Belle Weather Read online

  Hey, it’s not like he needs two kidneys, am I right?

  Kitchen lady excitedly told me that she’d make the arrangements for us to visit the granite.

  “Fabulous!” I said, envisioning a trip to its exotic land of origin. I’d done enough research to know the best granite comes from Italy, Spain, France, and Greece.

  “Honey,” I said to my husband, who had actually fallen asleep standing up in front of a display of travertine tiles, “Wake up! We’re going to visit our granite. It’s very exotic so we’ll probably have to travel a long ways.”

  “Kaching,” he muttered sleepily.

  “Oh, no, don’t worry,” the kitchen lady said, patting him on the small of his back, right where I imagined the surgical scar would probably be some day. “Actually the granite you selected is a tad closer to home.”

  “Really? Where?” I asked.

  “Well, actually, your granite is in Myrtle Beach.”

  Good-bye Louvre, hello Dixie Stampede. I was irrationally disappointed.

  “You’ll need to schedule an appointment to visit it,” the kitchen lady continued.

  “Say who?” my husband said. This is the Southern man’s response to anything that causes momentary confusion or puzzlement.

  I sighed, rolled my eyes, and jumped in to fix this.

  “I apologize for my husband. I believe what he meant to say was, ‘Do what?’”

  Well. Some people just aren’t fluent in Southern. I’m used to being a translator. It’s a gift.

  Because we live just a little over an hour’s drive from Myrtle Beach, this was going to be easy. Still, it was hard for me to reconcile the Myrtle Beach I knew, which was heavy on factory outlets, fish camps, and “gentlemen’s clubs” with the rich, elegant verde peacock I had fallen for.

  I began to think of our granite as a kitten at the animal shelter, waiting for its rightful owners to come save it from a grim fate. I would take this granite home and it would be safe from ever having to see another human being wearing a shirt with “My Other Ride Is Your Mom” on the front.

  It would be grateful and perform admirably over the years. The kitchen lady was excited about scheduling the visit because, as she explained, it was a bit like an adoption process.

  We visited the granite and I wept because it was so pretty. Really. I stood there in a gravel parking lot while a guy driving a forklift kept my slab suspended in the air and I walked around it about eighteen times. I had the distinct impression that if I walked around one more time, he was going to drop it on my foot.

  But this was our time together, me and my granite, and it was love at first sight. The tears came out of nowhere, unless you count the peri-menopausal haze that I reside in for most of the day.

  As my eyes welled, my nine-year-old said I was embarrassing her and I told her that Mommy needed a moment and Mommy had forgotten to take her mood-altering drugs that morning so what the hell was her problem, anyway?

  On the way out, I saw a woman caressing her (snicker) uba tuba slab and talking to it.

  “Hey, at least I’m not talking to granite like that poor soul,” I told Sophie, whose look told me that she wished she could trade me in for a sane mommy.

  “Mom,” she said, with an irritated tone that I instantly recognized from my own tween years, “If we stay much longer, I’m going to start my period. Let’s go!”

  Oh, snap! I have always admired sarcasm in the very young.

  The granite installation was subbed out to men whose names did not all begin with “D.” And since they were able to do the entire installation in less than a day, I didn’t even get a chance to fart on them.

  Their loss, right?

  3

  Possum Chokes on Packing Peanuts

  Gross Film at Eleven

  In the South, we’re used to varmints, but we sugarcoat everything, so we never use the word “cockroach” to refer to that icky, skittering blur of a bug that runs when you turn the kitchen light on.

  We call these “water bugs,” which sounds somehow more genteel. Occasionally, we call them “palmetto bugs,” which sounds downright charming, as if they march about with palm fronds for hair and carry tiny little glasses of sweet tea on a tray.

  Whatever they are, we all have them and it has nothing to do with how clean your house is. I’ve seen two-inch water bugs skittering around the pool of an oceanfront mansion and I’ve seen their rowdy cousins hanging out in the sidewalk cracks outside the seediest riverfront bar.

  Not long ago, we were at a fancy party given at the home of our one set of rich friends. The house was gorgeous, like something out of Southern Living, which defines high style to any right-thinking Southerner. The buffet table was resplendent with Chantilly sterling, naturally, and as I reached for a cheese puff, I saw little legs skittering across the Battenburg lace tablecloth and heading straight for the carving station.

  I discreetly informed our hostess that there was a water bug hiding near the au jus in her grandmama’s heirloom gravy boat and she might want to get that taken care of. Make no mistake; this is the spinach-on-your-front-tooth in the South. We want to know when there has been a sighting so we can fix it.

  No screams, no squeals, no apologies. The hostess simply plastered a beatific smile on her face, covered the bug with a monogrammed napkin and, in the single most graceful pest removal moment I have witnessed, picked up gravy boat and covered bug, announcing that she needed to replenish the au jus. Nobody knew a thing.

  Southern women are remarkably good at dealing with bugs as long as no one calls them cockroachs. That is simply unsavory.

  I’m personally good at dealing with wasps. One spring day, I opened the windows of my little home office and discovered that while I’d been passing an uneventful winter, killer wasps had been merrily constructing a community so large it deserved its own sidewalks and city sewer.

  The wasps flooded my office and lapped my head like it was the infield at Daytona. I looked for something to spray at them but all that was handy was a can of Lemon Pledge.

  So I sprayed ’em good, but it didn’t help. The wasps continued to buzz, dip, and torture me, plus now they had much shinier wings.

  Finally, I ran downstairs and found a rusty can of Hot Shot, which I sprayed wildly about the room with the door only open enough to put my arm through.

  One by one, they began to sputter and flop, collapsing against the baseboards.

  Of course, it would’ve been a really good idea to close the windows at some point but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’d just inhaled most of the contents of a nine-ounce can of Pledge and a can of Hot Shot so old that it bragged about “reducing the threat of polio.” New wasp recruits buzzed around, while, horrifyingly, the “dead” wasps began to come alive again, humming and wriggling. Fortunately, they were hung over, so I was able to clobber them with hubby’s size thirteen basketball shoes, wearing one on each hand like the mittens o’ death. A final wasp struggled to fly in my peripheral vision and I invited it to, yes, go ahead, make my day.

  Sadly, we don’t handle larger pests with nearly as much skill.

  When our cat brought a mouse into our upstairs bathroom late one night, hubby and I both screamed and slammed the door.

  “We can’t just leave them in there,” I moaned to Hubby. “At least turn the light off.”

  “Nonsense,” he said, “The bulb will burn out on its own eventually.”

  This has been our approach to rodent control for years, but there finally came a time when we knew it was time to call a professional.

  A possum, his sides bursting with Styrofoam peanuts he must’ve foolishly eaten while we were unpacking new faucets for the kitchen, had up and died under our house in mid-renovation.

  Possums are powerfully stupid, it turns out.

  In the midst of all the work, the possum had gotten confused and mistaken the packing peanuts for something that could actually be digested.

  Because of his location, in a crawlspace under our hous
e, we had no intention of going after him. He would have to be removed by someone who wouldn’t shudder and squeal and go “Ewwww.” The D boys were out; ever since the rat incident I’d realized they didn’t do varmints.

  So I looked in the Yellow Pages and, a few phone calls later, I finally found someone who specialized in varmint removal, although he was loathe to use “the V word” as he prissily called it.

  “Vince” was extremely professional and official-sounding when I talked to him on the phone. Bottom line, he said, it would cost about $250 to remove the possum from under our house.

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars!” I screeched. “Are you planning to hire Celine Dion to sing at his frikkin’ funeral? Just go up under the house, drag his dead ass out, and take him away.”

  Vince then launched into a discussion of “humane” methods of removal.

  “Look,” I said as calmly as I could because, let’s face it, I needed Vince more than he needed me at this point. “The possum is dead. Dead! I don’t care if you go all Abu Ghraib, put a leash around his neck and smoke a cigarette with your leg propped up on his haunches. Just get him the hell outta here!”

  Once Vince actually listened and realized the possum had waddled on over to that great other-side-of-the-road in the sky, I was sure the fee would drop dramatically, but I was wrong.

  “On the initial investigation, we will ascertain as to the particular species of the possum…”

  Sweet Lord above. Deliver me from a worldly pest control expert. Whatever happened to the good old days when I could just dangle a twelve-pack in front of a passing redneck and not only get the varmint removed but also get a damn good start on a deck on the back of the house?

  I tried again.

  “I don’t care what species he is, on account of why? Hmmm. Oh, yes! That’s right. HE’S DEAD!”

  “Ma’am,” said Vince, “Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean that he’s not deserving of respectful treatment.”

  “Vince,” I said, “are you high?”

  I realized that the possum would just have to stay where he was. I’d run into Vince’s type once before when I was shopping for an exterminator.

  We’d had a little problem with those water bugs I just mentioned. Summer in the South is peak season and if they got any larger, my kid was going to put bonnets and gloves on them and invite them to her little tea parties.

  “We don’t call ourselves exterminators anymore,” huffed “Clark,” the man in the eco-green Polo shirt. He sounded genuinely hurt.

  “It’s like calling a funeral director an undertaker,” he said. “It’s called pest control now.”

  “Hey, just ’cause the cat had kittens in the oven doesn’t mean they’re biscuits,” I said, repeating the wisdom of my Great Aunt Sudavee or Suzanne Sugarbaker, I forget which.

  “What does that mean?” asked Clark.

  “It means I don’t care what you call it, just get these water bugs dead. And I don’t want you to just kill them. I want them to suffer a little first. Can you do that?”

  Clark-the-pompous-pest-guy looked at me as if I was nuts.

  “OK, OK,” I said. “You drive a hard bargain. I’ll toss in an extra twelve-pack if you can promise a little suffering.”

  “I don’t drink,” he said rather stiffly.

  Of course he didn’t. Unless it was, perhaps, an unassuming pinot noir accompanied by some fried frou-frou and a side of “I’m better than you.”

  It was a varmint, of sorts, that recently reminded me that despite all the talk of blended populations and such, we Southerners are still different from the rest of the world. And not just because the people who work at Chick-fil-A always tell you to “Have a blessed day.”

  Maybe it’s because we live in perpetual fear of monster hurricanes and unsweet tea, both plenty scary in their own way.

  The Defining Varmint Moment happened when I was visiting a new friend who had moved from Long Island, which, as I have experienced firsthand, has an entirely different take on iced tea.

  I was saying good-bye to my new Yankee friend on her front porch when I spied a snake, about four feet long, slithering its way toward my car.

  Southern women do not like snakes. No, no. What I meant to say is: SOUTHERN WOMEN DO NOT LIKE SNAKES!!!!

  So I screamed. And so did Phyllis, although frankly she came in a little late, now that I think about it.

  “Snake!” I shrieked.

  “Snake!” Phyllis shrieked.

  “Get a hoe!” I shrieked

  “Huh?” Phyllis said.

  Fortunately, at this moment, Phyllis’ husband and their neighbor, also a recent Yankee transplant, walked into the yard.

  Relief flooded over me like butter on a hot biscuit. Everything was going to be OK.

  The Yankee neighbor’s garage door was up and I could see a fine array of Snake Killing Implements hanging neatly on pegboard.

  “Get a hoe!” I shouted to the men, who, I’d noticed, weren’t really moving as fast as I thought they should. “Snake!!”

  The men looked perplexed.

  “A hoe?” said the neighbor who was wearing a jumpsuit that I suddenly found annoying as hell.

  Why were these two men looking at me as if I’d asked them to help me strangle a basket of kittens?

  “Oh, he’s not a threat,” said icky jump suited neighbor guy. “Snakes actually protect us from other harmful pests.”

  I could’ve sworn I saw the snake pause to laugh at this, while on his way to curl around my front tire in a completely gross and spineless snaky way.

  “Get a hoe!” I repeated, thinking that at least Phyllis’ husband would take this seriously.

  But he’d also become Johnny Environmentalist and was babbling about rodent control and other Utter Crap. At this point, the snake appeared to be outright guffawing.

  And then it hit me: I needed a Bubba. My whole life, Southern men have come to my rescue, but this wasn’t something that translated geographically. Where I’m from, if a woman hollers “Snake!” at least four Bubbas will magically appear, hoes in hand, and you’re looking at snake puddin’ in under ten seconds.

  The snake, hearing all of this, slithered away to romp some more in his happy, Bubba-free neighborhood.

  “Fuhgeddaboutit,” I heard him hiss.

  4

  Shocked Smart? Nope, But I’m Plenty Grounded

  At some point during the renovation of an old house, someone is going to strongly suggest that your electrical system needs to be updated. They will use grave tones and speak of “code violations,” and “serious chance of electrical fire” and “how I really need a Hawaiian vacation with my second family.”

  “You’re just saying that scary stuff because you want me to pay you many thousands of dollars,” I told one electrician who had arrived to bid on the job.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, “I’m just saying that scary stuff because every time I flip on a light switch in your house, I get a shock that erases my memory of the past fifteen years. Who the hell am I, anyway?”

  “Oh, man up!” I told the wussy electrician. “They don’t make electrical systems like this puppy anymore.”

  “It’s called knob-and-tube,” he said, “and they haven’t really made it since, hmmmmm, nineteen–and–twenty-two. Then again, how would I know that? Who am I?”

  Another electrician arrived to give an estimate and was equally horrified by the state of our system.

  “None of your outlets are even grounded,” he whined.

  “Good. We’re not grounded either,” I said. “If we were, we wouldn’t be spending our kid’s entire college education fund on Beanie Babies from eBay. Oh, sure, they may be out of style now, but they’re coming back one day and we’re gonna be sittin’ pretty. Here. Take this unicorn. Could be worth a lot of money one day.”

  The third electrician to put in a bid couldn’t speak English. This isn’t a deal-breaker for me because I have an uncanny ability to communicate with people no matter wha
t their language. In this case, it was Spanish.

  “Que mucho?” I asked brightly after the electrician had made his final trip over, around, and under the house.

  He pointed toward our dark and spooky basement, shuddered, and then screamed out, “El Diablo!!!”

  I’ve seen enough bad Westerns to know that this is Spanish for “The hair dryer!”

  “Que?” I asked. There wasn’t a hair dryer down there. What a goof this guy was.

  He ran from the house and leapt into his truck and I happily added his large battery-operated lantern and clipboard to a box I was filling with all the things that people who give estimates leave behind. Tape measures, a few levels, a voltage meter…One guy had even left a very nice sky blue fleece jacket. Was our house so awful that people didn’t even want to come back and claim their belongings?

  I believe the answer was “Sí.”

  We finally settled on electrician candidate No. 4, whose name was Mike. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke, his words really mattered, kind of like that chick who narrates Desperate Housewives and always makes me want to say, “If you’re so damned smart, why are you dead?”

  But Mike, the man of few words, said the magic ones as far as I was concerned:

  “Just knock $500 off whatever your lowest guy says and I’ll do the job for that.”

  Suh-weet!

  As it turned out, Mike was a fabulous electrician who had a very dependable stable of helper-bees, including one who looked, spoke, and sounded exactly like Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., right on down to a heartfelt “Shazam!” when he saw the now-famous knob-and-tube setup in the attic.

  Unfortunately, as with many in-demand professionals, Mike and company were also working on roughly forty-eight other electrical jobs at the same time, so there would be days when he didn’t show up at all. This is an unfortunate reality in the contracting world.

  Even my beloved “D’boyz” had left me for a couple of weeks to finish another woman’s patio, a fact that left me weirdly depressed.