Southern Living

by Ad Hudler

  “Suzanne? Sweetheart?”

  The man from the table had walked up behind them. “I was wonderin’ where you went to,” he said. “Come on back to the table, honey, we’re missin’ you.”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. Saying nothing, she reached into her purse and pulled out a tube of Bermuda Sunset lipstick, which she twisted open and applied with a look of childlike concentration. When she finished there was a light blip of red that escaped the clean boundary of her top lip, reminding Margaret of the messy, northeast corner of Kansas on a map.

  “I’m gonna have a baby,” she said, looking at Margaret.

  “Suzanne?” the man said. “Honey?”

  She then looked up him. “I said, Boone, ‘I’m gonna have a baby.’ ”

  “Darlin’, you’ve had a little too much to drink. ’Scuse us, please,” he said to Margaret and Randy. “Y’all have been too kind. Come on now.”

  “In July,” she said. “July fourteenth.”

  First, thinking he hadn’t heard her correctly, he lowered his eyebrows and pushed his chin forward a few inches. When his wife nodded, the look of agitation and puzzlement melted into one of surprise, and Margaret suddenly detected a quick, inexplicable change in his attitude toward this woman. Gently taking her arm, he helped her to her feet then guided her back to the table, his manicured thumb caressing a spot on her lower back.

  “But how can that be, Suzanne?” he whispered to her.

  “I was fixin’ to tell you, Boone—I had an operation. It’s a surprise.”

  “But your doctor said it couldn’t be done.”

  “I found me a new doctor.”

  “Who?”

  “One in Atlanta.”

  “When did you do this?”

  Pausing for a moment, she finally said, “Last year. When I said I was goin’ down to St. Simon’s with John David for that antiques show. That’s when I did it.”

  “And you’re really pregnant?”

  “Why won’t you believe me?”

  After seating her, he took away her half-empty glass of chardonnay and ordered a cup of coffee. Margaret noticed that the ice had melted in the four glasses of untouched lychee tea.

  Randy pushed a fork into his guava cobbler. “Do you think it’s something in the air?” he asked Margaret. “Do you think it comes from a lifetime of breathing in that acrid smell of the paper mill? I don’t know how much more weirdness I can absorb.”

  Randy dropped Margaret off at the Reflector to get her car, and as she emerged from his BMW she saw, leaning against the building with his hands in his pockets, Dewayne.

  Somewhat self-conscious because of her martini buzz, Margaret began walking toward him, and as she grew nearer he pushed himself away from the tan-brick wall and brought his hands behind his back, locking his fingers.

  “Miss Margaret?” he said, nodding his head. He wore a white shirt and a too-short, blue-and-white striped tie that sloped down and outward, over his belly like a ski jump.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Have you been waiting for me?”

  “I have.”

  “How’d you know where to find me?”

  “Oh, I know a lotta people who know a lotta people.”

  “That sure makes me comfortable,” Margaret deadpanned, repositioning the strap of her purse on her shoulder. Reminiscent of Indian moccasins, it was a tan, leather child’s purse with fringe made of turquoise beads, which she had bought at the Salvation Army thrift store on Anthony Road.

  Dewayne looked over Margaret’s shoulder, toward the street, as Randy’s car suddenly sped away. After disgorging Margaret, it had idled there in the middle of Cotton Avenue, the driver hiding behind dark green, tinted windows as he watched the two of them converse.

  “I haven’t seen you at Waffle House lately,” she said.

  “I’ve been workin’ at the station down on Houston Road. They’re short-staffed this month. Some guys got called out on reserve.”

  “Where do you usually work?”

  “In the north Selby station. Right there on Vineville.”

  As he talked about his work, Margaret snatched glances at his body—arms, shoulders, his neck and lips—whenever his eyes would look upward or sideways or down for a second or two, and this did not give her much opportunity because he stared at Margaret in the eyes more than anyone she could remember, other than a salesperson or pro-lifer, and it made her feel simultaneously vulnerable and treasured. He was so reverential and polite and unthreatening, the way he kept his voice soft and arms behind his back.

  “So I was wonderin’,” he said. “Would you like to go out with me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Margaret said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I mean I don’t know what to say.”

  “How about yes?”

  “I just don’t go out on dates,” Margaret said. “I just never have. It’s just … something I don’t do.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t do this much either.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Shy, I guess. So don’t make me beg like a dog here. How about you let me take you out for a nice meal. I mean, I’d pay for it and everything.”

  Margaret laughed. “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Twenty-four.”

  “I’m four years older.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  Her defenses and verbal skills somewhat numbed by two martinis, she sighed in resignation, took a pen and Kroger receipt from her purse, and scribbled down her phone number.

  “Don’t be expecting some experienced older woman.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “You’re going to be disappointed,” she said. “I’m sure we have nothing in common.”

  “Do you like to eat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll do just fine.”

  Once inside the building, she watched him through the window as he crossed the street and climbed into a clean, blue Ford pickup. Never in her life had Margaret imagined she would be going on a date with someone who drove a pickup. She wondered if it had bucket seats and what kind of stations were programmed on the radio. And why did they call them pickup trucks?

  Too drunk to drive home just yet, Margaret walked upstairs, into the newsroom, to get some coffee and sit awhile at her desk. She noticed her voice mail light blinking and slipped on her headset to listen to her messages.

  There was only one: “Miss Pinaldi,” said the voice, mispronouncing the first syllable like the ubiquitous conifer that lined every highway in Georgia. “This is Lieutenant Nordy Thorpman of the Perry County Sheriff’s Department. Could you please call me back? I’ve got somethin’ I need to talk to you about.”

  Eleven

  Dear Chatter: I just called my bank, Selby First Federal, and I had to talk to a computer voice. I say no thanks to that. I want hometown service, and I’m takin’ my money out of there and into a bank where the president is right here in Selby and not in some place up north like Charlotte.

  Dear Chatter: Why should I care about what’s going on in the public schools? Maybe you didn’t know it but thirty percent of the kids in Selby go to private school. So I say bring back the society page and don’t waste that newspaper space on school news because most of those people can’t even read. Thank you.

  Arms akimbo, Donna stood on the loading dock behind Kroger, looking at the seven-foot stack of crated South American bing cherries that would prove to be her challenge of the day.

  Donna looked over at the truck driver, perched upon the seat of the yellow forklift. “What am I gonna do with all of these?” she yelled over the sputtering and revving of the piston engine and rhythmic beeping of a service vehicle in reverse.

  “Eat ’em!” he yelled in return, smiling, and then he shifted into forward and disappeared into the dark, aluminum cave of the truck. With his square jaw, blond flattop, and tanned arms
attached to lean torso, he reminded Donna of her cousin Ricky. Donna liked watching how confident he was with the lift, as if it were an appendage of his own body, zipping back and forth with the speed of a carnival bumper car, often coming within inches of the concrete edge of the dock.

  “Very funny,” she yelled. “I’m dyin’ laughin’ over here.”

  Donna looked down at the clipboard in her hand. At first she’d blamed the supply boys in Atlanta for misreading her fax as they had done with the Granny Smiths and tangelos, but after scrutinizing her handwritten order, Donna admitted to herself that her ambitiously curvaceous threes did somewhat resemble eights. Mr. Tom would not be happy. He’d warned her twice to slow down when filling out her orders. And, to make matters worse, this came one week after she’d injured a customer.

  Needing New Mexican chilis for a casserole but realizing Kroger was out of them, a middle-aged woman asked Donna if she could use habaneros as a substitute. Busy with a box of Swiss chard, Donna didn’t want to take the time to consult her book or the corporate website, and she said, “Oh, no that’s fine. They all taste the same.”

  Two days later, Mr. Tom, looking very serious in the face, appeared in the break room where Donna was snacking on a bag of barbecue-flavor Lays and Diet Coke. Laying in his hands, open like a large Bible, was the store’s sole copy of the four-inch-thick, three-ring Kroger, Inc., Guide to Produce Care, Display and Marketing.

  “Donna,” he said, “did you recommend habaneros in place of New Mexican chilis the other day?”

  “I’m not sure, Mr. Tom. I might have. These customers are always botherin’ me about somethin’.”

  “The customers never bother you, Donna. They may distract you at times but they never bother you. It’s your job to answer questions.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s what I meant to say.”

  He laid the produce manual on the table before her and pointed to a Scoville-unit chart, which ranked the heat of twenty-two peppers from first to last.

  “You see where New Mexicans are?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. Nineteen.”

  “Now look at number one.”

  Donna’s eyes grew wide. She gasped. “Oh, Mr. Tom!”

  “Hottest pepper on the planet,” he said. “And our customer, Mrs. Thornley … she asked her husband to help cut these chilis … and he did … and then he did the unfortunate thing of going to the bathroom without washing his hands.”

  “Mr. Tom! Oh, no!”

  “They went to the emergency room, Donna. The man panicked because he had blisters on his penis.”

  “Oh! Mr. Tom! Oh, my Lord! I am so sorry!”

  “Don’t tell me you’re sorry. I want you to call the Thornleys and apologize.”

  “Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I will.”

  “And then I want you to read the section on Scoville rankings.

  Okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Donna. I know you’re mad at the world right now. But you’ve got to be a professional and rise above all your troubles and do the very best you can. And please remember: What people eat can make a huge difference in how they feel and live. That’s a big responsibility, and I don’t want people on board who accept it lightly. Understand?”

  Donna looked at the surfeit of cherries on the loading dock and realized she had to act quickly or risk losing her job, which didn’t sound too bad at the moment except she knew she’d have to go home and tell her father.

  “Well,” she said to herself. “I suppose this is God’s will. And if this is a test, I’m gonna pass it.”

  A fruit or vegetable’s march to death begins at the moment of harvest, and Donna was amazed at the disparity of life spans among picked produce. Unchilled citrus could last three weeks, but in two days’ time a peach could turn from firm, blushing maiden into a dying, overripe crone with oozing bedsores.

  Misting the cherries would not help; though their skin appeared to be impermeable as Scotch tape, they actually absorbed water, which hastened their rotting. Donna knew the best thing she could do was wrap them tightly in cellophane.

  That Friday would be Valentine’s Day, and Donna decided to cut green foam produce trays into the shape of hearts, fill them with cherries, then finish it up with a good, tight shrink-wrapping and contrasting white bow around the middle. Today was Tuesday, so she would be sure to include only cherries with stems because they had a longer shelf life than those without.

  After getting permission from Connie, the front-end manager, she set up a display just inside the entrance to the store, in place of the giant foam football and Astroturf the Frito-Lay vendor had erected for the Orange Bowl. With the grocery markers, Donna made the sign herself: “If you really love her, you’ll give her these. Cherries—the heart-healthy valentine that will help her last FOREVER!” The letters were black, except for the dots of the I’s, which Donna made into oversized red cherries with happy faces.

  The first thirty-six hearts flew out of the store by noon, and Donna hurriedly constructed another twenty-five, which were gone by three-thirty. Mr. Tom asked her to write up a merchandising diagram so he could fax the idea to the regional corporate office in Atlanta.

  “Best Valentine’s promotion I’ve ever seen,” he said.

  “Thank you!”

  “And take a picture with the digital camera. We’ll send that as well.”

  “But I’ve got some russets to stack.”

  “I need it by the time you go home tonight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Donna used to think new potatoes, with their clean, pinkish skins the color of a newborn baby, were the most beautiful variety, but lately she had been favoring the more weathered-looking russets. Just as someone could find pictures of objects in the clouds, to pass the time Donna found herself looking for shapes in the random, brown splotches left behind from a lifetime in the dirt. Unloading them two by two, she saw an …

  Alligator … Which reminded Donna that she needed a new purse. She’d not been shopping at the mall since her car accident, and Jackee accused her of avoiding the Lancôme counter, which had been taken over by Nadine Simmons. Donna had hired and almost fired Nadine because she did not understand eye shadow—she swore the girl was color blind—so Lord knew why they would promote her to such an important position.

  The state of Michigan … or was it Wisconsin?… Whichever state it was that looked like a mitten. Donna remembered the puzzle of the United States she found with her mother at a garage sale when she was nine. She was drawn to it after hearing a grandma tell her little boy, “It don’t have all the pieces, honey, it’s no good.” Donna walked up to the wooden puzzle and noticed the brown gap that should have been a yellow Alabama. She talked the owner into giving it to her for a dime because it was not whole, and Donna took it home, where she scraped up some red clay from beneath the magnolia tree, wetted it, patted it into a pancake, and pushed it on top of the void. With a butter knife, Donna cut out a replacement that fit perfectly, and after drying it in the sun she colored it yellow with the acrylic paints her mother used to personalize welcome mats with an airbrush gun at a booth in Happy’s Flea Market. When she showed her mother, Doris Kabel kissed her daughter on the forehead and said, “Darlin’, you will never go hungry in this world.” Donna wondered now where her mother had put that puzzle.

  Suddenly, Donna was yanked from her mental ramblings by something she pulled from the box. Not quite believing her eyes, she turned the potato over and over again in her hands.

  “Oh, my gosh!” Donna whispered. “Would you look at this?”

  Just as she said “this,” the fake lightning and thunder tied to the timed produce sprayer came on. There was a flash, boom, rumble, spray. Donna got goose bumps, and she reached for the phone and dialed pound-fifty-five, the page for Mr. Tom.

  Holding a large eggplant in his good hand, Adrian Braswell walked up to Donna.

  “My Lord,” he exclaimed. “Miss Donna, look what you got in your hand!”

&n
bsp; “Can you believe this?”

  Mr. Tom came hustling up aisle twelve, his keys jangling on his belt.

  “What is it, Donna? Is something wrong?”

  Donna noted that his breathing was labored. She estimated he’d gained at least seven pounds since moving to Selby, and he was already ten pounds overweight before that. More than once she’d thought of advising him against his frequent Kit Kat snacks and all the processed meat in his daily Genoa Italian deluxe sub from the deli.

  “Mr. Tom, I’m sorry, but I was unloadin’ these russets and look what I found.”

  He took it from her and rolled it over and over in his hands, the way a child quickly scans a baseball for an autograph. “Wow,” he said. “Isn’t that cute?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this, Donna. A red potato, sure. They mutate into some very strange shapes … but a russet!”

  “That’s what I was thinkin’,” Donna said.

  It was the perfect shape of a heart, not a human heart but a cartoon-land heart. Symmetrical with a perfect cleavage at the top, it required no imagination.

  “You know what we’re gonna do?” Mr. Tom asked.

  “Sir?”

  “We’re going to call Channel Twelve.”

  “You think they’d really be interested in somethin’ like this?”

  “This is Selby, Donna,” he answered. “Last night’s news had a feature about some guy who decorates folding chairs with ribbons and bows.”

  Donna was surprised at how short Stephanie Reno was, and now she knew why they never showed her legs on Live at Five; her calves were beefy and round and grandmotherly like Hillary Clinton’s.

  “Are you ready?” she asked Mr. Tom.

  “No, no,” he protested, his hands going up. “Not me. It was her. She found it.” He pointed to Donna.

  “Oh, no, Mr. Tom, I can’t do that.”

  “Oh, yes you can.”

  “Mr. Tom …”

  “I’m the boss, Donna. It’s your find. Now go claim your fame.”