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Chapter 2

“Tell me you didn’t sit on his face, please” implored Tessa “you barely even know him.”
She could hear ice from Marian’s drink shaking as her friend snorted laughter through the phone line. “Okay, okay Tessa. Please tell me your opinion since you seem to know the proper way of doing things; at what point in a relationship is it okay to sit on a man’s face?”
“Oh my god, I don’t know. Maybe the fifth anniversary or sometime around there.” Tessa replied testily. “Certainly not five minutes after you meet someone.”
“Hold on.” Marian said as she reached down for her purse. “I have a pocket calendar in here. Let’s see if face sitting is a traditional or modern gift on a fifth anniversary.”
“Technically it’s wood,” replied Tessa automatically in her reference librarian voice. “Or silverware these days.”
“Well I gave him wood alright” leered Marion.
“Seriously Marian, you don’t pull out all your tricks the first time you go to bed with a man. You don’t want him to wonder where you learned all of that, and who all you learned it from” Tessa explained.
“I am forty-four years old Tessa. I was married for twenty-three years and have a daughter in college. Guess what? I think he’s on to the fact I may not be a virgin anymore.” Marian countered.
“ I am just saying you could be more lady like about the whole thing, at least in the beginning, especially at your age. Save the kinky stuff for later. My god, doesn’t he have grandchildren already?” Tessa remembered with horror. “You sat on a grandpa’s face! Ewwwwwww! I know you’re going to hell now for sure!
“You had to go there, but yes technically he is someone’s grandpa, however a young one. You know he and Donna married right out of high school and probably because they had to as soon as possible.” Marian replied, “and I am sure you are thinking “how tacky”. Well it was tacky when I walked down the aisle with my little belly and just as tacky if I remember correctly when you went to the courthouse with yours. Didn’t you post bail for Big Drew a few hours before the ceremony? And what does age have to do with face sitting? Do you have an age cut off point for that in your dating rule book?”
“I am not trying to tell you what to do, you’re a grown woman in a small town. I’m just trying to say don’t cast your pearls before swine. No lecture, I’m done, okay?” Tessa finished adroitly bypassing the age comment.
“Honey, I get my pearls from swine” Marian quickly retorted.
Tessa couldn’t help but laugh at her friend’s observation. “ So what did Teeter’s wife do after I left? She was staring a hole in you, so don’t try to tell me she didn’t know what was going on.”
“Let me tell you, Donna was pissed off. I saw them over by the bathroom having words, and then she stomped out in those tacky Payless shoes she wears. You know, women with big feet should never, ever wear flats. She had the keys to his truck in her purse, so she drove off and left his ass there.”
Tessa wondered if any of Donna’s friends saw Marian leave with Teeter. “Did anyone see you walk out with him?”
“Well hell no! Right after she left, he texted me to meet him up the road at the convenience store. So I texted him back to buy some condoms and Bud Light while he was there, waited fifteen minutes, then swung by and got him.” explained Marian.
Tessa was both floored and impressed. “Where did you learn to text?” she asked her friend. “ I can barely answer my cell phone right.”
“Well where else would I learn to do that? Raiford showed me one night at the library when it was just dead in there. He’s going to help me set up a MySpace page too.”
“Marion, please don’t set up a MySpace page, everyone in the world can see that. You will have every pervert in South Georgia stalking you.” Tessa begged, as visions of her friend in scanty clothes or even possibly less decorating her personal web page started flashing through her head.
Suddenly the insinuating sound of the PussyCat Doll’s song “Don’t Cha” started playing in the background. “Hey, I have to go,” said Marian. “That’s my booty call phone going off, I’ll see you tomorrow at work.”
Tessa hung up dumbfounded. When did adultery get theme music?
The next morning Tessa woke to pouring rain. She got her coffee started while her cats nipped impatiently at her toes. She danced around from foot to foot while trying not to spill coffee powder all over the counter. “Come on guys”, she said while heading to the back patio to fill their bowls with food. The cats milled around her legs and pushed impatiently at the bowls while she filled them. She went in next to wake Drew up for school. He didn’t eat breakfast these days, which drove her crazy, but as he became more firmly entrenched in his teen years she had learned to pick her battles with him. He did still sit and watch the news with her while she drank her coffee. The local news show was a sitcom for the both of them with its folksy spin on local current events. Drew was pretty sure the show was filmed in someone’s old barn. Not much serious news happened in South Georgia, so the hour was filled crop reports, prices of beef, accidents involving wildlife, and alligator sightings. They both lived for Monday Morning Makeovers, where some poor woman down on her luck was tarted up for the day by a local salon.
“You missed the Takeover yesterday” Tessa told her son as he sat down on the couch beside her. “Story?” he said as his fingers tapped early morning messages into his phone.
“This was the worst one I have seen this year by far” she started “Please look up at me at least while I am speaking, I can’t talk while you text.” “My bad.” he replied offhandedly as he finished typing. “So what happened?”
“Well, Willene J. Culpepper from Sparks wrote in about her friend and co-worker, Marilyn Monroe Zipperer. Now Miss Marilyn, besides her unfortunate name, tragically has just lost her husband, her farm, and her job all in the same week. Then her daughter got evicted from her trailer, and she and her six kids have all come to live with Marilyn Monroe in her van parked over at the Wal-Mart. She’s never had the money to buy real false teeth, so she files down donations until they fit right and uses duct tape to ease the pressure on her gums. However, in her spare time she helps out at the church daycare, the senior citizen’s center, and she always has a big duct tape smile on her face no matter how bad the pain from her sciatica is.”
“What sort of farm did she have?” Drew pressed for details.
“A bobcat farm.” Tessa replied and was cut off before she could go back to the story. “What the hell is a “bobcat farm” Drew laughed. “Well, it was more like a bobcat rescue mission or something, now let me finish.” Tessa replied impatiently. “Rescue bobcats from what?” Drew kept on. “I don’t know Drew, hunters I suppose or people like your Dad”. Drew’s father, Drew Senior, had a lamp made from a bobcat. He found the cat newly dead on the side of road one morning and could not help but notice it was still in good shape. He threw it in the back of his truck and hurried it over to the taxidermist’s office where it was made into a very expensive and wholly hideous home decoration that would terrorize many future generations of Millers as it passed down to them. “Now let me finish before your bus gets here. So to cheer her up, Raina over at the Cut’n’Run lightened her base to Sorrento Sienna; then added highlights around her face in Lady is a Tramp blonde. Then Raina jacked all three of her unfortunate hairs straight up on her head with some gel and blow-dried it to make it look casually windblown. Her new natural look make up, created by Miss Scarla from City on Fire Models included Autumn’s new smoky eye and a nude lip. Then Dr. Randall over at the dentist office fitted her with a just huge set of blinding white brand new dentures.” “Scale of one to ten?” Drew queried as he shrugged on his backpack. “ I would have to say a full ten honey, she was way more unfortunate after the Takeover. Bless her heart, if those bobcats find their way back home she’s going to scare the hell out of them with those big ole black eyes and that glow in the dark grin.”