Wide Open
The main thing I have to discuss is: punch.
Yes.
Punch looms large in this story.
[Read the lead-up here and here and here.–Ed.]
In the early hours of the shower–okay, it was only two hours long in its entirety, but it felt like twelve!–I was standing with a group of ladies, trying to act normal so they wouldn’t cast me out or whatever, and one lady goes, “I went to a wedding yesterday, and there were three different punch bowls with three different punches to choose from.” And everybody else goes, “Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh!”
We had punch too. It was made of ginger ale and lime sherbet, and there were little crystal teacups from which to drink it. [Private note to Left Hook: SLURP IT, BITCH!!!] Miss D___ called me over to the punch bowl and handed me a spoon and asked me to “take over” for her. She was, like, chopping up the sherbet with the spoon. I wasn’t sure. It made me really nervous. I stood there, cringing and chopping, until a different Miss D___ came over and said it looked done to her. Phew.
Later, Miss B___ asked me to pour her some punch. Her hands were too full of creme puffs and tea sandwiches and other such dainties. I took a deep breath and had a go at it.
“Miss Pistol,” she exclaimed, “you sure are a good punch-dipper!”
I think I blushed. “Oh. Well. This is actually my first time. Dipping. Punch.”
Titters across the room. I was laughing because it sounded kind of dirty. They were laughing because I’m a pitiful Yankee.
Here’s my favorite joke with the Southerners. I’ll be like, “Hey you guys, will you help me carry out the mints and nuts?” Then I’ll wait a beat or two. “Oh, I’m sorry. ‘You guys’ means ‘y’all.’” Har! They laugh every time.
So Baby Monster opened her presents. She got plates. She got bowls. She got chargers. She got flatware. She got towels. She got a FryDaddy. (”Ooooooooh, it’s the FryDaddy!”) She got hedge clippers, and everybody laughed. Yeah, I’m thinking, castration jokes! Hahaha! But then she goes, “I can use these to cut [redacted]’s fingernails and toenails. Y’all know he makes me!” Shudder.
I stood by, arranging the opened gifts on the table, smiling until my face hurt. I had switched over from thinking about sex, and now I thinking about death. Behind Baby Monster were three windows, and I watched a black cat lazily make its way across the lawn. “I’m doing my bathroom in black and white,” Baby said. The old ladies twinkled. I grinned. We’re all doomed, doomed, doomed, I thought.
Then it was over. I crept around the place pretending I was Caddy from the Sound and the Fury. It was a house like that–an old mansion full of grandfather clocks and paintings of dead people and dark bedrooms and vanities with foggy mirrors. I kept running out of the mirror. (Little joke.) Outside there was a crumbling walled garden and wisteria everywhere. It was beautiful. I took my shoes off and ran around on the lawn. I wasn’t gonna let those motherfuckers see my muddy drawers.
The South. Sigh.
The next day we went to the assisted living to have breakfast with Mr. Pistol’s grandparents, who both have Alzheimer’s. Granny kept meeting me the whole time. “Mr. Pistol went and got himself a pretty little wife!” She put her hand on my shoulder. “And it’s a good thing. Otherwise we would’ve thrown you out!”
She remembered what my job was without anybody reminding her. “So the children–are they naughty? Do you spank them?” She must’ve asked me fifteen times.
“No, ma’am. Against the law.”
Papa is my favorite man in the world. A wrinkled little turtle with the most amazing Old South diction, and lots of bizarre stories. The stuff he says makes your brain explode. Once he told us about a half-wit who used to wander around town; he saw a roasting pan in a catalog, and in the picture, it had a turkey and dressing in it. So the guy sent away for it, and when it came in the mail and he discovered it was just the pan without the turkey and dressing, he cried.
Papa has a habit of punctuating sentences and filling empty spaces with, “Wide open.” He says it all the time.
At breakfast he asked me if I liked strawberries.
“I love them,” I said.
“Not me. I don’t care nothing about strawberries. Peaches neither.”
I giggled.
“Wide open.”
He told us a story about hitchhiking to work every day, all the way from Selma to Montgomery, sixty years ago.
“Did you usually get somebody to take you the whole way?” Mr. Pistol asked.
“Oh no. But I’m good at putting one foot in front of the other.”
At least somebody is.
I’m glad to be home, y’all.
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