“Now wish me luck,” I say, grabbing two bottles from the fridge. “I’m heading into the fray to check on the boozy ladies.”
Perfectly chilled Taittinger in hand, I make my way toward the Ivy Room, one of several small formal dining rooms that fan around the grand rotunda. These spaces, intended for such intimate gatherings as small birthday fetes, sweet sixteen luncheons, or special family dinners, have been decorated with the feminine feel of a ladies’ parlor in a well-appointed Southern home, circa 1936.
I push open the door and step inside, noticing immediately how gorgeous the hyacinths are looking in that silver vase at the center of the table. I make a mental note to call my go-to florist and shower her with praise. And the white linens, crisp and perfectly draped, are a real testament to the entire team over in housekeeping.
The women are huddled, discussing in hushed tones the latest Posted Notice: Dogwood Hills’s most arcane form of public humiliation. The husband of one of their—now spurned—friends just had his name taped to bulletin boards around the club. An announcement carefully printed on expensive ecru card stock reports the precise balance on his delinquent account.
“Holly!” Loula, the younger of the Davis sisters, says, her voice slurring just the slightest bit. “Come join us!”
I set Loula’s not-too-bubbly champagne on ice and watch from an appropriate distance. Chatter about the Posted Notice abruptly stops, and Anna-Byrd extends her dainty hand, showing off the enormous emerald tennis bracelet dangling from her slim wrist.
Seeing that bracelet reminds me of the almost identical onecurrently residing in a safe under my desk. The only difference? That one is sapphire, presumably to match the piercing blue eyes of Kasey Ketchum, the young third wife of banking magnate Miles Ketchum, and Griggs’s erstwhile lover. According to Janey, the club’s receptionist and resident gossip, Kasey lost the bracelet during a passionate after-hours encounter with Griggs on the squash court (gross) after which he unceremoniously dumped her. She’ll probably never retrieve the bracelet since it was a gift from Griggs, and Mr. Ketchum appears to provide her with a shiny new object every week. In the meantime, a bauble worth several thousand dollars is gathering dust in my office.
“Come sit,” Loula calls out to me, patting an empty seat beside her. “Youmustsee thisabsolutely to-die-forring.”
Loula knows, of course, that there can be no “joining them,” and I won’t be cozying up beside her, since I am staff and they’re club members. Nevertheless, she persistently invites me.
“That’s a lovely piece, Mrs. Babb,” I say, lying. I’m not really a fancy jewelry person.
“For the hundredth time,” Loula says, gesturing for me to come closer, “please call me Loula! Mrs. Babb is my mother-in-law.”
“And for the hundredth time,” I reply, my voice gently teasing, “please don’t make me call you by your first name. I could lose my job for it. And I happen to really like my job.”
All the women around the table laugh uncomfortably. All but one, that is.
“Well, well, well. Isn’t someone feeling cheeky this morning,” Anna-Byrd Johnson says, through an utterly disingenuous smile. She shakes her head slowly, sending the bright blue tassels on her earrings bobbing about. The woman is obsessed with fringe earrings. Every time I see her she’s wearing a different pair, to match whatever brightly patterned dress she’s got on.
An uncomfortable silence ensues, during which I attempt to stare thoughtfully into the distance, or, in this case, at the strange array of eighteenth-century pastoral scenes gracing the walls of the Ivy Room.
Over many years, I’ve come to realize that the design of thisantiquated, slightly shabby club is meant to convey something important about the people that fill it: They areold money, not new. Theirs is multigenerational wealth. Any unseemly displays of their status are, at best, tacky and, at worst, meriting quiet expulsion from their tightly monitored social world.
I happen to know a good deal about their world. Growing up, I lived on the other side of the member-staff divide. Not here, but at a club a whole lot like this one, in Mississippi. My father basically ignored me, electing instead to play endless rounds of golf and drink bottomless scotch. My mom spent most of her time preening and gossiping with the ladies. She only cared about what I did to the extent that it reflected on her. For my mother, discretion and propriety were the most important virtues, and so discreetly raising proper children was the ultimate goal of parenting.
By the time I hit puberty, I was through pretending to have a real family. Instead, I worked my little ass off to ensure that every single action I took made my mother look like an utter and complete failure. Desperate to escape my gilded cage, I threw myself repeatedly against the bars. My teen pregnancy was, for her, both the pinnacle of my indiscretion and the final proof of my reckless irresponsibility. There was one fleeting moment, though, after I got pregnant with my son, Aidan, when I thought I might stay a part of that world—maybe even build a little family with his father, play by the rules, and make a place for us there.
Aidan’s father wasn’t like me. I rebelled; he simply belonged. He lived comfortably with his good name, his lovely family, his sterling reputation.
As it turns out, in my Mississippi town, teenage boys who want to maintain sterling reputations don’t become dads. They properly and discreetly pay to take care of the “problem.”
So I left. I escaped the gilded cage, secretly carrying away the shame both our families said the pregnancy would bring, and I boarded a bus for the big city.
Here’s the great irony: When I was utterly adrift, desperately seeking a job in Atlanta, this country club was the only place that would take me in. I landed a job here, with no familyor community, and the staff made a home for us. Almost immediately, they became, for Aidan and me, the family I never had.
Marg, the older Davis sister, breaks into my memories. “Holly, be a dear and run down to the driving range. Let Chase know we’ll be a tad late to pick the boys up from their golf lesson.”
“Of course,” I say, then leave the ladies to their jewelry chatter, to deliver the news that Chase will be babysitting the Davis sisters’ little hellions for a while longer.
The heavy oak door hasn’t even had a chance to thud shut behind me when Janey enthusiastically scurries toward me, sensible black pumps shuffling across the maroon carpet. Janey’s face brightens as she calls out to me. “Holly! I didn’t expect to see you here.”
At least one of us is thrilled I’m at the club on my day off.
“You won’t believe it,” she says, somehow managing to simultaneously express deep distress and utter glee at having procured new information. “It’s Reginald.”
“Reginald, the new head of security?” He’s been at the club for almost two years, but that makes him a real spring chicken, relative to old-timers like us.
“Fired!” she cries out.
“No!” My jaw goes slack with disbelief. Reginald is a great guy—honest to a fault, but also compassionate. Last summer, he did me a huge favor, and I’ll forever be grateful to him. If it weren’t for him, I’d probably be unemployed, and my son definitely wouldn’t be out there living his best life in college.
