Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [38]
The cheerleaders’ outfits are taking a week. Everything has to be done over. Cleo puts zippers in upside down, allows too much on seams, has to cut plackets out twice. The cheerleaders come over for a fitting and everything is the wrong size. Cleo tells the cheerleaders, “I’m just like a wiggleworm in hot ashes.” In comparison to the overalls, the blouses are easy, but she has trouble with the interfacing.
“You don’t charge enough,” Linda tells her. “You should charge twenty-five dollars apiece for those things.”
“People here won’t pay that much,” Cleo says.
Linda is in and out. The kids visit Bob at home during the weekend. It is more peaceful, but it makes Cleo worry. She is almost glad when they return Sunday evening, carrying tote bags of clothes and playthings. Bob has taken them out for pizza every meal, and they turn up their noses at what she has on the table—fried channel cat and hush puppies. Linda doesn’t eat either. She is going out with Shirley. Cleo gives Prissy-Tail more fish than she can eat.
—
“Smile, Grandma.”
“Well, hurry up,” Cleo says, her body poised as if about to take off and fly. “I can’t hold like this all day.”
“Just a minute.” Tammy moves the camera around. It looks like the mask on a space suit. “Say cheese!”
Cleo holds her smile, which is growing halfhearted and strained. The camera clicks, and the flashbulb flares. Together, they watch the picture take shape. Like the dawn, it grows in intensity until finally Cleo’s features appear. The Cleo in the picture stands there vacantly, like a scared cat.
“I look terrible,” says Cleo.
“You look old, Grandma.”
—
On the cheerleader outfits, Cleo is down to finger work. As she whips the facings, she imagines Bob alone in the big ranch house. What would a man do in a house like that by himself? Linda had left him late one night and brought Tammy and Davey over, right in the middle of The Tonight Show (John Davidson was the guest host). The children were half asleep. Cleo imagines them groggy and senseless, one day hooked on dope.
—
The cheerleader outfits are finished. There are some flaws, Cleo knows, where she has had to take out and put in again so many times, but she tells herself that only somebody who sews will notice them. She pulls out bright blue basting thread.
She does some wash, finishes this week’s Family Circle and cuts out a hamburger casserole recipe she thinks the kids might like. She throws away the Family Circle and the old TV Guide. She carries out trash. Then she straightens up her sewing corner and sorts her threads. She collects Tammy’s scattered pictures and puts them in a pile. As she tries to find a box they will fit in, she accidentally steps on the cat’s tail. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she cries, shocked. Prissy-Tail hides under the couch. Cleo can’t find a box the right size.
When the cheerleaders try on their new outfits, Cleo spots bits of blue basting thread she has missed. Embarrassed, she pulls out the threads. She knows the cheerleaders will go to the ball game and someone will see blue basting thread sticking out.
Later, thinking she will go to the show if there is a decent one on, Cleo drives to the shopping center. There isn’t. An invasion from outer space and Jane Fonda. Cleo parks and goes to the K Mart. She waves at Linda, who is busy with a long line of people at her register. Cleo walks around the store and finds a picture album with plastic pockets for Tammy. She will pay for it with some of the money she collected from the cheerleaders. Davey will want something too, but she doesn’t know what to buy that he will like. After rejecting all the toys she sees, she buys a striped turtleneck sweater on sale. The album and sweater are roughly the same price.