with everything Hilly says.” Tears come up in her eyes. Her lips are trembling. “The doctors want me to go up to Memphis for... shock treatment . . .” She covers her face but a tear slips through her fingers. “For the depression and the . . . the tries,” she whispers.
I look down at her long sleeves and I wonder if that’s what she’s been hiding. I hope I’m not right, but I shudder.
“Of course, Henry says I need to shape up or ship out.” She makes a marching motion, trying to smile, but it falls quickly and the sadness flickers back into her face.
“Skeeter, Louvenia is the bravest person I know. Even with all her own troubles, she sits down and talks to me. She helps me get through my days. When I read what she wrote about me, about helping her with her grandson, I’ve never been so grateful in my life. It was the best I’d felt in months.”
I don’t know what to say. This is the only good thing I’ve heard about the book and I want her to tell me more. I guess Aibileen hasn’t heard this yet, either. But I’m worried too because, clearly, Lou Anne knows.
“If you did write it, if Hilly’s rumor is true, I just want you to know, I will never fire Louvenia. I told Hilly I’d think about it, but if Hilly Holbrook ever says that to me again, I will tell her to her face she deserved that pie and more.”
“How do—what makes you think that was Hilly?” Our protection—our insurance, it’s gone if the pie secret is out.
“Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. But that’s the talk.” Lou Anne shakes her head. “Then this morning I heard Hilly’s telling everybody the book’s not even about Jackson. Who knows why.”
I suck in a breath, whisper, “Thank God.”
“Well, Henry’ll be home soon.” She pulls her handbag up on her shoulder and stands up straighter. The smile comes back on her face like a mask.
She turns for the door, but looks back at me as she opens it. “And I’ll tell you one more thing. Hilly Holbrook’s not getting my vote for League president in January. Or ever again, for that matter.”
On that, she walks out, the bell tinkling behind her.
I linger at the window. Outside, a fine rain has started to fall, misting the glassy cars and slicking the black pavement. I watch Lou Anne slip away in the parking lot, thinking, There is so much you don’t know about a person. I wonder if I could’ve made her days a little bit easier, if I’d tried. If I’d treated her a little nicer. Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’ d thought.
But Lou Anne, she understood the point of the book before she ever read it. The one who was missing the point this time was me.
THAT EVENING, I call Aibileen four times, but her phone line is busy. I hang up and sit for a while in the pantry, staring at the jars of fig preserves Constantine put up before the fig tree died. Aibileen told me that the maids talk all the time about the book and what’s happening. She gets six or seven phone calls a night.
I sigh. It’s Wednesday. Tomorrow I turn in my Miss Myrna column that I wrote six weeks ago. Again, I’ve stockpiled two dozen of them, because I have nothing else to do. After that, there’s nothing left to think about, except worry.
Sometimes, when I’m bored, I can’t help but think what my life would be like if I hadn’t written the book. Monday, I would’ve played bridge. And tomorrow night, I’d be going to the League meeting and turning in the newsletter. Then on Friday night, Stuart would take me to dinner and we’d stay out late and I’d be tired when I got up for my tennis game on Saturday. Tired and content and . . . frustrated.
Because Hilly would’ve called her maid a thief that afternoon, and I would’ve just sat there and listened to it. And Elizabeth would’ve grabbed her child’s arm too hard and I would’ve looked away, like I didn’t see it. And I’d be engaged to Stuart and I wouldn’t wear short dresses, only short hair, or consider doing anything risky like write a book about colored housekeepers, too afraid he’d