Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle

by Reinhardt, Susan

  “My mother would never take a dime from—”

  “As pure as she either is or pretends to be, all her Proverbs flew out her proper and righteous fanny when she extended her hand to accept one of Pauline’s seashelled-embossed entitlements, let’s call them.”

  “My mother would rather roll in hot coals than take that money,” I said. “She has pride.”

  “Pride has a sister, Ms. Prudy. It’s called Greed.”

  Pauline sighed. “Prudy, I insisted every one take a check. I can’t begin to repay what all my people have done to cause you and my grandbabies grief and harm, starting with Peter, who is really to blame because when you think about things, my baby boy—”

  “Watch it!” my aunt yelled. “Don’t even say his name. Remember, that was House Rule Number One until we can digest everything better. Maybe after a while we’ll let you add him to the prayer list, but that day’s a ways off, hon.”

  “Pauline, you are much too generous,” I said, rather uncomfortably. “But I’d feel indebted forever. Like I was always having to pay you back or something.”

  “I’m the one trying to pay you all back. And this is the only way for me. The jerk I married at least had some ASS-ets,” and the way she said it caused her and my Aunt Weepie to roar. What a pair. I never thought that jitter bag of a woman had a shot at humor and fun, and look how wrong I was. If I was wrong about her, I wonder how many others I’d misjudged? Maybe my mama was right and there was at least a kernel of decency in everyone, it just took the right timing to make it pop.

  “I got $550,000 in cash from the beast,” Pauline said, her growing boldness a nice change. “I also made off with half the value of both houses, the one in Virginia and the other in the Tennessee mountains. You know how much that is? It’s more than I’ll ever spend. I don’t even like to shop. Nothing fits me. Nobody but Ann Taylor makes a zero, and I can’t wear those clothes. I have to special order. It’s not a pleasure, I’ll tell you.”

  “Well, it’s a great pleasure for me,” Aunt Weepie said, crawling out of her nest to find more olives for her martinis. “She gave me and your Mama $50,000 apiece, and I plan to go to Jamaica and sit on the beach and let the natives braid my hair and bring me piña coladas. I’m ready to get my groove back.”

  “Prudy,” Pauline said, “the money is for anything you need, but if you want to call it an education fund for you and the kids that is fine with me.” Pauline surprised me by making eye contact. This was new. “If you don’t accept it for any other reason, do so for education. I know how much you want to be a nurse. This will help pay some of the bills while you’re in school. Plus, Jay’s so smart, I’ll bet he goes to an Ivy League college. I’m afraid this bit won’t pay one year’s tuition at Yale.”

  I didn’t know what to say. In the South we never accept gifts we feel we didn’t earn. I told her I’d think about it, but a not-so-quiet voice deep down told me I deserved it. That I’d more than “earned it.”

  Pauline reached eagerly for the martini my aunt had mixed her and sipped like a flitty hummingbird at the feeder. “My offspring would never accept a cent from me, so please.” She extended her tiny bird arm with the check.

  I finally took the check, folding and putting it in my back pocket without looking at the amount.

  “Thank the good Lord above you remembered to say ‘offspring,’” Aunt Weepie said. “You’re learning, darlin’.”

  What I did next came as natural as breathing and felt as right as saying a blessing before a big meal. I bent down and embraced little Pauline Jeter, her sharp, child-like bones pressing into me, into the scars. I was unable to let go and held her tightly, the way Jay and Miranda hold onto me when they’re terrified. I broke into tears and, no, it wasn’t because of the money. No, it wasn’t that at all. I cried because finally this woman was acknowledging I was a worthy human being and that I didn’t deserve what had happened to me. As I wept against her pointy shoulder that smelled of baby powder, I knew she didn’t deserve it either.

  “I never hated him, Pauline,” I said, dabbing my running nose with the back of two fingers. “They used to get mad. The therapists. I couldn’t punch their pillows or throw a fit. They always said I’d never heal until I expressed anger. Maybe I never hated him because somewhere deep inside, someplace buried in the mind, I knew he was sick.”

  I released Pauline, who remained silent as I led her into Aunt Weepie’s living room, all ornamental and festooned in formality despite the green shag carpeting from 1971. I turned to her and said, “We’re all different. Nobody has to be a textbook example of the stages of grief and recovery. No mother has to fault herself if her child does what others can’t forgive. Your son . . .” and I whispered his name, “Bryce,” into her ear so Aunt Weepie wouldn’t hear, “he was very sick and still is. I saw him, Pauline, and I hate what he did to me, to us. I really despise it when I see myself in the mirror or in my babies’ eyes. But as far as hating him, how can I? Look what he gave me. Jay and Miranda. I wouldn’t have them if I’d taken any other road.”

  “Prudy, you don’t have to say all this.” We had taken a seat on Aunt Weepie’s formal, velvet sofa. Pauline’s hands rested in two tight fists against her lap and clutched a clump of shredded tissues.

  “I promise, Pauline, whatever it took to get them on this earth . . . if I’d known before—had held a crystal ball and seen what the future had in store—I’d have said, ‘Let’s get on with it.’ I wouldn’t have used that knowledge to change courses. These children, I honestly believe, are the ones I was born to have. I couldn’t have had them without . . . him . . . without Bryce.”

  Pauline let out a succession of shoulder shakes, the tremble before the massive rumble and flood of her tears. It was a long while before the shoulders quit moving and the voice found itself, the crying Aunt Weepie was so proud of at funerals—the tears that ushered the two of them into the dining rooms of brick ranchers and Georgians where dish after dish of CorningWare released the homey smells of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, melting cheese and whatever vegetable happened to find itself bubbling beneath cheddar heaven.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Let it out.” I patted her. She was frail, a broken ballerina in my arms. “It’ll be all right, Pauline.” I tried to think of what else to say, what might possibly comfort her enough to stall this torrent of tears and silence her heaving upper body. The more I tried to soothe her, the more she wept.

  “You have a new family now,” I said, amazed at my own words. “We’re here for you.” She cried even louder. Aunt Weepie rushed in with another martini sloshing from the stemware.

  “Pauline, suck it up. We got a funeral in two hours and I don’t want you to use up your reserves over Miss Prudy. No offense, Prude.” She stood in front of Pauline, gin doing a Hula-Hoop in the wide-mouthed martini glass.

  “I already invited you to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Surely you realize a person doesn’t get such invites unless the family actually likes them enough to digest a meal in their presence. I’m not even inviting my oldest daughter this year. Surely this gives you an ounce of confidence.” She lifted the gin to her lips and sipped, struck a classic Aunt Weepie pose, then excused herself and crawled back into her nest. “Get me up when it’s time to crash the fune,” she said.

  ***

  Mama and Aunt Weepie live two miles from each other, and this is fortunate when a woman runs out of gas, which is exactly what happened after leaving my aunt’s place, a check for Lord-only-knew-how-much folded in my jean’s pocket and fresh tears of forgiveness damp on my cheeks. I was surprised how good I was feeling, how a heart could swell if a person found the capacity to excuse and release acts of people she never dreamed possible.

  The magic of near-autumn in the Carolinas wasn’t holding back, and today’s sky bathed itself in a shade of blue so intense it was startling.

&nb
sp; The day spread gorgeous, a postcard afternoon, temper-atures in the low 80s and perfect for walking the remaining mile to Mama’s to bum enough gas to get home.

  I strolled at a leisurely pace, taking in the way the air felt when all the humidity had been squeezed from it. The trees were growing a deeper, dull green, the color before the first frost brings a slow and beautiful transition into fall’s capes of red and gold and pumpkin orange. I thought about Croc as I walked, hugging the side of the road to avoid the teenagers who sped by in trucks and sports cars. I thought of the day the Beckers had packed their faith and furniture and put them at the mercy of the Mayflower and a second go at Florida. That was the night that changed everything. The night that turned living into loving.

  Working and taking care of my children had taught me how to live and that it was worth it to get out of bed every morning, that a lot of people had problems worse than mine, that I was lucky to have survived and am not in a wheelchair. After a while, a woman can find the satin edges of grace in tragedy’s wool blanket.

  It was Croc who taught me how to love. Really love. He taught me love in its beginnings, when we were young and in a hurry and fueled by out-of-control hormones. And now he was teaching me about the kind of love that could pace itself, a 26-mile-marathon love as opposed to sprints and dashes.

  I wasn’t seeking salvation in his arms. I did not long for him in a lusty sort of way (on most days). But I loved him—a steady kind of love like the older people I’ve come across over the years.

  “He’s my best friend,” they’d say. “He’s my greatest companion.” These people knew the secret. That if friendship were a major part of the union, the sex would always be the seasoning, something to spice it up or make it sweeter. And that if a devoted friendship wasn’t there, sex would, even on the best of days, be nothing more than an exercise of meaningless movement.

  I’d always, without question, figured a girl needed seasonings before she could cook the meal, and that love without spices and the zing of heat couldn’t be real or lasting.

  Now I understood better and knew love didn’t have to hurt. I know when I hold Croc’s thin hand, fingers calloused from guitar strings, when I allow him to trace my scars and tiptoe along the quieter paths to my heart, that this is right. That this is the kind of easy love I want. Not the kind Amber is getting from Landon, the scorching sizzling sex, the fights, the intensity of a brush fire burning fast and all-consuming.

  ***

  “I have a surprise,” Croc had said a few days ago when the Beckers moved out, the day I learned the roof over my head had been sold. I was at the counter, coating chicken breasts in a mixture of Special K and Parmesan cheese.

  “Come on, Croc,” I said, “I’m trying to cook. Might be one of the last meals I get to cook in this kitchen, so I want it to taste decent. The owner hasn’t returned my call, but I’m sure we’ll be put out just like the Beckers. It’s only a matter to time.”

  He wrapped his arms around mine, led me to the sink and cut the water on, rinsing raw chicken and crumbs from my hands, toweling them off with a Bounty, then kissing each finger until he came to the ninth, holding that left finger in his hand. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a teeny box wrapped in silver paper, no room for a bow. Oh, God. He was proposing. My heart raced, picking up irregular beats that rob a woman of breath and firm footing. I had not prepared for this, wasn’t even wearing lipstick or a decent coat of mascara. I had on ugly clothes, too. My breath was oniony. A woman doesn’t want to get engaged in the kitchen of a rental unit with raw chicken on her hands and onion breath. But who can be picky these days when a good many men fear death less than marriage?

  “Go on,” he said. “Close your mouth, take a breath and open the box.” He nudged the gift into my damp hands.

  I unwrapped the silver paper, slowly removed the black velvet box and lifted the lid. Inside, tucked in the slot where the ring should have been, was a piece of paper, a pink Post-It exactly like the kind Aunt Weepie had stuck to the biscuits she’d thought had been served from the floor. I unfolded the paper and read the block print, the careful lettering, almost as if professionally written.

  “MY DARLING PRUDY. WELCOME HOME. FOREVER, CROC.”

  I was puzzled. Welcome home. What was this? I smiled and started to go right back to my chicken, pissed there wasn’t a big old diamond in the appropriate section, where instead had been the Post-It note. I grew madder than a wet cat that he’d duped me into thinking he was proposing. Not, mind you, that I’d have said yes. Not by a long shot. Maybe. Possibly. I don’t know.

  “Prudy,” he said. “I bought this house. I’m the new owner.”

  I turned abruptly back to dinner preparations and rolled another breast in the mixture and plopped it into my Pyrex. Great. Wonderful. He owned the house and therefore he owns us. Could treat us like tenants, march us around like soldiers for the all mighty rent dollar.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “What are we supposed to do?” I snapped. “Fall on our knees? Say, please, Mr. Godfrey, have mercy on us poor folks and add ‘rent control’ to your high-falutin’, property-owning vocabulary?”

  Croc stood stunned as men will do when they’ve once again, for the millionth time, misread a woman and what she really wants in life. I wonder how many women expect to unwrap rings at Christmas and Valentine’s, then have to put on a big old fake smile and say, “What a lovely bracelet. Please, help me fasten the hook.”

  “Prudy, I don’t get it. Don’t leave me here to fill the gaps in a woman’s mind. I can’t do it. I admit I’m from Mars, Pluto. I want you to spell it out for me. Please.”

  I didn’t budge from my silent stance.

  “Okay, all right,” he said. “I’ll spell it. I L-O-V-E Y-O-U.”

  “G-R-E-A-T!” I spelled, opening the oven and shoving the pan into the heat that bathed my face, already hot with anger.

  “Prudy?”

  “Does this mean I’m your Jezzie, your $550 a month hooker, or do I get a discount because we’re finally French kissing and copping a feel or two?”

  He offered a lopsided grin, an exasperated smile that you see in 1950s movies when the befuddled man can’t figure out what the zany, wasp-waisted female is doing. He was Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Hugh Grant, Brad Pitt. All mine.

  “I’m going to be living here, too, Prudy.”

  I threw down the potholder and jabbed the air with a fork.

  “Is that right? You think a little black box with a major chunk of jewelry AWOL is going to get you in my queen bed, will entitle you to my Serta hospitality, my overall Sunday afternoon zest for the big act? Is that what your Lesueur pea brain is thinking?”

  He quit smiling. “I’m not moving into your bed,” he said. “I’m going to be living—”

  “What? What? I’m too hog-like for you. You a bit put off by a few cottage cheesy ripples? Well, I may be a size 10 to 12 but at least, at least . . . I don’t have that neck thingamajig hanging.

  “Show me a dozen 39-year-old women who don’t have a neck thingy, and I’ll show you a piece of ocean front property in Oklahoma.”

  “Go to your room,” he ordered.

  “Excuse me.”

  “You’re ruining my whole plan. Go to your room.”

  “I’ll not have you talking to me like your 8-year-old child.”

  He grabbed my waist and led me into the bedroom blooming with an enormous vase of 24 red roses and another box, this one much bigger than the first, sitting on my vanity. I picked it up. It weighed at least a pound or two and I figured it held a lead crystal candy dish or a clock or some other impersonal, non-committal type gift.

  “Go on and open it,” he said as I switched the box from hand to hand, figuring, guessing. “Before your chicken starts burning.”

  “It’s only been
in there a few minutes.”

  “Fine. Please, Prudy. Go on and open it.”

  I untied the white velvet bow and carefully lifted tape from the same silver wrap that had been on the first package. The first object I came to was a rock, a big Charlie Brown rock with dirt and moss still in its crevices.

  “Keep digging around,” he said.

  I found it. Another small, black velvet box, same as the first one. I opened it quickly with an expression of “another Post-It?” I saw my face in the vanity, flushed as a teenager’s, Croc behind me, expectant. Nearly 20 years may as well have been erased in that one moment, that single window of time warping—when we were both 18, 19 and love was new and possibilities endless.

  I looked into the box and staring back at me twinkled a beautiful diamond, emerald cut, at least 1 ½ near-flawless carats. He’d remembered, remembered all those years ago when we’d made love on the Hillbrook Golf Course and he’d asked, “What kind of diamond do you like best?” and I’d said, “There’s only one kind. The emerald cut.”

  He reached for my left hand, slipped the ring on and said these words:

  “I’ve loved you all my life. If you’ll marry me, I’ll give you every bit of joy you could ask for. The kids, too. Remember, fear no longer has a place in our lives. Regrets either.”

  My throat closed with emotion. I inhaled, smelling the flowers, the chicken, Croc’s Prell shampoo. I could hear the children in the next room, fighting, laughing, then fighting some more.

  I thought about the house and the kindness shown by this skinny man, this man as good as Gandhi and equally deserving of a peace prize. As I’d rebuilt my life since the radio station breakdown, he’d been there, the mortar for every brick I’d stacked.

  “Me too,” was all I could say. “I mean, I’ve loved you, too, and yes. Yes, I will . . . well, maybe not. I really want to, but I have a question to ask you, if you don’t mind.”