But since the spectacular failure of my photography studio in Chicago, I’d been training under the aging Mrs. Whitaker to take her place as the primary support staffer at Puckett and Puckett. My parents were well aware that I wasn’t an asset to their office. But they wanted to know that I was safe, that I was taken care of. And ultimately, I think that was why they liked the idea of my marrying Jason. He was safe. He would be a good provider. And he would probably keep me from setting fires with most household appliances.
“Mom, everything’s fine here. I’m enjoying my time on the road.” I sighed. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“Oh, sweetheart, how could you say that? You know I’m only worried about you. I would think that you would want to come home, just so I would know you were safe. I just want you to be happy.”
As long as it was her preferred brand of happiness.
“I like this temp job, Mom. It was really nice of Iris to hook me up with this assignment. She knew I wanted to get out of town to clear my head, and she helped me out. And believe it or not, I’m actually qualified for the work. I’ve moved almost a dozen times over the last eight years. I have a lot of experience driving back and forth across the country,” I said, taking the phone away from my ear long enough to pull a White Stripes T-shirt over my head. “And the one thing that you can say proudly is that I have a pristine driving record.”
My close encounter with the despondent chicken was on a need-to-know basis. Mom didn’t need to know.
“Well, it seems a very silly way to make a living.” She sniffed. “Then again, if it lasts as long as the other jobs, I won’t have much to worry about.”
And there went the eye again.
A half hour and many “I just want what’s best for you’s” later, my self-esteem was properly checked. Mom had given me the up-to-the-minute news on my family. Jason had successfully defended one of Daddy’s best friends from tax-evasion charges. Daddy shot a seventy at the Half-Moon Hollow Country Club and Catfish Farm, a new personal best. Glenn had just broken a record for highest-ever settlement against a grocery store in Kentucky. The management at the Shop-N-Go in Murphy hadn’t properly shelved bottles of dish soap, resulting in back pain and suffering for someone not smart enough to step around a puddle of it. My sister-in-law, Courtney Herndon-Puckett, had decided to open a brick-and-mortar store for her start-up cosmetics business.
OK, that one caught me off-guard.
“Does the world really need an outlet for repackaged Mary Kay products?” I asked, slipping into well-worn jeans and orange Chucks.
“Please don’t mention Mary Kay in front of Courtney. You know that upsets her.”
Courtney wanted to teach me how to apply makeup that didn’t make me look like “a sad-clown hooker,” film it, and post it on YouTube to promote her business. I wasn’t really worried about Courtney’s feelings.
I managed to wind down the conversation halfway through the semicondensed version of who from church was having surgery/a baby/surgery to help them “tighten up” by saying, “Sorry, Mom, my boss is calling on the other line,” and hanging up quickly. Was there a call from Iris? No. But it was more mature than what I used to tell her to cut calls short: “Sorry, Mom, a pigeon just spontaneously combusted on my windowsill.” That only worked when I was living in a city, anyway.
Palming my keys, I took a deep breath as I wandered out into the cool early-autumn night. Talking to my mother always left me feeling hollowed out, as if someone had taken an overpriced melon baller from Williams-Sonoma and scraped away perfectly spherical chunks of my resolve. Picturing a giant fruit salad composed of my emotions probably meant that I needed food desperately, or I would never get enough sleep to qualify as human in the morning. The Waffle Shoppe sign blinking across the parking lot put me in the mood for French toast.
Hold the melon.
The Waffle Shoppe did not disappoint. It had all of the charm and atmosphere you’d expect for a place that sold all-you-can-eat pancakes for $3.95. The Formica table was peeling, and three-quarters of the menu pages were stuck together with some mercifully unidentifiable mystery substance. But the coffee was hot, and the patrons were quiet. If I’d had my camera, I would have taken quiet, quick face shots, character studies. People were way more interesting to shoot while they were concentrating on their food, but you had to be careful, because in some establishments, the management took that personally … or they suspected that you were a narc.
I struck up a friendly conversation with Nina, my waitress, which, according to the truck-stop code, meant that my food wouldn’t be spit in intentionally before it arrived at my table. I consider that a quality dining experience.
After a delicious breakfast/dinner of apple cinnamon French toast and hash browns, I wandered into the motel parking lot, carbo-loaded and ready for bed. I had a long day of appeasing the ninety-year-old woman trapped in a vampire’s body ahead of me, and that would require sleep.
Shuffling across the lot, I plucked nervously at the engagement ring I wore around my neck. I hadn’t wanted to hold on to the ring at first. The moment I’d found out about Jason and Lisa, I’d taken it off and hurled it across the room, vowing never to touch it again. And I wouldn’t have, if the damn thing hadn’t gotten caught in my vacuum cleaner and destroyed it … the vacuum cleaner, I mean. The ring was fine. Damn it.
I’d seriously considered putting it through a wood chipper and sending him the fragments. But considering that it had survived the innards of my vacuum cleaner unscathed, I foresaw that plan ending in some sort of tragic, accidental Fargo scenario.
Jason Cordner was my first serious boyfriend. I’d dated casually before, but the boys I chose were either as dull as a box of mud or closet sociopaths. I’d moved back home, licking my wounds from the inevitable collapse of my studio, and my parents thought I needed “good influences.” I was on the verge of making up a boyfriend to get my mom off my back when I met Jason at the annual Puckett Labor Day picnic.
Jason was a junior partner in a law firm my parents occasionally consulted with. I dropped buffalo wings down the back of his polo shirt. He claimed it was love at first sight. I think he might have gotten barbecue sauce in his eye.
I liked Jason. He didn’t light my world on fire at first, but he seemed like a genuinely nice guy, a kind person. He made me laugh. He let me in on intimate little details that none of my previous boyfriends had shared, such as home address and marital status. And he made me feel centered, special, as if I was a fascinating work in progress, instead of an enormous fuck-up. We did all of the normal, boring things that normal, boring couples did. Pizza, Half-Moon Hollow High football games, arguing whether to watch a Sandra Bullock movie or Vin Diesel. He introduced me to his best friend, Lisa, who’d lived next door since they were kids.
The year we were together was the calmest of my life. Jason thought it was “cute” that I loved photography and suggested that I work at the Sears photo studio part-time if the artistic urge struck. My parents saw our relationship as some sort of sign that I was growing up. They stopped questioning me like a naughty teenager every time I left the house. They stopped telling quite so many embarrassing stories about me at family dinners. I think they were afraid that they were going to scare Jason off. They could not have been happier when Jason proposed, Daddy because it meant that I was someone else’s problem now and Mom because it meant that I wouldn’t move away from Half-Moon Hollow and she’d be able to keep an eye on me.
Because of their assurances that they were “like brother and sister,” I accepted Jason and Lisa’s relationship at face value. I overlooked inside jokes, frequent hugs, and sickeningly sweet nicknames. And then, one afternoon, I was shopping for wedding dresses with Lisa—my maid of honor—and she left her purse in the dressing room with me. Her phone went off while she went to look at a veil, and I recognized Jason’s text ringtone, the clink-clink sound from Law and Order. I ignored it once, and twice, and three times. He texted her four times in the span of about three minutes, and even though I knew it was a bad idea to look at her phone, my curiosity won out. The texts were descriptive and detailed. He was so in love with her, he typed out in painstaking text-speak, but so confused. He loved me, but he felt like a fraud when he was with me. He didn’t want to hurt me, but he didn’t want to lose her. He begged her not to give up on him while he “figured things out.”
To say that I flipped my shit in the middle of the Bridal Barn was an understatement. Because I also flipped a rack of plus-sized mother-of-the-bride dresses and a display of bridal tiaras and the cash register, all in an effort to get my hands on Lisa.
I paid for the damages out of a weekly deduction from my Puckett and Puckett paycheck.
Most of the damages.
Jason’s betrayal wrecked me in ways I hadn’t imagined possible. I didn’t get out of bed for days … after my dad bailed me out of jail for the public-disturbance charges. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t realize how much I could hurt until the first man I’d opened my heart to considered me second-best. I’d loved him. I’d loved what I thought was a kind heart, a strong soul. He was always so good, so open with me; I didn’t think he’d ever lie to me. I didn’t think he was capable of it. I’d loved the life I thought we were going to lead together. I thought that making a life with someone, accepting all of his quirks and differences, seemed like the ultimate epic adventure. And I’d worked hard to make myself into the woman I thought he deserved. I honestly tried to make the best of my job at the law firm. I let my mother select a work wardrobe for me at the Elegant Professional Boutique, which specialized in pantsuits in a dazzling array of taupe. I stopped dyeing neon streaks into my hair. Eventually, the most exciting part of my day was choosing which flavor of yogurt to take with me for lunch.