One Foot in the Grove (4 page)

From the kitchen, Loretta handed off a basket of cracklin' biscuits and pitcher of sweet lime tea.

“I like ‘Beauty from Bambi,'” said Bambi in a soft, sultry voice. “Remember, we talked about it on our walk today, Judi.”

I set the biscuits on the table and began working my way around the guests, pouring tea. As I reached around Judi for her empty glass, Sal banged the table hard with his fist.

“I'm not havin' any wife of mine gettin' into any business,” croaked Sal sharply. “Business is man's work. Besides, like I said, the only way to make money in olive oil is how we've been doin' it for years. Bottling and distribution.
That's
our biz. So, stay out of it and shut up about it.”

I finished pouring and gently set the last glass down on the linen tablecloth in front of Sal's plate.

“You know, Sal, I'm getting tired of the way you treat me,” scolded Judi. “Bambi and I've got good ideas. The least you could do is listen.”

“Yeah,” echoed Bambi. “We know lotsa stuff.” She stabbed a single crowder pea with her fork and held it up to examine it. “How about ‘Bambi's Beaudacious Beauty'? I like that name.”

“What does that have to do with olive oil?” asked Judi. “It's supposed to be about olive oil.”

“You're both stupid,” said Sal, grabbing a biscuit. “Right, Guido?”

“Right, boss.” With coleslaw on his chin, Guido shoveled a huge forkful of trout and crowder peas into his noisy mouth.

“I don't see why we can't have our own business. It gets boring around the house all day long. Hey, speaking of olive oil, that reminds me,” said Judi. “Miss.” She turned in her chair and looked up at me as I crossed behind her. “Bambi and I were on our power walk earlier, and we noticed some of the olive trees didn't look too good. Are they sick?”

“Say!” interrupted Bambi, looking at me. “You're that girl in the YouTube video, aren't you? The runaway bride? From Boston?” Holding a single piece of fried okra on her fork, Bambi's hand froze midair as she stared at me. With her batwing eyelashes and pouty, poofed-up lips, she looked like a surprised blowfish. The fried okra dropped to her plate. “Oh, phooey!”

“Damned if it isn't!” said Guido, staring at me as he pushed a mound of trout and coleslaw into his plump face. Then, with a mouthful, he said, “You're that
crazy bitch
who decked the weatherman! They were showing you on that
Celebrity Sneek Peek
TV show the other day. Guys, we got a real wacko servin' us!”

“Sal, why do you always have to be so nasty and rude?” Judi scolded.

“Maybe 'cause I ain't getting enough.” Sal sulked.

Judi squinted up at me. “Say, it
is
you, isn't it!” She looked delighted.

Still chewing, Sal leered, as he looked me up and down. I shrunk back, hiding behind the big silver pitcher of iced tea in my hands. If being the “wacko” from Boston wasn't bad enough, dressed in Daphne's French maid outfit, I was sure that I resembled a cheap call girl.

“You know, you're the reason we found this place, isn't she, Sal?” said Judi.

Sal ignored his wife and just kept leering. Then, he shoved a pile of coleslaw into his mouth, followed by half a biscuit. He never took his eyes off me.

“Sal!”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, finally looking down.

“We saw the TV show about you being a runaway bride in Boston. The lady on TV said that you ran away from
your hometown in Georgia once, and that your family had just started an olive plantation where guests could visit. Right, Sal?”

“Yeah, sure. Could ya pass the biscuits?”

“So, I looked up your place on the Internet and made last-minute reservations for our thirtieth anniversary. We were so lucky you had a cancellation! I knew this place was your family's and all, but I never actually expected to see
you
here. You're almost famous!”

“We're glad that you could join us on the plantation for your anniversary,” I said calmly.

Guido wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Like Sal, he lasciviously looked me up and down. He slathered a biscuit in butter and shoved the entire thing in his mouth, still not taking his eyes off me.

“Please enjoy your dinner,” I said with a smile that I hoped didn't look too insincere. “I've left the iced tea on the table so you may help yourselves to more, if you like. Chef Loretta has a wonderful, homemade Georgia peach and pecan olive oil cake she'll be offering for dessert.”

I backed into the kitchen door before anyone could say more. Chagrinned about the runaway bride comments, I was even more irked at the sleazy way the men had eyed me. In the kitchen, Chef Loretta picked her teeth with a toothpick as I yanked Daphne's big bow behind my waist and tossed the French maid apron. Then, I ripped off the stupid crinoline.

After traveling twelve hundred miles to take refuge back home, I still hadn't managed to leave the stupid Boston scandal behind me.

Dolly snored loudly from her cushy dog bed on the floor. Sitting on Granny's antique four-poster bed, laptop across my knees, surrounded with books, magazines, news clippings, and printouts about olive oil, I looked out a rain-spattered window. Fat spikes of lightning, angry cracks of thunder, and sideways rain pummeled the tall palmettos and live oaks in the yard. Between gusts of howling wind and rain, I could see the big house hulking in the night across the lawn. The place was completely dark except for a small light coming from my sister Daphne's room on the third floor. The five kids, also on the third floor; the two couples from New York, the Malaguttis and the Gambinis, in their second-floor guest rooms; and Chef Loretta in her basement apartment were all sound asleep, no doubt.

Restless and unable to sleep, I closed my laptop and picked up a magazine. Still, my mind kept wandering. No wonder. I'd suffered from insomnia as long as I could remember. And, often when I did sleep, my kooky dreams would awaken me. Then, I'd be unable to get back to sleep again. Although people said exercising before bed kept you
awake at night, in my case the opposite was true. I'd found that running at night cleared my head from all those annoying, anxiety-ridden thoughts that kept me from sleep. And on that stormy Monday night, there were plenty of reasons to run. Still, the storm outside made it impossible. So, I fretted.

An old ceiling fan churned around and around overhead. Still, it didn't seem to move the stiflingly humid air. I blotted my forehead with the sleeve of my oversized
GEORGIA VIRGIN
tee as my mind wandered back to dinner, when perfect strangers had reveled in the realization that the infamous, “wacko” runaway bride from Boston was serving them.

Of course, they'd been referring to the event two weeks earlier, on my wedding day, when I'd very publically ditched my fiancé, popular Boston weatherman Zack Black, whom I'd foolishly mistaken for the love of my life. Afterward, the TV network damage-control team for my not-to-be husband, Zack, made sure that he was still a paragon and that I'd lost all credibility—both with my clients and the public at large.

In a heartbeat, my weatherman, our shared condo, our future home in the suburbs, and my career as a pubic relations consultant had all gone up in smoke. I was homeless, broke, and single.

Worse still, because my ex-fiancé was an up-and-coming network “star,” sensational details of the wedding drama made all the national tabloids. And, of course, once word got out that I'd run away before, my miserable, mascara-stained mug began circulating on the Internet, big-time. Folks were messaging, tweeting, and hashtagging all about the antics of notorious runaway bride Eva Knox. One late-night television host even made a joke about me during his monologue. Worse still, YouTube videos of my unseemly behavior outside the Boston church ensured that my cringe-worthy fifteen minutes of fame would haunt me forever. Like the Malaguttis and the Gambinis, folks all over the country couldn't be happier to feast on my wretched heartbreak.

Sitting on the bed, absently flipping the pages of a
magazine, I wondered if it was some sort of karma. After all, eighteen years after running away from Buck, I'd finally been forced to run back home, tail between my legs, to face folks like Tammy Fae Tanner. Folks who despised me.

And as much as I tried pretending Tammy Fae's and Debi's harsh words hadn't mattered, they'd really gotten to me that afternoon. That, and the fact that people considered me some sort of unhinged celebrity, worthy of derision, only worsened my distress about the Boston affair.

Leave it to me; I'd handily served up another juicy helping of wedding-gone-wrong fodder for the Abundance Ladies Club to dish over. No wonder I was Tammy Fae's perennial topic du jour. A wave of tear-ridden anxiety heaved up from my chest. I grabbed a tissue, blotted my eyes, and blew my nose while a crack of thunder sounded off outside. Actually, I'd first thought it was a gunshot. However, nose deep in tissue, I hadn't been able to tell for sure.

“Get a grip, Eva. Focus on the olives.”

I tossed the spent tissue on the bed and ripped out an article titled “Olive Oil's Dark Side” from the
New Yorker
magazine. It was all about rampant fraud ingrained in the olive oil industry, and how it'd been going on since Roman times. Intentionally mislabeling schlocky oils as coveted, more expensive “extra virgin” oils—a moniker reserved for only the naturally finest and purest of oils—was a common trick, said the article. Moreover, new technologies made it possible to chemically treat bad oils, camouflaging their impurities and aiding in the masquerade. I put the pages down. Could an honest small-town farmer like my father really make it in this business? Or would Dad's venture to produce blue-ribbon oils ultimately end up being nothing more than a big, expensive boondoggle that would result in our losing the family plantation after all?

An earsplitting
CRACK
, followed by a
BOOM
, echoed outside. The teeny cottage shook as wind-driven rain spattered through an open window. Dolly woofed from her cushion beside my bed.

“It's only thunder, Dolly.”

I reached into my nightstand drawer, pulled out a dog biscuit, and tossed it to Dolly. She nabbed it from the air and chomped it to bits in a flash. My grandparents' black Victorian clock on the mantel chimed musically. It was eleven o'clock at night.

Dolly jumped up and barked again.

Someone knocked on the screen door.

“Eva, sweetie, are y'all up?” called a soft, honeyed voice. “It's Pep.”

“Coming!” I tossed another spent tissue and slid from my bed.

Dolly sat, wagging her tail, as I unhooked the screen door latch. Outside under a big moon, crickets and katydids
chicka-chicka-chicked
like noisy maracas. The rain had slowed to a pitter-patter, and the air smelled of sweet, earthly freshness. Leaves of tropical palmettos, along with gnarled limbs of centuries-old live oaks in the yard, swished and rolled in a balmy wind. Underneath the dogwood tree, light from my cottage fell on Pep's vintage Schwinn bike. A wicker basket hung on the handlebars.

“Hey, sweetie, how's tricks?” Pep gave me a big bear hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Sorry to bother y'all. I spied a light on and figured folks were up, so I pedaled over when the rain slowed.”

In her thirties, like me, and just two years older, standing no more than five feet two inches, Pep was curvier and shorter than I was. She wore no makeup on her flawless porcelain skin except for smoky eye shadow and mascara around her big, soulful gray eyes. She had a small nose, like mine, and a pouty mouth—she got that from Mother. Her natural strawberry-blonde hair—we
all
got that from Dad—was short, spiky, and bleached platinum. Pep maintained and fixed everything from engines to hard drives on the farm—that is, when she wasn't tending bar at the Roadhouse, a grungy watering hole located in an abandoned train station on the edge of town. She and her motorcycling musician husband, Billy, lived in a little brick ranch on the other side of the farm.

“Love your
GEORGIA VIRGIN
tee shirt,” said Pep, stepping inside.

“Thanks. Hot Pressed Tees printed up a bunch for us.”

“It's cute. Don't wear it to the Roadhouse, though. With your looks, there'll be more googly-eyed men on your tail than y'all can shake a stick at.” She snorted.

I latched the hook on the screen door.

“You're looking quite glam, yourself,” I said.

As usual, Pep was totally gothed out. She wore a black leather skirted corset with a big silver zipper that ran between pointed leather bra cups down the center to the frilly leather miniskirt—it was so short that it was more of a ruffle than a skirt, really. There was a wide black choker with an oversized satiny bow that draped over her chest. Lacy black bootie-leggings hugged her legs up to her thighs, where they were held high with black garters. She looked like a glamorous white mink in a biker tutu.

“Like I said, sweetie, I'm sorry to be a bother. I hope y'all aren't entertaining . . .” Pep smiled and raised her eyebrows as she stood on her tiptoes and peered over my shoulder.

“Entertaining?” I laughed hard. “Are you kidding? I've got a self-imposed moratorium on men these days. Just a bad case of insomnia, that's all.”

“Whoa, Eva!” gasped Pep. She made a face and ran her fingers through her spiky hair as she took in the cottage.

My cottage was little more than a shoe box with a bizarre furniture arrangement. Shoe box because it was small. Bizarre because Daphne—who considered herself a decorista of sorts—said the room looked best with Granny's big four-poster bed placed just inside the front door. And of course there was no arguing with Daphne.

As Pep and I stood between the fireplace and an antique steamer trunk at the foot of the bed, I followed her gaze. On top of the bed, there were lots of squishy pillows, a rumpled matelassé quilt, my laptop, as well as magazines, books, and other materials that I'd been reading. Littered on top of all
that were a couple of empty Kleenex boxes and—easily—fifty or more spent, wadded, and balled-up tissues. Next to the bed, an antique maple nightstand and small crystal lamp were nearly obliterated by more wads of my tear-stained tissues.

Pep whistled quietly. “Holy cow!”

Along the front wall, between the front door and an open window, the top of my Sheridan dresser was just about the only clean surface in the room. The dresser stood below a matching mirror hanging on the whitewashed wall.

“Okay, so, it's a little gross around here. I've been . . . working through some things.”

I swept my arm across the foot of the bed to make a space to sit down. Accidentally, I knocked a small mountain of tissues to the floor. Dolly hastened over to inspect. She picked her prize and trotted with it over to her bed on the floor next to mine.

“I'll say. About this man moratorium of yours, sweetie, I wouldn't stick with it too long. There's no heartbreak that an orgasmic night with a hot stud can't fix. Believe me.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Hon, y'all think I'm kiddin', but it's
way
better for your psyche
and
your complexion than sittin' around bawling all night.” Pep gave a tiny snort as she took in the room again with her hands on her hips. “Maybe y'all should wear your
VIRGIN
shirt to the Roadhouse after all.”

“Seriously, Pep, no men. And certainly, not one of your Roadhouse cronies.”

“Have it your way, hon. When y'all change your mind, just let me know. I'll set you up with a fella who'll make y'all forget
everything
.” Pep smiled provocatively.

“I'm afraid I may never be ready for that!” I laughed.

“Y'all know what they say about Southern farmers . . .”

“No. And please, don't tell me. Pep, you're scaring me.” I changed the subject, “So, why are you here? Is something wrong?”

“Naw, there's nothin' ‘wrong,' really . . .”

“How 'bout a late-night snack, then?”

“Thanks, no snack. Billy is waitin' on me. We went to the Creamed Peaches concert at the college. You know, part of the Monday night concert series.”

“I heard. Darlene and Charlene didn't work so they could go. Daph was fit to be tied.”

“Well, it was worth it. The stadium was packed. Unfortunately, party pooper Billy insisted we leave early 'cause after the last concert there was so much traffic we ended up trapped on the interstate for five friggin' hours.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, I s'pose that y'all know Billy and I've been havin' some ‘issues' lately.”

“Uh, I guess so . . .”

“I think he's been gamblin' again—stayin' out late, sometimes not comin' home at all. Last week, I discovered money missin' from the household account. And I'm worried that one of my gold rings—the one shaped like a skull with ruby eyes—may be gone, too.”

“I'm sorry.”

Pep shrugged. “Anyway, tonight we finally got to spend some quality time together, and Billy's actually in the mood for some nookie.” She smiled, and the room lit up. “It's been months. I wanted to slip out of this outfit and into something ‘more comfortable.' Well, really”—Pep rolled her eyes—“nothing at all.”

I cringed. “Thanks for sharing—sure we're not headed into the ‘too much information' category?”

Pep ignored me.

“Except . . . I can't.”

“You can't? Can't . . . what?”

“I'm stuck.”

“Stuck?”

“Yeah. Right, hon. Stuck.”

Pep reached up and grabbed the giant silver zipper between the cone-shaped bra cups of her leather corset and yanked on it, hard. Nothing happened.

“See?”

She yanked again, this time even harder.