The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  Sally told about the applehead-carving class, and about realizing that a wealth of materials lay unrecognized under her very own nose. As she talked, her fear left her. Words seemed just to flow from her mouth, as they had during the question-and-answer portion of the Miss Newland contest. She told about her group and the torrent of ideas generated by it, about the compiling of the book.

  The professor talked about the rich tradition to which Sally and her group were heirs: “Throughout history women have taken their household equipment and turned them into works of beauty. We think of the pottery and basketry down through the ages, wooden bowls and implements. Women were never content to produce them simply for utility. And when you have something designed for grace and beauty, as well as for function, you have Art.”

  Sally had never before thought of what she was doing as Art, or of herself as an Artist. But as she left the studio that afternoon she thought to herself, Well, why not?

  She was such a success that Mr. Hitchcock, the station manager, a tall dark man with sad eyes like a basset hound’s, asked her to do a half-hour program one morning a week. She asked members of the group to appear as Guest Artists to talk about and demonstrate their ideas.

  Meanwhile, the paperback had been published. Sally began getting several letters each week: “Dear Sally, You look like such a nice woman on the TV and on the cover of your book. I’ve always meant to write a book myself, but I’ve never had the time. I just found out my husband is having an affair with the paperboy. What should I do? I raise white rats for laboratories and would like to send you one in appreciation for all the pleasure knowing you has given me.” Sally took her responsibilities to her readers very seriously. She knew what it was like to feel trapped by your life and helpless to change it. But she herself was a living example that it was possible to prevail over your circumstances. She’d write back, “Dear Mona, Thank you so much for your nice letter. I’m glad you enjoy my book and show. About your husband, why not cancel your newspaper subscription? Please do not send me a white rat, as I have no place to keep one.”

  Every now and then there was a nasty letter from some sickie saying he wanted to lick her pussy, or carve up her pretty face like an applehead, but she always threw those away and forgot about them quick as she could.

  Soon answering her fan mail was taking up a lot of time, so she had a skeleton letter printed up, on which she could fill in the blanks and cross out inapplicable words:

  Dear—,

  Thank you so much for your—. I’m glad/sorry you—my show/ book, and I really appreciate your letting me know. Please do not send a—.

  These were printed on her own letterhead, with SALLY TATRO in bright green letters an inch high. She also enclosed an autographed copy of the photo from the book jacket.

  She’d been made Scheduling Chairman of the Candy Stripers by now. The demands on her time were so great she thought about quitting, but she decided it was important to make time for Candy Striping because it was volunteer work for the community and shouldn’t be sacrificed just because her other activities were bringing in money. Besides, she liked it to be known that Sally Tatro was still just a plain old ordinary person, in spite of all her achievements. She’d whisk into a patient’s room carrying a floral arrangement, and the patient’s mouth would fall open: “Ain’t I seen you on the TV this morning? Naw, you ain’t Sally Tatro? Shoot, wait’ll I tell Opal!” She liked bringing such pleasure into diseased lives. Sometimes she’d autograph their casts.

  Her Nashville publisher had told her to call him collect when she needed to. Whenever she gave her name to the operator, the operator would say, “Sally Tatro? The Authoress?”

  Sally would laugh modestly. “Yup, that’s me, all right.”

  A broker phoned her from downtown to try to sell her shares in an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. “Why, someone with the money Sally Tatro must be raking in needs her a good tax shelter. Why don’t you talk to your husband about it?” Sally was so flattered to have it widely known that she was making money that she said she would, although she knew Jed knew nothing more about tax shelters than she did.

  At Kroger’s now when she wrote a check, the check-out girl would stammer, “I declare, the Sally Tatro?”

  Sally would give a self-effacing laugh. “No, honey, the other one!” And as she walked out the door beside the bag boy, she could hear the check-out girls whispering and feel their eyes on her back. She liked it to be known that it hadn’t gone to her head, all her fame. That she still did all her own shopping. Except when she was overwhelmed with work and Jed had to do it.

  In fact she finally became so overwhelmed that she had to hire a full-time babysitter who also cooked suppers, and a cleaning lady. The little house was getting so crowded that one night she suggested to Jed they start looking for a new ranch house in one of the developments across the river, maybe one with white columns out front.

  “But we ain’t paid this one off yet,” Jed protested. “I got to make payments on the T-Bird and the inboard. Can’t afford no bigger mortgage.”

  “I can,” she pointed out. The book contract was in her name, so she was earning all the royalties plus the fee from the TV show every week. Once or twice she wondered if she shouldn’t split up the money with Bonnie and the other girls, but the initial idea had been hers, and the money to get the collection printed up had been her daddy’s. So it looked to her like she deserved the profits.

  “Well, why don’t you go live across the river then?”

  Why was he looking at her like that? She could have sworn there was malice in his eyes.

  A reporter from the Newland News came to interview her for a piece on “Sally Tatro at Home.” She’d given her babysitter and cleaning lady the day off, was wearing an apron made from country ham bags and was peeling Laura a banana when he and a photographer arrived.

  “That’s perfect,” said the photographer, bending his trunk at a right angle to his legs and snapping several pictures of Sally smilingly handing Laura the banana.

  “I don’t want a nana!” shrieked Laura, shoving it in Sally’s face. Sally had to pat Laura on the head to stop herself from clobbering the kid for messing up her makeup. Laughing weakly, she dabbed at the mashed banana on her face with a sponge.

  In response to the reporter’s questions, Sally gave a tour of her kitchen, describing her realization that untapped treasures lay hidden in her garbage can. She told about how she used to feel victimized by her appliances, as though their glass doors were eyes that mocked her for her lack of accomplishment. But that she had learned to make friends with her appliances once she realized they could be her accomplices. For instance, appleheads required four weeks to dry over the furnace in the cellar, but just thirty hours in her Amana self-cleaning oven.

  They sat down in the living room. The reporter asked her what she thought of the sewage bond issue.

  “Well …” Sally hadn’t actually known there was such a thing. But the reporter was gazing at her with such respect. Clearly, she should know about such things. And her opinion, after all, was as valid as the next person’s. That was what democracy was all about. More valid maybe, because she’d been around a lot, was on TV every week, had written a book that was being read all around the area. “… yes, I think sewers are a real good idea.”

  She dropped Laura at her mother’s and raced to the TV station to tape that week’s show. Bonnie, the Guest Artist, showed how to make a measuring tape dispenser from a walnut shell. Afterward Bonnie said, “We been missing you at meetings, Sally.”

  “Oh Bonnie, I’ve just been frantic!”

  “I’ve noticed,” drawled Bonnie. “Made anything lately?”

  Sally wouldn’t say so, but she had much more interesting fish to fry now. “Haven’t had time to make a thing in months.”

  “You don’t think you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater?”

  “What?” Bonnie walked away. Now, whatever was that supposed to mean? All Sally c
ould think of was that Bonnie was jealous. The others had been acting funny too whenever she saw them around town. She guessed she’d better get herself to a meeting pretty soon and find out what was going on.

  Mr. Hitchcock came up. “Just wanted you to know, Sally, that I think you’re doing a real fine job. I’m getting lots of mail from viewers saying how much they like your show.”

  “Well, thank you, sir!” She beamed. She liked Mr. Hitchcock. It was important that he like the show. He could cancel it at any moment.

  “Might write you a fan letter myself one of these days.” His basset hound eyes gazed into hers for a few seconds too many, and Sally felt a little tingle shoot through her body. Now, just what did the naughty man mean by that?

  As she sat under the dryer at the beauty shop later that afternoon, she read an article in Cosmopolitan called “How to Sleep Around Without Feeling Promiscuous.” The idea of cheating on Jed had never seriously occurred to her until this afternoon. Mr. Hitchcock was so exciting running that TV station and deciding on all the programming. She really liked the idea of him needing something from her. She pictured him kneeling naked over her with a big old erection, and her trying to decide whether or not he could put it in her. While he begged and pleaded and offered her a daily show for life. And Jed … well, poor old Jed was just such a sad sack these days. Always moaning about her not having time for him and the kids anymore. And the more he moaned, the farther away from him she wanted to be.

  The article said, “… a healthy self-respect for one’s needs is essential to the sound functioning of the total personality.” Well, she needed someone who appreciated what she was doing. And let’s face it, Jed didn’t now, and never had. Mr. Hitchcock, on the other hand …

  She glanced up at the Castle Tree as she drove home. Seemed to her like she was the only one of The Five who’d actually gone right ahead and fulfilled the dreams they’d all had for themselves in its branches. Raymond was running around barefoot in Kentucky. Emily had gotten herself to New York City, but, big deal, that was about all she could say for herself. An ordinary job, an ordinary child, a repulsive husband. Donny was parking cars up there. And Jed—well, just poor old Jed, was all she could say.

  As she drove up to the house, Jed and the kids and half a dozen women in suits and flowered hats stood outside. A Torino sat by the curb. Jed was wearing his beer can hat for the first time ever. He and the kids had apparently just returned from a boat ride.

  “… now are you Sally Tatro’s husband?” a woman was demanding. Another was snapping his picture. The cat stalked across the yard. A woman shrieked, “Look! There’s her cat!” They all grabbed their cameras and began snapping. The cat froze, then bolted into the shrubbery.

  Sally parked the Dodge in the driveway and got out. A woman screamed, “There she is! It’s Sally Tatro!” Sally chatted with them while Jed and the kids went in the house. They’d driven up from Chattanooga in hopes of catching a glimpse of her. They asked for her autograph, but had left their copies of her book at the motel, so she autographed their forearms.

  Jed lay in his La-Z-Boy Lounger with his eyes closed. Sally had forgotten she’d given the babysitter the day off, so there was no supper. As she pulled TV dinners from the freezer, she heard Jed on the phone: “Yeah, well, just be on the alert, in case you get a call, OK?”

  “Who was that, honey?”

  “The cops.”

  “The cops?”

  “Yeah, I don’t want a bunch of nuts hanging around my house, see?”

  “Those weren’t nuts, Jed. They were fans.”

  “Nuts, fans, who can tell the difference?”

  “I don’t want any police harassing my fans.”

  “Today they were fans. Tomorrow it might be some lunatic wanting to kill you.”

  “Why would anyone want to kill me?”

  “Don’t be a jerk, Sally. Lunatics always want to kill stars. I told the neighbors to call the cops if they see anyone prowling around the house.”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little melodramatic? It’s not like I’m Bobby Kennedy or something.” She was annoyed at being called a jerk. Thousands of people around the area thought otherwise.

  “It ain’t right, Sally. It’s getting all out of hand.”

  “Nonsense! It’s just beginning.”

  “All I wanted was a wife, not some goddam celebrity.”

  “I thought it was me you wanted,” she snapped.

  “You like you was. Not you like you is.”

  “When you take someone on, you take your chances.” She was through apologizing for being herself. To her amazement, he said nothing else. He gave up so easily these days. If she was different, well, so was he.

  That night in bed it occurred to her that she didn’t have to open her legs to him if she didn’t want to, which she didn’t. “I’m too tired,” she announced.

  “You what?”

  “Tired. I’m tired.” She felt panic. If she didn’t do exactly as he wished, what would happen? She held her breath.

  Nothing happened. He turned over, wrapped his arms around himself and fell asleep.

  The headline in the women’s section of the News was “Sally Tatro, Authoress, Artist, and TV Star, Favors Sewage Bond.” Jed glanced at it and threw it in the garbage. After he left and after she retrieved the News, she found a copy of Modern Wife lying on the dinner table open to an article called “100 Ways to Lose Your Man.” Someone, Jed presumably, had underlined and starred various sentences. “Let your house turn into a wasteland…. Give him the cold shoulder in bed…. Serve TV dinners when he comes home from work…. Put your own interests ahead of him…. Leave him to babysit the kids while you go out…. If you earn more money than he does, flaunt it.”

  She tossed the magazine into the trash. After a few minutes she retrieved it. Maybe this was Jed’s way of trying to tell her something?

  Lately, the girls in the group had started declining her invitations to be on the show. Sally couldn’t figure out why. She went to the next meeting to find out what was the matter. When she walked into Bonnie’s house, the whole group fell silent. She felt them studying her with critical eyes from where they sat around a table holding scissors and paint brushes.

  “Well, long time no see!” said Loretta.

  “Hi!” said Sally, smiling brightly.

  No one responded. Sally sat down and picked up an egg carton and handled it with unfamiliarity. She looked at what they were working on—a large American flag made from egg cartons, each star a cup, rows of painted cups as stripes. “Why, that’s a real nice idea. We’ll have to use it on the show!”

  “We?” inquired someone.

  “OK, Sally,” said Bonnie. “We’ll give it to you straight: We feel you’ve used us.”

  “Used you?”

  “Used us and our ideas to become a star and make a lot of money.”

  Sally was stunned. “But I’ve had each of you on the show as Guest Artists, and paid you for it.”

  “Yeah. Twenty-five dollars each. While you was making ten times that.”

  “And what about paperback royalties?”

  “And all them interviews?”

  A barrage of complaints assaulted her. It was like being the subject of an Ingenue Lemon Squeeze, only nobody said anything nice. Sally thought about crying, but instead sat in stony silence. Finally she stood up and announced, “I don’t have to put up with this.”

  “Let’s face it, honey,” said Bonnie. “It’s all gone to your head. And if your friends don’t tell you, who will?”

  Sally flounced out. After all she was Sally Tatro, and they were just a bunch of dinky old homemakers sitting around a kitchen table with paring knives. The nerve! She’d used her concepts and her daddy’s money to try to give them all an outlet from the tedium of their dreary housebound lives, and now they were turning on her.

  In the upcoming weeks they refused to appear on the show. And since Sally herself had been too busy giving interviews an
d answering fan mail to come up with any new ideas, she had to repeat some of her old ones, like the necklace of dried beans and pumpkin seeds. When viewers wrote in complaining about the lack of new material, she realized she had no choice but to offer the group whatever it would take to gain their cooperation. This turned out to be equal shares in the royalties and fees. Sally was horrified. There was just no justice left in this world.

  “And we want to take turns being hostess on the show,” Bonnie insisted relentlessly.

  “But it’s called ‘The Sally Tatro Kitchen Craft Show’!”

  “Well, we’ll just have to think of a new name, won’t we?”

  Sally saw her life collapsing around her like a house of cards. No longer would she be able to afford the babysitter and cleaning lady—or a new ranch house to put them in. Or the weekly hairdos at the beauty parlor. But she wouldn’t need any of these any longer either because she wouldn’t be a star. The flow of fan letters would dry up, reporters would no longer besiege the house. Check-out girls and telephone operators would cease to recognize her name. It was too awful. But she had no choice. She’d run out of material.

  Jed was already in bed when she got home. She began weeping. He held her with reluctance. “It’s all over, Jed,” she wailed. “I’m finished.”

  A look of suspicious hope came into his eyes. “Whadaya mean?”

  “I’ve given up the show, Jed. For you and the children. I know I haven’t been doing right by you. But I’ll make it up to you, honey.”

  “No kidding?” He rolled on top of her and pumped her full of semen, while she renounced all thoughts of Mr. Hitchcock, station manager.

  She sat in her tiny living room watching on TV as Bonnie showed how to make mock cattails from corncobs. Mr. Hitchcock had reluctantly agreed to the new plan, once he grasped that the alternative was no kitchen craft show at all. Sally would be hostess a week every other month, but in between—nothing. She felt like the character in the kids’ fairy tale when the genie arrived and removed all the riches he’d previously bestowed. But over the long painful weeks she’d come to see that this was how it had to be. It had gone to her head. She’d betrayed the group. She’d neglected Jed, Joey, and Laura. The star she’d followed had turned to cinders. There was more to life than money and fame. She wasn’t sure what.