Bless Your Heart, Tramp

by Celia Rivenbark

  I have told Martha a thousand times, “If you’d stop having a dinner party for eighty every time you chip a tooth you’d be a lot less stressed.” The woman’s a maniac.

  These annual Christmas letters to you, beloved family, have inspired me to write for an even larger devoted audience. As fate would have it, I had an unexpected ninety-minute layover in the Charlotte airport last June so I decided to test the waters and wrote my very first screenplay on my laptop before it was time to board along with the other first-class and Priority Gold customers.

  I am enclosing a tin of my famous cookies that, as you all know, won last year’s Pillsbury Bake-Off. Chip Sr. said I really should give some of the money to the children’s nanny, since it was actually her recipe, but I told him she’d probably fritter away the $50,000 on food and medicine for her sick mother. You know illegals.

  Hoping the new year will bring your pathetic lives a tad closer to mine, but knowing it probably won’t, I am

  Your Devoted Cousin,

  Myra Sue

  Carlos and Ruby

  They went everywhere together, Carlos and Ruby.

  Friends said you never saw one without the other.

  Carlos was a barber, known for crew cuts so sharp they’d just about cut your hand if you patted ’em.

  Ruby washed his barber towels, rinsing the witch hazel and talcum powder out of them for nearly fifty years.

  At home on their Carolina farm, Carlos grew corn, tomatoes, and beans; Ruby canned and froze and cooked.

  They did everything together. Maybe that’s why the people who loved them seemed strangely comforted by the sight of their matching mahogany coffins beneath the funeral tent.

  After sixty-five years of marriage, Carlos, eighty-eight, and Ruby, eighty-two, did the unthinkable: they died of natural causes on the same day.

  Carlos had been feeling poorly for a while, just age mostly. But he’d felt well enough to eat fried shad at the Supper House last Saturday night with Ruby at his side, doing all the talking as usual.

  The next day, they’d had the whole family over for Sunday dinner just as they did every other week. Children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and hangers-on knew where to go for a fine meal and some storytelling.

  No one knew, as they sipped tea on the front porch for the millioneth time joking about the “courting swang” Ruby had bought the first year they were married, that two days later, the tidy little farmhouse would be filled with tearful friends bearing cakes, casseroles, and condolences.

  Tuesday morning, Carlos had some kind of spell, maybe a stroke, but more likely his hardworking body just gave out.

  Ruby rode with her brother to the hospital. Trailing the ambulance, she was terrified. You don’t live with a man sixty-five years and not wonder how you’ll survive if he goes first.

  Ruby couldn’t let Carlos be apart from her in illness. He’d been the same way when she’d had a near-fatal heart attack ten years ago. With Carlos at her side, she recovered, and in just a few months was walking three miles a day, quilting, and baking pineapple cakes for the neighbors.

  So Ruby willed her brother to drive faster, faster. They were stopped for speeding, but Ruby’s ashen face told the highway patrolman the whole story. The excitement of the morning was too much for her. Just as they pulled in sight of the hospital, Ruby had a massive heart attack.

  Carlos was in Room 1 of the hospital’s intensive care unit. Within minutes, Ruby was in Room 3. Nurses swore that as Carlos improved, Ruby did, too. As he failed, so did Ruby.

  Family came quickly, keeping a vigil outside both rooms.

  The grandchildren remembered the pony Carlos had bought for them and how, one by one, he’d lead them around his pasture, never leaving them alone for fear something would happen.

  The cousins recalled how Ruby was crazy about traveling and trying new things, how she’d shamed a grown nephew into riding Space Mountain at Disney World.

  Carlos and Ruby never regained consciousness, though some speculated that Ruby felt the life leave Carlos Tuesday morning. They believe that, on some level, she knew it was time for her to go, too.

  He died at dawn; she died at dusk.

  On Friday, hundreds of mourners filled Shiloh Baptist Church. Many had left their fields on a perfect planting day to pay respects. The coffin lids, open until just before the service was to begin, were lowered with soft, matching “thwumps” and two preachers spoke for nearly an hour about these “two choice servants.”

  At the cemetery, their voices carried on a swift, hot breeze: “the best thing that could happen,” “meant to be,” “together in heaven,” “a special blessing.”

  Back at the homeplace, mourners seemed unwilling to leave Ruby and Carlos’s house, balancing paper plates of field peas, macaroni and cheese, and sliced ham on their laps, and bragging of Carlos’s fine garden, Ruby’s quilts and dolls, Carlos’s gourds…

  Jane Rich said her daddy had hung gourds in the trees on the Sunday before he died; already birds had made nests in them just as he’d hoped.

  On an afternoon that seemed to be filled with strange blessings and signs and wonders, Jane stopped pouring a glass of Sun Drop for a friend when she caught sight of her mother’s beloved amaryllis.

  In the time it had taken to bury both her parents, twin flowers had bloomed on the plain green stalk.

  “One for Daddy and one for Mama,” she said softly.

  Part Three

  And Everywhere Else

  Fake Dog Testicles

  A friend confided that she didn’t think I had the “Neuticals” to write about the latest craze in designer pet wear—artificial testicles.

  Nuts to her, I say. Let’s get started.

  Neuticals are the invention of a Kansas City fellow who got the guilts after having his two-hundred-pound bloodhound neutered. Before long, Gregg Miller had expanded his line to include Neuticals for horses (pronounced NEUTICALS!) and kitty cats, all costing about $30 for plastic and about $100 for Beverly Hills-style silicone.

  I first learned about Neuticals in the Sunday New York Times, which is to journalism what horses are to, oh, never mind. After you’ve finished reading a Sunday Times you’ll discover that your nails have grown four inches and your clothes are out of style.

  Installing the Neuticals, Mr. Miller told the Times, is “about as easy as changing a light bulb.”

  Speaking as someone who will never, ever be able to look at light bulb-changing in quite the same way, all I can say is Lord have mercy.

  On the other hand, I have to admit that if a cosmetic device using silicone is good enough for the happiness and peace of mind of fine, public-spirited citizens like Pamela Anderson—who, incidentally, just wants to direct—then why shouldn’t Rover get his?

  To no one’s surprise, Neuticals have swelled with controversy. Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA, a widely known and highly influential pet’s rights organization that doubles as a tasty Mediterranean flatbread, told the press that pets don’t mind being neutered. “It’s like switching from regular to skim to soy milk. You get adjusted to it.”

  Speaking as someone who will never, ever again drink any kind of milk, I have to wonder how she can be so dog gone sure.

  Perhaps hoping to boost sales nationwide, Mr. Miller sent a pair of Neuticals to Buddy, the First Family’s chocolate lab (and aren’t they delicious with coffee?) as soon as he learned that Buddy had been fixed.

  President Clinton reportedly sent a personal thank-you note to Mr. Miller, but did not have them installed, perhaps hoping to use them himself someday.

  I would hope that Mr. Miller would also send a pair to “Neut” Gingrich, who seems to have used all his up. Takes a lot of “Neuticals” to whine about family values while you’re dumping wifey No. Two.

  I asked my ten-year-old cat, Vinnie, if he was still harboring a grudge over his neutering nine and a half years ago, and he just fixed me with a bored look, followed by a long, exaggerated yawn.

  You don
’t miss what you never had, he seemed to be saying.

  Maybe. But I think I might order Vinnie some Neuticals just in case. If they make him suddenly start staying out late with the guys at Hooters, forgetting when our anniversary is, or, worst of all, start scratching his new “friends” in public LIKE NOBODY NOTICES, then maybe it’s a bad idea.

  I’ll keep you posted.

  Mozart Means Absolutely Nuthin’

  Okay, let’s see if I have this straight. That whole thing about how listening to Mozart will make your kid smarter turned out to be just a bunch of hooey?

  The newest research shows that the so-called “Mozart Effect” may have been, uh, overstated. In actual fact, there’s no real evidence that listening to classical music does anything for your brain one way or the other.

  This means that all those months I was sitting there with headphones strapped to either side of my belly pouring piano sonatas into my unborn baby’s developing little brain LIKE SOME KIND OF IDIOT, I might as well have been making her listen to Howard Stern.

  Here I thought I was raising a little Einstein and what I’m going to end up with is Jethrine.

  Have mercy.

  Now we learn that the famous 1993 research that showed IQ points jumping like cheerleaders on steroids after listening to Mozart was about as reliable as a Yugo.

  The researchers’ response? Oh. My bad.

  No, no, no. Not good enough. It was bad enough when “they” told us to give up eggs, creating a nation dependent on (ugh) Egg Beaters, then said eggs weren’t really all that bad for you and could even be good for you. (At a press conference, I believe the one-word statement was “Psych!”) Ditto red wine, butter (better for you than margarine, they say) and, even in moderation, killer popcorn. Forget about being scared senseless by some Blair Witch. We were frightened enough just by the fat grams in that tub o’ corn we bought at the concession stand. Now THAT was living dangerously.

  And sunscreen? We lathered up in the stuff then found out it contained PABA (stands for Practically All Bad and Awful), which could make sunbathing even more dangerous than going without any sunscreen at all. So now we have to make sure our sunscreen is PABA-free, odorless, colorless, and completely invisible to the naked eye, not to mention packaged in shrink wraps and safety seals that leave you sputtering in frustration until you just throw the bottle in the sand and cancel your whole vacation.

  For more than two years now, I’ve subjected my toddler to Mozart while, at tremendous personal sacrifice, banishing my beloved Led Zeppelin, Boston, Traffic, Cream, and even the artist formerly known as Give Me A Freakin’ Break CDs to the top of the hall closet, right alongside a still-in-the-box Thighmaster and some Flashdance leg warmers that I just know will come back in style someday.

  Of course, I’m not the only one who’s feeling a little foolish these days. South Dakota, Georgia, and Tennessee all voted to spend tax dollars on classical CDs given free to every new mother at hospitals in those states.

  I suppose now the only thing they can do as responsible legislators is quickly counteract with free Marilyn Manson CDs.

  The point is, we must not believe what “they” tell us anymore, but rather, go with our gut. To paraphrase a ’sixties anthem: “Mozart: What is it good for? Hoomph! Absolutely nuthin’. Say it again!”

  How to Marry a Multimillionaire (Doofus)

  Did you watch Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire? on the Fox Network? Well, of course it was on Fox, home of highbrow entertainment on the order of Car Wrecks So Gruesome You’ll Vomit, Part 4.

  You expect to wade in the shallow end of the gene pool when you flip to Fox.

  But this. THIS. Fifty women competing to marry a man they’d never met in a two-hour competition wedged between commercials for mouthwash and macaroni complete with a legal wedding at the end of the show.

  The women looked normal. Most were very attractive in a five-foot-ten, 118 pounds kind of way. If you like that type.

  The multimillionaire’s identity was kept top secret. Viewers, and more important, prospective brides, just saw a shadowy profile from a distance. When he was making notes you could see one hand, attached, I thought, to a long, hairy tentacle covered with green scales, but maybe that was just my imagination.

  These women didn’t care. When the mystery millionaire narrowed his choices to ten, they giggled and hugged the pouty-faced contestants beside them and skipped on to the beachwear competition.

  At this point, I wanted badly to huff about how repulsive and degrading TV had become and read a, whatchamacallit, book or something.

  But I couldn’t turn away.

  There were great comic moments such as when one of the five finalists (by this time they were all wearing actual wedding gowns, I kid you not) said that she believed that too many people were emphasizing “the money part” of the show, that this was about “re-la-tion-ships.”

  Right. That’s why next week Fox plans to follow with Who Wants to Marry an Unemployed Roofer With a Drinking Problem? I’ll be looking for Little Miss Relationship on that one.

  Like any beauty pageant, the best part is the “interview segment” where they get to talk about stuff like if they could be any piece of cutlery in the kitchen drawer which would they pick and why.

  When the host (a fairly no-name actor who must’ve gotten the gig because Carrot Top has some standards after all) asked the “gals” to name three things their new husband could do to make them happy and three things that would upset them, not a single one of them could count.

  “Welllll,” they’d drawl coquettishly, “I guess if he surprised me with a little romantic getaway that would make me happy and if he got moody that would bother me.” While the audience waited expectantly for more pearls of wisdom, none came. Three. It’s that number after two.

  Now, of course, we know that the millionaire and his bride, a blond emergency room nurse who shoulda had better sense, returned from their Caribbean honeymoon separately. Oh, and we’ve learned the groom once had a restraining order against him after an ex-girlfriend said he hit her and threatened to kill her.

  An embarrassed Fox canceled the rebroadcast of the show, which was one of the highest rated ever, but don’t expect the corporate remorse to last. Somewhere you just know somebody’s got that honeymoon on video.

  ATM Silliness Revealed

  The ATM controversy is fascinating to watch, from a polite ten to twelve-foot distance with eyes averted, of course.

  Nationwide, voters are sick of the $1.50 to $2 surcharges that banks charge non-customers to use ATMs, and they want to outlaw the fees. The banks, which only made $2.1 billion from ATM surcharges last year, are threatening to remove ATMs from handy places like convenience stores, where you can just hand the money directly over to the hooded robber while you’re buying milk, praying-hands refrigerator magnets, and horoscope scrolls.

  The whole ATM issue is being dissected endlessly by “consumer watchdogs,” who presumably knock you down and lick your face more often than “consumer watchcats,” who would probably just yawn, stretch, and go back to sleep.

  I love going to the ATM, acronym for “Automated Theft Machine.” Where else can you get the adrenaline rush that comes from parking roughly eight blocks away from the ATM—hidden provocatively by lovely shrubs—and then walking back to your dark car with wads of cash in your sweaty little hands?

  It’s much safer to use a drive-up ATM.

  With drive-ups, you don’t even leave your car. You just pull as close as you can, preferably close enough to add to the black rubber marks left on the side of the machine by the last customer, roll down your window, punch in your PIN, follow the instructions on the screen, and then read that the machine is “temporarily out of service.”

  The truth is that most drive-up ATMs are quite snippy about working after hours and holidays. There is roughly a 98.5 percent chance that if you actually need cash after five P.M. Monday through Friday and try to get it from a drive-up ATM, not only will the mac
hine be “temporarily out of service” but also it will laugh loudly at you when you slam your fist down on its useless, stupid keypad in frustration.

  There’s not any actual cash inside those gizmos, just a few empty beer bottles and some cigarette butts because, like I told you, they hate working weekends and all they wanna do is “paaar-taaaay!”

  Too bad they never work because drive-ups are so much easier. When you use a conventional ATM, you have to use strategy because everybody sits in their car, to be polite, and then nobody knows who got there first. It’s like being at a four-way stop. No one wants to be rude.

  Except me. Last week I was able to box out an elderly couple AND a cologne-drenched car salesman with a move that would’ve made Michael Jordan say, “You go, girl!” or, as we say in Español, “You go, chica!”

  I mention this because politically correct ATMs now ask if you want to conduct your bidness in English or Spanish. Nice, but it doesn’t go far enough. Why not a Yankeespeak option (“Geez! Whad I godda do to get some money heah? I been waitin’ two, three seconds ahready.”) or a Southern Belle (“Shugah, I’d be evah so pleased if I could have a little itty-bitty bit of my money.”)

  Just a thought.

  Mars Lander Woes

  So did somebody slip something wacky into the Tang over at NASA or what?

  Last September, the space agency came under fire (note to NASA scientists: that’s the glowing orange stuff that’s really, really hot) when somebody forgot to convert metrics to Presbyterians or some such, causing a multigazillion dollar space orbiter to, in the words of highly placed NASA officials, “go kerflooey.”

  And now, less than three months later, NASA scientists have apparently lost a Mars Polar Lander, which, in a cost-cutting effort was designed and built almost exclusively with parts from Sam’s Club.