Original Sins (83 page)

A few days later Sally received a letter informing her of her nomination by “an admiring neighbor” for the Mrs. Tennessee contest. Showing it to Jed, she asked, “Why, who do you think it could be, honey?”

“Nobody in this town, that's for sure.”

Her chin quavered. Couldn't he tell how hard she was trying to do right? He thought she was a lousy homemaker? Well, it was just possible that people all across America might disagree with him before long.

The Committee wrote saying they'd like to spend an evening observing her around her home. On the basis of these visits they'd pick a certain number of homemakers from each region to come stay at the Grand Ole Opry Hotel in Nashville and compete in the Grand Ole Opry itself for the title of Mrs. Tennessee. The day they mentioned was only a week away, and Sally was swept with excitement and terror. She was almost ready—except for enlisting Jed's cooperation. She decided he had to be out of the house that night. If he wasn't, he'd insist on demonstrating how he could crumple a beer can with one hand. He'd belch at dinner and eat with his forearms resting on the table edge. He'd get into an argument with the Committee, or belittle Sally in front of them. If he wasn't there, though, she could apologize for his absence, saying he was out of town on business, or had to work late, counting on her to keep the home fires burning, for him to return to when he could. She started right away trying to persuade him to work a double shift that evening.

“I'm a foreman now. Don't do that no more.”

He and Hank had the hood up on the T-Bird under the floodlight out back. They hung suspended over the engine like surgeons over an open heart. Sally tripped out and said, “Don't you boys want to go on a fishing trip or something?”

They looked up at her. Jed said in a bemused voice, “It's the middle of October.”

Later, in bed, he asked, “Hey, what's going on anyhow?”

“Why don't you go bowling straight from work next Thursday, darling? It'd save you a trip back here. It's OK. We can get along without you for supper one night.”

“What're you up to, woman?”

“Oh, all right, I'll tell you! The Mrs. Tennessee Committee is going to be here all evening next Thursday. I know you don't care much for all that stuff, and I was just trying to help you avoid it.”

“Are you lying to me, Sally?”

She looked at him with surprise.

“Why do you
really
want me out of this house?”

“I just told you, honey.”

“And I'm supposed to
believe
that?”

“Well, yes. Because it's the truth.”

“Shit, have your fucking meeting then. Don't worry about me. I don't need to come home after being on my feet all day. I can go wander the streets half the night.”

“Never mind, Jed. Come home, honey. But
please
behave.”

“Behave?
Behave?
Let's face it, Sally, you're ashamed of me. Always have been. I'm not good enough for you, am I? I've known it since high school, but I've tried to pretend it wasn't so.”

“It's not that, Jed.”

“Well, what is it then?”

“To tell you the truth, I don't think you much want me to be Mrs. Tennessee.”

“Ah shit,
be
fucking Mrs. Tennessee, Sally. I don't give a good goddam. Don't worry about it. I'll stay away next Thursday evening.

“Thanks, hon. I'd do the same for you, you know.”

“Hell, I don't wanna be no Mrs. Tennessee.”

The Contest Committee consisted of three wives of vice presidents in suits and heels and stockings. Sally showed them around the house and yard, wishing it was the ranch house in the development with the white pillars. She showed them her new method for rolling socks. She brought out her Candy Striper uniform and explained the rows of pins and bars and stars. She showed them her nativity scene in the bleach bottle, which was still under construction, and assured them it would be completed in time for the contest. She showed them her peach-pit window curtains. She told them how flattered she was that Dolores had nominated her, what an honor it was even to think about being the one chosen to uphold the standards that had made America great.

Joey and Laura were being very good. Sally had told them she'd cut off their allowances and not let them watch “Charlie's Angels” for an entire month if they uttered any sound other than “yes, ma'am” or “no, ma'am.” She put them to bed early, and the Committee watched as she sat on their bedsides and sang one of the lullabies she'd composed:

“Hush, Mommy's little larvae,/ Slumberland is so marvellous for good little children
…”

She felt really pleased when she heard one woman whisper, “I declare, what a cunning little song.”

But if anything would get her to the Grand Ole Opry Hotel, she knew it was her dinner. It just so happened that her dishwasher was a General Appliance brand. She wrapped a mackerel in a square of aluminum foil. As the Committee watched in amazement, she placed the packet in the dishwasher and turned it on. As the machine ran through its cycle, she described how she began homemaking feeling intimidated by her appliances, as though she was nothing but an appendage made of flesh. But how over the years she made friends with her machines and even came to regard them as accomplices in this business of homemaking. By the time she finished, so had the dishwasher. She took out the packet and served them perfectly poached mackerel; pickled green beans and zucchini bread from Jed's mother, which they thought Sally had made, an impression Sally didn't correct; and lemon Jell-O and grapefruit segments molded in scooped-out grapefruit rinds whose edges she'd scalloped.

Afterward they sat drinking coffee and admiring her candle holders made from the top halves of bleach bottles. One bottom half she'd turned into a basket and filled with dahlias, carnations, and lilies made from pink, yellow, blue, and white egg cartons. The Committee also commented admiringly on her meat-tray peacock plaque hanging on the wall above the table.

The Committee started talking about having to go back to their motel to rest up for their visit to the next candidate the next day. “Now, we'll be talking to some folks around town who've worked with you, Sally. The head of the Candy Stripers, people like that. You won't mind, will you?”

Sally hurriedly tried to recall what names she'd given them. Not Bonnie's, she hoped.

“… and of course we'd like to meet that nice Dolores Whittaker, who was kind enough to put us on to you …”

“She's out of town,” Sally assured them.

“What a shame.”

“Went to the Virgin Islands last week.”

“… and of course we're just so sorry to miss that nice husband of yours. But we'll have a chance to meet him in Nashville, won't we?”

Sally beamed. So she'd be going to Nashville?

Just then a siren sounded at the end of the street. It stopped in front of her house, the red light flashing through the window.

“My goodness!” gasped the Committee.

They heard shouts and running feet. Sally rushed to the door. Out by the curb two policemen held a man in a hammerlock. He wore a battered beer can hat low over his face.

“But I live here,” he was insisting. “This is my house.”

“Sure it is, buddy.”

Another cop was walking up to the back door. He said to Sally, “Your neighbor saw this guy looking through your window. Called us. We'll take him in. Don't worry about a thing, ma'am.”

“Sally, tell them it's me,” Jed called faintly. Sally glanced behind her at the Committee seated around the table. She murmured, “Thank you so much, officer.”

One of the women exclaimed, “Why, it's just horrible what goes on these days. That's why our contest is so important. We have to reaffirm decency in this nation once again, before all our values get eroded.”

After the Committee left, Sally locked the doors. But when Jed got home from the police station, he kicked in the back door.

“I'm just so sorry, honey,” she cooed. “We were right smack in the middle of our meal.”

“Not half as sorry as you're gonna be.” He clenched his fists.

“But what were you doing sneaking around like a peeping Tom in the first place?”

“Wanted to see who he was.”

She studied her fingernails. “And did you, silly?”

“Didn't get a chance before them cops jumped me.”

“Well, it wasn't a man, darling. It was the Mrs. Tennessee Committee. Just like I told you.” Poor Jed. Just a great big baby. She went over and put her arms around him.

“Sure it was.”

“It
was
, honey.” She was starting to get alarmed. She'd never seen him like this.

He shoved her across the room. She fell on the La-Z-Boy Lounger, fear on her face. “Please be quiet, darling. You'll wake the children.”

“It's
you
I want to wake up, Sally. Don't you see what you're doing to me? Doing to
us
?”

“But I'm not doing anything, honey.”

“I thought it'd be different once you quit that goddam show.”

“But it is different, Jed. Can't you tell?”

“Naw, it ain't. You're still pushing me and the kids away.”

“But I'm not, honey. I'm devoting myself to you. Didn't I get nominated for Mrs. Tennessee?”

He kicked her in the ribs and began punching her.

Sally coated her black eyes and bruises with pancake makeup. How would she explain her appearance to the Committee if they reappeared? She suspected one of her ribs was broken, but couldn't risk publicity by going to the hospital while the Committee was still in town. Last night Jed had stormed out, leaving her in a whimpering heap on the floor. He hadn't returned. She guessed she deserved this for neglecting him all those months. But she'd paid her dues. Once was enough. Now that she'd reformed, if he did this again, she'd have no choice but to leave. She wouldn't be able to live with a man who thought so little of her as to beat her up on a regular basis for nothing. But she had no income, had saved nothing from the book or show. She had spent part of what her daddy had put away for her on the book. She couldn't ask him for more. He'd probably fire poor Jed or something. No, to be ready to leave Jed, she'd have to earn some more money on her own. If she were Mrs. Tennessee, there'd be product endorsements, like Anita Bryant and citrus fruits. There'd be personal appearances. If she were Mrs. America, General Appliance would pay her to travel around the country for a year, talking about the pleasures of being at home; then maybe they'd give her some kind of public relations job. But to become Mrs. America she had to make up with Jed for long enough to become Mrs. Tennessee.

A few days later she had a letter from the Committee thanking her for a charming evening and inviting her and her lovely family to Nashville for the Mrs. Tennessee finals. The only problem, as usual, was Jed. He finally came home, sullen and uninterested in making up. He even turned down her offer to blow him, mumbling something about her “treacherous mouth that had been sucking cock all over town.” She assured him this was untrue, that she'd never sucked any cock except his, and never would as far as she knew.

“Why should I believe that?”

“Because it's
true
, honey.”

He shrugged her off. She was confused: He'd beaten her up, and now she was the guilty one, for things she hadn't done.

He began staying out all night a couple of times a week, sometimes saying, “You can fuck your little fanny off in our bed tonight, Sally, cause I won't be home.”

“But Jed, I don't want to, honey,” she insisted as he stomped out.

He didn't say where he stayed on these nights. She didn't care too much if it would help him
get
over this. He hadn't wanted to make love with her for a long time, and men had their needs. She didn't mind just as long as the Committee didn't hear about it. There was no such thing as a Mrs. Tennessee with an adulterous husband. She had to glue this marriage back together again somehow.

The next time he failed to come home after work, she hired a babysitter and went out in the Dodge to look for him. She toured all the motels but didn't see the T-Bird. She went to the Mill House, which she'd heard him mention ever since high school, and there was the car. She pulled into the shadows and waited. Eventually he came out alone.

She just barely managed to keep up with the speeding T-Bird by telling herself that her chance to be Mrs. Tennessee depended on winning him back, which meant she had to know who her competition was.

He stopped up ahead, so she did too, and watched him attach a chain to the trailer hitch on the T-Bird. He twirled the chain around his head like a lasso and wrapped it around the post on which sat someone's mailbox. Then he revved up the T-Bird and roared forward, ripping the post out of the ground. He did this three more times, Sally watching in puzzlement. She'd thought it was another woman who was keeping him out all night.

He stopped the T-Bird under the flashing red lights in front of some train tracks that crossed the highway. The engine swept up to the intersection, its headlights bathing the T-Bird in light. With a great roar the T-Bird seemed to leap across the tracks, the engine missing it by a few feet. The whistle blasted indignantly as the train clattered across the highway.

Sally returned home. Jed seemed angry or something. The following day she received in the mail a photo of the T-Bird, with the license plate that read “
STUD
,” parked in front of a house trailer with a sign on it that read “
TENDER TOUCH MASSAGE PARLOR
.” It was a Newland postmark. Her address on the envelope had been typed, and there was no return address. She wondered if Jed was responsible for this. Trying to make her jealous or something. Or maybe one of the other Mrs. Tennessee contestants in the area? Well, it was just a horrible spiteful thing to do, was all.