The Last Original Wife: A Novel Read online

  The sight of Cornelia and Harold together simply made me ill. It was way worse than Paolo and Lisette. Maybe because Tessa was gone.

  Listen, I’m hardly naive. I’ve seen the Jerry Springer Show. I knew that people fooled around and had been fooling around since the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. Many of them wound up divorced, but I never thought anything this brazen and embarrassing would happen to Danette. Reality shows were one thing, but Harold’s behavior just seemed so vulgar and desperate. And Cornelia was cheap. At least Tessa was dead. She didn’t have to see Paolo cavorting around with gel in his spiked hair.

  Having dinner with Harold and Cornelia and Lisette and Paolo was awful. I missed my friends. Hopefully, Tessa was in heaven petitioning the good Lord for Harold and even poor Paolo to get an irreversible case of erectile dysfunction.

  But what of Danette on Friday and Saturday nights? Was she home all alone in a sad chenille bathrobe, curled up on a sad sofa, watching a sad movie and drinking straight vodka, getting sadder by the minute? At least that’s what I heard Cornelia say to Lisette in the ladies’ room when they didn’t know I was in another stall.

  “Actually, ladies, Danette is not sad or drinking vodka. She’s doing great! She put the Buckhead house on the market, sold it for a whopping sum, and bought herself a wonderful craftsman’s cottage in the Oakhurst section of Decatur. She’s as happy as a clam.”

  “She is?” Lisette said.

  “Well, good for her,” Cornelia said.

  “You girls have no idea what kind of a woman Danette is. So, as her best friend of thirty years, I’m going to ask you politely not to run your mouths in public about her because it makes you sound happy that Harold left her, which you obviously are, but that sort of talk is better done in private.”

  “We’re in the bathroom,” Lisette said.

  “A public bathroom is not a confessional,” I said.

  “It’s not public. This is a private club,” Lisette said.

  “She means we probably shouldn’t gossip anywhere we might be overheard,” Cornelia said, looking at the floor.

  “ ’Cause you never know who’s in the next stall?”

  “Tessa must be spinning in her grave,” I said, looking Lisette right in the face.

  Lisette was as thick as a brick. I walked out of the ladies’ lounge leaving them there, jaws agape and red faced. I thought, Score One for the Home Team, those little twits can kiss it.

  It was true. Danette was flush with cash for the very first time in her adult life. She sold all her sterling silver and started collecting mercury glass. She gave all her designer clothes and handbags to Jody’s Fifth Avenue, an upscale consignment store, and started shopping at Anthropologie, mixing the deliberate bohemian of their tops and sweaters with her plain pants from Talbots. She began to look interesting in a new way. She got a great short haircut and bought a Prius. I didn’t mind the Prius, but to my great disappointment, she refused to discuss Harold or to say terrible things about Cornelia. I had mental steamer trunks filled with catty things I was dying to say about Cornelia. And Lisette! I was like an angry feline with a giant fur ball trapped in my throat and Danette had pulled away the soapbox the same way Peanut’s Lucy swipes the football from Charlie Brown. She was determined to be dignified. It was killing me.

  “I can’t speak for Harold’s behavior,” she would say. “He’s a grown man.”

  She said things like this a thousand times until I finally got it through my head that if she wanted to tell herself she didn’t care, then I should support her and tell my inner yenta to go throw herself in the Chattahoochee River.

  This posture went on for some time. Danette was the Queen of Serene, the Soul of Discretion, until, that is, it was time to start seriously planning Molly’s wedding. Then she gradually shifted gears, and all conversation moved to a new story entitled “What to Do About That Little Bitch, Cornelia?” And there was a subtitle, “And Lisette.”

  It was a beautiful day in early April, and I arrived at Danette’s new home carrying a take-out lunch from the Brick Store Pub, our new favorite haunt. Danette was in the nesting stage of her new life. Flowers were coming into bloom all over her front yard, and the new gardens were starting to take shape. Danette was doing a lot of the work herself, and if you could believe what she said, she loved getting dirty in the yard.

  I let myself in through the open kitchen door and found her there rinsing a huge copper pot in the sink. You could see your face reflected in the patina. In fact, you could see your face in all her pots and pans that were suspended from an overhead rack above the island in the center of her newly renovated kitchen. Houses that were too clean made me nervous. And Danette, as composed as she appeared to be, had a house where you could literally do surgery. She must have been cleaning to compensate for something. She couldn’t fool me. But it was beautiful all the same.

  “Hey! It’s a gorgeous day out there in Decatur, Georgia! We ought to be having a picnic in the park!” I dropped the bag on a counter, took off my sunglasses, and let my eyes adjust to the indoors. “Lord! We sure do have some sun!”

  “Hey, yourself! Gimme a smooch!” she said. I blew her a kiss and she blew one into the air back to me. “What’d ya bring? Just tell me they had the pimiento cheese and I’ll die a happy woman.” She rehung the pot above her head. Just for the record, until she and Harold got a divorce, I’d never seen Danette Stovall dry a pot in her life.

  “I’ve got food for an army.” I began unpacking. Imitating the voice of Rachael Ray, I said, “We’ve got pimiento cheese with pickled jalapeños to be served up with crostini and EVOO, butterbean hummus presented with pita chips and EVOO, a baby spinach salad with sliced turkey and tahini green goddess on the side for you and a muffaletta for me with balsamic and EVOO. Oh! And a brownie to share. Without EVOO. Ha-ha-ha.”

  Danette giggled. “You’re so bad! What? No soup?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m kidding. You want tea?” She opened her refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher that was filled with iced tea, mint leaves, and lemon slices.

  “Sure. I think I could drink the whole pitcher! Want me to put lunch on some plates?”

  “That would be great.”

  “Speaking of great, your yard is looking amazing,” I said.

  “Thanks! I’ve got a new guy to mow, blow, and go—fifty dollars a week! Isn’t that incredible?”

  “I’m imagining your old bill in Buckhead was slightly more?”

  “Are you kidding? It was like the Rape of the Wallet. But to be fair, it’s three acres versus one-third of an acre. You know, I met this guy, he’s a landscape architect from down the street, and he thinks we can turn the whole backyard into an oasis—new fencing, a little waterfall, maybe an outdoor fire pit, definitely a barbecue area and lots of seating. He’s drawing up a rough plan for me to consider. I was thinking if Shawn’s parents wanted to, we could have the rehearsal dinner out there.”

  “Why not? They’re from Vermont! How could they possibly plan the right rehearsal dinner for a bunch of picky southerners from that far away? Now who’s this architect? Single?”

  “Forget it; with my luck he’s probably gay. Brilliant but different. A little quirky but in an exotic kind of way. Anyway, Leslie, it doesn’t matter because I’m not exactly looking for a man. Am I?”

  “Quirky doesn’t mean gay and you know it. And we all need something to keep our coat shiny, don’t we?”

  “Oh, please!”

  I looked over to the table where we had lunch last week, and today it was covered with samples of wedding invitations and notes on Post-its stuck to magazine tear sheets that showed wedding cakes, bridal gowns, and food.

  “Oh my word! Would you look at all this stuff?”

  “Wait till your two get married. You’ll see.” She handed me two plates and began putting all her papers back into a cardboard box. “Molly could care less about anything that has to do with this wedding besides her dress. She’s
in l-o-v-e. She ought to know what I know.”

  “Amen, sister,” I said and sighed and began unwrapping the food. “My kids are never getting married.”

  “Oh, yes, they will. There’s a lid for every pot.”

  “Whatever, but I’m not holding my breath.” We looked at each other and I could see her thinking that what I’d said was probably true. Who wants to marry a young woman with a young child in today’s world? It would take a very special man. And my son, Bertie? Marriage, family, and fiscal responsibility were a long way off in the future for him. Sometimes my children’s performance in the world was deeply disappointing to me, but what good did it do to say anything? None, I’ll tell you. Absolutely none. They had been born belligerent. I was well beyond the begging and pleading years with them and had been reduced to a life of prayer as my only weapon. Thus far the heavenly response has been sporadic. But at least we were speaking. Many families had children in rehab or jail or estranged children and I had much to be thankful for, but still, isn’t it awful when a parent has to content herself by lowering her expectations? I had such lovely dreams for them.

  And then, as if Danette was reading my mind again, she said, “My momma used to say that if you lived long enough you’d see everything. Isn’t that the truth? Gosh! This looks so good! I’m starving.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  We sat down and began to eat.

  “Know what?” I said with a mouthful. “I still can’t believe Paolo married that airhead Lisette. Tessa must be flip-flopping in her grave.”

  “You know I hate gossiping, Leslie.”

  “Oh, save me. I thought you got over that.”

  “I’m working on it. As fast as I can. Is it a sin if I say that I really don’t want to see Cornelia at Molly’s wedding? Or this insipid little idiot, size zero, Lisette?”

  “Gossip is not a sin. Especially when it’s just between us. And I’ve been waiting for you to say something about that.”

  “And what are we supposed to do about the bridal lunch and showers? Act like what? That we’re from California circa 1970 and it’s all groovy or something?”

  “Well, we could all hold hands and sing ‘Michael Row the Boat Ashore,’ or how about let’s not invite them?” I said. “I don’t care if I ever see them again.”

  “In a perfect world the father of the bride leaves his trampy-looking new wife at home.” She took a bite of the pimiento cheese and moaned. “I could eat this stuff until I get sick.”

  “Me too. Push the hummus over here, darlin’. Thanks.” I scooped a tablespoon or so onto a piece of pita. “So the wedding’s September eighth or fifteenth?”

  “The fifteenth. I booked the club. We’re doing the ceremony there too.”

  “What? No cathedral wedding?”

  “I know, I know. I struggled with that, but Molly said, and she’s not wrong, that on any given Saturday we could spend an hour getting from St. Philip’s to the club because of traffic.”

  “She’s probably right. Traffic is truly miserable these days.”

  “Not only that, St. Philip’s already has four weddings that day.”

  “Too bad you can’t co-op the flowers with the other families.”

  “Isn’t that the truth? The cost of wedding flowers is over the moon. But thankfully Shawn’s parents have that bill. So are you getting excited about your Edinburgh trip?”

  “I’d just as soon get salmonella as travel with them, but you know Wes! He’s been dreaming of playing St. Andrews all his life. And he can’t go anywhere without Harold.”

  “Men,” she said.

  “Yeah.” We looked at each other for a minute and we could read each other’s minds. Danette should have been coming to Edinburgh, not Cornelia. “Tessa had some nerve to die and leave us.”

  “She certainly did. But you’ll have a good time.”

  “Listen to me, I will not have a good time. I will be miserable. Cornelia and Lisette have bonded and I’m like a third wheel—an old third wheel. You have no idea how awful it is to be with them. We can’t fill a table at the club for an event anymore, which is actually a good thing because I can always hope that someone my age will accidentally sit with us. But usually it’s dinner for six, and frankly, it sucks. Now I get to travel with stupid Cornelia too? Wes acts like he’s giving me a thrill to take me to Scotland. Oh, big whoop! Not that I have anything against Scotland, but haven’t you heard me say for years that I wanted to go to Italy? I mean . . .”

  “Les, Les! Stop! Listen, I know you think I’m all torn up about Harold, and at first I was! I miss our lives together—you, Wes, Tessa, Paolo, me, Harold—but it’s over, and I’m really okay with it. I’ve moved on! I’m not angry anymore, but that doesn’t mean I want to see his insipid face or Cornelia’s at Molly’s wedding, and God save me from Paolo and Lisette. It’s all too ridiculous.”

  “Well, I sure don’t blame you for not wanting to see them. I don’t either! But are you really okay?”

  “Totally and completely. Because I have to be. Besides, I have a wedding to plan. Did I tell you that Molly asked Suzanne to be her maid of honor? And Alicia is going to be a bridesmaid.”

  Suzanne and Alicia were Tessa’s daughters. We had known and loved them from the minute they arrived in this world at Northside Hospital.

  “She did?” My eyes filled with tears. “Oh! That makes me so happy! They’ve been friends since the sandbox!”

  “And she’s going to ask Charlotte if Holly will be her flower girl.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “And old friends are a special treasure, aren’t they?”

  I reached across the table and put my hand over hers, thinking how dearly I loved my friend. Let Harold be a damn fool. Danette would always be my dear, dear treasured friend.

  At least that was what I was thinking about until I got home and made dinner for Wes.

  We were sitting across the table from each other, and I was recounting my lunch with Danette.

  I told him, “And Suzanne, Paolo’s daughter, is going to be the maid of honor! Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “Sure,” Wes said. “That’s nice.”

  “So you know I’m going to have to give the bride’s lunch the day of the wedding.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s tradition, that’s why. There will be a lot of guests from out of town and then the bridal party and . . .”

  “Hold the phone, Les! That’s gonna cost a lot of dough!”

  “We’re not poor people, Wes. We can afford to give a lunch for twenty people. Besides, your granddaughter is the flower girl!”

  “Know what? I think it’s a good idea if you split it with Lisette.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, Lisette. After all, Harold is the father of the bride, and he’s paying for the wedding. And at some point you’re going to have to act like you’re friends with those two. For the sake of appearances, if nothing else.”

  “Never. Not in a million years.”

  “Come on, Les. Cut the poor girls some slack. We’re traveling with Harold and Cornelia, for God’s sake! In like a week we’ll be in Scotland with them. You’d better figure this one out!”

  “Wes, our daughter is five years younger than Cornelia and only God knows if Lisette still goes to summer camp. It’s the truth.”

  “And I bet you think that’s funny? Well, it isn’t.”

  He cut a piece of the roast beef and pushed it onto his fork. Instead of eating it, he put his fork down on the side of his plate, tightened his lips, and said, “Then you aren’t giving a lunch for twenty people with my money. Unless you want to go out and get a job. How’s that?”

  “Really? Is this an ultimatum, Wesley?”

  “No, you should know better than to be this way. It looks bad for you to be hostile. Do you know what people will say?”

  “How am I going to explain this to Danette?”

  “Aw, for God’s sake, Les, why can’t you girls just get along?”<
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  I felt like screaming, They’re girls, I’m an adult, and it’s an important distinction. I’m not going to Edinburgh. Screw you and the Old Course at St. Andrews too! And while we’re at it, screw Harold and Paolo too! But I said none of those things.

  Did he know how much it was going to hurt Danette if I hosted a bridal lunch with Lisette? Did he care? The lunch, which had just become the dreaded lunch, was still six months away. I’d surely find a diplomatic way to tell Danette before then. What choice did I have? If Wes said I had to do something, I had to do it. In fairness to him, he didn’t dig his heels in that often. Get a job? Yeah, right. The want ads were stuffed and bulging with jobs for women my age. It was too depressing to dwell on it, but it was all I could think about while I was packing for our trip. The ugly cold hard truth was that the painted corner in which I stood was fashioned by my own hand. I should’ve finished college like my mother wanted me to do and gone on to do something like become a CPA, a job I could work at while I was raising our two children. I just really hated it when Wes reminded me that I had no financial assets. He probably had no idea how upsetting it was, and even if he did, he probably wouldn’t have cared. In any case, I wasn’t looking forward to Edinburgh.

  I laid out all my clothes and accessories I planned to take across the bed in Bertie’s room. Then I stood back and looked at them—all the sensible shoes and cardigans in case I caught a chill and the tiny umbrella and the collapsible hat to protect my hair in case it was windy or raining—and I thought, Wow. These are the belongings of a much older woman than I considered myself to be. I called my daughter, Charlotte.

  She answered on the second ring.

  “Hi, Mom! What’s going on?”

  I told her what was happening and she said, “I knew you were going to hate this trip. I told Daddy so. And I totally don’t blame you. Just go to Phipps and buy a bunch of Eileen Fisher! It’s a total no-brainer.”

  “I’d feel better if you came along, you know, so I don’t buy the wrong thing?” I hated admitting I was insecure about my fashion sense, but I was. Anyone would be next to Cornelia. Charlotte had met her and Lisette and thought they were, in her words, a couple of obvious opportunistic bitches. It was one thing we totally agreed on. There was a long pause from her end of the phone. I knew she was thinking that it was rare for me to ask her to do something for me. She was trapped, and she knew it wouldn’t be nice to refuse.