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was, the place where she fit in …
    About ten years ago, when Ed had started seeing a woman he worked with down at the insurance company, she had attended a group called the Complete Woman, to try and save her marriage. She wasn’t sure she loved Ed all that much, but she loved him just enough to not want to lose him. Besides, what would she do? She had lived with him as long as she had lived with her parents. The organization believed that womencould find complete happiness if they, in turn, would dedicate their entire lives to just making their man happy.
    Their leader had informed them that all the rich and successful career women out there who appeared to be so happy were, in reality, terribly lonely and miserable and secretly envied them their happy Christian homes.
    It was a stretch to imagine that Barbara Walters might want to give it all up for Ed Couch, but Evelyn tried her hardest. Of course, even though she was not religious, it was a comfort to know that the Bible backed her up in being a doormat. Hadn’t the apostle St. Paul said for women not to usurp power over the men but to be in silence?
    So, hoping she was on the right track, she started up the ladder on
The Ten Steps to Complete Happiness
. She tried step number one and met Ed at the front door nude, wrapped in Saran wrap. But Ed had been horrified: He’d jumped inside the house and slammed the door. “Jesus Christ, Evelyn! What if I had been the paper boy! Have you gone insane?”
    So she never tried step number two: going to his office dressed as a prostitute.
    But pretty soon, the group leader, Nadine Fingerhutt, got a divorce and had to go to work, so the group just sort of fizzled out. Then, after a while, Ed stopped seeing that woman and things settled down.
    Later on, still looking, she had tried to get involved with the Women’s Community Center. She liked what they stood for but secretly wished they would wear just a little lipstick and shave their legs. She had been the only one in the room in full makeup, wearing pantyhose and earrings. She had wanted to belong, but when the woman suggested that next week they bring a mirror so they could all study their vaginas, she never went back.
    Ed said that those women were nothing but a bunch of frustrated old maids and too ugly to get a man anyway. So there she was, too bored for Tupperware parties and too scared to look at her own vagina.
    The night she and Ed went to their thirtieth high school reunion, she had been hoping she’d find someone to talk toabout what she was feeling. But all the other women there were just as confused as she was, and held on to their husbands and their drinks to keep themselves from disappearing. Their generation seemed to be on a fence, not knowing which way to jump.
    After the reunion, she would sit for hours looking at all her school pictures, and she began to drive by the places where she used to live, over and over.
    Ed was no help. Lately, he had started acting more and more like his daddy, trying to behave like he thought the man of the house should. He had become more closed off as the years went by, and on Saturdays he would wander around the Home Improvement Center alone, for hours; looking for something, but he didn’t know what. He hunted and fished and watched his football games like the other men, but she began to suspect that he, too, was just playing a part.
    Evelyn stared into the empty ice cream carton and wondered where the smiling girl in the school pictures had gone.

NOVEMBER 2, 1932
Whistle Stop Pig Club Started
    Due to the encouragement of the Alabama Extension Service, a local pig club has been formed. Anyone wanting information is to call Mrs. Bertha Vick at home. Bertha said that a Miss Zula Hight of Kittrel, North Carolina, earned a pure-bred Registered China Pig in just seven days, and Bertha said that you could do the same thing if you just put your mind to it. She said to own a pure-bred pig is a mark of distinction for you and your