[01] Catering to Nobody by Diane Mott Davidson

Author:Diane Mott Davidson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-05-12T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Show P.S. and T.

Why had Laura Smiley made that note on an article about a mistrial? It had been in her locker; one had to assume that P.S. and T. were available in the athletic club. It was an article about Dr. Fritz Korman, something from two decades before, something which, for a reason I did not know, had relevance for P.S. and T.

I put the article down and tried to call Arch’s teacher, Janet Heath, but got her answering machine instead. I stared at the article again.

Trixie (T.?) had said that she and Laura had talked about Korman in the steam room after exercise class. She also had said that Laura and Patty Sue, of all people, had had a tête-à-tête in the same steam room. Time for me to have a little chat with P.S. myself, especially since she was the only woman I knew who was a current patient of Fritz Korman’s.

But Patty Sue was out running when I arrived home. When she came back Arch was in and out with Todd so that it was impossible to ask questions. Then she went to bed after we finished the dishes. What was the point of all that exercise if it rendered you constitutionally incapable of staying up past nine at night?

Well, we still lived under the same roof. Sunday morning would do for questions. I dialed Janet Heath again and got her machine again. Another chat set aside for the next morning.

As usual I awoke early. Sunday, with its inevitable doldrums, is the bane of the single person who has been married. For couples and families it is a day of church, picnics, fishing, football games, pizza, and movies. Now the emptiness descended like one of the cold fogs that go creeping through the mountain valleys in winter. The frigid moisture is almost invisible, but you can see the way the icy clouds turn green pines to silver; you can feel the chill seep into your bones.

So I followed my routine. Cooking was the cure for loss. The candy for Arch’s Halloween party at Furman Elementary was the next order of business.

A batch of my Terrific Toffee would do for the sixth graders. The candy would keep in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. I buttered two nine-by-thirteen-inch glass pans and started to melt butter with brown sugar in a big pot. I rummaged through my knife drawer for the candy thermometer, then snapped its long bulb onto the side of the pan.

I stirred, and remembered when Arch was five. We had spent a lot of time playing the game Candyland. This had led to long discussions about how they made all the sweets for that place, which Arch believed existed outside of the game board. The Candyland cement mixer trucks were full of toffee, he insisted, because they could keep it moving all the time. Car engines had little blades to chop up peppermint drops so you could stir them into Christmas fudge. Two

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