Deeply Odd(51)
Sandy was taken with Mrs. Fischer’s gold brooch in which little diamonds and rubies formed a glittering exclamation point. “It looks like it means something more than just being pretty,” she said, “but I wonder what. If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Don’t mind at all,” said Mrs. Fischer. “It means ‘Seize the day!’ It means ‘Live life to the fullest!’ It means ‘Sister, what a hoot it is to be me!’ ”
Sandy laughed, but then seemed to catch herself, as if for some reason laughter might be inappropriate. “You remind me of my mom. She’s done everything from teaching skydiving to rodeo to stock-car racing.”
“Have you ever gone skydiving?” Mrs. Fischer asked.
“I love my mom to pieces, but we’re different. Jim, my husband, he’s my skydiving, and my four kids … they’re my rodeo.” She looked away from Mrs. Fischer, through the big window, at the street where passing cars already traveled behind headlights as the day faded. Her eyes seemed unfocused, as if she saw something other than what lay beyond the glass, and a note of sorrow in her voice was not suited to her words. “A month from now, when the desert’s all covered for a while in flowers, millions of heliotrope and fiddlenecks, poppies and red maids and yellow coreopsis—that’s better in my book than winning any stock-car race.” If she had for a moment sunk into a tormented place in her mind, she lifted herself out of it and turned a dazzling smile on us. “I’m just a stick-in-the-mud, I guess.”
Although these days a good waitress lives in a time when most people feel aggrieved and often for no good reason, she shows no such disposition herself and lightens your spirit merely by the gratitude with which she faces life.
We ordered, and after we were served coffee, Mrs. Fischer said, “That girl’s the right stuff, sweetie. After you deal with that rotten rhinestone-cowboy bastard, I’ll have to come back this way and do a thing or two.”
“What thing or two?”
“Whatever seems to be the best thing or two to do.”
She smiled with satisfaction, as if an array of possibilities had already occurred to her. She looked cute enough to be Yoda’s mother.
I said, “You mean like introducing Andy Shephorn to Penny, and now they’re married and building a winery that will be legendary one day?”
“Barstow isn’t a friendly climate for vineyards. And Sandy is already happily married.”
“Then what?”
She blew on her coffee to cool it, took a sip. “Something will occur to me when I’ve done a little research.”
“Is Sandy smoothed out and fully blue?”
“Not nearly to the extent that you are, child. But she’s got what it takes to get there.”
Because we were waiting for our food and couldn’t yet live by the motto of the moment, I was inspired by another motto: We might as well schmooze.
“Ma’am, how did you meet Mr. Fischer?”
She cocked her head, studied me for half a minute, and then said, “I guess I can tell you a little. If we’re going to spend the next ten years or more driving hundreds of thousands of miles, we’ll be best friends, and best friends share. I was twenty-three, being the finest Blanche that I could be, and Heathcliff told me that I was born for better things than Blanche.”
“Ma’am?”
“Please call me Edie.”
“Yes, ma’am. Being Blanche?”
“Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. It was a road-company production. I’ve always liked the road, being on the move.”
“You were an actress.”
“I thought I was. Some smart people agreed. Heath liked my performance, came backstage after the play, but he said I was born for wonder, not for Williams, by which he meant Tennessee Williams, the author of the play. He invited me to dinner, we had a lovely time, and over crème brûlée, he asked me to marry him.”
“What—the same night you met him?”
“Well, after the cute little rabbit and the dove and the waiter taking off his pants, I laughed so much that I knew this was the man for me. I mean Heathcliff, not the waiter, though the waiter was perfectly nice.”
“You ate rabbit and dove for dinner?”
“Good heavens, no. The rabbit was too cute to eat, and the dove didn’t have much meat on its bones. Heath pulled the dove from my purse, which astounded me because I just knew I didn’t have one in there. And then right before my eyes, mind you, the dove turned into a rabbit, and then the rabbit vanished—poof!—when he draped his napkin over it.”