Divas Do Tell (4 page)

Gaynelle greeted us at the door. She’s in her mid-sixties and colors her gray hair ash brown or blonde or whatever she feels like at the moment. Since her retirement she’s gone from wearing dowdy dresses to wearing silk blouses and nice pantsuits. Her cat’s-eye glasses have been exchanged for either contacts or frames with a modern look, and the occasional twitch in her eye has completely disappeared.

She had one of Cindy’s dogs by the collar. He was huge, a lovely pit bull with a wide smile and tongue hanging out one side of his mouth. “Come in quickly,” she said, and I could see she was hanging on to the dog with grim determination. The dog seemed just as determined to add his own greeting.

I put my money on Gaynelle when it came to a struggle of any kind. She’d been a school teacher for so long she commanded obedience and attention from even the most wayward of creatures. After a sharp word from her, the humongous dog sat on his haunches and didn’t budge.

From the way his eyes followed my cake, I knew he wasn’t as interested in me as he was the chocolate. Dogs don’t know that chocolate isn’t good for them. Bitty’s fur-child is quite good at sneaking Oreos, for instance. Brownie, my parents’ pet kleptomaniac cleverly disguised as a dog, has been known to eat an entire chocolate bar then devour a roll of Tums just in case it didn’t sit well on his stomach. He also eats errant jewelry. It can be very inconvenient, but since his penchant for devouring inedible objects got me an introduction to the local vet—a charming man with whom I’m now keeping company—I don’t complain as much.

While we put our Diva offerings in the kitchen, Gaynelle convinced the dog to go down to the basement with the other dog and a cat or two. Cindy has a vast menagerie of pets, including a duck with one wing that her kids found on the lake. Not all duck hunters are successful. The view out the windows was lovely: sunlight chipping at the water, a single pontoon boat in the middle of the lake, a fisherman sitting back with a pole in his hand. He probably didn’t care if he caught fish or not. It was just a nice day to be out. January weather is fickle, so any nice day is an invitation outside.

“I’m surprised you didn’t go with a Mardi Gras theme,” Bitty was saying to Cindy when I set my cake on the kitchen counter. “But Groundhog Day?”

Cindy is a cute, bouncy young mother with more energy than I remember ever having. Her brown hair was cut in a short style that only flatters youth. She laughed. “Mardi Gras is too far away. It was either Presidents’ Day or Groundhog Day.”

“We’re running out of themes,” said Bitty. “Next we’ll be celebrating our dogs’ birthdays.”

“Fluffy’s birthday isn’t until May,” Cindy replied.

Fluffy is the pit bull. Cindy’s four-year-old named him. The poodle’s name is Killer. Go figure.

Bitty eyed a couple crockpots on the kitchen counter. “You’re not serving groundhog, are you?”

Cindy laughed. “Not as the first course. But I did put
Groundhog Day
in the Blu-Ray for us if you want to watch it again. Come on. Rayna and the others are in the den.”

Rayna Blue is our local artist extraordinaire and married to Rob Rainey, a bail bondsman and insurance investigator. Rob stays pretty busy just bailing Divas out of jail. We tend to get ourselves in a mess at times. Our families have pretty much given up any hope that we won’t end up in prison one day.

Slender and artsy, Rayna wears her dark hair over her shoulders and big, chunky jewelry that she makes herself. Today she had on turquoise earrings, necklace, and a couple bracelets. She also had a big glass of wine in one hand. I immediately crossed to the wet bar and found all the necessary items to do the same. Cindy has a nice wine cooler tucked under the small sink and a rack of glasses. The downstairs has a walk-out to the yard that looks over the lake. Double French doors open onto a deck. A door leads down to a cellar that’s apparently the kids’ playroom since that’s where Gaynelle had put the pit bull. Most of the houses on the lake have a basement, some that can be used as a storm cellar and some with walk-outs.

Carolann Barnett, who hired me to supplement my meager savings by selling lovely lingerie in her shop, came to give me a big hug and recommend the peanut butter fudge. “Homemade,” she assured me with a smile.

I like Carolann a lot. She has crazy red hair that looks like a four alarm fire, wears New Age tops and skirts and funky little boots, peace signs on gold chains around her neck, and has one of the biggest hearts in all of Marshall County.

“What wine do you recommend to go with the fudge?” I asked as I eyed the bottles in the cooler. “White or red?”

“Zinfandel. It’s a good compromise.”

I smiled and poured a generous amount in my glass. Gaynelle and Sandra Dobson, who is a nurse in her real life, already had wine and chocolate. A table had been set up with more chocolate offerings as well as other goodies, and we were standing next to it and discussing the fallout from the book when Cady Lee and her sister Dixie Lee came down the stairs. Instant hush fell over the room. I could swear I heard Bitty almost swallow her tongue.

Dixie Lee was just as blonde as her sister, though taller and more slender, and her clothes draped her like only really expensive clothes can do. Diamonds glittered in her ears and at her throat, and a wave of perfume that was probably made of handpicked rose petals crushed by bare feet and poured into crystal bottles wafted out in a soft silky cloud. I stood mesmerized.

“Surprise!” she exclaimed, while Cady Lee wore a nervous smile, and her left eye began to twitch. Dixie Lee seemed oblivious to the obvious. She strode into the den with all the confidence of a Georgia Tech linebacker.

Right behind them Cindy’s head bobbed like an anxious full moon. I could tell she expected some kind of explosion. She underestimated Bitty. Or perhaps overestimated her. Instead of exploding, Bitty put a smile on her face and went into pure Belle mode. That’s much worse than an explosion, believe me.

“Why, Dixie Lee Forsythe, no one told me you were going to be here. This
is
a surprise.”

“I didn’t let Cady Lee tell anyone. I wanted to surprise all of you.” Dixie Lee’s smile was nearly as fake as Bitty’s.

“Well, welcome home. You have most of the town talking about you. Again. Of course, that was back in your teenage years when girls weren’t expected to be so . . . fast.”

“I was just lucky enough to mature early. I see that your breast implants are still perky. Wherever did you find such a wonderful plastic surgeon?”

I nearly fainted. While I knew Bitty’s breasts were made full by Mother Nature, there have been a few reckless people tacky enough to suggest otherwise. Bitty gets quite testy at the implication.

This time she just smiled, looked Dixie Lee square in the eye, and said, “No plastic surgeon would ever be able to match what God gave me, but Martha Swift knows one who works miracles with face lifts. Remind me, and I can look up her number for you.”

“Oh, honey,” purred Dixie Lee, “I wouldn’t dare risk having my face turn out like yours.”

“Sugar, I wouldn’t worry about that nearly as much as I would those wattles under your chin. I wouldn’t go out in the woods during turkey hunting season if I were you.”

“Oh, I’m not interested in hillbilly husbands. Whatever happened to the last one you had?”

They eyed each other like sumo wrestlers, clasped hands, then leaned forward and kissed the air next to each other’s ear. That ritual behind them, they squared off again while the rest of us held our collective breath.

Somewhere in the next room Bill Murray was reliving
Groundhog Day
, but inside the lovely den full of Divas the movie
Armageddon
seemed about to replay. I hoped for détente. Instead, I got another exploratory skirmish.

“If you’re talking about the senator,” said Bitty, lobbing the next conversational salvo, “he was killed while trying to bring industry to our area. Bless his heart. Are you still with the musician? The guy with the interesting beard who likes to dress in women’s underwear?”

“That was my junior year in college, Bitty. I can’t even remember his name. And how is your first husband? Is he able to get letters to you from prison?”

The breath hung in my throat. Gaynelle, Rayna, Sandra, Carolann, and I watched in fascination, rather like people do when watching a snake charmer and a cobra. Cindy still hovered in the background, and Cady Lee had found the wet bar. She splashed a little Jack Daniel’s in a glass and poured it down her throat without bothering with ice.

“Why, yes,” Bitty replied to Dixie Lee with a feral smile, “Frank keeps in touch fairly often. So sad about your second husband dumping you. His new wife is a twenty-two-year-old stripper, isn’t she?”

“Yes, Bambi is of
legal age
.”

Dixie Lee’s inference was clearly a reminder that Bitty’s last husband, the senator, had picked an underage cheerleader to have an affair with. I felt it was time to end the reenactment of D-Day on a Normandy beach so took a deep breath and stepped into the fray.

“Would you like a glass of wine, Dixie Lee? We have almost any kind you could want.”

“Why, thank you, Trinket. Wine would be lovely.”

While Dixie Lee took the opportunity to disengage from her opponent, Gaynelle succeeded in coaxing Bitty toward the table full of gastronomic offerings. Détente had finally arrived. I breathed a little easier. The old rivalry between Bitty and Dixie Lee seemed destined to continue. All we could hope for were moments of temporary truce.

Once wine had the chance to soothe ruffled feathers, Gaynelle tactfully danced around the subject that had us all wondering and talking.

“You’ve become quite the famous author, Dixie Lee. Whatever made you decide to write a book set in Holly Springs?”

Smiling over the rim of her glass, Dixie Lee said, “There are some stories just begging to be told. Of course, I fictionalized so much.
Dark Secrets Under the Holly
became more a work of love and homage to the town of my childhood than anything else.”

Since Bitty had reverted to Jack and Coke instead of a tamer glass of wine, I half-expected her to turn savage at any moment. She must just live to astonish me.

“I have to say,” Bitty remarked, “that what happened to Susana Jones was a terrible thing. Why did you give such a sad story a happy ending?”

“There are too many sad endings in real life,” Dixie Lee answered. “I gave it the ending it might have had in other circumstances. It was just too soon back in the sixties. These days it might get talked about, but no one would have to leave town over a bi-racial unwed pregnancy.”

“Does anyone know what happened to Susana after she left Holly Springs?” Rayna asked. “Billy Joe stayed here and married Allison, but no one has ever said anything about Susana since it all happened. I think the family went up north to Illinois or Michigan.”

Dixie Lee shrugged. “I didn’t research that far. My focus was more on the issues of the day, Civil Rights and race relations, how some people overcame enormous obstacles to not only survive, but thrive. I had to put in amusing anecdotes to lessen the tension, too. Most readers don’t want unrelenting suffering in their books.”

“Mrs. Tyree is annoyed that you didn’t write about everything that happened during the Civil Rights movement,” said Bitty with an arch of her waxed eyebrows. “She said it doesn’t tell half the story, and what it does tell is wrong.”

Dixie Lee sighed. “It’s a work of fiction. I may have used important facts, but much of it is my imagination when it comes to personal relationships.”

Important facts
? I thought. She’d used so much fact it could have been a documentary.

“Holly Springs didn’t have so much trouble during Civil Rights anyway,” Rayna pointed out. “I mean, except for a few people acting silly, things never got bad here. Not everyone was or is like Billy Joe Cramer’s family. They don’t mind anyone knowing they’re racists.”

“They must not,” Gaynelle said. “Billy Joe’s daddy got pretty ugly back then. That’s why it was a shock when it came out that Billy Joe had seduced Susana. He was already engaged to Allison by then, and everyone knew they were getting married right after she graduated from high school the next month. If not for Darcy Denton—Doris Dancey in the book—no one would have known about Susana’s baby.”

“I wanted Meryl Streep to play Darcy in the movie,” said Dixie Lee. “But since she was already starring in another movie they got Sandra Brady instead.”

“Sandra Brady!” I couldn’t help exclaiming. “She’s a huge star. I loved her in
Emerald Nights
.”

“Who’s playing the role of Susana—or Sharona in the book?” Cindy asked Dixie Lee.

“Mira Waller. Buck Prentiss is playing Billy Joe’s part.”

Cindy gave an excited squeal. “Buck Prentiss! He’s just as good-looking as Brad Pitt.”

Dixie Lee nodded. “Of course, you know I changed all the names in the book so I wouldn’t get sued, but as you all have figured out most people here know who I’m talking about anyway. And that’s just a small part of the book. All the other events are in the background, and a lot of bit players pop in and out. Some of the movie is being shot up in Memphis and down in Oxford at Ole Miss.”