The grandfather clock gongs midnight, eliciting a tiny jerk from my wobbly body as I creep down the hallway to my bedroom, having seen Joe for a second time today. Making a mental note to remember to tell Garrett to oil my squeaky bathroom door, I brush my teeth and fall into bed.
Waiting on my bedside table are the last few chapters of a memoir written by a Philadelphia physician who, upon receiving the news of his inoperable cancer, went on macrobiotics and lived well for seven years before trading it briefly for a diet of red meat and cheese while touring Europe. Within two months, he was dead.
At three a.m., I finally turn out the light, the musk of Joe’s aftershave clinging faintly to the T-shirt I’ve decided to sleep in for that very reason. Instantaneously reanimated, I make another mental note to pass the book on to Tina, with strict instructions to finish it tout de suite.
Plumping the down pillow, I roll on my stomach, recalling Joe’s amusement when he told me that, during the peak of passion, I said a word he swore sounded just like koirnk! Having no recollection of this moment or that word, I good-naturedly called him a lying sack and vowed to never again make any sound whatsoever in his presence. I kept my vow until he retrieved an imaginary dictionary from underneath the futon, reading aloud the definition of koirnk: “a really good word used by only the most extraordinary of Southern gentlemen indicating, more frequently than not, zeal, fervor, and enthusiasm.”
Right after this exchange, Joe reminded me it had already been nine months since we met, or re-met. Nine months since I had tossed my useless life in the toilet and returned to a place where I’d presumed I had nothing. I had done my best to conceal how touched I was he was keeping track.
Taking another whiff of the shirt, I reach over and, feeling for the diet book, toss it on the floor so I’ll bump into it in the morning on the way to my day.
* * *
Having uncharacteristically overslept, I had been forced to postpone my run, instead heading directly into breakfast preparations. A few hours later, the Gulf Coast breeze keeps me relatively cool as I finally complete my jog, entering the house to the unmistakable aroma of Sunday dinners past. No meal is as important as Sunday dinner, the highly anticipated repast rewarding those who have endured their fair share of hellfire and brimstone.
As I make my way toward the kitchen while fanning my sticky shirt in the welcoming frost of the air-conditioning, Garrett calls from where he stands at the bar, pulling bucket after bucket of Colonel Sanders from four large white paper bags.
“Hey, Bo Skeet, how was the jog?” he says.
“Excuse me,” I say, momentarily checking the lunacy-tracking device in my head, “but what are you doing?”
“I got dinner,” he says with a big grin. “To celebrate. Sis just sold two houses, so she’s gonna be staying with us for a couple of weeks. You know, change of scenery.”
My feet are cemented to the bright yellow tile like bridge pilings. “You…”
He brandishes a stack of Chinette he takes from a grocery bag. “See? I even got plates.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” I say, offering him one last chance to get on the train.
“I just thought for one day, we’d have a change. Um,” he says, snatching a drumstick from one of the buckets, tearing into it while he continues unpacking. He dangles it in front of my face. “Extra crispy.”
“I don’t—this is—” I sputter, turning around, searching for the macrobiotic book of horrors I’d brought downstairs with me. I toss Garrett a menacing look over my shoulder before I find the memoir on a living room end table, holding it next to my face as first and only evidence. “Do you want this to happen to Tina?” I ask, my eyeballs bulging like a thyroidal Pekingese.
Garrett rolls his eyes and brings two buckets to the breakfast table. “It’s just one meal.”
I point sharply at the book, taking two big steps closer to my father. “That’s what he said. And now he’s dead.”
Sis enters from the patio, tossing her backpack on one of the breakfast room table chairs. “Oh, my God, chicken!” she says to Garrett, tilting her head in my direction. “Is he gonna let us have this?”
“I’m sure fucking not gonna”—I say, whispering so that Tina, wherever she is, won’t overhear—“let us have it!” Grabbing the bags, buckets, and half-eaten chicken legs in one fell swoop like a selfish toddler, I open the patio door with two free fingers and head to the garbage cans.
“That’s thirty dollars’ worth of chicken!” Garrett yells out the door.
“I want you both out of the kitchen,” I say. “I’m going to prepare a special treat, something I had already planned for Sunday dinner if you had just given me the chance.” I drop the buckets and slam the lid on the can. “Tina deserves our support. It’s the least we could do to keep any fast food aromas off the premises.” I take two steps behind one of the receptacles in case someone decides to throw something.
Sis mumbles to Garrett. “Probably mung beans and boiled crap. No, crap would be considered flesh,” she says, pleased with her stinging, nonsensical aside.
“Just go,” I say, moving a bit farther behind one of the cans. “I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
Tina, her hair still wet from a late morning shower, enters the kitchen and sniffs the leftover chicken air. “Yuuum,” she says, “when what’s ready?”
* * *
You haven’t lived until you’ve been to the grand opening of a Walmart in a town of four thousand people. It’s like somebody dropped New York City smack dab in the middle of Mayberry. The town is a frenzy. My father is beside himself.
“Y’all better be gettin’ down to that Walmart. Why, somebody said they got all kinds of exotic fruits and vegetables the likes of which this town, or any other town, ain’t never seen.”
I wondered if Walmart could be the answer to our natural living prayers since our dimwitted friend at Healthy Way Foods wasn’t yet set up for produce. I was one of the first to line up at the door, third only to Percy Janks, a prehistoric postman from Walker Springs, and Cal Hunt, a former classmate of mine who stored the boogers he ate for recess underneath his desk well into eighth grade.
At seven a.m. promptly, I burst through the sliding glass doors past an old lady who yodeled, “Welcome to Walmart,” as she jammed a sale paper into my side.
“The produce,” I say, “fresh produce.” She points. I speed past the scores of pop culture junk and stop, frozen, unfazed that “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is coming through the PA system with two months left of spring. Directly in front of me is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. Throngs of crisp, freshly picked vegetables—bok choy, daikon radish, lotus root—the staples of macrobiotic cooking. I begin to pick as if from the Tree of Life itself. I pick and pick, and then I pick some more. I want it all, just in case it was only for opening day show, so they’ll be sure to order more. I picture a sepia-toned scene, the Walmart manager dressed in a bolo tie and butcher’s apron, frantically calling through the mouthpiece of one of those ancient wall phones. “Send more parsnips immediately. It’s a matter of life and death!”
And it would be.
I gather with the rest of the town on the bright green lawn outside. Mayor Nellie Huff christens the day “A New Age of Shopping in Clarke County,” a title more relevant for me than most of my fellow shoppers.
Fingering my bags of produce, I look to the heavens over the LOW PRICE LEADER sign, my heart full of gratitude. “Thank you, Jesus.” I positively radiate.
* * *
“Looking good!” I kneel next to the swimming pool with a stopwatch in my hand as Tina finishes another lightning-speed lap. Frances buzzes my ear bud with news of dyspeptic producers and reshoots.
“I slept with the director during rehearsals. I didn’t fake it, if you know what I mean, so he got upset.”
“Did nobody tell you that you don’t have to sleep with the director once you have the job?”
“But I think I replaced someone else. I wanted to make sure he was happy with the choice.”
“Atta girl.”
“I feel twenty years younger,” Tina calls as she swims to the edge of the pool.
“Do you think I should get veneers?” Frances asks.
“Frances, I have to go and get my mother her medicine.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, all about me. How is your mother? Is she still doing well?”
“No, she’s not doing well at all.”
Tina gets out and I hand her a towel. “Will you be a dear and spot me on some bench presses?” she says, heading for the basement. “I wanna try out some of those free weights of yours.”
“Free weights?” I ask, not sure what I’ve heard.
“Yes, free weights.”
“Are you sure?”
Tina calls out over her shoulder, “Sure, I’m sure!”
I am struck by the overwhelming evidence that our path of doom and destruction has taken a turn of almost biblical proportions.