Thelma had to answer with more chips in her mouth. “City planner. He’s why they ripped out those medians on…” She stopped. “Back in my hometown. He had the medians ripped out because they were causing congestion issues.” She swallowed, napkin over her mouth. “But that party had good shrimp. Beverly Beddingfield said I would get fat if I kept eating them, and indeed, I gained a pound at my next weigh-in.”
“Weigh-in?”
“Oh, yes, I weighed myself every week. Mondays, usually.”
“Why?”
Thelma shrugged. “Had to stay at 120.”
“…Why? Were you a boxer?”
It took Thelma a moment to get that. “Oh, my. Wouldn’t that be something?” In truth, she didn’t know why she did it, besides the silent pressure to remain slim and pleasing to the eye.Whose eye, though?Bill used to tease her for caring so much about her weight, claiming that she could always stand to gain a few pounds and that her “face was never as lovely as when it was fuller,” particularly during pregnancy. He didn’t even mind theswollen feet, let alone the swollen stomach.Never put a damper on things for him.
But maybe it hadn’t been about him. And it certainly hadn’t been about Sandy, who mentioned she often felt pressured to stay thin as well, despite her not looking for a husband.“The workplace demands it. I won’t get work if the editor finds me displeasing to look at.”
“I’m so tired of talking about my past,” Thelma announced. “Tell me all about yours. Quickly. Before the fajitas arrive.”
And boy, did they, sizzling and smoking in both of the waiter’s hands as he proudly presented them with steak fajitas and all the fixings (including, yes, shrimp.) By then, Thelma had learned about Gretchen’s childhood growing up in the same home she now lived in, including her father, the podiatrist, and her mother, the homemaker who occasionally worked “for fun” at the local elementary school as a classroom assistant. “Back then,” she said, taking her share of the huge margarita, “you could get by on one income in Van Nuys. Let alone if one were a doctor. So, my mother didn’t have to work unless she wanted to, and she did after I went off to middle school. I was a disappointment by then, anyway.”
Thelma cocked her head in curiosity. “Why? How could a child be a disappointment?”
“My mother was a homemaker, but she had a Master’s in childhood development. And my father was a doctor. So were most of the men in his family, and the others in my mom’s family all had good, educated jobs as well. They thought I would just naturally pick up their scholarly ways and become a lawyer, hotshot author, I dunno… anything but a kid who spent all her time in woodshop once she was old enough. My mom went from thinking it charming that I brought her home perfectly built and sanded birdhouses to wondering why I couldn’t do anything more delicately academic. Because, by then, I was also spendinga lot of time after school playing basketball. Did Varsity from middle school through graduation.”
Thelma cupped her hands around her face as she leaned her elbows against the colorfully mosaic table. “Did you get your letters?”
“That’swhat you care about from that?”
Thelma sighed. “I love a good Letterman’s jacket. Very stylish.”
As if she couldn’t believe anything coming out of Thelma’s mouth, Gretchen doubled over laughing, catching herself against the leather booth seat and nearly smacking her forehead against the table.
“Of course I have one!” she exclaimed when her laughter died down. “It’s in my bedroom closet. Oh, my God, I am such a jock…”
After the fajitas arrived and they were distracted by their food, Gretchen went into her experience of attempting college, dropping out, and moving in with a girlfriend during her carpentry apprenticeship.
“Everything about it was a mess for my parents,” Gretchen explained as she forked Spanish rice into a flour tortilla. “They pushed me so hard to go to college, and I even got a couple of scholarships. It’s where I met Amy, although we didn’t start dating until we reconnected on Facebook a few years later.” Gretchen stared into the past, her eyes glazing over and showing Thelma the subtler side of her soul. “When I dropped out, my mother was verbally upset, and my father just wouldn’t talk to me, except to tell me that I was ruining my body and my potential by going into the trades. And my mother was worried about all the sexism, but I had to ask her what she thought was going to happen if I became a lawyer? A software developer? Anything that pays well and has prestige is sexist as hell. That’s how it’s always been. Might as well get harassed or ignoreddoing something I love. Besides, I’m tougher than most of the pansies on my uncle’s team.”
“Are we still talking about carpentry? Or basketball?”
Gretchen offered a shrimp to her date before continuing. “Then there were the girls… I wasn’t expecting it from them, but they showed me a homophobic side of themselves. Like, they couldn’t have been shocked that their very unfeminine daughter, who had posters of Pamela Anderson and Kathleen Hanna in her bedroom, turned out queer, but they were in denial. Except they loved to think themselves the perfect liberal scholars who, intheory,supported things like gay rights and marriage, but in practice? God forbid their only child turns out queer.”
Thelma understood most of that, but probably not in the way Gretchen intended. “My parents would have disowned me. Sent me away. Maybe get me a lobotomy.” She blew air through her lips as she suddenly lost her appetite to eat more steak and rice-filled tortillas, as delicious as they were. “They never knew about Sandy.”
“Were you guys serious?”
Thelma cleared her throat. “I suppose you could say she was my girlfriend.” She lowered her voice—and her eyes. “I had an ongoing affair with her while married. He had no idea.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I never really thought about it. We were so secretive… every Wednesday, if we could.” Instead of dwelling on the sour feeling in her stomach, Thelma focused on how excited she always was to have Sandy over for lunch, tea, and a roll in the sack. “Right in my marital bed. I guess it didn’t feel ‘real’ to me, although there was a reason I kept bringing her into my home, right? It must have been real. I just… didn’t think there was a world where she and I could be together. She was ‘out,’ as you would say, but I didn’t have that temperament. I’m nota go-getter who has the stomach for breaking down barriers, no matter how the audience jeers.”
“What are you, then?”
Thelma had to think about that. “I actually liked being a housewife. I was very proud of my house. Taking care of my kids, entertaining the neighbors, and being entertained by them…” She closed her eyes. “I kneweveryoneon the shopping street. They knew me. We took care of each other, even if we didn’t share the same politics—see, Bill and I were Democrats, but most of the street was Republicans. If someone was sick, you took them a casserole and offered to watch their kids for a few hours. If there was trouble afoot, you told them. Some people weren’t as welcoming as others, but you mitigated that by being extra nice to newcomers until everyone felt comfortable. We even had a Hispanic family that lived at the end of the street. So many cold shoulders for them, but my neighbor Jane and I kept inviting over Marcella during the day and arranging playdates for our toddlers until everyone had to begrudgingly accept that they were our neighbors, dangit.”
“Right, right.” Once again, Gretchen had that countenance that implied she had followed Thelma’s story… to a point. But instead of asking further questions, she just went with it. “Classic suburban tale.”
“I know the things I say sound like they’re from… a different time.”
