“You look sort of familiar,” another one said. This man was lighting a Marlboro with the butt of his spent cigarette as he stood in the sun with his Bee Gee’s hair plastered to his oblong head. It was sprayed and lacquered and appeared sticky. He cupped his hand, the one without the cigarette, and boldly blew against his palm to check his breath, more than likely a combination of too many cigarettes, last night’s liquor and the Mega Bar at Ryan’s.
“We all have a twin,” I said, knowing he’d seen me on the news or in the papers during the Murderous Rampage and subsequent trial. People, thank the good Lord, were starting to forget, and their memories were growing dim. And since I had returned to my maiden name and homeland there was even less recognition.
“Could you please help us? If you do, I might consider a Nissan one day. You never know, there’s a potential customer in everyone who happens to find themselves in this lot.”
The other man, the one who didn’t say anything and seemed the most embarrassed about my “flop,” so to speak, came over and joined the pack, making the necessary adjustments, never once looking me in the eye. I thanked him, forgiving him of that tanned, stir-fry look he sported and sped out of there so fast I almost ended up in the trunk.
I had just three more miles to go. Please Lord, I promise I’ll return to the fold. I’ll find a good church and a decent minister. I realize, oh Father, that most of those called to duty aren’t murdering men. Lord, help me get this pool home, and I swear I’ll find a place of worship. I just can’t go to Mama’s church. It’s too hardcore with all that screaming and talk of burning in hell. I don’t even think You would like it, to be quite frank.
The pool tottered and wobbled, caught a bit of air, but otherwise remained fixed to the roof. Five minutes later, I saw red in my rearview mirror. A horn bellowed of the deepest and most frightening sounds. The fire truck. Only in Spartanburg would the firemen be so bored they had to get behind a woman with a shaking swimming pool on her roof. The truck followed me the last mile and into my driveway. Embarrassed beyond belief, I got out and thanked them, remembering my proper manners.
“You boys were so sweet to do that.”
“Didn’t look like that pool was going to stay put,” the driver said, and added for professional measure: “You do realize if it had come loose, it could have posed a real danger to fellow motorists and pedestrians.”
“Yes, I do. You men are fabulous. Don’t run off just yet.” I quickly unlocked my door, ran up the steps—grimacing as pain shot through my leg—to the kitchen and dumped some semi-stale brownies in an old Christmas tin, hoping they wouldn’t mind Santa in June. They probably wouldn’t even notice the container. Most men are so simple, as basic as babies. Feed them and tend to their “diaper areas.” No need for all the extras.
I breathlessly trudged up the stairs a second time and saw three messages flashing on the answering machine. One from Aunt Weepie, saying she had a blast at the funeral with me and I missed her best performance at Icy Corn’s planting.
“I got us lined up for another one this week,” she said. “Plan on dressing nice. The obit listed all sorts of male relatives, so you never know. Oh, and don’t worry. Your mama still doesn’t know you’re cleaning crappers.”
The other message was from Amber, my beautiful younger sister, announcing she had painted her grass green because it was dying from a major Georgia drought and didn’t look as nice as her neighbor’s vibrant spring greens. And besides that, the neighbors had added a new in-ground swimming pool and hot tub and Amber really needed to do something to get back at them.
“I had to put a sign on my grass that read, Wet Paint: Don’t Step on Grass.”
She hung up without so much as saying bye.
The final message was from Mama, a non-Proverb bit of zany news. I played it while fixing a glass of water, no ice. Mental note: Maybe the ice is causing the retention and bloating.
Mama: “Prudy, I don’t know if I told you this when we talked last night, but you really need to do all you can do to avoid the divorcee’s known reputation. They have an unbelievable itch for it. You know what I mean by ‘It.’ Also, let me know what happened at the funeral. Weepie said it was the best one yet and that she plans to train you in the art of artificial mourning, which causes me great concern. I cannot picture my daughter caterwauling and falling all over coffins just for some creamed corn. Call me. I’ll cry if you don’t. I got big news.”
***
Later, when the kids came home from school and saw the pool wedged in the small side yard of the house, they had a fit of joy, as if Christmas had arrived, which lightened my heart. I considered asking the older couple renting the downstairs portion of the house if they minded, but we never saw them.
The kids squealed as they ran upstairs to put on their swimsuits. They couldn’t wait to try out the sad little sliding board with the dent from my disastrous highway excursion. During the entire hour it took to fill the huge contraption with water from the limp and ancient hose, I returned the calls from my crazy kinfolk.
Amber spent my long-distance dollar wanting to talk about herself and her husband, who hasn’t desired her since seeing her vagina expand to cave-like proportions during the birth of her twins a few months ago. She said he was flying his plane when her first was born four years ago and never saw the birth, which in her case, was a good thing. She said having the nice green grass made her feel better, and that if her husband wasn’t interested in her, then he must have found another woman.
“If your fruits scared the man that badly,” I told her, “then he’s for sure not going to go barking up that tree again. It would be my clear guess the man prefers his fellow brethren who have units that would never be so bold and adaptable as to completely change forms and functions as can the Great Magic Vag.”
“Oh, my God. You are finally getting your sense of humor back. Prudy—’scuse me, Dee—is alive again. I think I’ll put up a billboard.”
“You do that,” I said. “Love you, sis. Wish you and the brood would come visit.”
“I will, honey. I promise. Things are just crazy right now. Try breastfeeding twins and see if you don’t feel like a friggin’ nanny goat. I’m thinking if things don’t change, I’ll just get another husband. Trade up again like cars, you know.”
She laughed, her fragile ego less bruised, considering that new gay option I’d tossed out after concealing my feelings for so long. She was also worked up about whether or not she should spray paint her shrubbery to match the grass, because the freshly painted ground cover made the leaves on her bushes seem rather dingy. “It’s kind of like when people apply Crest Strips to their top teeth and completely forget or choose not to fool with the lowers,” she said.
As soon as I hung up with her, the phone rang and Mama was on the other line, caffeined up as usual despite more doctors’ warnings.
“I’ve been trying for 30 minutes,” she said. “Why haven’t you called me back?”
“I was providing my kids some relief from the heat and only now got off the phone with Amber, and then—”
“Never mind, hon. Listen, I got to thinking. Maybe you shouldn’t go out with that boy Weepie wants to hook you up with. If he’s a grease monkey working for her husband at the garage, that would put you right back to square one, to my own upbringing, and we Southern women have a motto. Never marry down. Even a lateral move isn’t good, hon. You need a doctor. Someone who can support you. Here you are living in that rental unit. It’s a shame. I can’t believe you didn’t get two nickels after the divorce. What kind of state gives a killer and his church the marital property? What kind of law is that?”
“It’s the law, Mom. Equitable distribution in North Carolina. He gets half. No matter what.”
“Left you with half of nothing. One good leg. Forget Weepie’s poor little no-pensioned fellow. You know h
ow she is. Anything in trousers is prime rib on a platter. I’ll bet he smokes. Or has facial hair. He’s probably the type to toot in front of his own children.”
“God forbid!”
“Don’t say the Lord’s name in vain. Mercy, you got me all off track. What was it I was going to say?” I heard her walking around the kitchen, her high heels clicking along the tile floor she and Daddy recently installed during the remodeling and ridding themselves of all things from the seventies. She opened the fridge, and I could hear the crackling of ice cubes, half of them hitting the floor, the others dinging in the glass. “Oh, yeah, I know what it was. All that discussion of sex the other day made me remember that you probably got the itch.”
“Excuse me?”
“Carla Tisdale had it bad after her divorce. She went around screwing every man in four counties,” Mama said, and I was stunned because she rarely used the term “screwed,” especially since she’d been recently “saved” again and had rededicated her life to the Lord for the seventh time.
I had this theory about getting saved. First, I could never understand why you had to get saved in the way of tears and wailing and throwing down in a massive altar-side Jesus fit. Could not a person simply feel the presence of God in her heart, and with great composure and elegance, walk to the front of the church and shake the pastor’s hand, followed by a sprinkling of water a couple of Sundays later to seal the Christian deal?
That’s how the Methodists do it. That’s why I converted from Southern Baptist to Methodist until I married Bryce, when I had to switch back to Baptist and his constant threats of Satan riding my tail.
I preferred the Methodist’s less dramatic forms of a saving. I just can’t figure out why in some churches, after people were saved, they had to keep getting resaved? Did it not take the first time? Was it like getting acrylic nails and every so often a necessity for a fill-in?
I believe the Lord must get rather tired of all the retreads who come dragging up to the confessional. One or two savings is fine, but six to 12? I say if you need that many, then do them in private. Fall to your knees in front of the bed and quit wasting the preacher’s time.
I used to tell the Rev. Murder Man that he ought to cut these perpetual sinnings and savings off after a certain point, and he said I was the craziest bitch he’d ever met. Used those very words. Used them many, many times.
“The more they’re saved, the more money they give,” he said. “A sinner saved is a dollar earned.” He thought he was Mr. Wit.
Mama had turned on the stove and was slamming her cabinets as she continued to dispense advice along with the Canola in her pans.
“Carla was always up at the bars, on the hunt. Sugar, I know you’ve been through a lot and probably haven’t given much thought to anything but survival and your new job and the kids’ well-being, but now that things are better, I can tell you’re feeling frisky.” She used the term frisky because horny was a bad word in her mind. “Once a married woman is used to having it, she can’t stop the urges.”
She said “urges,” as if it were the same type of scourge as E-coli or Ebola. “You just remember that a good reputation is all a woman has. Keep that in mind. A woman’s . . . um . . . pretty patch . . . will be there till she dies. But her reputation dies fast if she loosens up even for a second.”
“Her what? Pretty patch? What is a pretty patch, Mother?”
“Now, Prudy, you know what it is, and I’m not going to say it, but it rhymes with wussy.”
I swear, since my mother went through the change she has gone 100 percent insane. Even the hormones she takes to increase whatever needs boosting are not helping in the oddness department.
A noise from the pool shattered my thoughts of the vagina and its many euphemisms. I could hear the kids splashing in the cold water and fighting over the goggles and inflatable balls, and I was about to end the conversation and go break up the fight when Mama sensed my boredom and changed the subject.
“I want you to take a wild guess what me and your daddy bought today?”
I ducked into the closet on our stairwell and found another pair of goggles, tossing them into the pool for Miranda, temporarily stalling the escalating fit.
“All right, I’m ready,” I said, prepared to hear one of my mother’s long-winded, screwball tales of utter madness.
“You have to guess. Guess what we’ve bought?
“A beach house on Hilton Head Island.”
“No.”
“A Lexus.”
“Try again.”
More splashing and squawking followed by a loud smacking sound. The sun was scorching, burning a hole in the top of my head as I sat on the top step with the cordless phone, supervising my children. I often wondered why people who wore hairsprays and other chemicals and styling agents didn’t up and spontaneously combust. Especially those of us in the bullseye of a South Carolina sun. It would not have surprised me in the least to pick up the paper and read: “Woman’s French Twist Explodes While She Gardens.”
“Prudy. Where are you? Guess. Be a sport.”
“I give up.”
“Hon, we bought us a mausoleum. They were on special. Two slips for the price of one. We had to buy toe to toe because we couldn’t really afford the side-by-side plan, but it’s all right. I won’t have to hear your daddy’s snoring.” She laughed in that high trilling voice that I associate with her beloved bridge biddies, those women who during my childhood would stay up late, ruffle cards, smoke and laugh and tell secrets way past my bedtime. “It’s in a chapel with heating and air-conditioning, carpet and a set of bathrooms with all these brass fixtures. Can you believe it? We’ll be inside away from all the harsh elements. And your daddy said having them bathrooms would be real convenient, him having prostate problems and all. Y’all can come visit. There’s a nice sofa right in front of our little drawer thingamabobs.”
“Those bathrooms. Those, Mama, not them bathrooms.”
“Well all right, those but let me say—”
“Please tell me you really got a condo at the beach. Even an RV or a poodle.”
“I’m so excited, Prudy. I just need to figure out what I’m going to wear. A friend said a real Southern lady has a dress for the viewing, something elegant but slightly on the flashy side so you’ll look your very best while dead. Then you need a separate one that’s more formal for the funeral. Something you can meet Jesus in with pride. So I’ll need two outfits, I believe. You and Amber will have to see to it that my stiffening body gets changed into the outfits properly.”
“I’m sure Dillard’s or Belks will come through.”
She ignored my sarcasm and pondered other matters.
“The thing is, it’s no more expensive to be in a mausoleum than in the ground, and I could have sworn only the snoots got the indoor places, but it’s amazingly affordable. We put it all on Visa.”
“That’s nice.”
“It would have been,” she said, “but they wouldn’t give us any Frequent Flyer miles for it.”
She couldn’t be serious.
“I plan to place a call to the VISA headquarters about that first thing tomorrow. Good heavens, they give you miles and miles for buying groceries and VCRs. Why not for your burial goods and services?”
“Beats me. Seems rather brave and deserving of flight time.” My mind was beginning to lapse into that frightening thought that one day, not long from today, I would become her, an endearing but veritable kook who took herself completely seriously.
“Hon, one last thing. Remember, don’t give in to your animalistic urges, okay? We’re not too unlike that monkey that flung his you-know-what in my hair. My hair still isn’t right. I had Florence Tilly, you know her, the Catholic? I had her minister put some holy water on it even though we aren’t Catholics. The thing is, it’s not proper to
spread yourself and your legs all over town, and I don’t want to hear about your horn-dogging, you understand? It’s a small town and people talk.”
“Mother, I don’t even have any prospects, okay? I’m just trying to earn a living and make some female friends.”
“That’s my good girl. Come on over soon and I will show you our burial drawers. I’m so excited they keep the temperature at 70 all year long, so when we’re dead, your father can’t chintz out and cut the heat back to save money.”
Chapter Eight
Morning, Pru-Dee: White hair is a crown of glory and is seen most among the Godly. Proverbs16:31
Mama’s Moral: With each white hair plucked, wisdom lands on a shoulder. I’ve never plucked one. So I may have wisdom waiting to surface. You need to get some extra wisdom. And I don’t mean teeth.
At the nursing home this morning, my second week on the job, my hands were raw from cleaning at the station, and I was exhausted from pacing the floor all night, having received the day before another set of those despicable letters from Bryce. This batch made the first seem like Valentines, and were much bolder, beginning innocently enough, with Bryce telling Jay how much he loved him and how grand life was in prison, that it was just like college and he got to play basketball and work out in the weight room and preach on Sundays to his cellmates and any other prisoners needing a connection to the Heavenly Father.
“I’m counting on you to be brave,” he wrote, the letters perfectly typed. “Be good to your mother. I did a very bad thing and I deserve this punishment. Please, always be a good boy. Love, Daddy.”
That’s not the letter that caused me to pace, though I’d have preferred my son and his father never have contact again. My therapist had warned and prepared me that it could, and probably would happen. That the children caught in the middle of domestic violence were as confused as the mothers whose sons had done the unthinkable. You’ve seen them on TV, moms with wet cheeks and frightened eyes holding up pictures of their sons when they were little boys with scraggly teeth and cow licks. Mamas saying to the Channel 4 News, “My boy would never do a thing like that.” Or, “I’ll always love him, no matter what they say he’s done.”
Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle Page 12
