Friendship Cake Read Online Free Page A

this Clairol Number Eighty-three, you’d be very pleased with the results.” She turned a funny shade of red, made a huffing kind of sound, and wheeled her buggy around so fast she knocked over the toothpaste display.
    You know, thinking about that now, I remember that happened only a few weeks before she died. So that when they brought her into Witherspoon’s, I figured here was my chance to lend Elsie some of the dignity she would never claim while she lived here on earth. But once again my good deed got punished.
    Delores, the meddlesome daughter who moved up north after school, claimed her mama looked too young. The black hair wasn’t natural. I said to her just as tenderly as I could, “Now, Delores, isn’t that the point for women in life and in death?” I was only speaking the truth, but after I said it I was afraid the woman was going to hit me!
    Dick, Mr. Witherspoon, said that even though he could see that I had done an excellent job with Elsie, the bereaved family needed to be pleased. Delores had apparently made things difficult for him. So I gave Elsie back that white chunk in the front and even streaked the back.
    After that Mr. Witherspoon preferred that I let the family choose how to fix up their loved one. He agreed that I had a real eye for that sort of thing, but that in the funeral business, just like at Kmart, the customer is always right. So now I fix them up the way I remember they looked or the way they could have looked with a little help, take a picture, and then let the family tell me what they want to change. There’s always something they want different, since I’ve learned there’s nothing worse than a person in mourning having to make wardrobe decisions. I keep the picture as a sort of legacy to my work. Mr. Witherspoon said he used to do the same thing, but now he doesn’t care to remember how many people he’s buried.
    I shouldn’t complain about the families, since I know all about what grief can do to your memories. For the longest time after Paul died, I pretended we never had an argument. I’d have long conversations with the other women about how Paul never raised his voice and how we never let the sun go down on our anger. They would all smile and nod, pat me on my arm like I was so fortunate.
    But in the more recent years, I’ve remembered things a little differently. Like how Paul never raised his voice because he rarely used it around me. And that we never had any arguments because we never talked. I realized that I had grown so accustomed to the silence that I began to invent reasons for it. Like he had too many things on his mind to speak about my new dress. Or he was all talked out from the last auction he called. I pretended over the years that we were comfortable and that the mediocrity that we both settled for was really happiness.
    It never occurred to me that we didn’t have anything to sayto one another. That the silence was simply reflective of our marriage. Now don’t hear me wrong; I’m not saying that Paul Newgarden was a bad husband or even that he was a bad man. He wasn’t. He provided for his family. He bought the children toys on holidays, took us to the beach every summer, and even set me up my own savings account. He helped out around the house and did as much driving for the children as I did. He just didn’t know how to love me. Not in the way I wanted.
    There was always a gift for my birthday. Weekends there would be some little knickknack he would pick up from an auction and bring home after the sale. He never missed taking me out to eat for our anniversary. All things that other women claim not to get from their husbands. But even these women, when they make this claim, make it with a depth of humor, some slapstick comment that makes me realize that there’s some balance for what they do get that I’d never understand.
    Like, for instance, maybe he doesn’t bring her