Richard Chamberlain Comes to Tolerance

March 27, 1983

Sissy Ghent is twenty-four years old. She has two children, Jill, 4, and Kelly, 3. It is a surprise to her that she is a stay-at-home-mom, but there she is. Her high school sweetheart and husband of five years, Cary Ghent, is also twenty-four. He owns and operates Butch’s Muffler. He bought the business from Butch and kept the name. Money was tight that first year. Every year, business improves. Every year, more and more people call Cary Butch. Their friends. His family. Butch’s Mufflers’ motto is No Muff Too Tuff. It is Sissy’s least favorite sentence.

They were born and raised and are now homeowners in Tolerance, Ohio. Next to their neighborhood of single-story starter homes sits Old Stone Cemetery. Old Stone Cemetery is the size of five football fields. There are no mysteries in Tolerance. Where do we go when we die, for example? The answer: Old Stone Cemetery. Everyone goes to Old Stone Cemetery. Sissy’s parents sure did when she was seventeen. Next to Old Stone Cemetery is the new mall. Everyone goes there too. Across from the new mall is Gold Circle, part department store, part upscale grocery store. Not everyone goes there. Going there seems to be a statement not everyone is willing to make. Going there means dipping your toe in being better than Tolerance. Sissy goes to Gold Circle every day. She is headed there right now.

She could, if she wanted to, do all of her shopping for the week in one day. She prefers once a day instead. The out loud reason is she likes the spontaneity of not knowing what she is going to make for dinner on any given night. The reason that wordlessly exists inside her body is it’s the only part of her day where she can breathe. It’s the only part of her day that leads anywhere. It’s the only part of her day that isn’t a circle.

Dinner is already set for most of the week. Their friends—the Hodiaks and the Daleys—will be coming over each night to watch the new installments of The Thorn Birds. The Hodiaks will bring Kentucky Fried Chicken on Monday. On Tuesday, the Daleys will bring barbeque. Tonight and Wednesday, Cary will run out for sheet pizzas, sheet pizzas in crowded rooms being Cary’s favorite food. This trip to Gold Circle, this one right here, is for snacks and drinks. Something Sissy could have done at any point last week. But if she had, what reason would she have for going today? If she gets snacks and drinks for tonight and tomorrow night, what reason will she have for going to Gold Circle tomorrow? She’d think of something, but this feels more honest.

Everything inside Gold Circle is clean and bright. The floor tiles are so glossy they look and feel wet. The silver clothing racks glint like samurai swords, the shelves lined with brightly colored promises. This makeup wipe remover will make your skin look and feel softer, younger. This dish soap will make your kitchen smell like a tropical getaway. Never buy them and the promise is forever.

Some days, Sissy pretends she’s a spy—Special Agent Solitaire—and her mission is to get in and out without being seen by anyone she knows. Almost impossible in Tolerance, though she does give herself a partial success for successfully pretending she doesn’t see them.

Today, however, she’s playing that game only a little. And that’s all it is, after all. A game. A little something to make the day a little more interesting. She’s not crazy, or anything. Today she’s more focused on what she’s doing here than usual. Just snacks and drinks, but she hasn’t decided what kind. The kind she likes or the kind the neighbors (and Cary) will eat.

Her mind whirs with possibilities. Scotch eggs? Beer cheese fondue? A cob loaf would be thematically appropriate given its association with Australia and The Thorn Birds being set in Australia. No, what really feels right is a smoked salmon pâté served with water crackers and a chilled white wine. She stares at the salmon filets sitting on ice behind glass at the seafood counter for three full minutes, knowing the whole time that’s exactly where they’re going to stay. Sissy’s never had smoked salmon pâté with water crackers and chilled white wine in her life, and she won’t tonight either. Snacks and drinks means pretzel rods and Coors Light. It didn’t absolutely have to be, but life would be just a little bit easier for everyone if it were. Like the time she made cucumber sandwiches for Luke and Laura’s wedding. No one said anything disparaging, but they also didn’t eat them. The absence of pretzels filled the room.

She waves goodbye to the salmon, grabs several bags of pretzel rods, a case of Coors Light, a six-pack of Heineken, and almost, almost, almost pulls a bottle of Almaden from an end cap display.

The magazines in the checkout aisles are festooned with Richard Chamberlain’s face. Sissy tries and fails to recall when exactly her living room was deemed Thorn Birds-central. She’d read the book. It was fine. She once read a book about the rugby team that crashed in the Andes and then started eating each other. It cost her a nickel at the church bazaar and she doesn’t go more than three days without thinking about it. Still, she can’t deny that seeing Richard Chamberlain’s face is like seeing an old friend. He was Dr. Kildare, after all. He once played F. Scott Fitzgerald in a made-for-TV movie and, to this day, when she hears the name F. Scott Fitzgerald, she pictures Richard Chamberlain. Shogun was pretty good, also.

 

On all of the magazine covers, Richard Chamberlain is trying his damnedest to be one of Gold Circle’s many brightly colored forever promises, but there is something in his face that seems to say, I’m sorry, I’m not any of those things. I’m incurably human. Don’t tell anyone.

Cary returns home with two sheet pizzas from Magic Oven. One is pepperoni, the other is sausage, onion, and green pepper, which Cary refers to as, “Both kinds.” They entirely cover the kitchen table. Sissy is putting Jill and Kelly to bed when Jan and Wayne Daley arrive. In the next room, Jan and Wayne and Cary’s voices sound like Charlie Brown’s teachers. Sissy has the sudden urge to lie down on Jill and Kelly’s floor and go to sleep. But she isn’t really tired. She’ll just lie there for five, ten minutes, fighting to keep her eyes closed. No matter what, she was going to have to leave this room and become a member of a group. It might as well be now.

Jan and Sissy hug. Ripley’s Believe It or Not turned way down low buzzes on the television. The room is warm and smells like pizza. Cary escorts Wayne into the adjoining kitchen for the big reveal. Two whole sheet pizzas when one would suffice. This, says the look on Cary’s face, is what life is all about. Wayne pantomimes agreement, then selects a beer out of the refrigerator, one of the six Heinekens. Cary asks Wayne if he wants to go out for a smoke. Wayne reminds him that he doesn’t smoke anymore but he’ll join him outside just the same.

Jan and Sissy tell each other how much they’ve been looking forward to this and they are smiling and there are no pauses between their sentences. It is taken for granted that they are best friends. Someone who doesn’t know better might assume both women are housewives married to mechanics. But they’re not. Jan and Wayne are accountants. They have a small office downtown. Downtown Tolerance is two blocks of stout two-story brick buildings that are only half occupied. Jan and Wayne went to college. They have this whole other life they never talk about. They go to restaurants and bars with friends from college that they never go to with her and Cary and the Hodiaks. On nights like tonight, Jan makes a big show of what a relief it is to be here and real and not there—wherever there is. Sissy assumes Jan acts the exact same way with her college friends.

“You’ll never guess who I saw at the Exxon today,” Jan says. She looks scandalized. “Phoebe. Albright.”

It is common knowledge that Phoebe Albright is divorcing Ken Albright. She moved out. He’s still in the house.

“No!” says Sissy. She doesn’t know why she says this.

“It’s true. There she was, plain as day. Filling that gaudy Caprice of hers. I drove right by. Just right on by.”

They all go to the same church but barely know each other. Sissy has spoken to Phoebe Albright only a handful of times and doesn’t remember what about. At least they used to go to the same church. Ken Albright, whom she also barely knows, still attends. Sissy has no idea what church Phoebe Albright goes to now, if any.

 

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