when her father would come home on a rampage after losing his week’s wages in a poker game.
Someone, probably her mother, had pierced the inside edge of the tire and hung plastic pots of petunias and geraniums. Plastic—it seemed so foreign. She thought of the clay pots and concrete statues of her own life. The glass measuring cups and mixing bowls. Steel flashlights. Sterling-silver goblets. Why was everything so heavy now? When had she stopped using plastic? How could something so much lighter and easier be considered tacky? Suzanne nudged one of the hanging plants and watched it swing like the pendulum of a clock:
Plas-tic. Plas-tic. Plas-tic. Plas-tic
.
She unhooked two of the plants and set them on the dirt. Bending forward, Suzanne then backed into the tire, one buttock at a time, chafing the rim, leaving black smudges on each side of her pale-yellow linen dress. Once inside, eyes closed, she became aware of her breathing and the beating of the blood in her ears. The tire had absorbed the day’s sun, and Suzanne found comfort in the warmth of the rubber that now hugged her.
Ten
Dear Chatter: Whoever changed the Selby Mall to no-smoking has sand for brains. I’m not going anymore. I’ll spend all my money at the flea market instead.
Dear Chatter: The reason there are so many wrong-number phone calls in Selby is because everyone’s fingers are so fat from all the greasy food. That’s the problem.
Dear Chatter: What are cheese straws? Translation, please.
I t had rained earlier in the hour, and as Randy and Margaret emerged from the air-conditioned lobby of the
Reflector
, they saw steam lazily rising from the asphalt of Cotton Avenue. Margaret quickly remembered a call she’d received in Chatter, from some man who truly had too much to say, too many voices in his head wanting to be heard. In between snippets about smothered pork chops and ATM user fees and the new no-smoking policy at Selby Mall, he managed to drop in an exquisite line explaining how steam was the spirit of dead rainwater, rising up to its home in heaven. Margaret was so excited about this revelation that she quickly pulled off her headset and placed it on Harriet’s head, accidentally denting her silver beehive. Harriet politely listened, smiled, said “Well, isn’t that nice?” and then quickly disappeared into the ladies’ room for fifteen minutes.
Randy reached into the breast pocket of his navy blue blazer and pulled out a pair of gray titanium, aerodynamic Oakley sunglasses, which he put on as they crossed the street. Margaret thought they made him look like an insect.
“Jesus! This humidity! Look at my glasses—it looks like I’m in a fucking sauna.”
Margaret internally flinched. Seven months of residing in Selby had already eclipsed twenty-eight years of living with Ruth Pinaldi—her ears were now sensitized to such language. For the most part, all four-letter words used to denote body parts or human waste were absent from the aural landscape of middle Georgia, and hell was verboten because it was a true place and destination people feared. Locals frowned upon damn because it was a root word from the Bible. In fact, Margaret had learned that the word
damnation
occurred eleven times within this book whose thick yet floppy composition reminded her of a raw porterhouse steak.
Shortly after moving to Selby, Margaret bought her first Bible at the New Way Christian Books and Music next to Kroger, where she found twenty-three varieties to choose from, including a downloadable version for Palm Pilots and a liberally abridged Bible for children with attention deficit disorder. Margaret selected a cheaper, burgundy, faux-leather, New International Edition from Dentwirth and Sons Publishing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and took it to the checkout counter. A twenty-something woman in braces was reading a comic book titled
The Rapture
, whose Roy Lichtenstein–like cover showed jumbo jets falling from the sky and exploding into
Someone, probably her mother, had pierced the inside edge of the tire and hung plastic pots of petunias and geraniums. Plastic—it seemed so foreign. She thought of the clay pots and concrete statues of her own life. The glass measuring cups and mixing bowls. Steel flashlights. Sterling-silver goblets. Why was everything so heavy now? When had she stopped using plastic? How could something so much lighter and easier be considered tacky? Suzanne nudged one of the hanging plants and watched it swing like the pendulum of a clock:
Plas-tic. Plas-tic. Plas-tic. Plas-tic
.
She unhooked two of the plants and set them on the dirt. Bending forward, Suzanne then backed into the tire, one buttock at a time, chafing the rim, leaving black smudges on each side of her pale-yellow linen dress. Once inside, eyes closed, she became aware of her breathing and the beating of the blood in her ears. The tire had absorbed the day’s sun, and Suzanne found comfort in the warmth of the rubber that now hugged her.
Ten
Dear Chatter: Whoever changed the Selby Mall to no-smoking has sand for brains. I’m not going anymore. I’ll spend all my money at the flea market instead.
Dear Chatter: The reason there are so many wrong-number phone calls in Selby is because everyone’s fingers are so fat from all the greasy food. That’s the problem.
Dear Chatter: What are cheese straws? Translation, please.
I t had rained earlier in the hour, and as Randy and Margaret emerged from the air-conditioned lobby of the
Reflector
, they saw steam lazily rising from the asphalt of Cotton Avenue. Margaret quickly remembered a call she’d received in Chatter, from some man who truly had too much to say, too many voices in his head wanting to be heard. In between snippets about smothered pork chops and ATM user fees and the new no-smoking policy at Selby Mall, he managed to drop in an exquisite line explaining how steam was the spirit of dead rainwater, rising up to its home in heaven. Margaret was so excited about this revelation that she quickly pulled off her headset and placed it on Harriet’s head, accidentally denting her silver beehive. Harriet politely listened, smiled, said “Well, isn’t that nice?” and then quickly disappeared into the ladies’ room for fifteen minutes.
Randy reached into the breast pocket of his navy blue blazer and pulled out a pair of gray titanium, aerodynamic Oakley sunglasses, which he put on as they crossed the street. Margaret thought they made him look like an insect.
“Jesus! This humidity! Look at my glasses—it looks like I’m in a fucking sauna.”
Margaret internally flinched. Seven months of residing in Selby had already eclipsed twenty-eight years of living with Ruth Pinaldi—her ears were now sensitized to such language. For the most part, all four-letter words used to denote body parts or human waste were absent from the aural landscape of middle Georgia, and hell was verboten because it was a true place and destination people feared. Locals frowned upon damn because it was a root word from the Bible. In fact, Margaret had learned that the word
damnation
occurred eleven times within this book whose thick yet floppy composition reminded her of a raw porterhouse steak.
Shortly after moving to Selby, Margaret bought her first Bible at the New Way Christian Books and Music next to Kroger, where she found twenty-three varieties to choose from, including a downloadable version for Palm Pilots and a liberally abridged Bible for children with attention deficit disorder. Margaret selected a cheaper, burgundy, faux-leather, New International Edition from Dentwirth and Sons Publishing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and took it to the checkout counter. A twenty-something woman in braces was reading a comic book titled
The Rapture
, whose Roy Lichtenstein–like cover showed jumbo jets falling from the sky and exploding into
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