Original Sins (81 page)

As Jed jabbed harder, she moaned and breathed heavily, as he'd decided he liked her to do—and thought about
egg
cartons. The girls had already figured out how to cut them into lilies and dahlias, and Sally thought carnations should be possible too. So far they'd confined themselves to the white cartons, but you could get pink ones too, and turquoise and yellow. She considered different angles for cutting the egg cups. As Jed jerked and came, she visualized a way she was pretty sure would work. With impatience she waited for Jed to roll off her and fall asleep so she could sneak into the kitchen and try it out.

“Was that OK for you?” he asked.

“Just fantastic, honey. You're such a wonderful lover.”

He grunted and turned his back.

As she stood at the kitchen table in her nightgown snipping
egg
cups into a perfect carnation, she decided all these skills should be written down in one place, like the recipe collections church guilds were always doing. That way more girls could share the skills, and the skills wouldn't be forgotten. Each girl in the group could write up her own ideas. They could get the collection printed up and maybe sell a few copies to people around town, split up any profits toward babysitting expenses and supplies. This might impress Jed, both the money and also her name on a real book.

The girls elected Sally Book Chairman. Each wrote up her ideas and did rough sketches. Sally typed them up and asked her father if she could have some of the money he'd put away to hire an artist to render the sketches, and to have the volume printed up in a spiral binding. After some hesitation he agreed, saying, “Well, if you're sure this is how you want to spend your inheritance, Sally.” They spent several meetings discussing the title.
From Trash to Triumph. Your Triumphant Trash. Your Glorious Garbage. From Garbage to Glory.
They settled on
Turn Your Trash into Treasures.
And for the cover one of their husbands took a picture of them all sitting around a table carving appleheads. They placed copies in local bookstores and hobby shops. Sally had the inspiration of mailing review copies to radio and TV stations, to magazines and newspapers in the region. To their delight, a few reviews drifted in. The local radio station interviewed Bonnie about her applehead-carving course.

And then one day came a letter from a magazine in Nashville that had a book-publishing branch. Would they consider licensing a mass market paperback edition to be distributed throughout the region? There would an advance of $3,000 and a royalty of 7 percent on a cover price of $1.95. After Sally read them the letter, they sat in stunned silence. “Ladies,” Bonnie announced, “I think we're on to something big.”

Jed was getting more and more difficult. For his birthday he asked for tight leather driving gloves. When he opened the beer can hat, he stared at it. “Don't look like no driving gloves to me.”

“I made it, honey.”

“I can see that.”

Sally wondered whether to burst into tears. Then, for the first time ever, she thought, Well, just pooh on him. Other people loved the beer can hats. She was getting comments from people around town who'd read the collection, made the hats and were just thrilled to death. If Jed didn't like it, that was just too bad, wasn't it?

Jed announced he was going to buy himself a boat for his birthday.

“But honey, I don't much like boats.”

“Well, I don't like dolls made out of no apples neither. Ain't no reason we have to do everthing together all the time. Said so yourself. So on weekends sometimes I'll go out in the boat, and you can just set at home and carve your goddam apples.”

“But apples don't cost a lot of money, darling.”

“Hell, it's
my
money, ain't it?”

Sally looked at him. Always in the past Jed's earnings had been “their” money. They'd decided together how to spend it. “Then maybe I'll just spend my book royalties on a trip to the Bahamas.”

He laughed. “Your money from that book ain't gonna get you to Knoxville and back.”

She said nothing. She'd show him!

A woman who ran a talk show on the local TV station phoned Sally and invited someone from the group to appear on the show. Sally thought about having the group elect someone. But after all, she was the chairman. And Bonnie had already been interviewed on the radio. So she accepted for herself. She spent the rest of the week deciding to wear her lime green polyester pants suit, and a choker of shellacked cantaloupe seeds. At the last minute she pinned an egg carton carnation in her hair.

On the show the hostess said, “We're just so pleased to have here with us this afternoon as our Guest Artist a local girl who's making quite a name for herself in the craft field—Newland's own Sally Tatro. And here to discuss her art with Sally is Associate Professor Dorothy Anderson, who teaches courses in art and women's studies at Volunteer State University. Sally, to get things started, could you please say a few words about how you came to be involved in the craft field?”

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 could 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?