Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

  “Fine,” snapped Slip.

  Well, what’s up her hind end? Faith wondered. But whereas the old Faith would have pouted about being wrongfully scolded (and then assumed that maybe she had done something worth scolding), the new Faith simply brushed off Slip’s bad mood.

  Daily there were instances in which she recognized how different the new Faith was from the old Faith—when Audrey announced yesterday that Dave and his wife were having another baby, Faith didn’t feel that old pinch in her heart, didn’t immediately start to count up the good fortunes of someone else, finding her own came up short in comparison.

  Bonnie, for instance, had been living for years with her boyfriend and seemed to have given marriage and children no more thought than she gave to what the weather was going to be like the next week. While Faith sometimes fantasized about now nice it would be to hold a grandchild in her lap, she no longer stood over the pot of what is, stirring in little poison dollops of “but it should be like this.”

  “Not only was Anders a husband,” Kari continued, “he was a father, and his arms were a wide net for his children, always open and ready to catch them.”

  Faith thought of Wade and how hard it had been for him when he found out his son was gay. Of course, at the same time he had learned his wife had been lying to him for years; Faith didn’t blame him a bit when he moved into a hotel, telling her he needed to think things through by himself.

  Two weeks later he returned, telling her—yelling at her—that what hurt him most was that she thought he couldn’t handle the truth about her. Hell, he loved her, and if she’d been an ex-con with a tattoo, he’d still love her, didn’t she know that?

  “I’m so sorry, Wade,” she said. “I thought I was keeping secrets to protect you, not to betray you.”

  He agreed to see a counselor with Faith, although for the first few sessions he was mute, feeling as shy and stupid as a boy dating a foreign exchange student. Gradually he began to talk, and what he talked about was not Faith’s betrayal, which he was beginning to understand, but what it felt like to have his only son be gay.

  “I can’t stand to think of him having sex,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Do you think of your daughter having sex?” asked the counselor, and Wade felt an impulse to slug her in the mouth.

  “Jesus, no!”

  “Then give Beau the same courtesy you give your daughter,” said the counselor.

  Wade wondered how much he had played a part in his son’s gayness—“Was it something I did or didn’t do? Something I said or didn’t say?”—and when the counselor told him it was all right to feel hurt (“after all, you have lost the son you thought you had, but remember, you still have a son”), he had bowed his head and cried in a way he couldn’t remember crying.

  Faith’s heart had opened like a sunflower on a summer morning, and she touched his back, her hand moving slightly as his shoulders shook, filled with love for her husband.

  She wrote to her mother that night, describing how they had left the counselor’s office exhausted and puffy-eyed but holding hands. Her letters to her mother were too much of a habit to break, but they had lost all accusation and resentment, and most of all, they had lost their sorrow.

  Grant and Merit flanked the other Angry Housewives, and Grant felt it a sign of his mental health that when Kari was talking of true love, he wasn’t blubbering about Stuart.

  He had flown out to Baltimore when Stuart called from a hospital. He had said his goodbyes, proud that he hadn’t broken down (he had cried, but there was a big difference in Grant’s mind between breaking down and crying). Stuart hadn’t apologized for anything—not for his infidelity or his lying, or for the unsafe sex from which he had gotten AIDS and with which he could have passed the virus along to Grant; in fact, he accused Grant of deserting him in his time of need, “because you always were a selfish bastard.”

  “Really?” Grant had said, his knuckles white pebbles under his clenched fists. “And I always thought you liked me because I was good for a laugh.”

  A smile had stretched itself across the emaciated planes of Stuart’s face. “You’re right, you were.”

  That was as good as it was going to get for Grant during that bedside visit, but it had been good enough, and when he kissed the dry, hot forehead of the man he had loved more than anyone else, he knew that, for at least a little while, Stuart had loved him too.

  It was only Merit, who usually listened to people with the avidness of a show dog awaiting commands, who was not moved by Kari’s words to ponder love; in fact she had no idea what Kari was talking about, having tuned out her voice.

  Her mind was on her daughter Reni, who had come into the piano bar last night with another medical student and after listening to at least a half dozen requests, politely made her own. “Will you play ‘The Wedding March’?”

  As soon as the words had been released into the air, Merit knew what was being said.

  “Reni!” she said, touching each patron on the shoulder as she rushed around the piano to hug her daughter.

  “Who’s the lucky man?” one of the regulars asked.

  “Why, Dale, of course,” said Reni, breaking the hug. She leaned back slightly and looked at the young man who sat next to her, beaming like a lighthouse beacon.

  “Dale!” said Merit. “I thought you two were just study partners!”

  “We were,” said Dale, looking beatific and uncomfortable at the same time. “But I was studying her all along.”

  “It took me a while to realize that,” said Reni. “But when I did, I thought, Hmmm, he’s almost as interesting as viral pathogens.”

  “Gee, you’re a romantic,” said a regular who only requested songs by the Gershwins or Irving Berlin.

  “Yeah, Merit,” said another. “Don’t you have any songs about viral pathogens you can play?”

  Reni blushed. “That’s just what we were studying when . . . when I noticed how long his eyelashes were.”

  Merit leaned toward Dale and peered into his eyes. “Oh, my, you’re right, Reni. They are long.”

  It had been a festive night at the piano bar, with toasts made and a free plate of Claudio’s chicken wings (the house special) delivered to the newly engaged couple. Merit honored request after request, glad that there were so many love songs that there was no danger of running out.

  AFTER THE FUNERAL LUNCHEON, Kari and Julia and Mary Jo, who had flown in from London, helped put away the chairs and tables in the church basement.

  “Kari, please. You don’t have to do this,” said one of the older men of the congregation.

  “I want to, Norman. I thought Anders might appreciate it.”

  A twinkle found its way through Norman’s milky blue eyes. He and Anders, in their capacity as church volunteers, had put away thousands of tables and chairs, and Anders, lounging now on some celestial surface (Norman doubted it was a cloud but didn’t doubt that it was soft and comfortable), was probably getting a kick out of watching his sister and old buddy doing manual labor.

  “Well, now,” said the old Swede, “just don’t hurt yourself.”

  When they were done, the three women sat down on the stage, admiring the clean empty space before them.

  “Say, would you gals like some coffee before I dump out the last pot?” asked one of the church circle women, coming out of the kitchen.

  “No, thanks, Agnes,” said Kari. If Jesus had appeared at their banquet and offered to turn water into wine, the parishioners of Lake Hiawatha Lutheran would have thanked him but politely requested coffee instead.

  “Do you need anything else?”

  Kari shook her head. “We’re fine.”

  “All right, then, but you just give a holler if you need anything.”

  “I will,” said Kari.

  The remaining members of the kitchen and cleanup crews said their goodbyes, reminding Kari to call if she needed anything and double-checking whether all the kitchen lights and burners were turned off.
br />   In the silence the volunteers left behind, the three women sat with their hands tucked under their thighs, their legs dangling over the edge of the stage.

  “What are you thinking, Mom?” Julia asked, seeing the slight smile on her mother’s face.

  Kari leaned into her daughter. “How happy I am to see you, even if it’s under these circumstances.” Julia had recently been transferred to her ad agency’s West Coast offices. “And you too, Mary Jo. You’re both so cosmopolitan. San Francisco and London. My goodness.”

  The smile returned to her face as she sat quietly for a moment. “And I was also thinking of how many things happen in church basements. I mean, all the fancy stuff—the sermons, the baptisms, the weddings, the funerals—go on upstairs, but it seems I have more memories of what’s happened in church basements.”

  “Like your mother’s book club?” asked Julia.

  Kari’s smile widened as she nodded. “Yes, I was thinking about all those women getting together at that little country church and riling up old Mr. Moe, and I was also thinking about Norman—one of the men putting the tables and chairs away, the tall, good-looking one.”

  Julia nodded, even though she would never have described the old, stooped man as good-looking.

  “Anyway, after Bjorn’s funeral, when everyone was gathered down here for the luncheon, Norman offered to get me a plate of food. I said I wasn’t hungry, but he said I had to eat something. He walked away, and the next thing I knew, he set a plate of chow mein in front of me—I’m not kidding, it was piled this high!” Kari gestured with her hands. “I was absolutely numb with grief, but something about that plate piled up a mile high with chow mein made me laugh. It was a tiny little laugh—I doubt if anyone could even hear it—but I was so grateful to Norman for it, because it seemed some kind of proof that God was still at work.”

  “I remember what good friends Dad and Norman were,” said Mary Jo. “Remember how they used to do that dumb little clog dance every year at the church social?”

  Kari smiled. “Sven and Ole, the world’s worst dancers.” She looked over her shoulder at the stage. “I’ll bet the floor’s all dented from the way they used to pound on it.” Kari sat for a moment, remembering the twin looks of glee that both men wore as they clomped around in their Bermuda shorts and curly blond wigs. She felt a stirring of sadness in her chest and pressed her lips together. “Norman’s wife, Lois, told me how hard Anders’ death hit him. He said there’s hardly anyone left he can talk to about the war or Benny Goodman or what good cars Packards were.”

  “I loved those church socials,” said Mary Jo. “Once I saw Miss Schaeffer, the choir director, kissing Mr. Byers behind the fish pond game.”

  “Quentin Byers?” asked Kari. “Quentin Byers who was married to Winnie Byers?”

  Mary Jo nodded. “And it was a pretty passionate kiss.”

  “And Nelva Schaeffer quit right around the time the Byerses left the church,” said Kari, remembering. “Oh, my.”

  “Well, I kissed Nate Wheelock down here after confirmation class,” said Julia. “Lydia Schaumberg saw us and threatened to tattle to Pastor Kittleson unless we each gave her a dollar.”

  “Why, the little extortionist,” said Mary Jo. “Did you pay her?”

  Julia nodded. “I think we even gave her an extra quarter, for insurance.”

  Kari laughed. “That’s what I mean about church basements. Upstairs people behave, but it’s down here that you really get to know them.”

  She looked at her watch, thinking they’d better move along, when suddenly she was floored by the situation she was so comfortably in: sitting on the lip of a stage with her daughter and her daughter’s biological mother! And she hadn’t been scared or nervous at all! A thought occurred to her, and its power was enough so that Julia and Mary Jo noticed Kari sitting frozen, her mouth hanging open, her eyes fixed in a stare.

  “Aunt Kari?” said Mary Jo, whose immediate thought was of a stroke. “Are you all right?”

  “Mom?” said Julia, draping her arm around her mother and shaking her a bit.

  Kari blinked and took a deep breath, deciding to go ahead. She looked evenly at Julia.

  “I was just thinking,” she said, taking her daughter’s hands in her own, “that I have something to tell you, but I’ve always been waiting for the right time and the right place. Well, I think I’ve found both.” She turned to her niece. “Do you think I’ve found both, Mary Jo?”

  Confusion wrinkled the younger woman’s features, and then fear paled them. She sat for a moment biting her lip before, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

  Kari had the odd thought that if she could look inside her mind right now, it would look like the Scrambler, a ride she’d once taken with Julia at the state fair. Like the cages the riders sat in, emotions were thrusting back and forth, nearly colliding with one another: Fear! Exhilaration! Doubt! Calm! Terror!

  “Julia,” she said, and her voice, scratchy and screechy, startled her. She cleared her throat. “Julia, you know how you’ve always said that you don’t want to know about your real mother until I’m ready to tell you?”

  Julia nodded, the nostrils of her fine nose flaring.

  “Well,” said Kari, and she paused for a moment as she swallowed hard. “I think I’m ready to tell you—that is, if you want to know.”

  If Kari’s voice had sounded like a cat’s in heat, Julia’s high little moan sounded like a kitten’s.

  Mary Jo stared down at her folded hands.

  A minute ago it had seemed so right, but now Kari felt on the verge of not just tears but hysterical tears.

  “So . . . do you want to know?”

  Julia looked as if she’d been slapped. “I don’t know. Yes, I guess. Yes. Hold your foot out, Mary Jo.”

  “What?”

  “Hold out your foot!” said Julia, her voice sharp.

  Mary Jo straightened her leg so that it was parallel to the floor. Julia did the same.

  “You see?” she said. “The whole time we’ve been sitting there, I’ve been noticing your feet, how long and narrow they are, just like mine. I wear a ten extra narrow. What do you wear, Mary Jo?”

  “About the same,” mumbled Mary Jo.

  Julia turned toward her mother, her eyes furious. “So tell me the story you’ve always told me.”

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “The one about how you got me!”

  Kari visibly cringed; she wasn’t used to her daughter yelling at her.

  “Well,” she said carefully, hoping this was the answer Julia wanted to hear, “a long time ago, when she was at at college, your mother became pregnant with you, and because she couldn’t keep you, she decided to give you to me.”

  Julia blinked so rapidly she looked as if she had gone into a seizure, but Kari couldn’t seem to lift her arms out to shake her, couldn’t seem to move at all.

  When the blinking stopped, two strands of tears, like liquid jewels, coursed down the lovely planes of Julia’s face. “And that college girl,” she said softly, looking at Mary Jo, “was you.”

  As Mary Jo nodded, Kari’s prayer was a silent shout: Dear God, please make this be all right!

  Julia dipped backward as if she’d been pushed, then plunged forward, boosting herself off the stage. “I . . . I . . . I need to be alone.”

  Kari and Mary Jo watched as Julia raced across the shiny linoleum floor toward the door that led to the hallway and bathrooms.

  “What have I done?” whispered Kari.

  “What have we done?” whispered Mary Jo.

  “It just seemed like the right time,” said Kari, her voice plaintive.

  “I know. My first thought when I heard Dad died was Oh, no, and my second thought was Now maybe Kari will tell Julia about me.”

  “I’d better go after her,” said Kari, easing herself off the stage.

  “She said she wanted to be alone.”

  Kari looked at the woman with whom she had shared her most profound secret
for over twenty-five years. “Sometimes when people say that, it’s the last thing they want.”

  August 1995

  HOST: GRANT

  BOOK: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

  REASON CHOSEN: “No offense, ladies, but sometimes we just need to read a real man’s book.”

  My dad was a World War II veteran and therefore a member of “a brotherhood you could never understand.”

  I can’t count the times he told me this, and each time he did, regret would thicken his voice, making him sound as if he had a cold.

  When I told him Uncle Sam had deemed me 4-F (bless my flat, flat feet), he looked as bereft as a new widower.

  He didn’t know I was gay yet, but then neither did I. I was the kind of kid who thought his main purpose in life was to please his parents, and so I honestly thought I was as dejected as he was that I wasn’t packing up my kit bag and heading to Da Nang or Phnom Penh or any of those other two-name places that sounded like train stations in hell.

  So there I was in school, at the University of Arizona in Tucson, sitting in back of long-haired kids (whose sex was unknown until they turned around) with my own precisely cut hair, which I parted as carefully as a surveyor dividing up property lines. I wore a sport coat and tie and carried my books in a briefcase, if you can think of anything more pathetic for a college student during the late sixties. I had the admiration of all my parents’ friends, who wished their own damn hippie kids would take a lesson from Ed and Verna’s clean-cut son and straighten up and fly right!

  I strode briskly across the campus in my high-water black pants and polished wing tips, behind kids whose bell-bottom hems were ripped and crusted from dragging on the ground, who reeked of patchouli oil while I smelled, just faintly, of the aftershave my mother ordered through Avon.

  I still listened to my Connie Francis and Bobby Vee 45’s, neatly filed in a blue plaid carrying case, while Bob Dylan and Joan Baez blasted from behind one dorm door and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin blasted from behind another.