Liberating Paris Read online

  Over the years, he had provided the everyday and formal attire needs for two generations of “Parisians” and had taught Brundidge as early as tenth grade, that one never, ever tampers with the basic concept of the formal tuxedo—no Nehru collars, no pastels, no ruffles. Try learning something like that from some bozo wearing a name tag and a purple vest. Where else could an old Jew from Europe with a concentration camp number on his arm help a young Arkansas boy get “spiffy” for his first prom? It could and did happen on Main Street. Brundidge knew it would never happen at Fed-Mart.

  Thank goodness the Killer Store had not slain Sidney Garfinkel before he could special order Brundidge’s Oscar de la Renta tuxedo, the one that hangs in his closet to this day, the one he wears to all formal occasions and has already left explicit instructions to be buried in. Thank goodness he was given a chance to see Mr. Garfinkel on his knees, in his immaculate suit and tie, his expert hands pinning hundreds of people into their clothes, literally reshaping them in some new way they had not imagined before. Without that, Brundidge would never have known that the secret to dressing well is in the tailoring or, as Mr. Garfinkel put it, in his soft clipped accent, “It is not important how the clothes move, only how the person is moving inside them.”

  He was grateful to have lived in the pre-Fed-Mart era, when a man of Mr. Garfinkel’s caliber could help him establish his own style. Any fool could tell that clogs make a man look like a male nurse, but without Sidney Garfinkel, Brundidge might never have understood the inviolable rightness of simple Italian loafers and the incredible wrongness of flip-flops with socks. Might never have known that Doc Martens were too clichéd for him, but that his Burberry raincoat was forever. Parkas were out. His cashmere scarf was in. And frankly, he was never going to rip the knees out of his jeans, or stop wearing button-down shirts simply because they had fallen out of vogue. Mr. Garfinkel had convinced him that his own good taste was just that—and even though Wood and Jeter (who apparently didn’t give a damn about how they looked and it showed) ridiculed him unmercifully, he was proud of the meticulous, well-groomed image he presented to the world. Milan was the only one of all his friends who felt the way he did about “personal presentation,” and he liked her for that. It was the main thing, besides Wood, that they had in common.

  Brundidge gave his daughters’ wardrobe as much attention as his own. People said they looked like the Morton salt girl in their yellow rain slickers, that they were adorable in their Little Slugger overalls and matching baseball hats, and that Cake, in her white faux-bunny jacket, had been the best-dressed Mary in the history of the Lutheran Church Christmas Pageant. It was hard enough to maintain a standard of excellence in a small town. Now Fed-Mart was destroying any chance of obtaining real quality things locally. Oh sure, you could shop the Internet, but you never knew if some store in Vermont’s size 5T was going to fit. Now he would have to be even more diligent in his search for excellence for himself and his girls.

  In the meantime, he would do everything in his power to bring down this King Kong of bad taste, where, in spite of the slogan “If You Can’t Find It at Fed-Mart, You Can’t Find It” you could seldom find anyone to wait on you, and if you did, they didn’t know squat about what they were selling or they would tell you, “Oh, that’s Larry’s department. He’s on break.” Not that Brundidge had gone inside. No sir, he had not and would not. He and Jeter had a pact. And Wood, who was always reluctant to rock the boat unless it was actually sinking, had eventually joined them, too. They agreed to stick together, like the three musketeers they had been since they were boys, even if they were the last ones in the whole damn town to never set foot inside the Paris County Fed-Mart Superstore. And they were not alone either. Miss Phipps, who resided at the nursing home with Jeter and who had taught them all in first grade, had said it best in her letter to the Paris Beacon: “This is everything we don’t wish our little town to be—ugly, impersonal, and, frankly, based on the Communist assumption that larger and undistinguished is better. I personally do not care to join the hoards of slack-jawed strangers overflowing their rubber thongs while steering pushcarts filled with Tshirts, plastic junk, and babies who sneeze Popsicle juice on you.” Hey, Fed-Mart, how’s that for a polite “Screw you”? And from a teacher, no less! Brundidge had immediately had it laminated and had taken it by to give to Miss Phipps. That was something he liked to do for people. Anytime somebody he knew got in the paper, he laminated it and gave it to them as a memento for posterity. He was not a man who lived in the past, but he knew what the past was worth.

  Brundidge hated the stereotypical redneck image so often assigned to small-town people, though he was proud to be one himself—a well-dressed, nonbigoted, good-daddy kind of redneck, not the kind you see on TV. That was why he hated the name Earl. Why he insisted that everyone call him Brundidge. If he was in Little Rock or Fort Belvedere on business, and a woman didn’t know him, he would never reveal his first name. “Earl” was just a killer with women—the quintessential good ol’ boy nom de plume. Darlene had used it when she wanted to get under his skin. The truth was, he had never known anyone named Darlene who had been worth a damn. They were invariably the kind of girls who wore cheap sequined evening gowns with toothpicks hanging out of their mouths, who went to the bathroom together in the middle of dinner and, while fixing their lipstick and rearranging their overperoxided hair, asked each other, “How was your meat?” Of course, being sort of a public person, he would never say that. You couldn’t be too careful these days. People would sue you for looking at them funny. Sure enough, as soon as he slandered the name Darlene, he would hear from something called “The Darlene Society” and he would be in a lot of trouble—even though she was the one who’d had affairs all over the tristate area, and then abandoned her two little girls for the backup guitarist at the El Rondo Motor Harbor and Lounge.

  That was why he disliked Frank Lanier so much—because Frank had sued him after being fired as a deliveryman for the Brundidge Beer and Beverage Company, a job he had been given as a favor to Milan. Frank, like Darlene, fell into the last category on the scale of Earl Brundidge Humanitarian Aid—people who “just can’t be helped.” They were both real bottom-feeders, the kind who drag a man and a town down. But fortunately, since Frank didn’t have size 36D breasts, it had taken Brundidge less time to find him out. Believe it or not, and Brundidge swears it’s not a joke, Frank actually printed the words “Whee Doggies” under “Sex” on his job application. Brundidge was finally forced to fire him when Frank and his brother, Tom Jr., started pretending to be part of backstage security at local music concerts. They used Frank’s old defunct auxiliary deputy sheriff’s badge (he’d gotten hired before a written test was implemented) and a couple of plastic toy walkie-talkies to make people think they were somebody. Brundidge had been part of the welcoming committee for The Dixie Chicks—had been dressed in his Brooks Brothers khakis with pin-striped cotton shirt and three-button navy blazer—had been actually speaking to Natalie Maines and by the way, no flies on her, when Frank, reeking of liquor, had walked up carrying his stupid plastic-shit, lavender walkie-talkie with Hello Kitty painted on it, for crying out loud, and called him “Boss!” It was the most humiliating moment of Brundidge’s life, and Frank was fired on the spot. They later resolved Frank’s lawsuit by Brundidge’s agreeing to rehire him as his man for “odd jobs.”

  There was no denying it was people like Frank and Darlene who gave hicks a bad name. They were the reason words like hee-haw and honky-tonk got started—the kind of people the media always interview after a tornado. It burned Brundidge up that reporters, especially northern ones, seemed to intentionally pick people who sounded ignorant and dressed like white trash off-the-rack. “Well, we’s all in our double-wide when we seen it a comin’. It lacked to scared Momma ’n ’em to death.” Brundidge had a fantasy that if a tornado ever hit Paris, he would be talking to Dan Rather in his black cashmere overcoat and burgundy scarf (yes, it would probably be in the spring, bu
t that was his best coat, and he was going to wear it), saying something like, “I had just sat down for bit of backgammon in the conservatory, Dan, when the terrible twister struck.” Brundidge had never actually known anyone with a conservatory, but ever since he was a boy, he had liked the looks of it on his Clue board.

  Anyway, people could think what they wanted to about hicks. Maybe some hicks even deserved it, if they could fall for a place like the Paris County Fed-Mart Superstore. Brundidge replaced his coffee cup in the little car tray and punched in Tim McGraw. He started the van, steering it away from his New Nemesis, as Tim began softly crooning, “I may be a real bad boy, but I can be a real good man…” Ah, now we’re in business. The mellow strains of the music put Brundidge in a more relaxed state of mind, making it just the right song for the right occasion. You tell ’em, Tim. Tell ’em who we are. In a few minutes, he would be back on the highway and heading toward the city limits of Paris, where soon he would be sitting at his desk, fielding phone calls, sharing the day’s jokes and handing out encouragement as easily as if it were sticks of gum.

  He already knew what he thought. He thought living in a small town was just about the greatest thing that could ever happen to anyone. But mostly, he was just glad it had happened to him. And now he was going to spend the rest of his life trying to pay that back.

  CHAPTER 7

  Mavis put another log in the little fireplace in her kitchen. Then she picked up a small strainer and placed it across the rim of a porcelain cup with bluebirds painted on it—the one that she had purchased from a hundred-year-old woman at a garage sale. After a time, she lifted a teapot and poured something called British Colonial Tea, “the preferred morning drink of aristocrats,” through the strainer. Mavis enjoyed the idea that the old Arkansas woman and the mustachioed Englishman on the British Colonial can had somehow joined forces to provide her with the nicest cup of tea in Paris. Not having much family of her own, she liked bringing people together like that. It was something she was good at, making small bonds and little families where before there had been none. That’s why, after last night’s conversation with Milan, she had called Elizabeth and arranged to meet her for breakfast. Because friends were important to Mavis. Friends were family. But right now she was going to enjoy her tea, read the newest magazine arrivals (a lifetime addiction), and try not to think about the odious task ahead.

  Mavis smeared apple jelly on a scone and studied the latest seriously acclaimed Hollywood actress to pose with her scrawny cheeks hanging out of her underpants while wearing a smile that begged the seemingly incongruent question, “Hi, I just won the Oscar, wouldn’t you like to do the dirty with me?” Inside, it was always the same spiel, how this girl’s never had any self-esteem because she’s only been valued only for her beauty. (Yeah. Yeah. Don’t people know that sometimes there’s a good reason for low self-esteem?) Anyway now she’s never felt more in tune with her own sexuality, and after some custom-designed Taebo, a fearless, chance-taking director, and daily sessions with her herbal supplement guru (strict, but loving), it looks like everything’s gonna be okay. Next were the obligatory articles on “How to Have Better and Better and Better and Better and Better and Better and Better and Better Sex” (as though there were no other reason to be alive, really) or how some famous model or TV personality has decided to try to be happy at a size eight. For Mavis that was as twisted as when they presented plus-size models on daytime talk shows with the promise “We want to show the world what real women look like,” when the plus-size models never even looked very overweight. What Mavis wanted to see waddling down the catwalk was a huge, happy, honking three-hundred-pound “you can kiss my fat ass” kind of gal, with cellulite forearms and hamhock thighs draped in some fabulous designer togs. Even just one woman like that pitted against the scores of skeletal chic chicks would go a long way toward making up for all the size-zero clothes in department stores. Tank tops so small Mavis wouldn’t even bother to blow her nose on them. Well, maybe she had bothered, once. Anyway, she knew that fat girl was never going to float across her TV screen, anymore than all the experts who make a living telling people like Mavis that “beauty comes from within” wanted her to. Mavis knew all too well where beauty came from—it came from having a long, thin body with a perfectly symmetrical face, large wide-set eyes, and Halloween-style paraffin lips with humongous Chiclet teeth. It did not come from being yourself and weighing two hundred and forty-eight pounds and wearing a muumuu. So just stop it! She’s not fat and stupid. Okay?

  Mavis was polishing off her scone, now. After years of trying to spin fatness as a state of independence, she had settled into the art of eating without apology. So maybe she would die five or ten years early—we all make our deal with the devil. In the meantime, she was going to enjoy herself. She loved her kitchen and the way things she made in it smelled and tasted. It was like the residue of everything she had ever made before was still just a little bit in the next thing. The way it was with generations of families. (Not that she knew much about that. It had mostly been just her mom and her.)

  Mavis tossed the magazine onto the sofa and gave Chester her last bite. She would have to hurry. It was almost 8:30 and her breakfast with Elizabeth was set for nine. She also had to go by Wood’s office and give them a piece of her mind over the infuriating thing that had happened to her in yesterday’s funeral procession. For Mavis, the worst part about living in a small town was that everybody knew your personal business. On the other hand, she liked the wide berth people gave each other—how Tommy Epps, a long-haired apparition from the sixties, slept in the maintenance room at the nursing home, but not only did they not make a fuss, they left the window unlocked for him. Or how Milan wore totally coordinated outfits and full makeup to the Kroger, but Mavis could still go in her pajamas and everyone would say, “Well, that’s just ol’ Mavis. She likes to shop in her PJs.” And even though Paris was often the butt of her jokes and almost every time she left, she threatened not to come back, for some reason, she always did.

  Oh sure, the goobers and rednecks, the sheer provincialism of it all, drove her nuts—the having to greet each person like at least one of you has been in a foreign prison for the last twenty-five years, the overniceness—having to write a damn thank-you note every time somebody threw a rock at you, the taking of fifteen minutes to say anything—you couldn’t even ask someone to perform the Heimlich without first inquiring as to how they were, the oversolicitousness—you all come back now, you hear? You must spend the night, stay for dinner, eat our food, sleep in our bed, smell this, wear this, use this, and please just let us know if we can do anything else for you in any way. And then you had to figure out the difference between which invitations were sincere and which were simply being polite—something northerners were invariably confused about but southerners understood implicitly. Mavis, who was not a “real Parisian,” finally decided that the first invitation is generally extended purely out of social graciousness. The second one means you could stay and it would be okay. The third one means they really want you. But phew! Isn’t everyone just exhausted by now?

  Mavis and her mom had moved to Paris from St. Louis when Mavis was six. At first they came to look after her mother’s Aunt Nell. Then after Nell died and left them her house, they decided to stay.

  Mavis’s father, Laddie Pinkerton, had been a school-supply salesman for the Red Chief Paper Company. He covered Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa and was on his way home for Thanksgiving when he stopped to fix a flat tire and was struck by lightning. Everybody always said the rubber on tires would keep you safe from lightning but evidently you had to be inside your car, not outside, under a tree. Anyway, the coroner told Mavis’s mother it wasn’t the lightning that killed him. It was lying facedown in a one-inch puddle of water. One inch. Mavis had studied, no, become obsessed with that particular measurement on the wooden ruler her dad had given her. All through elementary school, the teachers could be talking about multiplication, the fifty states, even the basic
food groups, but most of the time Mavis found that one-inch mark on her ruler emblazoned with Red Chief Paper Company much more fascinating. One inch? Were they kidding? How could anybody have such bad luck? I mean, first to be struck by lightning, then to survive that but die because you also happen to land in one inch of water. Well, it was too much. How could a child ever have confidence in anything again? To a kid, that’s got to feel, well, personal. Was it because she had forgotten to kiss him good-bye? Or that she had left her little bicycle in the rain when he had told her to bring it in? She had been alive for six years when it happened and she did not have one single playmate whose parent had been struck by lightning and then died in one inch of water. To this day, she did not know one other person it had happened to. Even now, when Mavis is filling a measuring cup, she is always exquisitely aware of when the liquid hits the one-inch mark—a reminder of how little it takes to change your life forever.

  Right after “the accident,” when people began arriving with cakes, cookies, and hams, Mavis stayed up late and ate some of it. Well, actually, she ate almost all of it. And since she was a hefty kid but not large enough to accommodate that much food, a doctor had to be called and she was pretty sure they eventually pumped her stomach. She knew she had been taken to an all-white room when they first thought it might be appendicitis. And then she remembered leaving the hospital with her mother, who was crying and holding her hand while Mavis clung to the little chalk figurine she had been given for being such a good girl. She guessed they had chosen a chalk figurine for her instead of a sucker because she couldn’t eat that—which she later did anyway.