Summer in the South (20 page)

It was all perfect. Tranquil and perfect. Even the old barn, Ava noted, had been given a new coat of white paint.

S
he would have been fine if she hadn’t started drinking Donnie Miller cocktails. Or at least that’s what she told herself later. Dinner was good. The food was excellent, and the rooms, spare and lit with candlelight, set a warm, intimate mood. Ava had started out drinking red wine, going from table to table with Will, letting herself be shepherded about with his hand on her back. She was always nervous in social situations. But after a couple of glasses of wine, bolstered by Will’s presence and his obvious ease among his guests, she began to relax and enjoy herself. Everyone was so friendly. This was something she hadn’t counted on, the way Southerners could make you feel like you’d known them forever. She had never felt so accepted, so welcome as she felt now, roaming among Will’s friends.

After dessert she wandered out onto the back gallery to get another drink. The bartender had set up a tray of rocks glasses filled with Donnie Miller cocktails. He smiled at Ava.

“Having fun?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” she said, picking up a glass. “I am.”

“You aren’t from around here.”

“How could you tell?”

He grinned, leaning against the bar. “You talk funny.”

She sipped her drink. “How old are you?” she said.

“Old enough to ask you to go for a drink with me when this thing is over.” He glanced behind her, then stood up and began to wipe down the bar.

“Here you are,” Will said.

Ava turned around. “Here
you
are,” she said, looking up at him and grinning foolishly. The lights behind his head seemed to glimmer and streak like shooting stars.

“Maybe you should stop drinking for a while,” he said smoothly, sliding his arm around her. He stared deliberately at the bartender and Ava giggled. He looked so handsome and gallant standing there. She thought,
What’s wrong with me? I should just marry him.

And although she had not consciously thought of it, the possibility that she might marry him became suddenly quite real to her.
Why not?
She could stay here in this lovely house and write a series of light, humorous tales about a quirky little Southern town. Something harmless and frivolous. A Mitford kind of place where everyone is kind, where the good are rewarded and the bad are punished, and the tragic past is never touched upon. The Woodburns, with their vast network of family and influential friends would, no doubt, be able to help her find a publisher in New York for such a series. And because she would not need the money, fame and good fortune were sure to follow.

He kissed her. “Let’s go check on our guests.”

“Yes,” she said happily.

L
ater, she found herself cornered at a table with a woman Will had gone to prep school with. The woman’s name was Grayson Byrd, and she was tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, the kind of woman who had never, since the age of puberty, spent a Friday night home alone. She introduced Ava to her husband, David, a mild-mannered pediatrician with dark curly hair and wire-frame glasses. Grayson was very outgoing and effusive, while he was very quiet, letting her do most of the talking. They had two sons, Franklin and Caldwell, who closely resembled their father (Grayson carried several photos in her wallet that she was only too happy to pass around). Franklin was in first grade and Caldwell was in second. She put her photos away, then sent David off to talk with some of the men.

“So how did you and Will meet?” she asked, laying her hand lightly on Ava’s arm.

Ava told her they had met in college.

“And you kept in touch all these years? How romantic,” Grayson said, resting her chin on her palm and gazing wistfully across the crowded room. Her cheeks were very red, and her eyes were bright. “Will has let his hair grow out. It looks good on him. Very Lord Byron.” She giggled at her odd comparison. “He was always such a romantic guy. Very old-fashioned, if you know what I mean.” She giggled again and her chin slipped off her hand, and Ava realized she was drunk.

“I always thought that he and Hadley would wind up together eventually.” Grayson stopped, frowning, realizing she had said the wrong thing.

Ava said quickly, “How long have you and David been married?”

“Ten years.”

“Ten years? Wow.”

“I know,” she said flatly, making a wry mouth. “We got married right after college, before David went off to med school.” She gazed across the crowded room to where her shy husband stood quietly listening to Will and another man who were engaged in an animated conversation. “He was such a good guy. David. Not very romantic, but a good guy. You know what I mean?”

Ava said she did.

“Kind of quiet but a nice guy.” Grayson sighed and leaned her arms on the table. “I don’t know. You reach a point in your life where you have to make a decision. Do you stay with the wild and sexy boyfriend, the one who makes your pulse race and your heart pound, or do you settle for the guy who will always pay the mortgage?” Her eyes were wide, tragic. “Do you settle for regular orgasms or money in the bank?”

Ava didn’t know what to say to this. She supposed if you were lucky, you got both.

“My dad was an artist. A bohemian,” Grayson said, and Ava, alarmed, sensed a confession coming. “I’d come home from school and he and a bunch of his friends would be smoking weed in the hot tub, listening to Led Zeppelin on the stereo. I didn’t want that for my kids, you know?”

One of the caterers stopped by and asked if they wanted a refill.

“No thanks,” Ava said.

“Another Donnie Miller,” Grayson said.

Compared to Grayson, Ava realized she was stone-cold sober. And growing more sober by the moment.

“Do you know what my dad said to me the night I told him I was going to marry David?” Ava looked around uneasily but Grayson didn’t wait for her to reply. “He said, ‘He’ll never make you happy.’ Just like that. As if he knew, or even cared, what made me happy!”

Fraser entered the room from the dining room and Ava quickly raised her hand and motioned for him to join them. She could see Darlene Haney sitting at a table with three other women. Darlene saw Fraser and made a face, turning her head slightly so she wouldn’t have to speak to him.

“And now I have these two sons,” Grayson continued, waving her empty glass in the air in front of her, “and they’re as cute as can be. You’ve seen pictures of them?” she asked, and Ava smiled and nodded her head.
Dear God, don’t let her take out the photos again.

“They’re as cute as can be and they’re sweet, quiet boys just like their father, and they don’t have any friends. Well, not very many anyway, not like I did when I was a child. I was very popular.” She looked at Ava. “Were you popular when you were a girl?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.” Grayson frowned, as if struggling to understand this. “What was I talking about?”

“Your sons.”

“Oh, yes! Do you know how many kids showed up for Caldwell’s birthday?” She put the glass down and held up five fingers. “That’s right,” she said. “Four.”

Fraser had stopped to say hello to someone he knew and Ava stared at him, willing him to look at her.

“Four out of ten invites,” Grayson said, sniffing.

“Well, that’s almost fifty percent,” Ava said bravely. She wasn’t trying to make light of Grayson’s pain. Clotilde had once thrown a surprise party for Ava’s thirteenth birthday for which no one showed up, but it turned out later that Clotilde had put the wrong date on the invitation and everyone showed up a week later. (“Oops!” Clotilde had said, laughing.) So maybe it wasn’t the same thing at all.

“Hello, girls,” Fraser said. He had come up while Ava had her head down, remembering her dismal thirteenth birthday party. He had toned down the Edgar Allan Poe tonight, wearing a pair of dark slacks and a dark silk shirt opened at the throat to show a simple gold crucifix.

“Hello, Fraser,” Grayson said brightly, dabbing at her eyes. “Excuse me. I have to run to the little girls’ room.”

He sat down and they watched Grayson push her way through the crowd. “Trouble in paradise?” he asked, arching one brow.

“Just girl talk,” Ava said.

“Well, then you can tell me, silly.”

“Kids,” she said. “Don’t ever have any.”

He leaned forward, smiling smugly. “And speaking of spilling the beans.”

“Were we?”

“How was lunch with Jake Woodburn?”

She looked at him uneasily. “How did you know about that?”

“Honey, the whole town knows about it.”

She was quiet for a moment, wondering which lunch he was talking about. She decided it had to be the barbecue place.
Battle Smoove.
She sat back, running her hand through her hair, pulling it forward around her face. “It was just lunch. It wasn’t sex in the afternoon. It wasn’t anything sordid.” Despite her insistence that there was nothing wrong with it, Ava felt her face flushing.

Fraser, noting her discomfort, grinned and said, “I’m not blaming you. Isn’t he delicious? And so very
bad.
Who can resist?”

“What is it exactly that he’s done that makes him such an outcast in this town?”

“Well.” Fraser crossed his legs and rested his hands on one knee. “He’s kind of a lone wolf, if you know what I mean. He doesn’t mix much with the town, doesn’t go to parties or barbecues, doesn’t date debutantes.”

“None of that makes him an outcast in my book.”

“The biggest thing, of course, is that he went up against the Woodburns. You know that old saying you don’t bite the hand that feeds you? Well, Josephine and Fanny paid for him to go to prep school, they paid for his college. He was living in a trailer with his mother on the wrong side of town and when Fanny found out, she went out there and talked to his mother. She insisted that the Woodburns would pay for his education, and they did. And that’s what made it so much worse, later, when he broke up Will and Hadley. He could have had any girl he wanted but he set his sights on Will’s fiancée and that’s what caused the rift.”

Ava felt a little quiver of alarm. She said, “Jake dated Will’s fiancée?”

“Well, technically they weren’t engaged yet. That came later. I don’t know if Jake dated her but he certainly slept with her. They were sleeping together while they were at Sewanee. While Will was up at Bard but before he and Hadley got engaged.”

She remembered Jake’s face the day she asked him if the breach between him and Will was over a girl. “Was it serious?”

“Between Will and Hadley? Of course it was! They started going together their sophomore year of prep school. He was crazy about her. She wasn’t from around here. Birmingham, I think, or maybe Mobile.”

“No. Between Jake and Hadley.”

Fraser waved animatedly at someone he knew. He turned his attention back to Ava. “Who knows?” he said, shrugging. “It’s hard to tell with Jake. Although he must have felt something for her because he dropped out of school and went to California after she and Will got engaged.”

She was quiet for a moment, wondering what upset her more, the fact that Jake had lied when he said it wasn’t a girl that caused his break with Will, or the fact that he might have been in love with that girl. She supposed she wasn’t really surprised. What was it Darlene Haney had said about him? “We’re risking our reputations just standing here talking to him.” He was obviously the kind of man whom women flocked to against their better judgment.

“So Will didn’t know about Hadley and Jake when he asked Hadley to marry him?”

“No. He found out two years later and then he broke off the engagement.”

“It was a sleazy thing to do,” she said quietly. “But obviously Hadley chose Will over Jake. She got engaged to Will. So maybe Will should have just forgiven everybody and gone on with his life.”

Fraser fussed with his sleeves. “Will didn’t see it that way, of course. He took it as a personal betrayal. So did Josephine. And you know how those Woodburns are, they can carry a grudge.”

“So Josephine was fond of Hadley?”

“I suppose so.”

“That figures. Southern girl and all that.”

Fraser grinned and made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Now don’t be jealous. I’ll bet Will hasn’t thought of her in years.”

“I’m not jealous,” Ava said.

“You’re as different from Hadley as two girls can be. You’re just plain folks.”

“Careful.”

Fraser giggled. “You know what I mean. You’re
comfortable.
And I mean that in a good way. And Hadley, well, she was just a big ol’ Barbie doll.”

“Oh, thank you very much.”

“A cruel-hearted dominatrix in stiletto heels.”

“It’s time for another Donnie Miller,” Ava said.

“Who’s a cruel-hearted dominatrix?” Darlene had sneaked up behind them while they were talking.

“Speak of the devil,” Fraser said.

She ignored him and turned to Ava, “Hey, are y’all talking about Hadley Marsh? Will’s old fiancée?”

Ava said, “We are, but I don’t know why.”

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Darlene said.

Fraser snorted. “Well, aren’t you sweet?”

She pointed at his face. “Your mascara’s running.”

“At least I know not to wear blue shadow with melon lipstick.”

“It’s not melon, you peckerhead,” Darlene said. “It’s coral.”

“Who’re you calling a peckerhead?”

“Hey, if the shoe fits.”

“Speaking of shoes,” Fraser said, staring at Darlene’s feet. “What size are those boats you’re wearing?”

Darlene said, “You fucker.”

Fraser laughed merrily.

Ava said, “Time to make a liquor run.” The room revolved around her, reflecting the glittering light of the chandelier. She closed her eyes briefly, trying to get her bearings. Jake’s face came suddenly, vividly, into view.

She put both palms on the table and pushed herself up, and while Fraser and Darlene continued with their argument she stumbled off through the crowd, determined not to think of him again.

T
wo Donnie Millers later, Ava spotted Will across the crowded room. He’d been cornered by Darlene. They had their heads close together. Will was looking at the floor and Darlene had her hand cupped around her mouth and was saying something into his ear. He raised his head, staring into Darlene’s face. She shrugged. Then they both turned and looked at Ava.