[title subtitle=”fiction Marla Cantrell”][/title]
I’m reading this book on how to get a man to propose that Mama bought me because I’ve been seeing Holt three years come October and he hasn’t once mentioned matrimony. So far, this is what I’ve tried:
- Took him to a cemetery so he’d realize life is short. Standing next to an ornate headstone, wearing heels and showing a little cleavage makes you look (A) like a living breathing beauty queen and (B) like somebody who’d be willing to birth a man a few babies, guaranteeing him the only version of eternal life a mortal girl has access to.
- Bought panties three sizes too small and tossed them across the handlebars of the stationary bike in my bedroom, hoping he’d see them and believe I was one of those tiny women whose behind would fit into a toddler’s car seat. Apparently, a tiny behind makes a man weak in the knees. (I’d like to point out that this tip collides with another in chapter twelve that tells you big hips equate fertility, another thing men are supposed to find irresistible.)
- Went camping. Pretended to like it. Got up at three in the morning to put on makeup so I’d look good when Holt woke up. Saw what I believe was a bear (or a giant raccoon) and ran like the dickens until I reached the bathroom that, let’s face it, smelled worse than the city’s water supply when the lake turns over every summer. Cursed the raccoon/bear, cursed society for making me believe I am inferior without my lip gloss and mascara, and then I sat on the toilet that looked like a glorified trashcan and read the next chapter: “Make Him Make You His Queen for Life”.
Which is why I sent myself flowers today. A big bouquet of cabbage roses and gardenias and white peonies that cost me two days’ salary. The card read: Thinking of you and wanting you and dreaming of you. Of course I didn’t sign it. Soon as the flowers arrived I acted all surprised so the other girls in the office would see and back me up if I needed them. Next, I texted Holt to thank him. Then I took a picture of the card and I sent it to him. And then I took a picture of the flowers and sent that.
I waited. Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. And then my boss came in and asked me real haughty like if I was working or just holding down my chair, so I got back on the phone trying to sell burial plots, which is not easy on any day — don’t get me started on what cremation’s done to my weekly quota — but is even harder when you’re waiting to see if your favorite chapter, “How to Make Him Make You His Queen for Life,” is going to work.
I couldn’t even eat lunch, that’s how upset I was, so I stayed in the break room where all the pictures on the paneled walls are of headstones — one of them reads “Grandma’s Gone to the Super Walmart in the Sky,” I kid you not — and I stared at my phone and I reasoned with myself. Holt sets up people’s satellite dishes, so he could have been up on a roof out in the country, getting some nice family access to Pretty Little Liars and Duck Dynasty. But by three I was sweating a little, I’ll admit that. So I told my boss I was having lady problems and I grabbed my flowers and headed home.
There Holt was. Sitting on my porch, his big hands clasped together, his brow furrowed like a man who just learned he owed back taxes. I took it as a good sign, since Holt never takes off work early, not even when the Razorbacks play one of those bowl games that I pretend to know all about.
So, I put on some lip gloss and I swung my legs out of the car like I’ve seen actresses do — one high heel and then the other hitting the red clay earth — and then I stood, one hand on my hip. Holt had straightened up and was watching me, his fingers moving through his blond hair. I walked to the passenger’s side and leaned through the window, and I unbuckled my flowers from where I’d secured them when I hightailed it out of work. Then I clutched them to my chest — I had on my V-neck blouse that could sell a dozen burial plots if those old geezers on the telephone could see me when I called — and I held them like they were the most cherished thing I’d ever gotten.
Holt had stepped off the porch, his arms crossed, a frown pulling down his square jaw.
“I declare, Holt,” I said. “Aren’t you just full of surprises today? First the flowers and now here you are at my house!”
“You’re home early,” he said, real flat and broody. “You expecting somebody?”
“Lord, no,” I said. “I took off early so I could throw on some steaks and then call you up and see if you’d come over and have dinner with me. The flowers,” I said, and then stopped, like I might cry if I went on. Just so you know, I did have two steaks thawing in the fridge, like any good girl who’d read chapter five “Steak and Make Out —- The Recipe for Matrimony,” which of course I had.
“About that,” Holt said.
I interrupted. “I had no idea you knew my favorite flowers were cabbage roses. And light pink. You know me so well.” Here I touched one perfectly manicured fingertip to my cheek, wiping away an imaginary tear. “I was telling Mama Sunday last how amazing you are. I said, ‘Holt Abbott is better than a weekend in the deer woods, followed by two nights of football and then a trip to Talladega.’”
Holt smiled at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
“You said that?” he asked.
“I surely did.”
Holt shook his head. “I never met a girl like you,” he said. “You wake up just as pretty as when you went to bed. You like camping and football and beer and racing. And you’re as innocent as a newborn, Livvie, I want you to know that. Men look at you all the time and you never even notice. I’ll bet you got guys telling you they wish they were in my shoes all the time.”
“Oh you,” I said, and set my flowers on the ground beside me. “Nobody pays me no never mind.” I looked off, like something real important had just occurred to me. “Well, almost no one. There’s this one guy. He owns the Bloomer’s Diner downtown. Owns it,” I said, putting the emphasis on the word owns. “Why, he’s no older than we are. Sometimes he delivers burgers to the office and he’ll tell me I look nice, nothing personal mind you, just being pleasant.” I tapped my lip and wait a second. “Well, sometimes he does throw in a strawberry malt even though I didn’t order one. And that one time he asked me out I told him I was seeing someone. He asked if we were exclusive and I thought, Well, I am. I don’t know about Holt. Are you exclusive, Holt?”
Holt had his keychain in his hands and he was swinging his keys around his index finger. Fast. “Hell, Livvie,” he said, “of course we’re exclusive. Why, we’re more than exclusive. You and me, well I figure, you and me are headed for the altar sooner or later.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I asked.
“I believe I…” he said and then stopped. I looked down so he could see my long lashes — the extensions Carla Jo put on down at Hair and Back cost sixty-five dollars. Worth every penny. “I reckon I am,” he said, and stopped again. I looked up at him and pinched the bridge of my nose so I wouldn’t cry. Holt smiled.
And then he squatted right down on the ground, then hopped up on one knee. I held out my left hand and he took it. “Livvie Rudell, I love you so much it makes me crazy sometimes. Makes me confused, if you want to know the truth, like I’ve had too much to drink even when I haven’t touched a drop.” Holt seemed to be veering off, so I patted his arm. He drew in his breath and then he said. “I’ve been thinking we ought to get married.”
I fell into his arms. He picked me up and swung me around. He kissed me. And let me tell you this, it felt even better than it looks at the movies when the music starts to swell, filling the whole dang sky, and everybody on camera starts to dance. I looked at my front door. Inside, the book that made this moment possible sat hidden in my lingerie drawer under my beige underpants, the ones that actually fit me. I imagined it opening and shutting fast, the pages clapping for me, like a magic book filled with spells.
Truth is, Holt cast his spell on me the first time he showed up at my door to set me up with satellite. His smile near about blocked out the sun. “I’m here to open up your world,” he said, which is this corny thing his company makes him say to new customers. And I thought right then and there, with my left hand shielding my eyes against the bright day (so that he could see that I wasn’t wearing a ring more than anything else), I thought to myself, I believe you could, you handsome hunk of change. You could open my world wide as a pocketbook, wider than the Gulf of Mexico. And that’s when my heart split in two, and Holt stepped into the opening and filled it clean up.
Just so you know, I plan to be the best wife you ever saw. I plan to love me some football, tolerate beer, learn the names of those slick-haired race car drivers that wear those awful coveralls. All of this I plan to do, right after I send my sweet old mama the biggest bouquet of roses you ever did see.
