by Webb, Peggy
And of course I can. I miss the comfort of arms around me when I fall asleep, and I miss my little dog with his cold nose and messy ways, but I sure don’t miss the feeling of always being a little inadequate, of never quite measuring up.
Stanley had a way of making the words Maggie, if you were more organized, I’d be able to find my gray socks sound as if I had single-handedly destroyed the institution of marriage.
Not that I was blameless, mind you. I had my own methods of inflicting small, daily wounds.
The day I first saw my name on the cover of a mystery novel, I was enormously proud. So were Jean and Mama. My sister sent roses and Mama brought a German chocolate cake she’d baked, and we sat in the sunshine in my butter yellow breakfast room eating huge slabs of cake, drinking French vanilla coffee from gold-rimmed china cups and celebrating.
All Stanley did was say, “I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into, Maggie.”
“I do,” I told him. “I’ve transformed myself from Stanley Dufrane’s boring wife into a woman reviewers call the next Anne George… Not that you care.”
The crumbling of a marriage is never pretty and it’s never fast. Although we didn’t call each other names or engage in the sort of domestic brawls that alert neighbors and make the dog hide under the bed, we gradually changed from a couple sharing a life to two people living under the same roof, taking pains to avoid each other in the bathroom and to hide behind the newspaper at meals.
Finally I said to my husband, “I’m leaving. You can keep the house.”
Not that I’m foolishly generous, but I just couldn’t imagine Stanley living anywhere except the split-level ranch with the big oak tree in front and the John Deere lawn mower in the garage waiting for him to perform the first rites of spring: suit up, power up and roar! On the other hand, the house had become polluted for me, a place where accusations had settled into cracks in the ceiling tiles and recriminations lurked in corners to waylay me every time I entered the room.
Now I enter my cool, quite bedroom with its blue sprigged wallpaper and old fashioned ceiling fan and breathe. Simply breathe.
The peace settles around me. The loneliness, too.
The hardest thing was not leaving the house but leaving the dream of happily ever after. I know, I know. Nobody believes in Cinderella with her Prince Charming anymore. It’s all Sex and the City, and how many ways women can turn themselves into tough-talking, love ‘em and leave ‘em creatures who would be men except for high heels and push- up bras.
If I could rewrite the script I’d restore grace and femininity. I’d make charm sexier than sassy retorts and striving for excellence more laudable than stepping over maimed cohorts to get to the next rung on the corporate ladder.
I am a dinosaur in the age of sleek, quick lizards.
I pack the things I’ll need while I dog sit for Mama: pajamas, a change of clothes, toiletries, perfume. Why not? A little spritz of Jungle Gardenia always make me feel like a powerful, sexy woman, somebody with a closet full of black lace and men languishing on the streets because I haven’t yet returned their calls.
Oh, yes. A good book. A historical romance by Donna Fletcher. A delicious escape into a world of dashing Highlanders and the smart, feisty women who bring them to their knees with desire.
And that’s all. I pack light because that seems hopeful, a sign that Mama will come blazing back to demand the latest New York Times crossword puzzle book, which is how she keeps her mind so sharp, and command the Lucas girls to shape up, which is easy if Victoria is telling you what shape to take, but seems impossible when her voice is stilled and the choices, confusing.
The phone rings and when I pick it up, I notice the red light blinking on my answering machine. I’ll listen to messages after I talk to Jean.
“Maggie…”
“What is it, Jean? Is it Mama?”
“I don’t know. She looks awful. I just went in for visitation, and she didn’t even squeeze my hand. I think she’s dying.”
Mama wouldn’t die on my birthday. She’s too strong-willed for that. Besides, I have to consider the source. This is my melodramatic sister talking.
“What do the nurses say?”
“They say she’s stable, everything looks good.”
“Okay. Great. You just hang in there tonight and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Walter said he’d fly home if he needed to. I said I’d ask you.”
Oh, lord. Why me?
“Tell him to wait, Jean. I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”
After I hang up the phone, I punch the new message button and hear my editor’s voice, sounding faraway and scratchy. I need a new answering machine.
“Hi, Maggie. This is Shelia Cox. Call me. I have great news.”
I dial her cell phone expecting to get her voice mail, but Shelia is who I get.
“Maggie…I wanted you to be the first to know… I met someone in California.”
“That’s great,” I tell her, meaning it. She’s thirty-three, generous hearted and lovely, and if anybody deserves somebody wonderful, it’s Shelia.
“It is. He’s a landscape architect, and his gardens are an absolute dream. You’ll have to come out and visit us.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach. “Come out? You’re staying in California?” I have to sit down. Losing a good editor is like losing a good husband.
“Yes, but I don’t want you to worry. Your manuscript is in the hands of Janice Whitten, and I know she’ll love your work as much as I do. Take care.”
I’m numb, and it’s not until after we say goodbye that the questions and nightmare imaginings begin.
Who is Janice Whitten? Somebody new, for Pete’s sake. Somebody who will loathe the idea of a slightly old-fashioned sleuth who revels in discovering rare books, tending her six cats and finding out whodunit to the dead bodies that keep cropping up in her bookstore. Somebody who hates grits and has never heard of fried green tomatoes. Somebody who won’t know Maggie Dufrane from Adam’s housecat.
Good lord, I’ve turned into Newton. All I need is a pair of baggy pants and red suspenders. Of course, I’m already halfway there.
I strip out of my sagging sweat pants and Stanley’s battered shirt and reach into my closet for jeans.
The phone rings again. It’s Jean.
“Hey, I forgot to give you your birthday present.”
“That’s all right.”
“Happy birthday, Maggie.”
There was nothing happy about it. But what did I expect – a woman born on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic?
I hang up the phone and sit on the edge of the bed to put on sneakers. Sturdy shoes that say this woman means business. No sinking into the Atlantic for her. She’s steady, upright, ready to plow ahead and go places.
The first place I have to go is the farm. And fast. It’s already nine o’clock and Jefferson will be leaning against the kennel fence moaning.
I grab my overnight bag and my car keys.
Who knows? Maybe Janice Whitten is from Georgia and can’t wait to buy my manuscript and share her grandmother’s recipe for chess pie.
I hope it has lots of butter.
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Chapter Three
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When it rains it pours. The streets are slippery tonight, folks. If you’re walking, don’t fall. If you’re driving, don’t skid into a ditch.
Rainman
“If only you knew, Rainman. I skidded into the ditch about the time Mama was hauled off to surgery. Or was it before when it became obvious I no longer had a marriage worth keeping?”
Here I am in the car, talking to the weatherman. He’s driving me crazy. Or maybe it’s Jean and Mama. Or my ex-editor and my ex-husband. Take your pick.
In the glow of the dashboard lights I watch the odometer click off the miles - 129,201. My Jeep is only six years old, which means I’ve traveled nearly ten thousand miles per year more than average. That would sou
nd exciting if I’d actually been going places such as Savannah, Georgia, to eat fresh crab cakes and walk along beaches in red-gold sunsets or Hot Springs, Arkansas, to plump up my wrinkles in the spas and go to the race track to root for a three-year-old filly named Lucky Lady.
Stanley and I went to Hot Springs on our honeymoon. We stayed at the Arlington and listened to the band play “Moon River” while a sleek, dark man with a handlebar mustache and shifty eyes danced with a white-haired woman wearing a rhinestone tiara and pink chiffon. We were there a week and she came every night, always wearing pink chiffon, always smiling while she danced. On Saturday night when Andy Williams was there to perform his signature song, she closed her eyes and sang along with him.
“Who is she?” I asked our waiter.
“Miss Gracie Smallwood,” he said. “Her engagement party was here in this very ballroom in 1942, and when her fiancé didn’t come back from the war, she kept coming here dressed in pink chiffon. She loves to dance. Sometimes when nobody will dance with her, she dances alone.”
I think about Miss Gracie Smallwood as I drive down Highway 371 in the glow of a yellow moon that popped full-blown from beneath the clouds after the rains stopped and the night crickets started singing. With my left front window down so I can hear their song and smell the rich, freshly washed spring earth, I think about the tragedy of dancing alone.
And the promise.
There was something hopeful about Miss Smallwood’s pink chiffon, something so full of grace and yearning that after I park the Jeep under Mama’s magnolia tree and retrieve Jefferson in all his tail-wagging glory from the kennel, I ramble through Mama’s huge stack of tapes until I find one that features Andy Williams singing his greatest hits. This takes a while. Mama’s a collector, and her tapes, like everything else in this house, have overflowed their original space and leaked onto adjoining surfaces. In this case, they’ve spilled off the bookshelves into two hand-crafted wicker baskets.
While “Moon River” fills Mama’s overstuffed bedroom, I twirl around bumping into furniture, the only girl in Mooreville who ever flunked Miss Femura Wright’s after-school dance class, but dancing anyway, all these years later, dancing because it’s better than crying.
Jefferson lies down and puts one paw over his eyes. Too embarrassed to watch.
Or maybe he’s just missing Mama.
I would miss her, too, if she weren’t in every crack and crevice of this house. Two walls are covered with her collection of Japanese fans, eighty-five of them clinging to the yellow Sheetrock like brightly colored butterflies, the largest one spread above her headboard in a five-foot display of dripping cherry blossoms, red pagodas and doe-eyed young women in purple silk kimonos. A glass-front display case in the corner groans under the weight of a hundred and ten porcelain dogs, acquired one by one over the years with the same relentless zeal Mama uses in all her pursuits.
I remember ten years ago when we were in San Francisco for my first book conference, and she wouldn’t leave Chinatown until we found somebody who would open his shop after hours to sell her a miniature jade Foo dog she’d seen in the window.
Jefferson lifts his big head, ears pricked and tail thumping while the glass in the front door rattles.
Goodness, somebody’s breaking in and Mama’s fearless watchdog is fixing to lick him to death. I freeze in mid-pirouette and rack my brain trying to think up a weapon.
Andy Williams croons, there’s such a lot of world to see.
I hope I live to see it.
The door rattles again, followed by banging and the sound of a male voice. “Maggie! Maggie, is that you in there?”
Horton Grimes. The neighbor whose cabbages Mama inadvertently harvested with the bumper of her car. He’s been her slave ever since, with the full blessing of his wife, Miss Hattie.
I turn down the music, then skirt through the hallway being careful not to knock over Mama’s fifty handmade pottery angels on whatnot shelves and her collector’s cups from every state plus the Virgin Islands.
It has started to rain again, and when I open the door Horton Grimes is huddled against the blowing moisture. I feel sorry for him. Besides, he’s company at a time I suddenly realize I need to hear the sound of another human voice.
“Mr. Grimes. Come in.”
“I saw your headlights over here early this morning while I was at the barn, and then when you came back a while ago, I said to my wife, ‘Hattie, there’s something wrong over to Victoria’s house. I’d better go check it out.’”
In the dim yellow bulb of Mama’s front porch light, he looks jaundiced and slightly disreputable, his circa 1950s felt fedora at odds with his denim overalls that smell of sweet clover hay and barnyard fertilizer. The scent of his farm follows him through the door, and Jefferson runs around him in excited circles, sniffing, while I surreptitiously check the floor.
Is that a clump of hair? The lighting in Mama’s house is bad, and with Horton standing there, I can’t bend over to see.
I put my hand on Jefferson’s collar to hold him still, but even standing by my side, he shivers and his sleek coat ripples like waves in the wake of a small racing craft. The next thing you know, I’ll have to be driving him to appointments with his own psychiatrist.
Keeping him on a short leash, I lead Jefferson along with Mr. Grimes into Mama’s living room which has too many chairs for its size, inadequate lamps whose main function is to collect dust on the shades and her collection of sixty-five toe rings. Don’t ask. I never have, and neither has Jean. Mama’s the kind who could have a secret life as a belly dancer and pull it off without anybody ever knowing.
Mr. Grimes places his fedora on his knees while I tell him about Mama’s fall and the aftermath.
“Victoria’s been falling a lot lately,” he says, and I feel knifed. Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t Jean? Good daughters would, wouldn’t they?
More to the point, why didn’t Mama tell us? Lord knows, she tells us everything else, even things we don’t want to hear. Just last week she called for the specific purpose of lecturing me about my career. I remember her exact words.
“You’ve getting tunnel vision, Maggie. What you ought to do is fly to New York when Shelia gets home and see a few shows, bring some dazzle back with you.”
I didn’t ask Mama how she knows I’m struggling to find words that used to flow through my soul like a sun-struck river. She never reveals her sources, but you can bet that when she speaks, she expects you to act as if you’ve just witnessed an oracle.
It’s impossible to think of her as helpless. And falling…
Now I ask Horton, “When did Mama fall?”
“Saturday when Hattie brought her a pecan pie. She tipped over sideways on the front porch, and if Hattie hadn’t caught her, she’d a landed on the wrought-iron table.”
He shifts his hat on his knees. “But that wasn’t the only time. She fell against her mailbox Tuesday a week ago, and before that Hattie came running to get me when she saw Victoria over here crumpled in the front yard with an apron full of daffodils.”
“Thank you, Mr. Grimes.” Are you supposed to thank people who bring you bad news? If I were the kind of woman who cared, I’d look it up in Emily Post’s book of manners.
“We’re just being neighbors. You tell Victoria we’ll be a praying for her.”
That’s probably what Jean’s doing this very minute, trying to strike up another bargain with God.
After Horton leaves, I make my bargain with Jefferson.
“If you’ll hang onto your hair until Mama’s well again I’ll make us a nice chicken pot pie. How does that sound?”
If he could talk he’d probably say, “You’re going to start cooking at ten o’clock at night?”
Will Mama ever be well again? Horton’s tales of falling confirm the diagnosis of a fading heart.
I have to do something. Stay busy. Dance. Sing. Cook.
All three at the same time?
Why not? All that activity leaves no
room for screaming.
I take out Mama’s sifter and her pottery mixing dish, Mama’s big wooden spoon and her glass measuring cups.
“Help me remember where these things go, Jefferson,” I say, and he thumps his tail on the linoleum. “I’ve got to keep Mama’s house exactly as she had it so that when she comes home she won’t have to hunt for stuff.”
The smell of chicken bubbling in good buttery crust takes me back to the day Daddy sat at the table laughing at Jean teetering around in a pair of Victoria’s red high heeled shoes while I stood on the stepstool beside Mama inhaling the fragrance of chicken pie and stirring chocolate chips into batter, plus sneaking bites of raw cookie dough when I thought she wasn’t looking.
At the age of four I thought I was fooling Mama. At the age of forty-one I know better. She was always looking, always guiding, always dreaming of the future. Not hers, but ours. Mine and Jean’s.
If I scream Jefferson will lose another patch of hair. That was a glob in the hallway. I saw it when Horton left.
Instead of upsetting the dog, I take a blue china plate out of the cabinet and place it just so on the table, then carefully fold a linen napkin and put it on the left. Folded side in.
Or is that out?
Where is Mama when I need her? Where is my editor? My contract? My income? My future? My shoes? I kicked them off before I started dancing, and now I can’t remember where they are.
I’m glad I’m not the kind of woman gets depressed and would stick her head in the oven with the chicken pie. Where would that leave poor, hairless Jefferson? And who would drive Jean home?
I switch on Mama’s wall-mounted radio to see what the weather’s going to be like tomorrow.
“And how are you, night owls?” Rainman asks.
“If you want to know the truth, I feel shitty,” I say. I’m glad he can’t hear me.
“Looks like we’re in for a long haul of the wet stuff, folks. There’s a front hovering over Arkansas and it’s moving this way. It’s a big one, too, about the size that hit Kansas and blew Dorothy’s house away.”
