Читать книгу Not Tonight, Honey: Wait 'til I'm A Size 6 - Susan Reinhardt - Страница 10

As a reporter and columnist for years, I’m accustomed to interviewing people and asking all sorts of nosy and prodding questions. I’m not used to the tables turning, as was the case when a western North Carolina magazine named me Favorite Columnist.

A reporter from the publication called and I was in no shape for an interview. I was laid up in bed, eight months pregnant, trying to hold back a premature birth. With both my babies, I had to take medicines for a condition in which my big old fickle oven of a uterus wanted to pop out kids before the center’s cooked.

“So, how does it feel to be named Favorite Columnist?” this sweet woman who sounded all of eighteen asked, as I rolled all two hundred pounds over in the bed and tried to think of something besides losing my mucus plug.

“Feels good,” I said, sounding like some stupid hick. “Feels damn good.” Oh, why is it that pregnancy has turned me into Billy Bob Thornton? Just give me a PBR and a Confederate flag, a hundred-dollar coupon to Feed and Seed, and maybe a fetus tattoo. “I’m honored,” I said, trying to redeem a few brain cells and some class. They say when a woman is pregnant, the cranial brain dries up and the placental “brain” becomes the body’s boss. I believe it. I had a feeling everything I owned or thought was stored in the placenta.

“Why do you think the readers keep giving you this honor every year?” she asked, and I was wondering the same thing.

“Hmmm. I would bet money it’s my hair. It’s my best feature and the only body part without a cartilage problem.”

“Do you have bad knees?”

“Bad knees?”

“Cartilage. You know, in the knees?”

“Nah, I was talking about my ears. They flop like a piece of cloth, not a drop of cartilage in them. People say they favor Ross Perot’s. And my nose, too. Way too much cartilage there. I have one pretty good feature and that’s my hair, so I think readers appreciate that. Most of my mail is in regards to various and sundry hairdos. I try to change the style and color quarterly to shake things up a bit. A man threatened to kill me with that last change, the do with what he called the ‘chunky skunk’ highlights. He said he was of a mind to come in with a gun to shoot me and the stylist both. He said my nose had batwings coming off the sides, that the tip dragged too low, and that overall, my new picture would singe the eyes of every man’s whose fell upon the page.”

She cleared her throat and tried not to laugh. I was having a contraction and wanted to logroll out of the bed, but the doctor said if I got up for frivolous reasons, such as the need to pee, I might as well hold a bucket under my privates to collect the new family member.

I was hungry and my husband had left to play pinball at Frank’s Pizza because he couldn’t stand my pregnancy personality. He’d slid a cooler of food by the bed and refilled my water jug.

The interviewer wanted to talk about the secrets of my success, and I told her I never thought I was successful—except in getting men to fall madly albeit temporarily in love and propose—but I wasn’t about to share those secrets with her.

“There aren’t but three of us they could have voted for,” I said to the young woman as I peeled a banana and stuffed half into my mouth. “There is Hooch McKinney, who writes about politics, but nobody wants to read about politics unless one of them’s got his jibblybob where it shouldn’t be, plus Hooch is bald-headed. Don’t get me wrong. I love bald-headed men, but readers aren’t going to generally vote for one. Then again, old Hooch should have won this thing ’cause he was the guy that broke the story on the Diapered Detective as you may recall.”

“Diapered Detective? I’m new at the magazine. Tell me about this, please.”

Ho-hum. “Well, the instigating detective had that cartoon piggy look to him and was one of those men with an unfortunate mad-baby face. You know, the kind of grown men who resemble angry infants all splotchy and puffed up? He was at least forty-five and got caught going to diaper parties at the local Best Western. A bunch of men just stand around in their nappies and give each other enemas. It’s sick, sick, sick. Let me tell you, missy, I know firsthand about giving enemas.”

“You do?”

“Well, I mean I don’t trot over to Motel 6 with my hand in a glove and a Fleet by my side, but there was a time I got paid decent money as a young student nurse to do that kind of business. No way I’d stand around and do it for free or personal enjoyment. You have to be a real pervert to do that. Hooch wrote a few stories about it, even used the Huggies and Pampers logos next to his column sig, which was a riot, but I guess the readers didn’t find him all that amusing, probably on account of being bald and having the Gorbachev thing going on up there.”

“What do you mean the Gorbachev thing?” she asked. I guess she was too young to know who the man was. She sounded like a high school senior and I had to do most of the talking.

“He was the…Never mind. Hooch had that discoloration on his head like Gorbachev, only his is shaped like a…well, let’s just call it a male member, and this got some people behind his back calling him a dickhead, only I don’t ’cause I was brought up Baptist and you go to hell for saying those kinds of words, according to my mother. Besides Hooch, the only other competition was Regal Hildebrand, who lives near the Biltmore House and is married to a rich gynecologist and writes about things like decorating and the Junior League fund-raisers and when the daylilies are ready to bloom. That’s boring as all…Hold on a minute, would ya? Something’s trying to crawl out of me. Oh, help!” A contraction hit hard and I knocked the phone to the floor where it bounced across the hardwoods and finally hit a coffee table and flew back toward me.

“Sorry about that.” The woman reporter said nothing. I couldn’t even hear breathing, so I decided to finish my story before delivering a child.

“I was saying that no one can relate to those rich-woman tales of constipated living. If she was smart, she’d be writing witty prose about what it’s like to be married to a gynecologist and how it sure helps they make a lot of money ’cause everybody knows what they face day in and day out. I dated one for six months who was partially fingerless, but don’t put that in there because he’s still mad on account of an incident with my old Subaru.” Silence filled the phone and I was certain she had gone on a bathroom break. I continued talking as if my best friend were on the line.

“My family grew up near a gynecologist and before Mama got her renewed religion, she called him the Cul-de-sac Pussy Peeper, only don’t quote me on that because Mama doesn’t use the P word anymore. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is this Hildebrand woman really has it in her to be funny. She got drunk one time at a Christmas party, purely by accident, I assure you, and told about the time her husband had to open his secret drawer when an unwashed woman came in for her P and P—that’s the lingo for pap and pelvic. He has this drawer, see, that has these things in them that look exactly like a Pest Strips but impart a lavender aroma, and Doc Hildebrand hangs them on one of the stirrups when the patient’s not looking because he said a lot of these people don’t bathe and have pubic vermin. That’s exactly what Regal Hildebrand called them. Pubic vermin. I loved her that day. I loved her for an entire hour but haven’t cared for her since.

“You know, both of them are really much better writers than me, but they just don’t use their best material and I always—”

“So you don’t think you are a good writer?” Oh my gosh, she was still on the phone, meaning all that talk was on the record.

“I’m just saying I have better material. Better hair—most of the time—and better material, with the exception of the Diapered Detective series Hooch got hold of.” Oh, why couldn’t I shut up? The drugs to stop labor were kicking in and I was on the record saying all sorts of crude things and had no good food and was craving a Big Mac and large fries something awful.

“That’s a good topic,” the woman said. “Let’s talk about your material. Tell me some of the more memorable stories you’ve done.”

Oh, mercy. Here we go. The ceiling was spinning, my stomach squeezed itself into a tight ball, and the baby kicked my bladder so that I’m certain I partially wet my elephantine underwear. I had panties so big that when it was all over I’d planned to use them as tablecloths.

“There’s just so many stories,” I said. “Let’s see, there was the 105-year-old who tried to kick my ass and the—”

“Did you say a 105-year-old tried to kick your rear end?”

“No, I said she tried to kick my ass. She was having her birthday party at Miss Margaret’s Place of Rest and Restoration and all her family was gathered, the both of them. She saw me and I tried to smile real nice and she said, ‘Why don’t you wipe that stupid grin off your face? You look like a little retard.’ She sort of hissed her statements through a set of yellowed hamster teeth and I was taken aback. Old ladies usually just smile and nod in and out of sleep when they get past, say 101 or so. Not Miss Tolly, the one they kept calling Jolly Tolly for reasons unbeknownst to me.”

“Did she physically attack you?” the reporter asked and I could hear her keys clacking away on the computer. Why couldn’t I just shut up? Why wouldn’t this medicine that’s supposed to stop my uterus from throbbing keep my tongue from throbbing as well?

A vision of the woman appeared in my head. She wore her pink cardigan with the moth holes, her blue-and-yellow-print housedress and taupe granny shoes. Her face looked like a crinkled brown paper bag and she had a zigzagging line of orange lipstick going in all directions around her mouth. She kept raising her top lip like a dog will when it’s mad and wanting to bite.

“She was a cantankerous thing,” I said, “and tried, sure enough, to beat me about the head and chin, but I held her off. I said, ‘Well, Miss Tolly, I’m here to do a nice write-up about your life and wanted to ask a few questions.’ She raised up both her fists and her lips high enough to show off those dangerous teeth and started shaking like a little dog. She sorta kangaroo-pumped those fists straight out, jabbing them boxer-style. I was afraid, let me tell you. She wheeled her chair closer to me, got in my face, and said, ‘What do you mean coming in here with your stupid nosy questions trying to pry into my bidness, you little idiot?’ The staff had invited me, not knowing she’d behave like this. One of them started crying on account of Miss Tolly’s horrible manners.

“After I asked her about growing up on a farm she got all upset, raised her fists again, and said, ‘I’m ready to fight that little nosy thing sitting there next to me,’ but the staff pulled her off. I tell you, I liked her. I was laughing away. I’ll tell you another thing. She hated me the whole interview, but when it was time to go, I asked her if I could have a hug. And that’s another reason I probably get voted this thing each year. Other than the good hair, I also give hugs.”

Miss Tolly had shrugged her shoulders when I asked for a hug, but I leaned in and squeezed her gently. It was like hugging a withered tree. She was stiff and didn’t respond, but she smiled. I saw it. A tiny little grin creeping from the side of her face. “I think the hug may have won her over.”

The magazine writer typed so fast I thought her keyboard would explode. From experience I knew reporters liked it when they snagged a good quote, and I could tell I was a good one due to the medicines supposed to quiet down my uterus.

“Are there any more memorable stories; things you’d like to enlighten us with?”

I tried to think what I might be missing on TV by taking so long on this interview, and then I remembered we didn’t have cable at this point in our lives. Might as well keep her on the line, this live human being. There was already a good chance with what I’d spilled so far I would lose my job, so I decided to pull out all the stops and gun it.

“There was the woman who kept calling about the ring of midget prostitutes living up under her single-wide,” I said. “She claimed there was a band of them, about eight, and most were hookers. She kept saying, ‘They’s hiding under there and making the awfulest moaning sounds you ever heard. I can’t get no sleep. That one little whore gets them all riled up and they bang on pots and pans all night and cook the smellingest foods up under my trailer. I can hear them moaning and hollering and doing the sex act all night long.’

“So I asked her, ‘Why don’t you call the police?’ and she said, ‘I do call them. Every time the sheriff’s people come out and shine the light up under my trailer all eight of them midgets scurry like rats. They hide behind the hot water heater. Can’t nobody find them. It’s a mess, honey. Why don’t you come on over and run ’em off for me?’”

“How did that story come out?” the reporter asked, exhaling what sounded like cigarette smoke.

“I called the sheriff and they told me not to worry. There wasn’t really a ring of midget prostitutes living in her underpinning and that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s.”

“Wow. That is so interesting.” The reporter’s voice had that edge to it that all but says, “You’re more nuts than the people you write about.”

I could have stopped right then. The writer had plenty for her article about why my columns were favored over Hooch’s and Hildebrand’s, but I was bored and hungry and my husband would be playing pinball for several more hours so he wouldn’t have to deal with my vicious placenta-ruled self. Might as well humor us both for a while longer.

“There was also a woman up in Yancey County who got kicked out of the VFW dance hall for dirty dancing. She was sixty years old, for goodness’ sake. She said her husband had lost a leg and wanted her to enjoy going out dancing so he didn’t mind when she put on her miniskirt and hit the dance halls. It was the other women who minded and got her kicked out. She sued the town and won. She got on Inside Edition, too. I talked to her one day and she said, ‘Honey, I wasn’t dirty dancing. I like to shake and throw my body around a bit, sort of an odd Elvis style, and then I just shimmy all over but I wear underwear. Ain’t nobody seen my cat for nothing. I know women are jealous. Some old biddy got green as a frog and this is how all this got started. I don’t do no grinding. We may bump a little bit but I don’t make like I’m having no intercourse. Like I told you I’s married to a one-legged guy they called Stumpy. He had the gangrene. He likes his TV and I like my dancing.’

“You may remember all this,” I told the reporter, “because the Star had a big write-up and picture of her.”

As I talked I wasn’t sure anyone was still on the other line. I heard the occasional peck of a worn-out reporter’s keystrokes and what sounded like someone blowing smoke rings, but figured as I rattled on, she was more than likely working on another story or e-mailing her boyfriend. I didn’t care. When you’re confined to bed trying to hold back a birth, you’ll talk to anybody, even a dead phone.

“There was an old lady, probably about ninety-eight, I met in a nursing home and we got to talking about marriage and she told me her husband had no interest in sex. She was so well spoken, and beautifully dressed, an accomplished woman, and I felt so honored to be in her company. All was going great as she spoke of her life and works, then she started back on her husband and how he never met her needs. If you’re still on the phone, I’d like to add at this point in the interview that for some reason people tell me things I’d rather not hear. Or, well, I do like to hear them, but I’m not asking for such information. This woman tells me she was a real beauty, stunningly gorgeous, but her husband had no interest. She said, ‘Some days I’d get so burning up hot I’d have to go off by myself and make things right.’ I was shocked because she held up her third middle finger for me to see exactly what she was talking about and kept waving that finger at me. I wanted to run away. I was like, ‘Way too much information, lady.’”

I heard the phone click. “Mrs. Reinhardt? Are you still there? Sorry, I was on another call, were you saying something?”

“No. Not really. Just eating my lunch, trying to keep my stomach calm.”

“What’s wrong with it? Do you have the stomach flu?”

“No, I’m eight months pregnant and doctors have me confined to bed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, exhaustion in her voice. “Why can’t you get up?”

“They call it an irritable uterus. Irritable uterus syndrome. It just won’t behave.”

We said our good-byes and one month later, on my way to the pediatrician’s office for my brand-new daughter’s first checkup, I picked up a copy of the magazine with our interview. There was the picture, an innocent motherly photo of me and my oldest, underneath which blazed a sentence I will never forget: FAVORITE COLUMNIST SUSAN REINHARDT MANAGES TO SPIN YARNS DESPITE BEING CONFINED TO BED WITH A GRUMPY VAGINA.

Oh my Lord. I have never in my life laughed and cried so hard at the same time as I stared at that headline and wondered what my boss at the paper was going to think.

That afternoon the phone rang while I was tending my new baby. “How ya doing, honey?” my husband, who never calls me “honey,” asked. “You want some loving tonight, or is it true you’re suffering from a grumpy vagina?”

For years it’s been hard to live that one down. But it does come in handy when looking for an excuse to avoid sex on the nights I’m too tired.

“Oh, not tonight, honey,” I’ll say. “I have a grumpy vagina.”