Georgia Bottoms

by Mark Childress

  “Why thank you, Geraldine.”

  “That is so darling! Georgia, you did this all by yourself? When you fainted on Sunday, I said, how will she ever get it together for Tuesday? But you did! How on earth?”

  “I had help,” Georgia said, conjuring an invisible cadre of staff, when in fact she and Krystal had been up till two a.m. hot-gluing Spanish moss to the candlesticks.

  Thank God for the doorbell. That’s the great thing about being the hostess—you are always needed elsewhere. “Help yourself to anything you’d like, Geraldine. I’ll be back.”

  This was Lily Jane Mobley and her sister-in-law Jean Lardell, widow ladies, never seen in public without each other. They exclaimed over the greenery in the front room, and came down the hall echoing Geraldine’s cries at the splendor of the lobster.

  Georgia wished Krystal could have heard it. Come to think of it, wasn’t Krystal supposed to come early to bring the cake plates and help with the hot hors d’oeuvres? No doubt she got caught up in some silly mayor thing. Luckily there were guests now to keep one another company while Georgia did everything by herself.

  This party was off to a slow start, no denying it. Nearly noon, and only three guests so far. Usually the crowd arrived in a big early wave surging through the house for the first hour.

  Guests were guests. What did it matter if it was three or three hundred?

  Georgia brought out the first tray of toasty prosciutto-wrapped figs and stood around watching them get cold. Each lady made a show of tasting one, as if that required great courage. Jean Lardell said they were “better than I expected,” a compliment so backhanded Georgia had to bite her tongue to keep from snapping at her.

  The phone rang. She excused herself and went to the hall.

  “Oh Georgia, it’s Nadine Watson—oh honey, it’s just so awful I can’t believe it! After all the trouble you went to.”

  “Nadine, what’s wrong? Aren’t you coming?”

  “Well honey, no, of course not. Don’t you know what’s happened?” She sounded hysterical, like Aunt Pittypat with Uncle Billy Sherman’s artillery shells raining down upon Atlanta.

  Georgia said, “What are you talking about?”

  “Bless your heart, you’ve been getting ready all morning, you don’t even know! It’s too much to explain. Go turn on your TV. Oh, it’s so awful!” She hung up Bam!

  Mama came down the hall on her walker, still wearing the bunnies. “Did I hear people talking?”

  “Our guests are here, Mama. Don’t you want to put on your shoes? I put them in there by the TV.”

  “No, I don’t,” Mama said.

  “Well, I’m not going to argue with you.” Georgia turned to the dining room. “Look, everybody, here’s Little Mama!”

  The ladies let out high-pitched cries, the forced extra helping of enthusiasm people reserve for the elderly and small children. Little Mama accepted their hugs and friendly inquiries without comment. Georgia said something about needing to answer the door, though the bell had not rung.

  She went up the hall to the front door. She peered out at the street.

  No one was parking a car. No groups of ladies in party dresses were coming up the walk.

  Georgia set her jaw. She went down the hall to Little Mama’s pine-paneled den. The TV was still showing that same part of the movie.

  She stood there and watched the scene again and again, until she understood. It was not a movie. It was news—“breaking” news, they kept saying. A blur came from one side of the screen. A cloud of orange fire exploded from a tower. A tower collapsed in a shower of dust. Panic-stricken people ran pell-mell toward the camera, chased by a boiling cloud.

  Georgia thought of ants. The great Ant Connection. The anthill kicked over, ants running every which way.

  She sat on the edge of Mama’s chair, reading the words streaming across the screen. She turned up the volume a little.

  When she looked up from the screen, Lily Jane and Jean Lardell and Geraldine and Little Mama were gathered behind her in the den, watching with mouths open.

  “It’s like Pearl Harbor,” said Lily Jane.

  “Georgia said it was a movie,” Little Mama said.

  Georgia held her tongue.

  “I guess everybody knows about this by now,” said Geraldine. “That’s why they didn’t come.”

  Georgia drifted out into the hall. The other ladies helped Little Mama into her recliner.

  The urgent voices of the announcers echoed up the hallway. Georgia stood at the front door, looking out.

  Things like this do not happen in Six Points. That’s why we live here—to be far away from such things.

  Georgia tried to grasp what had happened. It was a tragedy. A national emergency. The president was flying, they wouldn’t say where. Planes crashing all over the place.

  Naturally a thing like this would take precedence over anybody’s September luncheon. It was much, much more important than any social occasion.

  It occurred to Georgia that she might not be the only person in this position. All over the nation there must be hostesses standing at their buffet tables, waiting for guests who would never arrive.

  She walked through the parlor, past pyramids of chicken salad sandwiches and pimento cheese. She remembered her twinge of dread at the prospect of the guests pawing through the beautiful food. Well, you got your wish, she thought bitterly. The dining room display sat perfect, untouched.

  She picked up a dish of mixed nuts and carried it to the TV den. “Do they have any idea who did it?”

  “Ben somebody,” said Lily Jane. “He’s the one that blew up that ship.”

  “The Titanic?” said Little Mama.

  “No, a navy ship. Blew a hole in the side of it and almost sunk it. About a year ago. Remember?”

  “Where was that?” said Jean Lardell. “I think I missed that.”

  “Somewhere over there in the Mideast, I forget,” said Lily Jane. “Name a country that’s in the Mideast.”

  “Japan?” said Jean.

  “No, that’s the Far East. The Mid East.”

  “Would anybody like some mixed nuts?” Georgia said. “There’s so much food, oh my God. Why don’t I fix y’all a plate and you can eat in here while you watch.”

  “Oh, poor Georgia.” Geraldine Talby turned to her. “Y’all, look. Bless her heart. Her party is ruined.”

  The ladies clustered around to pat her arm and say how sorry they were. Georgia said a national emergency was much more important than any social occasion.

  Already she was tired of being brave, tired of the TV commentators, sick to death of the terrible scenes playing over and over on a loop. Those were real people jumping off those buildings as they burned. It was just not something they should show on television, that’s all.

  Georgia hoped her face didn’t look as crushed and disappointed as she felt—or if it did, she hoped the others read her expression as concern for the awful events, not the massively self-centered disappointment it really was.

  She wished everyone would just go home so she could cry.

  The phone rang.

  “Hey George,” said Krystal. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess so. Where are you?”

  “At the office. We’re waiting on a conference call. The state director of public safety is reviewing our civil defense procedures.”

  “With all this going on?”

  “Yeah, that’s the point, they don’t know if there’s going to be other attacks,” said Krystal. “There’s some thought the big cities might be just the first wave. They might try to hit the small towns next. We have to be prepared.”

  “Oh come on. You don’t really think these people would come to Six Points?”

  “I can’t be sure of that, can you?” Krystal sighed. “Look, the TV is saying it’s a war, and everything’s changed. I’m the mayor, you know, I have to take that seriously.”

  “I don’t want everything to change,” Georgia said. “I want it to sta
y like it is.”

  “Listen, the phones are going crazy down here,” Krystal said. “If I need you later, could you come down and give us a hand?”

  “Well of course. Just let me know.” Georgia was slightly amused by the idea of Krystal defending Six Points from the terrorists, but today was not a day to make jokes.

  That’s how awful this was: she couldn’t even joke with her best friend, with whom she could find the humor in even the darkest things. Georgia hated whoever it was that had reached around the world to get between her and Krystal. Why can’t they leave us alone? This has nothing to do with us!

  Suddenly she realized all three ladies had their purses on and were headed for the door. “Oh y’all, now, please don’t go,” she pleaded. “Nobody else is even coming, and y’all haven’t eaten a bite.” That was not the most gracious way to put it, and it was even more ungracious for Georgia to be thinking how much money she’d spent… but how do you keep your brain from thinking whatever it wants?

  “Oh, I couldn’t eat a thing, it’s all too upsetting,” said Jean Lardell.

  “I’m not sure we should even go out on the street,” said Geraldine Talby. “What if they start dropping bombs?”

  “Nobody’s gonna drop any bombs,” Georgia said. “This is Six Points.”

  Jean said, “My sister Frances has a girl in school up there in New York. I want to call and make sure she’s all right. She’s just the type to grab her camera and go down there to make pictures.”

  “You can call from here, Jean,” Georgia said.

  “That’s okay,” Jean said. “I have that unlimited long-distance plan.”

  “I feel so guilty not staying to help you clean up,” said Lily Jane Mobley.

  Georgia forced a gracious hostess smile onto her face. “I sure do thank you for coming,” she said. “We’ll do it again real soon.” As soon as hell freezes over! She knew it was irrational to be mad at the only people in Six Points, besides Nadine and Krystal, to even acknowledge they’d been invited to a luncheon. Everybody else seemed to have used the disaster as an excuse to abandon common courtesy.

  She hugged the ladies’ necks and watched them hurry to their cars. Geraldine craned her neck to look at the sky, then drove off, tires screeching in haste. Lily Jane and Jean waved goodbye as they pulled away.

  Georgia’s face was flushed, her hands trembling. She took a deep breath, let it out. She forced herself to repeat several times, Calm down, now. This didn’t just happen to you.

  The TV said thousands were dead. Maybe twenty, maybe fifty thousand. That number was too big to think about, really. Georgia couldn’t think about that many people at once.

  Anyway they were strangers, they were Yankees, they should be none of her concern. How were they different than anybody else on the news who died? A hundred thousand in a typhoon in Bangladesh. A million in a famine in Africa. You couldn’t wrap your head around a number like that.

  Georgia could not stop thinking about the stacks of sandwiches, hand-trimmed, the molded salads going soft at the edges, lime sherbet melting into the punch, a small fortune in lobster getting warm under the display lights.

  The world was spinning out of control and what could Georgia do? Nothing. Wars and sneak attacks were things that happened in the movies, in the past, to Little Mama’s generation—not now with all our modern inventions, the United Nations, cordless phones, windshield wipers that know when it’s raining. Who allowed this to happen? Georgia suspected this latest president was a bit of a fool. Going by his scared-rabbit look just now on TV, he hadn’t the first clue what to do next.

  “Can we turn it off please, Mama? That man gets on my nerves.”

  “Fine with me. He won’t say the ones that really done it. You know who it was.”

  “Rosa Parks?” Georgia said.

  Little Mama made a face. “I didn’t say that. But you know it wasn’t anybody white.”

  Mama was fortunate not to ever have to think about anything that happened. Automatically she knew who to blame.

  Georgia pressed POWER. Silence and darkness filled the house, instant gloom.

  The chatter of the newsmen was better. Georgia switched the TV back on, and cut the volume in half. If the end of the world was coming, she would like a little advance notice.

  6

  Georgia packed up the food in boxes, coolers, and Tupperware, and loaded it into her car. In a Rubbermaid ice chest she made a fresh bed of ice for the Lobster Scallion Shooters. The votives clinked softly, like the grape-juice glasses as the communion tray was passed at church.

  Just as she started to the car with the last load, Brother stumbled into the kitchen shirtless, hungover. She told him something bad had happened in New York and D.C., it was his duty to stay home and look after Mama. Go look at the TV if he had any questions.

  He saw the look on her face. For once he didn’t argue.

  Georgia drove a loop around the courthouse square. Hardly a car in sight, no one afoot—Six Points was quieter than the quietest Sunday morning. It looked like a scene from a movie about the end of the world.

  She drove out Maple Street past the hospital to the Sycamore Pointe Senior Life Village, which was the Six Points Nursing Home with a new sign.

  Georgia had taken pains to be friendly with Sharon Overby, who ran the place, in case she ever needed to get Little Mama admitted out there in a hurry. Sharon was one of those who usually came to the luncheon but rarely bothered to RSVP first. The minute she saw Georgia she set about apologizing. “Oh my gosh, Georgia! I meant to call but we’ve been so busy. All the residents got so upset this morning, you can imagine. We had to turn off the TVs and take away their remotes.”

  “That’s not why I’m here.” Georgia set down the ice chest. “I’ve got my car stuffed full of food for the luncheon. If you can get somebody to help me unload it, we can feed all your people a really nice lunch.”

  “Oh. Oh… oh my goodness, Georgia, that is so sweet of you. Really. So thoughtful.” Sharon looked embarrassed. “And I would love to take you up on it, but… actually we’re not allowed to serve food that hasn’t been inspected—well, you know, we have all this legal red tape.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Georgia. “The food is perfectly fine. I made it myself.”

  “Oh I’m sure it’s absolutely wonderful, it always is,” Sharon said. “I’ve been looking forward to it so, so much.”

  So much you didn’t bother to RSVP? Georgia shook it off. “Can’t you just bend the rules for today? I mean, if ever there was a day to bend the rules.”

  “Oh, Georgia, I can’t believe you are so kind as to think of our residents at a time like this. But we have state regulations, the county health department’s breathing down my neck… I’m not allowed to serve food unless we prepare it ourselves. We could lose our operating license.”

  “You wouldn’t be serving it,” Georgia said. “I can go up and down the halls and give it away. Like a gift. People bring gifts of food out here all the time, don’t they? Would that be okay?”

  Sharon beamed, exactly as if she were about to say yes, and said, “No, I’m sorry.”

  Georgia knew full well that Sharon ran the place, she could break any rule she chose. So much for trying to do a good deed. Georgia said, “You think somebody would tell on you? Is that it?”

  “You’d be surprised. A resident says something to a family member, next thing you know I’ve been reported to the state. It has happened before.”

  “I just thought, it being a national emergency and all,” Georgia said.

  Sharon assumed an odd, goofy smile, the kind of smile you put on for a baby to make it grin. She made a move to lift one end of the ice chest. “Let me help you carry this back to your car.”

  “No—no,” Georgia said, pulling the chest away by its handle to deny her any share of it. “I’ve got it! You’re busy. You’ve got a million things to do. Don’t think about it another minute.”

  “Thank you for understanding,�
� Sharon said. “I wish I could accept. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

  Georgia smiled and said, “Absolutely!” and got out the door fast. She was irked by the Sharon Overbys, mindless rule followers of the world. She felt silly for trying to give her food away. She let herself stew in that feeling all the way to the courthouse.

  This time, before lugging that heavy ice chest up three flights of stairs, she went up to the jail desk to ask. The deputy said no ma’am, Sheriff Allred is out on patrol, no ma’am we can’t accept food for the prisoners, blah blah blah state regulations.

  Georgia didn’t argue. She thanked him and went back to her car.

  Nobody wanted her charity. She was driving around with five hundred dollars’ worth of food getting ready to spoil in her car. And no one would even let her give it away.

  She switched on the radio, hoping for music to soothe her. In came the urgent voices of newscasters, panicky eyewitnesses, sirens whooping, unconfirmed reports, this just in! She lunged to turn it off. She couldn’t bear the flood of anxiety pouring out of the speakers.

  Georgia didn’t know any poor people, but she knew Six Points had its share. Mostly they were black and lived across the bridge in East Over. She tried to think where they might congregate. They didn’t have a community center or anything. That was part of why Krystal was fighting to annex them.

  When Georgia pictured herself driving into that run-down neighborhood, she pictured a gang of large black youths approaching her car in a threatening manner. There might be a scuffle or stampede when they realized the white lady was giving away free lobster and other fancy food.

  Anyway, wouldn’t it be a little condescending to drive into somebody’s neighborhood and start handing out canapés, like some honky-woman Santa Claus? Sharon Overby had made Georgia feel like an idiot. She had no desire to feel that way again.

  She drove three times around the square trying to decide. Finally it occurred to her that poor people have to eat just like everyone else. In Six Points there was only one place to buy groceries: Hull’s Market. The logical place to find whoever might be hungry.