Southern Living

by Ad Hudler

  “It’s just not very efficient havin’ him around, Mr. Tom. I feel like I have to baby-sit him.”

  “Just try harder. That’s all I’m asking. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered. “I’m gonna try. But, Lord, does that boy try my patience.”

  “Good … Oh, I forgot to tell you. I took a message for you today.”

  “Sir?”

  “Somehow the call came through to my office. Jackee called and said she’d pick you up at ten. Outside the store. Do I have the name right, Jackee?”

  “Yes, sir. Jackee Satterly. That’s my best friend.”

  “Donna, please don’t call me ‘sir.’ I’m forty this year and I feel really, really old.”

  “Forty’s not old.”

  “Forty’s old.”

  The bananas safely segregated, Donna retrieved her purse and sweater from her locker in the employee lounge then went to wait outside. She was leaning against the Coke machine when Tom Green came out of the store, carrying his dinner for the evening in a crinkly, tan Kroger bag—some Fritos and an Italian deluxe sandwich with extra mayo from the deli.

  Donna watched him as he walked to his silver Mazda pickup truck with Missouri tags. While Robbie was a stalk of broccoli, bulky floret muscles atop a lean sinewy torso, Donna thought Mr. Tom was more the shape and texture of a ripe Bartlett pear. He wore the same two striped ties over and over again, alternating each day, and neither of them appeared to be silk. His brown hair, starting to thin on the crown of his head, made it look from afar as if he wore a flesh-colored yarmulke. And, Donna thought, he really should drop the mustache—some guys needed to realize they just didn’t have the follicle density necessary for attractive, full facial hair.

  Still, he was one of the kindest men she’d ever encountered. Donna noted how Tom Green would carry out the twenty-five-pound bags of dog food to senior citizens’ cars, and when he found money in the parking lot he always put it in the March of Dimes box at the customer service counter. When Louise in deli lost the end of her index finger in the slicer, it was Mr. Green who, in the midst of the bloody chaos, remembered to find the tip among the fleshy sheets of honey-glazed ham and set it in a plastic cup of ice he quickly scooped from the fish case … and then drove Louise to the emergency room in his truck.

  “Good night, Mr. Tom!” Donna yelled out, across the parking lot.

  He turned to the voice. “Donna? You need a ride somewhere?”

  “Oh, no, sir,” she yelled back. “That’s my red Camaro over there. I’m just waitin’ for Jackee. We’re goin’ over to Rio Cantina for a margarita. We go every Friday. Here she comes now.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Jackee pulled up in her blue Geo Prizm. Donna heard the engine’s cooling fan click on as she opened the door and sank into the velour seat.

  “Okay, okay,” Jackee said, shifting the car into park and clicking on the dome light. “Let me see.”

  Donna turned toward Jackee and lifted her chin toward the light.

  “Turn a little that way,” Jackee said, pointing to the windshield. “I think you’re right,” she said. “I think it’s gettin’ better.”

  “You don’t think I’m tryin’ to fool myself?”

  “It’s been a week since I saw you. Things can change in a week. God made the whole world in a week.”

  Donna pulled down the visor to look at herself in the mirror.

  “Why aren’t you wearin’ foundation?” Jackee asked.

  “ ’Cause it only looks worse,” Donna answered. “Looks like tire tracks on a dirt road after a rain.”

  With her tongue, she pushed on the inside of her cheek, enlarging the scar for a better look. Though the redness of the line had faded somewhat, the width of the scar, which was straight and wide as a piece of uncooked linguini, had not changed, and Donna was certain now that when the emergency room doctor sewed her up he did something to the corner of her mouth. It felt tight and forced and unnatural, like the time she went to a costume party dressed as a geisha girl and her father had used duct tape to hold back the skin around her eyes to make them look slanted. And while she thought such a subtle, perpetual smile might be sexy on Dennis Quaid or Kevin Costner, Donna wondered how a girl could act aloof and mysterious when she couldn’t stop grinning like a clown.

  “I need to get plastic surgery, Daddy,” she said one evening.

  “No, ma’am. Nosiree. Not my daughter,” Frankie Kabel replied.

  “The doctor said a glass cut would leave a bigger scar. Look at me.”

  “No, missy. We are not messin’ with the plans of the Lord. You are already the vainest creature on this planet.”

  “But look at me, Daddy!”

  She was lying in bed that night, staring at the sprayed-on ceiling that looked like cottage cheese, when she heard her father’s knuckles rap against the outside of her door, then the cool whisper of paper sliding across tile. Donna left the note until morning and read it on the way down to breakfast: When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. Genesis 38:15.

  Jackee turned down the volume of her stereo, and Faith Hill sank into the dashboard. “So how was your day?” she asked.

  “Horrible,” Donna answered. “I got in trouble from Mr. Tom.”

  “What for?”

  “He says I was talkin’ mean to Adrian.”

  “Flipper Boy? Oh, he gives me the creeps.”

  “And you don’t have to look at him all day, Jackee. You just don’t know what it’s like to be washin’ lettuce and look up in that mirror and see that little thing wigglin’ around. It just about makes me want to throw up. I don’t know how much longer I can take it.”

  She often saw him from this perspective. Whenever Donna heard the timed, recorded sound of thunder that foreshadowed the simulated rain shower that drenched the leafy vegetables, she stopped whatever she was doing and moved to a spot near the refrigerated case along the wall. In the line of mirrors behind the produce, she saw an image of herself as she used to be, protected by the gauze of mist that hid the details of her face.

  “I like what you’re doin’ with your eyeliner,” Jackee said. “It’s heavy, but that’s the look now.”

  As they drove through the parking lot, Donna looked out the window. She saw a Japanese couple, about her age, holding hands as they walked from their Mercedes toward the red door of Mount Sushi, the new restaurant two doors down from Kroger. On the man’s nose were perched silver-frame glasses with lenses no bigger than a quarter, and both he and the woman wore retro, striped turtlenecks and black, square-toed boots—items that, just a year ago, would have flagged them as outsiders. Everywhere in Selby, Donna now saw people who, in her mind, belonged in the Range Rover zip codes of Atlanta.

  “You ready for a margarita?” Jackee asked.

  “Can we go by the dealership first?”

  Robbie had not spoken to Donna in two weeks. It most likely would have been longer, but Donna finally called him from a pay phone so he wouldn’t recognize her number on caller I.D. Flustered and guilt-ridden when he discovered the caller’s identity, he made plans with her to go to lunch that Saturday, but when the day arrived he called in the morning to cancel, saying his boss had changed his schedule, and he had to work the lot. Donna had not seen him in person for four weeks. Robbie said he was working overtime, but Donna did not believe him. The previous week she had seen his car in the parking lot at Whiskey River two nights in a row, and Jackee had heard thirdhand that he’d been seen riding the bumper cars at the Fun Tree with a redhead.

  Jackee turned north, onto Columbus Road. “I’m thinkin’ I don’t care much where Robbie is tonight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a new restaurant out on Milledgeville Road,” Jackee said. “It’s food from Vietnam or some place, but Brittany says there’s a cute little bar, and that the bosses from the Toyota plant like to go there … not the Japanese ones but the Yankees.”

  “What ab
out Robbie?”

  “Donna …” With the heels of her hands on the wheel, Jackee shook out two white Tic Tacs and popped them into her mouth. “Is he really worth us chasin’ him all over town every Friday night? Let’s go meet us some cute guys.”

  “Let’s just go see where Robbie is, and then I’ll go with you.”

  “Donna.”

  “Just help me find his truck, Jackee, and that’s all I’ll wanna do. I promise. I just wanna see where he’s at.”

  It was an easy truck to spot, a cherry-red Chevy 4×4 pickup with white lightning-bolt decals down each side. Robbie had sold Donna her Camaro in the exact color almost a year ago to the day, when they met as salesman and customer. They had their first date the following week, on the night after Robbie brought his sister, Lynn, to the Lancôme counter for a makeover.

  “I wanna know somethin’, Donna,” Jackee said. “All your life, cute boys have followed you like a dog chasin’ a bone. Why are you so set on Robbie when he treats you so bad?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s his truck,” she said, pointing to the lot of Fall Line Chevrolet-Buick where row upon row of new cars gleamed beneath the bright lights. “Don’t park by the window or he’ll see us.”

  Jackee hid her Geo between two new Suburbans. From the darkness of the car, they looked across the empty guest parking spaces and through the large plate-glass windows and could see the idle sales staff laughing and talking as they leaned on the receptionist’s round, gray Formica desk, their feet tired from pressing hot asphalt all day.

  “I feel like I’m watchin’ TV without the sound,” Jackee said. “Who’s that cute guy with the black mustache?”

  Robbie wore his trademark long-sleeve, white Polo dress shirt and the Jerry Garcia tie Donna had bought him for Valentine’s Day. Donna remembered how her mother always said that men were as easy to read as a Dr. Seuss book, and she focused on Robbie’s face, searching for clues as to whether he was happy or guilty or anxious or oblivious … or a sign, any sign, that showed he had simply moved on without her.

  “You gonna go in?” Jackee asked.

  “Shush,” Donna said, not losing sight of him. “I’m fixin’ to look into his heart.”

  Another three minutes passed, and Jackee noticed that her friend’s eyes had begun to well with tears. She watched Donna bring an index finger to her lips and unconsciously begin gnawing at her unpainted nail. Jackee had never seen her friend do such a thing—feeling so low and empty and hungry that she would actually eat herself.

  “I’m thinkin’ we need some margaritas,” Jackee said. She shifted her car into drive and pulled out from the valley created by the towering Suburbans. White light from above suddenly filled the car, and shadows crawled up Donna’s lap then torso then face.

  “Where we goin’?” she asked her friend.

  “Rio Cantina,” she answered.

  “I wanna go home,” Donna said.

  “I’m not lettin’ you.”

  They headed down Bass Road, flanked on both sides by established, live oaks, all with large yellow ribbons as thick as twisted beach towels tied around their trunks. In the glare of the headlights, they popped out at them like the fluorescent strips on a fireman’s jacket. These trees, whose branches reached across the road to form a canopy, had been naively planted just off the shoulder, back in a time when even a two-lane, paved road seemed luxuriant and unnecessary. Leaning against one of the trees was a white-painted plywood sign the size of a card table. In crudely drawn red letters someone had written “SAVE ME!”

  Donna leaned her head back and looked up through the tinted sunroof. Through the leafy ceiling, she noticed that the moon was three-quarters empty.

  Nine

  Dear Chatter: I get more wrong-phone-number calls in Selby than anywhere I’ve ever lived up North, maybe five or six a week. Can someone explain this phenomenon to me, please?

  Dear Chatter: Is it true that Jimmy Allred got fired from Channel 12? If it is then that’s a shame because the new weatherman talks too fast and I can’t understand anything he’s sayin’. I am also tired of his stories about New Jersey.

  After two hours of waiting, Suzanne could finally push a fork into the once-frozen piece of Mount Olympus casserole. It had been built in layers, this casserole; from the side it looked like a cutaway of the earth from some geologic formation in Arizona, and the lumpy layer of freezer-burned white cheese blanketed the top like old, crusty snow.

  Suzanne had agreed with Boone that it was one of the best dinners she’d ever prepared, and at the end of the meal—How long ago was it? Three months? Four?—she’d had the foresight to freeze a cupcake-size portion. And now, God bless women’s intuition, she needed it. That morning, before exiting the kitchen door, Boone had told her that he was bringing home for dinner a new prospect for the neurological clinic, and that they would be home for cocktails at six, dinner at seven. “Can you make that Greek casserole?” he had asked. “The one with the mashed potatoes on top?”

  No, this was cheese, Suzanne was certain, but what kind? Cottage cheese? Feta?

  Suzanne reached for her wineglass but stopped short when she discovered it was empty. She picked up a fork and slowly scraped the cheese off half the piece of casserole, revealing a blond lasagna noodle. Then, with a paring knife, as if she were dissecting some brine-soaked creature in biology lab, Suzanne made a V-shaped slit into the noodle and pulled back the flap, revealing a brown mixture of ground beef with cubes of carrot and tiny, randomly shaped nuggets of something the color of yellowed teeth. She smelled. Was it garlic? It was garlic. Wasn’t it garlic?

  “Oh, Boone …” she whined out loud to herself. “Why on earth have you gotta have this one?”

  With a spatula, Suzanne returned the casserole to the Rubbermaid container then snapped the lid shut. She would take it to Kroger, not what north Selbyites called the “social Kroger” near her house, where it was impossible to shop without bumping into the buggy of someone she knew, but to the Kroger in south Selby, next to the Silk Flower Warehouse on Truman Parkway, where she frequently went to buy her wine, always in liter size, always a Clos du Bois chardonnay. Suzanne had chosen this label because it was the same wine served by the most expensive caterer in town, Touch of Class Catering, whom she would use for the Dogwood Festival party.

  Until last year, north Selby’s unofficially official Dogwood Festival Party had been thrown by Giles and Georgia Griffin. Old Selby’s signature event, it exclusively included everyone who wielded power in town, and this included not only the big bankers and Realtors and business owners and politicians but, by nature, any wealthy family that had bred for three or more generations within the Perry County limits.

  When Georgia died of breast cancer in July, there was a silent scuffling and posturing among the women who fancied themselves as the likely hostess to carry on the torch. Perhaps because he had no legacy of children to leave behind, Boone embraced the Dogwood party as his raison d’être, and he granted Suzanne unbridled purchasing power to groom the candidate, their six-thousand-square-foot, redbrick Georgian Revival home.

  Four women who aspired to be the new hostess, including Suzanne, began to drop hints around Sugar Day and in the wallpaper stores and antiques shops of north Selby. In the end, it was Suzanne and Ginny Cuthbert on the jousting field, and it appeared that neither would swerve from the path of the other. Each woman placed strategic calls throughout the day, asking friends their opinions of decorations and invitations and caterers and musicians. Each began first-floor renovations in earnest.

  And then, just when an ugly confrontation seemed inevitable and north Selbyites would be forced to declare their loyalty, there came a call from Ginny.

  Suzanne, who had not spoken to Ginny since Georgia’s funeral, had taken pains to avoid her because she feared comparison with this woman known as the Martha Stewart of Selby. She feared that, should they ever be found standing side by side, those around them could not help but weigh one against the other, and th
ey would remember that Ginny’s yard had been featured in that year’s Mother’s Day Secret Gardens Tour, and that Ginny was the first north Selby woman to use goat cheese in an appetizer dish, and the first to install granite countertops, and the first to put colored marbles (pink for Easter; red and green for Christmas; red, white, and blue for July Fourth) in the bottom of her flower-filled vases. Conversely, they would remember how Suzanne had set out her decorative hay bales and pumpkins too early for Halloween, and that a neighbor anonymously called animal control after spotting two large rats feasting on the rotting, orange flesh a few weeks later.

  “Oh, Ginny!” Suzanne exclaimed on the phone. “Where have you been hiding? You been down at Sea Island?” Carrying the cordless phone, Suzanne walked over to the refrigerator and retrieved the wine bottle from the freezer. She preferred her wine ice-cold, and often, before scurrying away to answer the phone or help Josephine or Virgil with a task, she would stow the bottle in the door of the freezer, returning to find it in optimum condition, flecked with tiny shards of ice that would melt on her tongue. Suzanne had developed a habit of pooling the icy liquid around her bad, back right molar, providing three or four seconds of repetitive but tolerable penance for her vice.

  “I’ve just been busy,” Ginny said. “I’ve been doin’ some things to my kitchen.”

  “You’re not replacin’ those gorgeous countertops, are you?”

  “No, no, just puttin’ in new flooring.”

  “You usin’ Pergo?”

  “Pergo’s what I’m gettin’ rid of.”

  Suzanne looked down at the simulated-oak Pergo floor of her own kitchen, just two years old.

  “I’m getting one called Zeelis.”

  “Zeelis?”

  “It’s from Switzerland. It’s like Pergo but nicer.”

  Suzanne reached for a pen on the counter and spelled out Z-E-E-L-U-S on the front page of the Southern Bell phone book.

  “Did you hear about Kathy Hollander?” Ginny asked.

  “No.”