“Vile little bitch,” she said out loud to Annie-Vic’s retreating back. Alice hated Annie-Vic the way the Lord is supposed to hate sin. She hated everything about the woman, the way she walked, the way she talked, the things she said. It was the one fly in Alice’s ointment at the moment that Annie-Vic was a member of the Snow Hill School Board, right at that moment when Alice herself had managed to get elected to it. Not that Alice would have run for school board on her own. It wouldn’t have occurred to her. It had occurred to Franklin Hale, though, and Franklin went to Alice’s church, and there they all were now, sitting where they could do some good.
Except for Annie-Vic. Except for Miss Ann-Victoria Hadley.
What did it say about a woman that not only had she never married, but that she said she never wanted to be married, that marriage only “got in the way.” Got in the way of what? Alice wanted to know. Alice had been married three times, the last time in the church, and she didn’t see that it had got in her way at all.
“Vile bitch,” Alice said again, but she said it under her breath this time, and there was nobody around to hear her. It was too cold to be standing outside in nothing but her waitress’s uniform. The skin on her arms had begun to feel hard and brittle. The roots of her hair stung. Oh, but she did remember it all, every day of it, from beginning to end, without a break. There hadn’t even been a break in the vacations, because of course nobody ever went anywhere—this was Snow Hill. People just hung around their houses in the summers or got jobs in town. Sheila Conoway was there, but so was Miss Marbledale, coming into the grocery store to do her shopping, getting a visit from her unmarried sister who lived in Ohio, packing up her small car to go to Ohio herself when August rolled around, but only for a week, because school was about to start. Alice could smell school coming a mile away.
Miss Marbledale was still teaching at Snow Hill High School. Alice still saw her when she came into the diner for a cup of coffee or for her dinner on Thursday nights. Alice had no idea how old the woman was. She had seemed ancient forty years ago. She was even more ancient now. Alice remembered the time when stories had gone all over town about Miss Marbledale. People said that she was a “woman who liked women,” because they didn’t want to come right out and call her a dyke. People said that the woman who came every summer to visit wasn’t really her sister, or that she was, but it didn’t matter because they were doing it anyway. Alice couldn’t imagine Miss Marbledale doing it. She could imagine Miss Marbledale being a lesbian, because you had to be a lesbian to act the way Miss Marbledale acted and think the things she thought. Miss Catherine Marbledale and Miss Ann-Victoria Hadley. Maybe they were doing it together.
Alice turned away from Main Street and went back into the diner. There wasn’t much in the way of business at this time of the morning. Breakfast was always full up, but that was over, and at this time of day people were at their jobs. Alice checked out the booths along the south wall. They were all empty and had all been cleaned. They all had little wire racks for sugar packets and ketchup bottles were all full. Alice had been waiting tables all her life when she met and married Lyman McGuffie, but it was only after that that she had paid any attention to how a business like this was run. There was proof positive, though, of everything she had ever believed in. All that talk about “education” was a crock. You didn’t need an “education” to succeed in life. Lyman himself had dropped out of high school in the tenth grade and had built up this diner with his own two hands, and it was one of the most successful businesses in town. Alice had learned nothing by staying to graduate, except that it was all a crock, and the only reason for it was to make it possible for some people to prance around acting like they were better than everybody else.
Alice checked the counter. There were two men, sitting far apart, occupying stools. Both of them had coffee. There was one waitress. The waitress was trying to look busy, because it was Lyman’s one inflexible rule that nobody should ever be on the floor without looking busy. Alice went to the back of the room and let herself through the swinging doors to the kitchen. Lyman was back there, checking inventory and keeping an eye on the dishwasher who was not only loading dishes, but trying to clean off the grill.
“Well,” Lyman said.
Alice shrugged. “I couldn’t help myself,” she said. “I can’t always be polite, Lyman, you know that. I can’t always be Christian. It’s a failing. But that woman.”
“Which woman?”