Good Christian Bitches Page 21

  “I think you’ve described the situation exactly right.”

  “Well, what would you do?”

  “Well,” Tom began, “I know a guy in San Antonio who could make all your problems go away. You just put the names of the people who are bothering you on a piece of paper, and they’ll be floating down the Rio Grande before you can say ‘plausible deniability.’ ”

  Amanda gave a rueful smile. “Don’t think that thought hasn’t crossed my mind. But I don’t really think that’s the best approach.”

  “I honestly don’t see the difference between that and the kind of character assassination they’re doing on you. I could even go get my driver to take care of business,” he joked, “but then I’d have to find a new driver.”

  Amanda laughed. “Three-hundred-fifty-pound marksmen who can drive a Bentley aren’t a dime a dozen,” she said, grinning. Her smile quickly faded as she became serious again. “I don’t know what to do, Tom. About anything.”

  “Well, let’s take stock,” he said, his tone simultaneously gentle and businesslike. “What do we have?”

  Amanda wanted to say, what we have is two people, one very recently divorced, one still pending, who’ve gone on one “date,” one living in the other’s house, and you seem to know me so well that you can pick out nicer clothing for me than I can. But she thought for a moment longer and said, “We’ve got an event that was the highlight of the social calendar in Hillside Park for over thirty years, and it was screwed up so badly by the last person to run it that nobody wants to go near it.”

  Tom nodded.

  “And we’ve got a whispering campaign that’s actually hit the newspaper,” Amanda continued, “whereby there’s not a single woman in Hillside Park who wants to lift a finger to help me. If anything, it seems like the whole town has closed ranks against me.”

  “Check. That’s how I see it, too.”

  “So I’m running a Ball, with no support, no volunteers, nobody who wants to chair a committee, no electricity, no computers, and no phone. And somehow, I’m supposed to spin this straw into three or four million dollars’ worth of gold for the Pediatric Foundation. Is that how you’re seeing it?”

  “That’s how I’m seeing it.”

  “What would you do,” Amanda asked, “wise and all-knowing developer of half of Mexico?”

  “Punt,” Tom said teasingly. “And get on the next plane to Acapulco.”

  Amanda gave him a dirty look.

  “Thanks a lot. Seriously. I’m not going to quit. I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of destroying my reputation, harming my children, and running me off! You should have heard what one of the little girls said to Sarah this morning.” Tom waited. “I agree with you about what you said, that character assassination is like murder without a weapon,” she continued, sitting back in her chair. “And I’ll tell you what the problem is. Every single one of the women who’ve given me the most trouble in this whole thing—they’re all supposedly fine Christian women. Heather Sappington. Vodka bottle in one hand, Holy Bible in the other. Never misses a party Saturday night. Never misses services Sunday morning. Never misses a doctor’s appointment to get some more diet pills—at least that’s what my mother says.

  “Sharon Peavy. My best friend growing up, but now she’s gotten so bitter and jealous about my life—which is a joke, because I’m the one getting over a divorce, not her. But I’ve got some money and she doesn’t, and I might not have those perfect knockers she has, but I’m not so bad for a woman who’s—oh, well . . . never mind. But she’s another one. Going to Bible study and looking all squeaky clean and religious, when the reality is that she’s slept with every man in Dallas who’s got a positive net worth.”

  “Present company excluded,” Tom interrupted.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Your loss,” she cracked.

  “I might still be on the Forbes list,” Tom said, with monumental understatement, “but I still wouldn’t spring for a night with that nasty girl.”

  Amanda’s grin widened. “No, you wouldn’t,” she agreed. “And behind them has got to be Darlene Cockburn, because you know the three of them are thick as thieves and you know she’s been the info source for Mom’s age group—five marriages, four divorces, four massive settlements, and number five ready to be cashed in whenever she gives her lawyers the nod, and yet she has a whole building at the church named after her.

  “And then there’s Ann Anderson,” she concluded. “Heather must have pictures of her with a Thoroughbred in a stable somewhere. Otherwise, I don’t understand for a minute how the two of them could be friends.”

  She took a deep breath, and Tom waited for her to continue.

  “The thing is,” Amanda went on slowly, “if these women want to go after me, fine. I’m a big girl. I can take it. I’ll do just fine whatever happens. But tear up my daughter’s heart? No way. Now this stuff is affecting my children. Sarah now, Will next. And that’s where I draw the line.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “I wish there was some way to teach them a lesson . . . It’s like my dad always said—you don’t ever want to start a fight, but it’s sure okay to finish one. I only took on the Longhorn Ball because it does good work and it raises so much money for the Pediatric Foundation, and I figured it would be a good thing to occupy my time. But it’s not only about the Ball any longer. There’s one thing these women just don’t seem able to grasp.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You can be a good Christian,” Amanda said slowly, thinking it through. “Or you can be a bitch. But you can’t be a good Christian bitch.”

  Tom threw back his head and laughed so hard he brayed like a donkey. “I love the expression and I’m sure I’ve known a few, but why don’t you give me your definition of a good Christian bitch.”

  “It’s pretty self-explanatory,” Amanda said, “as a matter of fact. If you’re professing to be a good Christian, you’re claiming to have a desire to be like Christ, to have a heart like His. When a good Christian hides behind the cross while putting herself and her worldly desires ahead of her desire to be like Christ, at any and everyone else’s expense when she deems it necessary, she becomes a good Christian bitch. I mean, for heaven’s sake, don’t let Jesus get in the way of a good agenda. Does that make sense? Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

  “Actually, I do. My mother used to say some of the meanest people she’d ever met, she met in church,” Tom said. “So, how can I help?” Tom asked. “This is a cause I’d like to sign on to. I’ve taken my own share of heat from the ‘good Christian bitches.’ ”

  “We all have, believe me . . . This Ball is supposed to be run by women,” she pondered, “but except for Elizabeth, Sarah, and me, we don’t have any. They’ve all been scared off. So I guess it’s time to enlist the services of a man.”

  “If I’m that man,” Tom said, grinning, “the answer is yes.”

  “Only one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  Amanda paused before she spoke. “We both know that you could write a check right now to the Pediatric Foundation big enough that we wouldn’t even have to hold the Ball. But that’s not the point. I don’t want you to step in and save me. What I want you to do is help me get this Ball back on its feet so it actually thrives, not just survives. And if you can do that, maybe I can focus on setting things right. These . . . if you’ll pardon the expression . . . bitches need to learn a lesson. They’ve gone after me for no reason other than the fact that I’m theoretically in their way, and they think I’ve caught all the breaks in life and they’ve caught none. Which is a whole ’nother story, because as nice a man as you are, I’m truly not ready for any involvements.”

  “I understand.”

  Amanda thought she could hear disappointment in his voice. “All I’m saying is,” she said earnestly, “let’s take care of the Ball and the bitches first. And then we’ll figure out where you and I stand. How is that?”


  “That’s a deal.” They shook hands.

  At that moment, Elizabeth and Sarah arrived with coffee and doughnuts.

  “Looks like some sort of major deal went down in our absence,” Elizabeth told Sarah, seeing the handshake.

  “This is better than school!” the little girl exclaimed.

  “Don’t get too excited, honey,” Amanda told her daughter. “This is only going to last for a couple of days, until I get things squared away here in the community. Anyway, Mom, I’m pleased to announce the formation of the Men’s Auxiliary of the Longhorn Ball. And here’s the Chair of the Men’s Auxiliary, Tom Harrington.”

  Elizabeth nodded approvingly. “Wait till the ladies hear about this.”

  “Wait till the ladies find out I’m about to fix their wagon.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

  Sarah’s eyes lit up. “This is way better than school.”

  Amanda glanced at Tom. “I haven’t exactly figured out how just yet. But if I don’t find a good enough plan, Tom here says he’s got a guy in San Antonio who can make all our problems go away.”

  “That’s the spirit. Shoot ’em all and let God sort it out. Amanda, your daddy would be proud of you.”

  “Mommy, are you really going to have those ladies killed?” Sarah asked, alarmed.

  Everybody laughed. “Of course not, honey,” Amanda said. “But something tells me they’re about to get a lesson they’ll never forget.”

  Chapter 26

  Lunchtime found Sharon Peavy and Darlene Cockburn huddled in Darlene’s favorite booth at Tizio’s, a neighborhood bistro-type restaurant in the middle of Hillside Park Village, a half block from the movie theater. In Hillside Park society, as in the Mafia, there are two types of restaurants—the ones to which you bring your wife, and the ones to which you bring your girlfriend. This was definitely a “wifey” type of restaurant, due in part to its location. You would never take your girlfriend to lunch in a restaurant favored by “ladies who lunch,” because the chances of word getting back to your wife from three different sources before you left the restaurant about whom you had squired to the restaurant approached 100 percent.

  Tizio’s drew a solid lunchtime crowd from the businesses, law firms, and financial institutions that ringed Hillside Park Village, catering to its wealthy clientele. You could slip in for a burger and a beer, or a salad that met with the guidelines of the nearby Cooper Clinic (a rehab center for the overfed), but it was no place to take a girlfriend.

  Sharon and Darlene ostensibly studied the menus, but since they knew them by heart, they spent more of their time absorbing the kind of sociological detail that was so close to their hearts—who was lunching with whom, who was wearing what, who got a good table and who got relegated to a second- or even third-tier table, and who had already knocked back a few too many even at this early hour. The restaurant had been featured a few months earlier in the Wall Street Journal as a “power lunch” spot, complete with a diagram showing which tables were considered most desirable. Until the diagram had run, most people really didn’t know better. But now that something as august as the Wall Street Journal had declared new levels of status depending on where one sat, the maître d’s job had become radically more difficult—and more lucrative—as the financially stable members of the community, which is to say, pretty much all of them, jockeyed for favor.

  “Mmm-mmm-mmm,” Sharon was saying, indicating with her eyes a woman two tables away. “I mean, really . . . did she actually look in the mirror when she got dressed this morning? Bright orange short-short shorts with gold high-heeled wedges at her age? How did she stand there and think ‘I look really cute today’?”

  Darlene suppressed a grin. “It isn’t a look I would favor,” she said, petting her shoulders in her St. John suit. “And she’s obviously not from around here.”

  The only part of the menu that held any attraction at all for Sharon was the wine list. Her night in jail had given her the kind of headache that she normally associated with Saturday nights when she permitted herself to be overserved with red wine, vodka, or, if neither of those was readily available, tequila. Her temples were throbbing with pain from a headache that was a function of sleeplessness, frustration, and upset over the whole state of affairs with Amanda Vaughn.

  “I feel like the world’s biggest idiot,” she admitted, looking at the names of the wines as if they were a menu of prescription drugs especially selected to ease her pain. “I should never have kicked up this whole hornets’ nest with Amanda.”

  “For heaven’s sakes, why not?” Darlene glanced around the room, filing away mental notes about various clothing labels, or lack thereof, seating locations of various parties, and other vital information. “I thought your plan was working out marveliciously.”

  “It was never even my plan.” Sharon jerked angrily on her chain necklace, a barely passable Ann Demeulemeester replica she’d bought for less than ten bucks at TJ Maxx. “It was Heather’s idea. I just went along with it.”

  “If you didn’t think it was a good idea,” Darlene asked, sweeping her outstretched hand across the table and almost toppling Sharon’s ice water, “then . . . why did you get involved?”

  “Are you kidding me? Think about Amanda for a minute. I had an old score to settle with her over Bill anyway. Even though I’d never told her about it, we were good enough friends, she should’ve known I had a crush on him when he started pursuing her and then she goes and marries him! She’s beautiful, she’s a genuinely nice person, she’s got plenty of money—her family’s and Bill’s—she’s single or she’s on the verge of being single, and she’s available. Doesn’t that make you just wanna throttle her? Adding insult to injury, I’ve had a thing for Tom my whole life and he’s after her.”

  Darlene shook her head. “Truth be told, her demographic and mine don’t exactly . . . overlap. I’m interested in a slightly older archetype of man than she is.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Sharon moaned. “A guy who’s interested in somebody your age—that’s one thing. There are tons of older guys. But if you look at the concentration of men from thirty-five to forty-nine who are independently wealthy, available, or soon to become available, you’re looking at a very small pool indeed. Throw someone like Amanda into the mix and she’s going to draw all the attention away from somebody like me just like she did all through high school. I knew what to expect the second I heard she was coming back. I mean, I’ve been around here so long, everybody knows me.”

  “Not in the biblical sense, I hope,” Darlene said, giving her a coy smile.

  “Close enough. Sometimes I feel like I could write a Zagat’s Guide to the Private Parts of the Men of Hillside Park.”

  “I’d buy a copy of that.”

  “What are you talking about? You never have any trouble getting a man to marry you. I wish I knew your secret.”

  “I’ve gotten inquiries from the Learning Annex about doing a seminar on that very topic,” Darlene said with a laugh. “But tell me . . . why are you so upset about what’s transpired with Amanda?”

  The waitress arrived at their table. Sharon glanced at her and sized her up, relatively accurately, as a fifth- or sixth-year college student who was tired of school and no longer fit in with the world of sororities and cheerleading, who didn’t come from a ton of money, and who just wanted to meet some guy who had a few bucks so she could forget about the whole college thing, live in a big house, have a bunch of babies, and then come eat in restaurants like this as a Mrs. in the Neighborhood. Sharon knew the type; she had been one herself. Unfortunately, that strategy seemed to have worked for just about everyone but Sharon and, of course, Heather.

  “We’re not ready,” Sharon said in a tone that revealed a measure of her competitiveness with the waitress, who could easily have picked off any of the men in whom Sharon felt any interest with just a glimpse of her unlined, perfect skin.

  She nodded at Sharon, glancing disapprovingly at the out
ward display of cleavage, and headed to another table.

  “You don’t like our waitress, I can tell,” Darlene noted.

  “Don’t even start. Everything I’ve done has been disastrous. We both know it was Heather’s idea to have Amanda take over the Ball. I just went along. I figured it would keep her off the streets, keep her from competing for what men there are before I even knew about Tom.”

  “And?”

  “And? What do you mean and?! The one thing she didn’t have in the community was power, and now she does. And the first person she used it against was me. She had me arrested, you know that.”

  “You’re the one who swiped the card from her desk,” Darlene gently reminded her.

  “It wasn’t her desk,” Sharon said defensively. “It was Susie’s. I figured it was Susie’s card and—”

  Darlene waved her hand, speaking with unusual clarity. “We’ve been over this six ways to Sunday. Let’s try to deal in reality here. You swiped the card, you got in trouble, and then out of the goodness of her heart, Amanda bailed you out.”

  “Mmm. I guess . . . But it gets worse. You saw Ellen Salter’s column this morning?”

  “About how Amanda got both you and Susie arrested? Wasn’t that a little bit much? She hadn’t even unpacked her bags in Dallas when they took Susie in. She had nothing to do with that. You’d better hope Amanda doesn’t sue you for libel, or slander, or . . . whatever it’s called.”

  “That’s the thing,” Sharon admitted. “I really screwed up. A bunch of times. When I took the card, when I called Ellen—I’m just so jealous of Amanda that I’m not thinking straight.”

  “How about thinking of apologizing?” Darlene asked. She adjusted her noisy row of diamond bangles and glanced at the salad selections on the menu she knew so well.