On Monday morning, Gina forced herself to look squarely in the bathroom mirror. The hair fairy had not made an overnight visit. The short blond wisps framing her face were the same alarming length and color they’d been when she finally went to bed Sunday night.
Fine. It was only hair. She’d been telling herself that for the entire weekend. It was time to start believing it. She had a million things to do before taping started later in the day.
In the bedroom, she gathered up the outfits Scott had brought over on Sunday. She grimaced at the olive green satin blouse with the long, billowing sleeves and the deep V-neck that he’d selected for the Thanksgiving show. The olive would make her skin look sallow, and the sleeves would end up dragging in her pie dough. The blouse had a $560 price tag and a designer label she’d never heard of. But then, she’d never even been inside ZuZu’s, which was in an exclusive shopping center on West Paces Ferry Road, where she never shopped. It wasn’t that she didn’t like nice clothes. She did. But she was used to finding them deeply discounted at Filene’s Basement, or on clearance at Bloomingdale’s. She could have bought three or four outfits for the price of that one blouse, she’d protested.
“Last season’s leftovers,” Scott had said of her bargain duds. “That’s fine for your personal life. But on air, you’ve got to look up-to-the-minute. Your viewers want to aspire to the kind of life they assume you’re leading.”
“Anyway,” he’d added, “you don’t have to pay a dime for the clothes. The folks at ZuZu’s are giving them to you—in return for a wardrobe credit at the end of the show.”
Gina grimaced again as she crammed a faded blue Atlanta Braves ball cap onto her head. She didn’t mind cooking with products and equipment donated by sponsors. But wearing freebie clothes…She shuddered a little. It seemed somehow creepy.
Today was not the day to think about this, she decided. She had too much to do.
It was only 6:00 A.M., and she had to get down to the farmers market south of the city to buy the fresh produce and the turkey for the taping, then fight Monday-morning traffic on I-75 to get back to the studio to start prepping.
By the time she’d backed the Honda out of her parking spot, her T-shirt was already sweat-soaked. “Ugh,” she said aloud. “Thanksgiving in July.”
With an eighteen-wheeler overturned just below the exit to the stadium, and the resulting snarl of fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, and gawkers, it took her an hour to get to the State Farmers Market in Forest Park.
She drove directly to Boyette’s produce stand. The Boyettes were her favorite produce dealers. Richard had traded in a successful career as a medical malpractice attorney for the life of a gentleman farmer, while Rachel, his daughter, was a talented artist whose vivid oil paintings of eggplants and sunflowers and rustic farm landscapes were interspersed among the bushel baskets of Silver Queen corn and purple-hulled peas.
Rachel, who she guessed was in her early twenties, was using a dolly to move cardboard boxes of tomatoes toward the stand. She stood up and waved tentatively when she saw Gina’s familiar car pull up to the loading dock.
“Gina?” she said, squinting. “Is that you?”
Gina lifted the dark sunglasses. “Hey, Rachel. Yup, it’s me. I’m kinda incognito today.”
“Guess so,” Rachel agreed. “Whatcha need?”
Gina pulled her list from her backpack.
“Everything. We’re shooting Thanksgiving today. So, squash, of course, yellow, acorn, pattypan if you’ve got ’em. Green beans. Sweet potatoes. I need peppers. The prettiest red, yellow, and green you’ve got, for the beauty shots. Oh, yeah. And pumpkins, of course.”
“Pumpkins?” Rachel laughed and shook her head. “You’re kidding, right?”
Gina lowered her sunglasses to let Rachel see just how serious she was. “I never kid about pumpkins. We need three or four for the beauty shots, and then, let’s see, maybe three of the small Sugar Baby ones to cut up for the actual pies.”
“Gina, you’re from South Georgia, right?”
“Odum,” Gina agreed. “Doesn’t get much more South Georgia than that.”
“They pick pumpkins in Odum in July?”
Gina shrugged. “I guess. My daddy didn’t really farm. Mama keeps a garden. Mostly tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and okra. Oh, yeah, and butterbeans.”
Rachel giggled. “Gina, you don’t harvest pumpkins in July. Daddy’s growin’ ’em, but they won’t be ready till at least the end of September.”
Gina felt a trickle of perspiration roll down her neck. She looked up and down the rows of growers’ booths in the darkened shed. “What about these other guys? I mean, I hate to give the business to anybody else, but I’ve really gotta have those pumpkins. They don’t even have to be organic.”
“Feel free to ask,” Rachel said. “Maybe somebody’s growing a variety we don’t know about. In the meantime, you want me to box up the rest of the stuff on your list?”
“That’d be great,” Gina said, handing over the sheet of paper. “I’m really running behind schedule. And I still have to find a couple fresh turkeys.”
“In July? Good luck.”
For the next thirty minutes, Gina cruised the huge covered sheds in the car, trolling for the elusive summertime pumpkin. Most of the farmers and wholesalers laughed or shook their heads when she inquired about the availability of pumpkins.
Thirty minutes later, she was back at Boyette’s.
“Any luck?” Rachel called, as Gina pulled the car alongside the booth.
“Nothin’,” Gina said, wearily opening the trunk of the Honda. “I’m screwed.”
“Maybe not,” Rachel said, starting to load the cartons of produce in the trunk. She crooked a finger at Gina. “Come on inside the office.”
Boyette’s office was nothing more than a wooden lean-to, with an oscillating fan tacked to a wall, and a couple of sawhorses and a slab of plywood filling in as a desk. Rachel’s easel took up one corner of the room.
But there, sitting square on the desktop, was one smallish but otherwise perfect cantaloupe-size pumpkin.
“Rachel!” Gina gasped, throwing her arms around the younger woman’s neck. “How on earth?”
“It was Daddy’s idea,” Rachel said. “I was telling him about the fix you’re in. He had to run home to pick up some more corn, and while he was there, he found that bad boy in the pumpkin patch. The only one with any real size on it at all.”
Gina started to pick the pumpkin up.
“Hey!” Rachel said. “Give it a minute. The paint’s still wet.”
“Paint?”
“Yup,” Rachel said. “We were assuming you didn’t want a dark green pumpkin. That’s what color they are right now, you know. Small, hard, and green. They don’t start to yellow up until they get some more size on ’em in the fall. I took some of my acrylics and just kinda painted ’er up.”
Gina bent over and examined the pumpkin closer. The body was a rich orange, with subtle shadings of red, yellow, and deep green.
“It’s a masterpiece,” she said. “I only wish I had half a dozen of them.”
“Sorry,” Rachel said. “Daddy looked all over. He said the rest of them were mostly softball-shaped, so he didn’t even bother to pick any.”
Gina sighed. “This will just have to do. I can use it for the counter beauty shots, interspersed with the rest of the produce and the finished pie. I guess, just this once, I’ll use canned pumpkin for the actual pie.” She winced as she said it.
“It’s television, right?” Rachel said. “Nobody at home is gonna know it’s canned pumpkin. Heck, my mother always uses the canned stuff. And we grow the real thing.”
Gina had heard this a hundred times before, mostly from Scott or the other members of the crew, and always, before, she’d stubbornly insisted on standing by her principles. Today, however, she’d just have to compromise.
She wrote out the check and thanked Rachel effusively. “No problem. It was fun,” Rachel said. She carefully placed the painted pumpkin in a cardboard beer box, which they then placed in the trunk with the rest of the produce. “As hot as it is, it should be dry by the time you get to the studio,” Rachel promised.
With a wave and a grateful hug, Gina drove off, already ticking off the rest of the items on her grocery list. The turkeys were the biggest thing. She was running too late even to attempt to find the fresh ones she’d hoped for. Frozen would have to do, just this once. Eggs, cream, fresh greens, and citrus to garnish the turkey platter. She’d keep her fingers crossed that maybe she’d find some bags of cranberries in the freezer section. Pecans. Yes, she needed shelled and unshelled pecans for the pies. Oh, yes, she thought, making a rueful face. And canned pumpkin.