Straight No Chaser

Rock Candy, or, There Goes My Hero

it frustrates me that i have no patience for small towns.

more than that. i hate them. the place where my grandmother grew up is sort of like a poor, countrified pleasantville. a main street called, shockingly, main street. pitifully few cross streets, one of which is the residential street (it winds around in a spiral and is home to pretty much everyone who lives in the town), another of which is lined with greasy fast food restaurants.

besides the fast food restaurants, there are no business chains of any sorts. instead of a kinko's, there's something called kopy world--"now offering color copys!" instead of a safeway, or a giant, there is a "fred's," which does not sell feminine hygiene products of any kind.

there were forty-eight of us in attendance, and we made up more than half of the congregation at church on sunday. the other forty or so people were nearly all widowed women my grandmother's age, wearing giant white wigs and too much makeup, and most of them were in the choir. everyone knew everyone else, everyone planned on eating sunday dinner at the same three houses, afterward.

in that town, you can get anywhere within five minutes. in a car or on foot. walking is as fast as driving, because the traffic lights only change about once every ten minutes--totally unhurried because, even if you're massively late getting someplace, like to work, your boss isn't likely to get too upset with someone she considers fambly. which everyone is, there. part of one giant (but altogether too tiny) extended fambly.

i hate it there. and that's how i know i'll never be the next toni morrison.

here is the problem: the suburbs are, traditionally, known to be an unhappy place. as a society we've been conditioned to understand that happiness comes from love and family--the abstract and immaterial. it does not come from money or houses or hummers; therefore, if you have any of those things, then logically, you must be very unhappy. suburban life makes for easy, uncreative drama. the outer-city commuter cheats on his soccer-mom wife. poor little rich girl fears and subsequently dodges her amazing potential. et cetera.

whereas out in the country, there is a beautiful irony in finding a relateable story. country folk are, stereotypically, simple folk, and it always delights us when simple folk yield intricate, poignant stories. take sula. two country girls reared by flawed country people, blessed with your average neighborly country-girl friendship. so then why, at the end, do i, who art pretty cosmo by comparison, invariably break down in tears, moved to feel something i've only felt once before, in superlatively urban chicago?

and, beloved, god damn it. three freed slaves in a house in the country. a scene and cast of characters so tiny, i could recreate it with finger puppets from hearth song. but. but.

before i even read harriet the spy, i was obsessed with the social workings of suburbs. i invented endless yuppie couples in list forms, so that they weren't people so much as organizations. palmetto general hospital. "olivia" magazine. they were names, not humans. the femme fatale. the family man. cliches as undercooked as one of sula's sunshine cakes.

i know toni would love my grandmother's hometown. i hate that i still don't have the vision, the artistry or the appreciation for its intimacy to feel the same way. i think i'll kill myself if i ever become the next barbara delinsky. the next danielle steel.

no offense to either hack.

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