Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [136]
“Me too, I’m just tickled to death with it, and I said to Macky, ‘This is more like it, this is much more romantic than a sprinkler.’ Men, aren’t they silly sometimes? He won’t tell me where he got it, but it says on the bottom it was made in Czechoslovakia, so it must have cost him a fortune. He said he bought it for me to put on my knickknack shelf and I said, ‘Macky, this is not an ordinary knickknack.’ I’ve been thinking about where to put it and think I’m going to keep it in the living room on my end table. I mean, it certainly is a conversation piece. After all, how many homes could you go into and find storks dancing to ‘The Sheik of Araby’?”
Aunt Elner said, “I’ve never seen it.”
“No, as a matter of fact, I was surprised Macky had the good taste to pick it out all by himself. You know the kind of junk he usually gets. So I said to him, ‘Macky, you can still surprise me. That must mean we have a good marriage.’ He said, ‘We must have, because you surprise me with something every day.’ I said, ‘Well good, I don’t want you to get bored.’ And he said he was anything but bored, wasn’t that sweet?”
“Yes, it was. How did he like your present?”
“He loved it, but you know Macky—anything with a fish on it and he’s happy.”
Not every marriage was as happy as Macky and Norma’s. Over the past few years things had started to change even more between Hamm and Betty Raye. It was not so much that they had stopped caring for each other; they had just slowly started drifting apart, until gradually, even before they were aware of it, he was living one life and she another.
Hers was a quiet life, trying to stay out of the spotlight, while it seemed he was always running toward it. His hours were so erratic—he only slept three or four hours a night—that they finally stopped sleeping together. He started to use the small room off the master bedroom so as not to disturb her and never came back. She had her two boys, whom she adored, and spent most of her time with them but still, being so in love with Hamm and not really having him was hard.
It was sometimes difficult to keep up a happy face all the time, particularly when her mother came to visit.
Minnie had just come from one such visit to the governor’s mansion to see her daughter and her grandsons. Being that they had another few days off, she and Beatrice Woods had decided to have Floyd drive them down to Elmwood Springs for the day. Everyone was glad to see Beatrice again. She seemed very happy and still laughed at everything Chester the dummy said.
Why? No one knew. Ruby Robinson said if she could see him she wouldn’t think he was so funny.
Like all mothers when they get together, the conversation usually revolves around the happiness and success of their children, and Minnie and Dorothy were no different. At this point Minnie could discuss success with authority. Her daughter was married to the governor and the Oatman Family Gospel Singers were doing so well they had just purchased another brand-new Silver Eagle custom-made Trailways bus and had a new hit album.
Minnie said, “With it all I’m so blessed and thankful to have the relationship with the Lord that I do. I look around me and people don’t seem happy with all the money they’ve got. It’s never enough. They always think they need more. And all you really need is the Lord. Money just don’t do it, does it?”
Dorothy said, “Not in a lot of cases, I guess.”
“I told Emmett Crimpler just the other day . . . I said, Emmett, just how many new suits do you need? You can only wear them one at a time. But every time we stop near a Sears, he’s got to run in and buy him another one. He says it’s ’cause he used to be so poor but I don’t believe it.”
“No?”
“No. He thinks all them new suits is gonna bring him happiness. But they ain’t. You know, Dorothy, up to now I’ve had to scrimp for pennies every day of my life, trying to make ends meet. I’ve been poor as long as I’ve been alive and, you know, when you is poor, most won’t give you the second time of day. Why, I can remember when I was nothing but a li’l