by Webb, Peggy
I’m in trouble here.
“This is my daughter, Maggie” Mama says. “She’s a writer.”
I want to shrink to the size of silver sewing needle. Instead I smile and step behind Mama’s chair to hide the chewing gum on my knee. Rainman stares straight at me while self-conscious sweat trickles down the side of my face and threatens to drip off my chin.
Finally, being a consummate professional, he turns to Mama. The man knows a talk-show goldmine when he finds one.
Kneeling in front of her chair, he leads her through a story about Tupelo being the first city in the U.S. to buy power from the Tennessee Valley Authority. Naturally she’s the star of this tale, because she was the only child who got a picture made with President Franklin Roosevelt when he traveled here by train in 1933 to applaud our progress.
After she’s finished her story, Rainman maneuvers around her chair to stand beside me, sticking-out hair, gummed-up pants and all.
“Hi, Maggie. I’m Joe.” His slightly crooked smile is enormously appealing. “What’s your story?”
“Off the record?” I say, and he switches off his microphone. “I’m this glamorous mystery novelist who knows how to overcome a man six ways – all of them lethal.”
Goodness, I’m actually flirting – something I haven’t done since I can’t remember when.
“I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee and explore that,” he says.
In these pants? With this hair? This life? And after that come-on reply I wish I could take back? Oh, I think not.
“Thank you, but no. Mama’s getting tired. I have to take her home.”
Why didn’t I say I’ll take a rain check? Here’s the first man I’ve been interested in since Stanley and I’ve dismissed him.
Pressing a card into my hand, he says, “Call me when you’re free,” and suddenly there’s hope.
He moves on and so do we. Not quickly because Mama has finally played herself out – but triumphantly, which is even better.
“You know what we ought to do, Maggie? Get ourselves a red convertible so we could drive around and people could see us.”
I picture us in that sassy car, radio blaring, fancy hub cabs spinning and our hair blowing in the wind.
“Carter and I saw one on our honeymoon. It looked like Marilyn Monroe was driving, this red scarf tied around her hair and her lips painted to match like she owned the world. I wanted one so bad. Carter was going to get me one when he retired…God rest his soul.
I could drive anywhere in a car like that. With me at the wheel and Mama in the passenger’s seat, we could sprout wings and fly clear up to the stars.
*
At nine-thirty Mama finally settles in for the evening, and I call Jean to recount the day as proof she’s going to outlive us all.
My sister agrees, and afterward we hang onto the receivers swapping Mama stories that make us laugh, anecdotal evidence that we are right and the doctors are wrong.
I tell Jean everything about our day except the part about meeting Rainman. This I keep to myself. I want to savor it, say his name aloud and roll it around on my tongue like some delicious secret.
I actually do this, say, “Rainman” slow and dream-like, a fully grown woman taken leave of her senses.
Then, with my muse whispering in my ear, I sit at the dining room table in front of my computer and tap away at fictional mystery and mayhem, oblivious to my surroundings and the passing of time.
It’s three o’clock when I finally go to bed, and the smell of perking coffee wakes me at five. Stumbling into the kitchen in my nightshirt, I see Mama with her head on the table, snoring.
“Mama, what’s wrong?”
She lifts her head, rubs her eyes. “My beauty-shop appointment’s at eight.”
“For Pete’s sake. Do you know what time it is!”
“Of course, I do. I need time to fix up. I’m not about to go to the Beauty Box looking like Ned in the First Reader.”
Maybe this is a good thing. Words are flying around my head like trapped butterflies, waiting to be set free. I throw on slacks and T-shirt, then open my computer and start typing.
At seven-thirty Mama announces, “It’s time to go.” Although the Beauty Box is only five minutes away, I head out anyway, not out of duty but with a grateful heart that I can do one more small thing that will make my mama happy.
I pack my laptop and then tune out the roar of hair driers and the latest gossip as I dance with my muse.
*
There’s a ritual I always perform after I’ve finished a writing project. It requires white candles and a full moon, a thankful heart and a wide-open mind.
Having Jean makes it better so I call her and say, “I’ve finished the new proposal.”
“Already? Wow, Maggie. Just wow.”
I tell her about staying up late and taking my laptop to the Beauty Box. And then I say, “I’ve just typed the last sentence. Join me for the ceremony? I’ll drive over and get you.”
“Let me put on my robe.”
This is one of the things I love most about my sister. If I’ll pick her up she’s always ready to go, even if it’s past nine and she has already settled for the evening in front of the TV.
Mama’s asleep, so I tiptoe around the house gathering white candles. They’re everywhere, on tiny mirrors in her bathroom, in pink china holders on her dressing table, in cranberry glass cups along the side of her tub. I put these in a plastic shopping bag along with three chapters and a synopsis, newly conceived and freshly printed.
“Watch Mama,” I whisper to Jefferson, although judging by the way she’s snoring, I don’t expect her to wake until in the morning.
I drive to Jean’s in the light of a perfect gibbous moon, not quite full, but giving that appearance. Only the discerning eye can see the slightly bulging configuration on one side of this incandescent silver orb. Only a woman who waits under Venus and knows she’s standing on star dust can connect to this incredible, magical lunar queen.
Jean’s watching for me, and by the time I come to a stop, she’s opening the door and climbing into the Jeep. Less than ten minutes after I left, I’m back at Mama’s lighting candles on her front porch.
Then Jean and I kick off our shoes, shed our robes and dance with our feet in the splendid summer grass, our white gowns twirling in the moonlight.
“Think positive,” I say. “Are you thinking good thoughts, Jean?”
“I’m thinking about Walter.” She says this as if she’s dreaming and doesn’t want to be awakened. I don’t remind her, she’s supposed to be sending gracious thought-prayers skyward.
Under a moon like this it’s possible to forget everything except the gardenia-laden sweetness of a Southern summer night and the heart-moon connection that makes it impossible to tell where flesh and bone end and the heavens begin. I spread my arms, embracing the world, dancing, flying.
“What are you trying to do?” Mama’s voice halts me mid-flight. “Sneak off and have all the fun without me?” She’s standing on the front porch with her walker, the white nylon nightcap she uses to protect her freshly done, beauty-salon hairdo gleaming in the candlelight. “Jean, come up here and help me down the steps.”
“Mama, stay there,” I tell her. “We’ll join you on the porch.”
“Flitter, if I’m going to dance, I’ve got to do it right.”
Practical, earth-bound daughters would lead her into the house and put her back to bed so she could get some rest, but my sister and I understand that Mama has other, more compelling needs. Fun. Laughter. Spit-in-the-eye-of-fate-and- damned-the-consequences freedom.
It takes both of us to get Mama and her walker down the front steps, and then she kicks off her shoes and hulas around the yard, her night cap askew, her walker serving as a third, silvery leg.
Somewhere above us, God is smiling.
______________
Chapter Nine
______________
“For those of you who haven’t alread
y been outside to see for yourself, it’s a scorcher today.”
Rainman
Sweat is rolling down my face in spite of the air conditioner and my tee shirt is sticking to my skin in wet patches that might be sexy if the rest of me didn’t look and feel so wilted. Since when did I think I could work till three one night, dance and party till midnight the next and get up feeling sixteen?
“Wear a hat,” Rainman tells me. Well, he tells everybody in his vast WTUP audience, but I’ll bet I’m the only listener who’s talking back. This would alarm me if I didn’t know better. Sensitive, artistic souls often carry on conversations with inanimate objects and out-of-sight people – the can opener that won’t work, the toilet that refuses to cooperate, the computer that has a mind of its own, the DJ on the radio.
“Be Victorian,” he says. “Carry an umbrella.”
“Not many people know that,” I tell him. “Do you read a lot?”
“The temperature is hovering around ninety and climbing,” he says.
The trouble with talking to people who aren’t there is that it’s a one-sided conversation. And lonely, if you stop to think about it. It screams here’s a woman with sweat circles under her arms, a too-tight waistband pinching her middle and newly-discovered wrinkles around her eyes with nobody to complain to, a woman with unappreciated pot roast and lacy underwear collecting dust. A woman who could go on a crying jag any minute if she didn’t have so much to do.
Federal Express comes into view, shimmering and ephemeral in the heat that rises in blinding white waves off the cracked pavement. I park by the front door and go inside where I address an envelope to my agent, overnight, ten a.m. delivery. I won’t think last chance as I drop my proposal inside and seal the package. I won’t think what if. Instead I’ll remember myself dancing under the light of a gibbous moon and capturing its magic in my soul.
*
Before I head home, I perform ritual number two: celebrate with small indulgences. These usually come in the form of chocolate or butter and sugar. I wheel into Dunkin’ Donuts determined to order only one. That way I can feel virtuous and rewarded. Any more and I descend into a sugar overdose that makes me feel sluggish and guilty.
A waitress with powdered sugar on the front of her apron comes to take my order.
“A cream-filled doughnut. Just one.”
“How can you do that?” The voice behind me is deep and male. “I don’t have that much willpower.”
Rainman. My skin tingles and when I turn around I’m afraid he’ll guess that he’s the cause of my flushed face.
“Hi, Maggie.” He smiles. “Do you have time for that cup of coffee?”
I have a dozen errands to do, and Mama’s back home waiting, but oh, so am I. Something inside me has been waiting for a very long time, waiting to come alive.
“Yes,” I say, and join him at a small red vinyl booth, both of us with cream-filled doughnuts and steaming cups of coffee.
“I just heard you on the radio,” I tell him.
“Recorded.”
“I was fascinated by your reference to Victorian customs.”
“I read a lot. In fact, I just finished reading one of your books, The Cat’s Meow.”
When a stranger likes you enough to hunt for a back copy, it’s always gratifying. But when the stranger is Rainman, it’s thrilling. He just said, I like you enough to want to discover more about you.
“Thank you,” I tell him, and I hope my smile says, I’m glad you did.
“I enjoyed it. Your heroine has a wonderful sense of humor and, I suspect, so do you.”
Call me and find out, I want to say, but that only happens in fiction, so instead I tell him about the fine line writers draw between fantasy and reality, and how sometimes even we have a hard time telling them apart.
I sound like a teacher or a workshop coordinator. What do women my age talk about when they want to make a man sit up and take notice?
“That’s fascinating, Maggie. I’d love to hear more, but I’ve got to get back to the station.”
He dumps our wadded-up napkins and, as we both head toward the door with our take-out coffee cups, I feel eighteen and eighty-five all at the same time, the racing pulse of a teenage and the antiquated dating skills of an octogenarian.
Not that this is a date. Still…
His car is on one side of the lot and mine on the other. We’re about to go our separate ways when he turns back.
“Maggie, I never did get your number. Do you mind?”
“Of course not.”
After he leaves, I have to sit a while with the air conditioner on high to cool off my hot face. Not to mention my other hot parts. Oh, lord…
*
Jean and Mama are waiting for me in my sister’s kitchen with twin conspiratorial grins and fried chicken. I nab a leg from the platter as I pass by the serving bar.
“You didn’t have to cook,” I tell Jean, knowing she won’t pay me the least bit of attention. I wouldn’t pay me any attention, either, if I knew my way around a chicken the way she does. Fried, baked, roasted, stuffed, grilled – you name it; my sister does it to perfection.
“I thought we would eat first,” Jean tells me.
“Before what?” I say, thinking she means before I take Mama home for her afternoon nap.
“We have a little surprise.” Mama’s already sitting at the head of Jean’s table, where she presides over all family gatherings, drinking a big glass of iced sweet tea.
Six years ago when she announced she was tired of cooking and we’d be gathering at Jean and Walter’s house for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fourth of July and birthdays, my sister and I mourned the passing of an era.
“Things won’t be the same,” Jean told me and I said, “It’s not like Mama to step aside.”
Little did we know. Mama didn’t step aside; she just changed venue.
Now Jean fixes Mama’s plate, pours two more glasses of tea and joins us at the table. “Mama, we decided to wait until after we eat before we tell her.”
“Tell me what?”
“Something,” Mama says, and Jean says, “Nothing.”
“Good grief.” I get up, go to the serving bar and put too much food on my plate while Jean’s telling Mama, sotto voice, “You know she takes things better after she’s eaten.”
“I heard that. Are you forgetting who does the driving in this family?”
“We’re having a fancy dinner party,” Mama says, and I don’t have to see her big grin to know how much she’s looking forward to the occasion. She’ll wear silver shoes and sequins, no matter if it’s just for family or if we’ve invited the Bushes, both senior and junior. Of course, we’d do that over Mama’s dead Democratic body.
“Is Walter coming home?” I ask Jean.
“No, but Aunt Mary Quana’s going to be here. And Stanley because he adores her, and we knew you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course not. We’re friends.”
“Horton and Hattie are coming,” Mama says, “and Laura Kate because she went to school with Mary Quana. She’s bringing her nephew Charlie.”
My appetite for chicken vanishes, even if it is Jean’s and it’s buttermilk crusted and deep fried.
“I can’t believe you did this.”
A woman who has to depend on her mother to fix her up is usually unattractive, undesirable and untouched. Well, I am if you don’t count latex. Of course, I don’t care what Charlie thinks, so why am I getting so worked up?
“We didn’t invite him,” Jean says. “Laura Kate asked if she could bring him along and we didn’t want to be impolite and say no.”
“Besides,” Mama adds. “Somebody has to take the bull by the horns.”
“Charlie’s more an out-to-pasture gelding than a bull.”
“Listen, Maggie, before you get all bowed up at Mama and me, just think of this party as a nice surprise for Aunt Mary Quana. Besides, you don’t have to go to bed with him. Even if you are neglecting your libido.”
&nb
sp; “I can’t believe you said that in front of Mama.”
“How do you think you got here?” Mama says. “Immaculate conception?”
I flounce off to Jean’s family room to get away from meddlers. But not without my plate of chicken. How can I fight back if I waste away to a swizzle stick?
Long after I’ve taken Mama home, I stew about the problem, tossing and turning and watching the hands of the bedside clock. I’ve just dozed off when I hear noises in Mama’s bedroom. Racing in, I discover her hair drenched and her gown glued to her body.
“Mama, I’m calling Dr. Holman.”
“Maggie, no. It’s night sweats. Heartburn. I ate too much at Jean’s. Help me change these sheets.”
“Sit down, Mama. I’ll do it. But first I’m going to get you out of that wet gown and check your blood pressure.”
Not that I’m any good at nursing. The cuff inflates automatically and the numbers print out digitally. 110/60. A bit low, but nothing alarming, especially for Mama. I won’t panic and pick up Jean for a midnight run to the emergency room.
By the time I get clean sheets on the bed, Mama’s asleep in her recliner. She looks so peaceful I don’t want to wake her, so I climb into her bed and lie there watching her for signs.
Is her breathing too shallow? I ease to her chair and lean close so I can see the movement of her chest. Jefferson whines, and I reach down to pat him. “It’s okay, boy,” I whisper.
Is it?
I climb back into bed and shut my eyes, then instantly pop them open because I’ve heard a new sound. Is that a gurgle in Mama’s chest? Creeping in the semi-darkness, I stump my toe on her floor lamp, then bite my tongue to keep from saying a word and waking her.
She has twisted in her sleep and tangled the lap robe around her ankles. Rather than risk disturbing her by untangling it, I grab a blanket off the bed so she won’t get a chill from the air conditioner. It settles over her, but I still stand by her chair with my toes curled into the rug and my anxious feelings pressing between my shoulders.
