The Right Thing

CHAPTER 5


“So,” Starr says, “this town being what it is, you must have heard all about me and my situation since before I ran into you.” She switches on one of the ostrich-egg bedside lamps, and in its muted glow the room’s atmosphere softens to a kinder, gentler grisly theme park. “I mean, you came straight here, didn’t even have to ask where I was living.”

“I heard some of it,” I venture, feeling my way here. I don’t want Starr to think I’ve been gossiping about her. I’ll blame it on Dolly.

“Dolly’s mouth flaps at both ends,” I say. “How in the world did you get mixed up with Bobby?” I sink onto the leopard-print chaise. Starr sits on the edge of the monster California king–sized mattress, her legs dangling, looking like a child in an African whorehouse. Her eyes drop to her folded hands, pink nails bitten to the quick.

“It sure felt like the real thing this time.” Her voice is so quiet I strain to hear her. “And I’d been looking for Mr. Right for seeming like forever. Remember Mr. Right? The man my momma told me was going to carry me off, love me forever, and get me whatever my heart desired? Well, Bobby does the best Mr. Right of any man I ever did know.” She glances at me quickly, and if I didn’t know her better, I’d swear her eyes are crystalline with tears. “It was so good in the beginning, Annie. Back then, things were the best—at least till I told him I was expecting a baby.”

I bet. Nothing puts a monkey wrench in the works of a perfectly good thing-on-the-side like a pregnancy.

“Oh, Starr,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she says. “I’m not.” She mashes the heels of her hands into her eyes, rubbing them. “Not so much.”

“Dolly said you told him you’d rather die than have an abortion,” I say without thinking.

“She said that?” Starr looks at me without expression and is silent for a moment. “Amazing to me how word gets around in Jackson. Well”—she sighs—“that’s one thing I told him. I mean, I couldn’t understand how he would ask me to do that when he’d been swearing up one side and down the other he was going to leave Julie just as soon as she got back on her feet again, that we’d get married any day now.” Her mouth turns down, bitter with betrayal. “After I told him I was expecting, the truth came out in about five seconds flat. Bobby never meant to marry me at all, he wasn’t ever going to leave her, and wasn’t even going to help me after the baby came. ‘I’ve already got two kids—I’m not going to get held up by some white trash at their expense’ was his exact words.” Starr looks out the window and bites her lip.

My face reddens, remembering the overheard conversation at Maison-Dit. After all, “trailer park” was my first impression before I knew the woman in the hallway was Starr. “He’s a sorry piece of shit,” I say with heartfelt venom.

“Oh, but Annie.” Starr’s eyes have turned dreamy now, her lips curved in a half-smile. “In the beginning, in New Orleans, it was all so . . . special. Early last April, over to the racetrack where I was cocktail waitressing, he came in one night with a bunch of liquored-up lawyers who’d decided to blow all their folding money on the ponies after the convention was over. They were your usual brand of jackass, the kind I’d been dealing with since I was fourteen years old. After I ran away the third time, I got my first job by lying to a motorcycle bar outside of Pigeon Forge, telling the manager I was sixteen, the manager lying to the Board of Health and telling them I was eighteen. When a mess of bikers comes through the door with a load of home-cooked speed on, looking to mellow down with some beer drinking, pool playing, and hitting on the help, you catch on fast.

“But that night at the Fair Grounds, Bobby was different. He told all his drunk friends to leave me alone, to quit playing grab-ass when I served them their margaritas. I remember he was drinking top-shelf whiskey—‘just one ice cube, honey’—and he let it sit in front of him, sipping it slow, just like a gentleman. So good-looking, too, what with his black, black hair and that five o’clock shadow he gets even though he shaves twice a day, the way he wears his clothes like they’re made for him.”

“They are,” I mutter. By some little old man over in Hong Kong. Bobby brags about it all the time. Du’s mentioned more than once that he’d like to get some shirts from the Shapleys’ tailor.

“I know,” Starr says. “Vainest man I ever did meet. Well, Bobby took most of his shit with him after I said I’d throw everything he owned in the bathtub and set it on fire,” she says with a tight smile. “Anyway, after the races were done for the night, his a*shole buddies left and I was closing out my shift when he came up and asked real nice, ‘Won’t you have a drink with me? I promise not to break anything.’ His eyes were so sweet, oh—I could of fell into them and melted, just like a dab of butter in hot chocolate sauce. I’d had a long night on my feet, and having a drink with this good-looking man seemed like just the ticket. It was a warm evening for April, and the air like a live thing, wrapping itself ’round my bare shoulders. Bobby didn’t ask me where to go. With the top down on that Corvette of his, we drove to the Fairmont Hotel and drank until close at the Sazerac Bar, talking about this and that, but we both knew we were going to end upstairs in his room on the fifteenth floor.”


“You slept with him the first night you met him?” I don’t mean to sound judgmental, but that’s the way it comes out.

Starr doesn’t seem to mind, for she says, “I did check to see if he was wearing a ring, Annie. He wasn’t. If that makes me a slut, okay, I’m a slut.”

“You are not!” I say fiercely.

“Stupid, then,” Starr says with a sigh. “I should have known better, but like I said, it’d been a long time since the last Mr. Right and he didn’t mention his wife and kids until after we’d already done the deed. The next morning, he ordered up champagne and orange juice from the room service and we stayed in bed for three days straight ’fore we came up for air. He was the best I ever had, and that’s damn good, believe me. Never misunderestimate the power of great sex, honey. It’ll make your best intentions into orphan dogs.”

I’m almost blushing, impressed and more than a little envious. I’ve never known lovemaking like that. Du was my first, and he’s still the only man I’ve ever slept with. For years, I’ve found myself in bed with a man who snores like a grand piano dragged across a terrazzo floor, who hogs the covers and complains about how cold my feet are, so I have no basis for comparison. In fact, in the last few years, we’ve rarely done it at all, and when we do, it’s mainly on the nights when I’m ovulating and hope to make a baby. Then, it’s all up to me to get the ball rolling. After years of temperature taking, charts, and planned sex, Du complains about the lack of spontaneity. He wouldn’t even go in for a sperm count. He swears that all the men in his family have more kids than they know what to do with, so it must be me who’s got the problem.

Starr, on the other hand, sounds as though her romantic past has had all the heat and electricity of a summer lightning storm. “Poppa,” she says, a half-smile on her lips, “always used to say that the wages of sin was death, but I’m still here. I’ve made me some mistakes, but I can’t say I’d do anything different.”

“I wish I could say the same,” I blurt. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if . . .”

But I don’t finish the thought because I rarely let myself indulge in what-ifs. They’re like cookies that way. You have one, and before you know it, you’ve had a dozen and regret every last bite. Instead, I look down at my Rolex. It’s four o’clock. The afternoon is suddenly gone, vanished as if I fell down a rabbit hole. I have got to get home before Du does. I need time to get my act together, to get ready to lie to my husband about how I really spent my afternoon, to be dressed and braced for dinner tonight with Starr’s number-one problem—although she doesn’t seem to realize it yet—Judge Otto Shapley.

At this moment, the phone on the bedside table explodes with a series of demanding trills while at the same time another one shrieks from somewhere else in the condo. I expect Starr to reach for the phone, but she says, “I’ll take this up front. Wait here, okay?” Gathering her skirt, she hops off the bed and trots down the hall to the insistent summons of the telephones. I’m left in Bobby country with the stuffed animals, nibbling at a hangnail and dying for a cigarette. I’ve really got to go home.

Five minutes later, knowing I’m really going to be late now, I’m rehearsing my reasons for leaving when Starr walks back in the room. From her compressed lips and distracted expression there’s no question about it. This wasn’t a happy call.

“So,” she says, her eyes cast down on the carpet. “I guess that’s that.”

“That’s what?”

“That was the reason I was trying to get a new dress at Maison-Dit. Before he canceled on me, I sort of had a . . . meeting, an appointment with someone for later on tonight, and needed to be at my best. None of my winter clothes fit me right anymore, and I can’t afford to be looking desperate, not now.” Starr runs her fingers through her curls, pacing. “It was a long shot, anyhow.” She stops and looks over just in time to see me glancing at my watch again.

“Got to go, huh?” Starr asks.

I nod, hoping I don’t look as helpless and guilty as I feel.

“That’s okay,” Starr says. “It’s been good catching up—except we never talked about you, did we?” She leans against the elephant tusk bedpost and folds her arms expectantly. I don’t say anything because I don’t know how to begin, not without a load of self-serving explanations. The room is quiet. You could drop a city bus into the well of deepening silence.

“Guess that talk’s probably not going to happen, is it,” Starr finally says. It’s another one of her nonquestions.

There’s no probably about it. I try to imagine another Ladies’ Leaguer caught up in this mess, like . . . What Would Kendall Do? Kendall Carberry is a walking billboard of the big Southern gal with a big Southern smile, an ace on the tennis court and a crackerjack chairman of the baby-rocking committee. Kendall wouldn’t be caught dead in this situation, the rosebush voice whispers. Kendall would’ve disposed of Starr like junk mail the instant she was approached in front of the Walgreens. Kendall would’ve pretended amnesia of her entire childhood if it came down to that or acknowledging a once-friend who’s sunk herself as deep as Starr has. No, Kendall Carberry is no help to me now.

“Oh,” I manage weakly. With damp hands I crush the empty Pepperidge Farm bag into a crumpled paper ball. “I mean, it’s really not like that.”

It is like that.

“I’d love to get together again soon,” I rattle on, “but I need to dash home and get fixed up for this god-awful law partners’ dinner I’ve got to go to tonight.” With a nervous laugh, I get to my feet.

“Law partners?” Starr arches her delicate eyebrows in inquiry. “That’s a surprise. What kind are you?” She waits a long beat for me to answer.

“Oh!” In a head-clap of understanding, I get it. “I’m not the lawyer. My husband, Du. He’s a partner in his law firm.”

Starr nods slowly. “Your husband’s a lawyer? Lord, I surely need to get one of them now. Bobby says I can’t prove this baby’s his and if I say otherwise he’ll sue my ass to kingdom come, drag up every last man I ever slept with and brand me a whore.”

Oh, God, I think. Please don’t let her ask.

“You think your husband would take my case?” she asks, sounding hopeful.

I can’t look at her. Instead, I gaze upward at an immense palm-leaf ceiling fan planted in the middle of an acre of pleated batik fabric, as if the patron saint of cowards is going to open up the penthouse roof and deliver me from this impossible request. When I finally make myself look back at Starr, her eyes are full of questions. Now that same damned silence between us ripples outward in a steep wave, freighted with the weight of those questions. Before I break on the crest of it, Starr saves me.

“I bet he’s not the kind of lawyer I need,” she says. Her voice is cool and composed. “I bet he only does wills and contracts, or criminal de-fense. I bet he’s too busy, anyhow. No, I’m definitely going to need me a shark, a real man-eater for what I’ve got in mind.” She briskly straightens the bearskin coverlet on the bed and takes the balled-up paper bag from my nerveless hand. “I’ll just put this in the trash. I know you’ve got to be on your way.” Her proud back to me, she’s walking down the hall toward the kitchen.


“It was good of you to have coffee with me, Annie. So nice to see you again,” she says without turning around. Oh, I should be grateful to Starr for this polite dismissal. I should make my own polite noises and go, but instead, I follow her to the kitchen. She’s got to understand what she’s up against since an explanation is all I can do for her.

“Look, Starr.” I plant my hands on the cold marble countertop, determined to see this through. “You know Bobby and his family. Even if I could make Du represent you—which I can’t—you don’t have a bug’s chance in a hurricane of getting anywhere with this, not in Jackson. Nobody’s going to take on the Shapleys. Nobody. You know that, don’t you?”

Starr slams the garbage compressor shut with a thwack of rubber gaskets.

“So I’m supposed to just take it?” Her eyes are narrow pale-blue fires. “Isn’t that what everybody expects me to do? I’m supposed to quit, cry quiet-like, and go away?” Arms folded, she slowly shakes her head. “Dammit, Annie, I’m not about to do that. Me and my baby are going to see that lying nickel son-of-a-bitch pays for every damn box of Pampers, every pair of soccer shoes, every trip to the orthodontist, and anything else I can think up. I’ve got the money for the kind of lawyer I need, I just can’t get my hands on it, not right yet. New Orleans has got more lawyers than goddamn cockroaches, and one of them is going to take my case even if nobody up here will.”

She’s walking back into the white living room, across the tundra of snowy Berber carpet to the front door. “So don’t tell me what I know or don’t know, Annie Banks,” she flings over her shoulder. “The life I’ve led, I know a thing or two about trouble and how to kick its ass ’round the front yard.”

Starr is at the front door now, opening it to the entryway. All I have to do now is walk through that door, push the button for the elevator, and this is all over.

“Maybe after the holiday, we can get together,” I offer, floundering in another meaningless social reflex.

But Starr’s pointed little face is a study in detachment, seemingly engaged in battle elsewhere. Her hand on the doorknob, she says, “Bobby and those old bitches over to Maison-Dit might have won this round, but I’m not near done for yet. I just got to get to New Orleans.”

“New Orleans? Why?”

“Somebody’s holding onto my money for me down there,” she says grimly. “I mean to get it.”

“But New Orleans!” I exclaim. “Starr, that’s three hours from here, and you don’t have a car.”

As the words leave my lips, somewhere on the penthouse floor of the Tower, a dog commences a low, miseried howling. It must be in the other condo, and it sounds as desperate as I feel. “How in the hell are you going to get there?” I argue.

“I’ll work something out,” Starr says, waving a dismissive hand. “I always do. I can hitchhike if I got to.” Standing in the doorway with her sweater riding up over the bulge of her belly, the gaping waist of her skirt fastened with safety pins, Starr positively swaggers. But then, she never did back away from much of anything.

Now, like the soundtrack to a Swedish melodrama, the howling next door climbs a scale of dog angst from a basso profundo of loneliness to the mountaintop region of I-need-to-pee. And then, it’s only then, that I finally understand that I can’t walk out of this hideous penthouse leaving her alone and without a prayer of help.

“I, I could give you the money to take the train,” I stammer, wishing I could put my fingers in my ears.

The howling doesn’t faze Starr. “I thought on the train already,” she says. “Amtrak’s booked until after Saturday. So is Greyhound, and I’ve got to get this done before tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why the rush?” I ask, frustrated. Why won’t that dog shut up? Raising my voice to be heard over the howling, I demand, “Seriously, Starr—why don’t you wait until after Thanksgiving?”

“I can’t,” Starr says loudly. “They mean to put me out of the condo by Friday, and my money’s at the Fair Grounds.”

“You couldn’t keep your money in the bank like the rest of America?” I’m practically shouting. And then, as if the sound of our voices comforts it, the dog stops howling. Instead, it whimpers at the base of the other penthouse’s door, snuffling against the jamb to fetch up our scent.

“Look.” I sag against the door frame, half in and half out. “I’d drive you, but today’s just impossible. Like I said, I have to be at this partners’ dinner tonight, and tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, for God’s sake. I couldn’t do it until Friday at the earliest.” Maybe I can get away with a day trip to New Orleans after Thursday, maybe nobody will figure it out—if I’m careful. And lucky.

But Starr shakes her head in resolute denial. “Friday’s too late.”

And so it comes down to this: I have a new black dress hanging in the back of the Beemer. I have a husband who’ll be home in less than an hour, expecting me to be in that dress and putting on my makeup for an evening of too much chardonnay and sanitized chitchat with Jackson’s rich and powerful. I have a million reasons why I should get my ass home and away from this evolving catastrophe. I have no reason at all for what I say next.

“All right! I’ll drive you to New Orleans. Be ready by six thirty.” Like punctuation, the dog barks once and then goes quiet, silent as the space between us.

What else can I do? I won’t deny her again.