Fannie Flagg - Standing in the Rainbow

"I may be sick," said Anna Lee and left the room.

Mother Smith came in. "What's the matter with her?"

Dorothy laughed. "She wanted to know why we had to have Bobby."

"What did you tell her?"

"I blamed it all on the Good Lord."

"Well, that's as good an excuse as any. According to the Presbyterians everything in life is preordained, or at least that's what Norma's mother says."

"Ida? How would she know, she's a Methodist."

"Not anymore. As of last week she claims she's a Presbyterian."

"What?"

"Oh yes… right in the middle of the bridge tournament she announced it."

Dorothy, amazed, cracked three eggs in a tan bowl with a blue stripe and stirred. "But there's not a Presbyterian church within a hundred miles around here. Why would she want to be a Presbyterian all of a sudden?"

Mother Smith poured herself a glass of iced tea. "I suppose it's all part of her plan to move up in the world."

Dorothy was baffled. "Well… I just don't know what to say…

There's a lemon in the icebox. I just hope she'll be happy."

Mother Smith reached into the icebox. "I do, too, but I don't think anything can make her really happy unless, of course, Norma marries a Rockafella and she can at last take her rightful place in society."

What Mother Smith said was true. If there was such a thing as high society in Elmwood Springs, Norma's mother aspired to be it.

After all, Ida Jenkins's husband, Herbert, was the town banker and as such Ida felt she had a certain position to uphold and it was her civic duty to set the standards of genteel behavior. To light the way. Set an example. She was in charge of all the refinements of life and in her relentless pursuit to bring culture and beauty to the community she nearly drove Norma and her father crazy.

Even though she was living in a small town in the middle of nowhere, she subscribed to all the latest women's magazines to keep abreast of the times. In the late thirties she took to spelling the word modern moderne and referring to their house as a "bungalow," her clothes as "frocks". She used the word "intriguing" as much as possible, had her hair styled just like Ina Claire, the Broadway star, and she never cried when she could weep or have "wept".

Too, Ida was a club woman from tip to top. She was the grande dame of the National Federated Women's Club of Missouri and had spearheaded the local Garden Club, Bridge Club, the Wednesday Night Supper Club, the Book Club, and the Downtown Theatrical Club and was never seen on the street without a hat and white gloves. She never served a meal in her home without having an individual nut cup at each place setting and a clean white tablecloth. "Only heathens eat off a plain table," she said.

On Norma's sixteenth birthday she had given her a copy of the new and enlarged edition of Emily Post's book on etiquette, in which she had inscribed:

If everyone would read this we would certainly be spared a lot of unpleasantness in this world.

Happy Birthday

Love,

Mother

Ida was even on a first-name basis with the author and often wondered out loud, "I wonder how Emily would handle this?" Or she would sometimes preface her remarks with, "Emily says…" Ida's life goal and, she assumed, all of America's was to bring enlightenment not only to Elmwood Springs but to the entire world until even in the farthest igloo at the North Pole and the wilds of the deepest darkest jungles in Borneo people everywhere would know that the fork belongs on the left and that fresh flowers on a table supply a delightful treat for the eye, that a clean house is a happy house, and come to embrace the fact that raising one's voice in anger is rude and uncalled for on any occasion.

Ida always said, "Remember, Norma, in America a person of quality and class is not judged by aristocracy of birth but by his or her behavior." Norma figured that by that standard her mother must have thought she was the duchess of Kent by now.

Norma loved her mother but, as Norma said to Anna Lee, "You try living with her twenty-four hours a day. You just don't know how lucky you are to have your mother and not mine." In fact, Norma spent the night at Anna Lee's as often as possible, as did Monroe. The house was always full of people and fun things to do and the food was delicious.

And most important, over at Neighbor Dorothy's house you could actually sit on the living room furniture, something Ida never let Norma or her father do. In Ida's house the living room was only shown to people as they passed by and was called the formal room. It was so formal that nobody had been in it since she had decorated it eighteen years before.

On one of the numerous occasions when Norma was spending the weekend over at Anna Lee's house, she helped Anna Lee pull a good one on Bobby and Monroe. One Saturday afternoon, Bobby and Monroe were in the parlor with the blinds and shades drawn, sitting in the dark eating peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and listening to their favorite scary detective shows on the radio. They had just heard Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Boston Blackie, and The Whistler and now a new show was just starting.

First strange and weird chords played on an organ, then a voice came through:

WOMAN: There he goes into… that drugstore. He's stepping on the scales.

(Sound: Clink of a coin.)

WOMAN: Weight, two hundred and thirty-seven pounds.

(Sound: Card dropping.)

WOMAN: Fortune. Danger!

Organ: (Stinnnng!)

WOMAN: Whooo is it?

MAN: The Fat Man!!!

As promised, this week's program was chock-full of suspense and mystery. Near the end both boys were literally sitting on the edge of their seats. Just as the strange man in the raincoat was being followed down a wet, dead-end street, with the sound of footsteps following behind him, growing louder and louder… click click… footsteps… closer and closer… louder and louder… nowhere to run… nowhere to hide… just at the very moment when the terrified man, his heart pounding, turned to face his fiendish killer, suddenly two figures wearing hideous rubber masks popped up from behind the couch with green flashlights shining under their chins, shouting "BAAA! BAAA!"

It scared them so badly that both boys shot straight up in the air and screamed like two little girls. They almost knocked each other down trying to get out of the room, falling over the coffee table and chairs while they scrambled for the door and ran down the hall.

Norma's boyfriend, Macky, had rigged the flashlights with green bulbs and the masks had come from last Halloween. The girls had been hiding behind the couch all afternoon, just waiting for the right moment.

When Anna Lee gave the signal, all the waiting had been worth it.

Neighbor Dorothy started with a great big "Good morning, everybody!

Well, I could hardly wait to get on the air this morning because as Gabriel Heatter says, "Ah, there's good news tonight!" or in our case, today, and we are just tickled pink and chomping at the bit to tell you about it. But first let me ask you this: does your soap powder make you sneeze?

"Mrs. Squatzie Kittrel of Silver Springs, Maryland, says, "Rinso washes my clothes fast in rich soapy suds and it's so easy on my hands and on wash days it does not make me sneeze like all the others." So remember, Rinso white, Rinso bright, the only granulated soap that is ninety-eight percent free of sneezy soap dust. And also, are you looking for checked, striped, or polka-dot material for that bedroom den or kitchen window? If so, Fred Morgan of Morgan Brothers says come on in and he's also got a big bolt of dotted Swiss material he's going to discount by the yard, so if you have been thinking about making curtains, this is the time.