Chapter 6

Spring had finally arrived in Greenbelt. The grass had turned that absurdly bright color of green approaching neon. The lambs were gamboling in their overgrazed fields near the edge of town and the sun had warmed Candy’s backyard concrete slab to a toasty temperature. She was using it to dry her bath towels at the moment, giving her house the look of a not very good garage sale -- the kind that causes people to drive by slowly instead of stopping to inquire about the prices.

But things were looking up. Yesterday she had gotten the cast off her arm, which still looked white and pruny, a bit like old gym socks that you find down at the bottom of your backpack when getting ready for a new trip. Snuffy had been found by old Einar Flikkema, hiding out under Einar’s barn. Einar, being a soft touch, had been feeding him Vienna sausages all winter, so Candy’s mom had trouble getting Snuffy readjusted to his “healthier” diet of cheap dry cat food. It was fortunate for Candy that Snuffy was restored. She was certain that caring for the cat was the one daily activity that kept her mother from caring for Candy full time.

Candy sat out in the lawn chair on the slab, trying to tan some color back into her arm. It was time for her to get her act together. To get her whole life together for that matter. She would start by not calling Buck and wheedling a ride to the post office to pick up the new batch of letters. She had a hold put on her mail, so that it accumulated at the post office. She liked to pick the mail up in batches and then work furiously on it, rather than having it trickle in a few letters at a time.

Her bills and personal correspondence also accumulated at the post office along with the fan letters she answered for Annie, but usually that was just as well. She didn’t like to face up to her bills except periodically and rarely ever did she get a personal letter. People either called or e-mailed these days. She would just make herself get up, in spite of the fact that the broken strips of webbing in the chaise longe had allowed her butt to sink in somewhat too deeply. A few minutes later, Candy grabbed her trusty old backpack with the Dead Kennedy’s button on the strap and let the screen door bang behind her.

Walking the 15 blocks to the post office was a pleasant diversion. She got to the yellow-painted cinder block building that housed the post office. As usual, the postmistress (who looked a great deal like Aunt Bea from Mayberry, only not quite so likely to hand you a slice of warm apple pie as to leave you a nasty notice about keeping your porch and pathway shoveled) asked her if she didn’t want to resume delivery to her house.

“No, thank you anyway. I am not sure that I am able to care for my mailbox properly. I will just continue to pick up my mail.” Candy gave her best cheerleading smile.

“Okay then, if you’re sure that’s what you want,” said Aunt Postoffice in that I-don’t-think-you-know-what-is-best-for-you voice.

Candy rather liked the irritation it seemed to cause them at the post office after all of the little pink postcards delivered to her mailbox stating the exact distance that snow must be cleared to either side of the box. She thought she would always pick up her mail and never resume service. Perhaps even years after her death mail would be held at the post office for her. Maybe Janie would make a pact with her and agree to write her post mortem letters.

The postmistress went back into the secret recesses of the post office for what seemed long enough to have a Danish and two cups of coffee. She finally returned with several rubber-banded piles of letters, catalogs, and brightly colored junk mail.

“Thanks so much,” Candy brimmed with sweetness.

“You’re welcome,” replied postal comrade Bea efficiently.

Candy stuffed the pile into her backpack until it was almost overflowing and headed out the door. She liked to pretend that this was all of her fan mail, not just her job. She daydreamed about what it would be like to get so many letters from adoring fans. “Dear Candy, I just adored you in the western, Sagebrush Saga, with Brad Pitt. How do you stay so slim? And where did you learn to kickbox like that?”

But the reality of it was that plenty of the letters Anne got were plain weird. On the way home she would stop by Sunny J’s for a latte and perhaps even a chocolate dipped macaroon. She was sure the macaroons were just the same ones she could buy herself at Safeway, but they were somehow sinfully delicious, if rather stale, when purchased with a latte from Sunny’s. She got to the house after spilling the latte on her hand and burning herself only twice: once with the original inattentive tip of the cup and the second time more severely as she spasmed from the first spill. As she walked up to the house there were her mother and Buck chatting away companionably in the driveway.

“Hi honey!” they said in tandem as she walked up.

“Wow! It looks like a party!” Candy replied, thinking sadly to herself that only in Greenbelt would she consider the gathering of her mom and her sheepish courtier cause for celebration. She really didn’t have any friends in Greenbelt, aside from Sharon, who colored her hair at Greenbelt Beauty, and her Grade School friend, Montana, who occasionally dropped in and told Candy all kinds of weird stuff about her boyfriend and his drug problem.

Occasionally she and Sharon would go out for a burger after Candy got her hair done, and they went to the movies whenever Colin Firth or some other hunk worth paying seven bucks to see played at the Dianne Theater. But the truth was, Candy felt she was wasting away in Greenbelt. Nobody appreciated her as an artist. They were all just living from day to day, planting petunias in coffee cans, and drinking gallons of weak coffee at Patsy’s lunch counter. They thought she was one of them, but really, she was not. Candy knew that she was destined for some kind of great fame, and that whatever it was, it was not going to happen in Greenbelt.

She had spent the winter recovering from her failed relationship with Haines and answering Anne’s fan mail. She had spent the spring recovering from her crushed hand and eating macaroons. But now that summer breezes were rustling the leaves in the tall cottonwoods along Fourth Street, she felt, stronger than ever, that she needed to get away from the monotony of Greenbelt. She wanted to go back to California, set herself up in an apartment, audition for jobs, get an incredible part, meet a wonderful guy, become rich and famous. How hard could it be?

The only trouble was, she barely had the cash to keep herself in macaroons, let alone fly down to LA and get resettled. As much as she felt demeaned by answering Anne’s mail for her, she could not even consider the idea of going back and cocktailing in another sports bar. She would just have to wait until she had enough money to get to LA and take a few months off to really concentrate on auditioning. She had done the waitress thing, and it always ended up that she was so busy trying to make ends meet that she never had time to feel like an actress.

“We were at a garage sale over on 6th, and I saw a pair of jeans I thought might fit you,” Said Candy’s Mom. This hurt, as Candy had gained 15 pounds languishing on the couch and reading westerns in the six weeks it had taken her hand to heal.

“Thanks, but I really have to get to work.” Candy avoided the topic.

“We thought you might want to go to lunch,” Buck added.

“I really can’t. You guys go on. This mail has piled up for weeks, and I cannot put it off another minute.” The reality of Candy’s rent was upon her, and that very morning the thought had hit her that if she didn’t come up with $500 before next week, her next resort would be to move in with her Mom, or worse yet, with Buck. That had been enough to eject her from the couch and marching toward the post office with renewed vigor.

Buck and Mrs. White bid her farewell, and don’t work too hard, and Candy set about clearing several weeks worth of cereal bowls and coffee cups from her workspace. She was feeling glum after the garage sale jeans comment, and as much as the deadline for making some dough hung over her head, the necessity of actually doing the work was more dreadful than ever. Suddenly Candy was filled with an inspiration to do her laundry, to go for a bike ride, to sew a quilt, anything, anything but sit in front of that damned laptop.

Next, she began thinking of ways to make the experience less unpleasant.

“I could listen to a book on tape.” She thought, but she had already listened to all the rentals at Pump and Pack except Rush Limbaugh’s autobiography.

“Some macaroons would be nice,” she thought, but then she remembered the jeans, and shook her head to herself, no. No.

“If only I had some fresh air. I know, I will download all my e-mails onto the laptop, and then I’ll ride up to Luke’s Pond and dangle my toes off the dock while I read all the letters. I can compose the replies after I’ve read them all. Then I’ll reply to all the e-mails. I can send them later.”

In a matter of moments she had the mail and the computer in a grocery sack, and a jug of black cherry Kool-Aid and some grapes and Doritos in another sack. She draped them over the handlebars of her bike and teetered her way out of town.
Meadowlarks and red winged blackbirds were singing all around the edges of the pond. Candy found a nice shady spot, free of fresh cow pies, and laid out her work in front of her like a picnic.

She would read the letters first, sort of pick through them to get inspiration. Then maybe after a swim she would really get started. It was hard to find a comfortable position to read in. There were a lot of ants and twigs hiding in the soft grass. But it was nice here, just her and a small group of Black Angus cows tearing up clumps of the fresh spring grass and munching them audibly nearby.

Candy took the rubber band off the first bundle of letters and noticed one that was rather large and legal looking. Her first instinct was that it was the reply from the publisher’s clearinghouse sweepstakes that she had entered, but she was afraid that they don’t contact you by mail if you actually win. The return address looked like some sort of legal office.

Uh oh, Candy had an unpleasant feeling of foreboding. What would somebody want to sue her for? But wait, good things could come from law offices too. Maybe she was the heir to a fortune. She hadn’t seen her dad since she was four. According to her mom, he had left Idaho to work for Oscar Meyer in the sixties, and they had lost touch. Maybe he had patented one of those new hotdogs with the cheese in the middle, and then died, and she was his soul heir.