Loose Screws. Karen Templeton

Nedra protecting her pup. Then she says something about knowing all about women like Nedra.”

      That got a grunt from Terrie, whose beaded braids were beginning to remind me of a Gypsy fortune-teller’s plastic bead curtain. But don’t you dare tell her I said that. “There are no women like your mother.”

      “That’s what I would have said. But then she said…what was it? Oh, right—” I take another bite of cheesecake “—about how when she was in college, she had to deal with all these liberal, feminist types who were convinced she was whoring herself because she did beauty pageants….”

      I fade out for a moment, chewing and thinking about Phyllis’s pale blue eyes as she spoke, like a pair of small, cautious creatures peering out from behind a thicket of heavily mascara’d lashes.

      Oh, they made a lot of noise, and raised a lot of hell, all those women whose families could afford to pay for their education, about women’s rights and how people like me were setting the women’s movement back by at least three centuries. None of them ever bothered asking me what I really thought, or bothered to consider that perhaps there were worse things in the world than a woman using her looks to get ahead.

      I’d caught a whiff of desperation then, which I’d never noticed before, in her voice, her expression, the way her makeup was a little too carefully applied….

      Terrie smacks my arm, making me jump. “Hey. Back to earth.”

      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?”