Later she had to get up to go to the bathroom and when she looked at herself in the mirror that started her laughing again. She laughed so hard all that day that her upper plate came loose, and even that made her laugh. The next day she woke up feeling sore all over but very calm and rested, and for the first time in months she felt like she might get up for good.
After all of Verbena’s trying so hard to pep her up, Verbena never knew that a bee up her dress had finally done the trick. From that day forward, Verbena was convinced that it had been little Frieda Pushnik who had done the trick and Tot never told her any different.
Soon everyone in town knew Tot was going to recover from her terrible ordeal. For the first time in weeks she pulled up the shades in the living room, and week after week the shades came up room by room until one day Tot got dressed and went back to work with a new outlook on life. “Norma,” she said, “I’ve been on the verge of a nervous breakdown all my life and now that I’ve had it, I feel a whole lot better.”
Daughters
MACKY AND NORMA’S DAUGHTER, Linda, had married but continued to work to help put her husband through law school, a fact that irritated Macky to no end. “If he can’t support a wife on his salary, then he shouldn’t have gotten married,” he said. However, at the time Norma thought it was a good idea for Linda not to quit her job. “I wish I had a job,” Norma added wistfully.
Several months later, when the Pancake House opened, Norma applied for the job of hostess and, to her surprise, was hired but her mother, Ida, now an imposing dowager of seventy-five who wore six strands of pearls around her ample bosom and carried a black cane, talked her out of it. “Norma, for God’s sake, how would it look to people? The daughter of the president of the National Federated Women’s Club of Missouri being a hostess at a pancake house. If you will not think of your own social position, then think of mine!” And so Norma continued to be, as she put it, just a housewife. Her hopes of becoming a grandmother had been dashed when Linda had had a miscarriage in her third month. After the miscarriage, Linda and her husband had begun having problems. Linda had wanted to try again but he was against it until he finished school. Macky said it was because the husband was afraid he would lose his meal ticket but as Norma pointed out, he’d never liked him in the first place.
One afternoon a year later, when Macky walked in the door from work, Norma met him in the living room. “Linda called and said she is calling back at six because she wants to talk to both of us.” They looked at each other wide-eyed. “What do you think?”
Macky said, “I hope it’s what we think.”
“Do you think it could be?” Norma asked.
“I’m hoping it is.”
“Do you want anything to eat now or do you want to wait?”
Macky looked at his watch. “We only have forty-five minutes. Let’s just wait.”
“All right, but what are we going to do for forty-five minutes?”
“Should we call her?”
“No, she’s on the road and said she had a meeting and would call us when she finished.”
“I hope it’s what I think it is,” Macky said.
“I know you do, but you never know, and if it is what we think, don’t offer any advice. Just say it’s your decision and whatever you decide to do about it we will support you.”
“Norma, I know how to talk to my own daughter. She knows how I feel.”
“I know she knows how you feel. Especially about her husband—you certainly made that clear, nobody can accuse you of being subtle.” Norma shook her head. “Making a complete spectacle of you. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life.”
“All right, Norma,” said Macky.
“You could have at least said something in private and not waited till her wedding day to pull a stunt like that.”
Macky got up and went into the den but Norma continued. “Imagine such a thing. It’s part of the ceremony. Everyone knows when they say who gives this woman in marriage, you are supposed to say ‘I do’ and step back.” Norma got up and started rearranging the pillows on the sofa. “But no, you had to say right out loud, ‘I’m not giving her—I’m just loaning her.’ ”
“O.K., Norma,” he said from the den.
“And then to glare at the groom like that . . . no wonder they’re having trouble. I could hardly face his parents. They thought you were a drunk, or at least I hoped that’s what they thought. I didn’t want them to think you would do something like that sober. And then to have Aunt Elner laugh out loud like that, it’s a wonder that our daughter even speaks to us.”
Macky came back in. “Linda knows what I meant. I was not going to stand up anyplace, church or not, and say I’m giving my daughter away . . . like she was something that we had sitting around the house. And no matter what you and Linda think, I still say it was a rash decision.”
“Macky, she had dated him on and off for six years, how rash can that be? You knew she was going to get married sometime, and then to sit there and carry on like that, everybody heard you. I was the mother of the bride, I was the one who was supposed to cry, not you.”
“Norma, why are you dredging up all this old stuff?”
“Oh, I don’t know, just nervous I guess. Do you want some crackers or something? I have some pimento cheese.”
“No, I’ll just wait until after she calls.”
“But now, Macky, don’t get your hopes up, we’ve had false alarms before.”
“I’m not. I just hope it’s good news, that’s all.”
They sat across from each other, waiting, and said nothing until the phone rang and then he got on the extension in the den and she picked up in the kitchen. After they hung up Macky came strolling into the kitchen all smiles but Norma was not smiling. “Well, I hope you’re satisfied now.”
“I am,” he said, looking in the refrigerator for the pimento cheese.
Norma opened the cabinet where she kept the crackers. “Honestly, I never saw a man so happy his daughter was getting a divorce in all my life.”
Dr. Robert Smith Tours
AFTER MONROE’S FUNERAL something happened to Bobby. Going back home again had stirred up so many old memories. Being there had made him remember not so much who he was but all the things he had wanted to be. Yes, he had made good money, had enough in the bank, held good stocks, no complaints there. They had two homes, one in Cleveland and one in Florida. His children had gone to the best schools, he had worked hard, been a good provider, but now those old secret longings came creeping back. That boy who had watched the shadows of a fire dancing on the ceiling of the old bunkhouse and dreamed himself to sleep seemed to be waking up inside him again. He found he hated to put on a tie and sit in stuffy corporate offices in every stuffy corporate town. He found himself staring out windows more and more.
After three months of thinking about it, Bobby walked in the door one night and said, “Lois, what would you say if I told you I wanted to go back to school?” Lois said, without a moment’s hesitation, “I would say do it!”
And so Mr. Robert Smith took an early retirement and went back to college and got his doctorate in history and his dissertation, The American West: Dream and Reality, was published and Dr. Robert Smith and his wife went on a lecture tour, and as Lois told their children, “Your father is having the time of his life.”
Darling, We Are Growing Older
MACKY WAS RESTLESS. He walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table across from Norma. “Norma, what do I look like?”
Norma glanced up from her Things to Do Today pad. “What do you mean, what do you look like? You look like yourself.”