Southern Living (3 page)

John David was inspired, Suzanne was repulsed, and she dreaded the outcome of the renovation taking place in the California couple’s new home in Red Hill Plantation. She was not alone. John David, who decorated most of the homes in Red Hill, had noticed that the women of the north Selby neighborhood had been slowing down as they passed the house in their Suburbans and BMWs and Mercedeses, scrutinizing the fruits of demolition piled in front—splintered wood, appliances, shower stalls, tile, carpeting, and Sheetrock broken into pieces like giant soda crackers. Passing by one day in her black Lexus sedan, Suzanne was moved to the point that she felt compelled to call John David.

“You are not gonna believe what’s layin’ outside Claire Penrose’s old house,” she told him. “All those gorgeous window treatments piled up there like dirty clothes. Just tossed out with the trash!” (Hidden by the dark of the following night, John David and his housemate, Terrance, snatched them all up and stowed them in his garage.)

Unbeknownst to Suzanne and his other clients, John David had grown weary of the Southern, let’s-pretend-we’re-in-England decor that had paid his bills for so long, and Lord help the next woman who asked him to find another oversized gilt mirror, or to paint another dining room red, or to commission one more portrait of the lady of the house, or to purchase one more lamp with a monkey or pineapple on it. John David had begged Suzanne to let him loose on her house. He’d had a vision of something he called
Spouthern, a combative, Spartan-Southern elegance that mixed Scandinavian minimalism with French antique furniture and gold and floral accents. He’d pictured Suzanne’s mahogany French-Colonial bed flanked by cylindrical, brushed-chrome nightstands.

Yet she and her peers would not budge. No one dared stray from the Southern School, adding ornate to the already ornate, layer upon layer of tassels and pillows and rugs and brass and gold-leaf until the home felt like a Baroque chandelier.

After reading the feature in
Metropolitan Home
, Suzanne had Virgil, her hired man, install two new weather vanes on the garage roof. She added gold bows to the front-porch topiaries and hung another set of framed botanical prints in the foyer. She found two life-size brass pineapples at Big Peach Antiques and set them on each side of the parlor entrance.

John David refilled his tumbler with vodka. “If you wanna get your home in
Selby Magazine
, you gotta get brave,” he said. “You’re puttin’ on lipstick, Suzanne, when you need plastic surgery. Let me put those chrome cabinets in the kitchen.”

“You know Boone won’t go for that, John David. He doesn’t like that modern look.”

“Oh, Boone can go to hell.”

“John David!”

“But you suck his little Boonie enough and he’ll let you do whatever you want.”

“John David!”

As her laughter melted away, Suzanne lay her head back and slowly swayed it back and forth with eyes closed, reminding John David of Ray Charles. She breathed in then exhaled sharply, as if to wake herself from a trance.

“I gotta get dinner thawed, John David.”

“What casserole are we havin’ tonight?” he asked.

The biggest fund-raiser for the Selby/Perry County Museum of Arts and Sciences was the frozen casserole sale held every September.
Suzanne would buy thirty casseroles, the maximum number allowed. She then would give money to John David and Virgil to buy thirty more apiece, and all of these would go into the deep freeze in the garage, where they would hibernate until pulled out, then thawed, microwaved, and paired with a tossed green salad from a bag.

“Boone likes the one with noodles and cream cheese,” she said. “Maybe I’ve got another one of those left.”

John David stood up from the table. “None of that cat vomit for me, Suzanne. I gotta go.”

“Are we still goin’ to Atlanta tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“You said you’d take me to the merchandise mart to find that lamp.”

“I’m way too busy tomorrow, Suzanne.”

“John David, you promised.”

“Suzanne, I gotta spend all day with Mona Beckner.”

“Mona Beckner!”

“You got a problem with Mona?”

“Is she doin’ that dining room over? ’Cause I could have told her beforehand you just don’t paint a dining room yellow. That’s tacky, anybody knows that.”

“I’m doin’ the master bath.”

“Doin’ what?”

“Doin’ it all. They’re even gonna have a steam shower.”

Suzanne, still sitting, poured herself another finger of vodka.

“What kinda countertops is she gonna have? Granite?”

“I don’t know yet.”

John David pulled his keys from his pocket and started dropping them from hand to hand, back and forth, as someone plays with a Slinky. He had keys to some twenty upscale Selby homes, including Suzanne’s, and they occupied a ring as big around as an orange.

“I gotta go,” he said. “Where’s that throw pillow you want me to take back to Jeppeson’s?

“Are you sure I don’t need it?”

“I told you what I think, Suzanne. You need to work a fourth color into that living room, and that blue pillow is perfect.”

“But it’s just so plain, John David. Can’t you find one with fringe or tassels or somethin’?”

“Damnit, Suzanne, not everything in the house has got to look like Cinderella’s ball gown.”

“I just don’t think Boone’ll like it.”

“That’s bullshit, Suzanne. Boone doesn’t care a thing about this house.”

“You don’t have to get ugly with me, John David! I’m just askin’ for tassels and fringe.”

She stood up to walk him to the front door. Unlike the plumber and the exterminator and the other service workers, John David always used his clients’ front doors. He would park his Toyota truck in the driveway instead of the street and was even known to pull into the garage if there was a space.

Having watched his truck disappear around the bend of Red Hill Drive, Suzanne walked into the foyer, shut the door, and leaned back against it. When she opened her eyes, she flipped on the chandelier overhead and glared at the walls, which had been stripped of all adornment in preparation for the project. Had Ronnie Dipson shown up as promised, these would now be covered by a Schweitzer print of magnolia blossoms on vanilla background, ninety-eight dollars a roll.

Suzanne walked up to the wall and felt for a seam. With a red-painted fingernail she picked at the line until she pried an edge loose. Suzanne then pulled, expecting to remove from the wall a large scroll of old paper, but instead tore off a disappointing two-inch scrap. She continued to pick at this unwanted scab on her house, piece after tiny piece, until a pile of paper formed at her feet.

***

“Do you like your dinner?” Suzanne asked.

Boone wiped the corner of his mouth with a cotton napkin, golden fleur-de-lis on a burgundy background.

“You already asked me that, Suzanne. Yes, the dinner’s fine.”

They each sat at an end of the dining room table, separated by ten feet of polished mahogany that held a long, scarlet silk runner, two lit candles in sterling-silver holders, and a porcelain serving dish filled with something named Tokyo Surprise, which was a mixture of soba noodles, canned water chestnuts, baby corn, cubes of chicken, and cream of mushroom soup. Suzanne had found the casserole on the table marked “foreign.” She had wanted to avoid this table but was late arriving at the sale, and most of the traditional fare had already been sold. Not all of it was awful, however; Boone had enjoyed the dish named Mount Olympus that she served one day the previous week.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure I like it. What kinda spaghetti is this?”

“You made it, Suzanne. Don’t you know?”

“Maybe I put in a wrong ingredient or somethin’.”

Boone rarely finished a meal in less than forty-five minutes. To slow herself down, so she would finish after him, Suzanne would watch her husband and try to match his pace. He cut his food in the steady, methodical manner one would expect from a neurosurgeon, setting the knife down on the edge of the plate—
clink—
after every cut. Thanks to vigorous scrubbings each day at the hospital, Boone’s hands were immaculate and pale pink, the color of cooked salmon. His fingernails were trimmed and filed into perfect crescent moons. Boone engaged in no activity that would endanger his hands. He would not pick up a hammer or try to open an obstinate jar of pickles.

“I see the dogs of Red Hill are at it again,” he said, setting down his goblet of water. “Didn’t you call the pound?”

“Are they doin’ it again?” she asked.

“There’s another spot down by the mailbox, Suzanne. I don’t see how you could miss it.”

It seemed as if every house in Red Hill Plantation had one or two purebred hunting dogs, and shortly after moving to this part of town, Suzanne discovered that few people actually trained or disciplined these dogs, let alone hunted with them, so they roamed in packs, like bored teenagers in a mall, through the curvy streets and cul-de-sacs of Red Hill Plantation.

A group of Labradors had begun using Suzanne and Boone’s front yard as a bathroom. The turds were bad enough, but what bothered Boone even more were the more permanent, random yellow stains from the urine. “It looks like we don’t take pride in ourselves, Suzanne,” he had said. “Please find a way to get rid of those dogs.”

Obviously, she could not call animal control; these creatures belonged to her neighbors. After calling Chatter to leave a complaint, Suzanne tried simple verbal intimidation at first. Then, when no one was looking, she would pelt them with the brick samples she’d been carrying around in the trunk of her Lexus. Exasperated, Suzanne finally placed behind the potted dogwood topiary a tastefully aged-and-green copper bucket that held squirt guns filled with gasoline or Tabasco sauce. The problem was, the dogs would saunter in, do their business, and be on their way before she could even get to the front door.

“I just don’t know what to do about ’em, Boone,” she said. “I’ve tried everything.”

He pushed his plate away from him, finished. “You’re smarter than a bunch of dumb dogs, Suzanne.”

“Maybe Virgil knows what to do.”

“I sure hope so. I didn’t pay to plant winter rye just to have it look like that. I’m wanting that yard to look nice for the Christmas party, and that means green grass without doggie stains on it.”

Suzanne stood up with her plate in hand. She walked over to
Boone’s end of the table, picked up his plate, and disappeared into the kitchen with the dishes. Boone had not eaten but half of his salad for the third straight night—or was it four now? Five? How could he suddenly not like the salad? It was the exact same salad she had served for months, even the same Wish-Bone Lite Caesar dressing. If he didn’t like the salad, why didn’t he tell her? Or had he? As Suzanne crammed lettuce down the garbage disposal with a wooden spoon, she tried to reconstruct the hazy, brusque conversations of the past several nights.

Suddenly, she heard a dog bark. Grabbing a dish towel, Suzanne walked quickly to the front door, drying her hands along the way. She looked out the window, clicked on the outside light, then opened the door. On the porch, Suzanne reached into the bucket for one of the guns and pulled out an orange one filled with gasoline. It had “Avenger” written along the barrel in blue letters that were slanted to give a feeling of movement.

She ran out toward the street until she reached the most favored spot in the yard and stood there in the darkness, somewhat out of breath, smelling the dank ammonia odor that wafted up from the moist grass, waiting there, with her finger on the blue trigger. Across the yard, Suzanne could see Boone inside, watching the news from his leather wing-back chair. He had moved the floor lamp again to the left side of the chair, which put it too close to the lamp on the desk. John David had said the two light sources needed to be farther apart, and Suzanne would return it to its proper spot before going to bed.

R
uth and Margaret Pinaldi first found Susan B., emaciated and nearly unconscious, under the juniper bushes behind Ruth’s practice on Shornwood Avenue. Short-haired and all white, she appeared to be a ghost even though alive. Though Ruth had strong opinions about dogs—“They lack courage and individuality, and they run in packs because they don’t have the skills or confidence needed for solitary journeys”—she had no life experience with cats. Ruth assumed the animal was female; she had no idea that a cat’s testicles were neatly tucked up close to the body, discreetly covered in fur. She named their cat after the famous suffragist and decided to keep the name even after the true gender was revealed when she brought him in to be spayed.

Susan B. loved to climb trees. Often, when the back door was opened, he would dart outside, leap onto the nearest cylinder of
bark, and pull himself skyward, his claws clicking and crackling like static electricity all the way up.

Sometimes he would stay up there for two or three days. This time he had climbed higher, at nearly fifty feet now, and since it was the first time he had gotten stuck in a Georgia tree, in a backyard still unfamiliar, Margaret was more concerned than usual.

After four days she opened a can of Friskies Elegant Entrée and smeared it on the bark of the tree, hoping the aroma would tempt him downward, but the food just developed a dark crust and attracted yellow jackets. Margaret wondered how he could survive. She guessed he was licking the dew off the leaves, but when had he slept? And how could he just shut down his bowels like that?

On the eighth day, she took Harriet’s advice and called the fire department. Margaret was standing beneath the tree, trying to coax Susan B. down, when two firefighters with postlunch toothpicks in their mouths walked up to her. Their ample bellies pushed at the blue material of their shirts, reminding Margaret of newly upholstered easy chairs. She’d never seen overweight firefighters. The ones back home, in Buffalo, were known for their buff, tough appearance, and the
Buffalo News
had even published a beefcake calendar featuring the finest twelve specimens as they posed half-naked. Margaret looked at the men before her now and wondered: How could these guys climb ladders or shimmy across a floor on their stomachs?