CHAPTER 5.

Les-Atlanta, April 2012 All our lives began to unravel last December 31, when Harold sheepishly announced he was leaving Danette at the overcrowded New Year's Eve party at the Piedmont Driving Club, that venerable institution of stone and timber with the most majestic ballroom in town. Lately it was becoming the stage for too many life-changing events. It wasn't the first time that Danette suspected Harold was having an affair with someone, I think, but she had absolutely no idea this one was so serious. They were both a little drunk. Maybe we all were. Well, maybe just slightly tipsy. It was late; we'd been at the club since eight, drinking champagne and wearing silly feathered tiaras with our gowns, and the boys in their tuxedos wore glittered top hats. As we did every New Year's Eve we made ridiculous resolutions that no one would keep, and quietly we all wondered what the coming year would hold, each of us praying for our own private miracles. Good health. Better health. A marriage for this child, a good job for another. This hopefulness was something hardwired into our psyches, that a new year might mean some monumental something wonderful could happen to bring us happiness at a level we had never known. A new year was a chance to start over. Maybe even, just maybe, there would be peace on earth for one entire day.

The orchestra played and we danced and danced, but Lord save me, I couldn't wait until the clock struck twelve so that I could go home at twelve fifteen and take off my heels. Those black satin pumps that I thought made my legs look so good turned out to be individual torture chambers. My throbbing feet were my priority, and then suddenly I was blindsided. What happened next was the last thing in the world I ever expected.

It was around eleven forty-five. We were sitting with six other members we barely knew, a very ancient couple who seemed sweet and two other young middle-aged corporate types and their young Barbie wives. Paolo had stayed home, still mourning and saying he just wasn't up to celebrating anything yet. We didn't blame him really, but his absence made me miss Tessa like crazy that night. I remember thinking, At least I still have Danette.

Harold's cell phone kept buzzing-cell phones are strictly forbidden in the club. He had once been a stickler for rules and propriety. But lately? A silly club rule didn't stop Harold from pulling his phone out and looking at it. Someone was texting him like mad and Danette was becoming suspicious, rolling her eyes in my direction. The next time it buzzed she grabbed it from his hand. Harold tried to grab it back from her, but she slid his phone across the table to me. Before Wes could grab it from my hands, I managed to read a partial text message that involved Harold's tongue and the sender's nether regions. I was aghast. Wes's entire head turned beet red as he read it. As if by instinct he started to sweat and tossed it back to Harold. But Danette caught it and read it, and her expression was one of honest horror. I don't know why she chose that moment to speak up and defend her own honor. She had to know it would become the Most Talked About and Exaggerated Moment in the History of the Club-well, for 2011 anyway. And why take someone on-especially your husband-in a public place when you know in your heart it could get really ugly? But she'd had just enough champagne to take the chance that a sassy reprimand would put an end to whatever foolishness he was engaged in.

"You know, Harold," she said loudly enough for all of us to hear, "you can't have me and your little floozy too. You have to choose."

Harold cleared his throat, which we suddenly recognized as a harbinger of doom.

"Right now? Here?" he said.

"Yes. Right now and right here," she said.

Without missing a beat he said, "Wes? Would you drive Danette home? I have to go and meet someone."

I couldn't believe it. None of us could. But Harold stood and left, the orchestra started playing "Auld Lang Syne," and Danette dissolved into tears. Wes, in a gallant demonstration of southern gentlemanly manners, moved from his seat next to hers and handed her his perfectly pressed linen handkerchief to dry her tears.

"Come on, sweetheart," he said. "Les and I will take you home."

There have been many moments when I've wanted to kill my husband. This was not one of them. Wes could be a really great guy when he recognized the moment that called for it.

That same night, and perhaps at the same moment, somewhere across town in a romantic restaurant a promising young physician named Shawn Nicholls slipped a two-carat diamond on Harold and Danette's only child Molly's finger and asked her to be his wife. When Shawn brought Molly home, they found us at the kitchen table. I had never seen Molly happier in her whole life, and her young man, Shawn, was just beaming. She didn't even notice that her mother was a total wreck.

"Mom? We have something wonderful to tell you! Where's Daddy?"

"Dad? He's not here. Why don't you just tell me?"

"Actually, Mrs. Stovall, I should have discussed this with you and Mr. Stovall some time ago . . ." Shawn said.

"Is something wrong?" Molly said. "What's wrong? Why isn't Daddy here?"

"Your father and I had a little disagreement, that's all!" She put a smile on her face. "Now tell me! What's going on?"

On hearing the good news, Danette, being made of stronger and better stuff than her ridiculous husband, Harold, opened a bottle of champagne and began filling flutes.

"Harold's not going to ruin everything!" Danette whispered to me and dried her eyes again. "I'm so happy for you, darling!" She hugged Molly with all her might and then turned to Shawn. "We've waited all our lives for a wonderful young man like you to come along! Welcome to the family-such as we are."

Everyone laughed a little, and then she hugged him too. Happiness eclipsed Danette's pain, and optimism ruled the balance of the evening.

"Let me get a good look at that ring!" I said.

It was the first of many important moments that Harold would miss. And it also marked the moment that Danette decided Harold Stovall would no longer have a place in her tender heart. Her daughter was getting married and that was all that mattered for the foreseeable future.

The Little Floozy in question turned out to be Cornelia Street, the thirty-four-year-old buxom redhead who was the assistant to the director of human resources in Harold's law firm. Cornelia, who had tried out for and lost at auditions for every reality show that ever crossed the Georgia state line, was, shall we say, known to be very ambitious and extremely generous with her favors. (Read: exhibitionist, social climbing, slut of the world.) Danette cleaned Harold's clock rather smartly and in fact almost completely. That old saying "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"? Danette embodied the words, but in the way a true lady would.

Harold quickly married Cornelia on Valentine's Day, exactly four nights before his daughter's engagement party, which was also held at the club. At the engagement party we also had the opportunity to meet Lisette, thirty-one, who was Paolo's personal trainer. I thought I might throw up. Wow, I thought, it took him all of a couple of months to find a replacement.

Molly, the poor child, had no idea her father, Harold, was getting remarried. Neither did anyone else. Molly was understandably devastated and could barely maintain her composure, wondering aloud to anyone who would listen, when would her father stop ruining her life? And I wondered to Wes, didn't Cornelia know that she was barely ten years older than Molly?

When indeed? I thought.

I began to think there would never be an end to the bad taste and timing of Wes's two remaining best friends, others having left for sunnier climes and younger arms over the years.

Danette decided back in January that she was going to dramatically change her life. Rather than beg Harold to reconsider, which was what Wes predicted, she invited Harold to get the hell out of her gorgeous center hall colonial in Buckhead and to go live with his Jezebel in her tiny one-bedroom apartment in the Allure apartment complex at Brookwood on Peachtree Valley Road. That would be NW, thank you. And yes, Allure. Harold was too smitten to have any shame. He bubbled over with a never-before-seen enthusiasm and couldn't pack and hit the road fast enough.

Freedom from Danette's wrath! Let my lawyers handle it! I want to be free! Free! Take the money! Give her whatever she wants! I'm outta here! Cornelia! My love!

Of course I never heard him utter these actual words, but they were all over his face every time I saw him at the club during the short negotiation period of his settlement battles with Danette. He wanted a fast divorce and didn't even have the decency to show the slightest bit of remorse. All through dinner, Cornelia had her gelled nails all over Harold, and his hand traveled her lap to the point where I wondered when someone from the Ethics Committee would ask them to knock it off. My face was in flames, but Wes seemed not to notice a thing. The next thing I knew we were having dinner with Paolo again but now with Lisette on his arm. Oh, Lord, I thought.

Naturally, after any one or all of these dinners Wes and I would go home and the rest of the night was completely ruined. Well, for me, at least. Wes didn't seem to care that I was so unnerved by Harold's happiness or Paolo's or why. He'd tell me to go to sleep and quit fretting over things I couldn't change. He needed his sleep. He had an early tee time. He'd roll over and give me a slap on my hip, roll back, turn out the light, and begin to snore within minutes. I'd lie there for what seemed like hours wondering if Harold had lost his mind or if I was losing mine.

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 jalapeos 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.