Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [59]
“I know. I hope she’s getting her eyes full.”
Turtle twists in her seat to look at the staring waitress.
“How’s that Jax treating you, anyway?” Alice asks.
“Oh, he treats me good. Too good. I don’t deserve him.”
“You hush. You know better than that.”
Taylor smiles. With her left hand, the one that isn’t holding Alice’s, she puts down the menu and rubs the bone behind her left ear. “Yeah, I know better.”
“I picture him as looking exactly like that.” Alice points to the photo of Rhett Butler.
Taylor laughs out loud. “Oh, that’s Jax to perfection. If you leave out the hair, the face, the body and the mustache.”
“Well, that’s how he talks, anyway. Like a southern gentleman. Except for some of the wild things he comes up with. He’s real entertaining over the phone.”
“I’m glad you think so. He keeps asking me if I’m truly in love with our garbage man. He’s a lot more insecure than Rhett Butler.”
“If you’re having trouble sticking with him, that’s my fault. I didn’t bring you up with men as a consideration. I think single runs in our family.”
“It’s nothing you did wrong, Mama, I never missed having a dad. Plus I don’t think your theory holds water. My friend Lou Ann grew up without her dad, and she feels like if she doesn’t have a man in the house she’s not worth taking up shelf space.”
“Well, you’re solid gold, honey, don’t let that slip your mind. You deserve the King of France.”
“Maybe that’s my problem then. Jax is definitely not the King of France.”
The staring waitress walks toward them. When she gets to the table she stands staring while three glasses of ice water sweat it out in her hands. She is tanned and blonde, her hair in a tight ponytail, almost aggressively pretty; the jawbones and cheekbones push up hard under her skin as if something in her might burst. Finally she says, “Oprah Winfrey, right?”
Alice makes a surprised smile with raised eyebrows and her tongue against her lips. Taylor waits a second before saying, “Is that the whole question?”
“I saw you on Oprah Winfrey, right? The show where the Barbie Dream Convertible was used to save a young girl’s life? I have it on tape. It’s you, right?”
“Kind of.”
She thunks down the glasses of water with conviction. “I knew it! When you came in I saw you sit down over here in my station and I’m like, ‘It’s them, it’s them!’ and the other girls go, ‘You’re nuts,’ but it is. I knew it was.”
She extracts a pencil and pad from the pocket of her low-cut uniform, a short, red showboat outfit with frills. She stands gazing at them some more. Up close, Taylor decides, she looks slightly apart from the mainstream of the human race; she has hair of an unnatural color, pure yellow, and little curled bangs, and blue eye makeup that exceeds the size of her actual eyes. Her figure is the kind you notice even if you’re not all that interested in women’s great figures.
“I think we’re ready to order now,” Taylor says.
“Okay.”
“A glass of milk, two Cokes, three grilled cheeses.”
The waitress doesn’t write anything.
Taylor asks, “You have that Oprah Winfrey show on tape? That’s amazing.”
“I have probably the largest personal collection of Barbie-related items in the entire world. There’s this Barbie Hall of Fame Museum down in Palo Alto, California, right? And I’ve been there ten times so I know everything they have, all the original ones that cost, like, one thousand dollars to buy, in the original box. I don’t have those. But I’ve got videotapes and stuff they don’t have in Palo Alto. I’m like, why not? You know? Didn’t they even think of it? I have autographs, even. That kid that hit the dog with the Dream Convertible and saved a young girl’s life, is she a friend of yours?”
“No,” Taylor says.
“After I saw that show I got the idea of an ensemble called the Barbie Rescue Team, with an ambulance, where she’s dressed up as a paramedic, you know? A little white skirt with a tiny slit, and an emergency bag with those blood-pressure things? It could come with