Chapter 6 Holly
Vodka soda, hold the soda,” I tell Byron.
He smiles at me, concern gathering in his dark eyes and at the corners of his mouth.
“You off the clock?” he asks, glancing around the empty Magnolia Bar—a new, “modern” addition, which, at Dogwood Hills, is a relative term.
Instead of flocked wallpaper, this room has white wainscoting and walls painted hydrangea blue.
Instead of heavy oak or mahogany antique tables, it’s filled with overstuffed leather sofas and armchairs, with marble cocktail tables dispersed throughout.
I nod, slumping onto a leather barstool.
“All right, then,” Byron tells me, tucking a crisp white dish towel under the string of his equally white apron. “I suppose you can sit up here and keep me company while I prep to open.”
I rushed straight here to hide, as soon as the official program began, still reeling from my encounters with Griggs.
The first one—beside the equipment closet—shook me to my core.
The second one, from which I’ve just run away?
I think what concerned me the most about it was how unremarkable it probably appeared to everyone else in the room.
Griggs had simply approached me to ask where the mayor was sitting, or more precisely to insist that I seat her next to him, at the head table.
But he stood too close, watching me with roving eyes.
I could almost see his mind calculating, strategizing his next move—deciding how long it would take to break me.
Is this how it will be now? Every day, when I arrive for work, will I worry that Griggs Johnson is lying in wait for me, ready to pounce?
I needed to stop spiraling, to gather myself somewhere safe before trying to walk through the crowded foyer and away from this place. And I knew that, with the Philanthropy Banquet in full swing, I’d find Byron alone here.
I watch, taking comfort as he falls into his expert rhythm, one that I’ve seen more times than I can begin to count.
When Byron tells the story of our first meeting, he says that he came around from behind the bar to introduce himself, and I confidently thrust out my little hand for a firm shake, all the while looking him directly in the eye, steady and resolved.
Needless to say, our recollections of that day differ.
All I remember is that, terrified during my entire shift that I was leaking breast milk through my uniform, I compulsively stole glances at my tits.
But we all need people in our lives who resolutely believe that we’re stronger than we really are.
And for me, Byron is one of those people.
He pulls a crystal tumbler from the shelf behind him and fills it with ice.
“Looks like you could use a Belvedere,” he says.
I nod and drop my head into my hands.
He grabs the expensive vodka from the top shelf and pours me a double. “Wanna talk about it?”
“Nope,” I say as he slides the vodka toward me, two limes expertly balanced on the rim.
“Well, you know I’m here when you do.” He meets my gaze, his expression so kind that it physically hurts to look at him. I can’t drag Byron into this mess.
I squeeze both limes into my drink and then lift the glass and take a long swig.
The Belvedere burns on its way down, and the burn feels good.
But even this can’t keep my mind from obsessing over that secret—the one Reginald was keeping before he got fired.
The one Griggs aims to use as a weapon of blackmail and harassment against me.
It was a few days after Aidan’s eighteenth birthday. We had a dozen events lined up at the club that weekend, and on Friday afternoon, the new parking valet failed to show up—no notice, no excuse. Desperate, I called Aidan and begged him to come park cars for a rehearsal dinner.
Aidan rushed over, changed into a uniform, and dutifully began to park cars while I launched myself into the ballroom and started putting out a shit-ton of little fires.
It was one of those events where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, from botched seating charts to pasta for the vegetarian bride—who not only avoided carbs like the plague but also happened to be gluten-intolerant.
Irma blamed it all on Mercury’s retrograde. I blamed it all on myself.
Just as the (mostly collapsed) chocolate soufflés were being served, Reginald arrived at my side, tapped my shoulder, and discreetly gestured for me to follow him.
“We have a situation,” he said as soon as he had me alone.
The cause of the situation unfolded in a long conversation between Aidan, Reginald, and me—interspersed with a vast array of creative expletives from me.
The facts: Griggs and Anna-Byrd Johnson pulled up in Griggs’s brand-new C-class Mercedes convertible.
Aidan politely opened the door for Anna-Byrd, and she exited the vehicle.
Aidan then walked around to the driver’s side, and Griggs moved to the passenger seat, insisting that he ride along to park the car since Aidan was a new employee.
As Aidan drove into the garage, Griggs asked who’d hired him.
Aidan said, “Holly, the events manager,” but he left out that I was his mom, worried that it might appear I was doling out special favors.
Griggs replied that I was “hot,” and all the valets must want to “fuck” me.
Aidan said nothing in reply. Then, as Griggs was leaving the car, he casually added that he planned to “find a way into” my “hot little pants.” Aidan still said nothing.
Instead, my eighteen-year-old son, in his infinite wisdom, made the decision that only an “adult” man with a not-fully-formed frontal lobe can make: He used the valet key to scrawl “prick” onto the driver’s-side door of Griggs’s brand-new hundred-thousand-dollar cabriolet.
And—of course—he did this directly in a security camera’s line of sight.
In a gesture of mercy—and after patiently listening as I berated Aidan for a full five minutes about his back-ass, misguided chivalry—Reginald offered to get rid of the security footage and say a grifter must have wandered in from Piedmont Park.
We’d need to come up with the money to cover repairs, but he’d tell Griggs the club’s insurance would pay.
At first I was appalled by Reginald’s offer. “My son should take responsibility for his actions!” I proclaimed. Reginald then gently interjected that keying a car of that value was unequivocally a felony, which shut both Aidan and me up fast.
Felons don’t receive full-ride scholarships from the state of Georgia, as Griggs so helpfully just reminded me.
I made a split-second decision. Aidan would work all summer in the most grueling job I could find.
He’d earn enough to cover the cost of repairs, and we’d accept Reginald’s offer with gratitude.
Then, in August, Aidan would head to the University of Georgia on full scholarship, as planned.
We’d try to forget the whole thing happened.
That’s what we did, for better or worse. Griggs never found out who defaced his car, and Aidan spent a long, hot summer replacing roofs under the relentless sun. He paid for every penny of those repairs.
Now, I watch Byron work behind the bar, wondering if I made the right choice. I guess this is what it means to be a mother: I struggle to protect my son at all costs and then worry that I may have protected him too much. I make the impossible decisions and then accept the inevitable consequences.
Here’s the thing I’ve learned about Griggs in my many years of observing his behavior with women: For him, sex isn’t sex.
It’s power. He quietly has affairs with the wives of prominent men at the club as a way to prove his own dominance—not to other men, but to himself.
And women who refuse to sleep with him—especially women of a lower social status—threaten to diminish his feeling of power, which is really all he cares about.
As far as I’ve been able to observe, Griggs will do just about anything to prove to those who dare to refuse him that he’s still the one on top.
Which means, in short, that I’m totally screwed (metaphorically speaking).
Byron arranges stirrers, chops limes, and fills the fridge with bottles of white wine, while I sit in silence nursing both my extreme self-pity and my second double.
How can I go after Griggs—reveal him for the grimy sexual predator that he is—if it means destroying my precious son’s future?
“How about some water, Holly?” Byron asks after a while, gently pressing a glass into my hand. “Maybe some peanuts, too?”
I look down, my vision blurring. I thought I’d be fine having two doubles, but Byron’s “country club” pours are heavy, and I’m not much of a drinker these days.
I clutch my gut, feeling my forehead sink to meet the cool steel bar top. Then I feel a warm hand on my shoulder.
“Let me get Justine to bring you over a burger from the grill,” Byron says, clearly worried that he’s overserved me. “Rare, with bacon and extra pickles, just the way you like it?”
“I think I might be sick.” I lift my spinning head to exclaim to Byron.
Then I jump to my feet and rush out past the Azalea Ballroom, making a beeline for the bathroom, just in time to hear the announcer exclaim through a crisp, perfectly calibrated sound system, “Griggs Caldecott Johnson III, this year’s Young Philanthropist.”