The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

She sighed. But if they couldn’t afford it, well, they couldn’t, that was all. Yes, letting Sears take the furniture back was the right thing to do. And as she set the tray down on the dear little walnut coffee table and moved around the room, straightening things and flicking off a few specks of dust, she felt a sense of relief at having come up with a solution she could live with. Some of her natural buoyant optimism began to return. Now, all she had to do was keep the furniture clean until Sears came to get it. Of course, she’d have to come up with some sort of explanation for Jed—and her friends, too, who would wonder what had happened. But she’d worry about that later. She was sure she could think of something. And anyway, Jed was so distracted these days, he might not even notice the furniture was gone.

By the time Angelina Biggs knocked at the door, everything was ready. But when Ophelia opened the door to greet her guest, she was appalled. Angelina’s usually well-kept blond hair was disheveled, her face was mottled with ugly red blotches, and she was fighting back tears. She was wearing a bright green rayon dress that seemed to magnify her considerable size, and she must have doused herself in a quart of Emeraude. The scent enveloped her in a cloying cloud.

“Why, what’s wrong, Angelina?” Ophelia cried, and pulled her into the house. “Come in, dear, and tell me all about it!” She put an arm around the woman’s heaving shoulders and led her into the parlor. “Sit down and have a cup of coffee and a sticky bun. That’ll make you feel better.”

Angelina gulped, sat, sipped, and nibbled, and in a few moments, was sufficiently restored so that she could talk. “I’m sorry, Ophelia,” she choked out. “I really shouldn’t . . . It’s too much to expect you to—”

“Yes, you really should,” Ophelia broke in, bracing herself against a wave of Emeraude. “And, no, it isn’t too much. Please tell me what’s wrong. All of it. The whole thing.”

They were sitting side by side on the davenport now, and she patted Angelina’s arm, sympathetic, but by now deeply curious. Was there some sort of health problem? A family difficulty? Problems at the hotel? Money? Likely money. It seemed that everybody had money troubles these days.

“Well, if you insist.” Angelina put down her cup and reached into her handbag for a cigarette. “It’s Artis, Ophelia. He—” Her face twisted. “He’s having an affair.”

Ophelia stared at her, taken completely aback. An affair? Artis Biggs? Of course, he was very good-looking—one of the best-looking men in Darling, with a ready smile and dark hair graying at the temples. He was trim, too, unlike Angelina, who had let herself gain far too much weight. To give her credit, though, Angelina was trying to lose. She had recently confided to Ophelia that she was taking Dr. Baxter’s diet pills, a much-touted way to trim off the pounds. She had read about the pills in one of the beauty magazines she subscribed to. She had started smoking, as well—a surefire aid for weight loss, according to the cigarette advertisements. Lucky Strike, for instance. “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.”

As Ophelia got up to fetch an ashtray, she remembered hearing that Angelina and Artis had married young, when Angelina was right out of high school. She had been Darling’s Cotton Queen in her senior year and everybody thought she was the most beautiful thing on God’s green earth. While an engagement had not been formally announced, it was considered a sure thing that she would marry Charlie Dickens as soon as he finished up at Alabama Polytechnic and had the money to support a wife. But then Angelina had been smitten with Artis and married him and started having babies right away. And Charlie had finished at Poly and gone off to New York and then to the army.

And Artis must be—why, he must be fifty now, if he was a day, Ophelia thought, with some consternation. A fifty-year-old man, having an affair? She’d never heard of such a thing. And with whom? Who was the lady? How were they managing to carry it off? Darling was such a small town—weren’t they afraid of getting caught?

But Ophelia had more tact (and better sense) than to ask these nosy questions. Instead, she said, “Are you sure, Angelina? Are you very sure?”

It was a question that came straight from the heart, because she herself, just last year, had suspected Jed of having an affair with his cousin Ralph’s wife, Lucy. As it turned out, there had been nothing to the story that had gone around town, spread by that awful Mrs. Adcock, their busybody neighbor. Ophelia had been sorry ever since for failing to trust her husband, and sorry that she had thought badly of Lucy, who was really a very sweet young woman. Thank heavens she had held her tongue until she learned the truth. She had never had to confess her foolishness to Jed, and she and Lucy had become the best of friends. But she still cringed when she thought of the terrible pain she would have inflicted if she had made those groundless accusations.

Angelina had no such qualms, apparently. “Oh, I’m sure, all right,” she said bitterly, blowing out a puff of blue cigarette smoke. “They’ve tried to keep it secret, but they can’t fool me.” She lowered her voice and bent toward Ophelia. “I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes, Ophelia. With my very own eyes.”

“The . . . evidence?” Ophelia faltered, drawing back a little. Something about Angelina’s tone frightened her. It sounded sly, almost as if she were taking a kind of perverse pleasure in what she had learned.