This column garnered raucous response, both from the original letter writers as well as from Sam, Susan, and Caroline as they took turns reading the correspondence aloud.
They laughed after Caroline, who’d use different voices to better limn the letter writer, read a note signed “Mrs. Anonymous” because “that’s how I felt when I had to take my big lug of a husband’s name and especially when I couldn’t seem to get rid of it even after the big lug and I divorced!” and continued to laugh when Sam, inspired by Caroline’s interpretive rendering, huffed and puffed while reading a letter from the dogged Mr. Joseph Snell: “While having my morning coffee, I don’t mind reading the light piffle that is this columnist’s usual fare, but this morning’s looney harangue was nothing more than a chronicle of a radical hag!”
“Whoa,” said Caroline. “That guy’s got a problem.”
Sam flipped the notepaper over to see the memo stapled to it.
“Mom, it’s a memo from your grandpa. Listen.” He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Dear Radical Hag, Maybe you should add a recipe or a diet tip to soften your looney harangues, ha ha. P.S. There are so many readers’ comments to choose from, I wouldn’t give Snell the satisfaction of seeing this in print unless you’d like to do a little public tussling?”
“Oh, Sam, let me see that,” said Susan, and after a quick perusal, she added, “So that’s where it came from.”
“What?” asked both Sam and Caroline.
“Every now and then when Haze would turn in what she knew would be a controversial column, she’d put a sticky note on it saying, “From the Chronicles of a Radical Hag.’”
Picking a typewritten page from the stack of papers in front of her, Caroline smiled. “Look—it’s Haze’s very next column—with a recipe!”
May 8, 1968
I could pen a long defense, but I won’t waste precious time—especially the precious time of men, who by an overwhelming majority were the ones most offended by my last column about taking or not taking one’s husband’s name. (Jeepers, you would have thought I’d asked for an amendment to the Constitution to rip away men’s names and their masculinity!)
Instead, I offer a recipe of my great-aunt Alma’s cookies, with the suggestion that the baker in your household whip up a batch of these delectable cookies. I am certain I will then be forgiven for future hooey/baloney/radical haggishness that may appear in my columns. Really, they’re that good. (The cookies, not the hooey/baloney/radical haggishness.)
Alma was the type of cook who didn’t like to share her recipes, a parsimonious outlook, if you ask me. Why not spread a little goodness in each other’s kitchens? In fact, Alma, had she read any of my columns, might have called me a name or two herself. But Alma’s been gone for several years, and her daughter happily made and distributed mimeographed copies of this recipe for all the relatives who had coveted it over the years. So to all of those who wrote particularly angry missives, I ask that you put down your boxing gloves and put on your oven mitts instead.
P.S. In the spirit of what I seek, I’ve added an extra adjective to the name of the recipe.
AUNT ALMA’S GOODWILL CRESCENT COOKIES
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
⅔ cup almonds, pulverized (I like to seal them in a plastic bag and go after them with a kitchen hammer, but you can pulse them in a blender.)
⅓ cup sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 ⅔ cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
After thoroughly mixing all ingredients in bowl, shape dough into disk, and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate one hour. Pinch off a bit of dough, roll in palm into ¾-inch ball, then into a log, and carefully bend, shaping into a crescent. Place on cookie sheets, an inch or so apart. Work fast or the dough will get too soft.
Bake 14–16 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix together ½ cup sugar and ½ teaspoon cinnamon in pie plate. When cookies are cool enough to handle, place several of them in plate, and shake mixture until cookies are covered in cinnamon sugar. Makes about four dozen.
Enjoy with coffee, tea, or milk, and let their buttery, almondy goodness melt away any misdirected anger from which you suffer.
“Mom,” said Sam, “you should make those. They sound good.”
Caroline elbowed the teenager. “No, you should. In the spirit of radicalism—and goodwill.”
7
In downward dog, Susan’s view of Olivia Shelby is framed by her slightly bent knees. Olivia wears a cobalt-blue tank top, and Susan can see the ridges of muscles in her back. When the teacher says, “Point your tailbone to the sky,” Susan sees Olivia’s pert and youthful hindquarters rise like a soufflé, while her own sag and droop, pointing not upward, but at best toward the window that faces the parking lot. She knows yoga is the last place you’re supposed to feel competitive, but competition surges through Susan like an IV-administered drug that’s not being carefully monitored by the nursing staff. More than mounting a successful crow pose or fully straightening her leg in bird of paradise, Susan wants to keep up with Olivia. Keep up . . . and best her. When Olivia loses control of her breath and has to calm down in child’s pose, Susan wants to power through with even, regulated breathing and easily work her way into a supported headstand.
But Olivia is not losing control of her breath, and not able (yet!) to do a headstand, supported or not, Susan shuts her eyes for a moment. She’s heard there are yogis who go through their entire practice with closed eyes, but Susan is nowhere near that level and often loses her balance when her eyes are opened.
Tennis used to be her sport, and for years, she and Phil had played doubles against Gerri and Reed Albin every Saturday morning at an indoor court, and in the summer every Wednesday evening at the outdoor courts by Kingleigh Lake.
Susan had loved playing with Phil, a sentiment that seemed mutual, with Phil yelling out, “great shot!” and “fantastic!” during the games, and bragging about Susan’s backhand or accuracy when they shared a postgame cup of coffee (Saturday mornings at Sweet Buns Bakery) or a pitcher of beer (Wednesday nights at the Sundown). But last September (Susan remembers the exact date because the next morning Jack was scheduled for a tonsillectomy) Phil had been mute during their game (which they lost), and on the way home from the Sundown, when Susan asked if anything was wrong, Phil had snapped, “I just wonder why you gave away the last two sets.”
“I didn’t think I gave anything away,” said Susan. “But I do think the heat was getting to me.”
The record-setting temperature and humidity had lingered into the early evening, and a peel of sweat had covered all four players.
“What’d you mean? Are you in menopause or something?”
Susan laughed, assuming he was kidding. “Phil, it’s hot outside. And when I do enter menopause, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
The last game they had played was a Saturday morning in October. They’d opted to go to the outdoor courts because the day could have been a nominee for “Most Beautiful,” with trees decked out in their red, orange, and golden finery and a sky so blue, science could have no explanation for its color.
Susan was hopeful that the bright beauty of the day might restore their game, which for weeks had been more chore than fun.
She was wrong. After she’d lunged for and missed Gerri’s volley, Phil said, “Need glasses, old woman?”
They both were allowed to joke about each other’s playing and had, but always good-naturedly, except for the past couple weeks. If there was any cheer in Phil’s voice, Susan couldn’t hear it under the disgust.
By the second set, the tennis ball wasn’t the only thing Susan was intent on returning. When Phil hit Reed’s serve with a high, out-of-bounds lob, Susan said, “Do you understand what those lines are for?” and when a tepid backhand of his sent the ball barely over the net, Susan advised that maybe he should lift weights.
They won the game but lost all that was important, and it turned out to be the last one they played. Sev
eral weeks later, Phil accepted his friend Mac’s offer to go fishing with him in Mexico, and when he came back, he confessed to his affair with the dental hygienist and informed Susan that he was going to be staying at Mac’s condo because he had some things he needed to think over.
Susan accepted Gerri’s invitation to play the occasional game of singles, but for her, tennis was more fun with a partner. She hoped that one day her yoga practice would offer her more than physical exercise, but for now it was only a substitute for tennis, a way to relieve stress and burn a few calories.
After class, Susan changes in the locker room, trying not to notice how tanned and toned Olivia Shelby’s thighs are. Susan’s legs are a fish-belly white, but Olivia doesn’t have a job that keeps her inside an office all day like Susan’s does; no, Olivia’s a landscape architect, who turns the yards of Granite Creek’s wealthier residents into oases; she gets to go to work wearing a tank top and cargo shorts with lots of important pockets.
That’s probably why her arms are so buff too, thinks Susan, lifting all those bags of mulch and potted plants. She’s suddenly resentful that the heaviest thing she lifts at work is a pen.
“Jens tells me Sam’s working down at the paper with you,” says Olivia now, dabbing at her face with a rolled-up towel.
Pulling her T-shirt over her head, Susan nods.
“I’ve had Jens working with me every summer since he was ten,” says Olivia of her seventeen-year-old son, who looks like a Calvin Klein model. “It’s a great bonding experience. I hope the two of you enjoy your time together as much as we have.”
“I hope so too!” says Susan, with too much emphasis—and apology—in her voice.
Lingering in the locker room after everyone has left, Susan scolds herself for the mélange of feelings that takes her back to junior high school, when her confidence was a frail bloom that got trampled on daily . . . or hourly.
She was a successful business woman who ran an award-winning newspaper, for Christ’s sake! She was smart and well-informed and attractive and took care of herself and had a flair for fashion!
Okay, so she had inherited her position as publisher, and how could she not be well-informed being in the newspaper business? And her attractiveness certainly wasn’t dazzling, and the backs of her thighs could never be called smooth, and a flair for fashion—who was she kidding? That she didn’t wear the puff-paint appliquéd sweatshirts sold in Josie’s Stylin’ Boutique in the mini-mall where she got her hair cut only meant that there were worse dressers than she, but neither was she the type who could look chic in yoga class like Olivia Shelby. And Olivia Shelby still had a husband who lived with her in the same house, and her teenaged son certainly hadn’t gained at least fifteen pounds in the past six months thanks to the upheaval of his parents’ marriage and—
“Stop it!” Susan hisses to her blurred-by-tears reflection. Standing in front of the mirror positioned above the row of sinks, she collects herself for a moment before uncapping her lipstick and gliding the tube around her mouth.
“Hi! I know you!”
Startled by this greeting, Susan’s hand jerks.
“Oh, sorry,” says the young woman as in the mirror they both look at the slash of Muted Plum lipstick that now checkmarks the side of Susan’s mouth. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“That’s okay,” says Susan. She wets a paper towel and rubs at the errant mark.
“It’s just that I’ve seen your picture in the paper in the . . .”
“. . . the masthead?”
The woman, hands clasped around the shoulder strap of her pink neon duffle bag nods. “And now to see you in the flesh—well, not the flesh flesh, which would be pretty easy to do in a locker room . . .” She laughs, embarrassed. “Sorry, I’m just a little nervous.”
“Nervous,” says Susan. “Why?”
“Because I just love those columns you’re printing! The one of Haze Evans and her husband? I just got engaged myself, and, we—Brad and I—are taking premarital classes at St. Steven’s, but really, I think I’m learning more from the columns!”
August 8, 1968
Not exactly blessed with mechanical aptitude, I nevertheless love to tinker with the two machines that mean the most to me: my typewriter and my sewing machine. Neither requires much maintenance, but I am filled with pride when I change a typewriter ribbon or a needle. It was while I was in the future nursery and current sewing room, seated in front of my Singer, that my husband entered.
“Do you think you could fix this?”
“Just set it in the mending basket,” I said, using a voice a fair distance from cheerful. Surrounded by clouds of white tulle, pools of satin, and an invisible fog of anxiety, I was on a deadline, having promised my cousin Anne that I would indeed finish Sharon’s First Communion dress before her actual First Communion. Which gave me thirty-six hours, if I didn’t sleep.
My husband, who is sensitive to my moods (especially when smoke’s coming out of my ears) politely backed out of the room, knowing that further aggravating me might result in tears or a pelted spool of thread.
Several days later, after Sharon had been successfully communed (I don’t know the correct verb, not having grown up in the Catholic faith) and I had humbly accepted bouquets of compliments for the girl’s beautifully sewn dress, Royal asked permission to use my Singer.
“Use it for what?” I asked, taken aback.
“Well, to sew, of course. I thought I’d fix that shirt pocket of mine. No sense you always having to do it.”
Touched over his desire to lighten my housework load, I was about tell him that no, no, it was my pleasure to sew up his seams, when he added, “How hard can it be?”
To all and any married men reading this column: For marital harmony, avoid this phrase, especially when referring to a task/hobby/pastime/job of your wife’s.
Seating himself at the machine, he stared at it for a while, finally asking, “So what do I do now?”
“You’ll have to thread it,” I said, my voice as chipper as one of his hospital’s candy striper’s.
“Well, doesn’t thread just go through a needle?”
“Not just through a needle,” I said brightly.
For a few minutes I enjoyed his struggle to figure out the Singer before graciously swooping in to give him a lesson. He was a good student, watching me carefully wind the thread around and through the various dials, hooks, and levers. After several demonstrations, he claimed himself ready to try, and try he did. Diligently. Until he finally, delightedly, got it.
“Okay, give me the shirt!”
“You have to thread the bobbin first,” I said.
“What’s a bobbin?”
Dear Reader, I did enjoy his befuddlement, almost as much as I enjoyed schooling him on presser foots and stitch length and thread tension and backstitching. He managed to sew a straight line; unfortunately it was one that fused the opening of his pocket to his shirt.
I could have passed him the seam ripper and showed him how to undo his mistake, but I could tell by his red face and colorful expressions that he’d had enough of the domestic arts and would confine his sewing to the operating room. Where by all reports, he does a sterling job.
August 10, 1968
Dear Haze Evans,
You bet Dr. Kirby does a sterling job in the OR! I had hernia surgery last year, and a prettier scar you’ve never seen! And Dr. Kirby was so kind to me and so patient with my husband, who is sort of a know-it-all and likes to be the boss of every room, including mine in ICU!
Why I’m writing is that I hope Dr. Kirby isn’t embarrassed by your column. If he is, I say, Put down your pen! We need good doctors more than we need wiseacre newspaper columnists.
I usually enjoy your work but not at Dr. Kirby’s expense!
Yours truly,
Mrs. John Peltz
P.S. This is not for publication—unlike you, I do not get a kick out of publicly humiliating my husband.
October 8, 1968
To say Royal looked pleased when I informed him I had just purchased a dozen dance lessons would be grossly misrepresenting the word pleased.
“No,” he said, after the “pleased” expression had further curdled. “I’m not taking dance lessons. One—I don’t have time. Two—I don’t want to.”
“The teacher’s flexible,” I said. “She willing to work around our schedule. And besides, Ricky and Lucy and Fred and Ethel (names have been changed to protect the innocent—and our friendship) have signed up too.”
I am pleased to report that I did not go stag to our first lesson, that my reluctant and grumbling husband showed up at the dance studio along with our friends and learned how to do a basic box step.
“That wasn’t so bad,” he said on the drive home. “When you’re shown the steps, it doesn’t seem so mysterious.”
I wrote that down in capital letters in my notebook, because isn’t that true for everything that challenges and/or befuddles us?
When I took my first clarinet lesson and I confessed to my teacher that I wanted to play “Moonlight Serenade” for my mother’s birthday in two weeks because it was one of her favorite songs, Mrs. Strom said, “How about we learn the scale first?”
In our second dance lesson, we spent the first half hour reviewing the box step we’d learned the week before and the next half hour learning how to cha-cha. Ricky was like Royal, adrift, but Fred was demonstrating a rhythm and grace previously unknown to us. (“We practiced all week,” Ethel told Lucy and me. “Honestly, I think I might have unleashed a monster.”)
Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes) Page 7