Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

fingernails and toenails. And they were always the most beautiful shade of pink or red, depending on what color outfit she was wearing that day. She had a collection of nail polish that even Ruthie Morgan found enviable. There must have been thirty or forty bottles of polish, from Chrysanthemum Pink to Paris Evening Red, neatly stacked on the bottom shelf of her bathroom closet. And when it was raining and we couldn't go outside and play, Gloria Jean would give me and Martha Ann a manicure, just like in a real beauty parlor.
    Sitting out on her television set was a photograph of herself. She was standing in front of the fountain at city hall with her legs positioned just like a model in one of those
Vogue
magazines she kept laying around the house. She looked so fancy in her full, pleated skirt and her high, pointed heels. Her hair was swept up on her head and her lips were painted a deep ruby red. Gloria Jean had been a sure-enough beauty in her day. Even Martha Ann and I could figure that out.
    Apparently a lot of men had figured that out, too. She had been married five times, something I considered an amazing accomplishment but something you could tell didn't impress my daddy much. Gloria Jean said herself that she hadn't given up on love, just the official marital ritual. In fact, she had a steady boyfriend who lived down in Calhoun. His name was Meeler Dickson, and he worked in a carpet mill, and that was all I knew about him. She visited him the third weekend of every month without fail, but she never once let him come to her house.
    She said she wouldn't feel right about a man in her house with the preacher living next door. But I think she was more concerned about Ida Belle Fletcher, who lived two doors down, spooning out the details of her private life just as freely as she did the creamed corn at church suppers.
    Martha Ann and I loved it when Gloria Jean talked about her husbands and her weddings. She'd begin with some simple piece of advice like, “Oh girls, don't you ever marry a man that comes to the church late for his own wedding.” Then we knew it was time to pay close attention because Gloria Jean was about to share a story even juicier than those soap operas she loved to watch on the television.
    “My first husband, remember girls, Cel Beauchamp, from Louisiana. He was late to the church, and I just knew that was a sign from God that I should hightail it out the back door. If a man can't show up for his own wedding on time, girls, then he'll never be able to keep a woman happy,” Gloria Jean said with the conviction that comes only from experience. “But the church was already filled with people, the candles were lit, my veil was on, and my mother said, ‘Unless that leg of yours is in a cast, you are walking down that aisle.’
    “Girls, hear me out, there is always time to turn back. You know why he was late? ’Cause he was getting drunk at some bar up in Soddy Daisy. I left him after three months of wedded bliss. He come home one too many nights smelling of Jack Daniel's and homemade cigars. But I did all right. I walked away with one fine diamond ring, a brand-new double-wide, and a set of Corning Ware that's still sitting in my kitchen cupboard, never even taken it out of the box.”
    “Oh Daddy, Gloria Jean is just so neat,” I told him when he got home from visiting the sick late one night. “You know she wore white at all five weddings. She says that is a bride's prerogative. She even said that when I get married, I can wear one of her dresses.”
    “Catherine Grace,” Daddy replied in an unusually firm tone, “there's a reason a bride wears white on her wedding day, and we will discuss that when you're a little older. But remember this, husbands and wedding dresses are not meant to be collected. You only need one of each.”
    Daddy never seemed particularly fond of Gloria Jean. I guess he considered divorce to be one of those get-down-on- your-knees-and-beg-for-forgiveness kind of