Southern Lady Code Read online

  ALSO BY HELEN ELLIS

  American Housewife

  Eating the Cheshire Cat

  Copyright © 2019 by Helen Ellis

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Several pieces in this collection originally appeared in the following publications: “Making a Marriage Magically Tidy” in the New York Times column “Modern Love” (June 2, 2017); “How to Stay Happily Married” in Paper Darts (Winter 2017); “Tonight We’re Gonna Party Like It’s 1979” in Eating Well (November/December 2017); “How to Be the Best Guest” as “An American’s Guide to Being the Best Guest” in Financial Times (March 2016); and “When to Write a Thank-You Note” in Garden & Gun (February/March 2018).

  Cover photograph © Alyssa Boni / Gallery Stock

  Cover design by John Fontana

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Ellis, Helen, author.

  Title: Southern Lady Code : essays / by Helen Ellis.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018019774 | ISBN 9780385543897 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385543903 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women—Southern States—Conduct of life. | Women—Southern

  States—Social life and customs. | Man-woman relationships—Southern states. | Courtesy.

  Classification: LCC PS3555.L5965 A6 2019 | DDC 814/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2018019774

  Ebook ISBN 9780385543903

  v5.4

  ep

  for Elizabeth,

  the best sister and my favorite reader

  Southern Lady Code | noun | ˈsə-thərn ˈlā-dē ˈkōd : a technique by which, if you don’t have something nice to say, you say something not so nice in a nice way

  · CONTENTS ·

  COVER

  ALSO BY HELEN ELLIS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  MAKING A MARRIAGE MAGICALLY TIDY

  THE TOPEKA THREE-WAY

  HOW TO STAY HAPPILY MARRIED

  FREE TO BE…YOU AND ME (AND CHILDFREE)

  A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN (THAT’S FULL OF GAY MEN)

  THE OTHER WOMAN’S BURBERRY COAT

  PEGGY SUE GOT MARIJUANA

  WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD LEARN FROM ABC’S THE BACHELOR

  THE GHOST EXPERIENCE

  PARTY FOUL

  TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY!

  STRAIGHTEN UP AND FLY RIGHT

  HALLOWEEN PEOPLE

  TONIGHT WE’RE GONNA PARTY LIKE IT’S 1979

  HOW TO BE THE BEST GUEST

  WHEN TO WRITE A THANK-YOU NOTE

  AN EMILY POST FOR THE APOCALYPSE

  HOW I WATCH PORNOGRAPHY LIKE A LADY

  DUMB BOOBS

  YOUNG LADIES, LISTEN TO ME

  SEVEN THINGS I’M DOING INSTEAD OF A NECK LIFT

  SERIOUS WOMEN

  THAT KIND OF WOMAN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MAKING

  A MARRIAGE

  MAGICALLY

  TIDY

  I have the reputation of living what Marie Kondo would call a “magically tidy” life. My tights are rolled like sushi, my tabletops are bare, my kitchen is so clean I could perform surgery in it. But I wasn’t always this way. When I was twenty-three, I left my New York City apartment with a panty liner stuck to my back.

  Yes, it was used. Yes, earlier that day, I’d taken it off and tossed it onto my twin bed like a bear throws salmon bones onto a rock. Once it was there, I guess I forgot about it. It was probably camouflaged. I promise you there was other stuff on the bed. My bed used to look like a landfill.

  Maybe I threw my coat over it and it stuck. And then I put my coat back on and rode a bus thirty blocks with a panty liner between my shoulder blades. No, nobody said a word. I didn’t know it was there until my date gave me a hug and then peeled it off like he was at a burlesque show in hell.

  This was not the man I married.

  The man I married walked into my apartment and found Pop-Tart crusts on my couch. I can still see his face, bewildered and big-eyed, pointing at the crusts as if to ask, “Do you see them too?”

  I shrugged.

  He sat on the sofa. It is my husband’s nature to accept me the way that I am.

  My nature is to leave every cabinet and drawer open like a burglar. My superpower is balancing the most stuff on a bathroom sink. If I had my druthers, I’d let cat puke dry on a carpet so it’s easier to scrape up. If druthers were things, and I had a coupon for druthers, I’d stockpile them like Jell-O because you never know when you might need some druthers.

  My husband fell in love with a creative woman. “Creative” is Southern Lady Code for slob.

  But it is one thing to accept a slob for who she is; it is another to live with her.

  A year into our marriage, my husband complained.

  He said, “Would you mind keeping the dining room table clean? It’s the first thing I see when I come home.”

  What I heard was: “I want a divorce.”

  What I said was: “Do you want a divorce?”

  “No,” he said. “I just want a clean table.”

  I called my mother.

  Mama asked, “What’s on the table?”

  “Oh, everything. Whatever comes off my body when I come home. Shopping bags, food, coffee cups, mail. My coat.”

  “Your coat?”

  “So I don’t hang my coat in the closet—that makes me a terrible person? He knew who he was marrying. Why do I have to change?”

  Mama said, “Helen Michelle, for heaven’s sake, this is a problem that can be easily solved. Do you know what other married women deal with? Drunks, cheaters, poverty, men married to their Atari.”

  “Mama, there’s no such thing as Atari anymore.”

  “Helen Michelle, some women would be beaten with a bag of oranges for sass talk like that. You married a saint. Clean the goddamned table.”

  And so, to save my marriage, I taught myself to clean.

  Not knowing where to start, I knelt before the TV at the Church of Joan Crawford, who said as Mildred Pierce, “Never leave one room without something for another.”

  Yes, I’ll admit she had a temper, but she knew how to clean.

  You scrub a floor on your hands and knees. You shake a can of Comet like a piggy bank. You hang your clothes in your closet a finger’s width apart. And no, you do not have wire hangers. Ever.

  I have wooden hangers from the Container Store. They’re walnut and cost $7.99 for a pack of six. I bought the hangers online because stepping into the Container Store for me is like stepping into a crack den. See, you’re an addict trying to organize your crack, and they’re selling you pretty boxes to put your crack in.

  Pretty boxes are crack, so now you have more crack. But wooden hangers are okay. They’re like mimosas. Nobody’s going to OD on mimosas. Wooden hangers give you a boost of confidence. They make you feel rich and thin. The
y make a plain white shirt sexy. You promise yourself you’ll fill one closet, and then you’ll quit.

  But I didn’t quit. To keep my buzz going, I asked my husband if I could clean his closet.

  He asked, “What does that mean?”

  I said, “Switch out your plastic hangers for wooden ones. What do you think I mean?”

  “I don’t know, something new for Saturday night?” He did the air quotes: “Clean my closet.”

  My new ways were so new he assumed I was making sexual advances. It’s understandable—so much dirty talk sounds so hygienic: salad spinning and putting a teabag on a saucer. It’s like Martha Stewart wrote Urban Dictionary.

  My husband opened his closet door and stepped aside. The man trusts me. I rehung his closet with military precision.

  He said, “I never knew it could be this good.”

  We kissed.

  And then I relapsed.

  I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was leaving the Dutch oven to soak overnight. Maybe it was tee-peeing books on my desk like a bonfire. Maybe it was shucking my panties off like shoes. And then my coat fell off the dining room table. And I left it there because the cats were using it as a bed. There it stayed along with laundry, newspapers, restaurant leftovers (that never made it to the fridge), and Zappos returns.

  My husband played hopscotch, never uttering a word of contempt, seemingly okay to coast on the memory of a pristine home as if it had been a once-in-a-lifetime bucket-list thrill like white-water rafting or winning a Pulitzer. Sure, he could have put things away, but every closet except for his was bulging and breathing like a porthole to another dimension.

  I scared myself straight by binge-watching Hoarders. What do you mean, that lady couldn’t claw her way through her grocery bag “collection” to give her husband CPR?

  So I gave books I had read to libraries. Clothes I hadn’t worn in a year went to secondhand stores. I gave away the microwave because I can melt Velveeta on a stove.

  And then came Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Or as I like to call it: “Surprise, You’re Still a Hoarder!”

  Kondo’s big question is: Does it spark joy?

  I took a harder look around my home and answered: Pretty boxes of novel manuscripts that were never published did not spark joy. Designer shoes I bought at sample sales but never wore because they pinched my feet did not spark joy. My husband confessed that his inheritance of Greek doilies and paintings of fishing boats from his grandmother did not spark joy. So, out it all went.

  And what is left is us. And my husband is happier. I’m happier, too. Turns out I like a tidy house. And I like cleaning.

  Dusting is meditative. Boiling the fridge relieves PMS. Making the bed is my cardio, because to make a bed properly, you have to circle it like a shark. And all the while, I listen to audiobooks I would be too embarrassed to be caught reading. Not in the mood to clean a toilet? Listen to Naked Came the Stranger, and see if that doesn’t pass the time.

  The downside is that my husband has created a monster. I burn through paper towels like an arsonist. I joyride my vacuum—which has a headlight—in the dark. And I don’t do it in pearls and a crinoline skirt. It’s not unusual for me to wear an apron over my pajamas.

  I say, “Hey, it’s me or the apartment. We can’t both be pristine.”

  Without hesitation, my husband will always choose the apartment.

  Sometimes, I invite him to join in my efforts, offering him the most awful tasks as if I’m giving him a treat. I’ll say, “I’m going to let you scoop the cat box” or “I’m going to let you scrape the processed cheese out of the pan.”

  My husband says, “You’re like a dominatrix Donna Reed.”

  I say, “Take off your shirt and scrape the pan, dear.”

  He takes off his shirt and scrapes the pan. In our more than twenty years together, my husband’s nature hasn’t changed.

  Me, I’m a recovering slob. Every day I have to remind myself to put the moisturizer back in the medicine cabinet, the cereal back in the cupboard, and the trash out before the can overflows. I have to remind myself to hang my coat in the closet.

  And when I accomplish all of this, I really do feel like a magician. Because now, when my husband comes home, the first thing he sees is me.

  THE TOPEKA THREE-WAY

  At a dinner party, the host fills a lull with: “Have I ever told you my Topeka Three-Way story?”

  Now, this story does not take place in Topeka. I’ve changed the name of the city where it really takes place just like I’ll change the names (and, while I’m at it, the personalities) of all of us who heard it. I’ll call myself Bobbie Sue Gentry. That is the name of a lady who will give you the gory details. “Gory details” is Southern Lady Code for flat Coke and faux pas. If you repeat a word of it, Bobbie Sue Gentry will slit your tires.

  I say, “You have not told us your Topeka Three-Way story.”

  By us, I mean me and my husband, Beauregard Beauregard Gentry. Yes, I like his made-up name so much, I’ve named him twice. Beauregard Beauregard is the name of a man who has biceps as big as beer cans and calls his wife “Mrs. Gentry” because he is so happily married to her. Mrs. Gentry (me with a 1970s Coppertone tan) calls her husband Beau Beau because honestly, who wouldn’t?

  Also present are another married couple: two male pickle-ball players who are not really pickle-ball players and not really gay men. But here’s the thing: every party is made better by homosexuals; so, since it’s my party, I’ll add gay men if I want to.

  Mr. Topeka says, “I was flying across the country to go to a wedding with Chichi in San Diego.”

  Chichi is the hostess and the storyteller’s wife. In real life, she is the opposite of a Chichi. A Chichi nukes nachos and serves them to you while wearing an airbrushed halter top that reads CHICHI. The airbrushed i’s dot her nipples and her nachos are delicious, but Chichi is not Chichi and her husband is not Mr. Topeka. In real life, Mr. Topeka finds himself in dinner-party-worthy conversation situations because, as he puts it, he talks to everybody.

  This stranger asked him to switch seats so that he could talk to the gorgeous young woman Mr. Topeka was sitting beside. I will not give this gorgeous young woman a new name, because gorgeous young women are never given names in such stories to begin with. They are called gorgeous young women, which I assume to most men means a rack like a loaf of Wonder Bread and an anime laugh.

  Mr. Topeka says, “So, I look at this woman, and she nods it’s okay to switch seats. And I ask her, Do you know this guy? And do you know what she says?”

  “It’s her parole officer!” I say.

  “What? No.”

  “You asked me to guess,” I say. I am the kind of woman who considers every conversation a game show.

  Mr. Topeka says, “No. She shakes her head, No. She doesn’t know the guy. And he’s wearing a wedding ring. And here’s the kicker: SHE’S wearing a wedding ring, too!”

  “Ooooo,” says the dinner party, Chichi included.

  A secret to a happy marriage is: be your partner’s biggest fan. I wonder how many times Chichi has heard her husband tell “The Topeka Three-Way” and I wonder if she “Ooooo’s” every time that she hears it. Every time Beau Beau hears me tell our “Cretan Gorge” story (which includes him force-feeding me protein bars, a donkey strike, and our leaving an elderly woman for dead), he drops his head to read his iPhone.

  Mr. Topeka says, “So, we switch seats and the guy promises to buy me a drink, but he never does because we have to emergency land in Topeka.”

  “Ooooo,” says the dinner party, Chichi included.

  I ask, “Where’s your new seat?”

  A pickle-ball player asks, “What does it matter where he moved to?”

  “Well, did the guy give up first class for this woman?”

 
Mr. Topeka says, “Back of the plane, right in front of the toilet. Worst seat ever. But I could still see them canoodling.”

  Stop, you think, no straight man says canoodling. You think, Can I trust my narrator?

  Well, of course you can’t. Nobody retells a story word for word how they heard it. We embellish. We substitute. We censor. We lie. So, since I can’t remember if Mr. Topeka’s flight experienced turbulence or bad weather, let’s just say: the wings were on fire, so they land.

  Mr. Topeka says, “Everyone gets off the plane and gets vouchers for a hotel, and the guy says to me: ‘I ordered a car, get in my car.’ So, I get in his car and now there’s four of us: me, the guy, the woman, and some new guy. And here’s where Chichi gets mad at me.”

  Beau Beau says, “Here’s where she gets mad at you?”

  Chichi says, “For getting in a car with strangers.”

  Beau Beau says, “Mrs. Gentry would have been mad at me for switching seats on the plane.”

  “But then there’d be no story to tell.”

  “Mrs. Gentry would never let me tell this story to begin with.”

  It’s true.

  A secret to a happy marriage is: know your audience. Especially, your biggest fan. Beau Beau knows that I don’t like to see movies in which a woman has natural childbirth; and he doesn’t like to see devil possession. So we don’t see these movies. And we don’t tell stories the other one doesn’t like to hear. For Beau Beau, I’ve stopped telling the “Bismarck Bear” story and the “Salem Horse” story because—even though these stories are hilarious—Beau Beau thinks, as he puts it, that he comes off like an idiot. I don’t like to come off as anything other than the only woman in the world, so Beau Beau can’t tell stories about his sex life before me. He can’t tell stories about other women in general. I don’t care if the story is about a pharmacist who sold him Odor-Eaters, I don’t like stories where women get too close to my man.