In her makeup drawer, she finds an unopened sample tube of Pecan Peach lipstick. It’s ancient, from when Avon used to come calling, and wasn’t that always a pleasant break in the day, the Avon lady sitting beside Flo on the sofa in her nice dress and spreading out all her wares on the coffee table in such a way that you wanted everything?
Flo tries the lipstick and finds it still works well enough. There’s all kinds of old makeup in the drawer; Flo was never very good about throwing things away. She digs through the drawer for a while, remembering how she used to get ready to go out with Terrence and when she came downstairs withher makeup on he would say, “Well, don’t you look nice?” And Flo always thought he’d had no idea what she’d donetolook nice, patiently putting on the mascara and the rouge and the lipstick. He didn’t care. He just liked that she looked nice. But here was the thing about Terrence. She could be absent of any makeup at all, and he would still tell her she was beautiful. That was mostly in her younger years, but even when she got old he would tell her she was beautiful, and that warmed her far more than the compliments he gave her when she was young. Everybody’s beautiful when they’re young, even if they don’t know it. And isn’t it funny, it seems to Flo, that mostly theydon’tknow it. Mostly they complain about their faults that no one else even sees.
Ruthie, I just found some old mascara in my top right dresser drawer. It’s the old-fashioned kind in a case with a mirror and you wet the cake of mascara with the tiny little brush that comes with it. All one summer, you used to play with it, you in those big shorts you liked to wear because they were your sister’s, your mouth often stained with purple popsicle. You liked for me to put that mascara on you and then I would make you a tinfoil crown and matching wand and one time you changed my philodendron into a handsome prince. That’s what you said, and I had to clasp my hands under my chin and say, Ohhhh yes now I see. I wonder do you remember that.
In the drawer below the makeup is a jewelry box, and the best thing in there is my pearls. I don’t care what you wear pearls with, they make everything look good. Terrence gave me those pearls one Christmas and I looked up at him, and at first, I couldn’t even speak. But then I said, Terrence, I am going to wear these tonight and then we’re taking them back, there is no way we can afford them. And he said, I know we can’t. And that’s why I got them for you. If we were rich, what pleasure would there be in my giving you such a thing? You wear them, they’re to help you remember what you’re worth.
Oh, he could be romantic, Terrence. But every now and then I would have to hope the neighbors couldn’t hear us fussing. Not that they didn’t have their own squabbles. I once had a neighbor ask me in the driveway, Did you hear me yelling atmy husband last night? No, I said, what were you fighting about? Well, she said, let’s go to your kitchen and have some coffee. I remember I got out my flowered cups and before she commenced to complaining she said how pretty those cups were and that she liked drinking out of them, they made the coffee taste better. Dorothy Potter, with her two big dimples and her naturally curly hair, she was a real pretty gal. I have an address book and if you look in there under P you’ll find her. You’ll see a star by her name, which means she died, I never had the heart to cross anybody out. You’ll see her old phone number: ME 1-6995. ME for Melrose. I think those old telephone prefixes were nice, I was sorry to see them go. PL, Parkland. TW, Twinbrook. And of course who could forget BUtterfield 8. Elizabeth Taylor. I wonder if every time she looked in the mirror, she couldn’t help but say yes indeed. But of course even she got old and then she was always fighting with fat. She got married an awful lot of times, I don’t see how she could say her vows seriously after a certain point. I say, Think hard before the first one, and then stick to it. Otherwise, you’re just going to trade one set of problems for another.
Dorothy Potter told me why she had been mad at her husband, and at the end of the telling she said she realized she hadn’t needed to get that mad at him. I said I sure did understand that, and I told about how one time I was spitting mad at Terrence, and I’m here to tell you that spitting mad is a real thing, I was shouting hearty and real spit was flying out my mouth. This was in the early years before I figured some things out and I was taking everything he did personally, from leaving the john lid up to saying something I found insensitive. Well, I decided he didn’t love me anymore. And I nearly had smokecoming out my ears, I was just raging, thinking of how he had said, I’ll always love you, I’ll always be kind, I’ll always take care of you, he’d said it pretty as a preacher. And so I told him, I said, Never say always to me! He said, What??? I told him again, Never say always to me! And he said why not. And I said because there IS no always, that’s why! There is only sometimes, and if a girl believes in always, her heart will be flat broken. As I can surely attest.
Terrence nodded. He was so calm it made me kind of suspicious. But then he said, Sometimes there is always. When it comes to my loving you, for instance. I can’t help it if you don’t always feel it. But it is always there. It is there as long as I breathe in and out, and if I have my way it will be there long after I stop breathing and my bones have gone to dust.
I said, Don’t you say those things to me when I’m so mad. And he said don’t you tell me what to do! And then he said like this: Whooeee, I don’t like a woman telling me what to do! And then we both busted out laughing and he said, Let me ask you something. Wouldn’t you rather go out and eat than fight this way? And we went out for hamburgers to our favorite place and everything was better.
They sold trinkets at that restaurant we went to. One of them was a plastic toothpick dispenser with some little red flowers painted on it. You can’t hardly make out the flowers anymore, but they were there. I said how I would like that dispenser and Terrence said he thought it was unnecessary, if you wanted a toothpick why you just pulled one out of the box. I went quiet then. We left and started walking home and I was awful quiet. And then Terrence pointed to a park bench we were passing and he told me to wait there and didn’t he goback to the cafe and get me that toothpick dispenser. And he got down on one knee to give it to me like it was a diamond ring. But of course he didn’t propose, he only said, Here you go, I’m sorry I didn’t get it right away, and I said thank you, and when we got home I set up that toothpick dispenser and he tried it out and he said okay I see what you mean, even though I’m not sure he did. Whenever I come across that toothpick dispenser, I think about that time when he tried so hard. If you ever have seen something like a guy with real big, rough hands giving something dainty to a woman, that’s how it was. Him thinking, I don’t for the life of me know why we need something like this, but I guess she wantsit.
When we finished walking home that night, I remember Terrence was talking about how great it must be to be a movie star. I told him I would never want to be a movie star. Really? he said, and I said really, I would not, I always think movie stars are mostly pining away in their big houses, always unsure and lonely, and who are they going to admit thatto?
I said, Don’t you think it would be a hard thing, having to pretend you live the high life all the time? I guess it would, Terrence said. Tell you what, I said. I have what I want. I want to be able to walk home in the dark with you, holding hands. I pointed to a streetlight and said, See? Our own spotlight.
And then Terrence said, Come with me, and he pulled me over to be under a tree and he kissed me so tender and said, I will never be able to tell you how much you mean to me. So you see, Ruthie, every time I see that toothpick dispenser, I remember that. That’s why I kept it. I spect you’ll throw it out now, and I guess you should. But anyhow you got the story, which is the important part.
You know, when Terrence got down on one knee to give me the toothpick dispenser, I remembered how I always thought that that was how he’d propose to me. But that’s not the way he did it. I guess he was too shy. He proposed to me on the phone, my mother in the background banging on the piano so loud I could hardly hear him. What did you say? I asked. And he said again, I’m asking you to marry me, Flo. My heart like to rose up clean out of me. I said, Why are you asking me on the phone? He said well if I refused him he wouldn’t have far to run to his bedroom and cry. I said ha ha. And then I said, But what about the ring part? I was just dying for an engagement ring I could look at a hundred times a day. He said, If you’ll say yes, I’ll sure enough bring it right over. I said yes and he brought over the ring and we went out in my backyard and he gave it to me right by the clothes pole. It’s just a speck of a diamond, but I’ll tell you what, it took my breath away and it still does. My engagement ring that Terrence gave me. I don’t know that anyone would ever really appreciate it, worn thin on the band and so fragile now. I thought about being buried with it but that seemed selfish, seemed like it should live on somehow. It’s not worth much, leastwise not in money. But maybe you could give it to some little girl might be thrilled to death with it, a real diamond ring. Tell her it was from a princess found her prince. I guess it’s not correct anymore to say that, but I sure don’t see why not. If you say a princess found her prince, doesn’t it just mean a prince found his princess, too, and what’s wrong with that? It’s just two people both found a four-leaf clover is how I see it. And you know full well a person can find a four-leaf clover since didn’t you come banging up onto my porch one summer day lit up like aChristmas tree on account of you had found one. What should I do with it? you asked and I said well you just keep it. What if it dies and gets all shriveled up and blows away? you asked. I said then you just keep the memory that you found it. That’s not going to blow away anywhere.
Now, Terrence was right romantic and we were happy together. But there was that secret I kept that I mentioned earlier and I believe I should finally tell you about it. It will take a bit of time for me to explain, and it will be hard for me to explain, so I want to wait a bit before I get into that. I always did like to put off the hard things, even with my homework in school, I’d get the easy stuff done first, spelling words and such, and then, last, ARITHMETIC, which near about made me rip my hair off my head. Lord have mercy. I would do that arithmetic homework mostly wrong and then I would fuss and fume and go and raid the larder. Never was a cookie bit so hard as when I had been working with those numbers that seemed like leering tricksters tome.
This thing I mean to tell you will be the most important thing in this letter, besides my telling you how much I love you. And I’ll tell you what, I’m glad I’m not trying to say this thing to you in person because I’m not sure I could. Anyway, you would probably cover your ears like you used to do sometimes and say, Nope, I’m not listening, la la la. You could be stubborn as a hunting dog being told to lay off his prey when you wanted to be. But I hope you’ll read it and think on it, Ruthie. I hope in that way that even from the other side I might still help you.
Flo hears a rapping at her door and goes to let Teresa McNair in. When she opens the door, Teresa looks at her and says, “Oh, you’re tired. I’ll come back.”
“I’m not tired!” Flo says, then immediately corrects herself. “Well, I am a bit, but I still would like your company. Do I look awful? And here I put on lipstick and everything!”
“You don’t look awful,” Teresa says. “You just look a little tired.” She holds up a wicker hamper. “I did bring dinner, though. What do you say we share it, and then I’ll be on my way?”
“Have a seat at the kitchen table and I’ll get everything ready,” Flo says. “I want to hear all about your rascal cat.”
“Nothing to get ready,” Teresa says. “I’ve got it all in here. Tin picnic plates, botanical themed, if you please. Elegant flatware, plastic though it is. Drinks, too, if you don’t mind lemonade.”
“I don’t know why anybody drinks anything else!” Flo says.
They sit down and Teresa pulls out a yellow casserole dish with white polka dots on it. “Macaroni and cheese,” she says. “And I’ve got sliced tomatoes, and for dessert, some chocolate chip cookies I baked this morning.”
“My goodness! I wish I’d met you before now!”
“I’m embarrassed I never introduced myself.”
“Things get away from us,” Flo says. “Speaking of getting away, howisyour cat?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Teresa says, dishing out the food. “When I got home, I couldn’t find him. He was on my backporch. I have no idea how he got out again. Nothing was left open!”
“Maybe you should name him Houdini,” Flo says.
Teresa says, “Maybe I will. Although if I have to go outside to call him, it might be embarrassing to be yelling, ‘Houdini!’ ”
Flo takes a bite of macaroni and cheese. “Oh, my goodness. This is just delicious!”
“Thank you. My mother’s recipe. She said when she first made it for my dad, he called it ‘Marryin’ Mac ’n Cheese.’ I guess it worked. They were happily together for just short of seventy years!”
