I lowered all my windows to let the air in. The air felt so good. It was a gorgeous September day and I was going to have lunch with my sister, the good egg of all times. I sneaked through Mount Pleasant (a notorious speed trap) like a drug lord with a trunk full of contraband, vigilant for redneck policemen hiding behind billboards with their shaved heads, beady eyes and radar. It was a game I played. I’d never had a speeding ticket, and I was determined never to get one. In fact, I thought, the only flawless thing in my life just might have been my driving record.
The Island looked like a wreck, the same way it always did after a storm. The million-dollar new houses on the oceanfront had taken a terrible beating, but the old shacks still stood. The tire swings in their front yards hadn’t even gotten tangled in the trees. One thing I had to say for Maybelline, she had taste. And, true to her history, the Island Gamble was waving the victorious flag of survival after one more bout with Mother Nature.
“House looks good!” I called out to Maggie, who came down the back steps with her purse, ready to go. “Where’s my brother-in-law and my nephews?”
“Gone fishing early this morning—out to the Gulf Stream.” She got in the car, slammed the door and looked at me with one of her martyr faces. “Shoot, my house should look good! I nearly broke my back this week cleaning this yard and then we power-washed the whole house!”
“You’re a good woman, Maggie. A good woman.” I started to back out of the yard. “I’m sick of Maybelline and her mess too. You should see my third floor.”
“Under control now?”
“Yeah, God, but only after eighty million phone calls and this incessant waiting for a human being to talk to. By the time they pick up the line, I forget who I called! I hate automated phone systems.” I started toward the Isle of Palms. “I hate workmen too. You could spend your whole day waiting and they still don’t come.”
“How ’bout Tom? Hate him too?”
“Nah, he’s just an asshole who can’t help himself. I could put him on one of those daytime talk shows and a thousand angry women could tell him what a jerk he is and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
“Didn’t call, right?”
“Right. Didn’t call.” We drove past the gas station, Station 22 Restaurant and Dunleavey’s Pub. “Bump him. It’s okay with me, and it doesn’t matter anyway.” What a liar. “As soon as I’ve stuffed my face with fried food,” I continued, “I’ve got an idea I want you to think through with me, okay?”
“I’d be grateful for any excuse to use my mind, and besides, you know how I love telling you what to do.”
“Well, this time I’m inviting it. Show me no mercy.”
The young waitress showed us to a booth that faced the ocean. We slid across the leather benches opposite each other and, driven by some shared genetic compulsion, we wiped the crumbs from our respective sides of the Formica-topped table.
Knowing the menu by heart, we ordered without it. The waitress brought us our drinks and we settled in for the next hour or so, watching the beach and fishing through the mayonnaise seafood dip with Club crackers, looking for pieces of crabmeat or anything that resembled seafood.
“Think this is worth the calories?” Maggie asked as I popped a fat gram–laden cracker into my mouth, washing it down with Diet Pepsi and lemon.
“Nope, but I’m tired of dieting and today is a day for celebrating.”
“It is? Tell me why.”
“Do you know what the total damage was to my house?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Sixty thousand.”
Maggie let out a low whistle. She couldn’t whistle for beans.
“The insurance company is only paying fifty thousand. I had a five-hundred-dollar cap in my policy on landscaping.”
“Bunch of thieves, they are, the whole bunch of them, Yankee carpetbaggers.”
“Yep, worse than lawyers. But I have a plan.” I drained my glass and motioned to the tiny waitress in cutoffs, T-shirt and platform sandals. The waitress teetered over, smiling.
“Can I he’p you?” She smiled a wide, self-medicated smile. Prozac, I imagined.
“Just some more Diet Pepsi,” I said, “thanks.”
“Sure ’nough!”
“There but for the grace of God go I,” I whispered to Maggie.
“In a pig’s eye, honey. You and I would’ve dug ditches before we wound up doing this for a living. Besides, we’re at least two decades on the back side of cutoffs and platforms.”
“Backside is the operative word.” I giggled.
“Okay, okay. Tell me what the plan is!”
“Remember when I was a kid and I used to keep all those diaries? I found them in a big trunk in the attic when I was up there with the workmen checking the support beams.”
“What’s that got to do with the insurance money?”
“Just hang on, I’m gonna tell you.”
The waitress returned with our baskets of fried shrimp, potatoes, a small plastic tub of coleslaw and hush puppies.
“Kin I git y’all anything else? Ketchup? Some more Pepsi?”
“No, thanks, we’re fine.”
She tottered away and I bit into a hush puppy, burning the skin on the roof of my mouth. I gulped my drink to put out the fire.
“Hot, huh?”
“Yeah, bu’good. Whew! So listen, here’s the deal. I’ve figured out that if I hang the wallpaper myself and do all the repainting myself, I can save ten thousand dollars out of the insurance settlement. My neighbor, in a fit of guilt, is replacing my shrubs.”
“No kidding? That’s a break. So what are you gonna do with the money? Run away to Paris and be a writer like you always said you would?”
“No, no. I wish. But nothing that exotic. I’m buying a computer for myself. I decided, and tell me what you think about this, to try to put together some essays with cartoons!”
“What? For who?”
“For the newspaper. A column about being a single mother in the nineties, about growing up in the sixties, about being Geechee children, about dealing with a husband with the zipper problem, you know, about sexual harassment…”
“Sweet Mary, Mother of God. You’re serious!”
“Yeah, I’m dead serious. Look, Maggie, I never have two nickels extra to rub together. Beth wants to shop, and God forbid I should ever get my wardrobe together and look like something attractive to the opposite sex. What kind of money am I ever gonna make working at the Charleston County Library? I can write at night; it’s bound to pay something!”
Maggie got very quiet and I waited for her to say something. She picked up a fried shrimp, squeezed a lemon over it, ran it around in her tartar sauce and finally bit into the thing. I watched her chew as she stared at me.
“Well, say something,” I said. “Christmas is coming.”
“Are you doing this for an excuse to get on-line in those chat rooms and meet some stud muffin?” Her face was serious.
“Gimme a break, will you? I leave the chat rooms to Beth. Would you believe I caught her talking to some guy, saying she was a twenty-three-year-old blond aerobics instructor from Malibu who loved Mexican food?”
“Good Lord, Susan. But, hey, it’s another story you could write!”
“See what I mean?”
“Susan? Are you going to use your real name?”
“I don’t know, probably not. Because if nobody knows who I am then I think it would be easier to really say what I think, you know what I mean?”
“I wouldn’t use anybody’s name in the column either. You’ll get your butt sued for libel.”
“Yeah, I thought of that, unless it’s a politician.”
“I could help you with lots of stories from when we were kids.” She liked the idea. I could see it.
“I have a trunk full of them! The journals, remember?”
“Right! Well, when you run out of stuff to say, let me know.”
“Maggie, people will be spending the weekend o
n the moon before I run out of things to say.”
We started to laugh and our laughter grew. Pretty soon, tears were running down our cheeks as we were remembering all the crazy things we had done as children.
“Remember that kid Stuart?”
“Oh, God! What a little creep he was!”
That was how it all began. I spent the next two weeks writing like a maniac. I wrote a piece about going crabbing with an illustration of kids on the beach attached to it. I wrote a piece about sibling rivalry with a cartoon of kids choking each other. I particularly loved the one I wrote about Livvie. That one had a picture of a little white girl on the lap of a black woman. There was something to be said about single parenting, a lot, in fact, so I burned up the keyboard of Beth’s word processor on that. I wrote about the sexual revolution and how it had passed Charleston by. They were all very tongue-in-cheek and some of them were damn funny, if I said so myself. And the cartoons set the tone. They were eaten alive with cuteness.
Beth thought I’d gone mad. She was letting me use her computer, because I couldn’t make up my mind which one I wanted to buy, and she’d sacrificed her privacy. She moved to the dining room to study, saying that my laughing out loud, not to mention my pacing and smoking, broke her concentration. No doubt.
When I had twenty-five essays together, I was ready to try to sell them. But first somebody had to read them for me. Catch the goobers, fine-tune the language, gauge the rhythm, veracity and wit. I called Maggie.
“Whatcha doing?” I lit a cigarette. “Do you love me?”
“Of course I love you. What choice do I have? Where the heck have you been?”
“I’ve been impersonating Anna Quindlen for the last ten days. My fingers are worn down to little nubs from spilling my guts on paper. My thumbs are callused from the space bar. I need your help.”
“Name it.”
“Do you think you could pretend you don’t know me and read what I’ve written and then tell me the truth? I need to have all this stuff proofread.”
“You’re not really seriously asking me if I like to criticize, are you? Get your bones in the car and come on over. I’ve been dying to see what you’re up to! I’ll make supper for y’all tonight.”
True to form, my sister helped me once again. She found tons of errors that the spell-check feature on the word processor didn’t pick up and had some good suggestions for tightening up some of the essays. It took another week to get them polished and another three days to work up my nerve to call the newspaper. I just kept telling myself that if they didn’t want to run my essays, I’d try another paper. No big deal. In fact, I expected rejection.
Finally, on Friday, I looked up the number and dialed. The computerized voice that answered the phone had me so confused, I wasn’t even sure who I wanted to talk to when the human voice finally came on the line.
“Hello? Can I help you?” The voice, female, sounded mature and pleasantly professional.
“Um, I hope so. My name is Susan Hayes and I’m in charge of literacy outreach programs at the county library.”
“Yes, Ms. Hayes, how may I direct your call?”
“Well, I’m not sure. I’ve written some essays about living in these hard, fast times we’re in and I was hoping I might speak to someone about buying them for the paper.”
“Ah, so you’re a journalist too?”
“Well, an aspiring one, I mean, I’ve done a lot of writing—”
She cut me off in midsentence. “Just bring them to the front desk, any weekday between nine and five, and we’ll have a look at them. Make sure you have your résumé and phone number attached to your portfolio and we’ll call you.”
“Okay. Fine. Thank you.”
I wasn’t used to being dismissed and it felt terrible. But then I realized I was talking to the receptionist and she probably got fifty calls a week from people who are sure they’re the next Dave Barry or Molly Ivins. Can’t blame her, I thought, and then I realized: Portfolio? Don’t have one! Résumé? Haven’t updated it in years! I spent all Friday evening composing a new résumé and successfully resisted the urge to include any wisecracks.
Maybe I should send a copy to Roger Dodds too, I thought. He still hadn’t called either. I could’ve died in the hurricane for all he knew.
The next morning I bought a black leather portfolio, to hold my essays, from Huguley’s on Wentworth Street. I prayed that I’d bought the right kind and that it didn’t look pretentious. I decided to beat it up a little to make me look experienced, so I threw it on the asphalt a few times and walked on it. Then I damp-wiped it and Pledged it. The end result was convincing enough to me.
On my way to work Monday, I dropped the whole kit and caboodle off at the Post & Courier, held my breath and began a novena to the Blessed Mother. O most gracious Virgin Mary, never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession was left unaided…
It was in the blood. I would be a card-carrying, fish-eating, bead-pushing, candle-lighting, altar-making, incense-sniffing, genuflecting, saint-venerating Catholic until the day I died. I figured the Blessed Mother was my best bet in the Roman Catholic pantheon of possibilities. After all, she was a woman. Maybe I would resort to daily Mass in case I’d used up all my heavenly favors.
Tuesday and Wednesday went by and no one called. Not Roger, not Tom and not the newspaper. I had indulged in a thousand fantasies by late Wednesday afternoon. Ones where crowds roared at my jokes and held their breath while I spoke.
I was making a meat loaf for supper and had my hands in the bowl of chopped meat and ketchup when the phone rang. I was so deep in thought that I jumped at the loud noise.
“Beth! Can you get that? If it’s Oprah, tell her there’s no fee for me to appear, but I only fly first class!” I had been having a marvelous time imagining fame and fortune and how cool I’d be.
“It’s for you, Mom!” Beth screamed from upstairs. “It’s some man, probably wants to sell you something!”
Oh, good Lord, I thought, just when I’m up to my elbows in gook. I wiped off my hands and picked up the receiver.
“Ms. Hayes?”
“Yes?”
“This is Max Hall calling. I’m the publisher of the Post & Courier.” He paused.
“Oh! Yes! How nice of you to call.” My heart was beating against the wall of my chest.
“I’ve read your essays.” He took a very long pause again. Did he hate them? Did he love them? Tell me already and stop the pain!
“And?”
“Well, it happens that one of our writers who does a column on Thursdays is leaving us and I might be able to use some of your work. I’d like to meet with you and discuss it.”
“Fine! When?”
“Well, would Friday around four o’clock be all right with you?”
I would’ve gone at three in the morning if he had wanted me to.
I MARCHED MYSELF into Berlin’s the next afternoon like I shop there every day. I bought a pair of black Calvin Klein trousers with a jacket and a black silk T-shirt and paid the full retail price for it all. Then, full of beans, I walked down to Bob Ellis Shoes and bought a pair of black Prada pumps to match and a black knock-off Chanel bag. Thank you, Jesus, and all those good people at Metropolitan Insurance! Friday, I picked up the trousers from the alteration woman and hurried home to try on my new image. As I stood in front of the mirror on the back of my door, I liked what I saw. I was tall, thin and very cool. No, I was dignified. I went to Beth’s room for the ultimate test.
“If I pull my hair back in a clamp, what do you think? Do I look like a writer or an Italian widow?”
“Groovy, baby. Shagadelic!”
“Thanks, I think.”
All the way to Max Hall’s office I tortured myself. What if he hated me? This was not a romance, I told myself, it was business. What if he laughed at me and thought my work was idiotic? What if he bought it, it was published and everybody knew it was me and they laughed at
me?
“Ms. Hayes?”
His door had swung open, and a pimple-faced young man in shirtsleeves scooted out past me. I marveled that he was old enough to be a journalist. I was feeling old, but the face on Max Hall was a lot older than mine. I took a deep breath and jumped in the deep end.
“Hi!” I shook his hand. Firm grip. That was good. “Mr. Hall?”
“Call me Max.” He closed the door behind us. “Everyone does.”
His office was exactly what I expected. Behind his old leather-topped desk was a computer screen on a credenza, flashing news with a stock tape running across the bottom. His desk was huge and had several pencil cups and neat piles of paper stacked on both ends. He took his seat in the leather swivel chair and indicated that I should sit opposite him.
“Then call me Susan, please.”
“Sure. You want coffee?”
“Sure. Black’s fine.”
He spoke into his intercom, asking the female outside to bring in two cups of coffee. Then he leaned back and looked at me.
“So, you want to write a column for the Post & Courier, do you? What kind of experience have you got?”
“Jack,” I said.
“Excuse me? You worked for someone named Jack? Do I know him?”
I cleared my throat and my face got hot. I should’ve watched a video on how to interview.
“Um, no, Max, I mean I have a lot of experience, but not in journalism. But I do a lot of writing for my regular job at the county library. Grant proposals, brochures, that sort of thing.”
“Ah! I see.” He leaned across the desk and said in a low voice as his secretary left the office, closing the door behind her, “What you’re telling me is that you don’t know jack about journalism, is that right?”
The son of a bitch had no sense of humor.
“Well, yes and no. I mean, everyone tells me I write like a journalist and that I should write professionally and that I’m funny. Well, they think so, I’m not so sure.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“Ah, Jesus.” I had spilled the coffee down my arm.
“Don’t be so nervous. Here.” He handed me a wad of tissues.