“No, I’m serious . . . what do I look like?”
“Macky, I don’t have time to play some silly game. I’m trying to figure out how many sandwiches I need to order.”
“It will only take a second. . . . Look at me . . . and tell me what you see.”
Norma put her pencil down and studied him. “You look just like you always did, Macky, only older.”
“How much older?”
“You look . . . oh, I don’t know, Macky, you look the same to me as you always did. I don’t know what you look like. Go look for yourself in the mirror.”
“I want an objective view. I see myself every day.”
“Well, I see you every day too. How am I supposed to know what you look like?”
“What if I was walking down the street and you saw me coming toward you, what would you say?”
“I’d say, There comes my husband, Macky Warren. What do you think I’d say? Here comes a perfect stranger?”
“Norma.”
“Oh, all right. If I didn’t know you and I saw you coming down the street, I’d say . . . Oh, I don’t know, Macky, I’m no good at these silly games, you sound like Aunt Elner. Go look at a picture of yourself if you want to see what you look like, go look in the yearbook where we were voted Cutest Couple. That’s what you look like now—older but still cute.”
It was not the answer he was looking for.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you think a person can still look cute when they’re older?”
“How old do I look?”
“Well . . . you look your age. You look like you’re supposed to look, Macky. I don’t know what you want me to say anymore. Macky, go ask somebody else. I’ve got to figure out if we should have potato chips or fruit salad. Just as soon as I decide on chips everybody will say they wanted fruit salad.” She went back to her list but said to him as he got up to leave, “I’ve never heard of anything so crazy in my life.”
After Macky left she thought about what he had said. He was obviously worried about getting old, but was he? How about her?
It was hard for her to tell, being with him day after day, year after year. They had never really been separated except for the night she’d stayed in the hospital when she had Linda and the three days she and Aunt Elner had spent in St. Louis visiting Aunt Elner’s niece Mary Grace. But little things had started to happen. She found herself going sound to sleep sitting straight up in the chair at night when they were watching television. Macky would more often than not wake her up to go to bed. Her eyes were bad now; she had to wear her glasses almost all the time if she wanted to read or do any close work. Macky needed reading glasses but he was too stubborn to get them and picked hers up when he read the paper. He had stretched all her glasses.
Maybe he was right, maybe they were getting old. When he came back home she was standing in the bedroom in her panties and bra looking at herself in the full-length mirror. “Macky,” she said, “does my body make me look fat?”
He would not have answered that question for all the tea in China.
THE NINETIES
Popsicle Toes
WHEN MACKY WALKED in the door Norma was waiting for him in the living room and said, “Macky, sit down.” The look on her face told him she was about to tell him something terrible or wonderful, he never knew which. But he sat down.
“What is it?”
“I’ve been on the phone with Linda,” she said.
“Yes, and?”
“And. She said she wants to have a baby, she says her biological clock is ticking.”
“Uh-huh, has she met someone?”
Norma got up and started to rearrange the pillows on the sofa, just like she always did when she was nervous. “No, she hasn’t met anyone but she has been calling different agencies.”
Macky was alarmed. “Agencies? What the hell is she doing that for? There are plenty of men where she works.”
Norma cleared her throat. “That’s just it, she doesn’t want a man; well, at least not in person. She wants the baby but not the husband . . . that’s what she said.”
“What?”
“Now, before you get mad at me, I did not say I thought it was a good idea but she has decided to go to a”—Norma weighed her words very carefully—“a place that specializes in that sort of thing. She’s looking into one of those . . . you know . . . bank things.”
“Banks?”
Norma was becoming impatient. “Oh, Macky, don’t make me have to spell it out for you. She wants to get pregnant but she does not want to get married again. She’s going to one of those places that deal in . . . frozen . . .” Norma struggled but no matter how hard she tried she could not bring herself to say the actual word. She glanced out the front window to see if anyone was in hearing distance, then spelled it out: “S-P-E-R-M.”
“What?”
“Macky, have you never heard of artificial insemination? That’s what she wants to get and she just wanted to let us know.”
“Good God.”
“You always said she could tell us anything—well, now she has. I just don’t know what to say or what to think. She’s your daughter. If you hadn’t acted like you wanted a grandchild so much that other time, this might not have happened.”
“Norma, she was pregnant—what was I supposed to say?”
“You acted like a grandchild was the only thing you’d ever wanted in your entire life, then when she had the miscarriage it made her feel even worse.” Norma suddenly burst into tears and wailed, “I hope you’re satisfied. You’re about to have one with a Popsicle for a father!”
But after months of trying and many disappointments, Linda’s attempt to become pregnant was not successful and she finally gave up. Macky and Norma assumed that was to be the end of it but when Macky came in from a fishing trip Norma met him at the back door and announced, “Well, I hope you like chop suey.”
“What?”
“Your daughter called while you were gone. She is now on her way to China to pick up a foreigner baby.”
“What?”
“She said she applied for a little girl a year ago. She said she didn’t tell us before because she thought she would never hear from them but three days ago they called her and told her to come over and pick it up.”
He stood there holding his string of fish with his mouth open. It was the last thing in the world he expected to hear.
“Congratulations, Macky, you are now the grandfather of a Communist who will probably grow up and murder us all in our beds.” With that she left him standing in the kitchen and went back to bed in tears.
As upset and worried as they both were, the moment they saw the beautiful little button-eyed girl Linda had named Apple, they fell in love. Two years later Norma was out at the mall proudly wearing a sweatshirt with a picture of the little Chinese girl on it. Printed underneath was SOMEBODY SPECIAL CALLS ME GRANDMA.
Cecil Figgs, a.k.a. Ramon Novarro
WHEN THE BODY of the large, heavyset woman in the red wig had been picked up off the street and brought to the Cecil Figgs funeral parlor for embalming, they discovered that the lady on the table was no lady. Imagine their incredible surprise when they were told that the man in the bright green dress was none other than Mr. Cecil Figgs!
What a scandal. Thank heaven, Cecil’s mother had not lived to see it. Jake Spurling immediately flew to New Orleans. But even he, with all his powers of deduction and all the resources of the F.B.I. behind him, could not figure out how Figgs had wound up living in New Orleans for the past twenty-something years as a Miss Anita “Boom Boom” De Thomas.