Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [165]
Norma said, “I had forgotten about that.”
Tot continued, “So I spent the first three months of my marriage being a nurse and then after he got drafted and went off to the army he came back home five years later a full-blown alcoholic, just like Daddy, who I’d married James to get away from. So I was happy from the time I said I do until we got outside the church and somebody threw rice in his ear. How long does it take to go from the altar down the aisle to outside the church, a minute? So you can say I was happy for a minute.”
Norma felt terrible that she had even asked the question. “Poor Tot,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Well, don’t be, because it’s my own fault. I did it to myself. I should have known when I had to give my own self away, it was a bad omen. I should have just turned around and gone home but everybody wants a wedding, I guess. Women are fools; they will marry anything that has a heartbeat just to have a man.” She glanced over at Darlene again. “I’m still paying for her last fiasco, number three. And it’s not just the women—Dwayne Junior has already got two girls pregnant that I’m having to pay child support to. Sometimes I wish both my kids had turned queer and saved the world a lot of trouble.”
“Mother, I don’t think that’s funny.”
“I know you don’t but it’s true.” Tot looked at Betsy in the mirror. “From fifteen to twenty-five she managed to marry every half-wit in town and is dating number four.”
Her daughter defended her latest fiasco: “He has a job, Mother.”
Tot rolled her eyes. “Well, if collecting beer cans in the back of a truck is considered a profession, then I stand corrected.” She changed the subject: “Darlene, run down the street and get me a tuna fish salad on whole wheat and a bag of chips. Do you want anything, Norma?”
“No thanks, I just had lunch. I’ve been up since five-thirty.”
After Darlene left the shop, Tot shook her head. “Norma, just be glad you have a daughter with good sense. Darlene is about to drive me crazy. I tell you, from the day she flunked out of tap school it’s been downhill ever since. I went in her house the other morning and she’s sitting there at the table with a brick. I said, What are you doing and she said, I’m filing my nails. I spent a fortune sending her to beauty school and she’s filing her nails with a brick. After the tenth grade she was flunking everything but fooling with her hair night and day so I shipped her off to beauty school. I figured she’d be good at it. But I was wrong. And I don’t know where she got that thin fuzzy hair. She didn’t get it from my side of the family. She got it from the Whootens. No telling what’s in that gene pool, but it’s the worst possible advertisement for the hair business. I swear, between her and James and Dwayne Junior I’m so worn out I can hardly get up in the morning.”
Although she did not want people to know it, Tot had a heart of gold and would give you the shirt off her back if you needed it. That was the main reason she was so tired all the time. After working in the shop all day and on weekends she would pack up her kit and go over to all the older ladies’ homes and fix their hair for them. Most were either sick or bedridden and could not pay but Tot did not care. She said as long as her fingers could move no lady she knew was going to do without her weekly shampoo and set.
And as much as she complained about Darlene and Dwayne Jr., she let them have just about anything they wanted and baby-sat