Читать книгу Not Tonight, Honey: Wait 'til I'm A Size 6 - Susan Reinhardt - Страница 7

An Introduction to Life

Lying facedown on the top stairs, I could hear them. Smell their perfumes, a random mingling of different florals sprayed with the heavy-handed intentions of being noticed.

Their laughter was high, almost operatic, and with it the accompanying percussion of tinkling glasses filled with gin or vodka for tonics and Bloody Marys.

Cigarette smoke, like the funnels of tornados, rose up the stairs and into my nose, but I didn’t care.

I wanted to see them, smell them, hear them. Be them.

The bridge ladies. Mama’s bridge club.

I must have been twelve or thirteen, lying against the stairs, peeping. The blood filled my inclined head as I listened to their stories and heard the shuffling of cards, collapsing into hands softened with lotions and ending in long tapered nails polished in corals and reds.

They were glamorous. And old. To me they seem old, but they couldn’t have been more than thirty-five or forty. They wore enough lipstick to leave prints on their glasses, and cake eyeliner rimmed their lids. Most styled their hair like Jackie Kennedy and Marlo Thomas from That Girl.

They talked about who was having nervous breakdowns and whose husbands were cheating. They talked about exercises and clothes, their children and other people, but always said the required “Bless her heart” and “God love her” if their words weren’t particularly kind.

One of their favorite phrases, which my mother uttered often and would affect me for a lifetime, was about people “going to pot.”

“Pauline Bingham just up and let herself go to pot,” my mother might say and all would nod knowingly and click their tongues, sip their Bloody Marys, and be happy it wasn’t them. “Just flat-out let herself go.”

“Pure T pot,” another would add, the cards fluttering like wings as she dealt.

“Lot of married women do that,” Mama often said, her hands usually fiddling in the bowl of chocolate-covered nuts. “I always try to put on lipstick and comb my hair before Sam comes home. I may get wrinkled and old, but I can at least make an effort.”

“Peg, you look great,” they’d say, because my mother really did. She was tall and thin, had wonderful high cheekbones and facial planes that only improved with age. She moisturized her soft olive skin and applied Vaseline under her eyes to prevent lines. Three days a week she took exercise classes in a spare room at the First Methodist Church, forgetting for that hour she was Baptist to the core.

Mama always told us whatever we did, “Don’t let yourselves go.” Getting married, she admonished, is not a free ride to the pig trough.

Her second biggest piece of advice was to “work on your minds.”

“Beautiful women are a dime a dozen. You’ve got to be much more than that.”

The rules were simple. Work on your minds. Think of others. Don’t let yourself go. Don’t go to pot. Don’t smoke pot. And stay a virgin as long as possible.

Some of these we fulfilled. Others we did not.

Throughout the years Mama has always been a huge part of my life and my greatest influence. She is nutty and dignified, gracious and hilarious. Her mind works in ways that never cease to surprise, except in her unfailing and unconditional kindness.

Many of these stories contain her adventures and capers. And others contain mine or those of friends and family. It is my great hope that within these pages—this collection of stories taking readers on a carousel ride infused with lights and the music of laughter, the tears of love and even loss—you will find pieces of yourselves and those you cherish.

And that you will laugh like Mama’s bridge ladies, a feeling all of us needs as we proceed through an up-and-down world without guarantees. We may be getting older, but it is possible to do so without going utterly mad and straight to pot.

It is possible, just as it was with Mama’s bridge ladies, to grow older with grace and leave our own imprints on the lives we touch.