Then late in August, I was coming up the hall from the back bedroom when I overheard Daddy and Willa Mae in the kitchen, talking about me.
Willa Mae said, “I swanee, Jack, Maggie Sweet doesn’t seem the least bit excited over making a nurse.”
Daddy said, “Well darlin’, that’s kindly my fault. You see, I was real tired that day. I meant to mark the beauty school box on the application form, but I accidentally marked the nursing school box instead. By the time I saw the mistake, it was too late to get my money back. But I didn’t think she’d mind, her mama being a nurse and all.”
I froze. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Before I could move Willa Mae said, “Why, Jack Sweet, if that don’t beat everything! You mean that child’s been a’squallin’ all summer ’cause she doesn’t want to go to nurse’s school?”
Before I could duck back in my room, I heard chair legs scrape linoleum and Willa Mae met me in the hall. “Maggie Sweet, I think we need to have us a woman to woman talk. Your daddy just told me you don’t want to be a nurse a’tall.”
I stood there paralyzed. This was important, but I didn’t know what to do, what to say. Then I started bawling, “Oh, Willa Mae, all I ever wanted was to go to beauty school. Now that Jerry’s gone, doing hair’s my whole life.”
“Well, Lord have mercy, child,” she said, patting my arm. “I can’t do nothing about that boy, but I swanee…your daddy thinking nursing school and beauty school are all the same…sometimes, I swear, that man just don’t think.”
A minute later, Willa Mae stomped out of the house. The next thing I heard was gravel flying, and the old pickup peeling down the driveway.
An hour later she was back. “It’s all fixed, Maggie Sweet. You start beauty school Monday morning.”
Chapter 3
Grandpa Pruitt had left Mama Dean. Mother had left Daddy. I figured that was the way of the world. People you loved broke your heart and the sun still came up like always, life went on, you grew up.
My troubles with Jerry had taken the shine off beauty school, but I figured if I had to be an old maid, at least I could have a job I loved. When I wasn’t in school, I tried to stay too busy to think. I even volunteered as a candy striper at the hospital on weekends. And even though I was only going through the motions, I was good at both jobs. Being raised in a boardinghouse had taught me how to do for people. (Why, Mother and Mama Dean would have skinned me alive if I hadn’t known how to do.)
I’d been raised hearing: “Maggie Sweet, run upstairs and get Mama Dean’s headache powders. She’s getting one of her migraines.”
“Miss Honeycutt got some bad news from home. Try to be extra sweet to her tonight.”
“Maggie Sweet, don’t put onion in Miss Skurlock’s salad. It’ll talk back to her all day.”
Also I didn’t shock easy. Which is real important. I learned that doing hair.
Even when I was real young, I’d start brushing out someone’s hair and pretty soon they’d start telling me things. They’d tell their life stories during a simple comb-out. And if I worked on them longer, like during a Toni or a Frost ’n Tip, they’d tell me things they wouldn’t tell their own mamas. They wouldn’t have done that if I shocked easy.
Mostly, they just wanted to talk. But sometimes they’d ask for advice. It’s easy to know what’s best for other people.
As a hospital candy striper, I heard everything from folks. I guess it’s easier to talk to a stranger. Also, my own heartache had given me more understanding. Sickness and love gone wrong are a lot the same. A heartache is a heartache no matter how it comes.
A lot of people couldn’t see it that way, though. Miss Cato, the volunteer supervisor, thought I was real advanced. She was always saying things like “Maggie, how did you know to hold that woman’s hand in the emergency room today? We don’t cover ‘reassuring the patient’ until spring.”
I told her it was because I lived in a boardinghouse and did hair. She looked at me kind of funny, but one day she asked me to frost her hair and was barely in the chair before she started telling me all the problems she was having with her fiancé.
That year I grew up a lot, made a perfect 4.00 in precision cutting and streaking. At night I practiced makeovers on Willa Mae, helped with supper and the dishes, and tried to forget my aching heart.
The following spring, while I was working at the hospital, Mr. Presson, my tenth-grade biology teacher, was admitted to the hospital. He’d been visiting his mother in Chapel Hill for the weekend when he’d had an appendicitis attack. The attack was so bad he ended up having emergency surgery.
By the time I saw him, he was still pretty sick. And his bossy, stuck-up mother had aggravated the other volunteers ’til they all refused to go near his room. Naturally, they sent me. But I didn’t mind. My heart went out to him. He was a bachelor, sick and alone in the world. Except for a mother who didn’t like anyone, not even him.
After my shift was over, I took him magazines and books and he told me all the news from home. Before he left the hospital, he asked me to call him Steven.
When he was well enough to go home to Poplar Grove, I tried to get back to my old routine but I thought about Steven a lot.
Two weeks later, he called and asked me out. And just as calm as could be I said yes. It wasn’t until after we hung up that I got nervous about what I’d tell Daddy and Willa Mae. I figured they’d have a pure fit what with Steven being so much older and all. (He was twenty-nine. I’d sneaked a look at his hospital chart.)
And they did get all fired-up. But not because of the age difference like I thought. It was because Steven was a college graduate. Daddy and Willa Mae had never had a college graduate in their house before.
It was the oddest thing! Daddy and Willa Mae spent the next two days cleaning that neat little mill house from top to bottom. They even painted the bathroom a shiny Pepto-Bismol pink color which was all the rage that year.
On the morning of my date, Daddy drove all the way into Chapel Hill to a bakery and bought a marble cake. He planned to serve the cake on cut-glass plates along with tiny little glasses of sherry. For some reason, Daddy thought marble cake from a bakery and sherry, all served on cut glass, was the height of refinement.
Up ’til then, I’d been calm as could be, but all this fussing had my nerves torn to pieces. At the last minute, I got so nervous I sneaked outside and smoked one of Daddy’s Chesterfields behind a big rhododendron.
When Steven got there, I was in the bathroom gargling Listerine. Then everything fell into place. Steven put Daddy and Willa Mae at their ease and we picked up our conversation where we left off at the hospital.
When Steven told me he loved me after only one month, you could have knocked me over. I mean Steven was a grown man. Up ’til then I’d only known boys who didn’t have to shave every day. Why, I’d never expected a grown-up, college-educated man to feel that way about me.
For the next few months, Steven made the two-hour-long trip to Chapel Hill every weekend. He was everything I thought an adult should be: steady and predictable, someone I could count on. Even his voice was calm and soothing. I liked that. I liked that his life had order. Everyone I knew seemed to barely get by from one minute to the next. But Steven had a plan, a life plan he was sure of. I thought if I could just study him long enough, I could learn to be that way too. I was tired of living off my emotions, tired of waiting around for my grown-up life to begin. So that July, when he asked me to marry him, I said I’d be honored. I even used that funny, old-timey word: honored. Because that was exactly how I felt.
Then Steven did what I thought was the sweetest, most sincere thing. Before we told another living soul, he went to Daddy and asked for his blessing. Daddy was so thrilled over Steven’s show of respect that he almost cried. I almost cried myself. (’Course now I know Steven only asked Daddy first because it was the proper thing to do. Steven’s very big on proper.)
That very same weekend, I took Steven back home to me
et Mother and Mama Dean. Mother liked him right away, but Mama Dean gave him her all-men-are-only-after-one-thing look. I held my breath and squeezed Steven’s arm. Finally she gave him her steeliest look and said, “Just what are your intentions toward our Maggie Sweet?”
“My intentions are honorable, ma’am,” he said seriously.
“Do you work steady?” Her eyes glinted.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m a schoolteacher.”
For a moment Mama Dean seemed to soften. Then came the question I had dreaded for weeks.
“And what church do you go to?”
The room went silent. All I could hear was the clock on the mantel strike, the motor in the refrigerator click on, and my heart pound so loud I was sure everyone heard it. My entire future hinged on how Mama Dean would take what Steven had to say next.
“Presbyterian, ma’am,” he said, his voice firm.
“Well,” she said, giving him a stern look. “A Presbyterian’s just a Methodist with a college education.”
When she smiled I knew that Steven had won her over. She even seemed to like him. This was amazing! Mama Dean had never liked anyone, man or woman, who wasn’t a Methodist.
Later Mother told me that after we left, Mama Dean had picked through the Whitman’s Sampler Steven brought her and said absentmindedly, “That Steven’s a man to go to the well with. Anyone who can’t get along with him, couldn’t get along with Jesus Christ.”
After that she considered Steven “kin” and was on his side no matter what.
In September, a week after I graduated from beauty school, we were married. It was a small Methodist church wedding with warm wishes from mine and Mary Price’s family and the cold shoulder from Steven’s side.
We were given a toaster, coffeemaker, linens, and cash, and Steven gave me a beautiful Add-a-pearl necklace.
After a short but wonderful honeymoon at Myrtle Beach we returned to Poplar Grove and I told Steven I couldn’t wait to start working.
He gave me an odd look and said, “Maggie, marriage is a big adjustment. Wait a little while.”
Nine months later our twin girls were born. They were perfect, adorable babies, with Steven’s blond hair and Mama Dean’s chinquapin-black eyes. We decided not to give them rhyming “twin” names, but called them Amy Elizabeth and Jill Carole. When Mama Dean heard the names she said, “Amy Elizabeth is right nice, but why in the world would anyone call a poor helpless baby Jill Kay-roley?” We told Mama Dean over and over again that it was not Jill Kay-roley, but Jill Carole—Carol with an “e” on the end of it. But no matter what we said she never got it right. But then, Mama Dean also called Kmart “Kmark,” petites “petikes,” and boys named Kevin “Calvin.”
That same year we bought the old Shockley place on the corner of Morehead and Magnolia, three blocks from where I grew up. And even though the inside of the house was dark as a cave, I was tickled to death. It had a big garage out back—perfect for my Styles by Maggie shop.
We painted the house colonial blue, then filled it with flea market and family attic finds we refinished ourselves. We bought a couch and some beds. Mother Presson gave us a silver tea set, a Gone with the Wind lamp, and a Queen Anne chair. Mother and Mama Dean gave us an antique hutch and the old brass bed Mama Dean was born in. I was thrilled. I’d been dreaming about how I’d decorate my very own house all my life. We’d tear out the dark mahogany paneling and paint and paper every room in warm, friendly cream and gold colors. I’d even make all the curtains on Mother’s old Singer treadle. When we were through, everything would be as warm and cheerful as a page out of a Sears-Roebuck catalog.
But Steven said, “Maggie Sweet, I know you’ve never had much and you’ve got a lot to learn, but that’s genuine mahogany paneling. We don’t tear out genuine mahogany paneling.” He said each word slow and drawn-out, like he thought I was backward or something.
When I asked for sheer curtains to let in some light, Steven hung heavy wine-colored velvet drapes at every window, then covered the walls with dark, gloomy portraits of his long-dead relatives hung from guy wires attached to the ceiling molding (so the nail holes wouldn’t “disfigure” his precious paneling).
I remember looking around the house, my house, and thinking, Lord have mercy, this place is as creepy as a museum and this man’s a stranger. But then I’d cuddle my sweet, dark-eyed babies and think, grow up, Maggie Sweet. You’re not a child anymore; you’re twenty years old with children of your own. Even if this isn’t the way you thought it would be, he’s a good man. You can do this. You can be whatever it is he wants you to be.
So we joined Steven’s church and a neighborhood improvement group, and we went to all the school functions. Steven joined the historical society, the Sons of the Confederacy, and a Presbyterian men’s group. I missed cutting hair like crazy, so I read all the hairstyle magazines and practiced on friends and family. (During the day when Steven wasn’t at home. He had hissy fits over what he called “women traipsing through the house.”)
I also volunteered at the hospital and the Methodist home and stayed so busy, I barely had time to shave both legs on the same day.
Then things settled down. By the time the girls were ready for first grade we were so settled that the only thing that ever changed was the display of magazines on the front room coffee table.
That September I asked Steven what he thought about me finally starting to work.
He said, “Wait until the girls are a little bigger.”
So I waited and became Maggie Sweet, Homeroom Mother and Queen of the Kitchen Sink, while Steven went on for his master’s degree and locked himself in the den the nights he was at home.
I’d visit Mother, Mama Dean, and Mary Price. Every chance I got, I’d sneak down to Shirley’s and breathe in the scent of Matrix shampoo and Zoto permanents. When I got home, I’d read the fine print on my cosmetology license, and even if I had to use my birthday money from Daddy, I kept my license renewed.
By the time the girls were in junior high and bigger than me, I told Steven that I thought I’d waited long enough.
This time he didn’t say anything. He just stood there looking like I had slapped him. Then he slammed into the den and tore the Poplar Grove phone book half in-two.
After that my life became as predictable as our meals. I raised the girls, cooked and cleaned. Six times a year I served chicken à la king at banquets where the topics were fund-raising or tombstone-rubbing. Every quarter we changed the furnace filter, and Steven’s mother came to visit. On our wedding anniversary, I put on a shirtwaist dress, low heels, and the Add-a-pearl necklace and Steven took me out for a forty-five-minute dinner at the K & W Cafeteria. We made love every Saturday night, right after the eleven o’clock news. Sunday morning, right after church, Steven updated the magazines on the coffee table, and raked the rug ’til all our footprints disappeared.
It wasn’t until my coffee got cold and the sun came up that I realized I’d been rocking in the glider, thinking things over, for hours. I jerked myself back to reality. You’re not Maggie Sweet anymore. You’re Maggie Sweet Presson. Steven’s wife. The mother of two almost-grown girls. In another half hour or so the alarm clock would go off, my family would awake and start flipping on light switches, getting ready for their day. But I wasn’t ready to go inside yet. I still had some thinking to do. For years Steven had slammed the door on my beauty shop dreams and I’d shoved it to the back of my mind. I’d shoved everything to the back of my mind until Steven spent our savings on cemetery plots and I started to see how much time had passed. I sat under the magnolia, watching the sun rise, thinking about my class reunion and Jerry; thinking about my life. Now I wondered if all these things hadn’t happened at the same time, would I have even noticed that I’d spent all these years sleepwalking.
I felt my life take a turn, a hard bump.
Chapter 4
Horoscope for April—Poplar Grove Expositor
Balance introspection with fun. If your social life seems m
eager, do something about it. Refuse to be swayed by one who shouts invectives. Someone important will enter your life at precisely the right moment.
It rained all week, a real gullywasher that seemed to go on forever. For seven days, I sighed, stared out the window, and picked the dead leaves off the African violets on the kitchen windowsill. On Friday I noticed that I’d picked every last leaf off one of the violets and thought, Good Lord, Maggie, get a hold of yourself. You’ve killed that poor flower dead as a hammer.
Monday morning, Modine Dingler, a former classmate, called to invite me to an Around-the-World Home Lingerie Party at her house Wednesday night.
I’d sworn off house parties years before (I had enough Tupperware to sink Coxey’s Navy). But when Modine said a lot of our old classmates would be there, I promised to call her back.
Then Tuesday something happened that told me I had to go to Modine’s party or die.
I was carrying a basket of clean, folded laundry past the den, when I overheard Steven on the phone. “Don’t worry about a thing, Theo. We’ll have the meeting here Wednesday night.”
Theodora Bloodworth is president of the local historical society. She and Steven are on beaucoup committees together. If you saw Theo anywhere you’d know right off, historical-society president. She’s forty-something, lives in a big old turreted house on West Main, has a plantation accent saying chay-ah for chair and cen-tah for center. Theo wears cameo brooches, clothes edged in silk ribbon, and her hair in a chignon like Princess Grace.
Now Steven was saying, “Theo, I insist. You already work too hard and good old reliable Maggie doesn’t have anything else to do.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, my face burning. “Good old reliable Maggie doesn’t have anything else to do.” I think I said the words out loud. When had I been reduced to “good old reliable, Maggie”?
Suddenly the laundry basket felt like it was filled with rocks. I carried it upstairs, put everything away, then went back to the kitchen to wash supper dishes.
Maggie Sweet Page 3