Loose Screws

I blink, fill them in, at least about Phyllis’s comments. Terrie opens her mouth as if she has something to say, only to close it again. Frowning, Shelby reaches for the cheesecake while there’s still some left. As I repeat the conversation as best I can remember it, I realize rehashing it is stirring something inside me, way below the surface, too far down to identify.

“Then she said something about how we all make choices, and that it doesn’t really matter what they are, as long as we’re happy with them—”

“Well, I think that’s very true,” Shelby says.

“—that so many women today seem to forget, or perhaps they don’t want to acknowledge, that sometimes we have to take what seems to be a step or two back in order to get enough momentum to propel ourselves through the barriers men have been erecting in front of them since time began.”

“Huh.” Terrie grabs her own piece of cheesecake, opting as well for the direct-from-box-to-mouth approach. “Spoken like a white woman who had choices.”

“Not as many as you might think,” I say. “She didn’t come from money, remember. Which is why she got into the beauty pageant stuff to begin with. But, anyway, that’s just a sidetrack issue, because then she says, out of nowhere, that she just wanted me to know Greg didn’t back out because of anybody else.”

Two sets of eyebrows dip simultaneously.

“I know,” I say. “So of course the minute she says that, I’m like, oh, crap—is she covering up something?”

But Shelby shakes her head. “No,” she says, then swallows. “I don’t think that’s why he dumped you, either.”

Terrie and I just look at her. Shelby continues eating, oblivious.

Then Terrie squints at me. “But you are ready to rip his entrails out, right?”

Shelby glances up for this. I sigh. “I don’t know. I should be. I mean, I am, but…” I look from one to the other. “I think mostly I’m just confused. And hurt.”

Terrie humphs. Shelby nods, even though I can tell the whole thing’s going over her head. She clearly can’t imagine her and Mark ever going through anything like this.

“So,” Terrie says. “She know where the jerk is?”

“No. Or so she swears. But then…she said I should forgive him, give him a second chance.”

“Like hell,” Terrie says. “Besides, it’s kinda hard to forgive somebody whose sorry ass isn’t around for you to forgive.”

I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. I feel Shelby’s hand light on my wrist. A light breeze from the air conditioner stirs her hair. “You still love him, don’t you?” she asks, a note of hope hovering in her wispy voice. Shelby cannot stand an unhappy ending. I don’t think she’s ever quite forgiven Shakespeare for Romeo and Juliet.

“The man stood her up,” Terrie interjects. “What do you think?”

“What’s that got to do with how she feels?” My cousin may be the most gentle soul in the world, but that doesn’t mean she can’t stick up for her convictions. And right now, she’s glaring at Terrie like a Yorkie whose chew toy is being threatened. “I mean, Mark once forgot my birthday, and I was so hurt I could have spit. But that didn’t mean I didn’t still love him, did it?”

I can tell Terrie is fighting the urge to bang her head on the table. Shelby is no dummy, believe me—she’d been a crack editor for a major magazine prior to her deciding to stay home with her first baby—but her eternally optimistic nature has definitely corroded her brain when it comes to matters of the heart.

In any case, I wrest back the conversation, since I called the meeting. “Anyway, what I said was, I didn’t know what I was feeling.”

They’re both frowning at me again.

Exasperated, I throw both hands into the air. “Whaddya want me to say? Okay, no, it’s not like I expect this to get patched up—sorry, Shel—but I’m not like you, either, Terrie. I haven’t had the practice you’ve had at getting over men.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Okay, so that didn’t exactly come out right, but you know what I mean.” I reach for the cheesecake; Terrie slaps my hand. So I guess I’m stuck with the ravioli. I get up to stick the plastic tub in Shelby’s microwave. “In any case, while a good part of me says I should write him off, there’s another part of me that isn’t sure. I mean, if he should come back.”

Terrie is clearly appalled. “You have got to be kidding. You’d crawl back to the skunk?”

“Did I say that?” The microwave beeps at me; I take out the ravioli, sink back into the chair at the table with a disgusted sigh, although I’m not sure what I’m disgusted at. Or with. Or about. My own ambivalence, maybe. Or that Greg’s actions have put me into this untenable position. “Of course I’m not about to crawl back to him.” I look up, fighting the tears prickling my eyelids. “He humiliated me. If, by some chance, he wants me back, he’d have some major groveling to do. But…”

“Oh, Lord. Here we go.” Terrie lets out an annoyed sigh. Shelby shushes her.

“But what, honey?”

“You weren’t there,” I say. “You didn’t see Phyllis’s face when she told me that I was the best thing that ever happened to Greg. That I would have been more of an asset to him than he could possibly have understood. That…” I take a deep breath, setting up the punch line. “That women are always the ones who have to fix things, that pride is a commodity we can’t afford.”

“That’s true,” I hear Shelby whisper beside me, although Terrie lets out an outraged, “Oh, give me a freaking break.” Her eyes are flashing now, boy, as she leans across the table and buries herself in my gaze.

“Girl, men have been able to get away with the crap they have for thousands of years because women like Phyllis Munson feel they have some sort of duty to perpetuate that myth. God—it makes me so mad, I could spit.” At this, she gets up, grabs her handbag from the buffet along one wall, rummaging inside it without thinking for the cigarettes that aren’t there, since she quit smoking a year ago. So she slams the bag back down onto the buffet and turns back to me, one hand parked on her hip.

“What that man did to you isn’t forgivable. Or fixable. I mean, come on—he calls you up and apologizes on the phone?”

Shelby actually laughs. Terrie and I both turn to her. “Well, of course he did,” she says. “He’s a man.”

“No kind of man I’d want hanging around me, that’s for damn sure. Besides, none of us is ever gonna break these chains of male domination and oppression if we don’t change the way we think about who’s gotta do what—”

“Oh, get off your high horse, Terrie,” Shelby says, a neat little crease between her brows. “Women are the peacemakers, honey. We always have been. That’s a sociological, not to mention biological, fact.”

“And I suppose you think that means we have to kowtow to them on every single issue?”

“No, of course not. But what good does it do for us to back them into a corner, either?”

“Making them accountable isn’t backing them into a corner.”

Shelby goes very still, then says quietly, “Says the woman who’s had two marriages crumble out from under her.”

Uh-oh.

I stand up, my hands raised. “Hey, guys? This is supposed to be all about me, you know—”

“Shut up, Ginger,” they both say, then Terrie says to Shelby, “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Twin dots of color stain my cousin’s cheeks, but I can tell she’s not going to back down. “That I’ve watched you with your boyfriends, your husbands, how every relationship you’ve ever had has degenerated into a mental wrestling match. How your obsession with never letting a man…control you, or whatever it is you’re so afraid a man’s going to do to you, has always been more important to you than the relationship itself. No wonder you can’t keep a man, Terrie—you castrate every male who comes close.”

Terrie actually flinches, as if she’s been slapped. A second later, though, she comes back with, “You are so full of it.”

“Am I?” is Shelby’s calm reply. “Then how come I’m the only one in the room who knows who she’s going to bed with tonight?”

Holy jeez.

Terrie glares at my cousin for several seconds, then snatches her purse off the chair and heads for the door, throwing “If you need to talk, Ginge, call me” over her shoulder before she yanks open the front door, slams it shut behind her.

For a full minute after her exit, the room reverberates with her anger. I’m not exactly thrilled to still be there, either, to tell you the truth, but I can’t quite figure out what to do. Let alone what to say.

Shelby gets up, starts clearing the table, her mouth turned way down at the corners. “I guess things got a little out of hand.”