Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes Read Online Free PDF

squeeze. He had taught her this years ago, but somehow, during the past few weeks she had spent trying to figure out how to put the zip back into her marriage, Nita had managed to forget.
    “Sorry,” she said.
    He went back into the bathroom and a minute later she heard him humming to himself as he brushed his teeth.
    Nita caught a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror. She wet her fingers and tried to remove the mascara smudges beneath her eyes. She rubbed her mouth on a Kleenex. Dr. Ledbetter was lying there, faceup on the bed, and she quickly slid him into her nightstand drawer.
    “I saw Leonard at the office today,” Charles said, coming out of the bathroom and wiping his hands on a towel. “He says you and Lavonne have a lunch meeting tomorrow to talk about the firm party. He seemed to think Lavonne was getting pretty close to finding a caterer.” Nita pulled the sheet to her chin. She didn’t know what to say to this. She wasn’t very good at lying. She nodded her head slightly.
    “Good,” he said. “Is it one of my mother’s caterers?”
    Nita nodded again. She tried to imagine her husband as a lion tamer or a pirate. She tried to imagine him with long hair and an eye patch and a curving cutlass strapped to his waist.
    “Why are you squinting like that?” Charles said, frowning. “Is there something wrong with your eyes?”
    Nita opened her mouth to explain about Dr. Ledbetter’s Christian lovemaking, but then thought better of it. Charles stared at her suspiciously. In the hallway behind him, Logan’s door closed softly. “You might want to make an appointment to get your eyes checked,” he said. “You’re getting to that age when people start needing to wear reading glasses.” He stepped out of his slacks and folded them neatly over a chair. “I’m going to jump in the shower,” he said. “I had dinner at the club so don’t bother to make me anything.”
    She waited until she heard the water running and then she went into her closet and took off the black camisole and put on her favorite flannel nightgown and her slippers with the pig faces the children had given her last Christmas. She stuffed the camisole in the back of a drawer where she would never find it again. She was thirty-nine years old. Her eyes would be going soon. Her breasts would sag. Her thighs would dimple. All that time she had spent reading soft-porn romance novels and going to Passion Parties and reading about how to explore her sexuality, she should have been developing a hobby. Something safe and matronly like collecting spoons. Or scrapbooking.
    From inside her closet, Nita heard him climbing out of the shower. She wrapped herself in her bathrobe and noticed Charles had hung his Orvis hunting jacket in her closet, near the front where she would be sure to see it. He was scheduled to leave four weeks from now for his annual hunting trip, and Nita supposed he had hung the jacket there to remind her to take it to the dry cleaners. She reached to move it, and as she lifted the hanger, a long slim package of condoms fell out of the pocket.
    “Nita!” he called from the bathroom. “Make sure my mother’s at that lunch meeting tomorrow. She may be able to help you with some of the details for the party.”
    Nita stood there looking at the condoms and feeling like someone had kicked her in the stomach. They were in a blue cellophane wrapper with the picture of a rhino on the front.
Ribbed for her Pleasure!
it read across the front. She’d had her tubes tied eleven years ago and this thought clanged through her head, insistent as an alarm bell. She looked down at the little blue package in her hand. The voice in her head said,
What does this mean?
But she knew what it meant. She closed her fingers tightly over the condoms and stood, clenching both fists. Something monstrous rolled beneath her breast like a heavy wheel, like a stone rolled across the mouth of a cave. All her life she’d been a good girl. All her life