Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle

by Reinhardt, Susan

  “Say, you skydive?” Landon asked, getting in on the tail end of the conversation, the part that interested him.

  “Easy as shooting pool.”

  “Cool,” he said.

  And I thought, How can men this verbally and socially challenged ever get into vet school? Maybe he’s much better with animals, pups and kittens that wanted only two meals and a stomach rub. Conversation, especially witty exchanges, not required.

  “Prudy,” Croc said as Landon beat a path to the bar. “Make sure Doctor Boy treats you with the respect you deserve. I want you to know I had a wonderful time with you the other week.”

  “Yes, Croc. I can tell.”

  “I’ll call you, sweet girl. There’s a very real explanation as to why I had to back off for a while. I’m so sorry. Please. Just take my call.”

  “I may. Good seeing you.” I walked away, managed a weak wave as another piece of my heart sank and the tears threatened to fall from eyes already burning from smoke. It was a long drive home. Mama wasn’t going to be happy about this at all. I had tried. That’s all a girl can do.

  ***

  Two days later on a cloudy, almost breathable Monday morning, I remembered I hadn’t checked the mail. In the box was another letter. Bryce Jeter’s Charlotte address. A letter, it seemed, from him to me, directly. I shoved it in my pocket and went inside to make the children breakfast before dropping them off at Mama’s and going to the radio station for my show to discuss the subject of how whiny children end up conservative and confident children somehow become liberals. This radio job I loved almost as much as the work at Top of the Hill.

  Once I got to the station, I slipped into the ladies room and ripped open the letter, my hands damp with fear and shaking. My stomach twisted and I felt sick. I entered a stall and sat fully clothed on the edge of the toilet seat, the proper place to read a letter from Satan’s Twin.

  It was typewritten, once again.

  “Dear Prudy: I love you and am so sorry for what I did. I’m not sure what it was that caused me to snap, other than the fact I was driven insane by constant thoughts of you cheating on me. I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but there is no other way. You put me here, so now I’m going to put you where you belong. If you know what’s good for you, and you never have before, you will move to Virginia immediately and allow my parents to have meaningful relationships with my children, their grandchildren.

  If you don’t move, I am not at liberty to say what will happen to any of you. I have plenty of connections, if you know what I mean. I guess you heard I’m gravely ill. I won’t go into that at this time.

  Yours, Bryce.”

  This was the first time I hadn’t seen his letters signed, “Yours in Christ.” Maybe he realizes he is evil. But this very mention that he would hurt me or my children again, was the last straw, the one he’ll never pull again. I sat there, the hard plastic of the toilet seat causing my legs to go to sleep. I sensed the approaching anger that hadn’t come since the accident. I trembled and my entire body began sweating and then shaking violently. I threw up, a vile sickness in my stomach, a deep and darkening edge closing in on my vision, the entire world zooming in, zooming out, making no sense at all.

  I had just enough strength to stand up and walk toward the studio for my show. After that, it was time to pay my ex-husband a little visit. Way past time to drive to Charlotte and see what he’s been doing with himself these past two years.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hey Miss, Prudy: A man with hate in his heart may sound pleasant enough, but don’t believe him, for he is cursing you in his heart. Proverbs 26:24-25

  Mama’s Moral: Watch out for the smooth talkers. Like Satan’s Twin. And probably Croc. Give Landon Kennedy one more chance. Please.

  By the time I was done taping, the room was spinning and I held the edge of the chair until my fingers hurt, pressing my feet harder into the floor, trying to anchor stability that threatened to disintegrate.

  “Dr. Dee!” Mr. Hammer, Chuck’s boss boomed, calling out my on-air name. “Are you with us? As I’ve stated twice, the show’s over.”

  “Good morning,” I said, barely whispering. “This is Dr. Dee and I’m here to . . . to . . . may I help you?” Care for some fries with that? Would you like to supersize? I wasn’t thinking straight.

  “Dee you’re off the air. Are you listening?”

  In my mind I could hear a caller, someone’s voice fading in and out like a speaker with a bad connection. “I’m going right now to get that parenting book . . . you’ll be . . . then let’s see what you think you can . . . just put him in time out if—”

  I sat there until the station manager shook my shoulders and hooked one elbow under mine. “Let’s go into my office,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  When life begins tumbling as it had for the last two years, it keeps rolling until it hits bottom. I was about to smash into mine.

  “Dee,” Mr. Hammer said, settling me into a cold leather chair in front of his desk, the chair for minions and hopefuls and subordinates. His smooth radio voice boomed deeply, a tuba of tones, a voice that could make the unaware rush out to Bojangles for a biscuit, hurry over to Haverty’s for a new loveseat. It was an advertiser’s magic carpet ride to sales. It had taken him to the top of this radio station in a fairly large market for rock stations. He was going places. He had honors and framed awards on his wall and heavy glass trophies lined up on a shelf.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, cracking his chubby fingers. “You have a certain audience, the moms, granted, but quite frankly, I’m not sure about their buying power. Appears their husbands have control over everything, including the finances. Bottom line,” he was no longer making eye contact, “bottom line is we don’t have the budget to keep the show going. We’re going to have to let you go. You were great and funny as hell, but parents don’t really think they need an expert. They think they are the expert.”

  Let me go. Let me go? Go where? Where does a woman go who has plates and screws in one leg and a chest full of holes? This is where I thought I belonged. No matter what was going on or how many letters Satan’s Twin sent, flip on the radio and there I was, every morning at 8 a.m. I wondered, but didn’t ask, if I could still clean the restrooms and perform housekeeping duties. My mouth filled with what tasted like quarters, dimes, nickels. I tried to swallow the bitterness.

  I was speechless. All I could say was, “Why?”

  “The audience we’re targeting is much younger. The demographics have changed. We’re courting the 18 to 34s. It’s the way of the world. We’re changing the show to a dating format to meet our audiences’ needs.”

  Everything was about the demographics. The world loved Gen X. Gen Y. Baby Boomers had done their spending, were now sucking off the system they’d bought into, reaping their interest rates, paying off their mortgages, buying power on pause, a group feeding off savings and purchases made long ago. “And the kids want more music, less talk. We could cut you back to $50 and put you on at night.”

  “I have small children. It wasn’t even my idea to have the show, but since it started my whole life was getting better.” By then he had quit listening and I could feel the edges of anger broiling and approaching the surface of my mind like a raging fire.

  “Dee, it’s just the way it is.” I kept hearing a Bruce Hornsby song in my head after he said it then repeated it. “That’s just the way it is. We’ll do one more show to wrap things up. Give you a chance to direct the market elsewhere. Oh, and you can still serve as our housekeeper.”

  “I don’t fully understand, if you could—”

  “No ad dollars. Nobody’s paying for the programming. People don’t want to advertise their new cars when a bunch of women are calling in yakking on and on about their juvenile delinquent children.”

  “Please. We could
do another type show. I could help women who’ve been through spouse abuse. Just think. It might work and really help—”

  Mr. Hammer turned red as a hot pepper. “They shouldn’t have married the bastards in the first place.”

  So this is how he saw it. This is how the world saw it. Men beat up their wives and girlfriends and that’s just the way it is. It’s been happening since man’s beginnings and we’d better damned get used to it. Take our punishment. Shut our mouths and wear our pretty underthings and fix a decent meal and act like when he’s inside us that it’s the grand prize, that all that cooking and cleaning and the putdowns about our fat asses and our cheating and our ugly stupid minds and terrible driving and parenting skills don’t matter. Throw all those verbal and psychological abuses out the window and suck it up because now . . . now . . . you’re getting the big one. The golden spike. Lay down woman and submit. That’s just the way it is. The way it will always be.

  Women try to leave, over and over they try to leave and the bad wolf brings them back and dumps them in a pot of boiling water, cooking their souls and frying their resolve until nothing is left. He promises to kill them if they don’t stay. And when they stay, like good dogs, he’ll beat them and rip their skins and break their bones but he won’t kill them. Not usually. He reserves the knives and bullets, vans and screwdrivers for when she gets brave enough to take out a restraining order and show a little power. This infuriates him. He decides to put her in her place. Once and for all. That’s just the way it is. The way it will always be.

  The anger, the missing link to my life according to the therapists, was marching to the front of the emotional lineup. I felt it, the way it heated my skin and scalded my veins: tapping drumming pounding. It had to get out. It begged for release. It had simmered for two years, and suddenly, with this news, rushed to the surface. I reached up to feel my cheeks and they were flaming.

  I saw flashes of light, of Bryce, his chrome bumper dazzling against the sun before ramming into me, sending my body reeling through the plate-glass window. Before anyone came to help, Bryce pounced, straddling my bleeding and broken body as I tried to thrash and fight back on the hard sidewalk. I felt his smooth manicured hands around my throat, squeezing tighter, then releasing me while he fumbled with a six-pack of Phillip’s screwdrivers, choosing his murder weapon as an afterthought. No one did a thing but stand gawking, mouths agape.

  I remember smelling French fries, the kind at McDonald’s, hot and right out of the oil. I looked around for heroes when the first screwdriver entered with a sharp, intense pain, over and over, until it didn’t hurt anymore, and I was using one hand to cover my face and the other to shield my heart. Instinctively, I knew if he struck my left chest it was all over. No more life. No more love from my two babies who were with Jenny and had no idea their daddy was trying to kill their mommy with the same tool kit he used to put batteries in their Fisher Price toys.

  My eyes flew open and didn’t blink. I stared as the dead do while Bryce held up a small screwdriver and jabbed it into my neck, shoulders and the breasts that had fed our babies. Again and again the screwdriver plunged and I felt nothing, only the dullness of an object, like someone poking a finger to get your attention and the warm wetness of blood and a body unplugged.

  After eight or ten blows with one of the smaller screwdrivers, he threw it aside and picked the biggest from the bunch and stabbed it into my chest twice, nicking the ventricle until I lost my breath, choking for air, and felt consciousness slipping and the entire world cut off its light. I saw the yellow plastic handle of the screwdriver, I saw his purpled face, the blood. All the blood. My blood. I saw my leg, the tibia bursting through skin and panty hose and foot bent like a wrung chicken’s neck. Someone in the grocery store had called 911, a giant man was on top of me trying to pull Bryce off, and the crews arrived seconds before I’d have died.

  My anger was now out of control as I stared at Mr. Hammer and reached for the first object I could find, the cell phone, hurling it across the room, aiming for floor, but accidentally hitting the glass framed awards case and listening as it shattered into hundreds of splintered shards. Instead of feeling guilty and apologetic, I took it a step further and threw the chair into the bookcase, a hot river of adrenalin surging up my spine. I began to scream and couldn’t stop. The station manager picked up his desk phone, sweat on his upper lip and around his armpits, and called for security. I crouched behind a sofa in the corner, nothing moving but my shirt, the fabric beating from the marathon pace of my heart, which had become a live animal, an eviscerated creature, skinned and raw and trying to escape. My mind was gone . . . sailing to BI-LO, in the parking lot, dead unblinking eyes on the display window. Silver Queen Corn, six ears for a dollar.

  I couldn’t stop the flow or pace of memories. They rushed without direction and all I could do was watch. I saw Bryce’s tanned fingers, wedding ring glinting gold in the sun the first time the sharp tool slashed the skin and, then later, when there was no pain, only heat, like a few drops of splashed boiling water. My eyes rolled back and I saw other feet, feet of human beings standing far enough away to watch, but not moving toward me, not helping, not pushing the beast from my body. He held his hand up again and I reached for his face, my nails digging into his perfect cheeks, tearing and scratching as hard as I could, only the weapon plunged down again and again. This time, my hands let go and cupped my heart, one across my face. Consciousness was flickering, blinking. On and off. Alive. Dead. Heart beat beat beating. Flatlining.

  And now in the radio station, lights flashed, maybe sounds. I was no longer in the world of functioning beings. Men and a couple of women arrived in navy pants and thick black boots. They carried red crash carts and medical kits. Police cars squealed into the station parking lot, blue lights splashing the afternoon with intrigue. The paramedics asked questions but it was dark in my head, and I was unable to separate the voices, just heard them melding together like indiscernible jazz and couldn’t make out the questions. It was like a choir, only everyone singing different songs. Two of them lifted me onto a stretcher and eased me down the four steps leading from the station’s front door and into one of two waiting ambulances. I saw faces—people pointing, and someone, someone . . . laughing.

  The ride was different from the one I’d had after Bryce ran over me. For the first time my brain had jolted into remembering details of the crime, not the pain or the rampage, but the ride. I remember the interior of the rescue vehicle, the freezing cold feeling of losing control, the warmed blankets the EMS crew draped around my legs while they ripped away my shirt and tried to prevent the holes in my neck and chest from spewing any more blood. There were needles and nervous, loud voices. Equipment flung and discarded and piercing my body, paddles and rapid heart flutters, then no flutters then darkness, light, a face, a woman’s startled blue eyes opening mine and looking in. Is anybody home?

  The white sheets crimson with streaks of bright red blood. Candy canes. Barber poles. Latex gloves. “We’ve got to stop her bleeding . . . need to get the blood pressure up . . . losing her . . .”

  This time I wasn’t bleeding. Not on the outside. They asked me questions, what is your name, what day is this, what year is it, can you hear us, do you understand where you are, that you are in an ambulance? Everything is going to be all right, we’re going to call someone for you, could you tell us who to call? Who do we call Ms. Millings? Do you have a number for someone—

  We are taking you to the hospital and need to get in touch with next of kin. Next of kin. Who are your next of kin?

  We were suddenly in the emergency room. I wasn’t thinking clearly and slipping farther into a place where there was no ladder out. A nurse with long acrylic fingernails forced a gown over me, and I could feel the tips of the nails, cool and scratching along my bare back. She tied the two loops and eased me onto the stiff white pillow and hard gurney. I don’t know how
long I waited for a room or for next of kin. They injected me with a tranquilizer to stop the shaking and trembling. It calmed me, liquid Valium that takes women places they’re normally afraid to go.

  It took me back to Kiawah Island, my wedding night, the gray cedar beach villa, ocean breeze playing hide-and-seek in my flowing, billowing dress. I was this new bride, legally wed to Rev. Bryce Jeter, the most beautiful man I’d ever seen and made more so by his connections, his gold sashes to the kingdom of God and to forgiveness, what I wanted most. Forgiveness.

  God, forgive me. Forgive me for the sin you know I committed when I was 22 years old and forever ashamed to face myself in the mirror, a woman who hated her own eyes, her body, what had occurred within. I’d thought Bryce could extend his Jesus glow and encircle me in the robes of forgiving cloth. Show me the way. Show me how to ask and receive the peace of a God who promises redemption.

  And now I lay on the steel bed padded with sheets where others had bled and died, sheets sterilized in industrial washers and dryers, bleached and sanitized and holding yet another victim. I lay there all Valiumed and loose with a mind opening enough to allow all of the Rev. Jeter inside. I would not have married him, this much I know, had I lived a life free of this one sin I couldn’t bear, a sin without absolution no matter how many times I’d fallen to my knees and begged for God’s mercy. I’d visited Catholic churches and pastoral counselors, confessing and crying and all of them pointing to Scriptures that showed without doubt I could be sin-free, but in my eyes the act I’d committed had been murder. All I had to do was ask God for release and it was mine, they said, because Jesus had died on the cross. He hadn’t died for nothing, they told me. Just ask. Ask in sincerity and you shall receive. Peace, the sweet peace of forgiveness.