Waking Up in Dixie Read online

  Elizabeth managed to soldier on till late in the evening, when a drunken Katie Madsden—the wife of one of Howe’s business associates who was nowhere to be seen—draped herself seductively over Howe and started talking about when they’d slept together, in front of everybody who was anybody in Whittington, including Elizabeth.

  Conversations halted abruptly as all eyes turned their way.

  Howe laughed, trying to escape and pass it off as drunken nonsense, but Katie just got louder and lewder.

  Elizabeth’s complexion flamed. Shocked and humiliated, she scanned the room for reactions and got a warning glance and shake of the head from Howe’s mother. God forbid, she should make a scene.

  But what about Howe? The scene was his, in their home! And Elizabeth had every right to react.

  Their guests went brittle with anticipation of what might come next.

  “Tommy,” Howe called to Katie’s husband. “Come get your wife! She’s had so much to drink, she thinks I’m somebody else.”

  “Oh, no I don’t,” Katie insisted, grabbing Howe’s crotch. “I remember you, mister, and this.”

  An audible gasp escaped the watching guests.

  Elizabeth froze. This was too much. Nameless, faceless whores were one thing, but this woman was local, and anything but discreet.

  She could have killed Howe.

  How could she look the other way when everyone in town had seen this?

  Heart pounding, she grimly approached her husband and his lover, then heard herself say in a low voice that trembled with suppressed rage, “Katie, I’ve never asked a guest to leave my home before, but I’m asking you to, immediately. Get out. You have abused our hospitality and insulted both me and my husband, and you are no longer welcome here.”

  Tommy appeared and grabbed his wife, pulling her toward the door. “Sorry, Howe. She gets crazy when she has too much. It doesn’t mean anything, I swear,” he said to Elizabeth, then repeated for the room, “It doesn’t mean anything, I swear.”

  “Good-bye, Tommy,” Howe said smoothly. “I don’t want to see you or Katie again. Our business relationship is terminated.” Howe put his arm around Elizabeth’s waist. “You’ll hear from my attorneys tomorrow.”

  A wave of sympathy for Elizabeth erupted from the room behind them. To keep from crying, she took a steadying breath and channeled Miss Melly, then turned to their remaining guests. “Some people shouldn’t drink at all,” she said, brows lifted. She motioned toward the buffet and the bar. “Please, everyone, let’s go back to the party and put this little unpleasantness behind us.”

  The tension ebbed as conversation resumed. Elizabeth stood rigid, a forced smile plastered on her face.

  “Well done,” Howe said quietly from just behind her left shoulder.

  Hating him for the first time in all their long, challenging years together, she faced her husband with stone-cold anger. “You owe me for this,” she bit out. “Make it right with the Harrises. Now.”

  He eyed her with renewed admiration. “Done. But only this once.”

  “We’ll see,” she said, then resumed her duties as hostess.

  When she looked for the Harrises, she saw Howe shaking a much-relieved Robert’s hand, and Faith was crying happy tears.

  At least someone here was happy tonight, Elizabeth thought, and bitterly wished herself a Merry Christmas.

  Chapter 2

  The past: Greenville, Georgia

  Eleven-year-old Bessie Mae dragged the scraggly pine sapling she’d cut down in the back door of the abandoned Piggly Wiggly her family had appropriated. Once the tree was safely in, she carefully closed the door, even though the insides of the windows were coated with frost. At least the door blocked the raw December wind.

  She carefully selected a battered bucket from the store’s leavings and poured it half full with water from the trash cans they’d used to collect rainwater from the downspouts.

  But she made too much noise. After a spate of shuffling footsteps on the broken linoleum, the sour smell of BO and cheap wine preceded her father’s appearance at the opening to the front of the store. He scowled, his arms akimbo under the coats and sweaters and multiple pairs of jogging pants piled onto his gaunt frame. “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s Christmas,” she said as cheerfully as she could manage. “So I got us a tree.”

  He collapsed into one of the scavenged chairs around the huge cable spool they used for a table. “Bullshit. Christmas is a hunnerd percent bullshit,” he slurred, waving a hand in dismissal. “Totally commercial. All them Jews soaking all them dumb-ass Christians for money, that’s all it is.” He leaned back to holler, “Jacob! Git in here.”

  Elizabeth tensed. If only she’d been quieter, she’d have had a chance to put on the string of popcorn and colorful paper chain her teacher had let her take home for the holidays. Then maybe her daddy might have smiled instead of gotten mad. She was his pet, after all.

  “I’ve got some decorations for it, Daddy,” she said. “It’ll be real pretty. Just you wait and see.”

  “Jacob!” her father blared. “I said git in here! If I have to call you again, it’s a beatin’!”

  Daddy was always whaling away at her big brothers, even Liam, who was a strapping man at nineteen. Especially when all of them had been drinking, which was most of the time. Why Daddy spared her, she’d never been able to figure out. And though she was grateful, Bessie Mae felt guilty every time she escaped his wrath.

  She let out a sigh of relief when Jacob—at sixteen, already four inches taller than Daddy—sidled into the room, his expression dark and sullen. “Whut now?”

  Daddy pointed to the little tree. “Put that into the stove in my room and light it. Then git yer coat and cut some more.” He glared, pulling his clothes tighter around him. “This place is colder than a witch’s tit.”

  Jacob saw Bessie Mae’s disappointment about the tree. “I cain’t, Diddy,” he dared to say, deliberately keeping out of their father’s reach. “Gotta git to the pool hall. I’m already late. Dewey Sosebee bet me a truckload of oak against forty dollar that he kin beat me.” He pulled a frayed jacket from the Salvation Army over his flannel shirt. “I’ll have that wood here in less than an hour.”

  Their father’s brows lowered dangerously. “You better, or there’ll be hell to pay. And yer mama better git herself home from work soon and fix me some supper.” He lurched out of his chair and started rummaging through the mess, looking for a bottle. “I’m hungry.”

  And thirsty.

  Bessie Mae and her brother took advantage of the distraction to slip out the back door and run. When they got to the end of the street, her brother pulled a beer from his coat pocket and popped the top, then grinned. “You better make yerself scarce tonight, Annie.” He called her “Annie” because she tried to talk like her teachers and believed that one day she would be rich, just like Little Orphan Annie in the musical. “There ain’t no pool game,” he confessed, “and no firewood. So we both better lay low.”

  Bessie Mae looked back at the dark store. “But what about Mama? And Liam?”

  “They can take care of themselves,” Jacob told her. “Now, go on. Git yerself to the library. You can hide when they’re closin’ up, then sleep there all night.”

  It wouldn’t be the first time, and the library was Bessie Mae’s favorite place, thanks to all the happy endings on its shelves. “Okay.”

  She felt guilty about Mama and Liam, but it was Friday—payday at the chicken plant—so Mama would be bringing home a case of beer with the weekly groceries. Maybe Daddy would pass out before he got mad, this time.

  “Ya gotta look after your own self,” Jacob cautioned, then headed for the pool hall.

  “Merry Christmas,” she called after her brother.

  Jacob just shook his head in disapproval and kept on going, his shoulders hunched against the cold wind.

  “Merry Christmas,” she repeated, to herself. Hands fisted in the pockets of her secondhand
coat, she turned toward the library.

  She could find another tree. And this time, she’d hide it where Daddy wouldn’t find it.

  Chapter 3

  The present: Whittington, Georgia

  Two Sundays before Christmas, Elizabeth knelt in the pew beside Howe and prayed for help to forgive him for his greed and lack of love, then went through the motions of the service by his side, as she had for more than a quarter of a century.

  When it came time for the sermon, Elizabeth settled back and tried to look interested, though she knew the message would be anything but. Father Jim’s sermons had been dry as melba toast lately.

  Men of the Whittington family had been falling asleep—sitting up—in the second pew of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church since their ancestors had built the place in 1793, and Howe was no exception. So Elizabeth took little notice when he went rigidly still beside her while their aged minister made a thready connection between the daily Epistle reading and the topic of global warming.

  Her mind wandering, Elizabeth tuned out the priest’s monotonous delivery, suppressing a sigh. Normally, she accepted the humdrum of her weekly routines with gratitude—she’d had enough drama the night of the party to last her for quite a while—but on this particular Sunday, the minister got on her last nerve.

  She looked across the aisle to see her mother-in-law focused on the priest as if he were delivering the Word of Heaven straight from God Almighty, which only annoyed Elizabeth more.

  Father Jim was a kind man, but wholly ineffectual, and clearly out of ideas for his homilies. The man needed to retire, and that was all there was to it. Unless St. Andrew’s got somebody livelier, the Baptists would end up with all the young people.

  The Baptists might just end up with her—a thought that made Elizabeth smile, even though she knew she’d never dare. Her mother-in-law would disown her for sure, and there was already no love lost, no matter how hard Elizabeth had tried to win the woman’s approval.

  As the sermon meandered on, Elizabeth discreetly opened her purse and glanced down at her pocket calendar to review the upcoming week: Women’s Club tomorrow; bring her strawberry flan.

  Errands and shopping in Atlanta on Tuesday, as usual, and lunch with P.J. They hadn’t seen each other since before the party, so she was looking forward to it even more than usual. Her ego really needed a boost. She wanted to tell P.J. what had happened at the party.

  Nobody knew Elizabeth had been seeing P.J., and nobody needed to.

  It was all innocent enough. She’d bumped into him a couple of times back in September on her regular Tuesday shopping trips to Phipps Plaza, and they’d chatted about their old high school days over lunch at Maggiano’s, hitting it off immediately. P.J. lived and worked nearby, and they both loved the restaurant, so they’d fallen into splitting the huge servings every week, but lunch was all it was. Elizabeth wasn’t about to risk her reputation with anything more.

  Even so, people might not understand that the relationship was strictly platonic. On her part, anyway.

  As the minister droned on, she focused back on her calendar. Sewing Circle Tuesday night—or “whine and cheese” as some of the husbands called it, where she offered sympathy, but never breathed a word about her own sterile marriage or friendship with P.J.

  Altar Guild Wednesday; remember to pick up the altar cloths from the cleaners on the way.

  Teeth cleaned and whitened on Thursday.

  And her regular hairdresser’s appointment on Friday; not so dark with the color this time.

  Respectable. Predictable. A decent life, all in all.

  She and Howe would see each other in passing, always pleasant, always polite.

  Even though Howe had helped her friends, he’d only done it under duress. So she’d given him the cold shoulder all week. Now, though, guilt told her she should be happy that Howe had relented about the Harrises. She ought to be happy enough with her life.

  She focused on the blessings God had given her. Their son Charles was such a darling, and even spoiled Patricia would eventually come to appreciate her as a mother one day, if only when she had children of her own.

  Speaking of mothers, Howe’s mother was mortal and in her mid-eighties; that was big on Elizabeth’s gratitude list. Augusta Whittington would croak one day, and Elizabeth would be the one who could rest in peace. No longer would she be Princess Di under her mother-in-law’s critical eye. The thought relaxed her.

  Maybe next weekend Elizabeth would slip away and take a drive up into the mountains. She was free. Charles and Patricia wouldn’t be coming home from college for another month—unless Patricia ran out of money again, in which case, she’d show up at the bank and wheedle it out of Howe before going back to Athens. If the weather was bad, she could read. She loved to read, as long as the books had happy endings.

  Something ought to have happy endings.

  The pipe organ signaled the end of the sermon and her daydreams, so she stood and opened to the hymn she’d marked with her order of service. She got through the first line before realizing Howe hadn’t risen beside her. Mortified that he hadn’t woken up, she gave his foot a firm poke with her own, but he remained seated, eyes closed.

  Everybody in the rows behind her could see, so she tipped slightly toward him and said out of the corner of her mouth, “Howell, wake up.”

  Usually, the use of his name was enough to get his attention, but he didn’t respond.

  Elizabeth bent to whisper an adamant “Howell, wake up” in his ear, but when she did, he started to tilt toward her, his eyes still closed.

  A bolt of alarm shot through her as she sat and pushed him back erect. “Howell?” she whispered, gripping his arm.

  Dear God, he was pale as paste, and stiff.

  But his chest was moving. He was breathing.

  Elizabeth turned to see Mitt Wallace from the club on the row just behind them. She grasped his forearm and drew him toward her. “Mitt,” she whispered as the choir started recessing down the aisle, “something’s the matter with Howell. Help me get him out.”

  Her husband would be humiliated if anybody realized the state he was in. God forbid, he should have a seizure in public, or worse. His battle-axe of a mother had made it clear from the beginning that appearances must be maintained at all costs, and Elizabeth had spent the past quarter of a century seeing that they were.

  So far, the recessional had distracted everyone enough to keep them from realizing what had happened. By some miracle, Howe’s mother was busy mouthing for Catherine Wilkerson to meet her in the vestibule as the choir passed, so she didn’t barge in and take over.

  Mitt came around and helped Elizabeth lift Howell. At six one, Mitt was as tall as Howe, but even with adrenaline working in their favor, they struggled to get Howe up and out into the side aisle, then into the minister’s study as inconspicuously as possible, his feet dragging across the polished stone floors.

  Once in the study, they heaved him onto the velvet three-cushion sofa.

  Mitt grabbed the desk phone and called 911, while a panicked Elizabeth rubbed her husband’s hand and demanded, “Howell, can you hear me? Howell!”

  “My friend is unconscious,” Mitt told the 911 operator. “He’s breathing, but unconscious. We’re in the minister’s study at St. Andrew’s Episcopal in Whittington.” Pause. “He just closed his eyes in church and didn’t open them again.” Pause. “No. He never drinks too much.” Mitt turned to ask Elizabeth, “What medications does he take?”

  “None. He’s healthy as a horse.” At least, he had been, till this happened.

  “None,” Mitt repeated, along with the rest. He scowled. “How should I know?” He immediately reconsidered. “No. No drug use. No pot, no cocaine, no nothing.” Pause. “Trust me, I’d know.”

  Everybody who knew Howell knew he’d never indulge in anything that might interfere with his iron control of his life. The sole exception to that was his doting affection for their daughter. He’d been wrapped around Patricia�
��s little finger from the moment she was born. But that was his only weakness. Except for the floozies, but they were just nameless sex objects, a fact that made the situation bearable.

  “All right,” Mitt said. “I’ll be waiting for them out front. But please, ask them to cut the siren before they get here. Church is just letting out, and he wouldn’t want a scene.” Mitt hung up. “They’re on their way. Ten minutes, tops. What can I do?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s breathing. His heart’s beating. He’s just not responding.” She laid her head to his chest, the most intimate contact they’d had in years. “It’s kind of fast, but it’s beating.”

  There had been many times when she’d dreamed about the compensations of genteel widowhood, especially since she’d been seeing P.J. She’d imagined what it would be like not to cater to Howe’s rigid habits; not to have his private peccadilloes hang over her, threatening her precious respectability. But now that she faced the possibility, panic pounced on her. “Howe,” she said, maintaining a calm exterior by sheer act of will, “you’re going to be all right. The paramedics are on the way. Hang on. Don’t leave me.” She shocked herself at how frightened she felt.

  Then her husband did something he hadn’t done in years: he laughed—a sharp, disjointed guffaw. One, loud, bizarre laugh, then silence.

  I died laughing shot through Elizabeth’s mind, and the panic tightened, but Howe kept right on breathing, his eyes closed to tiny slits, with no movement beneath his lids. She shook him. “Howe?”

  Why would he laugh?

  He couldn’t be playing possum. Howe never, ever joked.