Steve Martin (of sicolamartin) and I were talking the other day about how fun it is to mentally make up stories about people you see in random photographs at antique stores (what, you don't do that? hmm) Side note: I buy old pictures and cards at antique stores and give them to people. It's kind of my thing. Anyway, Steve said, "hey, you should actually write stories to go along with the pictures and blog about them." Good idea, right?! Well, last year I wrote this blog, a short story about a lonely self-amputee who stole her neighbor's cat. It's pretty much the only story writing experience I have--I've never been learned to do the story writin'--I just enjoy arrangin' words!
June Mathis was born May 7, 1949 just outside of Electra, Texas. Saying she was born "just outside" of Electra doesn't do nearly as much clarifying good as if it were "just outside of Dallas" or San Antonio. Electra's a small panhandle town surrounded by small panhandle towns. Only place up there worth a pushpin in a map is Amarillo.
June was born to John, a welder and Claire Ann, a book keeper who worked up until about the third trimester when June's wiggling began to impede her ability to get a good breath. Claire Ann found it hard to keep her eyes uncrossed and her head clear when standing for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time, so she resolved, without much deliberation and almost with extreme anticipation, to idleness and sleeping for the rest of her pregnancy. Had she not been with child, this cross-eyed predicament was likely to manifest at some point; Claire Ann had grown to be a bit of a weary and paranoid soul. This baby was Claire Ann's "get out of doing anything free" card. Understandably, this frustrated her husband, John, because he'd grown quite accustomed to her hand battered, hand fried, hand served chicken each night.
Rest assured he was still fed mighty well--Mrs. Barefoot, their widowed and persistently cooking neighbor, came by their 3 bedroom 2 bath house every night at 6:25 sharp with one of two meals: green bean casserole with mashed potatoes and a pitcher of sweet tea or fried green beans with squash and a pitcher of sweet tea. Mrs. Barefoot believed in sweet tea as much as she believed in America. She didn't as much believe in green beans, but her deceased husband did. Their pantry (and cellar and bedroom and part of their living room) was a living example of Cold War stockpiling. Since he was finally (she'd deny the word "finally") gone, she could start to get rid of the stacks of canned clutter that blocked creamy yellow paint he'd brushed onto their walls 3 summers before.
At 6:15 every night, Claire Ann would roll off of the couch and waddle to the powder room in a usually futile attempt freshen up her drab, lifeless face. At 6:24 each night, against her will but knowing it was their only hope of a hot meal, Claire Ann would tap and tug at her hair one last time in front of the entry hall mirror in anticipation of Mildred's delivery. The mirage of being put together was something Claire Ann would chase to the grave. She kept a tube of cherry red lipstick in her apron pocket for moments like this. That most of it ended up on her teeth was the irony. At exactly 6:25, she'd open the door, take the food, say thank you, and flash an insincere smile. Their relationship had been strained, to say the least, ever since Mildred's husband Ernie's funeral.
Claire Ann was a savvy girl. She knew a lingering pair of peepers when she saw them. As the casket descended into the ground, and every watered eye at the graveyard watched intently as if to make sure no one dropped it, Claire Ann turned, chin to shoulder, to clear her throat. That's when she saw Mildred look at John, that way, for the first time. Claire Ann had known that their neighbors' marriage was not the most loving institution, but until that day, she'd never thought Mildred was a shifty-eyed whore of a husband stealer. Granted, John didn't seem to reciprocate the romantically ophthalmic advancement. But still, Claire Ann's suspicions were ignited...
