Maggie Sweet

This is the first time I ever wrote to anyone for advice, but I have studied and studied, and I swear I don’t know what else to do. Last night at supper my husband announced that he had taken our entire life savings and spent it on a family cemetery plot.

Aunt Sally, I’m only 38 years old. Why, just that morning I’d been thinking that when my girls graduate from high school this June maybe I could start to live a little. We had even talked about using that money for something fun, like a family vacation to Myrtle Beach. Just daydreaming about what we’d do with all that money really kept me going some days.

I never, in all my life, thought he was thinking about cemetery plots!

Well, to make a long story short, when he told me what
he’d done, I got all torn up, right there at the kitchen table, in front of everyone.

The way I see it, he had no right to spend all that money without talking it over with me.

He said I should be relieved to know that I’d be taken care of for all of eternity.

I cannot tell you how discouraging those words were to me.

Now don’t get me wrong; my husband is a good man. But when he told me I’d be spending all of eternity resting beside him at All Souls Cemetery, right here in Poplar Grove, North Carolina, I got slicing pains in my chest.

I always thought something was going to happen sooner or later. Now I keep thinking: what if this is all there is slam up to and even after death? An everlasting eternity of nothing ever happening but the same old tired routine

If this is true, I’m desperate. Please tell me what to do before it’s too late.

The Teacher’s Wife

Dear T. W.

It sounds to me like you think too much. You need to stay busy. Join the PTA, teach Sunday school, take up bingo. Get creative. Enclosed is a copy of
The Joys Of Jell-O
cookbook guaranteed to open up a whole new world of cuisine to you and your family. Perfect tiered Jell-O rings, multicolored ribbon salads, and scrumptious Jell-O strawberry pie. This will add so much excitement and variety to your life, you’ll wonder how you got along without it. Especially when you see the looks of gratitude on your family’s faces.

Remember you could do worse than to have a husband
who knows where he’s going in this world and the next. Believe me, I know.

Always remember Aunt Sally Cares.

Until recently I’d have called myself a typical small-town southern housewife. You know, bored, but resigned to the whole thing.

But things just kept going from bad to worse until I couldn’t hardly take it anymore. That’s when I decided to write to Aunt Sally Cares in the Barium Springs
Daily Ripple,
who used to give good advice, but lately sounds more and more like some throwback to the fifties.

(I mean
The Joys of Jell-O
! You’ve got to be kidding! But what choice did I have? If I wrote to the Poplar Grove
Expositor
sure as shooting someone would have recognized me. To tell you the truth, it’s almost impossible to have any secrets in a small town.)

It’s easier to write to a paper over in Barium Springs since not a living soul over there knows me. It’s also just close enough that if I was to run into anyone from home, I’d just say I was there for the Red Star Superette’s grand opening two-for-one sale. It would never come to anyone that a person would drive that far for just a
Ripple.

Well, after all that driving—it took three trips and about two tanks of gas before my letter appeared in the paper—Aunt Sally gave me the same advice my own Mama Dean would have given me right here at home, for free.

Still, it was weirdest thing. Aunt Sally’s advice had no sooner appeared in the evening paper than my telephone started ringing right off the wall. All at once I’d gone from bored to being busier than a one-armed paperhanger.

First, my best friend, Mary Price Bumbalough, called to tell me that our high school class was having its twentieth reunion this summer. Mary Price’s phone call shook me up but good, ’cause from what she said, all of our old classmates are leaving home, taking lovers, and seem to know how to live.

So there I was standing in my very own kitchen, talking on my very own phone with Mary Price going on and on about the reunion, when it suddenly came to me like a flash. There is more to life than collecting Tupperware and keeping the sourdough alive and every one of my old classmates already knew it. I was the only one who was sleepwalking through life.

I wondered if it was because I’d stayed behind in Poplar Grove, while the rest of them had seen the world. Why, they’d lived in cities like Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Charlotte—you name it.

Of course, Mary Price never got out of Poplar Grove either and she still lives an exciting life. But then that’s Mary Price. Not only does she have a house, a husband, and two kids, she and Hoyt sing and play country music every weekend at the That’lldu Bar & Grill. She’s also taken to parading all over town dressed in cowgirl outfits complete with hats and boots. When I told her people were starting to talk about her she just laughed. Mary Price is absolutely fearless.

The more I thought about Mary Price and Hoyt and everyone else who graduated with me, the more I wanted to add some excitement to my own life. But I swanee, what with one thing and another, I just wasn’t sure how to get started. I mean, just how far can a nice Methodist
girl from Poplar Grove, North Carolina, go? Especially, when you consider all the obstacles in my way.

First, there’s my husband Steven. Steven is a high school biology teacher who makes love only when his vas tubes are blocked. The only time he spent money like a drunken sailor was when he bought the cemetery plots.

Next, there are my twin teenage daughters, Amy and Jill.

Amy is a clean, wholesome, honor-roll student. She wears a smooth shoulder-length bob, cultured pearls, and preppy clothes. Her goal in life is to get into an expensive college, marry someone worthy of her, and leave tacky us and tacky Poplar Grove far behind. Why, even Mama Dean, her great-grandmother, says Amy’s got more airs than an electric fan.

And Jill. For three years, Jill dressed in an army shirt with the name PFC Presson emblazoned on the pocket. Then last year she saw an Indian on TV who sold chain-saw art out of the back of a truck in the parking lots of malls. Next thing we knew, Jill was wearing her blond hair in a fat braid, dressing like Hiawatha, and dedicating her life to dragging logs, branches, sometimes whole dead trees home to the garage workshop.

Also, there’s my mother and Mama Dean, who live three blocks away. Mother is a crisp, no-nonsense licensed practical nurse, while Mama Dean is suspicious and high-tempered. They have only two things in common: a deep and abiding mistrust of men and keeping an eye on me.

So besides being Methodist, my family is a big part of why I never learned how to throw caution to the wind and really live.

Well, as if I wasn’t already shook up enough, I’d just hung up with Mary Price when the telephone rang again. It was another old classmate who had never left Poplar Grove either. Dreama Goforth. Actually Dreama Goforth Nims since she married poor old Bucky Nims. (Bucky owns Nims Hardware down on Main Street.)

Twenty years ago, Dreama Goforth was the biggest gossip in the entire Poplar Grove school system. Now she’s the biggest gossip in all of Poplar Grove. And to make matters worse she pretends she’s Miss Holy Christian.

Naturally, the minute I heard who it was, I put up my guard. The first thing out of Dreama’s mouth was that she was in charge of the reunion ticket committee. This didn’t surprise me one bit since this way she can find out everything about everyone who’s coming.

After pussyfooting around for a while, Dreama finally asked, “How many tickets are you gonna need for the reunion, Maggie Sweet? One ticket, just for yourself, or will Steven be coming along with you?”

Since I wasn’t sure what she was getting at, I was real careful. “Why Dreama, you know I’ll need two tickets. Steven and I do absolutely everything together.” Which of course is a lie, but I’d rather hang out wash on a wet day than tell
her
any different.

“Well, I think that’s just wonderful, Maggie Sweet,” Dreama purred. “I’ll just put you down for two tickets then.”

For a minute I relaxed and let down my guard and then she said, “Oh, by the way, hon, you’ll never guess who I just talked to.”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, Dreama.” My voice just as cool and uninterested as can be.

“Well, the least you can do is guess,” she said, and I could just picture her bottom lip pooching out in a pout.

When I still didn’t say anything she sighed real loud right into the receiver. “All right! All right! I’ll tell you. But you better sit down.”

“Dreama, please. I’m just real busy right now.”

Then she hit me with it. “All right, Maggie Sweet, but I warned you. I’ve only been talking to your old flame Jerry Roberts, that’s all.” She paused for a minute to let that sink in.

Well, I guess I should have sat down. For a minute I felt like someone had cut off my air.

“You’ll just never guess what he told me,” she went on. “Him and that wife of his are separated and he wouldn’t miss this reunion for anything in the world! He is ab-so-lute-ly dying to see you, hon.”

By now I was barely breathing at all. But Dreama just kept chattering away so I was pretty sure she didn’t know how hard this had hit me.

“Maggie Sweet, it’ll be just like old times. You and Jerry together after all these years. I wonder what he looks like. I wonder what he’ll think of you. Maggie Sweet, are you there, hon? Now just what was it you were saying, darlin’? Did you say you wanted old Steven to come along or did you just want one ticket for yourself after all?”

Dreama Goforth Nims is a nosy, interfering old busy-body, and I purely despise her, but she sure can ask some questions.

It was later, when I was breading meat for country fried steaks for supper, that I wondered how I’d answered her. I think I said I’d call her back. But I wasn’t sure. Because
even after all these years when I thought about Jerry Roberts I ran slam out of breath.

That night I didn’t get a wink of sleep. All night I had this feeling that soon, very soon, my life was going to make a big change. But, to tell the Lord’s truth, I’m not sure if I was more thrilled or scared about the whole thing.

Finally, around five a.m. Steven rolled over in the bed and started snoring, so I gave up and tiptoed downstairs to start the coffee.

When the coffee was ready, I carried a mug out to the glider under the magnolia tree, my favorite thinking-things-over spot.

For a while, I just sat there, drinking coffee and swinging and thinking about what had happened to all my old classmates and what had happened to me. But it all just kept going round and round in circles in my mind.

I was
baptized at the Pea Hill Methodist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, thirty-eight years ago. Everyone says I look younger ’cause I’m small, have a Sally Fields face, and hardly any bust.

Steven, my husband, was my biology teacher in tenth grade. But in those days I only thought of him as a teacher. The only reason he stuck out in my mind at all is that he blushed. I thought a grown man blushing was real sweet. But he was the teacher. It would never have come to me to feel
that way
about a teacher.

No. The real love of my life all through high school was Jerry Roberts. I thought Jerry had hung the moon.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself.

I’m the only child of Betty and Jack Sweet. When I was four, Mother brought complete disgrace on the family by divorcing Daddy after he took up drinking in Seoul, Korea, during the war, and just kept on drinking after he came home. Mother said Daddy just wasn’t the same and she was real sorry but she just couldn’t live that way.

That’s when Mother and I went to live at Mother’s mother—my Mama Dean’s—boardinghouse here in Poplar Grove.

One of my first memories, after we moved, was overhearing Mama Dean tell a neighbor that my daddy was really dead. Since she considered death much more fitting than divorce, she figured telling everyone he was dead was the best way to ward off gossip. At the age of four, I hadn’t figured out how her mind worked, so I thought Daddy really
was
dead. Naturally, I had a pure fit and went screaming to Mother. And to Mama Dean’s everlasting shame Mother carried me from house to house and told everyone the truth.

Smilin’ Jack Sweet, as my daddy was called, stayed in touch. Once a month he’d drive from Raleigh to see me. We had dinners at truck stops, then went on to drive-in movies in his old Ford pickup. Sometimes he’d even let me drive the truck. Since I was too little to reach the pedals, I’d sit on his lap and steer while he did the footwork. ’Course he only let me drive in safe places like parking lots, but even so, I knew better than to tell Mother or Mama Dean.

We saw movies like
Mighty Joe Young
and
Francis, the Talking Mule
. He’d let me drink RC cola right from the bottle while he drank something (which I now know was
white lightning) from a bottle hidden in a brown paper sack in the glove box. Daddy must have taken me to every carnival and fair in that part of the state. Sometimes he’d buy me so much cotton candy and Co’cola I’d be sick.

Since my everyday life with Mother was made up of Walt Disney movies, early bedtimes, and foods from the four basic food groups, my visits with Daddy seemed downright reckless.

Daddy had nicknames for me. He called me “Rebel” or his “feisty little brown-haired girl.” I loved it and begged him to call me “Scout” after being told that I looked like the girl in
To Kill a Mockingbird
when I was little. Scout never caught on, but his other nicknames made me feel that Daddy saw something bold and spirited in me, something no one else seemed to notice.

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