Shirley

This, I tell my husband, is too much like a pin-up poster. He disagrees. Still. Hazy memory. We’ve just attended an evening service, him next to Ray on the men’s side of the church, me on the opposite side with Ginnie and the other wives and their numerous calm children, and me frantically stuffing our baby girl with Cheerios because otherwise she’ll make noises and embarrass me half to death. Now we’re at Ginnie and Ray’s for dessert, pumpkin roll—spicy cake spread with a cream cheese filling, coiled up like a tube, and cleaved into slices. Though we’re friends forever I almost never see Ginnie anymore. I love her outrageously. Next to Ruth Westenberger, she’s the godliest person I know. Ginnie’s kitchen counter is bare, stripped clean, which astonishes me. And when we’re wolfing down our cake, Ginnie says a strange thing. It’s a blessing, she remarks, to have an appetite. Astounding. Not the usual message, for sure. Prior to our visit I’d rolled quite a ways down the slippery s...

Cake, cont’d   No picture, here, of that cake the other morning. It was chocolate, like the one I showed you how long ago with Aldi’s peanut butter cups in the bottom (you could hear a screech—my knife scraping hideously across the cake plate). I didn’t photograph Dale’s sausages for you, either, or Kathy’s skillet of peppers and onions (believe me, we feasted). And I have only a verbal description to offer of the meal I pulled from the oven Monday night for supper—collards out of the freezer, sweet potatoes Paulson dug from our dirt, cheddar, Parmesan, chopped onion, nutmeg. I love staring at the perfect, lavish platefuls of food on the internet, I do, I do. I just wonder what hungry people think, looking.

Kathy texted before we set out for Lancaster—we intended to spend the night. Her: I need to discuss whether you are coming early enough that we can have supper together at the patch. (A pumpkin field lies up the road from her and Dale’s house, with a fine picnic spot.) Me: Why, we can make that happen. Sounds mighty ambitious. (They would have to haul the food.) Her: You don’t know the menu yet. Me: Do you? Her: Hot dogs and chips. Just kidding. Me: I love chips. I love hot dogs. Her: But, no. I don’t know the menu yet. You’re such a dear friend. You’d likely say you love cow pies if I gave that as the entree. Me: Would not. Her: Actually, I’m just now getting off the couch. Yesterday I went and got Covid and flu vaccines. Couldn’t do a thing until just now. Me: Smart girl. Also, thank you. Because if you die before me I’ll miss you terribly. Her: Ditto! Have you gotten?! I’m comforted by the fact that you’re in pretty good health and eat good food. Me: My word. Do you know...

My pretty-much-best Christian movie, or Evangelizing I can’t exhort loudly enough to get people to see Thelma . Nobody listens, heeds the call.

Does your paw hurt? I ask. Mm? Does it hurt? He won’t say, just keeps scraping his tongue across fiercely. I’m not blaming God above in heaven but it’s unfair, his not being able to talk. The universe of silence between us—something’s not right. He just sits there, tail whipping back and forth fluffily, its movement the only sign, almost, of his longing. Can I get up there beside you? asks his face. Well sure. I push the porch furniture around so he can leap into a chair beside mine. Is it suppertime? beseech his eyes. Hang on, can’t you see I’m besieged? You’re hardly starving. I’d love to come in, implores his wagger, steadily. (Haunches planted, too, the other side of the screen door, because this isn’t a request to make lying down.) So you would. But look at you. You should’ve had boots on. Not that he’s mute—growls gurgle up from his chest, he snivels, he emits high-pitched bleats, he exhales palpably. A person must accept the limitations. Also, my dog talking—I’m not positive...

I can’t find a perfect word for Jeff’s book. Luminous. Refulgent—whatever that is. Ineffable, except that sounds vaguely vulgar. Anyway, his words are better— Tadpoles that died on the porch and went rotten. Him and Sharon, neither of whom melted the other into a puddle. A somewhat famous poet, also clueless. Chicken manure piling up inexorably. A crisping and drowning planet. Johnny A.’s coffin. The mother who got all her friends to read The Feminine Mystique six weeks after it came out. Corn creaking in the breezes, its temporary monotonous green cities every summer, how it crowds together closer than any crowd. Parsecs and parallax angles (goodness). Nephilim bones under the Adena-Hopewell mounds. Turbines across the prairie, twisting and spinning to serve the sweet and bitter will of women and men. He even quotes Sir Orange Baboon (NOT Jeff’s words), on wind energy. “We can say so little clearly and surely,” writes Jeff (so I hope he won’t mind this). “So much is hidden, not by...

Another grandboy stands so high nobody can see over the top. The fourth, farther into manhood, always sniffs the cream carton. He won’t pour any into the coffee I made him, before sniffing. I could be upset about this, but he seems to feel at home, stopping in. Isn’t that everything? He says he had a bad experience once with store cream. You might think I’m straying from the topic. I’m not. All grandboys are the best.

Framed-art tour, exhibits 9 & 10 Some time back, Grandboy, 10, went through a bard phase. One of his gems, I hung on the wall. (I’m who cut out the magazine letters and pasted them.) He also gave me a notebook, mostly empty, titled THE INTERESTING BOOK OF POEMS. Here’s one: A SIMPLE REQUEST IF YOU KNOW THAT I KNOW THE ANSWER TO A QUESTION PLEASE DONT ASK ME Were they torturing him at home, bombarding him? Were the questions too asinine? Were the grandparents over here being meanies, picking on him? He got a fine piece out of it, anyway. Another grandboy, age 9, i s still in his objet d’art stage. He lays out his plastic snap-shut palette he tow ed to Virginia in a toolbox- type carrier and his gazillion brushes and begs, “Paint with me.” Oh honey. “ I can’t paint,” I say. Busybusybusybusybusy. But t ouching my bottom to the chair, grudgily, I dip into his murked water . He says make the paper wet first. He says he likes the edges r ipped, r ough. He says his on...

I don’t guess she ’d go for my shoes either, even though they’d be less punishing than her stilts. Up at the podium Tuesday night in Philadelphia, she’d be able to lean back and rock nonchalantly on her heels, in greater command. She’ll still supersede. (The insoles, when I landed on these, were already sludgy. They only got worse. I cut new ones from an ugly handbag from Gift & Thrift, fake suede, and glued them in. It’s a good glue so maybe the clamps were overkill.)   

How about my Kamala pants? Nice if hers could be limp, more flowy. From what I’ve seen, the way they hang, the fabric must be some some blend of military-grade polyester, Scotchgarded. Not linen that creases and goes pouchy. Kamala can’t fly places, stuff into limousines, and go up and down stage steps wrinkled. Other than the pants, she’s the best.    

When Better Is Good, Chapter 3: Ruth’s Pie The Sunday I had some of Ruth’s pie, we attended just the potluck, not the service. She had peaches slathered on top, gloriously. Weeks later, Paulson came home from church with her recipe. I’d asked for it. (He’s less inclined than I am to skip, which you’ve possibly already deduced.) I bought a 10-inch shell—the pie as I remembered it was large, generous, not a puny 9-incher. I beatered the cream cheese part, dolloped it all around in the shell, baked the thing. Then I piled on a black-raspberry sauce. But the pie was a bust—the crust brick-like, tasteless. When I saw Ruth next, I told her the bad thing I’d done—a 10-inch crust, not 9-inch. And it wasn’t good like hers. Oh? I said. Keebler? I’d dived for the store brand. I was planning another try, I told her—I’d already smashed the graham crackers. Our West Virginia friends came soon after, on a Tuesday. Here’s what was left when they left. When Ruth says 9-inch, get 9-inch (if you...

When Better Is Good, Chapter 2: Bad Blues   Chapter 1 was the hearth story—better not to break your face. This second one has to do with the jugs. You can see, out the window, Paulson’s privy. He reads in there. And alongside are the compost bins. What you can’t see in the grass are plastic gallon milk jugs with their bottoms cut out. This isn’t due to your failing eyesight or my bad camera. They’re not out there anymore. Did Paulson have to use jugs for his seedlings, make it look like we were going into the junkyard business? Also why the all-different stakes in the garden for holding up his electric wire—some black, some white like Snaggle-Tooth Louie’s crooked mouthful? “I ran out of the others,” Paulson explained. “The white were all I had left. “Then buy more,” I begged. “Dark. And those trees or whatever they are, use chicken wire. Not sore-thumb jugs.” Then the well’s hand-pump system he ordered by mail for in case the world ended, when the pieces arrived in a mammoth c...