Southern Legitimacy Statement:
When I lived in the South (which began when I was about three months old), I didn’t fit in; I was different. When I later attended a university in and therefore necessarily lived in Yankee country, I didn’t fit in; I was different. When I later lived for a few years in the West, I didn’t fit in; I was different. I lived in three Southern states as a child and as an adult and worked, and therefore lived shorter term, in three others. I worked as a regular performer on the Grand Ole Opry, and, of course, toured throughout the South. I appreciate the many good things about the South, including the literature, the music, and many dear friends. Nevertheless, and although I am legitimately Southern, I don’t seem to fit in any better than I do elsewhere.
While I have a friend and former work colleague who had to deal with a dead mule, I have not yet enjoyed that dubious pleasure. I have walked behind a few mules, however, and I remember the late, great Hank Williams saying, “You’ve got to smelled a lot of mule manure, ’fore y’can sing like a hillbilly.” I can sing like a hillbilly. I am a hillbilly.
Incidentally, the small town outside which I currently reside still has one of those local/community business directories—in print, on paper.
Git Along Home
Cynthia’s sister, Isabella, lay dying in the Swedish town where both were born. In a tearful telephone conversation, Bella reported the doctors’ estimate she had five weeks to live. The sisters, despite some friction in their pre-teen years, had shared a close relationship from their teens onward; now, Bella was dying, and Cynthia felt devastated.
The news made Cynthia want to fly to Bella. Like most residents of the rural settlement where she lived, however, Cynthia lacked the financial resources for the $5,493 ticket. She thought the trip a fantasy and gave it no further consideration.
Cynthia had abandoned Gregory, her husband of twenty-four years, for Arnold, a man she met in a therapy group prescribed by their respective psychiatrists. Greg once commented negatively on her weight two decades earlier, and Cynthia felt unappreciated ever afterward. Arnold took his new acquaintance to lunch after a therapy session and told her he preferred more “curvey” women. Their relationship blossomed from that day forward. Besides Gregory’s earlier slight, Cynthia resented his incorrigible rationality.
Most of the time, Cynthia resented that Gregory wouldn’t fight back, when she attacked him, although she sometimes appreciated the way he would hug her and remind her of his love and talk her down from her explosive moods. She appreciated that Greg took good care of her in every way, but she still resented his consistent and intimidating self-sufficiency and his irritating hyper-rationality. Arnold exhibited none of those characteristics. He couldn’t take care of Cynthia, could hardly take care of himself. He needed someone to take care of him, and Cynthia assumed that role with joy.
Surviving on disability payments after a workplace accident years earlier, Arnold never had surplus funds. Cynthia didn’t mind that—it was just another way he differed from Gregory: Arnold needed her, Gregory didn’t. Bella’s diagnosis made Cynthia wish she had access to Greg’s savings—of which she had taken half in their divorce—to visit her sister. The financial straits in which Cynthia and Arnold had lived since they got together became less appealing, as did Arnold’s general ineptitude.
Greg often exchanged emails with Cynthia, always reminding her of his enduring love, so she told him about Bella. He replied within an hour and, to Cynthia’s surprise, offered to help her travel to Sweden. No, Cynthia thought, that’s no surprise. Greg loves me.
Cynthia surprised herself by deciding not to avail herself of Gregory’s help. Perhaps she had matured, perhaps she thought the time remaining meant she couldn’t reach Bella’s bedside soon enough, perhaps such a trip constituted too big, too frightening a project—whatever the reason, Cynthia did not accept the offer.
The next day neighbors visited bearing fruits, vegetables, and baked goods, and offering condolences. One of them, whom Cynthia had always thought rather scatter-brained, gave Cynthia a lottery ticket, saying, “Maybe Lady Luck will help you.” Cynthia thanked both, told them of Greg’s kind offer, enjoyed chatting with them for an hour, and bade them farewell. Later, an elderly couple from down the road visited with greetings and neighborly bonhommie. In the course of the congenial conversation, the couple both mentioned they had seen Arnold having lunch with another woman at a café in the regional town.
Cynthia went shopping the following day. Once finished shopping, she stopped by the lottery-and-tobacco desk and presented her ticket. To her amazement, she learned she had won $10,000. Thinking, I can see Bella, Cynthia hurried home to ring Bella immediately but then recognized the time in Sweden was 4:30am.
Cynthia decided to wait three hours and instead rang a travel agent to book flights. At 7:45 that morning, Sweden time, she rang the hospital. A nurse said the patient’s condition had deteriorated and prevented Isabella from taking the call. The nurse suggested the caller ring in thirty minutes.
Time dragged, as Cynthia waited and thought about Bella, and about Greg, and about Arnold. Cynthia surprised herself with, What did I ever see in Arnold? He doesn’t do anything as well as Greg. She felt guilty, thinking thus about her partner, then thought, Why shouldn’t I feel critical of Arnold? I was critical of Greg for decades for no reason. She suspended her internal dialogue to ring the hospital again.
The nurse presented a different, almost officious attitude on this later call and required that Cynthia confirm her identity and her relationship to Isabella. Once satisfied regarding the caller’s identity, the nurse assumed a softer tone and informed Cynthia her sister had died.
While the news did not surprise Cynthia, she felt more devastated and distraught—and now also bereft. Cynthia needed to do something to ease the ache inside her. She could not share Bella’s last moments, so what, then, could the grieving sister do? She needed succor. Making herself think rationally—Where did I learn to do that? she asked herself rhetorically—Cynthia recognized Arnold could not help, could not provide the succor she needed, could not provide anything she needed.
Suppressing the turmoil inside her, Cynthia called the travel agent and changed her reservations. She booked a flight the next day to the international airport nearest Greg’s home. If I can’t visit Isabella, Cynthia thought, I can visit someone else who cares about me. Cynthia packed that night, rose earlier than her accustomed hour, drove to Hamilton before daylight, caught the 6:15 train to Puhinui, then a taxi to the airport’s international departures area.
At the airport, Cynthia had half an hour to check in and get to the departure gate. She hurried to check her suitcase and obtain her boarding pass. She chafed while waiting for the security checks but reached the gate as the airline announced the final boarding call. Cynthia presented her boarding pass and walked down the tunnel and into the Boeing 737-9.
Relieved her seatmates on both sides wore masks, Cynthia read a book for four hours, interrupted by a snack, then slept for four hours and read for three more before the jet landed. Once through customs, she rang Rent-a-Bomb, who picked her up fifteen minutes later. The company had two cars available with automatic transmissions, which Cynthia required; the one she rented was eight years old—“but reliable,” they told her. Forms completed, deposit paid, Cynthia made her way to Interstate-65, then headed south and across the state line.
Following the Google directions she had printed out and now kept beside her on the passenger seat, she left the freeway at the Ardmore-Elkmont exit and followed Shipley Hollow Road to its end at a “T” junction. Cynthia left Leggtown Road for the road in Greg’s address about 2:00pm—when new worries assailed her. What if he has someone there—a girlfriend or a live-in lover? Even if he loves me, and she felt sure he did, what if he has someone else? Those thoughts terrified Cynthia and almost sent her back to the airport.
Tremulous, she crept along Gregory’s road, reaching his driveway before three. The drive, the house, the hill beyond—familiar from photographs—reassured Cyndy that she had arrived where she wanted and needed to be. Feeling desperate for Greg’s love but terrified of rejection, she followed the drive to his house.
Gregory must have heard the car, because he walked out to greet her. The love in his eyes reassured Cynthia, and they shared a hug. He asked about Isabella, and they mourned together, then Greg showed Cynthia the the groves of fruit trees he knew she particularly liked, showed her the raised beds with his vegetables, showed her the trees he had planted and the bigger ones already on the place. He showed her the garden beds of greens she knew he liked, showed her the creek, showed her the garage with its one-bedroom apartment, but mostly showed her that sharing with her was still the most important thing in his life.
Later, Greg made dinner and they sat and chatted for hours. When he said, “Omigosh! It’s two hours later for you. You must be tired,” then offered Cynthia the cottage or the guest room, she felt frightened. Beset by conflict between her confidence in Greg’s love and her fear she had mistreated him too much for too long, Cynthia hesitated to tell him what she was thinking. She worried anew about hesitating, because she feared he might sense something was wrong. Despite her terror of rejection, Cynthia risked all by telling her ex-husband, “I’d prefer to fall asleep in your arms, like we used to do.”
When Greg said, “Oh, gee, Cynthia, I’d like that so much, but I’ve made a commitment to someone else. I wouldn’t have, if I’d known you wanted us to be together, but y—” Cynthia opened her mouth to yell at her ex- and tell him what a creep he was but burst into tears before she could say anything. He enfolded her in a hug and comforted her, weeping together, until she could walk to his guest room and quietly cry herself to sleep.
Cynthia woke in the night and thought of slipping into Greg’s bed to try to change his mind. Recognizing how very important commitments had always been to Greg, she accepted defeat and eventually cried herself back to sleep. When she rose the next morning, she found Greg as loving as ever but also as staunch in honoring his commitments. They wept together, before she drove out his drive and back to the airport.
