implement salesman who was gone from home most of the time. As a teenager then, after her mother was crippled, she had spent many hours taking care of her mother and her two little brothers. She knew a great deal about cooking and cleaning and washing clothes and changing bedpans and emptying urine bags, and she had worked part-time in the evenings at fast-food restaurants, and she had even saved a little money to buy material to make clothes for herself. But she didn’t know much about fun. It was all a kind of gray reiteration of things to her, an endless unhappy routine. Then she graduated from high school. And after graduation she had worked as a temporary secretary on several occasions. But none of that was taking her anywhere. Then it was about this time that her father, because of business associations, heard about the weekend job at the elevator convention at the Holiday Inn. So she applied for the job and she was hired to show the film about hybrid seed corn in the motel lobby. She wore the miniskirt they required her to wear and the short-sleeved white blouse with the low neckline, and all the time she managed to smile congenially at the men at the convention. Then Jack Burdette showed up and began to talk to her. And soon it was more than just talk, and then on Monday he married her.
S o for the next five years, after seeing her for the first time in the Holt Cafe that Thursday noon, like everyone else in town I still only saw her infrequently. And then it was only causally, remotely, as from a safe and necessary distance. On those occasions when she happened to be shopping on Main Street, or on those rare weekend nights when she would agree to go out to the bars with Burdette, I would see her, just as everyone else did, and pay attention to her.
She was still doing some of that then—going out to the bars, I mean. During those first seven or eight months after Wanda Jo Evans had left town and while she herself was still new among us, we would see her every once in a while at the Legion or at the Holt Tavern on Saturday nights. And we would all watch her then. Typically, she would be sitting quietly in a corner booth by herself, sipping some sugary drink very slowly while the ice in her glass melted away, thinning the pink liquor to mere colored water, while Burdette himself (since marriage hadn’t changed him; since marriage was merely a change in his weekend companion, not a real break in his Saturday night routine, that masculine habit and custom of his) would be standing off at the end of the bar away from her, drinking whiskey or scotch, the center of that constant and admiring group of backslapping men, while he told his jokes and stories and they all laughed.
That wasn’t often, though; we didn’t see much of that. Jessie Burdette did not go out to the bars very regularly. And when she did go out she was always pleasant and would talk to you if you said something to her, but she would never volunteer anything herself. Instead she seemed to prefer to sit quietly sipping her watery drink, watching others have what she maybe didn’t even consider then as being a very good time.
But in the meantime the local women had begun to work on her, to pay special attention to her. I suppose the women in town wanted to be friendly. They began to ask her to join their social clubs and their church organizations. Wouldn’t she like to come to tea, to join Rebecca Circle, to play bridge, to be a member of the Legion Auxiliary, to golf with them on Saturday mornings, or maybe—wouldn’t she like to participate in Bible study?
But she wouldn’t, she told the women. She refused them outright, although when they called on her she was pleasant about it all. Nonetheless she was certain about it too.
So the women felt a little hurt by this, a little bit rebuffed and rejected. It put them off. But a month or two later they decided to ask her again. She only needed more time, they told one another; she was merely being
S o for the next five years, after seeing her for the first time in the Holt Cafe that Thursday noon, like everyone else in town I still only saw her infrequently. And then it was only causally, remotely, as from a safe and necessary distance. On those occasions when she happened to be shopping on Main Street, or on those rare weekend nights when she would agree to go out to the bars with Burdette, I would see her, just as everyone else did, and pay attention to her.
She was still doing some of that then—going out to the bars, I mean. During those first seven or eight months after Wanda Jo Evans had left town and while she herself was still new among us, we would see her every once in a while at the Legion or at the Holt Tavern on Saturday nights. And we would all watch her then. Typically, she would be sitting quietly in a corner booth by herself, sipping some sugary drink very slowly while the ice in her glass melted away, thinning the pink liquor to mere colored water, while Burdette himself (since marriage hadn’t changed him; since marriage was merely a change in his weekend companion, not a real break in his Saturday night routine, that masculine habit and custom of his) would be standing off at the end of the bar away from her, drinking whiskey or scotch, the center of that constant and admiring group of backslapping men, while he told his jokes and stories and they all laughed.
That wasn’t often, though; we didn’t see much of that. Jessie Burdette did not go out to the bars very regularly. And when she did go out she was always pleasant and would talk to you if you said something to her, but she would never volunteer anything herself. Instead she seemed to prefer to sit quietly sipping her watery drink, watching others have what she maybe didn’t even consider then as being a very good time.
But in the meantime the local women had begun to work on her, to pay special attention to her. I suppose the women in town wanted to be friendly. They began to ask her to join their social clubs and their church organizations. Wouldn’t she like to come to tea, to join Rebecca Circle, to play bridge, to be a member of the Legion Auxiliary, to golf with them on Saturday mornings, or maybe—wouldn’t she like to participate in Bible study?
But she wouldn’t, she told the women. She refused them outright, although when they called on her she was pleasant about it all. Nonetheless she was certain about it too.
So the women felt a little hurt by this, a little bit rebuffed and rejected. It put them off. But a month or two later they decided to ask her again. She only needed more time, they told one another; she was merely being
Similar Books
