You didn’t have to be absolutely Nice. The southern standard of niceness was this: You’d never been convicted of anything, you didn’t look at other’s women’s husbands too openly. You wrote your thank-you notes and were polite to your elders. You had to take a keen interest in your children’s upbringing. And you made sure your family was fed adequately. There were sideways and byways in this “nice” thing, but those were the general have-tos. Poppy was teetering on the edge of not being “nice” enough for the club, and since there had been an Uppity Woman in the forties who’d been just barely acquitted of murdering her husband, that was really saying something.

I shuddered. It was time to think of the positive.

At least we didn’t have to wear hats, as Uppity Women had in the fifties. I would have drawn the line at wearing a hat. Nothing makes me look sillier, whether I wear my hair down (because it’s long and really curly and wavy) or whether I wear it up (which makes my head look huge). I was glad that the Episcopal church no longer required women to wear hats or veils to Sunday service. I would have had to look like an idiot every week.

I’d been mentally digressing, and I’d missed what Poppy said. “What? What was that?” I asked.

But Poppy said, “It’s not important. We’re all fine; I just have to take care of something before I get there. See you later.”

“See you,” I said cheerfully. “What are you wearing to the meeting?” Melinda had asked me to check, because Poppy had a proclivity toward flamboyance in her clothing taste. But I could hardly make Poppy change outfits, as I’d pointed out to Melinda. So I’m not sure why I stretched the conversation out a little more. Maybe I felt guilty for having tuned her out, however briefly; maybe it would have made a difference if I’d listened carefully.