Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [27]
Mother Smith played a few strains of the funeral march and pointed to a jar on the desk. “Oh, that’s right, thank you, Mother Smith. Last week we told you about a new instant coffee but we will have to take it off our list of recommendations, and I am just as sorry as I can be about it but it’s just not up to snuff, as they say, is it, Mother Smith? She says no and made a face but as I say to all my sponsors, Keep trying because we are behind you one hundred percent.
“And remember our motto: If at first you don’t succeed, try again.”
Unfortunately for Bobby, his mother’s motto was one he was to hear from her firsthand the very next week, when he dragged in the door having lost the Bazooka Bubble Gum Bubble Blowing Contest for the second year in a row. It didn’t help him feel much better. He had practiced long and hard until his jaws were sore but he came in sixth. Rats, he thought. Everybody in the family is always winning something but me.
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
DOC WAS HOME for lunch and Dorothy stood by the kitchen table waiting for an opinion about the new hat she had just bought for their upcoming trip to Memphis. He studied the object perched on her head for a long moment and then said, “Oh, I don’t know, Dorothy. As far as hats go, I’ve seen worse.”
“Well, thanks a lot,” she said.
Mother Smith jumped in and offered, “I like it,” and gave her son a dirty look.
Dorothy blinked hopefully. “Really?”
“Oh, yes, it’s very stylish. Don’t ask him. He doesn’t know anything about hats.”
Doc readily agreed. “That’s right. Don’t ask me. I can’t tell one from the other.”
“Honestly,” said Dorothy, “I don’t know why I go to so much trouble if you don’t know the difference. I could just stick a pot on my head for all you care.”
When she left the room Mother Smith said, “Now you’ve done it.”
Doc shrugged. “Well, they all do look alike, only this one looks like a pancake with some fruit and a dead bird on top.” Beatrice Woods, who was sitting at the table, laughed. Doc leaned over and spoke under his breath. “Count yourself lucky you can’t see it. You wouldn’t know whether to shoot it or eat it.”
After Doc had gone back to the drugstore they all sat around the table talking about the upcoming trip. Dorothy sighed. “I just wish I could lose ten pounds before I go.”
Mother Smith said, “I just wish I was eighteen again and knew what I know now.”
Dorothy said, “What would you do differently?”
“Oh,” she said, “I’d marry the same man and have a child, of course, but I would have waited awhile before I did it . . . maybe been a bachelor girl like Ann Sheridan or a career woman and had my own secretary, smoked cigars, and used bad language.”
Dorothy and Beatrice laughed and Dorothy said, “Beatrice, if you could have any wish come true, what would it be?”
Beatrice, whose favorite radio show was the Armchair Traveler, thought for a moment. “I would wish I could get in a car and drive all over the world and never stop.”
Dorothy reached over and touched her hand. “Would you, honey?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“It sure would,” said Mother Smith and quickly changed the subject. She could see that Dorothy was about to get emotional. What was doubly heartbreaking about Beatrice was that even though being blind had limited her life, she did not have an ounce of self-pity and they had to be sure she never heard any in their voices. And it was especially hard when the thing she wished for could never come true.
A week later, the old adage about the boy who cried wolf once too often came true for Bobby when he woke up and claimed he couldn’t go to school that day because he had broken out all over in big red spots. Dorothy knew this was the day of a big math test that he