Ellis - Southern Lady Code: Essays

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 Were Gonna Party Like Its 1979 in Eating Well (November/December 2017); How to Be the Best Guest as An Americans 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 : WomenSouthern StatesConduct of life. | WomenSouthern

StatesSocial life and customs. | Man-woman relationshipsSouthern states. | Courtesy.

Classification: LCC PS 3555. L 5965 A 6 2019 | DDC 814/.54dc23

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

Ebook ISBN9780385543903

v5.4

ep

for Elizabeth,

the best sister and my favorite reader

Southern Lady Code | noun | \s-t h rn l-d kd \ : a technique by which, if you dont have something nice to say, you say something not so nice in a nice way

CONTENTS

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 wasnt 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, Id 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 didnt 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 husbands 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, Id let cat puke dry on a carpet so its easier to scrape up. If druthers were things, and I had a coupon for druthers, Id 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? Its 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, Whats 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 dont hang my coat in the closetthat makes me a terrible person? He knew who he was marrying. Why do I have to change?

Mama said, Helen Michelle, for heavens 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, theres 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, Ill 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 fingers width apart. And no, you do not have wire hangers. Ever.

I have wooden hangers from the Container Store. Theyre 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, youre an addict trying to organize your crack, and theyre selling you pretty boxes to put your crack in.

Pretty boxes are crack, so now you have more crack. But wooden hangers are okay. Theyre like mimosas. Nobodys going to OD on mimosas. Wooden hangers give you a boost of confidence. They make you feel rich and thin. They make a plain white shirt sexy. You promise yourself youll fill one closet, and then youll quit.

But I didnt 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 dont 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. Its understandableso much dirty talk sounds so hygienic: salad spinning and putting a teabag on a saucer. Its 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 dont 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.