Read Online Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes by Cathy Holton - Free Book Online Page A

frowning.
    “Jimmy Lee,” Lavonne said. “The south Georgia yard boy.”
    Nita swirled her soup with her spoon. Jimmy Lee should be loading his tools into his truck right now. She stared into her soup like she was staring into a crystal ball. She could see him reflected there, standing with the sun shining on his dark glossy hair. If she hurried maybe she could get home before he left.
    Virginia clucked her tongue and looked around the crowded restaurant. She wished now she hadn’t overheard Charles and gotten her feelings hurt. For one brief moment she wished she hadn’t turned the party over to her daughter-in-law and her drunken friends. It was sure to be a disaster, and then Virginia would have to spend weeks explaining to everyone who’d listen that she hadn’t had a thing to do with it. “Look,” she said to Lavonne, opening her purse and taking out a business card. “Call this woman. She works out of her home in Valdosta. I haven’t used her, of course, but I understand she did the Chasen girl’s engagement party when the girl got herself in the family way and her parents didn’t have time to plan a decent function.”
    Lavonne could feel a muscle twitching above her right eye. She felt like someone had tied a plastic bag around her head. She had a sudden vision of her mother lying dead on the frozen ground, a basket of wet clothes strewn around her like the petals of some monstrous flower. “She won’t use it,” her father had said, when Lavonne asked him why he hadn’t hooked up the new dryer she’d brought her mother for Christmas. “Why hook it up when she won’t use it.”
    “Do you want it or not?” Virginia repeated, holding the card out to Lavonne like she was offering entrails to a rabid dog.
    Lavonne shook her head. “Keep it,” she said. “I’ll find my own damn caterer.”

CHAPTER
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    FOUR
    O N THE WAY home from the lunch meeting, Lavonne decided to stop at Shapiro’s Bakery for a cream cheese brownie. She was feeling depressed and anxious and she figured a cream cheese brownie might be just the thing to take her mind off the party. The traffic was light and she found a spot in front of the bakery and parked.
    Lavonne hadn’t even known there were Jews in the South when she first moved here. She had been amazed to learn that Dixie Jews went by names like Junior and Bubba and prided themselves on being Southerners, first, and Jews, second. The South was like that. It could take in any ethnic group, culture, or religious sect and pretty soon they’d be saying “ya’ll” and fixing greens and corn bread for supper. Maybe it was the drinking water filtered out of murky lakes where alligators slept, maybe it was the sultry, siesta-prone climate or the way the jasmine smelled blooming on a moonlit night. Whatever the reason, within a generation of arriving here from Bialystok in 1886, the Shapiros were as Southern as they come.
    Lavonne pushed open the door and went in, the little bell above her head tinkling merrily. Mrs. Shapiro came from the back, wiping her hands on a clean white apron. “Oh, hey, Miz Zibolsky,” she said. She was a small round woman with red cheeks and wisps of gray hair that escaped from her hairnet and fell in wild profusion around her face. She had a lazy left eye, the result of a childhood accident involving her brother, June Bug Rubin, and a shovel. “You doing all right?” Mrs. Shapiro’s bad eye shifted slightly to the left of where Lavonne stood contemplating the glass case of baked goods.
    “I’m fixing to get a whole lot better,” Lavonne said. She could talk Southern when she wanted to. Everything in the display looked wonderful. The Texas sheet cake looked especially good. “You got any of those cream cheese brownies in the back?”
    “I sure don’t. If I’d known you were coming in, I’d have made up a batch this morning,” Mona Shapiro said, patting her hair. “The Texas sheet cake is real good.” She moved the cake closer to