Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle

by Reinhardt, Susan

  Toward the end of the reception, Mama approached me again.

  “You have some good, clean, Christian fun tonight,” she said and gave me a big lipsticked kiss on the cheek, which later showed up in three of the wedding pictures. “You’ve remained a virgin for this long. Time to give the old preacher his big reward. He’s given you his.”

  “What’s that?’ I asked, trying to keep people from listening in on this conversation.

  “His name. What else, Prudy? I’ve told you and Amber since you were old enough to know what a possum is, that if a girl holds it pure and untouched, it’s the best gift she could give her husband on the wedding night.”

  Great. I’m going to give Bryce Jeter the old possum-roo tonight. That sounded so romantic.

  “I’m sure he’s so excited he’ll bust,” I said, and she shook her finger in a shame-shame and swished away in search of her husband who was sneaking bourbon from his flask and dumping it into the punch bowl.

  I wanted to tell her she was crazy. She knew I wasn’t a virgin. She knew I’d lived with two men on a part-time basis before I’d hooked up with the preacher. What did she think I did in those houses with those men? Vacuum? Fold their clothes? But some part of me felt all the sins I held in my private closet could be finally cleansed and righted upon wedding a man with a direct line to the Lord. Believe me, Southern women who grow up Baptist hold onto guilt the way some men hold onto money.

  I mingled with the guests for about half an hour, then noticed my mother standing in a daze by the punch bowl, staring into her cup.

  “You all right?”

  “Some days I don’t know who I am,” Mama said absent-mindedly as the pianist played and one or two bold couples tried to find enough merriment and courage to dance in a Baptist church basement. “It’s the change. One minute you’re certain of your convictions and beliefs and so calm with life, and then all of a sudden you want to hop on a plane and say, ‘One way, please.’’’

  “Really?” This was new to me. Who was this woman? Half an hour ago she was my mother. I laughed suddenly. Daddy had given her a full cup of his doctored-up punch, and she had no idea it was loaded with truths in the form of Jim Beam. Normally, she never drank anything stronger than a glass of wine or a weak bloody Mary. “Oh, I need a proverb,” she said. “Where’s my Bible when I’m craving a proverb?” She sipped her punch lustily. “Parker!” she hollered after my dad. “Go out to the car and get me a proverb, hon.”

  He didn’t budge. But he would. He had to hear a request three to six times like most men.

  “I love you despite all your proverbs,” I said to Mama, and we cried, mother and daughter, while the Jeters stood off to the side and ate their crustless cucumber sandwiches, neither speaking to the other. That brief time I’d met them before the wedding, I found it odd how Pauline cowered when the good doctor came near. How she jumped up like a frightened child, scooting around the room as if she were the maid, pouring tea and coffee and tending to him like he was some sort of visiting dignitary and not her husband of 35 years.

  At 1:10 p.m. the event was finally over. I shed my corseted body of the spectacular wedding dress, Mama promising to send it off to be sealed and cleaned and preserved for my own daughter I was certain I’d have one day. “That is, hon, unless you wait too long and then you’ll have yourself a Downs baby. Don’t get me wrong, they are precious but don’t grow up tall or thin enough to wear size-8 designer gowns. I’m not sure they can legally marry. Parker, can a Downs child—”

  “Mama!”

  As soon as I’d thrown the bouquet and stepped into the plain and undecorated car with no exclamations of “Just Married!” or rattling cans and streamers, we were on our way to a honeymoon, five days on Kiawah Island, an upper-middle-class inlet of ocean, 30 minutes outside of Charleston, a tiny playground for those with money. A church member had loaned Bryce her vacation home free of charge, all in the name of the Lord and getting to Heaven.

  As soon as he hit the accelerator and turned out of the church parking lot, his eyes flashed and changed, those trick-card eyes. He grabbed my hand with urgency as we entered the second hour of our marriage.

  “Things will be fine,” he said. “You just follow my lead. Like the Bible says, and we’ll be okay.”

  I scooted next to him as he drove, both hands gripping the wheel of his Mercury, official car of the middle class GOP. I tried to kiss his strong perfect hand and he flinched. I saw it, felt it. There was a slight jerk of his muscles, as if I were Sin in Disguise, which is what he’d come to call me over the next six years. Sin in Disguise.

  Still, I sat there closely, not leaning my Eve-in-the-garden head on his, for that would seem too bold, too risky, but at least sitting close enough that I could smell him, that clean mix of Dove soap and Calvin Klein cologne. I wanted to touch him so much I hurt. I wanted to feel his thighs, inch down in the spotless Mercury, way down, and give him the first real taste of the kind of preacher’s wife I aimed to be. I didn’t even need a seafood dinner to do what I had planned for our honeymoon drive. Submit. I’d show him some Southern submission, all right.

  Just wait until he saw what I was wearing—and not wearing—under my going-away dress. Just wait until he saw my 130-pound, thinnest-since-college body, bronzed from the ten sessions at Malibu Express. Just wait. He would praise Jesus like he never had in his life.

  This is what I thought would happen, even as we got out of our car and walked up the stairs to the adorable gray, cedar villa, overlooking a calm bend in the Atlantic Ocean, sun beginning to fatten with first indications of setting, a golden warmth made bearable by a breeze delivered with generous enthusiasm. The air smelled like salt and sea and whispers of ocean life.

  This is not, however, what happened. I’ve never told a soul what really happened on what is probably the worst honeymoon on record. Not Mama, not Aunt Weepie, not Amber. No one. It was too awful.

  Once, in the courtroom, woozy from pain medication and thinking doctors may have to amputate my lower leg, I almost blurted it out. But I didn’t. The state had its case. I didn’t need to air one more set of dirty undies on my heavy line.

  ***

  I’m not sure what bit of nerve wove itself into my brain, but later that night I turned on the computer, and, instead of checking the weather and other mundane news, I Google-searched people. I needed to find my old boyfriend. I poured a glass of Chardonnay, compliments of Aunt Weepie because she said my future funeral antics were certain to make her proud and were guaranteed to be good for business. I took a long sip from a plastic cup, wishing I had a set of glamorous wine glasses. It tasted of oak and bitter, rotten fruit, but I drank anyway—for courage, for a bit of peace of mind. Maybe I was drinking to remember or maybe to forget.

  Maybe I drank because Bryce never let me.

  The search proved easier than I could have ever dreamed. I typed in “Croc Godfrey,” the most luscious, talented, kindest boyfriend I ever had, but the one who peed on Daddy’s lawn one night when he and a bunch of other boys got rowdy on Miller Lites and sang off-color “Christmas” carols, changing the words and throwing in a few profanities. This is what ended our relationship.

  “You ever see that boy again and you’re out of this house for good,” Daddy yelled the next morning, climbing into his old Mustang and driving to Croc’s house at six a.m. to tattle on him and wring his neck. “Any boy into rock’n’roll and naming his band ‘Snatch’ is a no-good hoodlum you aren’t going to be seeing again. I’ll make sure of that.” The engine roared, rubber burned on our white cement drive and off Daddy went. No more Croc Godfrey. He was as much afraid of seeing me then as I was of my father.

  Time passing is both a beautiful and heartbreaking reality. The years gone by soften things, blur them in the mind and distort facts enough they can often be reabsorbed into other memories. I am pushing 39 and w
hat have I got to lose? What? Is Dad going to come after us both with an ax handle if we end up meeting over a hamburger or cold glass of beer? Croc was probably married and a father of five. He was most likely the Labrador doctor I’d invented who treated his wife with the utmost respect and brought her flowers twice a week.

  Only one way to find out. Soon after typing in his God-given name, a list of stories came up. I read the top three and my heart nearly stopped. Oh, my God. No, no, no. Jesus Christ, bless his poor soul.

  Surely, all of this couldn’t have happened to the Croc I knew. It had to be another Croc, as if there are millions of people with such a name.

  Tears pooled, and I turned off the computer. Maybe, just maybe, I’d call him tomorrow. What in the world would I say after reading all of that?

  Chapter Ten

  Wake up, Pru – Dang it, I mean Dee: Wine gives false courage; hard liquor leads to brawls. Proverbs 20:1

  Mama’s Moral: If you drink too much, the man you bring into your home won’t have a lick of sense. Neither will you. Plus, you’ll have bad breath and eye bags.

  P.S. I don’t think it’s a good idea to take 104-year-old women out drinking! Shame on you, Prudy.

  Regular school had been out for a month and all of Spartanburg had collapsed under this oppressive tin roof of heat. People without ten cents to rub together were calling pool companies and having their back yards dug to uncharted depths for that cement relief. Even those living in single and double-wides were putting above-grounders on their credit cards. Well, at least we had our dented Kmart plastic pool.

  Riding down the street, one saw kids playing beneath sprinklers, metal manifolds in plastic framework spinning and spewing overtime to water what hadn’t turned brown or given up during the month-long drought.

  At night, as I lay in my bed, the high ceiling above me having kidnapped the sun’s soul and trapped the apartment with a suffocating wet heat, I started missing the mountains in Asheville.

  It is truly a place surrounded in beauty, the blue and purple mountains like layers of protection as they rise up and encircle the city. I had loved it there, the odd mix of people, the deep pockets of mountain folks who lived back in the hills and rural hollers and coves, the city people, artists, many who were brilliant transplants from bigger cities and who’d heard about the freedom in Asheville, the open-mindedness of a region enclosed by mountains.

  I missed the rivers and the Parkway, the smell of summers there, an earthy blend of indigenous plants and trees mingled with the faintest trace of mountain flowers, the kind that bloomed beautifully but didn’t overpower like the magnolias, gardenias and oleanders of the flatlands. Infused in that cool mountain air were the sharp smells of woodstoves burning in the log cabins and fires roaring in stone hearths as late as early June.

  I missed my friends, especially Jenny whom I hadn’t seen in more than a year. Bryce had gradually cut me off from most friends while we were married, those he didn’t approve of.

  “You’re a preacher’s wife. You’ll befriend my congregants.”

  One by one, the force of his anger behind me, the loss of self in front of me, I eliminated my associations. He had me under his spell, those trick eyes, that way about him that seemed as if I were following a cult leader. Back in my old hometown, I wondered who was still around, who hadn’t moved on to bigger cities and better outcomes. I wanted friends. It had been so long. The church women had been nice and a few a lot of fun, but I always held back, and so had they, because I was the preacher’s wife.

  My thoughts of Asheville shattered at the sound of the old doorbell, no doubt my mother coming to inspect my living conditions, to see if they’d improved post-employment, though she still didn’t know I was the local cleaning lady at WUSC radio.

  “It feels like hell uprooted out there,” Mama said, lugging huge bags of luxuries from Bed Bath and Beyond into my apartment, which over the past month had taken on a more optimistic light. She’d adopted the place as her orphan, and had received lots of pleasure buying seafoam-green towels and a real cloth shower curtain to go around the clawfoot tub, which she scrubbed with bleach, managing to rub all the brown stains out. She’d been watching Trading Spaces on TV late at night and decided to tackle my apartment as her project. We were now the inhabitants of a soothing haven, with thick comforters, lovely candles and end tables, a birch futon with fabrics she selected from a swatch book of fifty choices.

  The owners of the old house thought she was insane, but gave her the go-ahead when she decided to hire a painter and turn the exterior of the wooden, faded-to-gray white two-story into a gorgeous shell pink that made me happy every time I drove down the street and saw it, that glorious salmon shade emerging from the pines and magnolias. It’s hard to be depressed when you live in a pink house. Mama also painted all the nicked white walls with warm taupe hues, framing them with pretty borders she found at Home Depot and accessories from Pier 1 Imports, where she also chose long, wide rugs of the richest colors for the hardwood floors.

  “This is too much, Mama. Really you shouldn’t be spending all the money on—”

  “I get Social Security checks earlier on account of your Daddy’s doings, and I’ll spend them on what I want to, thank you very much. These kids need a decent home.”

  “Well, thank you. Anyway, I’ve got some news,” I said, fanning myself with a rustling bag as she unfurled the new linen placemats and napkins on my kitchen table. She looked at her handiwork and seemed pleased, paying me no attention as she lit a blue and maroon marble candle in the center of the table, a candle that cost as much as my Goodwill chest of drawers.

  “I’ve got a date,” I said, piling my long hair up with a clip, finding relief in the smallest ways from this soaking humidity.

  “You know, Prudy, Dee, whoever you are, I think I can go back and get that brass corner unit and you could display those pretty new Mikasa plates Amber gave you for your wedding, only dang thing Bryce’s people didn’t grab. Those would look great and offset all the blue in here. A touch of green and more maroon would blend the look together.”

  “You sound like the Home Decorating Channel.” She was completely ignoring my earlier comments about having a date, a tactic she used when she didn’t want to face reality or confrontation.

  “Umm. I guess I do. How’s work, hon?” she asked, not looking at me, as if she didn’t expect or even care to hear an answer. She had come to accept my new down-sized lifestyle, the job at Top of the Hill, which thankfully had grown to five days a week so that now I could pay the rent and bills. Chuck had been promising lately if I kept up the good work with Tilex and a scrub brush, he had a special job for me—my own show about parenting.

  “We want you to be funny and informative at the same time,” he said. “This is a call-in show and we have three psychologists on stand-by to help with the questions. You’ll pick a topic, say the family bed or breastfeeding till a kid is 3, and then we expect some humor. You dig?”

  “I can do it. You know how funny I used to be in high school.”

  “Well, I hope you’re still funny after all you’ve been through. Training starts in two days, and we’ll have you on the air by next week if all works out.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I was thrilled. “It pays an extra $100 a week and you’d still be cleaning johns until we see if you work out. Deal?”

  “Deal.” Now I’d have money for extras, like new shoes for the kids, maybe some nice eye cream for myself.

  “Prudy? I ask how was work going?” Mama said, arranging all her new goods around the apartment.

  “Good. Top of the Hill is great, and they’re training me for a nursing certificate right on the premises.” It was true. Lately, everything had been running fairly smoothly. No more dreams. No more letters. It had been weeks since the last batch Jay handed me from beneath his mattress, and, since
getting him into therapy, he had settled down and the nightmares stopped.

  “He’s progressing and beginning to act like a regular little boy,” the therapist had said. I still don’t know how the letters got to this address but don’t care as long as they aren’t coming back.

  Kathy was right. Bryce was pulling my chain, trying to exert that sick control in a world where his is stripped bare.

  “Have you thought any more about applying for real nursing school, not just that dinky nurse’s aid business?” Mama asked, lighting the gas stove, putting on a kettle for iced tea. Lord, was nothing I ever did good enough for that woman?

  “Not really. And it’s an LPN degree, then later, the RN training. Did you hear me while ago? I said I have a date.”

  “You have a what? A date? I hope he’s not a drunk. Is he effeminate? Where does he work? Has he got an education?”

  “Hold on a minute, Mama.”

  She sat down and I observed her face. These past two years had taken a toll. Frown lines gave her a scowlish appearance, and it didn’t help that she was losing weight, most of it in her face and chest. My theory is a woman needs a few pounds after a certain age. I love the quote from Marilyn Monroe, “Five pounds is a wrinkle’s best friend,” or something along those lines. Every time I want dessert, I think of Marilyn and indulge. That’s why my fanny could double as a dinette set and seat a family of four. Mental note. Go on slight diet.

  “Who’s this man, Prudy? You know you’ve never had good judgment when it comes to men. You remember that thing you drug in the house, who stopped up my toilet after that big spaghetti dinner?”