Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle

by Reinhardt, Susan

“You won’t have to,” she said. “I hear the Lord calling me home.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rise and Shine, Prudy: A gift does wonders; it will bring you before men of importance. Proverbs 18:16

  Mama’s Moral: Give this important man a chance; and think of me while watching movies, hopefully nothing rated R, on your new DVD player.

  At precisely 8:16 p.m., as I stared for the twentieth time at my new hairdo in utter horror, there was a knock at the door, and this time, it was Mama, not Aunt Weepie, who ran down the stairs to let more of my past inside.

  “Coming,” she trilled, and I heard her heavy shoes on the stairs. I wished she had made him wait. As it stood, he was exactly 16 minutes late for our date, not quite the impression decent men care to make.

  “Oh, he probably got caught up in traffic,” she said, and I wondered when in the world Spartanburg ever had traffic after 6 p.m. Even during rush hour, the delays never amounted to more than a few extra minutes.

  I heard the door creak open, the old wood giving way once again to visitors, to this mystery man. My mother had been so excited the past couple of hours, ever since her meltdown prior to visiting the mall. She had smiled and become almost giddy, a mother who’d at least temporarily forgotten her daughters’ troubles: the gay husband, the jailed husband, the five might-as-well-be fatherless grandchildren and the assortment of uncertainty her grown children faced. It was her hope, at least I assume it was, that I should fall madly but not lustfully in love with the man knocking on the door.

  How in the world could I possibly let her down, especially after her mini-breakdown in my Honda? It had taken a Reese’s Cup and a Diet Pepsi to rouse her into enough of a state of normalcy to proceed with my appointment for beauty and new clothing, so that I might impress this creature now entering my rental unit with the Pier 1 and Bed Bath & Beyond accessorizing.

  Once the man got a load of my hair, which was crow-like in both color and feathery bang, he would run right back outside, bumping into the plastic pool on his way out of a potential nightmare. The hair was the disaster du jour, the handiwork of a Northside Mall stylist who treated me as walk-ins are often treated. No appointment, no pleasantries or juicy conversations. If a woman wants any of the above, she best have an appointment, keep it to the minute and have chosen a trendy, privately-owned salon with a name like Rumors or A Cut Above where they offer customers bottled water and even glasses of wine.

  Mall stylists are often in a league of their own. They are either fresh out of beauty school or fresh out of options, or just love the Gap so much they’ll work anywhere to be near one. Sometimes you get a great one, other times, well . . . you don’t.

  Another thing about mall stylists or any stylist without ideas, is that they’ll likely whip you into a mirror image of themselves or who they fancy being.

  My particular hairstylist from the Northside Mall had hair blacker than a moonless night, and I had repeatedly told her, “Just darken mine enough to get rid of the Linda Tripp look. Please, spare my light brown shade and highlights, at least the more subtle ones.”

  “Sure, whatever,” she said, not a bit more hearing me than Miranda did when I told her no more videos for the night. The beautician reached over me, pressing her $6,000 inflatables in my face and began mixing color.

  The result of her hidden agenda to transform everyone into a version of herself stared back at me in my antique vanity. Tomorrow, if only the mystery man Mama had summoned waited one more day, I’d have had enough time to redo my hair and get my natural shade back, whatever that was. Too late now.

  “How in the world you been?” I heard Mama saying in her high, sing-song, “I’m-just-a-classy-Joanne-Woodward-type” voice. In return, I heard a deep, unrecognizable muttering of clichéd responses.

  I scurried quickly into Jay and Miranda’s room to hide, find comfort in my babies’ presence and sneak a better peek than I would have been afforded from my own room.

  “Hey, darlings. What are y’all doing?”

  Jay actually looked up from his book and waved at me and my heart soared. He was doing much better. I believe the basketball camp was helping, plus Grampy was taking him to sporting events and the golf course. In addition, Jay had met a new friend at camp whose daddy had died after being struck by lightning and this seemed to even life’s score, so as not to appear all the bad had collected only in our court.

  “You look like the Addams Family lady,” he said. “Cool.”

  Miranda stuck out her tongue and made a face. “You look like a pooh-pooh. That stuff on your hair will give you lice bugs.” I tried to hug her but she backed away and grabbed Jay, hiding behind his shirt. Both of them pretended I was the mean monster lady and squealed and shrieked with delight as I played the part chasing them around and making ghoulish noises. Despite the nightmare they had actually lived, pretend fear for some reason comforted them.

  I heard the voices in the kitchen. “Y’all be quiet just for a second,” I said, opening the door a crack and seeing a pure-T hunk that the good Lord must have dropped down from heaven just for me on account of past pain and suffering. Thank you, Fortuna, Mother Mary, St. Francis of Assisi and every other goddess or saint in this world.

  This man was adorable, tall and curly-headed, kind of long-haired and foppish, a chiseled-faced thing with a suntan and wearing jeans that fit him like a Calvin Klein model. He had a fanny that shouted “Amen!” to me as my heart pounded, not with fear but with the most impure thoughts I’d had in a long, long time. I could show that man some Serta hospitality for sure. I thought Mama said he was a man I knew. I’d never laid eyes on this six-feet, three-inches of glory in my life.

  I gave myself another once over in the kids’ mirror. Whew, I was one ugly looking woman. Thank goodness for the wonderful white peasant blouse and slimming jeans Mama had bought me. Even my large arse could pass for an 8 in these well-cut pants. I wished turbans were in so I could cover up this ghastly crow hair. I’ll bet Aunt Weepie or Annie Sue had a turban, but it was too late in the game to round one up. I had an idea, though, and rummaged through Miranda’s drawer and found a thick white headband and pulled my black hair from my face, applied some pink frosted lipstick (which as I’ve noted previously will cure any beauty problem) and decided this was an improvement, despite the fact that an iron-on Barbie danced in ballet shoes on the side of my head. Maybe he wouldn’t notice the tiny figure emblazoned on the headband.

  I promised Jay a baseball game and Miranda a new Groovy Girl if they’d let me get through this one date without a hitch. “You guys behave for your Mama ’Cinda,” I said. Jay gave me a big hug. Miranda once more told me I was ugly but that the headband made me “one ounce better looking.”

  When I walked into the kitchen, my mother’s hand flew to her mouth. She’d zoomed right in on the Barbie headband. “Prudy, sweetheart, don’t you look pretty,” she lied, and I felt 12 again. Instinctively, my hand went to my neck and chest where the huge silver necklace, a woven pattern that took up a lot of space, covered most of the scars.

  The unbelievably attractive, throw-down-on-the-ground gorgeous man next to her nodded approvingly and winked. How vain I thought. He winked! Yuck. “You remember this fellow?” Mama said. “Be sure and think a minute before you answer, Prudy.”

  “It’s Dee. Tonight, it’s Dee.” I checked him out, and there was something oddly familiar about him, the eyes, the thick unruly hair. Maybe I did know him. I searched my mind and couldn’t place him, though I knew he was there, lost in the gray folds of living and too much information crowding those things I should have retained.

  “We’re not going to tell you. You have to guess,” he said. And then it hit me, the dimples I hadn’t seen since. Since . . . 1980. The image of a little boy, at our supper table, eating like it was his last meal, hair damp from our washing him in the bathroom sink, slammed
into me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing.

  I shook my head and said, “No. No way. How did you find him?”

  My mother smiled victoriously. So did Landon. The little boy who all but lived with us for a couple of years. The muddy neighbor boy whose mom had died of cancer, whose empty eyes had searched ours to fill his, whose precious dirty face was a staple at our kitchen table for nights of chicken casseroles and green beans with potatoes. I remembered his dimples, how he smiled when we put him in the sink and let the warm water rush through those thick curls. How we’d lather him up, singing while we suds, then fed him home-cooked meals and taught him about love and family and the etiquette of the South.

  Mama, as I recalled, had wanted to adopt him. And here was Landon . . . Landon . . . what’s his last name? . . . in my kitchen, drinking one of my Miller Lites and having himself a grand old time with my once sane mother who in the past 24 to 48 hours had turned from the stable branch of our frenetically fed family tree to the shakiest of all. Her behavior of late made Annie Sue and her “Hottie” T-shirt and naughty bar jokes seem almost blasé. She had soared above even my Aunt Weepie’s madness.

  In this state, this frantic condition, she could and would do anything. She was a woman whose daughters had plummeted from grace. She would take life by its choking collar and unleash what was rightly owed her of the good life. And here he was: Landon . . . Landon . . .

  “Tell me, because for the life of me I can’t remember,” I said, “What is your last name?”

  “Kennedy,” he said. A Kennedy. My mother had gone out and found her daughter a Kennedy. Who cared if he wasn’t anymore related to John-John than old Myrtle Monroe down in Seneca was related to Marilyn. It was a last name. Oh, but to my mother . . . She could tell the bridge club that her daughter, the one nearly murdered at BI-LO, has hooked up with a Kennedy. She might even dare whisper to a select few that he was a “distant cousin of the real thing,” and then sip her coffee in utter triumph.

  It takes a Southern daughter to understand the inner workings of the Southern-mother mind. I had her number, although it hung around my neck like a noose she could tug and pull at will.

  “It’s really wonderful to see you again,” I said to Landon, and he lifted his beer and took himself an introductory swig then released his grip on the bottle with a satisfied sigh. No return greeting. Where were the manners we’d taught the boy? My, to look so fine he was as rough around the edges as a pair of Annie Sue’s pinking-sheared short-shorts.

  “Prudy, you’ll never in a million years guess what he does for a living.” Mama was beaming. Any more endorphins and she’d have ascended to the heavenly kingdom she’s been awaiting since buying her mausoleum.

  I thought about potential careers for vagabond, motherless boys who liked dirt and sopping gravy with biscuits.

  “Got me.”

  “Guess, Prudy,” Mama demanded, opening the fridge and helping herself to a beer. My mouth dropped open. My mother didn’t drink beer but maybe once a year. She twisted the cap off with the tail of her silk shirt and held the beer to the light, then put her mauve lips around the opening, not even bothering to pour it in a glass. She tilted the bottle and swallowed six or seven times without pause. “Lord, have mercy, that’s delicious.”

  The world wasn’t spinning correctly; it had shifted, reversed, and nothing had been going right for the last two years in our family, particularly these past few months since I’d finally gotten a place of my own. “I can’t tell you how I met him or that would give it all away.”

  “Mother, it would be my best guess, given his physique and head of hair, that whatever he does definitely doesn’t involve the banking industry, the law profession or anything that requires conforming attire and mannerisms.”

  “Just talk plain, Prudy,” she said, finishing her beer and reaching for another. “I done told him you got yourself a B.S. degree. Ain’t no use putting on a pretense.” She was doling out double negatives and “ain’ts,” which she’d never done before. It was the beer. And now it’s back to the two basic types of women in the South. The classy preppy types who join sororities and service organizations and talk with proper grammar and a lovely Southern buttery drawl, and the redneck types, the hicks who have a certain beauty, granted, but one that is buried beneath tons of makeup, hard living and the unfortunate habit of smoking cigarettes, which can suck the prettiness right out of a girl.

  If say, a woman happens to fall somewhere between the two types, due to a generation or two of family members finding education and higher rungs on the social ladder, then it’s a sure bet that after a few beers she’ll land right back where the family originally began. She’ll be twanging and ain’ting and acting like she’d never in her life shopped anywhere but Wal-Mart at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night. My mama was 12 ounces away from becoming an aging redneck.

  I eyeballed the handsome man in front of me and secretly broke a few commandments. I figured he worked outside, given his muscles and bulging pecs. I was dead wrong.

  “You are tanned, well built . . . I would say you are a building contractor or an outdoor fitness instructor. Or maybe you’re a student. You can’t be more than 32.”

  “Close,” he said, grinning, those dimples sending my thoughts into the bedroom, a kitchen table, the woods, any surface would do. I did some figuring. If I slept with him, which I very much wanted to do in spite of his unpolished ways, this would put me well into digits that weren’t acceptable. I was already at 12 to 14, (my memory fuzzy about two of the encounters), unless one believes the lie I’d all but convinced myself to believe, the measly four men I’d told Bryce about. Going one more couldn’t hurt. It was too late to pull out of the double digits, and an extra lover would not bump me from the teens and into the super-slutty 20s. Why, I could even go up four more. No use sweating over adding him to the list.

  “Prudy, come on and guess, hon,” my mother said, sounding exactly like Wynonna Judd, not that there’s anything wrong with Wynonna, it’s just that usually Mama sounds more like Naomi or Ashley. The Judds, by the way, are perfect examples of the two factions of Southern women. All the Judds are pretty. One simply decided to stay on the lower rung, and, in a way, I had to admire her for doing so.

  “Pruuuuuuudy?” Mama licked foam from her top lip.

  “Tell me please, before I have to go find some fun on my own, leave you two here to reminisce and pretend to be Jackie and John-John splitting a sixer.”

  “Hush up, Prudy, and act sweet. Listen to this,” she shouted. “He’s a vet! A veterinarian! A man who takes care of—”

  “I know what a vet is, Mama.”

  Landon was smiling as if he’d finished Harvard at the top of his class and received the Nobel not long thereafter.

  “That’s great. Really, you must love working with the animals. We have a pet squirrel if you’re interesting in taking its pulse.”

  “Prudy, Wuudy,” my mother slurred, deep into her second beer, getting sloshed on a mere 24 ounces just like Annie Sue. “He’s a D-O-C-T-O-R.”

  “Are we still spelling, today? I realize vets have their doctorate degrees,” I said. “Did you tell him about my squirrel and how I’d brought it back to life with some good old mouth-to-mouth?”

  Mama ignored me.

  “It’s really a tough profession to break—” Landon was saying when Mama cut in.

  “I mean it ain’t, isn’t rather, the highest rooster in the pecking order of medical doctors—no offense, Landon, hon—but at least M.D. comes after his name. M.D.!”

  “Actually, Mrs. Millings, “It’s D.V.M., Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine.”

  Mama thought for a moment, eyes red and cheeks flush with drink. “Do they call you Dr. Kennedy?” she asked in a voice like a squealing pig getting ready for a fine cob of corn.

  “They sure do,” he s
aid, basking in my mother’s appreciation of his accomplishments.

  “Hear that, Prudy? You hear that? I had taken Kitty Bitty to get her shots and there he was, old Doc Newsome’s new partner. There he was. I couldn’t believe it. I ran out of there and forgot poor Kitty Bitty I was so beside myself. Are you aware of this man’s talents?”

  “I believe I understand them.” And I’m hoping he has others, I wanted to add but did not.

  “He cuts open baby animals and fixes their little intestines and stomachs and things. All those tiny parts must be much harder to operate on. I believe this makes him smarter than a doctor with bigger organs to fix. Makes him a genius. You know, Prudy, here? She’s got herself a genius back there in the back bedroom. Bona fide.”

  “I’ll have to meet him soon,” the Great Neutering One said, as if he’d do my child a favor by offering an introduction.

  “You ready to go?” I asked, but he and my mother were having another beer, his second, her third, before I went to the fridge and took the last one out and opened it myself, drinking it just so my kids wouldn’t have a sloshed babysitter.

  After about 30 minutes, during which time the kids ran around wild and hyped up on Mama’s insistence that Little Debbie’s were part of a major food group, the phone rang. I lunged for it, as if whatever was going on inside the receiver was better than the turn things were taking in what Mama likes to call my “rinky-dink rental.”

  “We really hate to bother you,” said the old woman downstairs that we’d rarely seen since moving in. “But Fred recently returned home from having by-pass surgery and he needs his rest. Could you have the children play a little more quietly?”

  I covered the receiver with my hand. “It’s the neighbors,” I said to the children. “Y’all please tone it down. She says we’re too loud . . . I’m so sorry, Mrs. . . . uh—”