The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue (21 page)

T
hankfully, the next night was Saturday and the weekly bridge game. We were meeting at my house, and I spent the day cleaning
and baking, in hopes that such mundane activities would take my mind off the disturbing events of the previous evening.

“Tonight,” Linda said after we’d filled our plates and sat down at my dining room table, “we’re going to focus on how to finesse.”
Linda sat across from me, Grace on my left and Jane on my right.

I knew what the word meant, but I wasn’t sure what it had to do with bridge. “What’s a finesse?”

“It’s a way of slipping a lower honor card past a higher one to take the trick.” Linda laid some cards out on the scarred
surface of the table. “For example, let’s say that you have the ace and three of clubs in your hand, and the dummy—me—has
the queen and several low clubs in hers.”

“Okay.” I didn’t see where this was going. Jane watched Linda’s lesson with interest, but Grace seemed distracted and unusually
quiet. Before I could ask her if anything was wrong, though, Linda plowed ahead with my lesson.

“You want to try and take a trick with the queen from the dummy for an extra winner, but you don’t know which of your opponents
has the king, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“If Grace, the person to your left, has the king, then you can make the queen a winner by finessing.”

“What if Jane has the king?” I said, nodding to her on my right.

“If the last person to play has the king, then your finesse won’t work. But you have a fifty-fifty chance of taking the trick,
and sometimes in bridge those are pretty good odds.”

I looked at the cards in front of me. “So, how do I play it? Do I just go ahead and lead my ace?”

“No. You lead weakness to strength.”

“What do you mean?”

Jane plucked a three of clubs and laid it in the middle of the table. “Lead with your low club. If Grace has the king and
plays it, you play a low card and then your queen can take the trick the next time clubs are played.”

“And if Grace doesn’t play the king?”

“Then you play the queen from the dummy. If Grace was holding it back, you take the trick. If Jane, on your right, has the
king, then you lose.”

“Shouldn’t you try for something that you know is going to work?”

“Finessing is about taking extra winners, not for tricks you need to make your contract.”

“Just remember, lead from weakness to strength,” Linda reminded me as she began to deal the cards for real. “And remember,
too, that it’s okay to take risks. Sometimes they pay off. You just have to know when they’re worth it.”

“How do you know that?” I’d never been very good at trying to slip something past anyone, queen or otherwise. And I rarely
ever anticipated someone making an effort to slip something past me, although I had caught Connor red-handed that time he’d
tried to sneak a six-pack of beer out of the refrigerator.

Jane nodded her agreement. “Calculated risks can pay off. You just have to know the odds and plan accordingly.”

“Like with you and Roz,” Linda said.

At the mention of that name, I started to feel queasy. I’d spent even more time in the past week in my futile effort to find
shuttle buses and valet parking for the ball. Roz had taken to leaving daily messages on my answering machine and blitzing
me with e-mails. I’d just been screening her calls and ignoring the e-mails, but I expected her to show up on my doorstep
in the near future.

“Why do I need to finesse Roz?” I had enough drama in my life. The last thing I needed was to add to it.

Linda gave me a piercing look. “Ellie, you know she set you up for a fall. And you know she’s going to keep doing it as long
as you move in the same social circles.”

“Well, after next week, the only social circle I’ll be moving in is when I join the mall walkers at Green Hills.” I couldn’t
seem to make myself admit my failure
to Roz. I was like a person tramping down the railroad tracks, knowing a train was barreling toward me but somehow determined
not to be the first to flinch.

“It would be better to confront her sooner than later,” Jane advised.

Grace had been uncharacteristically silent all evening. I looked over at her. “What do you think, Grace? Should I have it
out with Roz?”

I hadn’t expected the solemn, almost grieving expression that covered her face. “Sometimes the truth has to come out,” she
said, her shoulders rounded as if she bore a great burden. Since her usual posture was bolt upright, I knew something was
wrong.

“Grace? Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine, Ellie. Just feeling my age tonight.” Her thin smile didn’t reassure me any more than her feeble answer did. “I’m
sure you should do as Linda says.”

“I’d rather not confront Roz.” Despite their well-meant advice, these women had no idea of the history between Roz and me.
Years of enmity, and my theft of Jim’s affections, couldn’t be solved so easily.

“We’re not saying confront her, Ellie.” Linda waved a hand at the cards on the table. “We’re saying finesse her. Slip one
past her. So that the next time she tries to set you up, she’ll think twice.”

“It sounds pretty complicated.”

“It’s time for a power play.” Linda leaned forward. “I’ve been in Nashville society for a long time, and one thing I know
is that women like Roz will always be a part of the equation. But, if you can learn to manage them, your life suddenly gets
a whole lot easier.”

The mere idea that I could ever “manage” Roz Crowley was ludicrous. No one in her life had ever been able to put a leash on
her.

“I’m not the woman for that job,” I protested.

“On the contrary, you’re exactly the woman for the job,” Linda said.

Because of Linda pushing so hard for me to finesse Roz, I was grumpy the rest of the evening and couldn’t even enjoy it when
I pulled off several successful finesses of the bridge variety. Didn’t the other three understand that I was no match for
my oldest enemy? Sure I’d won the battle over Jim, but she would fight to her last breath before she let me win the battle
for the upper hand in Nashville society.

I
found it both a little scary and a little Zen how many principles of bridge were turning out to be quite handy in my everyday
life. Or at least in this strange new post-divorce existence. That lesson on finessing a queen, for example, proved quite
helpful not forty-eight hours later when I was pushing a grocery cart down the aisle at Harris-Teeter.

Most important moments in life catch us unaware, just as this one did me. I had been stewing over the whole “finessing a queen”
thing since Saturday. But today was Monday, the start of a new week, and I needed to forget about Roz and focus on how in
the world to find shuttle buses for the ball. Not to mention figuring out what I was going to do about Henri and Will. And
the myriad of
other difficulties that seemed to swamp me every time I thought about them.

So there I was, pulling a stack of ninety-nine cent frozen pizzas out of the freezer case when I saw her out of the corner
of my eye.

Roz Crowley.

She, of course, was not wearing faded jeans and a Target T-shirt like I was. No, she looked like a million dollars in her
chic little separates from Sigfrid Olsen.

For a moment, I debated the pros and cons of climbing into the freezer case and trying to hide out behind the wall of frozen
pizzas. I didn’t have the chance to give it a try, though.

“Ellie!” She spit out my name somewhere between a bark and a screech.

I turned, slowly, careful to look surprised to see her. My eyebrows were arched so high that they hurt.

“Oh. Hello, Roz.” I don’t know if I could have sounded so cool if I weren’t standing with the door to the freezer case open.
“Nice to see you.”

Her eyes narrowed above the forced smile she’d plastered on her face. “I’ve left you several messages but you haven’t called
me back.”

“Sorry.” I pitched the pizzas into the basket of my cart and prayed she wouldn’t check out the other contents too closely.
Everything in there had a generic or a store brand label. “My new business has really taken off and I’ve been swamped.” I
resisted the urge to cross my fingers behind my back.

“I need to know about the transportation arrangements. I assume you have made them?”

“Why wouldn’t I have?” I was pretty good at feigning innocence from all those years of convincing my kids that I had no idea
who had eaten all the Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies.

Her eyes narrowed further, if that was physically possible. “What company’s doing the shuttles?”

She might as well have pinned me up against the frozen pizzas and shone a bright lamp in my eyes.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It’s going to be something very special.”

I could tell she didn’t believe me. “I’m the chair of the ball. I think you can tell me.”

“Nope. It’s going to be a surprise.” And it was, even to me, so I wasn’t lying. Still, guilt thickened my tongue and raised
my heart rate.

“And the security?”

“Taken care of. All the off-duty Metro officers we need.”

Her eyebrow arched, then, in pure skepticism. “How did you manage that?”

“Connections.” And an excruciating dinner at Green Hills Grille.

“I always worry when I think someone’s being less than truthful with me.” She took a step closer, totally violating my personal
space. And I couldn’t retreat since the freezer case had my back.

“Don’t screw this up, Ellie, like you do everything else.”

“If I screw this up, Roz, it will be because you used Nashville’s biggest charity event to get back at me for stealing your
boyfriend!”

All the breath whooshed out of my lungs on the wings of those words. I couldn’t believe I’d actually said that.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Roz rolled her eyes, but it was an affected gesture. I could tell from the tightening of her nostrils
that I’d scored a direct hit. Only in an outright battle, I knew I couldn’t beat her. She had money, power, connections. Lord,
she was going to squash me like a bug. She’d been waiting years for the opportunity.

“Look, Roz,” I said, swallowing the large knot in my throat that was my pride. “I’m sorry about Jim. But that was a long time
ago, and clearly I’m getting my just desserts now.”

But even that didn’t seem to mollify her. Her perfectly made up cheeks took on a fiery tone.

“You think this is about Jim?” She was looking at me in patent disbelief.

I didn’t know what to say.

“I could care less about Jim Johnston,” she sneered. “Although I will say I admire him for finally coming to his senses.”

“Wait a minute.” The cold tile beneath my feet was starting to spin. “If you don’t hate me because of Jim, then why?”

“You really don’t know?”

“No.”

I couldn’t tell whether my denial made her mad or happy. She looked up at the ceiling, then down at her impeccable navy pumps,
and then finally back at me. And when she did, she had tears in her eyes.

“Your mother never told you?”

“Never told me what?”

Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly, much as mine had done when Jim had asked me if Tiffany could wear my mom’s wedding
dress.

“My father…”

Just the start of that sentence was like a sucker punch to the stomach.

“He and your mother—”

“No!” I was not going to let her stand there and slander my mother. Roz was a jealous, bitter, vindictive—

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes. For
years.”
She drew out the last word like it was a knife coming out of its sheath.

“No way.” I thought of my mom, collapsed on the couch at the end of a long day with her feet in a tub of hot water and Epsom
salts. As far back as I could remember, her face had been lined and worn. She was the last person in the world who would have
had an affair with her boss. Besides, I knew who my father was. Kevin Michael Hall had died in Korea three months before I
was born. I had his eyes and his strong chin. One look at the portrait of my dad in his dress uniform confirmed my paternity.

“No, Roz, my mother wasn’t involved with your father.” And then the light dawned. “Good Lord! You think we’re sisters?”

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. Not a very politic thing to do at that exact moment, but it wasn’t intentional.

“My mom always said—”

“Your mom was a bitter, jealous woman.” I’d been young, but not too young to pick up on that fact. I’d always resented when
my mom threw Roz’s accomplishments in
my face, and if I protested her doing that, she would tell me tales of Roz’s horrible mother.

Evidently the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.

“It has to be true,” Roz hissed. “He was always talking about you, going on about your grades, your hard work, your accomplishments.
Ellie
this and
Ellie
that. I hated the sound of your name.”

Another shopper bumped against me trying to get to the frozen pizzas. I moved aside, and Roz moved with me.

“Look, Roz, I can show you a copy of my birth certificate if you want. Your dad was a doctor. If he had thought he was my
father, his name would be on my birth certificate. He would never have messed with something like that.”

Right there, right in front of my eyes, she deflated like a balloon stuck with a hat pin. Her face crumpled as much as it
could, given the amount of Botox it contained. I half expected her to go swirling and spinning off through the store.

For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for Roz Crowley. Suddenly, I didn’t feel the need to finesse anything. I’d taken
an extra winner without even trying.

“I’m sorry, Roz,” I said and tried to sidle around the side of my cart. I was going to try and do something kind, like put
a hand on her shoulder and pat her as Grace so often did to me. But before I could get anywhere near her, she threw back her
shoulders and glared at me with those laser-beam eyes.

“If you ever, ever repeat this to anyone, I’ll—”