by Peggy Webb
She leaves and closes the door behind her. She’s a pretty woman, not unlike the women I grew up with who devoted most of their time and effort to their families. Not enough makeup, a little too much fat around the middle, a touch of gray in her brown bob, oversized T-shirt over her jeans instead of a nice, crisp blue blouse that would bring out the color of her eyes.
She has a generous heart, too, something I’ve rarely seen in the last few years.
When Rick brought me here earlier in the afternoon, she said, “You can stay with us as long as you need to. Just make yourself at home. Our house is your house.”
When I offered to pay for room and board, they turned me down flat. In fact, I think I insulted them. Unintentionally, of course. It’s going to take me a while to remember all things Southern. Rule number one: when somebody does something nice for you, don’t grab your pocketbook. Just say thank you.
I suppose I can regroup here as well as I could have in Jackson. The point never was to return to a place of bricks and mortar but to return to Mississippi. At least I’ll be in a charming home filled with real people instead of a childhood home filled with ghosts.
After my parents drove their car into a train three years ago, I toyed with the idea of selling the house, but it’s more than a house: it’s my roots and my anchor. Although I rarely visit, I know the place is always there, my little piece of the Deep South, a reminder of where I started, how far I’ve come and who I am.
Thank the lord I don’t have to worry about paying the bills till I can get my fighting boots back on, return to Hollywood and kick some serious butt.
As I grab a piece of chicken and crunch into the savory crust, I think how lucky I am. Really. I don’t have what the Millers have—a loving partner to make the world feel safe and wonderful—but I do have the luxury of not having to worry about missing a few weeks work. Shoot, I could miss a few years and still be on solid financial ground. Of course, I have no intention of staying away from my work.
If Jenny keeps bringing me food like this I’ll be up in no time and plotting a triumphant return to TV Land.
In the meantime I chow down on gravy and biscuits while real life unfolds outside my door.
I don’t mean to eavesdrop. In spite of my character flaws, I haven’t sunk that low. Still, when Rick and Jenny’s voices float over the transom and through the walls, I can’t help but hear.
“Don’t wait up for me, Jen. I’ll be working late at the restaurant tonight.”
“Oh, Rick. Again?”
“You know how big the crowds are getting.”
Jenny’s husband kisses her. I can hear it plain as day, and all of a sudden I’ve lost interest in what they’re saying.
I haven’t had a kiss in five years that wasn’t orchestrated by a TV director. And though I love acting, there are times when I long to be one of a pair, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so with embroidered pillows on the bed, side by side. I don’t know what it’s like to have strong arms around me, and the sweet comfort of a man who understands that cuddling always makes things better.
I can’t stand this. There’s too much here to remind me of all the things I’ve lost. Or more precisely, never had.
Setting the tray on the bedside table, I ease out of bed and wobble toward the bathroom on my crutch. The nurses at the hospital sponged off the mud, but a good hot bath and a shampoo will make me feel better. Propping my crutch against the sink, I sit on the edge of the tub and unwrap the stretchy bandage from my ankle.
I’m glad it’s time to take another pain pill. I hope it makes me sleep through all this marital bliss. If I have to hear the loving-couple sounds of Rick and Jenny Miller in the middle of the night, I won’t be responsible for what I might do.
Screaming comes to mind.
Who stole my obedient daughter and turned her into a teenager?
—Jenny
WELL…there goes my drop-dead-gorgeous husband who could have women falling at his feet just by crooking his finger. And who knows? Maybe they do. Maybe that’s why Rick has been working late every night for the last six months.
I can do two things: I can pitch a fit like my mother-in-law, Godzilla, which involves pouting and noisy tears followed by a few choice words that curl the ears of small dogs and innocent children. Or I can do what any normal under-appreciated, under-endowed housewife would do—pick up the torch of civic duty and ramrod every women’s club, charity benefit and cakewalk in Mooreville. Give me a telephone and a couple of days and I could get Banjo elected President. Of the United States, not the Mooreville Kennel Club.
As I march toward the telephone, I detour to Angie’s room. Sprawled on the bed with the telephone growing from her ear, she’s dark, long-limbed and gorgeous. Just like her daddy.
“Angie.” I can recognize a guilty jump a mile away. “You’re not talking to Jackson Tucker, are you?”
“No.” A bald-faced lie. I can tell by the way she widens her big brown eyes. “I was talking to Sally. About going to the library tomorrow morning.”
Angie reading? In the summer? No way.
“Great. Maybe you can get a headstart on some of your senior English reading.”
“Sure thing, Mom.” She twists her long black ponytail around her finger and gives me a radiant smile. Another gift from her father. I swear, let these two smile at you and you’re putty in their hands.
Any other time and I’d call her bluff. No seventeen-year-old should be fooling around with a twenty-five-year-old, I don’t care how good he is at fixing cars. Especially a wild buck like Jackson Tucker. But I’m not going to start a family ruckus in front of Gloria Hart, of all people.
“Hurry up and finish the call, Angie. I need to make a few calls about the barbecue at Tuck’s.”
Yet another charity benefit after I swore to Rick I’d cut back. But this is for a good cause, one he should appreciate—the volunteer fire department.
Life would be simpler if we had two phone lines. Angie’s been lobbying for her own for two years, and Rick wants to get it for her. I lost the argument about getting her a car, but I’m holding firm about the phone. I was brought up to believe you ought to earn your way, that life doesn’t get handed to you on a silver platter. If I left the child-raising decisions to Rick, he’d already have given Angie Mexico City wrapped in a gold ribbon with Tijuana thrown in for good measure.
The minute I turn my back, Angie says into the phone, “Bye. Gotta go.”
Another clear sign she’s defying me by carrying on her dangerous flirtation with a young man who’s far too old and worldly wise for her. I swear, he is so busy racing around on his motorcycle I don’t know how he runs a garage and repair shop.
Well, actually I do. With help from his daddy. Matt Tucker (Tuck, we call him) can fix anything except his own lonely life.
Who am I to talk? I can’t fix my boxed-in, disappointing life, either.
When our marriage started out, I was Rick’s right-hand woman, not only his loving wife but his helpmate in his fledgling restaurant. I was acting as hostess, booking little private parties for the banquet room and helping in the office. Then one day, the cook got sick and I pitched in. One taste of my pies, and the customers were hooked.
After Angie was born, I moved pie-making operations to the house, and the rest is history. I’m here, Rick’s there, and nothing’s in between. We hardly ever see each other except to say, “Pass the biscuits.”
Now I take the portable kitchen phone off its base then fix a big bowl of peach cobbler with ice cream to nibble while I call my best friend Laurel. I might as well. What’s another pound or two? And who notices, anyhow? Certainly not my husband.
“You’ll never guess who’s staying at my house.” When I tell her about Gloria, she squeals like a teenager. This is one of the things I love most about her: in spite of holding the staid position as director of the Lee County Library, in spite of being an icon to the community, she’s still a little girl at heart.
Laurel demands full detail
s, and after I promise to make sure she gets to meet Gloria, I take a big bite of cobbler, let the comfort of peaches and cream settle on my tongue and my thighs, then dial the first of fifty people on my list. Thank goodness, this will take a while. Long enough for me to have another helping of peach cobbler with maybe some toasted English walnuts on the side and forget that the black silk nightgown I bought on my fortieth birthday last September is going to waste in my bedroom closet.
I had such hopes for that gown. Visions of me wrapped in my husband’s arms in a state of connubial bliss.
What has happened to us? All I’ve ever wanted was to be loved by Rick Miller.
Banjo slides under the table and licks my ankle while Rollo sits at the base of my chair and puts his head on my knee.
At least the dogs love me.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Rick does still love me. Maybe he’ll surprise me and come home early tonight.
I turn my full attention to the telephone and the peach cobbler.
At nine-thirty I fold my list, put the phone in its cradle and join Angie in the den where she’s watching Tristan and Isolde on HBO.
The clock inches toward eleven while hope fades. I take a tissue from the box and cry over the fate of star-crossed lovers everywhere.
When did Mom start riding a broomstick?
—Angie
I CAN IDENTIFY with this movie. As far as I’m concerned, Tristan and Isolde could be Jackson and me with warring separate nations trying to keep us apart. Not that Mom’s a warring nation, but when she gets on her high horse—which happens all the time lately—you feel like she’s sicced an army on you, got you bound and gagged and thrown in the dungeon waiting to get your head chopped off.
She’s says I’m overly dramatic, but she’s the one who wanted me to be the star of all the school plays. What did she expect?
Now here she is hogging all the popcorn and acting like my best buddy when I know good and well she’s plotting to keep Daddy from getting me a cell phone. Or anything else I want that shows I’m growing up.
Why can’t she see I’m not a little girl anymore? She was practically married at my age, and if there’s a more wonderful man than my daddy, I don’t know who. If Mom was old enough when she was in high school to pick him out, why can’t I?
We’ve come to the good part of the movie now—I’ve seen it a dozen times—where Tristan and Isolde get back together. Secretly, of course. This part always makes me cry. And want butter.
Naturally when I reach for the popcorn all I get is a few hard kernels. Mom’s hogged it all and is sitting over there on her side of the couch sniffing into a tissue, acting like she sympathizes with their plight.
She wouldn’t understand star-crossed lovers if you tattooed it on her forehead. She’s too busy trying to keep me from growing up.
I wish she could be more like Sally’s mom. Mrs. Talant lifts Sally’s curfew on weekends. She’s not on her case about everything, either. Last week when Sally and I smoked in her bedroom, I know good and well her mom smelled the smoke, even though we took turns standing at the open window and fanning. But she didn’t say a word.
Mom would have stormed in there acting like we’d committed a cardinal sin. She’d have spent ten minutes lecturing us about lung cancer and premature babies. I know her like a book.
The only thing she’s done to surprise me lately is let a real Hollywood actress stay with us. I haven’t met her yet, but Dad said she was driving a Ferrari and that she took her wreck like a champ.
See, that’s what I’m talking about. Why can’t Mom take a few things in stride?
I’m hoping Miss Hart stays long enough so some of her joie de vivre will rub off on Mom.
I feel so cool knowing that expression. Maybe Mom ought to take French.
Is Squirt still a term of endearment, or is it merely the sound mustard makes when it spews out of the bottle and all over your blouse?
—Jenny
NOISES IN MY HOUSE wake me at 4:00 a.m.
I turn to wake Rick, but his side of the bed is empty. Either he didn’t come home last night or he’s gone to the kitchen to get a snack or even put on the coffee. An insomniac, he has a tendency to prowl the house at all hours.
Putting on my faded summer seersucker robe and terry-cloth slippers, I tiptoe through the semidarkness toward the light burning in the kitchen.
And that’s when I hear my husband’s voice and the unmistakable sultry drawl of daytime TV’s most beautiful femme fatale.
Rick is leaning against the stove by the coffeepot, smiling, while Gloria sits at the kitchen table, her crutch propped against her chair and her long blond hair flowing down the back of an elaborately bejeweled and embroidered red silk dressing gown. It probably cost more than my Chevrolet pickup.
A woman has no right to look that incredible at four in the morning without a stitch of makeup, especially in front of my husband, who is clearly appreciating every minute of this kitchen rendezvous.
The green-eyed monster waylays me with such force I feel like bopping Rick on the head with the coffeepot. Instead I stand in the doorway—unnoticed, might I add—until I can get my unexpected jealousy under control.
After all, I’m being ridiculous. Why in the world would Hollywood’s glamour queen have the slightest interest in a small-town man of modest means who has never done anything more exciting than score the winning goal to cinch the state championship for his high school’s basketball team?
That doesn’t take into account our honeymoon in Las Vegas where he lit every one of my lights.
And they haven’t gone out since.
On the other hand, Gloria has stolen three husbands and brought two kings to their knees. Of course, that’s her TV persona, Jillian Rockwell, but still, there was that real-life scandal with the famous movie director.
You never know how closely art imitates life.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says. “I seem to have awakened the entire house.”
Standing there feeling like a toad I note that everything about her is gorgeous, from the top of her lustrous blond hair to the tips of her perfectly manicured nails. Not to mention she’s wearing an emerald ring as big as my head.
The pocket of my robe is ripped and the seat is worn almost threadbare. I feel like a bag of rumpled laundry. A jealous bag.
“She came in to get some ice just as I was coming home,” Rick says.
He was just coming home? This is supposed to make me feel better?
“After I closed the restaurant I was doing accounts and fell asleep over the books.”
First Angie lies about Jackson and now Rick makes up this flimsy story. Is everybody in my family conspiring to make me look foolish in front of a woman I’ve cheered for, wept with, idolized and secretly envied every day at noon for the last twenty years?
“Oh,” is all I can say.
I feel naked standing in the door with my feelings showing all over my face. After all, I’m no Emmy-award-winning actress.
Gloria grabs her crutch and stands. Towers is more like it. Even in bare feet she’s at least four inches taller than my five feet five inches. And about a million times sexier.
“I’d better get back to my bedroom so everybody can sleep.”
Rick watches her hobble out, then turns off the coffeepot. I guess it would have been fun to drink coffee with Gloria. I guess I’m just chopped liver.
He drapes his arm around my shoulder and squeezes.
“Let’s go to bed, Squirt.”
That’s been his nickname for me since he first saw me in the sandbox at Ballard Park. I was two and he was four. The name became public knowledge when I stood on the sidelines in my pleated cheerleader’s skirt and pom-poms shouting into a megaphone so everybody in the Mooreville High School gymnasium would cheer for the basketball star. As he dribbled the ball past me, he shouted, “You tell ’em, Squirt.”
I used to love that name. Now I’m hoping Gloria didn’t hear it. I’m wishing he’d call me
something else. Darling. Sweetheart. Precious.
If I thought I was precious to Rick Miller, I’d die a happy woman.
In the bedroom we lie side by side not touching, not even our hips.
“Are you okay, Squirt?”
“Sure.”
I know I ought to shut up and go to sleep. I know heated words spoken at 4:00 a.m. can lead to regret in the bright light of day. But it’s like picking a sore you know is going to bleed. You just can’t let it alone.
“So, you slept slumped over a desk all night?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t get a crick in your neck? Your legs didn’t go to sleep all scrunched up under the desk? You didn’t even have to get up to pee?”
“Jen, do you know how that sounds? Just let it alone. You’re imagining things.”
“Maybe I need a brain transplant.”
I’m on a roll here. There are all kinds of cutting things I can say about him making coffee before daylight for a woman who can mesmerize a nation with one look from her incredible violet eyes.
But Rick puts his hand on my thigh, and I hold my breath, waiting, hoping. Finally I can no longer stand the suspense.
“Does this mean the dry spell is over?”
“’Night, Jen.”
Rick rolls over and turns his back to me.
Great. I can’t let well enough alone. I can’t swallow my pride long enough to accept a little peace offering. I have to be a snippy hog, mad because six months of strangers-in-the-same-bed didn’t get wiped out in one big passionate hurrah.
We were going to be the kind of couple who always had something to say to each other across the breakfast table, the kind who greeted each other at the end of a day’s work as if we’d been separated by war, the kind who fed each other popcorn at the movies even after we had to get bifocals to see the box.
Lying there with my hopes dashed and my dreams shattered, I watch the clock inch toward morning.
