Wrong Turn
I walked down the hallway of the Greater Metropolitan Roopville Star Center, which houses an auditorium and an arts gallery and several classrooms for revolving functions. I wanted to find a specific class to join but could not find it for love nor money. Instead, I walked into a hornet's nest known as a Public Spat during an emergency meeting of the Ladies Who Wear Funny Hats Club.
Trust me when I say, no man should ever walk into such a scene. The very sight of narrowed eyes and tightly pursed lips on otherwise sweet-natured Southern women gave me a shiver down my spine. From the way some of them clenched their fists with their long sharp manicured thumbnails exposed, I hoped desperately that I was not the subject of their ire.
All heads turned at my unexpected appearance in the doorway, and Miss Irene Hassendoodle was the first to bellow out to me. "What do you want!" she roared, and I blanched. She immediately morphed into her standard Cool Collected Southern Lady mode and followed up in honeyed tones. "That is, why hello Mr. Fable; what can we do for you?"
I made a quick assessment of the situation. There were ten women on one side of the room including two Finch wives, a couple of Vollingers and my friend Sally Dimity's mother Betty Dimity. On the other side of the centrally placed clutch of tables stood an equal number of women with Miss Irene including two other Hassendoodles, the mayor's wife Iris Talley and a collection of McGuires. Well, technically nearly everyone was a McGuire; I don't know of many families that do not contain a McGuire on some branch of their family tree.
However, as a Fable I am not related to nor technically obligated to any family in the Greater Metropolitan Roopville area. This placed me in the uncomfortable position of being a Fence Sitter and therefore, the ideal go-to guy in whatever kind of squabble that currently plagued the Ladies Who Wear Funny Hats Club.
"Truman, dear," Miss Irene began, but Betty Dimity took my other arm.
"Truman, perhaps you could suggest a resolution to a...a concern of ours."
Oh dear. A Concern was a bigger deal than a mere Situation or a Fix. In Southern parlance the order of escalation was a Thing, a Deal, a Problem, a Situation, a Fix, a Concern, a Conflict, and a Regrettable Occasion, topped only by an Unpleasantness. A Situation could cover a plethora of ills such as a public fistfight between your brother and the preacher. A Concern is for bigger stakes, say a stretch in jail or Impuning the Family Honor. The Civil War is considered the ultimate Recent Unpleasantness. (In the South, the Civil War is recent and don't think for a minute that it is not.)
Still, it would do me no good to walk away from resolving a Concern between ladies so I might as well hunker down and deal with it. "Well, I will certainly give it a try," I replied with all the gallantry my sinking courage could muster.
"We of the Ladies Who Wear Funny Hats Club must agree upon a theme for our fundraiser this year, and there is not a clear-cut resolution so far," Iris Talley said. As the wife of the mayor she was used to careful wording in a delicate situation.
"What are the ideas?"
"Well now, Mrs. Hassendoodle feels that Hearth and Home would be appropriate, while Mrs. Vollinger has suggested Vegas Fever."
"Vegas Fever has been done," Irene Hassendoodle huffed with a roll of her eyes.
"Yes, and it was very successful," Mrs. Vollinger countered.
"And it is time to move on; we've done it for three years. Much more of this and we will look like a gambling club, not a ladies' society."
"Only if Viola decides to serve drinks again," Mrs. Vollinger replied with a particularly biting tone of voice.
"Only you would bring up that particularly noxious incident," Miss Irene fumed.
"Only you would ignore it."
"Um, ladies? Please?" I interrupted before I could stop myself. I knew better than that; a fellow does not willingly step between two hissing cats without risking his skin getting raked by their claws. Still, I had things to do and places to go, and listening to them fuss over The Time Miss Viola Hassendoodle Was Too Generous With The Liquor For Her Gentleman Friends was wasting my time. "Just what is the fund-raising for, what cause are you supporting?"
"Our club," Marybeth McGuire said. "That is, we do numerous charitable works, scholarships and sponsoring lectures and such," she hastily corrected when she realized how the bald truth sounded. "We've just run low on ideas."
"Do you have to have a theme? Can't you just say it's a fundraiser for charity?" I asked.
Betty Dimity giggled first, then a Vollinger tittered and the next thing I knew, the entire roomful of women were laughing at my suggestion. "Truman dearest," Betty explained with a sympathetic pat on the shoulder at my ignorance, "The Ladies Who Wear Funny Hats Club cannot simply say 'we need money'; it simply isn't done."
"Why not?"
"We must have an entertaining theme so as not to present the gauche tableau of simply begging for a handout. It would sound as if we ourselves were the charity."
"But that...that..." I was stymied. It was perfectly acceptable for the Ladies Who Wear Funny Hats Club to allow different causes to come to them hat in hand to ask for a scholarship or a fee or a similarly gauche tableau for themselves. These women were ready to tear into each other because no one wanted to be honest. They preferred to fight over which veneer to present to the world, as if the causes they supported were not noble enough to justify a request for funding without the fuss. "This is a zoo," I decided, and it came over my teeth, past my lips and out of my mouth before I could stop it.
"A zoo. Yes, a zoo!" Mrs. Irene Hassendoodle exclaimed. "We can decorate with animal cutouts and use animal print patterns, you know zebra and leopard and tiger skins -"
"And footprints; and serve animal-themed refreshments," a Finch added. Everyone had an idea, and their club secretary scrambled to write down twenty excited voice's input.
Betty Dimity gave my arm a squeeze. "You're not half bad," she told me. "I should tell Sally to quit piddling around and let you call on her again."
"You laughed at me," I said, indignant.
"Well honestly, Truman; there are certain protocols a lady must follow. This isn't the wild West, you know," she said, knowing full well that I was a Transplant to the Deep South and not a native of the land.
Before I could say something I realize now I would likely regret, Mrs. Irene Hassendoodle flitted over to me and patted my cheek. "Oh, aren't you just the little idea devil himself! Goodness, that was an inspired idea! ...do you know my daughter Viola, by any chance?"
Betty's eyes narrowed. "He also knows my Sally," she said in a light but dangerous tone.
"Yes m'am, we've met. They are both charming women. I'd better be on my way, I'm late for a meeting," I babbled before Mrs. Irene had the chance to pair me up with Miss Viola in front of Sally Dimity's mother, thus setting the stage for a terrible conflagration known as Southern Mothers' Defense of Potential Daughter's Beau, which could escalate into a Fix. This would mean entirely leapfrogging over a Thing, a Deal, and a Situation and given the tension of the day, plow right through a Problem and straight into the heart of a Concern. It is not that I am such a desirable catch; it is purely a matter of proprietorship. On the other hand I would prefer not to think of myself as a last resort.
I hurried down the hallway until I finally found the room by a paper taped to the door with the hastily scrawled legend, "Stress Management."