The hotel clerk offers me a free dinner at
the bar. I accept. It's way past ten, I haven't eaten and nearby restaurants have
stopped serving. Downstairs by the serve-yourself salad bar, I find a three-by-five-inch
menu printed in italics.
The effort invested in producing a four-item
menu was touching—the flourish of oblique script adds the panache of pride: basil
tomato bisque, Caesar salad, brownies and beverage of choice including beer, red
wine or Chardonnay. This hotel was striving to offer the ultimate guest experience. The wine was out of
a box—a box from California that was probably made in China.
I perch on a bar stool next to a woman
in black slacks, a sparkly shirt and dark blond hair, Cheryl from, as she calls it, “Oh-hiya.” She's talking to Joe on
her left, yet shoots a friendly glance to me on her right, “You don’t believe
there are rednecks in Ohiya? Well I’m here to tell ya there are. We were six
kids in my family. Let me tell you something, other kids went to the beach on
vacation.”
As I try to figure out what beach exists
in landlocked Ohio, Cheryl adds, “We didn’t even go to the river, and we
lived down the street from it. We played in the house.”
Cheryl says that abandoned cars populated an empty lot near her family’s home. “Let me tell ya something, my sister
got pregnant in one of those abandoned cars and had to give up the baby for
adoption. Is that redneck enough for ya?” she says to Joe.
He winces. As I choose wine over beer, Cheryl
says, “I drink wine with my neighbor back home all the time. He’s a big black
guy with spongy hair. He lets me touch it,” she says, bouncing her fingers in
the air like playing piano chords and giggling. She continues, “I didn’t used
to like wine, but now I do, the fruity kind. I’m a wine lover, a wino.”
“You mean wine aficionado, my darling,” I say,
rising to serve myself salad into a Styrofoam to-go box from the buffet and ladle
basil tomato bisque into a sturdy, white porcelain bowl. Cheryl's stories remind me of
looking at pictures through my great aunt’s View-Master stereoscope: one
poignant little episode after another flash by in crisp succession as she
clicks through her narrative.
She is a master of the non-sequitur, freely
skipping from one vignette to the next. “Melissa,” Cheryl says, “told me she buys
size medium underwear, but that woman is as big as a house. I told Linda what
Melissa said and she did not believe me. ‘She’s bigger than you and me both!’
said Linda."
"Now me,” says Cheryl, “I am a large. ‘L’ straight up,” she says,
forming her index and thumb into a sign language ‘L’—“That’s me.”
I am not quite sure what to do with this
information. She was facing me as she said it, but I think it was intended for
Joe. I rest my soup spoon on the edge of the bowl, look up at her and say,
“Well, I reckon being comfortable is what matters most in that situation.”
To me, she says, “We have family reunions
with all my cousins, aunts and uncles. Kids are everywhere. I confess, though, there
are not many pretty babies at those reunions. I said to my Momma, ‘Momma, we
have the prettiest babies.’ When I meet a guy, I want to know if he makes
pretty babies. If he doesn’t, then I don’t want to go out with him.”
She says to Dave, the Latino bartender, “Do
you have babies? Do you make pretty babies?” He pulls out his cell phone and
shows us pictures of Maya and Estelle – aged four and one, respectively. “They
are beautiful,” coos Cheryl. “Do you see their mother?”
“I live in the same house with their
mother,” says Dave.
I imagine that must be the geopolitically
correct phrase for the new millennium to avoid stating marital status. Cheryl
looks a little crestfallen to hear Dave’s domestic arrangement, but charges on,
“Well that’s just great. I’m not here to criticize,” she says and starts to
chat up Joe again.
Joe has a shaved head, a short beard and a
solid, Mount Rushmore silhouette. He is there for an electrician conference. He
has a child with autism who is “real smart.” And, the way he says “real,” you know it’s true.
Cheryl’s rainbow-and-unicorn friendliness
makes you feel like she is your kid sister. She’s attending a teachers’
conference on meeting the needs of special populations like autistic kids in
the public school—kids like Joe's son. Cheryl does not seem like the ashen-faced
disciplinarians of yore. She hovers over her bar stool, full of excitement to be
at a conference, to be in a hotel, to be surrounded by menfolk.
She says, “For me, growing up with all
these kids, staying at a hotel is heaven.” Turning to Joe, she says, “Remember
Razzles with the gum inside? Let me tell you, I want me some of them Razzles.” I get the feeling she is not talking about
candy as she winks and paws nonchalantly at a couple of guys who walk past the
bar.
I bid her and Joe good evening and retire
with my salad and a couple of risqué, one-inch brownies on the side.
~ North Carolina, July 17, 2014
photo: evening falls on the roadside of 15-501, North Carolina
