On the screen, Imogene, or Idgie, Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson) tells Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker) to stay under a wide oak while she walks across a clearing to a broken, dead tree housing a wild beehive. It was a Friday evening, and we spooned on the gray couch in her front room, the DVD player ticking and the window open to Kentucky’s late summer. I had never read the 1987 novel, nor seen the movie, though Alex was known to quote both like scripture. I saw Fried Green Tomatoes when I was twenty-nine and dating Alex, the first woman who was not a secret to my family and friends.
