Read Online Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes by Cathy Holton - Free Book Online

matching thong, the kind of thing Jane might have worn if she was trying to coax Tarzan into a new zebra-skin sofa for the tree house.
    Virginia poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. Behind her the coffeepot gurgled and steamed. She sipped her coffee and tried not to think about last night. She supposed the slight tinge of self- loathing and nausea she was feeling was probably no different from what a Saigon brothel girl must feel every morning of her life. Her marriage to the Judge had been no different, although with him sex had been all about power; and with Redmon it was all about his admiration of her. She supposed, in some distant, remote, unexplored crevice of her heart, she felt flattered. It wasn't love, but it wasn't exactly disgust, either. At least, not entirely.
    Bright sunlight fell through the long windows, and beyond the lawn a dark rim of trees rose against a slate blue sky. She glanced at the newspaper that Redmon had left open on the table. After a while, fortified by her second cup of coffee and unable to stop herself, she picked up the paper and opened it to the editorial page. It was a long-standing habit, one of which, although painful, Virginia had never been able to break herself. The woman's photograph, small and gray, hung from the upper-left corner ofthe editorial page. Her byline read “Grace Pearson, Staff Writer.” She seemed to gaze out at Virginia with the scornful, knowing expression of one who smells something foul, and knows it emanates from Virginia's direction. How anyone could name a six-foot, overeducated, liberal-minded Amazon
Grace
was beyond Virginia's comprehension.
    Grace Pearson was a local girl whose parents had had the misfortune and short-sightedness to send to Wellesley. She had rewarded them by returning to her hometown to work as a political writer for the local newspaper, where she churned out truckloads of liberal propaganda. She and Virginia had been enemies for years.
    One of Pearson's earliest editorial targets had been Judge Broadwell. She had written an article about the strict sentencing of juveniles and African Americans that occurred in his courtroom. In the article she referred to him as “the Hanging Judge.” On reading this, he had gone into an apoplectic fit so severe Virginia had thought he was having a stroke. After that, he took to calling Pearson a femi-Nazi obstructionist and would read her editorials aloud every afternoon over cocktails and rant and rave like a lunatic.
    After he died, Pearson took on his son. Charles had been named president of the Bar Association and was just beginning what he hoped would be a long and illustrious career that might end in the governor's mansion or, who knew, maybe even in the U.S. Senate. As president of the Bar Association, he had made it his mission to try and bridge the deep divide that existed between the local legal and medical professions. With that in mind, he had gone out to the Ithaca County Hospital to observe doctors in action, the idea being that direct observation of the daily life-and-death decisions made in the operating room might lead to more understanding on the part of the legal profession for their medical colleagues. The walk-a-mile-in-myshoes theory. Unfortunately for all concerned, Dr. Willis Guffey had ruined this opportunity for conciliation by choosing this very day to operate on the wrong knee of a young black athlete by the name of Dicie Meeks. This blunder was made worse by the arrogant Dr. Guffey, who, on being informed of his mistake at the first slice of the scalpel by the operating room nurse, quickly cursed her into horrified silence and continued cutting, bellowing from time to time, “Goddamn it! I don't see a thing wrong with this knee. Cartilage is fine. What in the hell is wrong with these people? Wasting my time like this! There's not a goddamn thing wrong with this knee!”
    Charles did what he could to hush the matter up, using his position