Maggie Sweet

by Judith Minthorn Stacy

  I grinned back. He remembered. “Things changed. You were going to be a writer. Whatever happened to that?”

  He laughed. “Lord, Maggie Sweet. You’re the only one in the world who’d remember that, the only one who knew about it.” He grinned at Mary Price and Hoyt. “Who would have thought it? All those years I tried to be this tough guy, but Maggie Sweet had my number all along. You all didn’t know it, but I was really Dixie Burger’s writer-in-residence.”

  Everyone laughed. Jerry reached over and filled my coffee mug. I stared at his arms, his long, slender fingers. Just talking about all our old dreams made me sick with longing.

  I shook my head to clear it.

  “Well, Maggie, we’re fixing to ride out, see what all Jerry’s got to do to the old place,” Hoyt said.

  “Everything needs doing,” Jerry said. “But the Navy always called us Seabees the ‘dirt Navy.’ We built barracks, cleared land, only now it’ll be my place, my land, and I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  “All the time in the world.” He’d actually be living here. I’d be bumping into him everywhere. Suddenly all the air went out of the room. If Jerry so much as looked at me again, I’d start hyperventilating, calling for a paper bag. I’d look like a fool, sitting here in Mary Price’s kitchen with a paper bag over my face.

  I stood. “It was good to see you, Jerry. But I’ve got to go…got a lot to do.”

  He stood. “It’s been great seeing you. I wish you could stay. But I guess we’ll be seeing each other all the time now.”

  Mary Price winked. “Thanks for the warning, right, Maggie?”

  This was where I was supposed to say something clever, some high school line like “Not if I see you first!” But nothing came to mind.

  Thank heaven, Mary Price slipped her arm through mine and walked me to the door. Walking and breathing seemed to be a full-time job.

  All the way home, my thoughts raced. What was I going to do? I’d never considered being unfaithful to Steven. Never even been tempted. Why had Jerry come here, now, at the most mixed-up, restless time in my life?

  Then I remembered his eyes, the way the whole room seemed to disappear around him, just like the first time we’d met, all those years ago at the sock hop. For years, I’d pushed Jerry’s memory so far back in my mind that there were times I’d started to think that I’d made him up. Made us up. Now here he was. A live flesh-and-blood person; near at hand, just out of reach. It would be so easy.

  You’re not a love-struck teenager anymore. You’re married. I know! You’ve got to stop this. I know! What are you gonna do? I don’t know. You’ll stay away. I’ll stay away.

  That night at supper Steven said, “Well, for heaven’s sake, Maggie. Aren’t you going to comb your hair today?”

  “It is combed. It’s the latest style in Southern Hairdo magazine.

  “Then it’s supposed to stick up like that,” he said, trading a smirk with Amy.

  My hands automatically smoothed my hair.

  “Don’t touch it, Mama. I like it,” Jill said.

  “Thanks, Jill.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t get too excited, Mama. We all know what tacky taste Jill has,” Amy said.

  I didn’t say anything. I just looked at Amy.

  “Now, Maggie, don’t go getting your feelings hurt,” Steven said. “All Amy’s trying to say is you’re thirty-eight, not eighteen. You’ve got to admit that middle-aged women look ridiculous when they try to look young.”

  That night, I dreamed I was in a woods, following a path through a heavy fog. The fog was so thick I could barely see, but I knew if I didn’t stay on the path something awful would happen. I fumbled on, keeping my eyes down, concentrating on never letting my feet leave the path. At times the fog got so bad, I couldn’t see the path at all. When that happened, I’d stand completely still, afraid that if I moved, even an inch, I’d get so far off the path, I’d never find my way back.

  Then the fog would lift for a second and I’d take another step or two before the path vanished again.

  Suddenly the path just stopped and I was at a crossroads.

  I stood there, staring at the Y in the road. There wasn’t a single sign to guide me, to show me which road to take.

  I looked back toward the path I’d already taken, but it had vanished without a trace to show it had ever existed.

  There was a sinking feeling in my stomach as I turned and faced the crossroads. I knew I had to decide which road to take, or stand in the same place for all of eternity.

  Chapter 9

  Monday morning, after everyone left for school, I decided to stay too busy to think. I covered my hair with a bandanna and started the spring cleaning. I was defrosting the refrigerator when Mary Price knocked on the back door. She was dressed in a yellow cowgirl outfit and carrying an Eckerd bag.

  “Maggie Sweet,” she said, pushing past me into the kitchen, “I’ve had the greatest idea in the world and you’re the only one who can help me.”

  I froze. I hadn’t talked to Mary Price since Saturday. For two days, I’d been hiding out in the house. I still wasn’t ready to talk about Jerry, not even with Mary Price.

  She went to the counter, poured herself a cup of coffee, and lit a Virginia Slim, talking a blue streak the whole time.

  “It’s been a whole year since me and Hoyt started playing at the That’lldu. If I’da known we’d still be there I’da stuck my head in the oven and been done with it.”

  I relaxed. She wasn’t here to talk about Jerry.

  “It isn’t that bad, Mary Price,” I said, avoiding her eyes while I told this big lie.

  “It is that bad,” she said. “But something happened Saturday night that told me what I need to do to get out of there.”

  “You’re not going to quit, are you? I mean, it might not be much, but the That’lldu is the only place that pays you cash money to sing.”

  “If you call that money. The way Hoyt manages us it’s costing us money to work there. Anyway, I’m not quitting. Not yet.”

  She flopped down in a kitchen chair. “But what I’ve got in mind is my ticket out. I just know it’ll start me and Hoyt on the road to fame and fortune.”

  She set the Eckerd bag on the table and pulled out a package of Lady Clairol Champagne Blonde hair color, plastic gloves, and a beautician’s cape.

  “Well, Mary Price…what in the world?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Saturday night, I was strutting my stuff, belting out a Tanya Tucker number….”

  “I love Tanya.”

  “Me too. Especially ‘I’ll Come Back as Another Woman,’ which is something I’m fixin’ to do.”

  “Lord, Mary Price!”

  “I mean it. Saturday night this old boy at the bar kept staring at me. Finally, during our break, he came over and said, ‘Honey, you sound just like Tanya when you sing that song. You even look a little like her too.’” Then Mary Price started waving the boxes around, like I could read her mind.

  “Saturday, when I saw your new hairstyle, I knew you could do it,” she said, seeing she had to spell it out for me. “I want you to color my hair like this,” she said, pulling out a record album with a picture of Tanya Tucker on the cover.

  “You want me to bleach your hair?”

  “Does Bubba drive a truck?” she asked. She tore the Clairol box open, like it was decided.

  Stalling for time, I started a new pot of coffee. But Mary Price was already covering her cowgirl outfit with the cape.

  “Mary Price, sometimes you worry me to death. You know this is a cut, rinse, set, kind of town. I haven’t done a bleach job since beauty school. I mean, I get to do a precision cut now and then, or even a Frost ’n Tip, but never an out-and-out bleach job.”

  “Jumping Jesus, Maggie Sweet! You wouldn’t recognize opportunity if it knocked you slam into next week. You’ve been talking about Styles by Maggie for years. Now I’m offering you the chance of a lifetime, a chance to be Maggie Sweet, hai
rdresser to the stars!”

  “But bleach, Mary Price. It could ruin you for life.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Only that your hair could fall out. There isn’t much call for Kojak look-alikes in the country-western field.”

  “Shoot! It’s only hair. If it don’t work out, it’ll always grow back. Besides, I want you to whack most of it off anyway; one of those precision cuts but not too precise. Sort of a cross between Tanya, Tammy, maybe a little Anne Murray. You know, my own look.”

  That’s Mary Price all over. Impulsive and hardheaded. Once she gets an idea in her head, there’s no talking to her. Also I’ve noticed that since she’s taken up country singing she talks country all the time. She doesn’t have to. She just wants to. But she sure knew how to work me. Maggie Sweet, hairdresser to the stars, did have a nice ring to it.

  After stalling all I could, I poured myself a cup of coffee, read the Lady Clairol directions over and over again, and then did it. I bleached her hair. ’Course the whole time I was slathering on the bleach goop, I kept praying that it would come out all right.

  By lunchtime we were finished and when I handed her the mirror, she was tickled to death. “Lord, Maggie Sweet, it’s even better than I thought. I just hope Hoyt can stand all this beauty in one person.”

  She was right. The short champagne blond hairdo suited her. All her life she’d had mousy brown hair. “Hair-colored hair,” she called it. ’Course her personality more than made up for it, but now her hair matched her personality.

  When she got ready to leave, I followed her. It was as if I couldn’t stand to see her go. Because Mary Price had changed. She was all lit up, like someone had flipped on a switch. When she went out the back door, I had this terrible sinking feeling that my old friend was gone forever, that this sparkling, shimmering stranger had taken her place.

  I walked her out the driveway and as she got in the Silverado, I said, “Mary Price, what in the world is Hoyt going to say about all this?” (I didn’t really care what Hoyt said, I was trying to keep her from leaving, from going out of my life.)

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said, drilling me with her eyes. “All weekend, we fussed and argued. Finally this morning he said, ‘Hell, Mary Price, why don’t you just suit your own damned self. That’s what you always do anyway.’ Well, that flew all over me! I mean, if I’d been suiting myself I’da never been at the That’lldu in the first place. So I said, ‘All right, Hoyt Bumbalough. I will suit myself.’”

  She paused, then looked away. “I’ve been thinking how it’s been twenty years since we left school. Twenty years, Maggie Sweet! And I’ve settled for being a second-rate singer in a redneck bar. Well, maybe I can’t do any better than that, but I’ve got to try. I mean, even Toy Overcash was willing to try.”

  Until that moment, I’d always thought Mary Price was fearless. Now I saw she was scared, just like me. Only, scared or not, she was going ahead anyway.

  “Listen, Maggie Sweet, our lives are slipping by while we wait around for something to happen. Well, we can’t just wait. There’s no law that says a person has to settle. We’ve got talent, Maggie. We’ve got what it takes. We’ve just got to let everyone know it.”

  “Lord, Mary Price, I don’t have any talent.”

  “You’re only the best hair stylist in town. Only you’ve been so busy doing whatever it is housewives do that we all forgot. When I saw your new hairdo Saturday I thought, Lordymercy, I didn’t know Maggie had it in her. I’m your best friend and even I didn’t know. We’ve got to show them, Maggie. And that’s what I’m fixing to do.”

  Then she climbed into the truck, blew me a kiss, and drove off.

  After she left, I stood on the porch for a long time. I wanted to chase the Silverado down the street, wanted to shout, “Mary Price, come back. Please don’t leave me! I’m not ready. I need you to tell me what to do. I don’t know what’s right or wrong, what’s brave or foolish.”

  And then, because I didn’t know what else to do, I dried my eyes and went back inside to finish the refrigerator.

  Chapter 10

  That night I drove to Winn-Dixie to pick up more Windex, Murphy Oil Soap, and paste wax for the spring cleaning. It was the first time I’d left the house in days so I was kind of jumpy anyway. To make matters worse, I was barely through the door when I saw Dreama Nims pushing her grocery cart past the dog food aisle.

  Since Dreama was the last person I wanted to see, I ducked behind a paper towel display ’til she went on to the dairy lane.

  When I saw her muumuu disappear around the corner, I slipped up the cleaning-supply aisle, grabbed what I needed, and headed for the meat department to hide out ’til the coast was clear.

  Darting to the back of the store, I saw a blond, spiked-haired woman in a yellow cowgirl suit, hugging a tall, dark-haired man near the T-bone steaks.

  Lordhavemercy! It was Mary Price and Jerry. I froze. But Mary Price saw me and waved.

  She came toward me. “I was just fixing to call you. Oh, Maggie, the most amazing thing in the world happened. You tell her, Jerry. I can’t talk—I’m as jumpy as a cockroach in a hot skillet!”

  Jerry smiled. “Should I start at the beginning or just blurt it out?”

  “Well, Lord, Jerry, I could blurt it out. I want you to start at the beginning, complete with the drum rolls.”

  “All right. Here goes. It all started after Mary Price left your house this morning. She drove straight to Charlotte and found herself a talent agent—.”

  “—Not just any talent agent,” Mary Price interrupted. “The best talent agent in the entire Southeast! But go ahead, Jerry.”

  Jerry laughed. “Well, the agent took one look at her yellow cowgirl suit and yellow hair and the poor woman was—”

  “—She was overcome! Completely overcome,” Mary Price said, her eyes as big as soup tureens. “The next thing I knew she was listening to my tape, changing Hoyt’s and my name to The Traveling Bumbaloughs, and by three o’clock we had a major audition.”

  “An audition. Oh, Mary Price, that’s wonderful!” I said.

  “But it gets better. Oh, Maggie Sweet, we got the job! Saturday night we’ll be one of the featured acts at Palomino Joe’s!”

  “I’ve heard about Palomino Joe’s. They’ve got this big sawdust-covered floor for dancing, plank tables, pitchers of beer,” Jerry filled in.

  “And it’s not just pickup bands, either. Vince and George and Charlie have all been through there and now we’re the featured act! We’ve only got one set, but if they like us there’s no telling. And I aim to see that they like us,” Mary Price said.

  “You may touch her now,” Jerry said. “’Course you’ll have to get in line for autographs.”

  Mary Price took a deep stagy bow, then jumped up and spun around. “Oh, Maggie, I can’t believe it! It’s starting!”

  Just then Hoyt came up the aisle carrying a bottle of champagne. When he saw us, he grinned, flung his arms around all of us, and hugged us tight.

  “Oh, Lord!” I said, hanging onto them for dear life. They were my childhood, my history, my past—Mary Price and Hoyt, Maggie Sweet and Jerry, together 4-ever. I’d come home.

  I started to cry.

  Mary Price pulled away, “Lord, Maggie, don’t. You’ll have me bawling in a minute. We need to be dancing, not having a big old bawling session here in the Winn-Dixie.”

  “I guess I’m like your agent—completely overcome,” I said, laughing through my tears.

  Then Hoyt grabbed Mary Price and Jerry grabbed me and the four of us did a smooth combination line dance, Texas two-step through the meat aisle.

  Jerry held me tight. “Maggie Sweet, it’s so good to be back. I wouldn’t have missed this for anything in the world!”

  That’s when Dreama Nims nabbed us, laughing and dancing in the meat aisle at the Winn-Dixie.

  Chapter 11

  Dancing with Jerry at the Winn-Dixie had brought me back to life. But o
ver the next few days I wondered if he’d saved my life or ruined it.

  Tuesday morning, I lost my simple mind and drove past the city limits sign, the That’lldu, the Jesus-or-Hell bridge, past the Dinglers’ house, the stand of loblolly pines, Belews Pond and wound up on Chatham Road.

  Thank goodness, Jerry wasn’t home. I don’t know what would have happened if he’d been there. Would I have flung myself into his arms, lived out my schoolgirl dreams? Made a fool of myself? Wrecked everyone’s lives?

  It was such a close call that when I got back home, I was still shaking. Because while my heart was buckling at the knees, my head said, “For goodness sake, Maggie, you’re thirty-eight, not eighteen. The time for dancing in the aisles is over.”

  While my heart said, “He’s the one for you,” my head said, “Your family’s counting on you. You’re a good Methodist girl from Poplar Grove, North Carolina. You can’t change that. You can’t go back on your raising.”

  But spring cleaning, I’d catch myself line-dancing the oil soap over the mahogany paneling, shagging the velvet drapes on down to the dry cleaners, Western-swinging the steam cleaner over the rugs, and scrubbing the floors to George Strait’s “Second Chance.”

  When Mary Price called, I was oil-soaping the kitchen cupboards. “I’ve reserved a big table up front for my friends at Palomino Joe’s Saturday night,” she said.

  This surprised me so, I didn’t say anything.

  “Maggie, are you still there? You are planning to go, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world,” I said, not missing a beat. But after we hung up, I realized I hadn’t even thought about going to the opening. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go. I was just so out of the habit of going anywhere, it never came to me to think that I could go. I’d never gone to see her at the That’lldu. Steven had had a hissy fit the one time I mentioned it, so I dropped it. But Palomino Joe’s was the biggest thing that had ever happened to Mary Price. I couldn’t let her down again.