Фэнни Флэгг - The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

February 10, 2010

SOMEONE ONCE SAID, “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” and in Evelyn Couch’s case, this was certainly true. She’d been well over forty, overweight, and depressed when her life had suddenly taken an unexpected turn. So unexpected, in fact, that not one person, particularly Evelyn, could have guessed how it would end.

Evelyn had been an accidental late-in-life baby, the only offspring of a cold mother and somewhat indifferent father. Their obvious lack of parental enthusiasm had made Evelyn feel as though she was always in the way.

From an early age she was shy and insecure. In high school, if there had been a category to vote for “Least Likely to Succeed,” Evelyn would have won. She was so uncomfortable at being noticed that through four years of high school she had tiptoed through the halls with her head down; so afraid of making a mistake that when a teacher called on her, she would turn beet red and was often unable to speak.

And as the years went by, sadly nothing changed. When she and her husband had attended her fifteenth high school reunion, only a few of the girls remembered her, but not one of the boys did. Not surprising. She had never been the kind of girl boys asked out on a date. Having endured such a lack of male interest, Evelyn felt grateful to have a husband at all, even if he had been a hand-me-down. His first wife, a woman named Olive, had run away with her interior decorator.

Ed Couch, several years her senior, was working for her father at the local Firestone tire store. Her father had invited him home for dinner, and that was that.

Not that Ed wasn’t perfectly nice, he was. And she loved him. However, the longer she was married to him, the more she understood the first wife. The truth was, Ed was not a romantic person. On their last wedding anniversary, he had given her a set of new bread knives and a toenail clipper. It was clear that something was missing in their relationship. Maybe if they had not had two children right away, it might have helped. Ed had not wanted children. He already had one son named Norris with his first wife, and he didn’t like him very much.

After both of their children left home, Evelyn began to do everything she knew how to help their marriage. She had even enrolled in a “Put a Spark Back into Your Marriage” seminar, but as she found out later, you can’t do that alone. The other party has to be willing. And after years of trying, she finally had to face facts. It wasn’t that Ed didn’t love her, he did. But he would rather watch football and eat. And soon, all they did together was eat. Sometimes she cooked, sometimes they went out to the cafeteria. It was some comfort.

But as the years went by, and she gained more and more weight, she found herself getting more and more depressed. She began to wonder what the point was of dragging herself through another dull, hopeless day just to face another one just like it.

Bored at home, she had gone with Ed to his weekly visit with his mother at the nursing home. She walked down to the visitors’ lounge to wait for him, and she just happened to sit down next to an eighty-six-year-old lady from Whistle Stop, Alabama, named Ninny Threadgoode. As Evelyn soon found out, Ninny just loved to talk. She told Evelyn the most wonderful stories about the two women who used to run the Whistle Stop Cafe and their little boy, Buddy.

Every week after that, when Ed was with his mother, Evelyn would sit and visit with Ninny, and before Evelyn knew it, she had made a friend. For some unknown reason, she wasn’t shy with Ninny. And for the first time in Evelyn’s life, someone saw things in her she couldn’t see herself. Ninny didn’t think she was too heavy at all, she thought she looked healthy. Ninny also thought she was pretty, and had a great smile and personality.

As the weeks went by and Evelyn confided in her friend about the depression she was going through and how hopeless she felt, Ninny encouraged her, and told her that she was far too young to give up on life. She advised Evelyn to start getting out in the world and meeting new people. Maybe get a job selling Mary Kay cosmetics.

With a little more confidence in herself and thanks to Ninny’s encouragement, Evelyn took a chance and signed up for a Mary Kay starter kit. Six months later, against all odds, Evelyn Couch became one of Mary Kay’s top saleswomen, and within the year was driving a brand-new pink Cadillac. Nobody was more surprised at her success than Evelyn. When she attended a Mary Kay convention in Dallas, Mary Kay herself pulled her aside and told her why she was doing so well. “Honey, people like you. You’re not some high-powered intimidating salesperson, you’re one of them. More like a sister, or a friend. They trust you, and they trust the product.” Pretty soon after that, Ed started turning off the television set and paying more attention to her. As she was finding out, nothing succeeds like success!

—

WITH THE MONEY she’d made selling Mary Kay products, Evelyn Couch purchased a big new house over the mountain, a vacation home at the beach, and a brand-new RV that she and Ed drove to Mary Kay seminars all over the country. Mrs. Evelyn Couch, age 51, from Birmingham, Alabama, had become one of the company’s most inspiring leaders. She and Ed traveled for years, and really had a lot of fun. Until they found out that Ed had diabetes. He would have to be put on dialysis, and could no longer travel. So she gave up her position with Mary Kay and stayed home with him. She missed the work and the traveling, but unbeknownst to her, another unexpected turn was just around the corner.

Over the years, Evelyn had been responsible for the sales of so many pink Cadillacs for her Mary Kay team that the owner of the big Cadillac dealership in Birmingham called and offered her a job.

Evelyn had worked on the showroom floor selling cars for only six months when the dealership’s sales almost doubled. Her secret was having worked for Mary Kay for so many years. She knew how to sell to women. At the time, what most car salesmen didn’t understand was that while it may have been the men who paid for the cars, it was usually the women who picked them out. They chose the model, the make, and the color. And thanks to the women’s movement, more women were entering the workforce, and more women were buying their own cars. A year later, Evelyn had been made branch manager, and eventually she wound up buying the entire dealership.

“Couch Cadillac” had a nice ring to it, she thought.

In fact, she did her own television commercials. “Hi, this is Evelyn Couch, of Couch Cadillac, inviting you to come on in to one of my dealerships. Tell them Evelyn sent you, and I’ll give you the deal of a lifetime on a brand-new Cadillac.” Everyone said the ads were very effective. They must have been, because at her next high school class reunion, everybody there claimed to remember her, especially the men.

All this because twenty-five years earlier, she’d happened to sit down next to a kind lady named Ninny Threadgoode. Evelyn often wondered why she’d just happened to sit by her that day. Had it been fate? A chance meeting? A happy accident? Evelyn chose to believe it was fate. And it made her happy to think so.

And even now, so many years after her friend Ninny Threadgoode had passed away, Evelyn still kept a picture of her on her desk, and sometimes she even talked to it. And today was one of those days. After she hung up the phone, she looked at the photo of the sweet-looking old lady wearing a polka-dotted dress and said, “Ninny, you won’t believe this, but some fool just called and offered me over a million dollars to buy Couch Cadillac, and I just might take it.”