Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [194]
It had suddenly become obvious to her that if you wake up every morning and it takes you almost an hour to talk yourself into just getting out of bed, something is wrong. Every morning for the past twenty-plus years she had been her own mental cheerleader, doing back flips and chanting, “Be happy you are alive, life is great, rah rah rah . . . sis boom bah! You will be dead soon enough, don’t waste your life away, get up, get up, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, it’s a new day,” and so on. But this morning the cheerleader inside just sat down with her pom-poms and flopped back on the bed beside her, saying, “I’m exhausted . . . I give up, I can’t do it anymore.” She was like that Old Man River, tired of living, but feared of dying, and this morning she had realized that she could no longer jes’ keep rolling along.
After a lifetime, day after day, of getting up and taking care of first her brothers and sisters, then her own children, a drunken husband, her parents, she was like the elephant, so exhausted from carrying such a heavy load that she just fell down and couldn’t get up. Poor Tot knew that not only could she not go on but she did not want to go on. Each of her children had been such a disappointment, and she had not had one good holiday in her life. Every Christmas had been the same. James drunk as a coot by ten in the morning, passed out by noon, and Darlene and Dwayne Jr. constantly fighting over something. Darlene was on her fourth marriage and her daughter Tammie Louise seemed to be taking after her—only ten and already crazy about the boys with the motorcycles. The last time Tot had seen Dwayne Jr. he had come to visit and walked off with her good silver candlesticks to buy more dope with, she guessed, or to hand over to that skinny girlfriend of his, the one with the penciled-in black eyebrows who smoked one cigarette after another. Where he had found her was a mystery that she was afraid to solve.
And neither one of her children would listen to her. They both snapped, “Well, look who you married.” Not that she hadn’t tried with Darlene. She had sent her to the Dixie Cahill School of Tap and Twirl, but Dixie had sent her back home with a note.
Dear Tot,
Darlene does not know her right from her left and I am afraid she will never make a dancer. You work too hard for your money to waste it on any more lessons.
Sincerely,
Dixie
Then, after years of putting up with James and his drinking, and begging and pleading with him to quit, they found him one day passed out in the back of the garage, sick as a dog from one of his long binges. The doctor finally told him, “If you take one more drink it will kill you.” After all the years of Tot threatening him, crying, that one sentence did it.
He sobered up and soon was holding down a good job and the next thing she knew he was sitting in the living room telling her about some woman he had met in A.A. He looked her right in the eye and said, “Tot, for the first time in my life I am really in love.” There she sat, after having borne his two children, put up with his drinking for over thirty-two years, and he had the nerve to tell her he was in love for the first time in his life. At that moment it occurred to her why people are driven to murder and she made a mental note not to support the death penalty.
If she had had the strength, she would have killed him, but she was unable to move. So she sat and stared while he went on and on about how sometimes in this life people are lucky enough to find their true soul mate. How for the first time since he was a boy he was able to laugh again. How the world looked bright and new and shiny again. About how much he liked the new woman’s children and that he felt he now had a chance to be a better father this time than he was the last time, now that he was sober, that is.
Then he finished off his dissertation on love and second chances. “I can’t tell you how much better I feel now that I’ve been honest with you.”
“Oh