Fannie Flagg - Standing in the Rainbow

If she had had the strength, she would have killed him, but she was unable to move. So she sat and stared while he went on and on about how sometimes in this life people are lucky enough to find their true soul mate. How for the first time since he was a boy he was able to laugh again. How the world looked bright and new and shiny again.

About how much he liked the new woman's children and that he felt he now had a chance to be a better father this time than he was the last time, now that he was sober, that is. Then he finished off his dissertation on love and second chances. "I can't tell you how much better I feel now that I've been honest with you."

"Oh good. I'm so glad you feel better."

"My sponsor said that the sooner I told you, the better off we would both be."

"I'm glad he thought so," she said.

"So now that you know, what do you want to do about it?"

"What do I want to do about it?"

"Yes," he said and looked at his watch like he was late for an appointment.

"I want you to get up and call that woman and tell her that you are already married."

"Oh, now, Tot, be reasonable. Jackie Sue needs me and you don't."

Tot could not believe her ears. "Jackie Sue Potts? Who's been with every man in this town?"

"Tot, don't say anything you will regret. You don't know what a hard life she has had."

"She's had a hard life?"

"Tot, the past is the past. We all have to live in the present, one day at a time."

"I'll tell you one thing, One Day at a Time. I'll give you a divorce but on one condition. You take that woman and you get as far away from us as you can because I will not live in the same town and have to see her or you, do you hear me?"

Tot had felt like a complete fool. Not only was the girl younger than her daughter, but all this time she had been fixing Jackie Sue's hair. She had been doing it so Jackie Sue would look good for a date with Tot's own husband!

Of course James had not moved and soon she had to see him and Jackie Sue floating all over town, showing off their new baby. That morning she wondered why she had finally reached the end of her rope. Maybe it was because she was just so tired. So bone tired that at long last she could not hold on anymore. By seven o'clock that morning the phone started ringing. She knew it was Darlene, wanting to know if she could drop her children off at the house so she and that new husband of hers could go off to the stock-car races. But for the first time Tot did not pick up the phone. Several more times before noon the phone rang, and several more people wanting something were annoyed because she did not answer. She heard the phone, but even the sound of the ringing did not stir the slightest, smallest interest or need to answer. Tot wondered what had happened. What in her had finally broken. What had undone her at last so she could lie there as peaceful and as silent as a radio that had suddenly been unplugged. That was it, she thought, I am unplugged.

Dead inside at last. No more currents running through me, forcing me to keep going, to turn on, to feel anything.

Was this permanent or was this just the vacation she had never had in her life? How long would she be off, she wondered, and she hoped it was forever. It was so peaceful, so soothing, so painless to be alive but not to feel. It was as if she had stepped out of her body and left the house, although the woman who used to be her was still there, empty, hollow.

Around three o'clock she decided to try to get up out of bed. She was almost afraid that if she moved that old self might jump back in but as she slowly got up and walked through the house she was so relieved. She could move and nothing of her old self came back. She was a ghost in her own home, floating around and observing life, but not being affected by it in any way. What a pleasant state! What a peaceful way to spend the days! What was it? she thought, as she wandered through the house, pulling down the shades, taking the phone off the hook, and sticking it in the closet. What was this new state? After a while she identified it. It was quite simple. She just didn't care. After a lifetime of caring, trying, struggling, looking for answers, today one had come. Today was the day that she simply did not care anymore about anything.

Let her kids get upset. Let the shop go to hell in a handbasket. Let the church committees wonder about why she wasn't there. Let the world go to hell, she no longer cared.

She made herself some Campbell's tomato soup, drank a Coke, ate some crackers and a piece of cheese, and went back to bed. The dishes were still on the table. She didn't care. She dreamed of that one day, that one afternoon when she was seven. It had been a warm day and her schoolmate had invited her to a birthday party and she had been allowed to go. For one afternoon in 1928 she had been allowed to go to a party alone. Not having to take her brother or sister, not having to do anything but attend a party. They had played games and eaten ice cream and afterward she had been allowed to run in the large meadow behind the girl's house and run without her mother yelling at her to be careful, without having to watch out for her brothers and sisters. She had been happy for a while, for one afternoon when she was seven.

She wondered what her life would have been like if she had not had that one hour that one day.

Everybody in town was concerned about Tot Whooten. Norma was speaking to Aunt Elner on the phone about it. "I am just worried sick. I drove by and there was poor Tot out in the back of her house, wandering around in the fields all by herself like she didn't have a thing in the world to do. You know, she's quit the church and she told Darlene not to drop the kids by anymore. She's stopped going to Bingo altogether.

Her yard is a mess and you know that's not right. She never let her yard get out of hand. She always kept her lawn cut and those hedges neat and trimmed. Why, you could set a place setting on her hedges and serve dinner on them. That's how right and neat she kept them."

"Why would you want to eat on a hedge?" asked Aunt Elner.

"That's not the point; I am afraid she's flipped. I always thought I would be the first one in town to flip out and it's turned out to be Poor Tot. Poor Tot, she has just gone around the bend. Just like her mother did."

Aunt Elner said, "I don't think so, Norma. I went over to see her the other day and she made perfect sense to me. She's tired, Norma, that's all that's the matter with her, and she'll either come around or she won't."

"Well, that's a comfort, Aunt Elner. What do we tell Darlene and Dwayne Junioryour mother is either going to get back to her old self or she isn't?"

"That's the truth, Norma. What else can you say?"

Norma thought about it. "I guess you're right. We can't do it for her, she's going to have to pull herself out of this one all we can do is be there for her when and if she needs us. Isn't that right?"

"As far as I can see, that's the only thing we can do," said Aunt Elner.

But other people in town took a different view. Mrs. Mildred Noblitt, a thin woman with a tic in her right eye, marched over to Tot's house and banged on the door so long Tot finally had to open it and let her in. Tot was in her aqua chenille bathrobe with the pink flamingo on the back, and as Mrs. Noblitt marched in the house and sat down in the living room, she said, "Tot, are you aware that it is already ten o'clock and you are still in your robe?"

"Yes," said Tot.

"Tot, everybody is very concerned about you. You are just going to have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and get back into life and put your phone back on the hook. You can't just sit around in your house all day with the shades down and your yard going to pot. What are people going to think?"