Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle

by Reinhardt, Susan

  I gave myself another critique in the mirror. Opening the drawer of the antique vanity, I took out a bottle of Lauren in the square, dark red bottle. The scent of the early ’80s. The smell of my neck under Croc’s nose. He would remember the perfume. It would transport him in time to the me he first held, even if my face and figure showed another woman entirely.

  The voice came closer, up the steps, the loud wooden steps. I listened to the voices, a man’s, deeper than I remembered from the phone, and Aunt Weepie’s drawling, high-pitched tones. They moved into the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened and Aunt Weepie was saying, “I can’t believe I’m seeing you after so long, Croc. You look just . . . well . . . you sure haven’t gained any weight, which is more than so many can say these days.” She was doing the nervous woman thing of spilling too much information. “Can I get you something to drink? How about a beer?” I crept to the door, opening it a few inches to hear what they were saying.

  “No, thank you. I had to give the stuff up awhile back. Didn’t agree with me.”

  Great, I thought. Croc’s an alkie. He’ll drag me to Al-anon, and I’ll become a smoker and a Big Book thumper, which is all well and good and has saved many lives, but I didn’t care for another super-sized serving of Self Analysis—Anal-Asses, I liked to call it. I’d had quite enough the past couple of years.

  I sat frozen at the vanity unable to move. “Looky here,” I heard Aunt Weepie say, “this is Jay, he’s 7, and the one hiding under the table in the Ariel mermaid costume is his little sister, Miranda. Jay is the brain of the family. We have no idea where he gets it, me probably, and Miranda under there is the charmer. She’s also an old soul, the nun of the family who’ll count exactly how many beers you drink and tell you to pick up your trash and put it in the correct bin. I’ve never seen such a churchy-type little girl. They are wonderful children who just need some guidance and direction, if you get where I’m coming from. Poor Prudy does all she can, trying to make ends meet, not wanting to bum off her kin, and she is the best mama you ever did want to see and a good little cook, too.”

  Why is Aunt Weepie doing this, giving him the rundown as if he’s coming to apply for the job of husband? Come on, Aunt Weepie, this is more my mother’s style. You, Aunt Weepie, should have your arm around him by now, giving him a rousing pre-show before I come onstage.

  “You sit tight and I’ll go see which gear Prudy’s stuck in.” There was low talking, mumbling and laughter, and I heard Croc say, “Sounds just like Prudy,” and my aunt’s answer, “You know it, mister.”

  I pictured my kids, especially Jay, miserable with the small talk and introductions. I imagined his face sour and bunched in a frown, his arms folded, his mind ticking. Another man. Another set of problems. Another van. Another screwdriver. Another nearly dead mommy.

  “Let me run and see what’s taking her so long,” Aunt Weepie said loudly, giving me a cue that the hour was nigh. “There is Coke and Sprite in there, but Lord knows how long Prudy’s had it. She’ll swig out of the jug, too, so watch out for wet potato chip crumbs if you dare have a glass.” Oh, Aunt Weepie, stop. I heard the patter of children fleeing, running from Croc Godfrey as soon as Aunt Weepie had left the room. Who could blame them?

  “Pruuuu,” my aunt cooed, opening my door without knocking. I could see half of Croc’s body from where I was sitting. He wasn’t big as an exclamation point. He had a hump on his back, a neck that seemed to lack support. I sure hoped the second half of him was an improvement, but I couldn’t see that being possible. A person typically has two fairly equal sides.

  “I’m not going out there, Aunt Weepie.” She scooted a chair next to mine, and I laid my head on her shoulder. “I’m not ready. I can’t do this. He looks like Gandhi.”

  “He’s taller than Gandhi, sugar. You know, when you fall off a horse you gotta get back on,” she said, stroking my hair.

  “I didn’t fall off the horse. I fell off the Empire State Building.”

  “Well get back in the elevator and punch the top floor.” We both laughed and then Aunt Weepie handed me something curled up in her fist.

  “Here,” she said, giving me a silver heart etched in gold. “This has never brought me anything but love. Tony gave it to me when we first met. He’s been the best of my four husbands. The very best. Now, give it a kiss for luck and put it somewhere safe in your purse.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Weepie. You aren’t nearly as mean as Mama says you are.”

  “And she’s not nearly as innocent as she tells you and Amber she is. Trust me.”

  “Hard to imagine.”

  “Then we won’t.” And she cupped my face in her soft hands that held the overpowering scent of gardenias. “You look prettier than I’ve seen you look in years.”

  “I’m huge. Thank God for this set of bad nerves, otherwise I wouldn’t have tinkled in two days. You know how I retain.”

  “You’re beautiful. Go on out there. Truth be told, it ain’t going to take much to impress him. He can’t weigh 90 pounds. Most of it is in his nose.” I shook my head and shot Aunt Weepie a naughty expression. I stood up and my jeans clamped tighter, hugging every inch of me, making me feel like a swamp sow. I managed a couple of deep knee bends, trying to stretch the material from the dryer’s frying an entire size out of them. What could I expect from a dryer bought third-hand?

  Finally, ten yoga breaths later, I walked into the kitchen, saw that Aunt Weepie had lit every candle I owned, bringing the extras in from the bathroom to scatter around the kitchen and living room. She knew exactly what a girl past 35 needed to soften her edges and give her a warm glow.

  I saw him, too, Croc Godfrey, and my breathing ceased. What in the world had happened to the man? I know his wife died, but he looked as if a parasite was eating him alive. Instead of appearing 38, he looked 10 years older even in the candlelight. When he smiled, his teeth were dingy, and I bet he hadn’t seen a dentist in years. Part of his front tooth was chipped, and it gave him an unsettling look I hadn’t expected. I’m not sure why I thought he would step right off time’s pages, torn right out of the ’80s, head bobbing and body jiving to the Doobie Brothers and Electric Light Orchestra, Eddie Money, BTO, Ambrosia and all those rock groups his own band copied at dances in school gyms and roadside dives.

  I expected him to look like Jon Bon Jovi, who in my opinion, aged as beautifully as any rock star could humanly do. Instead, Croc was only a speck of his old self, a flash of recognition in the eyes and the coloring, the height and the voice. The voice, beautiful and perfectly pitched, was exactly as it had been nineteen years ago, not deeper as I’d thought earlier.

  “Prudy,” he said, gulping. I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with nerves. He held out a hand for me to shake, as if we’d never had relations on a golf course in our lives.

  I took his hand and it trembled against my palm. I did what Amber does when she’s pretending to be a gracious society hostess for her gay chicken man husband’s crowd. I cupped his shaking hand with my other, protecting it, letting it know I was there for it, for him.

  “You look the same as ever, as pretty as you’ve ever been.”

  “That’s a stretch,” I said, trying to infuse humor into this funeral parlor-toned date. “But thanks. A girl never tires of that remark, I assure you. How was the drive from Nashville? That’s an awful long way.”

  “I worked a gig in Knoxville last night and stayed at the Ramada. I’m doing fine, sweet girl. It wasn’t a bad drive at all. Just a few short hours.”

  Aunt Weepie bustled in, waving around and putting on her mother-of-the-bride act, stepping in for my own mother who refused to show up “over my dead body.”

  “Go on out with him and you might as well put me in my mausoleum,” she had said. “Toe-to-toe. Don’t forget. We couldn’t afford the side-by-side plan. By the way, I got my Frequent Fl
yer miles so after this Croc business finishes me off, take yourself a fine trip around the world on my dead dime.”

  “You two don’t worry about a thing,” Aunt Weepie was saying. “I’ve got the kids covered. Movie. Popcorn. Bedtime at 9:30 or 10.”

  I checked my watch. It was 7. I hoped I’d be home long before 10. Why did I possibly think I could resurrect nineteen years by typing his name in Google? I wondered how many reconnections the Internet had sparked. Plug into the worldwide web and cast a net for all the exes out there waiting to be reeled in once more.

  I kissed Miranda bye and tried to hug Jay, but he wouldn’t even look at me. “I love you,” I told him. “I love you forever and always like in that book we read.”

  “That’s a baby book,” he said, briefly making enough eye contact so that I didn’t feel like jumping off a bridge into cold, deadly water. At least now he occasionally looked at people’s faces, thanks to the therapy sessions. Children seem to know just how far they can push it without polishing you off.

  Croc walked me outside into the stale air that had refused to cool. It must have remained in the high 80s, and with the humidity it felt like breathing the steam from a bowl of just-cooked pasta.

  “Got any place in mind?” I asked, wondering how to have a conversation with the man you lost your virginity to so long ago it may as well have been a clean slate. Born-again virgins they call us. I can see why. If you don’t keep at it, keep those sexual wheels in motion and in gear, they lock up, freeze, rust, forget what they are meant to do.

  He opened the car door for me, which he’d always done in high school, even when the other boys didn’t. His good manners, the fact he’d bring my mother flowers from his folk’s garden or home-grown tomatoes, were lost on her after his boozed-up Christmas caroling. The car was new and smelled like the factory, an aroma of leather and paint, carpet that hadn’t held a thousand spills or lost French fries. It was some sort of huge beastly four-wheel-drive, an Expedition or a Honda Pilot, I couldn’t tell, but I wondered why one man and one child would need such a behemoth.

  Suddenly, I remembered he was in a compact, maybe a Corolla, when the oil rig hit, so he probably feels protected in his gas guzzler.

  “You still like steak?” he asked. I nodded, sizing us up as we sat in the car, two stiff figures, one thin as a drinking straw, the other with a metal leg bone and scars through her neck and hands, along with a pair of jeans that pinched a stomach protruding over her pant’s zipper.

  I patted his arm, which I suddenly realized is what I did to the old folks at Top of the Hill. “Anything’s all right with me. I’m starved. How about you?”

  He didn’t say either way, but I’d be surprised if he ever felt the pangs of hunger. Some skinny people look hungry. His starvation was different—a more internal kind of hunger. Whatever he was wanting, from me, from life, food had nothing to do with it.

  “You know, Prudy, I was really surprised when you found me,” he said, turning on the CD player.

  I was expecting to hear Foreigner or the Eagles, Peter Frampton or music from our days and passion, when his big thing was playing ’70s hits, skipping most of the ’80s all together. Instead, he slipped in an Allison Krauss CD, her exquisite voice always bringing me to tears, and his choice taking me by surprise.

  She was one of my new favorites, besides my standby Dixie Chicks, but Croc had always hated country and bluegrass. He despised it in high school. I love Allison, her sweet tiny voice as beautiful as any I’d heard, the kind of voice all the princesses in Disney movies should emulate in order to lure to their sides flocks of birds and animals. Disney should consider paying Allison to sing when they draw up a new set of princesses.

  I leaned into the stiff leather seat and let the music take me where the conversation wasn’t.

  Finally, he spoke. “What made you do that? Look me up on the computer?”

  “Oh, right.” I thought for a moment and considered lying. I’m not sure why, but I told the truth stripped of games or pretenses, just as the evening was whittled of every expectation I had carried for days about a scorching reunion—a romance-novel pairing, heaving-breasts reunion, with promises and urgent kissing.

  I pushed a tear away before it fell and swallowed a huge lump in my throat. “I wanted to be her again.”

  He was quiet. He was a smart man. “I understand. She was something else, I’ll tell you. And you know what? I’ll bet she still is.”

  We rode through what seemed half of Spartanburg’s dozens of traffic lights, and Croc would slow down and come to a near stop even if the light was green. He’d reach for my hand and hold tightly, as if trying to keep me anchored to this seat, or maybe his heart.

  For a town this size, Spartanburg had a lot of traffic lights, or maybe it only seemed that way because I was nervous and Croc was driving like a little old man. I’d almost rather join Annie Sue behind the wheel.

  We passed all the usual sites – a couple of prestigious private colleges, a university branch, malls and outlets and huge superstores that popped up overnight, places like Old Navy and Toys R Us, Target, Super Wal-Marts and Kmarts, all signs the world thought it needed to grow bigger to feel better.

  The downtown was what I liked, old stores like the Leader, and Bon Marchè, the Belk’s building now a law firm and accountants’ offices. Each time I pass I remember shopping for Easter dresses with Mama, the smell of new clothes against my face, blinding white gloves, as I held them with excitement. Most of our life’s milestones were marked with trips to Belk: training bras, first pair of tap shoes and back-to-school clothes, even prom dresses. Whatever life dished up, Belk was ready to serve its purpose.

  Lots of character remained downtown, and I was thankful the Floridian-conforming developers hadn’t come in and stucco’d it like they had all the aluminum-sided strip malls. If I never saw another pale yellow stucco strip mall or gray-sided spec house trimmed in white, I’d be one happy woman. A town needed to keep its originality, didn’t need to lift its face except for a bit of paint and simple upkeep. Let the character shine through.

  That’s the one thing lacking along the perimeters of most cities with more than 40,000 people nowadays. They all look the same. Throw a person along the outskirts of any town in any state and the scenery wouldn’t change. Burger King, Taco Bell, Cracker Barrel and the gas stations with the restaurants unappetizingly attached. There is something quite depressing about walking into a Subway that has a Shell station sticking out front.

  I glanced at Croc and thought he could sure use a few burgers. It wouldn’t hurt him a bit to gain a good 30 or 40 pounds. I didn’t remember him this thin in high school or the first year of college when we dated weekends, before drifting apart, victims of distance and disinterest and my parents.

  He kept his eyes on the road, focused and intense, head nearly in the dashboard as he drove, eyes darting right to left as if trying to avoid enemy fire and didn’t know from which direction it might arrive.

  He didn’t ask me where I wanted to go, but kept driving, all the way down Pine Street until it crossed I-85 and he came to the Herron Traffic Circle where he pulled into Steak and Ale.

  I froze. I couldn’t breathe. My head filled up with too much hot blood. I had been listening to the silence filled with Allison Krauss, and before I knew it, this is where we were. Oh my God in heaven.

  “I hope this is good.”

  I said nothing. I tried, but couldn’t talk.

  “What’s the matter, Prudy?”

  I shrugged and hugged my body as if it were 20 degrees outside.

  “I’m sorry but I don’t guess I’m hungry,” I said. This is where Bryce used to take me.

  “I guess I’m not either.”

  He turned around and pointed his wheels toward Asheville, got on I-26 for a few miles and veered off at the exit that woul
d lead us to Lake Bowen where we’d spent much of our time getting to know each other at the edge of the water, deep in the woods, on decks, piers, houseboats. He searched for a place we used to go. After 19 years, it was still there—empty, dark . . . waiting for us.

  He parked in a clearing, opened his trunk and removed a wool blanket, a cooler and a bouquet of pink and orange Gerber daisies, my favorite. No fancy picnic basket. No Brie and crusty breads. No wine or champagne. Just a cooler filled with two beers, “in case you want one,” and two Cokes for himself. He also had a quart of chocolate chip ice cream and one big spoon, a couple of flashlights and some insect repellent. Practical, a side to him I’d never known.

  He opened a beer and handed it to me. The cold glass of the bottle sent a shiver up my spine, in contrast with the airless, muggy night. “It’s a Miller Lite,” he said smiling, moonlight catching his chipped tooth, the beams over water actually making him a whole lot more attractive. “I remember that’s what you and Claire drank. Whatever happened to her?”

  “I’ve tried calling a couple of times and just gave up.” I didn’t tell him I was too chicken to leave a message.

  He popped the tab of a Coke for himself. “Cheers,” he said. “To the present and the future.” It is odd that he didn’t say “the past” for wasn’t that why we were here, to fall back into those years that had been so good to us?

  I wanted that past. I wanted it so bad it hurt until I thought of Jay and Miranda and how that past didn’t include them.

  We walked farther into the woods, listening to the crickets and katydids, a dog howling in the distance, everything illuminated by this energetic half-moon and the faint yellow light from lakehouses pushing through the fully dressed summer trees.