The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel (14 page)

We were having a good laugh with William about the events of the weekend when Mary Bennett suddenly gasped and said, “Oh my God—WHAT was it like with Gerald's parents? Do you think they suspected?”

Gerald reappeared at that moment, shaking with laughter, and said, “No worries on that score. I just got off the phone with them—felt terrible for wakin' 'em up in the middle of the night, but I just could
not
wait another second to BE who I AM—and God bless 'em, they said in their hearts they'd always known about me and they knew about William the second we walked in. They were just waiting for the right time to bring it up. Mother said whatever we wanted to do was fine, but if ‘Sheila' was scheduled for any more appearances, she's insisting on giving her some fashion and makeup tips! William, they don't even care that you're not Jewish—they just want us to be happy.”

William stood up and declared that he would convert if it would make Gerald's mama happy. “If Sammy Davis Junior can do it, so can I.”

With eyes brimming, Gerald said, “Y'all, I intend for William to be a big part of my life. What I said about us eloping…well, nobody will marry us legally, not even in Livingston, but we're together—forever—no matter what.”

“We couldn't be happier for you guys,” Patsy said.

“That's the truth,” Tammy said.

“Ditto!” Mary Bennett said.

“And it's not like we're losing a Queen,” I said with a smile. “We're gaining a drag queen! Welcome to the family, Tammy Willie-Sheila!”

T
hree more pounds down,” said Sean Kelly, patting his diminished midsection as he stood on the scale. “I'll be able to fit into my Speedo this year.”

“If you own a Speedo,” I said, recording the weight in his chart, “I advise you to throw that sucker into the incinerator and bury the ashes. I'll let you in on a little secret. No man alive, not even Sean
Connery,
looks sexy in a
Speedo
.”

“You just haven't seen
me
yet,” he said with a wink as he hopped off the scale. Sean had devilish green eyes and a weathered face splashed with hundreds of freckles. Two years before, when he'd first visited the weight-loss center, he'd weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and had been recovering from a triple bypass. Now he was a lean one hundred seventy-eight pounds and healthy as a mule.

“Miss Susan might not approve of me ogling you in your swimsuit,” I said, referring to his wife of forty-five years.

“In Sue's book you can do no wrong. ‘Jill saved your life,' she always says to me. I think she's even written to the pope nominating you for sainthood.” He pumped his arms up and down as if he were jogging. “I'm up to fifteen miles a week now.”

I put a finger to my lips and shook my head.

“Don't sweat it,” Sean said. “The wicked witch of weight loss was leaving just as I was coming in.”

I'd tried to follow Penny's rules after she threatened to fire me, but two days later a client burst into tears because her weight was coming off so slowly. She wanted to whittle down to a size eight before her wedding, but she didn't have a chance in hell without exercise.

That's when I started scheduling coffee dates with clients who were frustrated by the program. I now had more personal training clients than I could handle.

“When are you going to quit this place and become your own boss?” Sean asked, handing me his credit card.

“Any day now.” I hadn't quite screwed up the courage to give up the steady paycheck.

“I've heard that before,” Sean said. “By the way, will you do me a favor? My buddy Malcolm is putting together Jackson's very first St. Paddy's Day parade. You think you could hang a flyer in the window?”

“Parade?” I said, snapping to attention. “With floats and candy-throwing and beauty queens gliding by to wave and blow kisses?”

“That's the idea.”

“Where do I sign up?”

Sean chuckled. “You want to be in the thing?”

“You better believe it, Buckwheat. Me and the world-famous Sweet Potato Queens will be the highlight of that parade.”

“Can't say I've ever heard of any ‘world-famous' Sweet Potato Queens.”

“Mark my words, once you meet us you'll never forget us.”

“I'm looking forward to it,” Sean said, stuffing his wallet into his rear pants pocket. “St. Paddy's is my favorite day of the year. Susan will make some kind of inedible low-cal, low-fat, but somehow Irish-type food and I'll console myself by guzzling mugs of green beer.”

“Make that light beer,” I said, pointing at the scale.

Sean made a grumbling sound. “You're just plain ol' mean. Just mean.”

 

The next step was coaxing the Queens to come to Jackson for the parade. I hadn't seen them together since we'd gathered in Atlanta a few years ago for the birth of Patsy's son, Mack. The parade would be an ideal opportunity for a raucous reunion.

I spoke with Patsy, who said she'd be thrilled to come. Then I dialed Tammy's number, and as usual the phone rang and rang. I'd been trying to catch her for the last several days. Just as I hung up, Penny came into my office and slapped a copy of
Soap Opera Digest
on my desk.

“Isn't this your friend, the actress?” Penny asked, proving herself to be a chronic eavesdropper.

I opened the magazine and saw a color photo of Mary Bennett sitting in a wing chair, wearing a lacy black dress with enormous shoulder pads. She was filing her blood-red, talonlike fingernails and staring haughtily into the camera. The title of the story read, “Mary Bennett Manning Cast as the Queen of Mean on New Evening Soap Opera
Eagle's Cove
.”

“Good gawd almighty,” I said. “I knew she was up for a big part, but I didn't know she'd gotten it. I can't believe she didn't tell me!”

“Look,” Penny said, pointing to the second paragraph. “‘Mary Bennett Manning, who will star in NBC's
Eagle's Cove,
claims that, in real life, she's nothing like her backstabbing character Electra Frostman. “I'm just a sweet little ol' magnolia blossom from Mississippi.”' The article also says she's been stepping out with her co-star Grant Frazier. Have you seen him? The man is sizzlin' hot, is all I'm sayin'.”

“You can't trust one word written in that rag,” I said. “Mary Bennett happens to be engaged.”

Penny gawked at me, awe in her eyes. “I just can't believe you're best friends with someone who's on TV. If she ever comes here for a visit, do you think I could meet her?”

“She doesn't come home that often,” I said. There was no way I was going to introduce Mary Bennett to a ditch-witch like Penny.

“I'd probably be so starstruck I'd babble like a baboon.”

Kinda like you do now,
I thought.

“I've never known anyone who's been on TV before. Will you call Mary Bennett and ask her for an autographed picture? I love my soaps.”

I sighed. Unfortunately Penny was still my boss, and I had a vested interest in keeping her happy.

“All right. I'll have her send one out.”

“Why don't you call now?” she said. “Never mind the long-distance charge. Talk as long as you like. Have a little gabfest on my dime.”

I didn't feel like talking to Mary Bennett with Penny breathing down my neck.

“It's still pretty early on the West Coast. I'd better wait.”

“It's ten a.m. in California,” Penny said, in a snippy tone. “I don't know why you're being so difficult about this—maybe you're not such big buddies with her after all.”

“Hold your water,” I said, reluctantly picking up the phone. “I'll give her a holler.” Maybe I'd sneak in a mention about the St. Paddy's parade while I had her on the horn.

I dialed, listening to several rings droning in my ear. Finally I heard a click.

“Hello,” said a weary voice on the other end.

“Brian? This is Jill. I was trying to reach Mary Bennett.”

“Hi, Jill,” Brian said in curt voice. “Mary Bennett isn't here.” He paused for such a long time I thought he'd hung up. “You heard she got the part, didn't you?”

“Yes! I just found out.”

“That changed everything. She's moved out. We split up.”

“You're kidding.”

“I'm afraid not. It was for the best. Let me give you her number at the studio. I don't have her new home number.”

Had fame gone to Mary Bennett's head?
Maybe that's why Brian sounded so abrupt. She'd broken his heart.

I
chewed my fingernails down to the quick as I watched Bob read my essay. He chuckled a few times, and I had to restrain myself from leaping up out of my chair and saying, “Which part made you laugh?”

After a few minutes, he looked up from my pages and started to rub his temple.

“It gave you a headache, didn't it?” I said. “I don't know why I asked you to read my pitiful little chicken scratchings. I'm not cut out to be a writer. You could dangle a participle right under my nose, and I'd never know it. I wouldn't recognize a gerund if it bit me on the butt.”

“Jill!” Bob said with a smile. “Calm down. I really liked it.”

“You did?” I said, resisting the urge to dance the cancan right in the middle of his classroom.

“I think it's ready to be sent out.”

“Sent out? What do you mean?”

“You do want it published, don't you?”

“Published?” I said, dramatically clutching at my chest. “You mean in print, out there…for complete strangers to ridicule?”

Bob chuckled. “You won't be ridiculed. Writers usually write to be published.”

“I told you! I'm
not
a writer. Writers wear pince-nez and ascots and trade bon mots at Elaine's. They're tortured souls who drink whiskey straight from the bottle…. Although come to think of it, I could probably cozy up to the whiskey part, and what the fuck is a pince-nez, anyway?”

“This is funny stuff. Humor's one of the hardest forms of prose to pull off,” Bob said, handing me my pages. “You're a writer—like it or not.”

I tried to imagine myself saying, “I'm Jill Conner, a writer.” It sounded as credible to me as saying, “I'm Jill Conner, pop singer and part-time proctologist.”

An Amazonian blonde, wearing an add-a-bead necklace and painted-on Bonjour jeans, sashayed into the classroom.

“Mr. Hollingsworth, do you have a minute?” There was so much sickly sweet hanging off her words, it made 'em all have several extra syllables. “I have a question about my term paper.”

“Sure, Tiffany,” Bob said. “Fire away.”

“I'd best git,” I said, unfolding my six-foot frame from the student-size desk.

“Don't leave,” he said. “I'll only be a minute.”

Adolescent girls today seemed far more sultry than when I was coming up. Bob's high school crawled with so many pouty-lipped, hip-swinging sex kittens it looked like the site of a Lolita convention. It was a miracle teenage boys could concentrate on anything beyond their pocket rockets.

Tiffany was especially comely. As she chatted with Bob, she kept tossing her long, blond hair over her shoulder and rotating the end of a pencil between her shiny pink lips. Tammy told me female students were constantly slipping perfumed notes into his briefcase.

Bob, on the other hand, was blind to their charms. He acted as if every woman on the planet was a snaggletoothed troll compared to Tammy. His desk had several framed pictures of the two of them, and after several years of marriage he still sent flowers and wrote her steamy love poems.

“Thank you SO MUCH, Mr. Hollingsworth,” purred the junior seductress just before she wiggled out the door.

“Sorry about that. Where were we?”

“You said something about publication. Maybe I'll try the
Fish Wrapper Gazette
.”

Bob shook his head. “Come on, Jill. Have a little faith in yourself.”

“I can't help it! The idea of anyone but close friends reading my stuff makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.” I stood to leave. “I appreciate your time, but I should let you get back to work. Say hello to Tammy for me.”

“If I ever see her,” he said with a sad sigh. “She's always working. She's given up her singing gig and is angling to be a full-fledged news anchor.”

“She didn't mention it to me.” Tammy hadn't said a word about work. She'd been too busy bubbling over about a new pair of diamond earrings.

“I hope she and I can spend some time alone before I leave.” Bob was in the army reserves, and was shipping out in a couple of days to Fort Dix, New Jersey, for his field training.

“I guess the diamond earrings were a good-bye gift.”

“Earrings?” Bob said, perplexed. “What earrings?”

A feeling of dread stirred in my gut—telling me that something rotten this way comes.

“What am I saying?” I said, banging my forehead with the palm of my hand. “That wasn't Tammy. I'm getting her mixed up with one of my clients.”

“Oh,” Bob said, accepting my line of bullshit with nary a raised eyebrow. He was so trusting, so innocent. “Jill, will you look after my girl while I'm gone? I worry about her so much.”

“You got it. No problem,” I said, mustering up a reassuring smile. Obviously Bob had not given Tammy those diamond earrings, so the question banging around in my little brain was, where the hell had she gotten them?

 

I sat around a table in the meeting room of the Jackson Public Library listening to a squeaky-voiced twenty-three-year-old graduate student named Fred read a section from his novel-in-progress. The work was entitled
One Man's Journey.
It was about an intrepid photographer named Fernando who had women constantly throwing themselves at him. The novel read like a series of
Penthouse Forum
fantasies strung together. Fred, however, considered his manuscript to be a groundbreaking work.

“Comments?” said our workshop leader, Louis, after Fred finished reading. Louis was in his forties and had a long gray ponytail.

“You misspelled ‘turgid,' dear. It's ‘t-u' not ‘t-e,'” said Bonnie. She was a retired schoolteacher who wrote poems about nature, her latest being “Ode to an Orchid.” “I also thought the setting for the scene was original.”

“You understood the symbolism, didn't you?” Fred asked, blinking behind smudged eyeglasses. “The bank vault represents how Fernando seals off his innermost feelings.” He went to explain all the other nuances and metaphors that might have escaped our inferior little minds.

“Where's the plot?” said Norah, who always sounded angry. She wrote aggressively feminist haikus about areolas and labias. “Am I the only one who is wondering when something's going to happen besides sex?”

“It doesn't need a plot, Norah,” Fred said very slowly, as if he were talking to a dim-witted child. “It's a literary novel.”

“I agree with Norah,” Louis said. “You should consider adding some conflict. The scene reads a little static.”

Louis wrote wonderful short stories, one of which had been published by a literary magazine called
Ploughshares
. He was also finishing up a novel.

I was too shy to comment. After all, what the hell did I know about writing novels? I just scribbled “good effort” on the bottom of Fred's pages and handed them back to him.

“Do you have anything today, Jill?” Louis asked.

I'd brought an essay about all the crazy diets my clients went on (cabbage, stewardess, grapefruit, and the ever-popular pink weenies and ice cream) and had planned to read it, but couldn't bring myself to share it with the others.

“Not this week,” I said. “But I
do
have a question. If, on the off chance, I ever wrote an essay good enough to be published, where would I send it?”

“
The New Yorker,
or
The Atlantic Monthly,
” Fred said, impatiently.

“
Guideposts
takes essays,” Bonnie said. “So does
Reader's Digest.
”

“Actually,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I was thinking of something a little bit less intimidating.”

“Good for you, Jill,” Louis said with an approving nod of his head. “Learn to walk before you run. Why don't you try that free circular in town? It's called
The Diddy Wah Diddy,
and they publish essays.”

“Thank you, Louis,” I said. “I'll look into it.”

I don't know why I lied. I had no intention of submitting my work anywhere. I wasn't near ready yet.

 

“Gerald?” I said, squinting through the peephole. He stood on my stoop with a very fat dachshund on a leash. I immediately flung open the door. “What a fabulous surprise! This must be the infamous Kitchie Koo.”

Every year Gerald and William sent Christmas cards with Kitchie posing in the center like a beloved child. Gerald claimed he warmed the dog's Alpo and fed him with a sterling silver spoon.

I hugged him, and he stiffened in my arms.

“Are you okay?” I said, after I dropped my embrace.

“Can we come in?” His expression was somber.

“Absolutely!” I said, beckoning him inside. “It's great to see you. Where's William?”

Gerald sat ramrod straight on the couch but allowed Kitchie to jump up on his lap. It was the first time I noticed he had dark crescents under his eyes, and he was unshaven.

“Did the two of you have a falling-out?”

Gerald didn't answer right away. His features were so still they could have been cast in plaster of Paris.

“You could say that,” he said in a barely audible voice.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” he answered immediately and vehemently. Judging by the sound of his voice, it must have been a bitter breakup.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I've quit my job at the university in San Francisco. There's a position at Jackson State. It's an adjunct professorship but it could turn into full-time. I've also rented an apartment here.”

I knew Gerald was close to becoming tenured in San Francisco. It used to be all he could talk about, so I was shocked to hear he'd left his job.

“I wanted you to know I was back in town. Naturally, I'd like to get together with you and Tammy.”

“Of course,” I said, sitting beside him. “Sometimes it helps to get these things off your chest. See this,” I said, grabbing one of my ears. “This is one big, ol' floppy listening device. It is right here, waiting for you to talk into it.”

Gerald placed Kitchie on the floor and stood. “I'll be glad to gab all you want. But there's one thing I won't discuss, and that's William. Understand?”

“But—”

“I mean it, Jill. I never want to hear his name mentioned again.”