Page 23 - The Geography of Women

The Geography of Women 9

of a fight.
That’s how she caught Mister Apple who everybody
thought was more good-lookin than she deserved while
he was still at the pharmacy college in St. Louis an no
more n about twenty-eight hisself. She suddenly had this
real urge to get married to somebody fast. Everybody in
Canterberry knew, but never said anythin to Mizz Lula-
belle’s face about the way she used her charms, an a whole
lot a Maybelline, an the promise a the deed to the old
Harms farm that was her farm, as I said, all to herself that
last year since her daddy died free an clear. But it wasn’t
the farm, or the Playtex Cross-Your-Heart, that lassoed in
Mister Apple.
It was somethin else. Actually, you might say, it was
the usual thing in short engagements an fast weddins.
Except for Mister Apple, Mizz Lulabelle was the only one
who knew she had a little apple dumplin already in the
oven the day she marched down to say, “I do,” an cut her
three-layer cake.
I figgered, sittin on the porch steps lookin at her,
there’s gotta be more n one kind a woman in the world. I
didn’t have any hoo-ha notion a how many there was, but
I knew as sure as the radio on that hot summer porch was
playin my favorite song, “Moonglow and the Theme from
Picnic,” with Mizz Kim Novak, who I idolized, that I was
gonna find out an try em all on for size that I figgered
might fit, cuz if my thigh-feelin ran true to my heart, I
knew I was gettin warm an only had to touch the girl or
the woman or the lady, who, like Mizz Doris Day with
her Calamity Jane hair style, sang “Once I Had a Secret
Love,” an triggered my own very secret-love feel in to flare
up, to find out what I was like, sorta like other women
was the mirror a me, or the opposite a me, or, I’m sorry, I

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