Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [148]
About ten minutes into the trip home Betty Raye took her earrings off and reached for her purse. But it was not there. She realized she must have left it at the party, in the upstairs powder room.
She would not have returned to the Wheelers’ but her reading glasses were in the purse also and she needed them. The young state trooper who was filling in for Ralph Childress that night turned around and drove her back to the party. She slipped in and went upstairs and got her purse. As she was coming down the stairs, trying her best to be inconspicuous, she heard a woman’s laugh that was so infectious she had to look and see where it was coming from. The woman, who had just joined the party, standing in the middle of a large crowd of men, laughed again and was clearly enjoying a story that was being told. Betty Raye could not help but stop and stare for a moment until Martha Ross, a woman she had met earlier, walked up and said in a loud voice, “Why, Mrs. Sparks, we all thought you had left!”
Betty Raye whispered and tried to head for the door, hoping not to be noticed by anyone else. “I did but I had to come back; I forgot my purse.”
Martha followed her. “Oh, don’t you just hate when you do that, I do it all the time.” When Betty Raye reached the door, curiosity got the best of her and she said, “Mrs. Ross, who is that pretty lady over there?”
Mrs. Ross looked. “Why, that’s Vita Green. Don’t you know Vita?”
Betty Raye shook her head and Mrs. Ross looked at her in surprise. “She practically runs your husband’s arts program. I can’t believe you don’t know Vita.” She proceeded to grab Betty Raye by the arm and pull her across the foyer, calling out in an excited voice, “Vita! Look who I have here. . . . I can’t believe you haven’t met Mrs. Sparks yet.”
An entire room full of laughing and chatting people suddenly went as silent as if they had all been struck dumb. Even the ice in the glasses stopped rattling. The men in Vita’s group went visibly pale before her eyes.
Vita, who had her back turned to Betty Raye at the time, seemed to be the only person able to move and speak. She casually turned around, her expression unchanging, and with warmth and poise said, “Why no, Mrs. Sparks and I have somehow managed to miss one another until now.”
Vita smiled and extended her hand and in a pleasant voice added, “Hello. I’m so pleased to finally meet you at last.”
Betty Raye was dazzled by Vita’s large diamond spray pin and her beauty in general but did manage to offer a faint “How do you do.”
Vita smiled again. “It’s so lovely to meet you, Mrs. Sparks. I hope we’ll see each other again sometime.”
“Thank you,” said Betty Raye. As she made her way back out of the crowded room, Mrs. Ross, thinking she had just done a good deed, said, “That’s nice, I am glad I was able to introduce you two.”
As soon as Betty Raye got to the door and it closed behind her, an ice cube managed a weak little clink and gradually people began to move and within seconds, Vita, who had never blinked an eye, continued her conversation as if nothing momentous or so potentially dangerous as wife-meets-mistress had just happened.
On the drive back to the mansion Betty Raye thought about Mrs. Green. When they had met she had so gracefully and effortlessly moved her black cigarette holder from one hand to the other, with such elegance and style. She was like one of those movie stars that she and Anna Lee had seen at the Elmwood Theater. Betty Raye wondered if she should try to take up smoking. Vita, on the other hand, who had only seen Betty Raye in photographs, wondered how Hamm could have ever been attracted to this rather plain, nondescript person, a woman who, she was sure, was perfectly nice but had looked more like the help than a guest.
Hamm, who had been in another room