#72
Martha knew that Estelle would win the bake-off. Anyone who can execute a coconut cream pie with such precision should get all the blue ribbons in the world. She’d been entering the contest for the past fifteen years, but this is the first time she’d won anything significant. Surprised and slightly embarrassed by her success, she climb the stairs to the stage to accept her award, blushing as she let out a meek thank you into the microphone.
Martha was glad for her. She was also glad that her chemo had ended long enough ago to be a judge again. And she still had her hair. Normally, it would be Martha there with the blue ribbon, and prize money. Estelle deserved it. Her pie was excellent.
Announcer: Make sure you join us this evening for the pig scramble at six followed by Larry the Elvis impersonator! Entry is two dollars.
After the pie contest was over, she went home for a drink, to freshen up a few select bits, and be back in time to eat a pork chop sandwich before the pig scramble.
Martha dressed well. Better than most people in town. Her husband passed a few years back and she saw fit to spend some money. Not that she didn’t before. She knew people talked.
Janet: did you see Martha’s new car? Awfully fancy.
Sara: and so close to Bill’s death.
Martha was tall and still had mostly dark brown hair. A real brunette. Her husband’s death, a blessing, was quick. She was glad she didn’t have to care for him while he withered away in a hospital. The week after the funeral she took a cruise, and while she was away she wept each evening alone in her cabin, and now she’s over it. The cancer came along not long after.
Martha: maybe it’s a punishment?
Doctor: what’s that?
She vowed it wouldn’t kill her, or, make her loose her hair and it did neither.
Martha: it’s just gotten a bit thin.
Sharon: let’s see what we can do.
Martha’s eye fell to younger men, boys really. She knew it would only cement her reputation. She cared little about that. Unfortunately, most of the boys over the years had gotten soft, round, pudgy, squishy around the edges. Fat. Martha thought it was a shame that this is what had become of the men. Beer bellies and jowly chins. Needless to say, her pickings were slim.
She still had periodic floods of tears. Not for her husband, but for herself, deciding to stay with a man she thought initially was one thing, but turned out to be another. But that’s behind her. All the efforts she made to be the prettiest in town at one point stopped mattering to him.
The town squashed her. Suffocated her under its weight of fake superiority and superficiality. Because she could never truly be alone or be invisible, her life felt like it was being guided or pushed along by expectations instead of desires. Bill never asked Martha what she wanted or what she aspired to. And for awhile it didn’t matter, she never thought about it either.
Now, here, looking in the mirror in her bathroom, putting a few small touch-ups to her makeup, a spritz of perfume, she sees herself, not as she is or was, but how she hopes to be from now on.
—
The grilled pork chop was just as they always were. Smoky, thick, juicy. Martha sat at one of the long picnic tables under the big blue tent, strings of white bulbs overhead. It felt festive, even if the lights attracted an array of bugs, moths, flies, and the like. She grabbed a lemon shake-up from the Shriners to which she poured some gin from a flask in her purse. People around here would say she could hold her liquor. It wasn’t a lie.
A steady stream of familiar faces mingled about, a few from the next county over, and she spent fifteen boring minutes hearing about Helen Walden’s grandchild, a kid Martha never met, and never will. She never like Helen and her Baptist church sense of doom and destruction.
The air was sick with humidity and the smell of animal manure. Martha’s shirt stuck to her back and there was no breeze, no respite. Plenty of mosquitoes. Somehow they never bit her. On her way over to the grandstand for the pig scramble, she eyed a couple of fellas, but they were so usual. So of here. She could tell that you could see her bra through her shirt, especially where her damp skin stuck to her top. She could feel the eyes of the town on her each step she took.
In the muddy pit in front of the grandstand, two men used chalk powder to make circles where the contestants would have to drag their pig to win the prize of $100. The pigs were greasy, they squealed and hollered. Martha loved watching the women degrade themselves while she sat quietly in her cloud of Chanel No. 5.
The ceiling fans were on in the grandstand, the announcer, Phil (it was always Phil) counted down from 3,2,1, and the ladies took off after the pigs.
The taffy Martha picked up, hand pulled, rolled in corn starch, wrapped in wax paper, reminded her of her mother, and of Martha’s boyfriend at 17, eating it in the same grandstand, watching the pageant and wanting to be there on the stage in an evening dress. Her mother telling her always next year, next year, but she never got the chance to show off her legs, her length, her shoulders or slender brown arms. They taffy would stick to her teeth and gums, the flavor of vanilla, the sugar hitting her body, after a couple of pieces, a headache.
Martha ate another piece just as the last hog was pulled into what remained of the white ring of chalk. The woman, a local school teacher, held the $100 bill in her mouth, jumping up and down, her breasts nearly coming out of her mud-soaked shirt. At the far end of the arena you could see a man with a hose washing the ladies down which had an innocent feeling to it.
That evening, after the the pigs were all hauled off back to the farm, teenagers in couples roamed the fair, holding hands. It seemed like the only place in the world that mattered. They had hopeful possibility on their faces. Martha walked among the lights of the carnival, colorful like a kids birthday cake. The air was still heavy with the smell of fried dough and the lightening bugs flew close to the ground, which was getting worn down to dirt from the crowds. Music played from the rides, screams came from the every direction, what was left now was for the youngest of the adults, spending their cents and dollars on thrills and the feeling of summer at its most ample.
Martha left the fair on foot and turned left onto Main Street. As she walked, the town quiet, the lights from the fair in the sky to the east, she could just make out the scent of the Chanel No. 5 left on her shirt, which was still stuck to her dewy back.