Southern Living (23 page)

“That mold adds some color to the bricks,” Josephine said.

“That mold is tacky.”

Suzanne had invited Madeline VanDermeter, the executive director of the International Dogwood Festival, in hopes of changing her mind. This year’s official sister-country sponsors of the festival, named as one of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s
top-ten events of the South, included Britain, as it did every year, as well as Japan (to please the new Toyota executives in town) and Botswana (a gratuitous nod to the majority black population who generally ignored the festivities anyway). And, much to Suzanne’s displeasure, instead of getting the distinguished, white-haired, crimson-cheeked, parliament member from Wales, she and Boone had been chosen to host and quarter Ed Nwasu, the assistant attorney general for the Tswana-majority, south African country.

Feeling as if her status in the community was under siege, Suzanne called to complain to the organizers in the festival office downtown, a houselike, faux-stucco, Georgian-style building painted the creamy white of dogwood blossoms with shutters the color of the tree’s foliage. In front of the building stood a new, specially commissioned, three-tiered fountain with dogwood blossoms and cherubs sculpted into the base. Unfortunately for Madeline VanDermeter, it had caught the attention of the new editors at the
Reflector
, who wrote an editorial critical of the extravagant purchase. Though the fountain remained, she no longer lit it at night.

“When I put my name in to be a host, I told you I specifically wanted Lord Benjamin,” Suzanne said.

“It’s an honor to host any of the delegations,” the receptionist consoled her.

“But can’t you change your mind?”

“No, ma’am. Everyone’s already been contacted.”

“Well, I am not happy about this,” Suzanne huffed. “No, ma’am. I am not happy. Not one bit.”

“Lord Benjamin’s gonna be stayin’ in your neighborhood. You can stop by and see him.”

“Who’s he stayin’ with?”

“Someone new in town …”

“Who?”

Suzanne heard a ruffling of papers as the receptionist looked for the name she could not remember. “Armbuster?” she finally said. “Jodi and Marc … Now what a strange name that is.”

Suzanne breathed in deeply and ground her teeth. “I can’t believe this! I just can’t believe this.”

“Mr. Marc’s the president of WSEL.”

“They’re not even from Selby!”

Unruffled, the young woman continued. “I guess she—Mrs. Armbuster?—she went to college in England or somethin’. That’s probably why Miss Madeline put Lord Benjamin with them.”

Suzanne thought of the new Yves Delorme bedding she’d bought for the guest room, an elegant mixture of satin off-whites and whites. When she put them on the bed the first time, it reminded Suzanne of a late-night TV commercial for an at-home teeth-whitening system
—before … after
—and, in front of the bathroom mirror, she held up an example of each color beside her open-mouth smile to make certain Dr. Pilcher was doing his job. She thought of Jodi Armbuster, and how she needed braces on her bottom teeth.

“Well, this just isn’t gonna do,” said Suzanne, on her third glass of chardonnay. “It’s just not gonna do. I don’t even know what to feed someone from Africa.”

As Josephine polished, humming along with the hymns on WHXK that she listened to on her paint-splattered transistor radio, Suzanne walked the house with her Daytimer, listing the remaining items John David needed to address before the Dogwood party. Along the way, she noted with pleasure all the changes they’d made,
the additions they’d found on their trips to Atlanta and Charleston—the matching pair of Rose Medallion Chinese vases for the window table in Boone’s den … the gilt, ram’s-head finials for the living room curtain rods … the new fake fireplace they’d built in the living room, flanked by waist-high Imari vases from Jane Jarsen Antiques in Atlanta, even though John David had wanted to buy modern, black Tizio lamps for these high-profile spots … the Zuber and Cie wallpaper in the downstairs powder room, which featured scenes of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, their genitals discreetly concealed by leafy flora that looked like banana leaves.

At seven-thirty—two hours after calling her husband to ask him to take the minute steaks out of the freezer—Josephine buffed to a shine the final piece of silver, a large soup ladle. She leaned back in her chair and looked at the seventeen spent rags on the table before her, all soiled with gray tarnish and the robin’s-egg blue of Wright’s Silver Polish.

After rolling her neck to relieve the tension from sitting so long, she gathered the rags and went to wash her hands in the kitchen, where Suzanne was using a rubber spatula to scrape the last of the mashed potatoes from a clear Rubbermaid container with
DONNA K
. written on the side in black marker.

“Did you get the bread plate, too, Josephine?” Suzanne asked. “The one on the small sideboard?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As Suzanne carried the Portmeirion botanical-print bowl of potatoes to the warm oven, she noticed from the corner of her eye that Josephine was staring at her.

“Is somethin’ wrong, Josephine?” she asked. “Didn’t I already give you your paycheck?”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” she answered, diverting her glance to the floor. “No, no. Everything’s fine.”

Yet on the way out to her car, Josephine wondered if she should
have put the potion in a different spot. Perhaps the oil that she had dripped into Suzanne’s Playtex rubber gloves was laying, out of reach, in a small pool at the end of a finger. She had thought of rubbing a bit into one of Suzanne’s prenatal vitamins, but she didn’t seem to take them with any regularity.

Driving down Forest Lee Boulevard, Josephine pondered ways she could administer the drops secretly and effortlessly. She passed a billboard that featured a gigantic squeeze tube whose words were intentionally blurry and indecipherable.
“Toothpaste … or hemorrhoid cream? It’s time for LASIK surgery from Dr. Marty Lanton.”

“Now why didn’t I think of that before,” she said to herself. “Lord, thank you for that inspiration.”

F
or forty minutes, Margaret stood over the hot, gas grill on the patio, spearing with a fork and flipping sliced, marinated zucchini, summer squash, eggplant and Portobello mushrooms for thirty-two people. Though her eyes stung and her hair reeked of garlicky smoke, Margaret was ecstatic. This was her most lucrative catering job to date, and the first that actually called upon her knowledge and love of ethnic food. Jodi and Marc Armbuster, who tasted her bruschetta at a grand opening reception for a new Montessori preschool, called and ordered a Mediterranean buffet, including tabbouleh, hummus, a tossed salad of herb greens and baby romaine,
grilled lamb and dark-meat chicken tossed with feta cheese and fresh mint … and the vegetables, all sliced by Donna Kabel, who offered to help when Margaret was shopping for supplies.

“We basically want a garlic buffet,” Marc had said when they interviewed her.

“We’re going through garlic withdrawal here,” added Jodi.

“Put garlic in everything,” Marc said.

“Even the salad dressing,” said Jodi.

“What about your guests?” Margaret asked. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but garlic isn’t a favored staple in the native population’s diet.”

The husband and wife looked at each other in surprise. “I thought you were one of us,” Marc said.

“What do you mean?” Margaret asked.

“One of us. You know—from the outside.”

“We’re change agents,” Jodi interjected. “We were brought in to drag this town’s television broadcasting into the twenty-first century. They need garlic in their food here, you’ve got to admit it.”

Not wanting to alienate herself and lose a potential client, Margaret nodded. Yet she fondly remembered the pre-Armbuster weathercaster on WSEL. Instead of relying upon computerized graphics, the balding, portly Billy Jeskins used maps of North America and Georgia that were permanently painted on a white dry-erase board, and with a black marker he would illustrate the easterly movement of the jet stream or an approaching storm. The daily highs across Georgia were recorded in his handwriting, the hottest temp written in red and the lowest in blue, and in winter months he sometimes added tiny icicles to the latter.

“Besides,” Jodi continued, “they won’t even know what they’re eating. People always say they don’t like garlic, but when they eat something with garlic in it, they always love it.”

The Armbusters told Margaret that their trademark for entertaining was casual elegance, and indeed this was the case. A white,
damask tablecloth covered the dining room table, and Margaret and Donna served the food in a variety of bowls and baskets the Armbusters had collected in their years of childless travel. Red and white gladioli poked out of a vase fashioned from an old lens from a historic Canadian lighthouse. The only in-bad-taste outcast was intentional, a floral centerpiece in the middle of the glass coffee table in the living room. The International Dogwood Festival coordinator had commissioned Mattel to issue a commemorative Dogwood Festival Barbie dressed in green go-go boots, a beret with dogwood blossoms embroidered on the top, and a coat with genuine ivory-dyed mink collar and cuffs. It cost three hundred dollars, and though Jodi and Marc called to order one the day they read about it in the
Reflector
, they were already too late.

“Sold out?” Jodi asked. “How can that be? You don’t have one left?”

“No, ma’am.”

“None?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Not one?”

“Well,” she said, lowering her voice to a semi-whisper. “We do have five more, but they’re … African American Barbies.”

Jodi was silent.

“Black Barbies?” explained the woman.

“You’re kidding me.”

“We didn’t order ’em but they sent ’em anyway. But we can put you on an order form for the next shipment of regular Barbies.”

“Nobody wants the black Barbies?” Jodi asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“I’ll take three,” she said.

Jodi took one of the Barbies to David Messenger Florists near her house.

“I want to speak with one of your gay floral arrangers.”

The clerk looked puzzled. “Ma’am?”

“Do you have someone on staff who’s gay? I need someone with
a sophisticated Yankee sense of humor, and they’re the only locals who seem to have it.”

The young woman smiled politely and disappeared into the back of the store. After a hushed conversation between three or four people, out came a balding man in khakis and an L.L. Bean button-down shirt.

“Can I help you with somethin’, ma’am?”

Definitely not gay
, Jodi thought.

“I want this Barbie in a centerpiece,” she said. “And I need it over-the-top. Funny.”

He took the Barbie from her. “Well, she sure is cute.”

“No, she’s not. She’s vulgar, and I want to capture that somehow. I want something idol-like, something altarlike … as in, come and pray to black-princess dogwood Barbie. And make sure it has silk dogwood blossoms in it.”

Disappointed with the tasteful outcome, Jodi disassembled the centerpiece, scavenged around the house for some other items and rebuilt the arrangement as she saw fit. The final result included Dogwood Blossom Festival Black Barbie rising from the middle of two antique mannequin’s hands, set on their wrists so they flanked Barbie like large parentheses. On the fingers of the plaster hands were fuchsia Lee Press-on Nails, and the sprays of faux dogwood blossoms jutted out in all directions, as if to mimic a divine aura. Next to that, sitting in a plate holder, was a sign on a paneled card that Jodi had printed out on the computer:
“Please join us for a celebration of the Dog Days of Spring, April 12. Watch for Invitations.”

With her bare hands, Margaret tossed the salad in an oversized stainless-steel bowl, coating the greens with a cumin-flavored vinaigrette. Suddenly, Donna walked through the swinging kitchen door. As it opened, the buzz of talking guests poured into the room.

“They’re not takin’ the grilled asparagus spears,” she said to Margaret. “I don’t think they know how to eat ’em.”

“Just tell them they’re like carrot sticks,” Margaret said.

“I did. I even showed ’em how to do it.” She set the silver platter on the butcher-block island. “I sure am gettin’ lots of compliments on my tie, though.”

At a caterers’ supply store in Atlanta, Margaret had found bow ties made from a material of illustrated black-eyed peas floating in a violet background. Both she and Donna wore these, along with long-sleeve white shirts tucked into black pants.

“Miss Suzanne’s here,” Donna said. “The lady I do all my cookin’ for? She wants me to cater a party she’s gonna have in a few weeks.”

“Do you cater?”

“No, but that’s one reason I wanted to help you out tonight. To see how you do this.” She picked up a tray Margaret had filled with circles of sliced, grilled Italian eggplant, each topped with a dollop of spicy baba ganoush. “And I think I could do it,” she said. “If Jackee helped me.”

“When is it?” Margaret asked.

“Friday week.”

The phrase still caught Margaret off guard, one of the linguistic remnants of the English who settled Georgia three hundred years earlier. It was one of those wonderful, path-of-least-resistance, verbal shortcuts so common in the language here;
Friday week
was an impressive five syllables shorter than
a week from this coming Friday
.

“Let me help you,” Margaret said. “I’m not doing anything that night. Dewayne’s working that weekend.”