Authors: Jill McCorkle
They had everything in this Revco. I thought if I couldn’t sleep at night I’d make an afghan, so I picked out some pretty yarn, and then I thought, well, if I was going to start making afghans at night, I could get ahead on my Christmas shopping, and so I’d make an afghan for my mama and
one for Paula, who had been calling me on the phone nonstop to make sure I hadn’t reported the stolen car, and one for Martha that I’d make a little bigger than normal, which made me think that I hadn’t been to the Diet Center in so long I didn’t even know my weight, so I went and found the digital scales and put one right on top of my seventy-nine skeins of yarn. I bought ten each of Candy Pink, Watermelon, Cocoa, Almond, Wine, Cinnamon, Lime, and only nine of the Cherry because the dye lot ran out. It made me hungry, so I got some dietetic bonbons. By the time I got to the checkout I had five carts full and when that young girl looked at me and handed me the tape that was over a yard long, I handed her Kenneth I. Barkley’s MasterCard and said, “Charge it.”
It was too hot to work in the yard, and I was too tired to crochet or unpack the car and felt kind of sick to my stomach. Thinking it was from the bonbon I ate on the way home, I went to the bathroom to get an Alka-Seltzer, but Kenneth had taken those too, so I just took two Valiums and went to bed.
“I feel like a yo-yo,” I told the shrink when Paula suggested that I go. All of my clothes were way too big, so I had given them to Martha as an incentive for her to lose some weight and had ordered myself a whole new wardrobe from Neiman-Marcus on Kenneth I. Barkley’s MasterCard number. That’s why I had to wear my
KISS THE COOK
apron
and my leotard and tights to the shrink’s. “My clothes should be here any day now,” I told him, and he smiled.
“No, I feel like a yo-yo, not a regular yo-yo either,” I said. “I feel like one of those advanced yo-yos, the butterfly model, you know where the halves are turned facing outward and you can do all those tricks like ‘walk the dog,’ ‘around the world,’ and ‘eat spaghetti.’” He laughed, just threw back his head and laughed, so tickled over “eat spaghetti”; laughing at the expense of another human being, laughing when he was going to charge me close to a hundred dollars for that visit that I was going to pay for with a check from my dual checkbook, which was what was left of Kenneth I. Barkley’s account over at Carolina Trust. I had already taken most of the money out of that account and moved it over to State Employee’s Credit Union. That man tried to be serious, but every time I opened my mouth, it seemed he laughed.
But I didn’t care because I hadn’t had so much fun since Kenneth and I ate a half-gallon of rocky-road ice cream in our room there in Sea Island, Georgia.
“Have you done anything unusual lately?” he asked. “You know, like going for long rides, spending lots of money?”
“No,” I said and noticed that I had a run in my tights. After that, I couldn’t think of a thing but runs and running. I wanted to train for the Boston Marathon. I knew I’d win if I entered.
Lydia was ten years younger than Kenneth, I had found that out during the six weeks when he fluctuated between snappy and choked up. That’s what I knew of her, ten years younger than Kenneth and studying to be a barmaid, and that’s why I rolled the trees in the yard of that pitiful-looking house she rented with eleven rolls of decorator toilet paper. My new clothes had come by then so I wore my black silk dress with the ruffled off-the-shoulder look. Lydia is thirteen years younger than me and, from what I could tell of her shadow in the window, about twenty pounds heavier. I was a twig by then. “I’d rather be an old man’s darlin’ than a young man’s slave,” my mama told me just before I got married, and I said, “You mind your own damn business.” Lydia’s mama had probably told her the same thing, and you can’t trust a person who listens to her mama.
I stood there under a tree and hoisted roll after roll of the decorator toilet paper into the air and let it drape over branches. I wrapped it in and out of that wrought-iron rail along her steps and tied a great big bow. I was behind the shrubs, there where it was dark, when the front door opened and I heard her say, “I could have sworn I heard something,” and then she said, “Just look at this mess!” She was turning to get Kenneth so I got on my stomach and slid along the edge of the house and hid by the corner. I got my dress covered with mud and pine straw, but I didn’t
really care because I liked the dress so much when I saw it there in the book that I ordered two. The porch light came on, and then she was out in that front yard with her hands on her hips and the ugliest head of hair I’d ever seen, red algae hair that looked like it hadn’t been brushed in four years. “When is
she
going to leave us alone?” Lydia asked, and looked at Kenneth, who was standing there with what looked like a tequila sunrise in his hand. He looked terrible. “You’ve got to do something!” Lydia said, and started crying. “You better call your lawyer right now. She’s already spent all your money.”
“I’ll call Sandra tomorrow,” Kenneth said, and put his arm around Lydia, but she wasn’t having any part of that. She twisted away and slapped his drink to the dirt.
“Call her?” Lydia screamed, and I wished I had my camera to catch her expression right when she was beginning to say “her”; that new camera of mine could catch anything. “What good is that going to do?”
“Maybe I can settle it all,” he said. “I’m the one who left her. If it goes to court, she’ll get everything.”
“She already has,” Lydia said, sat down in the yard, and blew her nose on some of that decorator toilet paper. “The house, the money. She has taken everything except the Mazda.”
“I got the dishes,” he said. “I got the TV and the stereo.”
“I don’t know why you didn’t take your share when you had the chance,” Lydia said. “I mean, you could’ve taken the microwave and the silver or something.”
“It’s going to be fine, honey,” Kenneth said, and pulled her up from the dirt. “We’ve got each other.”
“Yes,” Lydia nodded, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, being about ten pounds too heavy for her own good. I waited until they were back inside before I finished the yard, and then walked over behind the fish market where I had parked the car. There wasn’t much room in the car because I had six loads of laundry that I’d been meaning to take to the subdivision Laundromat to dry. Kenneth had bought me a washer but not a dryer, and I should have bought one myself but I hadn’t; the clothes had mildewed something awful.
Not long after that all my friends at the Diet Center took my picture to use as an example of what not to let happen to yourself. They said I had gone overboard and needed to gain a little weight for my own health. I was too tired to argue with Martha, aside from the fact that she was five times bigger than me, and I just let her drive me to the hospital. I checked in as Lydia Barkley, and since I didn’t know how Lydia’s handwriting looked, I used my best Kenneth imitation. “Her name is Sandra,” Martha told the woman, but nobody yelled at me. They just put me in a bed and gave me some dinner in my vein and knocked me out. As overweight as I had been, I had never eaten in my sleep. It was a first, and when I woke up, the shrink was there asking me what I was, on a scale of one to ten. “Oh, four,” I told him. It seemed like I was there a long
time. Paula came and did my nails and hair, and Martha came and confessed that she had eaten three boxes of chocolate-covered cherries over the last week. She brought me a fourth. She said that if she had a husband, she’d get a divorce, that’s how desperate she was to lose some weight, but that she’d stop before she got as thin as me. I told her I’d rather eat a case of chocolate-covered cherries than go through it again.
My mama came, and she said, “I always knew this would happen.” She shook her head like she couldn’t stand to look at me. “A man whose business in life depends on others taking to the bottle is no kind of man to choose for a mate.” I told her to mind her own damn business, and when she left, she took my box of chocolate-covered cherries and told me that sweets were not good for a person.
By the time I got out of the hospital, I was feeling much better. Kenneth stopped by for me to sign the divorce papers right before it was time for my dinner party. His timing had never been good. There I was in my black silk dress with the table set for twelve, the lasagna getting ready to be thawed and cooked in the microwave.
“Looks like you’re having a party,” he said, and stared at me with that same look he always had before he got choked up. I just nodded and filled my candy dish with almonds. “I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused you,” he said. “I didn’t know how sick you were.” And I noticed he was
taking me in from head to toe. “You sure look great now.”
“Well, I’m feeling good, Kenneth,” I told him and took the papers from his hand.
“I’m not with Lydia anymore,” he said, but I focused instead on signing my name, my real name, in my own handwriting, which if it was analyzed would be the script of a fat person. Some things you just can’t shake; part of me will always be a fat person and part of Kenneth will always be gutter slime. He had forgotten that when he
had
me he hadn’t wanted me, and I had just about forgotten how much fun we’d had eating that half-gallon of ice cream in bed on our honeymoon.
“Well, send me a postcard,” I told him when I opened the front door to see Martha coming down the walk in one of my old dresses that she was finally able to wear. And then came Paula and the man she kept in her bedroom, and my mama, who I had sternly instructed not to open her mouth if she couldn’t be pleasant, my beautician, the manager of Revco, my shrink, who, after I had stopped seeing him on a professional basis, had called and asked me out to lunch. They were all in the living room, mingling and mixing drinks; I stood there with the curtains pulled back and watched Kenneth get in that Mazda that was in my name and drive down Marnier and take a left onto Seagrams. Summer was almost over, and I couldn’t wait for the weather to turn cool so that I could stop working in the yard.
“I want to see you do ‘eat spaghetti,’” my shrink, who by then had told me to call him Alan, said and pulled a butterfly yo-yo like I hadn’t seen in years from his pocket. I did it; I did it just as well as if I were still in the seventh grade, and my mama hid her face in embarrassment while everybody else got a good laugh. Of course, I’m not one to overreact or to carry a situation on and on, and so when they begged for more tricks, I declined. I had plenty of salad on hand for my friends who were dieting so they wouldn’t have seconds on lasagna, and while I was fixing the coffee, Alan came up behind me, grabbed my love handles, and said, “On a scale of one to ten, you’re a two thousand and one.” I laughed and patted his hand because I guess I was still focused on Kenneth and where was he going to stay, in a pup tent? Some things never change, and while everybody was getting ready to go and still chatting, I went to my bedroom and turned my alarm clock upside down, which would remind me when it went off the next day to return the title to Kenneth’s name and to maybe write him a little check to help with that MasterCard bill.
I could tell that Alan wanted to linger, but so did my mama and so I had to make a choice. I told Alan it was getting a little late and that I hoped to see him real soon,
socially
, I stressed. He kissed me on the cheek and squeezed my hip in a way that made me get gooseflesh and also made me feel sorry for both Kenneth and Lydia all at the same time. “A divorce can do strange things to a person,” Alan
had told me on my last visit; the man knew his business. He was cute, too.
“It was a nice party, Sandra,” my mama said after everybody left. “Maybe a little too much oregano in the lasagna. You’re a tad too thin still, and I just wonder what that man who calls himself a psychiatrist has on his mind.”
“Look before you leap,” I told her, and gave her seventy-nine skeins of yarn in the most hideous colors that I no longer had room for in my closet. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
“That’s no way to talk to your mother,” she said. “It’s not my fault that you were overweight your whole life. It’s not my fault your husband left you for a redheaded bar tramp.”
“Well, send me a postcard,” I said and closed the door, letting out every bit of breath that I’d held inside my whole life. I washed those dishes in a flash, and when I got in my bed, I was feeling so sorry for Kenneth, who had no birds in his hand, and sorry for Mama, who would never use up all that yarn. I hurried through those thoughts because my eyelids were getting so heavy and I wanted my last thought of the night to be of Alan, first with the yo-yo and then grabbing my hipbone. When you think about it, if your hipbones have been hidden for years and years, it’s a real pleasure to have someone find them, grab hold, and hang on. You can do okay in this world if you can just find something worth holding on to.
Man Watcher
What’s my sign?
Slippery when wet
. Do I want to see your etchings?
No
. Have you seen me somewhere before?
Maybe, since I’ve been somewhere before
. What’s my line? Well, I’ve got quite a few, all depends on what I’m trying (or not trying) to catch.
It’s not so hard to pick up a man, matter of fact it’s one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. A good man? Well, that’s something entirely different. Believe you me, I know. My step-sister, Lorraine, is always saying
like I don’t know where you’re coming from
. Like if I say I’ve got a migraine headache, she says,
“Like I don’t know where you’re coming from. I
have the kind of migraine that
blinds
you. The doctor says I might have the very worst kind of migraine known to man. My migraines are so horrendous I’ve been invited to go to Duke University for them to study
me.” You get the picture.
Like I don’t know
. Lorraine knows a lot about everything and she has experienced the world in a way nobody can come close to touching. Still, when it comes to sizing up men, I’ve got her beat. I sit back and size them up while she jumps in and winds up making a mess of her life. When she opens her mouth in that long horsey way of hers, I just say
like I don’t know where you’re coming from
.