profusion of flavor exploded on my tongue. “Oh my God,” I moaned through the ecstasy melting in my mouth. “I can’t believe
this cake.”

Jane smiled. “Well, there’s more where that came from.” She reached down and sliced off another piece. “So, Ellie Hall, do
you have plans for your birthday?”

I sighed and leaned against the counter. “No. Not really. Since it’s Saturday, Oprah and Dr. Phil won’t be expecting me.”

“Good.” Jane took another paper napkin from the pile and brushed the crumbs from the counter into her hand. As casually as
if it were her house instead of mine, she opened the cabinet door under the sink and tossed them into the waiting trash can.
“We’ve been waiting for a fourth.”

“A fourth? A fourth of what?”

“A fourth for our bridge club.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, but I don’t play bridge.”

Jane smiled. “That’s okay, honey. I didn’t play either when I moved into my house. But I learned.”

The woman might bake heavenly pound cake, but she was clearly a bit loopy. “I’m sorry, but what does your house have to do
with a bridge club?”

“Follow me.”

Jane stepped around me and led me back through my dining room to the archway that separated it from the living room. The heart-shaped
arch had mocked me from the moment my realtor had first shown me the house. But it had been one of the few in this rapidly
gentrifying
neighborhood south of Vanderbilt University that I could afford. It was as close to Belle Meade as my budget would allow.
In time, I could channel my inner Martha Stewart to drywall the offending arch into another shape. A dagger, perhaps, for
sticking through Jim’s faithless heart.

Jane ran her hand over the curve in the plaster, caressing it. “Didn’t you wonder about this when you bought the house?”

I shrugged, not wanting to reveal the depths of my pain or my sensitivity about the arch. “It’s important for some reason?”

“All four houses have them. One for each suit.”

“All four houses?”

“Built by the original members of the club.”

“Someone built houses based on a club?”

“Not just any club. Their bridge club. The Queens of Woodlawn Avenue.”

That drew a rare chuckle from me. “Queens of Wood-lawn Avenue? You’ve got to be kidding.”

Jane shook her head. “Nope. I’m the Queen of Diamonds. Grace on the other side of you is the Queen of Spades. And Linda, in
the Cape Cod on the other side of me, she’s the Queen of Clubs. We each have the dining room arch for our suit.”

Okay, her pound cake was sinfully good, but this woman was starting to frighten me a little. “Look, I appreciate the invitation,
but really, I don’t think I’d make very good company right now.” Not to mention my complete ineptitude with card games of
any variety. While
some of my sorority sisters in college had been bitten by the bridge bug, I’d declined to be infected.

Jane waved away my words with a flick of her expensive manicure. “You’ll learn. We all did.” She stepped back into the living
room and I followed like an obedient puppy. “In fact, I think we should meet tonight. You need backup on your birthday.”

“Look—” Okay, I was starting to get perturbed. Couldn’t this woman see that I just wanted to be left alone?

“Seven o’clock at my house,” she said over her shoulder as she tugged open the obstinate front door. “And wear a red hat.”

“Wear a what?”

“A red hat.”

I sagged against the arm of the sofa. “I’m not sure I own a hat, much less a red one.”

Jane smiled, again blinding me. “Then you can borrow one of mine. We never play bridge without our hats. Chapter rules.”

Chapter rules? Great. Not only had my husband thrown me over for a Hooters waitress, but I had spent all the money from my
divorce settlement on a house in a neighborhood of crazies.

“Bring a dish, too. That’s another rule.”

“A dish of what?”

“Hors d’oeuvres. Casserole. Dessert. Whatever you feel like.”

“But I don’t have anything in the house.”

Jane smiled again. “Then I guess you’d better run to the grocery store.” Her eyes traveled over my sweatshirt and sweatpants.
“You might want to change first. In this
town, you’re going to see someone who will report back to him.”

“Report back?”

“To your ex. He’ll hear about your every move. So you can decide what kind of report he’s going to get. Would you rather be
the spurned woman in scruffy sweats or the fabulous divorcée who embraced life and moved on?”

Truthfully, I’d rather be able to dial the clock back nine months so that none of this had ever happened. But she did have
a point. Jim was bound to hear about it if I schlepped to the grocery store in our son’s castoffs. When it came to demographics,
Nashville might be a major metropolitan area, but in all the ways that mattered, it was still a small town. I’d learned never
to say anything bad about anyone, because you could count on the fact that the person you were speaking to was somehow related
to the person you were disparaging.

“Seven o’clock?” I said weakly, and Jane beamed.

“Good girl. You’re going to be okay.”

I wanted to believe her, but reason and hard truth were not on her side. I was a fifty-year-old broke divorcée, living in
a run-down, eighty-year-old house and wondering how I was going to pay next month’s electric bill. But even at my lowest,
I still had my pride. It was about all I had, but for the time being, it was going to have to be enough.

Jane waved good-bye and disappeared through the front door, leaving me alone with the pound cake. I straightened my spine,
walked to the coffee table, and scooped up the Twinkie wrappers and Coke cans.
Whether I wanted it or not, two things were apparently going to happen.

With or without Jim, life was going to go on.

And much to my consternation, I was going to learn to play bridge.

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