Original Sins (55 page)

“No, honey. I've always liked it better cold.”

She looked at him, her painted face gone haggard. “Jed, don't ever leave me, honey. Your love is all I got.”

He coughed, embarrassed. “Now that ain't true, Sally. You got you a washer-dryer ensemble, a Dodge wagon, a TV console, two healthy children … Am I right?” He smiled winningly.

He reached in his pocket for the beer tab rings and began putting them on. Then he took his rifle from the rack on the living room wall and filled a pocket with bullets, his mouth set.

After giving the kids their bath, reading them a story and getting them to bed, cleaning up from supper and folding the clothes from the dryer, Sally went into the bedroom. As she picked up Jed's dirty clothes, she wondered if she could ask him to put them in the bathroom hamper himself. Or should a wife be in charge of her husband's dirty clothes?

She lay in a steaming bath, inspecting her body. Nice legs, but not long enough. Jed thought her ankles were too thick. He liked her breasts, though. A lot. So did she, but she liked them better before the nipples got huge from nursing, and before they got streaked with silver stretch marks. Her waist seemed a little too thick these days. She'd better start the exercise for it in the
Modern Wife
article.

She sat up and shaved her legs, her armpits, the edges of her pubic area, then plucked a few dark hairs from around her nipples and below her navel.

After she dried and oiled herself, she plucked her eyebrows, then examined the roots of her hair. She used cleansing cream on her face, reapplied her makeup, and rolled her hair. She sprayed herself with cologne and deodorant. She douched.

She took her eyebrow pencil and put it against her ribs, underneath her right breast. When she removed her hand, the pencil stayed in place, instead of falling to the floor as it always had. She felt the pencil with horror. She had failed the
Glamour
magazine two-piece bathing suit test. Her breasts were starting to sag … Those darn children anyhow. Were there exercises to make breasts perky again? She'd have to check the article.

She slipped on a coral silk kimono and climbed into bed with a newspaper and the article and some magazines. She read the article and pressed the heels of her hands together for half an hour.

The front page of the newspaper was all about the ball bearings through her parents' windows. Apparently Jed wasn't lying. At least not this time …

She sighed and flipped open
Modern Wife
to a questionnaire to determine the durability of your marriage:

When he leaves the cap off the toothpaste, do you (a) put it back on; (b) ask him nicely to put it on; (c) get angry and make a scene; (d) leave it off and let the toothpaste dry up, so that he can experience the result of his thoughtlessness?

Sally peeped before marking, discovered (a) was the desired answer, and marked it. Probably she shouldn't ask Jed to put his dirty clothes in the hamper. That was a wife's job.

Sally circled her remaining answers without cheating, totaled her score, then realized Jed would have to answer his part before they could say for sure how long their marriage would last. How could she get him to? She discovered the author had anticipated this problem:

If your husband refuses to participate in this questionnaire, will you (a) get angry; (b) cry; (c) try to guess his answers; (d) abandon the questionnaire?

She chewed the eraser. Suddenly she looked at the clock. She dashed to the bathroom like Cinderella at midnight, brushed her teeth, and rinsed with mouthwash. She took out her rollers and teased her hair. Climbing back in bed, she arranged her kimono, straightened the covers, and turned on the radio. Honey Sweet was singing, “…
a woman is just made to be hurt. / Cheated on, lied to, treated like dirt
…”

Eleven-thirty, and Jed still wasn't home. He took his rifle. What if he was lying dying somewhere, calling for her? What if he was lying in some other woman's arms? She couldn't decide which was worse.

She glanced at the Norman Rockwell picture over her dresser of the smiling mother hovering over two sleeping children and went in to check on Joey and Laura. They always slept with such ferocity, tossing, sighing, slurping on fingers. Funny little creatures that emerged from her body. She felt tenderness for them, the kind available to her only when they were asleep.

She went into the kitchen, illuminated by the light inside the wall oven. She stood in the middle of the linoleum in silence, listening, hoping to hear the roar of the Chevy at the far end of the street. She heard only the hum of appliances. The glass doors on her oven and washer and dryer seemed for a moment like eyeballs watching her, making fun of her. Her job was to put things in them, punch buttons and turn dials. What was it crazy Raymond had said to her that night? “Can't you see, Sally? They've turned you into an appendage of your machine, an appendage made of flesh.” She wasn't sure what appendage meant. But Raymond was right for once: There sure was something creepy about these machines …

She dashed into her bedroom, climbed into bed, and pulled up the covers.

When Jed stomped in a half hour later, he looked radiant.

“Everything OK?” she asked. Why did he look so happy?

“Yeah. We sat up on the roof of that garage next door to yall. A bunch of cars went by, but no one stopped.” He let his shirt fall to the floor.

“Honey, would you mind putting your dirty clothes in the bathroom hamper?”

He looked at her.

“It'd be a big help.”

He picked up the shirt between two fingers, gazing at her. He marched into the bathroom and dropped it in the hamper, still gazing at her.

“Thank you so much, darling. I feel just terrible asking you.”

“Mama always did it at home. Said it was the least she could do when her men worked so hard all day long.”

“Never mind. Don't do it anymore,” she pleaded.

“No, I'll manage.”

“Please don't, Jed. I
like
doing it.”

“You want my clothes in the hamper, Sally, you'll get my clothes in the hamper.”

“But I don't, Jed. I want them on the floor. I don't know what got into me, sweetie.”

He climbed in bed and turned his back. She ran her hands under his pajama top and scratched his back with her Eat Me Orange nails. He lay as still as death.

“Jed, honey, what's wrong?”

“What you mean? Nothing's wrong.”

“You haven't held me in weeks, honey. And here I am knocking myself out not to be like a corpse.”

He said nothing.

“What am I doing wrong, honey? If I knew what you wanted, I'd do it.”

“I'm tired, Sally. I just want to sleep, is all.”

Tears began eroding her Revlon pancake makeup. She sniffed loudly.

“Goddam, Sally! For Christ's sake!”

She sniffed again.

“Shit, Sally. All right, look: When I said that about screwing a corpse, I didn't mean for you to go turn yourself into a whore.”

“A
whore?
Here I've been trying to be exciting, and now you call me a whore!”

“It ain't exactly exciting to have a woman all over you all the time. In fact it can get downright repulsive.”

She wailed.

“Damn it, will you shut up? You said you wanted to know what I want. Why can't you act—you know—hard-to-get sometimes? Turn me down when I want you. Like I can't always have you just because I want you. Or come at me when I'm not expecting it. Surprise me sometimes. That's what I mean by exciting.”

Sally digested this. It seemed to conflict with the safe harbor advice. “I'll try, Jed. I really will. If you want me not to want you sometimes, then that's exactly what I want.”

“And when I want you, I want you sometimes to act like you want me, not that you're just going along with what I want to please me.”

“Whatever you want, Jed, is what I want.”

“Fine.”

They settled for sleep.

“Jed,” Sally whispered.

“Ummm?”

“I just want you to know that I don't want you now.”

“You don't?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He rolled over and ran his hands inside her kimono.

“I'd rather you wouldn't,” she said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

He pushed her knees apart as she moaned, “No, please don't.”

Sally was rushing around in a flowered muumuu when Rochelle arrived in her grey maid uniform the next morning. There was a purple stain on the white collar, which made Sally recognize the dress as one of Kathryn's from many years back. The stain was the result of one of Raymond's failed magic tricks involving grape juice.

“Rochelle, would you please wash and wax the kitchen floor, and wash the back windows? And the ironing's already damp.” Even though she'd watched her mother with Ruby all her life, Sally felt uncomfortable telling Rochelle what to do. Even if Rochelle was being paid. It didn't seem quite right. She could do these things as well as Rochelle, and after all, it was her own house. But Jed was determined for her to have a maid. Said he didn't want her to break her nails. She pointed out that she could carry a baby in one arm and a load of wash in the other.

“But you can't expect no woman to set up ladders and scrub windows,” he insisted.

“Your mother always did. Besides, Rochelle is a woman, isn't she?”

“Neither of them is
my wife.”

True, Sally's own mother had never washed windows. But Sally still felt awkward. After all, Rochelle was Donny's wife, and The Five hadn't believed in bossing each other around. Or rather, they'd taken turns at it. But Ruby insisted Rochelle needed the work.

“What do you hear from Donny?”

“Oh, he just fine, thank you, ma'am. Got him a job parking cars up near the United Nations.”

Sally recalled seeing Donny when she drove Rochelle home one afternoon shortly before he left for New York. He stood on his porch in green work clothes with an ugly scar down one cheek.

“Goodness, Donny, what have you done to yourself?” she'd demanded through the Dodge window.

“Car wreck.”

“You all right now?”

“Oh yes, ma'am. I just fine.” He grinned.

Sally stopped in front of the Tatro house. Mother Tatro came out in a bright orange muumuu. As Sally waved, she tried to figure out why they couldn't get along. At first Jed bad complained that Sally's turkey stuffing didn't taste like his mother's, her biscuits weren't as flaky, her shelly beans didn't have enough fatback. She'd started calling his mother for her recipes, but when she used them, she was always disappointed when the results didn't taste like
her
mother's version of the same dish. Sometimes Jed would get his mother to bake him a pecan pie, which he'd bring home to show Sally what a
real
pecan pie should taste like.

Mother Tatro would bring over her discarded furniture. Sally would make Jed put it in the garage. When Mother Tatro babysat, Sally would return to find her living room rearranged to accommodate the pieces Mother Tatro had carried in from the garage. She also straightened Sally's drawers and shelves. Scorning the electric dryer, she'd string a clothesline through the back yard, iron the sheets, take Jed's rumpled shorts from his dresser and iron them. She'd bake several days' supply of biscuits and corn bread and spoon bread, as though sending her baby son into a culinary wilderness, and she spread it around town that Sally didn't keep Laura's feet covered properly. Sally thought she deserved better. After all, she'd agreed to switch churches.

Mother Tatro heaved herself into the Dodge like a sack of chicken scratch. “Hey, Mother Tatro. You look really nice. How are you?”

“Well, I'm just fine, thank you, Sally. How you, honey?”

As they walked through Myrtle Kendall's front door, Myrtle put crepe paper leis over their heads. “Aloha, Rose! Aloha, Sally!”

The room was filled with large ladies in tentlike dresses of bright fabric, with flowers in their hair and sandals on their feet. “Why, aloha there, yall!” they greeted each other. Sally looked around. No women her age. Mostly Mother Tatro's friends. Their gossip filled the room like bees swarming—whose new car had been repossessed, whose children were turning out a disgrace to their parents. Sally was trying to abide by the saying Mr. Marsh had put on the church marquee last week: “When tempted to gossip, breathe through the nose.” Because she knew how it felt to be the target of gossip. For months after her marriage, as her belly got larger and larger, she'd had to hold her head high as people exchanged glances and whispers.

“Hear about Coach Clancy over at the high school?”

Sally strained to hear.

“… floating in the Whirlpool at the high school.”

“… dead.”

“Dead as a doornail.”

“… hands bound behind his back, and a plastic bag tied over his head.”

“… suicide, they say.”

Sally listened with horror. Oh dear, poor Jed would be so upset.

Waikiki punch was served. Then open-faced ham and pineapple and cream cheese sandwiches. Dessert was pineapple upside-down coconut pudding cake, which had won a national recipe contest two years earlier.

After the business meeting, two girls from the high school came out in grass skirts and halters. One played “Little Grass Shack” on her ukulele, while the other did a hula. Then Mercedes Marshall showed her slides of the South Pacific. Most featured either Mercedes or Harvey, or Mercedes
and
Harvey, against an exotic backdrop—a grass hut, a listing coconut palm, a distant wall of wave with surfers hanging halfway up it.

“… but you know, ladies, you couldn't
give
me one of them palm trees,” Mercedes was saying. “Why, a palm can't hold a candle to one of our Tennessee poplars. Forty feet of trunk with a little biddy ole clump of leaves at the top—why, it's just pitiful …”