Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [200]
“What if I was walking down the street and you saw me coming toward you, what would you say?”
“I’d say, There comes my husband, Macky Warren. What do you think I’d say? Here comes a perfect stranger?”
“Norma.”
“Oh, all right. If I didn’t know you and I saw you coming down the street, I’d say . . . Oh, I don’t know, Macky, I’m no good at these silly games, you sound like Aunt Elner. Go look at a picture of yourself if you want to see what you look like, go look in the yearbook where we were voted Cutest Couple. That’s what you look like now—older but still cute.”
It was not the answer he was looking for.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you think a person can still look cute when they’re older?”
“How old do I look?”
“Well . . . you look your age. You look like you’re supposed to look, Macky. I don’t know what you want me to say anymore. Macky, go ask somebody else. I’ve got to figure out if we should have potato chips or fruit salad. Just as soon as I decide on chips everybody will say they wanted fruit salad.” She went back to her list but said to him as he got up to leave, “I’ve never heard of anything so crazy in my life.”
After Macky left she thought about what he had said. He was obviously worried about getting old, but was he? How about her?
It was hard for her to tell, being with him day after day, year after year. They had never really been separated except for the night she’d stayed in the hospital when she had Linda and the three days she and Aunt Elner had spent in St. Louis visiting Aunt Elner’s niece Mary Grace. But little things had started to happen. She found herself going sound to sleep sitting straight up in the chair at night when they were watching television. Macky would more often than not wake her up to go to bed. Her eyes were bad now; she had to wear her glasses almost all the time if she wanted to read or do any close work. Macky needed reading glasses but he was too stubborn to get them and picked hers up when he read the paper. He had stretched all her glasses.
Maybe he was right, maybe they were getting old. When he came back home she was standing in the bedroom in her panties and bra looking at herself in the full-length mirror. “Macky,” she said, “does my body make me look fat?”
He would not have answered that question for all the tea in China.
THE NINETIES
Popsicle Toes
WHEN MACKY WALKED in the door Norma was waiting for him in the living room and said, “Macky, sit down.” The look on her face told him she was about to tell him something terrible or wonderful, he never knew which. But he sat down.
“What is it?”
“I’ve been on the phone with Linda,” she said.
“Yes, and?”
“And. She said she wants to have a baby, she says her biological clock is ticking.”
“Uh-huh, has she met someone?”
Norma got up and started to rearrange the pillows on the sofa, just like she always did when she was nervous. “No, she hasn’t met anyone but she has been calling different agencies.”
Macky was alarmed. “Agencies? What the hell is she doing that for? There are plenty of men where she works.”
Norma cleared her throat. “That’s just it, she doesn’t want a man; well, at least not in person. She wants the baby but not the husband . . . that’s what she said.”
“What?”
“Now, before you get mad at me, I did not say I thought it was a good idea but she has decided to go to a”—Norma weighed her words very carefully—“a place that specializes in that sort of thing. She’s looking into one of those . . . you know . . . bank things.”
“Banks?”
Norma was becoming impatient. “Oh, Macky, don’t make me have to spell it out for you. She wants to get pregnant but she does not want to get married again. She’s going to one of those places that deal in . . . frozen . . .” Norma struggled but no matter how hard she tried she could not bring herself to say the actual word. She glanced out the front window to see if anyone was in hearing distance, then spelled it out: “S-P-E-R-M.”
“What?”
“Macky, have you never heard of artificial insemination?