Southern Living

by Ad Hudler

  “Ms. VanDermeter …”

  “Listen to me, young lady!” she snapped in a whisper. “They know who’s been killin’ all those dogs, and let me tell you what—it would surprise a lotta people, and it’s gonna be just too juicy to ignore. Tommy’s agreed that we should just handle this on our own. Quietlike. All I’m askin’ is for you to do the same. I know you got a phone call. You know about this.”

  “Tommy?”

  “Tommy Barnes.”

  “The sheriff?”

  “Of course.”

  Margaret looked over at Donna, who was stirring skim milk into the mashed potatoes. Margaret had tried to persuade her to use cream, at least half-and-half, but Donna wanted to keep the fat content down. “I can’t promise you anything, Ms. VanDermeter.”

  “What is it about you people!” she shot. “Don’t you understand: sometimes … when you see somethin’ wrong goin’ on … you just gotta look the other way? Why make a big fuss and drag people through the mud just for a show? Sometimes you just gotta take care of things in a nice quiet way so people can keep their heads high. The Reflector used to do that, but let me tell you, those days are gone. No, ma’am. That newspaper of yours has gone to the dogs.”

  She stormed out of the kitchen, back to the living room, unaware of her comical choice of words that helped lessen the anxiety that was buzzing through Margaret’s body like a double shot of espresso. Margaret looked at the floor, noting the red blotches left by Madeline VanDermeter’s right shoe, evenly spaced and growing weaker with each step toward the door.

  Twenty-eight

  Dear Chatter: There is no justice in the world. A security guard who carries a gun is sellin’ his sister’s soul, and I have proof, but the law won’t do anything. The person he sells it to has money—so can someone tell me what to do?

  Dear Chatter: I don’t know how many times I have to tell Yankees this but you should not plant any annuals until Good Friday. It will not frost, but the ground is too cold until Good Friday, and if you want your annuals to grow strong and big then you’ve got to wait. I don’t know why y’all are in such a hurry to get those annuals in the ground. Maybe it’s because you’re so excited not to be shoveling snow in March.

  It was late night, just after midnight, and Boone was snoring in the guest room. Suzanne set her glass of chardonnay onto a mahogany end table then focused her attention on the oversized wicker basket at the foot of her ivory-damask recamier in the bedroom. It was heavy, the size of an ottoman, with a load of at least three hundred mail-order catalogs, but she pushed slowly, alone, lifting one edge off the carpet until that point when gravity abandons the enemy and, sensing defeat, runs over to join the other side. Together, they overturned the basket with a weighty roll, and the catalogs, all cool and slick and shiny in the lamplight, flowed from the vessel like a load of freshly caught fish.

  Happier in her marriage than she’d been in years, Suzanne was determined to make her man’s thirty-third birthday the best ever, and she was pleased with her final selection of gifts. From the Horchow catalog, which was at the very bottom of the basket, a double, automatic watch winder that featured not only two rotating orbs that twisted and turned at night with the watches attached, but also a glass-topped display area that held up to six other watches, a perfect match because Boone had exactly eight.

  From The Sharper Image, two items, including the Turbo Groomer 2.0 that trimmed unsightly hairs not only from deep inside the nostrils but also the ears. Made of black plastic and chrome with a laserlike light on the end, it reminded Suzanne of a weapon from Star Wars. Yet even more exciting, because Boone had started grilling again for them at night, was the combination fork/thermometer with ultrasensitive “fish” option, a long, two-pronged spearing device whose tines were actually thermometers that measured the heat of the meat and displayed the temperature on a lighted panel on the handle.

  Unlike birthdays of years past, which she scrambled to fill with friends and noise, Suzanne decided this year’s celebration would be an intimate affair. She had asked Donna to make beef filets with béarnaise sauce and to re-create the roasted asparagus with lime and garlic that had become a favorite of Boone’s at the Forsyth Room.

  After dinner, he would want to talk of the baby again, and to plan and dream ahead. Suzanne didn’t mind this in the least because when he pondered the future of his son, Boone’s blue-gray eyes seemed to dance, reminding her of moonlight on rippling water … or spinning bicycle wheels. She would watch him as he wondered out loud if his mother still had his baseball mitt from Little League and if they should start participating this year in the prepaid college tuition program at the University of Georgia. He was so animated when he talked of such things! He twitched with playground energy she hadn’t seen this late in the day for years, and Suzanne would fill to bursting and say “Kiss me.” And as she felt his hands gently cupping her face, Suzanne would think, How can I give this up? How can I ever live without this again?

  Suzanne got up, went into the kitchen and returned to the recamier with the Sugar Day directory and three felt-tip pens, one red, one blue, one green. Over the past month, she had been going through the roster of families, circling in red the ones she could count on to show up for her and Boone’s Dogwood party, circling in blue those traitors who would attend Marc and Jodi Armbuster’s party, and marking with green all the fence-sitters. These were the ones Suzanne had been scrutinizing the most, checking and rechecking the names to see if any of them had tottered to one side or the other. She based this on signs she observed throughout the week. For example, did someone choose to sit on the other side of the aisle from them that Sunday at Christ Church … or had she caught anyone wheeling their Kroger buggy directly to the checkout lane of the grocery store and then, after seeing Suzanne in line, suddenly but smoothly veer left, turning into the safety of aisle sixteen where they proceeded to read the labels on laundry detergent as if they were the backs of book covers.

  Suzanne carried the Sugar Day directory with her as she went about town, and, like a politician on the stump, if she saw a chance to sway someone she would nab it. That Tuesday, Hal and Tiny Trane moved from blue to green. Emerging from the Aveda Salon, Suzanne saw that Tiny was searching for a rare, coveted parking spot, and as Suzanne pulled out she blocked a car with New Jersey plates long enough for her fellow native Selbyite to zip right in.

  Tiny emerged from her bronze Cadillac sedan and waved. “Thank you, Suzanne,” she yelled.

  “See y’all next month at Dogwood!” Suzanne yelled back.

  Twenty-nine

  Dear Chatter: Thought y’all might get a kick out of this: Four guys are driving cross-country together. One’s from Idaho, one’s from Nebraska, one’s from Georgia, and the last is a Yankee from New Jersey.

  A little bit down the road the man from Idaho starts pulling potatoes out of his bag and throws them out the window. The Nebraska man turns to him and asks, “What in the world are you doin’?” The man from Idaho says, “Man, we have so many of these things in Idaho that they’re laying around on the ground. I’m sick and tired of looking at them.”

  A few miles later, the man from Nebraska starts to do the same thing with ears of corn, throwing them out the window. The man from Idaho asks, “Why are you doing that?” The guy from Nebraska says, “Man, we have so many of these things in Nebraska that they’re laying around on the ground. I’m sick and tired of looking at them.”

  So the man from Georgia opens the door and pushes the Yankee out.

  Yeah!

  Pass that casserole, Dewayne,” Sonny Case said. “Your daddy’s gonna have some more of that.”

  “I didn’t know grits could taste this good,” said his mother, Ronna. “You gotta give me this recipe, Dewayne.”

  Dewayne looked at Margaret and smiled. “I didn’t make it,” he said. “It’s Margaret’s doin’.”

  Margaret had made the entire meal in Dewayne’s kitchen, where she’d labored since five o’clock that morning. At
daybreak she baked a batch of Dewayne’s biscuits. By noon she’d finished her homemade green-tea-and-lemongrass ice cream. She had planned on roasting a chicken in a Mediterranean marinade of citrus and bouquet garni but at the last minute was inspired by a piece of chorizo she found lying next to the cube of Velveeta in Dewayne’s meat drawer. For the longest time Margaret had shunned the rubbery processed cheese as an ingredient in squash casserole, but after numerous, greasy, gloppy attempts with the firmer cheeses she finally relented and embraced it.

  Tonight’s popular casserole, now three-quarters gone, included layers of grits, four white cheeses, and a meat sauce of chorizo-infused ground pork with tomatoes, the tiniest hint of a chipotle pepper, cilantro, and adobo seasoning.

  “What kind of meat is this?” Ronna asked.

  “Pork,” Margaret answered.

  “Pork?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now we can’t have garlic. I hope Dewayne told you we can’t have garlic. This doesn’t have garlic in it, does it?”

  Margaret looked at Dewayne for guidance on the question.

  “No, Momma,” he said.

  Margaret looked at him, surprised but secretly relieved that he would lie to his parents. Doing so put him on her side—for this evening, at least. She reached for and squeezed his hand under the table.

  “Well, what tastes like garlic?”

  “Probably the cumin,” Margaret answered.

  All evening—and Margaret found this peculiar—both Ronna and Sonny avoided asking Margaret anything about her pre-Selby life. Instead, they talked about the Reflector and had many questions about a newsroom and how it works. Sonny shared his thoughts on Margaret’s dilapidating roof and gave her pointers on quizzing the roofers when she would call for estimates.

  Ronna was a homemaker, and though Dewayne was twenty-four she still bought his underwear and socks and did his sewing. Sonny was the assistant supervisor of elections for Perry County and worked in the courthouse downtown.

  “Do you take lunch breaks?” he asked Margaret.

  “Sometimes,” Margaret answered. “Why?”

  “You work downtown, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well there’s this new program for executives at the Mulberry Baptist Church,” he said, stopping to glance at his wife. “It’s called Power Lunch with the Lord, and everyone takes their Bibles and gets a sermon every Monday from a different Baptist minister. Maybe you can go with me some time.”

  “Maybe so,” Margaret said. “That sounds real nice.”

  “She’s been goin’ to Sunday school with me,” Dewayne said, eliciting from both parents looks of surprise that melted into smiles.

  The four of them stood on the sidewalk in front of Dewayne’s house. It was obvious the elder Cases were waiting for something, but neither Margaret nor Dewayne could figure out what. So, as one looks for four-leaf clovers but in the meanwhile settles for interesting, exotic weeds, they exchanged empty items of chitchat.

  Finally, after a long moment of silence, Ronna said, “Margaret, I don’t see your car, honey. Did Dewayne drive you over?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do you want me and Sonny to take you home?”

  “Dewayne can take me home.”

  “Well, he has work tomorrow, don’t you, Dewayne? You probably better get goin’ to bed.”

  “I’ll take her home, Momma,” he answered. “We’ve gotta clean up, first.”

  “I can have your daddy come back and pick her up later.”

  “No, Momma. I can manage.”

  “I’m just tryin’ to help.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I know. Thank you.” He leaned down to his mother and kissed her cheek. “Good night.”

  After they pulled away, Margaret walked over to the glider beneath the carport and sat down. “They hate me,” she said.

  “That’s a pretty strong word,” Dewayne replied.

  “Okay, then, they don’t like me.”

  “You can’t be sure about that.”

  “I’m sure. I think it was the prayer.”

  Before the meal, Dewayne had had to ask Margaret to join hands to pray. When he offered his arm across the table, toward hers, Margaret simply thought he was being romantic; she didn’t know she was supposed to grab Ronna’s as well to complete the circle.

  “They did not want to connect with me, Dewayne. They did not ask one thing about me.”

  “They did so.”

  “Not about my past. Not about anything that would have shed some light on who I am. For a culture that’s always asking ‘Who are your people?’ they sure didn’t seem interested in mine.”

  Dewayne sat down beside her and took her hand in his. Even after all these months, the juxtaposition of sizes made Margaret stare.

  “They might’ve thought you didn’t wanna talk about it.”

  “You mean the fact that I was born illegitimate?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean about your momma’s job.”

  There was much about her mother Margaret had shared with Dewayne—the year of cancer, the alpha personality, even the anecdote of when Ruth Pinaldi gave her twelve-year-old daughter a Ms. magazine article with line-drawing illustrations showing masturbation techniques. Yet she had told him nothing about the clinic or what she did there. All he knew—or at least all she thought he knew—was that she had worked for her mother, the doctor.

  “What are you getting at?” she asked. “What do you know about my mother?”

  Dewayne gave a slight pained look as if he’d been caught in a white lie. “My momma’s secretary-treasurer of Middle Georgians for Life,” he said.

  Margaret’s mouth dropped open. “Oh … my … God. They know? You know? How long have you known?”

  “Couple of months, I guess. Momma ran a Google search on her, and she gave me lots to read. It’s not like your momma tried to hide behind a rock, Margaret.”

  “Well, then, I suppose you think of me as the Devil in the flesh now, don’t you?”

  “Why would I do that?” he asked.

  “Guilty by association.”

  “That was your momma.”

  “Yeeeees. There’s a connection here, Dewayne. Do you see it yet?”

  “Don’t get ugly at me. I might not agree with what your momma did, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna hold it against you.”

  “That’s what pro-lifers do,” Margaret said.

  “No,” Dewayne replied. “That’s what Yankees do.”

  The sun had set, casting in the western sky a glow that reminded Margaret of orange sherbet. In anticipation of rain, the tree frogs had begun their tiny, whiny, seal-like barks.

  “So you can honestly tell me,” Margaret said, “that when you look at me you don’t see the patient counselor of an abortion clinic who shepherded thousands of unborn children to their death?”

  “No,” Dewayne answered. “I see a girl who lost her momma to cancer.”

  While working at the clinic, Margaret received a version of the same phone call at least three times a week.

  “There are two red lines,” the woman would say. “But how can I be sure?”

  “Two red lines?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this is from urine voided this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’d best set up an appointment to see Dr. Pinaldi.”

  “But how can I be sure?”

  “Two red lines? Not one … but two?”

  “Yes.”

  “A thick line and a skinny line?”

  “Yes.”

  Margaret knew the reliability and indicator signs of every home-pregnancy test on the market—a thin blue line, a green circle, a blue diamond, two red lines. All meant yes. All would plunge the caller into either despair or guarded euphoria.

  “It’s positive,” she would say. “I have an opening next Thursday, would that work?”

  Now, standing before her own bathroom vanity, holding the disposable, wh
ite-plastic device in her hand, Margaret unconsciously repeated the words out loud.

  “Two … red … lines,” she said. “Oh … my … God.”

  And then she thought of the new Planned Parenthood on J.B. McDonough Road. She wondered if they simply doled out pamphlets and birth control pills or also had a clinician on staff.

  “If not, there’s always Atlanta,” she said to herself.

  Thirty

  Dear Chatter: My friend and me went out for lunch the other day and we found a new restaurant that made sweet-potato milkshakes! It was so good I’m fixin’ to go back and get me another one. Whoever heard of such a thing!

  Dear Chatter: Okay, Selbyites, time for a driving lesson. There’s this thing on your car called a turn signal. Use it! Also, we do not roll down the windows and chat with drivers of other cars on the freeway. It is for high-speed travel. Stop driving as if you’re living in the country.

  Donna was crouched before her easel in front of the tropicals, pieces of orange, yellow, and green chalk in her hands. From the corner of her eye she saw Koquita entering aisle eleven, coming into work, her purse around her shoulder and a McDonald’s milkshake in hand.

  “Koquita!” she yelled. “Can you come over here, please?”

  Koquita ambled into the produce department. “Whatchu want?” she asked.

  “Can you tell me what this is?” Donna asked, pointing to her easel.

  “No, ma’am, I ain’t takin’ no produce test today.”

  “I just wanna know if you can tell what this is. I’ve been drawin’ pictures on my daily tip board. People just notice ’em more if I do.”

  With her large, round, Garfield-like eyes, Koquita took in the drawing. “That’s easy,” she said. “That’s a papaya.”

  “You are absolutely correct.”

  “That’s good, Donna. You draw real good.”

  Donna stood back to admire her work.