If you needed to buy a new skillet, a cattle prod, and a plaid shirt - all in one place - you knew where to go.
Swamp & Pete’s was about as ordinary a hardware store as you could find. Located in the outskirts of Pensacola, right across from the Mini Mart that changed ownership every few years, it wasn’t exactly Phoebe’s dream job. But it made sense at the moment. The owners, a couple in their sixties, were nice enough when she walked through their glass doors, a jingle bell jangling against the handle, and she asked them for a job.
She was new in town, having left a man whom she would never regret leaving (do we ever?), and needed a bit of help getting back on her feet. She had a clear idea of the next person she was going to be: a helpful employee at Swamp & Pete’s Hardware Store. No more party girl, no more bad decisions. She already turned over the metaphorical leaf, and there was no going back. The couple must have recognized something in the look in her eye, the way she held herself, bracing for rejection, or the way she held her resume, her fingers sweating through the Kinkos printer paper, because they hired her on the spot.
It was there, behind the weathered, handmade wood counter, that Phoebe found the nerve to block Mr. Bad Idea from her phone. And where she gathered the gumption to screenshot his threatening messages and post them to her Facebook page where her cousins, known more for their strength than their smarts, could see what he was up to. For whatever reason, this new job and the position that it held, gave her the strength she needed to stay away from Mr. Bad Idea for good - this time.
Phoebe mostly spent her days at Swamp & Petes behind the counter, ringing up customers. She got to know people rather quickly because, it turned out, people who go to hardware stores are adept in the art of chitchat. There were the landscapers who were always in need of a new rake or hose clamp or very specific length of screw. There were the handymen who’d buy 2x4s from the back, the farmers loading up on various kinds of sprays and livestock ointments. Then, there were all the Do-It-Yourself-ers who quickly recognized that Phoebe was the right person to ask about half-inch wainscotting or paint color preference.
Before Phoebe Briggs had gotten involved with Mr. Bad Idea, she’d worked in construction. Just small jobs in Southern Georgia but she was a fast learner. She loved the craft and the pace, feeling at home around sawdust and dreams. She was a tiny, pale woman with dark brown eyes and a wildly thick head of hair that a person would be perfectly justified in assuming was a wig. Despite looking like an American Girl Doll, she became the go-to person for all of the angry couples barging into the store, looking to replicate an HGTV video. And she helped. She knew how to fix up messes. In some ways, that was the story of her life.
Sometimes, business was slow and the hot days melted into stillness. The shelves would already be stocked, and inventory would be up-to-date on Swamp & Pete’s very sophisticated white legal pad. The customers were either out working their fields, tending to their cattle, or tiling their backsplashes in world’s most difficult herringbone pattern. On those days, Phoebe would find herself daydreaming about the next person that she was going to be. And she wished that she could say that she came up with the idea all on her own. But, you see, she didn’t. She wanted to be Angela.
Angela was a regular customer who owned an exercise studio on the other side of the Mini Mart. Something in her building was always breaking or bursting or cracking but that didn’t stop Angelina from sweeping into Swamp & Petes with a large smile spread across her deeply tanned face. At least to Phoebe, and the majority of the male customers in the store, Angela was perfect. With hair so blonde she would have given Marilyn Monroe a run for her bleach, her defined shoulders looked as if the Florida sunshine followed her from room to room. Her bright blue eyes sparkled when she was in the bathroom cleaner aisle or looking for rubber matting for underneath her new pilates machine. And her body! Phoebe had never seen a woman so strong before. It was as if every muscle had been thoughtfully curated by a higher being. Angela’s perfectly toned arms and stomach would peak out from whatever neon exercise clothing she was wearing that day. Which is why Phoebe was so surprised when she started bringing people in with her. Ok, not just “people.”
First, Angela brought in her twelve-year-old son whom she had to tell not to lick the salt blocks.
Wow, Phoebe thought, a fit, together, beautiful business owner and she even has a child?
He helped carry a mop and a floating shelf. He dropped them twice. Angela carried the brackets.
The following week, she brought in the same twelve-year-old, his ten-year-old sister, a kindergartener, and a toddler gripping her hand.
Ok, Phoebe thought, Wow, good for her.
The next day, Angela was back in the store because the floating shelf couldn’t be secured where she wanted because there were no beams behind that particular wall. Phoebe was polite in the exchange. But it was so, so, SO hard not to stare. Phoebe had never met a woman before who had it all together like this perfect specimen of all that was modern womanhood standing right in front of her. In her recent memory, she’d been so focused on Mr. Bad Idea and then getting herself two states away from Mr. Bad Idea that she hadn’t had the time, energy, or the head space to really think about herself.
Phoebe Briggs was a tough young gal and not prone to a personal pity party, but this time it was harder to fend off that wave of emotion. How would she ever be able to pull it together like Angela? She didn’t even like doing squats. And, Angela most definitely did a lot of squats.
As the smiling, courteous, bubbly woman handed over her small business Visa card, Phoebe caught a glance at the diamond ring on her finger.
All that, she thought, the business, the body, the kids, and the cherry on top? She’s got somebody who loves her.
Now, who knows why this particular thought on this particular day got so deep under Phoebe’s skin that she couldn’t shake it for the rest of the workday. She couldn’t shake it the entire evening or through her after-dinner walk. She walked every day after an episode of Dr. Phil swore that walking was essentially a human cure-all. But all she could think about was how there was a perfect woman with a perfect life so close to her own and yet so, so far away. And that was when Phoebe’s thoughts started to darken like the rain clouds coming in from the Gulf, turning the sky into a heavy mood to match her own. The drops fell with an intensity that she hadn’t known in Georgia.
Dammit, she should have brought an umbrella. Or at least have worn a slicker. Living in Florida was much like living with an unpredictable man; the day could go from happy to dark to mascara dripping down your cheeks in the blink of an eye.
As the giant drops splashed against her face and began to soak her thrift-store t-shirt, Phoebe’s brain turned against her.
You know that Angela wouldn’t have been caught in this downpour. She would have checked the weather. What are you even doing on these walks? Do you really think that you’re going to get legs like a Pilates instructor by walking around the flattest state in the country?
As Phoebe darted back down the cul-de-sac that was home to her studio apartment, she couldn’t tell the thoughts to fuck off, no matter how hard she tried. They were strong, too strong to overpower.
Dr. Phil had called them “automatic thoughts.” He described them as what our brain thinks without thinking. Often, Phoebe’s brain wasn’t particularly nice to her. Phoebe hadn’t been raised with words like “anxiety” or “trauma.” Life was just hard and that was the way things were and, in her family, at least, it wasn’t worth discussing because it wouldn’t change anything. But instead of putting her head down and scrunching her shoulders up around her ears to ward off the downpour, Phoebe took a deep breath and threw her head up to the sky, allowing the rain to drench her hair and face. She didn’t feel like letting yet another thing, especially not the weather, tell her what to do or how to be.
Here she was: on her own, employed, watching Dr. Phil five days a week, and then walking all seven of them. She was trying to learn how to cook since her favorite TV therapist had done an exhaustive segment on nutrition and she’d successfully made some roasted sweet potatoes the following night which gave her the fleeting but memorable feeling that anything was possible.
But the thoughts about Angela were relentless, like a drunk couple banging on the bar doors long after closing time while Phoebe wiped down the sticky bottles in the speed rack. The thoughts pounded on her brain and her heart as the rain continued to fall harder and harder.
Why? She asked herself in the way that Oprah’s successful mental health protogé had taught her. Angela’s perfection didn’t feel fun or inspiring. It felt like an in-her-face picture of a life that she would never know. Angela, to Phoebe, at least, represented what the ‘right life’ looked like. It was coming from a good family, making good choices, and meeting a good guy. And Phoebe had none of that. She changed direction, turning down an unfamiliar street. She had no interest in going home.
Unsurprisingly, that night, Phoebe slept terribly. She kicked the sheets into a ball so tightly wound that it could have shattered glass if thrown at a window and she sweat completely through her light quilt. Glancing at the Goodwill digital clock on her bedside table, our heroine was surprised to see that it was only 5 am. Since the Dr. Phil rerun didn’t start until 7, Phobe threw on her father’s old ARMY sweatshirt, laced up her shoes, and walked six miles of Pensacola neighborhoods. She watched people jog and get into cars wearing suits that assumed some kind of superiority. She watched gardeners pull their work trailers into people’s driveways and heard the birds chirp hello from every branch on every irrigated tree. Even the Blue Jays seemed to have their shit together.
By the time 10 am rolled around and Phoebe arrived for her shift at Swamp & Petes, she was already drained. A year earlier, she would have stayed in bed, ignored the phone calls, and been fired from yet another job. But, today, she knew, was a bad day and it too would pass, like the rainstorm had the night before. There’d been an episode a month earlier about how to weather highs and lows of emotions and Dr. Phil didn’t make Phoebe feel stupid for never having thought about this concept. It was just a bad day. It didn’t mean a bad life or a bad future or, well, she glanced in the mirror facing the front of the store, it didn’t even mean bad hair.
Much to her genuine surprise, Phoebe looked pretty good. She didn’t have much time to consider the idea that sometimes the outsides of a person didn’t match their insides because a couple came in looking for a “professional contractor’s opinion,” as the husband held his hand, wrapped almost mummy-like in gauze and the wife shot daggers through his skull with her eyes every ten seconds. Instead of directing them to the aisle with the circle saws, Phoebe pulled her favorite handyman’s card from the bulletin board. The wife exhaled a whole lot of relief.
The morning flew by. The mean thoughts in Phoebe’s head were no match for the flood of customers. She didn’t have the space to ponder her bad day until her lunch break. And, of course, that’s when Angela came in.
That day, she looked even more perfect than usual, if that was even possible. Her bright, immaculate outfit looked like it would have been more at home in the pages of a tennis catalog than a dusty Florida hardware store. All four of her kids wore somewhat matching clothes. The youngest was especially adorable, wearing a blue, checkered dress that poufed out at the waist, giving her an almost princess-like air. The ten-year-old girl was faintly singing along to whatever pop song was playing in her magenta headphones and looked like she belonged on the cover of one of those teen magazines, plastic choker necklace and all.
Phoebe tried to keep her emotions in check. Dr. Phil, if he were standing with her at Swamp & Petes, would wiggle his bushy mustache and suggest, in his kind and soothing voice, that she do the opposite of what her automatic thoughts were telling her. She should offer to help Angela. But Phoebe Briggs had been Phoebe Briggs for twenty-six and a half years and only a Dr. Phil student for three months. So that was quite the internal battle.
Much to her genuine surprise, the recent-student side won and Phoebe found herself walking around the counter and heading towards aisle three, following the chirping voices of the perfect family. She had an idea of how to help Anglea repair her broken water pipe once and for all. Then, something made Phoebe stop abruptly in her tracks. It was Angela’s voice.
“Oh God, no, Rory, no, no, no NO.”
“Mama, NOW!”
“No, not now, no…”
Phoebe kept her legs still, stretching her neck to peer around the corner. The sight before her would haunt Phoebe for the next three weeks. There was Angela, on her hands and knees in the tool section, a look of pure horror spread across her face as the adorable gingham-clad two-year-old squatted in the middle of the aisle, cheeks red with concentration, and took one of the biggest dumps that Phoebe had ever seen, directly into her mother’s outstretched hands. The smell didn’t take long to travel down aisle three, and Phoebe dashed back to the cash register, doing her best impersonation of a person who did not witness one human taking a giant poop into another human’s hands by the Allen Wrenches.
She pretended not to notice when Angela rushed to the door, her children following her like ducklings, the perpetrator of the crime begging her mother to be picked up.
“Mommy CAN’T pick you up right now, Rory, Mommy’s hands are FULL.”
Rory, who hadn’t wanted to be potty trained in the first place and also hadn’t wanted to wear the checkered dress OR the no-undies situation that day, did not seem to comprehend why any of this was her fault. Just as this whole scenario began to strike Phoebe as, yeah, okay, absolutely hysterical, she saw Angela push her shoulder into the glass door with a loud THUMP and then, of course, the jangle from the perpetually hanging jingle bells. It was a PULL door…
“Can one of you, please…?” Angela looked around desperately at her four children, wincing from the pain in her arm but lacking a poop-free hand with which to rub it.
But the kids, as attractive as they all were, seemed to be a little low in their Common Sense Bank Accounts.
“Mom, WHAT?” asked the twelve-year-old who was now using his AC/DC T-shirt to cover up his nose from the overwhelming stench of, well, shit.
“OPEN THE DOOR!” Angela screamed, scaring Rory who burst into tears.
The ten-year-old girl bopped her chin along to her headphones, clearly not hearing any of this and somehow being immune to the olfactory assault.
“SOMEONE!” Angela begged, her voice cracking, her eyes watering, her hands trembling.
Now, Phoebe doesn’t know why she ran to the rescue, a roll of paper towels in hand while opening the door for Angela and her kids, but she 100% blames it on Dr. Phil.
“Oh my god, oh my god, thank you, thank you… I don’t know what to say!” Angela yelled as she ran out the door to her car, the roll of paper towels hugged between her chin and her tanned chest.
Phoebe has no idea how Angela got her hands clean that day. She has no idea how long it took to potty train Rory. She has no idea if the eldest son flunked out of school or ever moved out of his parent's house. She doubts either of those outcomes. What she did know, is that she learned something.
One hundred episodes of daytime self-help had helped guide Phoebe on her path of healing and self-discovery. But it was Angela (of all people) who put it all into perspective. Angela still came into Swamp & Petes, always turning the same shade of pink as her sports bra or shoelaces when she saw Phoebe. But, then the two women would share a smile. And Phoebe would relax, ring up the woman’s purchases with careful thoughtfulness. She knew that she wasn’t long for Swamp & Petes. Because she was very clear about the next person she was going to be. She wasn’t going to be Angela. She wasn’t going to be perfect. And she wasn’t going to turn herself into someone’s version of Ms. Good Idea. She was going to be herself. Sure, a healthier and happier version, but she was making that happen already.
Now, Phoebe got herself out of Pensacola. She went back into construction and worked her way up the company ladder - or skid loader. She met Mr. Good Idea. She even went back to school. But, she’s holding off on having kids. Because if that means catching someone's turd in your bare hands in a hardware store, well, Phoebe Briggs is just fine without them.
Sweet Dreams.
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