Belle Weather Read Free

Greece.
    “Honey,” I said to my husband, who had actually fallen asleep standing up in front of a display of travertine tiles, “Wake up! We’re going to visit our granite. It’s very exotic so we’ll probably have to travel a long ways.”
    “Kaching,” he muttered sleepily.
    “Oh, no, don’t worry,” the kitchen lady said, patting him on the small of his back, right where I imagined the surgical scar would probably be some day. “Actually the granite you selected is a tad closer to home.”
    “Really? Where?” I asked.
    “Well, actually, your granite is in Myrtle Beach.”
    Good-bye Louvre, hello Dixie Stampede. I was irrationally disappointed.
    “You’ll need to schedule an appointment to visit it,” the kitchen lady continued.
    “Say who?” my husband said. This is the Southern man’s response to anything that causes momentary confusion or puzzlement.
    I sighed, rolled my eyes, and jumped in to fix this.
    “I apologize for my husband. I believe what he meant to say was, ‘Do what?’”
    Well. Some people just aren’t fluent in Southern. I’m used to being a translator. It’s a gift.
    Because we live just a little over an hour’s drive from Myrtle Beach, this was going to be easy. Still, it was hard for me to reconcile the Myrtle Beach I knew, which was heavy on factory outlets, fish camps, and “gentlemen’s clubs” with the rich, elegant verde peacock I had fallen for.
    I began to think of our granite as a kitten at the animal shelter, waiting for its rightful owners to come save it from a grim fate. I would take this granite home and it would be safe from ever having to see another human being wearing a shirt with “My Other Ride Is Your Mom” on the front.
    It would be grateful and perform admirably over the years. The kitchen lady was excited about scheduling the visit because, as she explained, it was a bit like an adoption process.
    We visited the granite and I wept because it was so pretty. Really. I stood there in a gravel parking lot while a guy driving a forklift kept my slab suspended in the air and I walked around it about eighteen times. I had the distinct impression that if I walked around one more time, he was going to drop it on my foot.
    But this was our time together, me and my granite, and it was love at first sight. The tears came out of nowhere, unless you count the peri-menopausal haze that I reside in for most of the day.
    As my eyes welled, my nine-year-old said I was embarrassing her and I told her that Mommy needed a moment and Mommy had forgotten to take her mood-altering drugs that morning so what the hell was her problem, anyway?
    On the way out, I saw a woman caressing her (snicker) uba tuba slab and talking to it.
    “Hey, at least I’m not talking to granite like that poor soul,” I told Sophie, whose look told me that she wished she could trade me in for a sane mommy.
    “Mom,” she said, with an irritated tone that I instantly recognized from my own tween years, “If we stay much longer, I’m going to start my period. Let’s go!”
    Oh, snap! I have always admired sarcasm in the very young.
    The granite installation was subbed out to men whose names did not all begin with “D.” And since they were able to do the entire installation in less than a day, I didn’t even get a chance to fart on them.
    Their loss, right?

3
Possum Chokes on Packing Peanuts
    Gross Film at Eleven
    In the South, we’re used to varmints, but we sugarcoat everything, so we never use the word “cockroach” to refer to that icky, skittering blur of a bug that runs when you turn the kitchen light on.
    We call these “water bugs,” which sounds somehow more genteel. Occasionally, we call them “palmetto bugs,” which sounds downright charming, as if they march about with palm fronds for hair and carry tiny little glasses of sweet tea on a tray.
    Whatever they are, we all have them and it has nothing to do with how clean your house is. I’ve seen two-inch water bugs