We, the Coronado Scribes, consist of both professional and amateur writers. We have in common a desire to learn, by sharing our efforts and listening to other writers. We hold pressure-less sessions every Wednesday, at the Coronado Library conference room, starting at 1:30. Often we have guests who wish to just listen. They are welcome, and so are you.
Each week on eCoronado, we feature a different piece of prose or poetry produced by one of our writers. Please feel free to comment or ask questions in the comment section below.
The Life and Times of Marlayna
Part 2 of 3
Marlayna is creative in every area of her life. She dresses artistically. She stands out in any crowd with her layered long skirts and vests, Indian jewelry and hats or jeans with hand-painted shirts, boots and silver hair ornaments. She attracts attention. Once, while playing the slots at Rosebud Casino, a stranger asked her if she was a movie star!
But her creative cooking misadventures are legend. She married right out of school at 18, having never learned the basics of cooking.
When she was newly married, she had her folks over for coffee.
“Say,” her dad said, “This coffee is really good!”
“Thanks!” she said.
The next week they came back and again she gave her dad coffee.
“Daughter!” he said. “Last week’s coffee was so good and this is awful! What happened?”
“Well,” she said. “You liked last week’s so well that I saved it.”
One day she put some hotdogs in a pan of water, turned it on and went shopping. She had no idea that hot dogs took only ten minutes to cook. When she came home, fire trucks were at her house. Neighbors had reported smoke coming from the kitchen windows. The house smelled like smoke for months.
She realized she needed help to learn a few recipes. The Holiday Inn offered a day long cooking class. They provided recipes along with the demonstrations. She liked the look of the fried chicken and bought the ingredients on the way home. The recipe called for the chicken to be dipped in beaten egg and then crushed cornflakes. She had forgotten cornflakes, but had Wheaties in the cupboard. After frying the chicken, she made gravy. Wheaties flavored gravy. She decided to add yellow food color to the gravy. With her effervescent personality, she was one to think if a little of something was good, more would be better.
Before long, she decided to have a party for a dozen friends. She didn’t have that many plates, but had the idea of using plate-size phonograph records. She covered them with foil and stacked them by the stove. As the guests lined up, each took a “plate”, held it out for her to lift a pork chop onto. Within a minute, each record broke, plunging the pork chop to the floor. This happened over and over, for each guest.
She offered her friends drinks made with white wine and ginger ale. After filling the glasses, she decided that they looked too plain, and added green food color to each glass .a lot of green food color. During the rest of the evening, each guest carried on conversations with bright green lips and teeth. Her parties were memorable.
One evening she cooked a canned ham without taking it out of the can. It amazed everyone who heard that story that the can didn’t explode. But her husband, in realizing what she had done, insisted they wait until the can cooled before they opened it. Supper was a couple of hours late that night.
For Thanksgiving, she bought a ham, decorated it with cloves, slices of pineapple and brown sugar, according to a recipe in a Family Circle magazine. When it came out of the oven, one of her guests realized that the plastic wrapping had not been removed first.
In the course of her marriage, she had two sons. She said her boys used a lot of ketchup growing up. They used it to cover most of her meals.
The first marriage didn’t last, but it wasn’t because of her cooking. Her husband was patient. He had gone on to get a degree, taught science at the local college, and helped with raising two boys. She and a friend had their own beauty shop, called Adam and Eve’s. One time the two of them went to a Cosmetologist Convention in Omaha. In the hotel bar one night, she struck up a conversation with a charismatic man with a French accent. He was born in Quebec, but was stationed at the Strategic Air Command in Omaha with the service. They began talking and she had never known such intriguing conversation. This man, named Bruce, massaged her feet and told her he was a lawyer. Only much later he corrected her understanding. He said he had told her he was a “liar” with the French inflection.
She went home from the convention, got a divorce, and married Bruce. They are well matched. He is the steadying influence in her life, yet he is funny and on their frequent car trips, he strikes up conversations with strangers, inventing stories and mimicking accents so that they think he is knowledgeable in their own areas of expertise.
We won’t feel sorry for the first husband. He is remarried to someone who can cook and his life is much calmer. He and Marlayna remain friends. During her first marriage she was a brunette named Marlene. In her second, she is a blonde with a name change. It suits her.
And Bruce has taken over the cooking in their home. He is retired now, and has taken on the role of house husband. He cooks, he vacuums, and he keeps everything in order. She continues to run her beauty shop- boutique, now called Marlayna’s, with the sub title, Wigging Out, for the wigs she specializes in. Bruce takes her to work, brings her lunch at noon, and picks her up at closing time. She has it good. She chooses to keep working as she enjoys the customers. They exchange gossip, she reads them their horoscopes, tells them of her latest money making scheme, enthusiastically sells them her newest purchases from the Denver Market .purses, jewelry, jackets, long skirts, each a one of a kind item. And she sells wigs. She convinces everyone how important it is to have one on hand for days they can’t get an appointment with her. Each customer is now a friend and leaves her shop with a lighter step, for she has encouraged them and solved all their problems.
One day when I went to my appointment at her shop, I found she had taken over a small room because it had more atmosphere. After she washed a customer’s hair in the main salon, she would take her into the smaller room to comb and set it. The room was dim, cozy, and an Italian tenor sang from the tape player. Several friends sat on the carpeted floor laughing and talking as she backcombed her client’s hair. They were not there to have their hair fixed. She was a people-magnet.
Suddenly, smoke! As she swished around, her flowing long skirt had caught fire from a candle she had lit on a low shelf beside her work space the candle was intended to add to the atmosphere. The accident was discovered quickly enough that the flames were extinguished. The only damage was that one side of her skirt was shorter than the other. She quickly turned her skirt so that it was stylishly shorter in front and went on with her work without missing a beat.
She never gets upset.
One day Bruce and Marlayna were talking in their kitchen when they both decided they needed a snack. They opened the refrigerator and spied the left over cherry Jell-O at the same time. Simultaneously, they made a grab for it.
“It’s mine,” she said.
“I saw it first,” he said. “And besides, I made it.”
They had a tug of war with the bowl. Back and forth, neither one would give in. Suddenly the Jell-O dumped on the floor and they both slipped and fell down in it, laughing.
After they cleaned up their mess, they shared the bologna.
© Mary Beth Dodson
