Not Tonight, Honey: Wait 'til I'm A Size 6. Susan Reinhardt

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, СКАЧАТЬ