The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted (24 page)

Laura and Trudy nod and grunt, their mouths full.

“Well, he remembered me right away, and he was laughing, and he just sounded so happy to hear from me.”

“Is he married?” Trudy asks, and Joyce says, “No, no, but I’ll get to that. Just listen. I told him I had to be in Indiana not far from him—I didn’t want to say he was the only reason I was coming. No point in going that far. I said I was going to be there that afternoon and how about lunch. He said fine, and then he asked if I was married. I said no, I’m divorced, and he said, Yeah, so am I, and there was this kind of sad, awkward silence, and then he got all hyped up again about how glad he was to hear from me and gave me the address for this restaurant called
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Chucky’s, and I agreed to meet him there at noon. I told him I’d wear a yellow blouse and a black skirt, and he said fine, he would, too.”

“Playful spirit,” Laura says, and reaches for another samosa. She could eat the whole pile, she loves these things. She’s glad Trudy didn’t cook; the homemade samosas she’s tasted are never as good as a restaurant’s.

Somehow they get too Americanized. The Velveeta factor, Brian used to say.

“So I got to the restaurant,” Joyce says, and Trudy interrupts her, saying, “Wait a minute. How did you prepare?”

“What do you mean?” Joyce asks.

“I mean, how did you do your makeup?”

“Oh. Well, it was subtle.”

“Did you use the expensive stuff ?”

“Of course I used the expensive stuff. Chanel.”

“Jewelry?” Trudy asks.

“Diamond studs, a gold bangle bracelet.”

“Did you wear your Spanx?” Laura asks.

Joyce looks down at her plate. “No.”

“No?”
Trudy says.

“No, because I . . . Because I thought,
What the hell,
what if . . . ?
”

“True,” Trudy says. “Not the kind of thing you want a guy to tear off you.”

“They need to put lace on those things,” Laura says, around a mouthful of biryani.

“Even then,” Joyce says. “But anyway, I walked into this restaurant—terminally family, but kind of cute—and right away I spotted him, sitting there in his yellow shirt, reading the newspaper. I spotted him right away. I walked up to the table and said, ‘My God, Roy
Schnickleman
!’ and I 186

t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d leaned over to kiss his cheek, and the man pulled back from me, a little alarmed, and I saw that it wasn’t Roy at all.”

“That’s the part we were laughing about,” Trudy says.

“Now you’re all caught up.” She cracks open another beer, and Laura does, too. Then Joyce does.

“Finally I saw the real Roy. He was sitting at a corner table, and he was quite a bit heavier and he was wearing a
toupee,
I could tell from across the room.”

“Oh, God,” Laura says. Bald is bad enough, but a girl can work with that. Memories of Telly Savalas and all. But a rug. Dead end.

“He leaped up and grabbed my hand and went to kiss my cheek, and we ended up bumping heads. But it was sweet, you know. It was cute.

“Then we start talking, and it wasn’t awkward at all, we just blabbed and blabbed and blabbed. I was watching his face, and I saw it kind of go back and forth from how he was to how he is. It was weird. His eyes are still beautiful.

Everything else, well . . . I could see that he thought I was still attractive, and at one point I got this image of us making love all those years ago. I remembered the first time we did it, I accidentally
snorted
when we were humping away, and then I was just so embarrassed. Neither of us said a word, we just kept at it, but then he started snorting with every thrust, just to make me feel better, you know.”

The women laugh, and Trudy begins rhythmically snorting.

“Yes, like that,” Joyce says, “but you know, it was great, it broke the tension, and we had a lovely afternoon.”

“It was daytime when you did it?” Trudy asks.

“Well, yes. Yes, it was daytime, we used to do it in the daytime all the time in those days. Remember when our bodies looked good in daytime?”

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“Oh yeah,” Trudy says.

“It was daytime, and we had Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway on the stereo, and I think we made love four or five times in a row.” She stares into space, sighs deeply.

“But anyway, Roy said he had a big crush on this woman, and he was having a hard time working up the courage to ask her out.”

“At this age?” Laura asks, and Trudy says, “Oh, come on, Laura. Some things never change.”

“I asked if there was anything I could do to help,” Joyce says, “and he was just so grateful. He said she was a cashier at Wal-Mart and she was working right now, we could go and see her and I could maybe tell her what a good guy he is. I said sure, what the heck, I needed some things anyway.”

“Never shop at Wal-Mart; they’re unfair to their workers,” Trudy says, and Joyce says, “Oh, stop. It was a social emergency. I had to buy something; it wouldn’t be polite to meet her at her store and then not buy something.”

“That’s not true,” Trudy says. “Do you think that’s true, Laura?”

Laura finishes chewing her naan, then says, “I guess it depends on how the woman feels about Wal-Mart.”

“When you’ve finished your discussion on microeconomics, let me know,” Joyce says.

“Not microeconomics, ethics,” Trudy says.

“Isn’t it more etiquette than ethics?” Laura asks.

Joyce sighs loudly, and Laura says, “Sorry. Go on.”

“
Thank
you,” Joyce says.

The phone rings, and Trudy says, “Forget it, forget it, let the machine get it, keep talking,” but then they hear that it’s Trudy’s daughter so she has to take it. Laura and Joyce hear her say, “Is everything all right?” Laura’s 188

t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d mother-in-law used to say that; each and every time she called, the first thing she said was, “Is everything gall right?” As though there were a liaison between the “g” of

“everything” and the “a” of “all.” She was a very nice woman, Rose Goldstein, Laura liked her almost as much as her own mother.

Trudy says, “Okay, well, let me call you back, I’ve got dinner guests, I love you, good-bye.”

“You’re never free once you have children,” Joyce says after Trudy returns to the table, but there is a note of satisfaction in her voice, and Laura believes her friends are in agreement that there is a sweetness—a great solace, really—in having your children need you.

“So,” Trudy says, “you went to Wal-Mart to meet the princess.”

“Yes,” Joyce says. “And guess how we got to Wal-Mart?”

She’s pretty excited, and so the answer is obvious.

“Motorcycle!” Laura and Trudy say together, and Joyce squeals, “Yes, a big
hog
! With all this
stuff
on it!”

“Did you sit on one of those high little back seats and wrap your arms around him and let the wind blow in your hair?” Laura asks.

“
Yes,
no helmets, so
Easy Rider,
but listen to what happened: His
toupee
blew off!”

Trudy spews beer out of her mouth, then, laughing, says, “Gee. I always wanted to do that. Sorry. Go ahead.”

“So,” Joyce says, “he pulled over and retrieved his hair and shoved it in his jacket pocket and said, ‘I’ll put it on when we get there.’ And I thought,
Okay, golden opportu-nity,
and I said, ‘Roy? I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but I think you look way better without it.’ And he put his hand on top of his head, all shy, and said, ‘Really?’ and I told him yeah, I honestly think women prefer bald to
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toupee. He said yeah but the only way she’s seen me is with hair. I suggested, gently, that she probably knew it was a toupee, and he blushed and then I felt terrible and I said well,
maybe
she knows. He said he’d decide what to do when we got there, and when we did get there, sure enough, he put the damn thing on. Right out in the parking lot. And I straightened it for him, because the man does not know how to put on a hairpiece, and then we went into Wal-Mart. And I saw her right away.”

“Uh-oh,” Laura says. “This sounds familiar.”

“No,” Joyce says, “this time I was right. She was such a stereotype. She had fake blond hair all ratted up, a low-cut V-neck shirt, and blue eye shadow. Killer figure. Killer.

Stomach flat as a pancake and a real nice butt.”

“Yeah, well, how old?” Trudy asks.

“About fifty, fifty-five.”

“Damn,” Trudy says, and looks down at her stomach.

“So Roy went over and talked to her, and she looked at me and waved and then she put the Closed sign on her register and came over. And I was thinking,
Wait a minute,
how can I talk about what a nice guy Roy is, I don’t even
know
him anymore.
We went over to the little café and got coffee, and Roy and she took out cigarettes—she said she smokes there all the time even though you’re not supposed to. She leaned over and looked up at Roy when he lit her cigarette and then she
French-inhaled.
”

“Oh, she likes him,” Trudy says.

“Right, that’s what I thought,” Joyce says. “But then Roy said he was going to go pick up a few things, why didn’t we ladies just relax, and when he walked away, the woman, Cyndi was her name—as her necklace announced—anyway Cyndi said, ‘God Almighty, I wish that man would stop coming around.’ And I said all this stuff 190

t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d about how he really is just the sweetest guy. I told her about how we were friends so many years ago when he was a musician and played guitar in a rock band. Cyndi said,

‘He played guitar?’ and I said oh yes and I said he was really really good, which he wasn’t, but what the hell, and I told her about this one time when I was at his apartment and a whole bunch of beautiful girls came over looking for Roy—groupies. True story. That was the night I first slept with him. Of course I didn’t tell Madame Blue Eye Shadow that part. Cyndi said she once heard a musician say that he would rather be blind than deaf, and she always thought that was bullshit, but maybe it wasn’t. She looked over at Roy, hanging around in the candy aisle, acting like he wasn’t watching us, and she said, ‘Listen, he’s a nice guy, but . . . Can I be honest with you? I just could never go out with a guy that wears a rug.’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, why don’t I let him know you’d prefer he not wear it, and then would you let him take you out to dinner?

Just once?’ ” She looked at him, and it was the most unfortunate thing because he was bending over rifling through the candy on the lowest shelf and it was
such
an unflattering view. But then she blew out some smoke and kind of smiled and said, ‘Aw, hell, I’ll tell him to come over for dinner tonight. The only thing is, I got five kids. Three still at home and one of ’em’s retarded. Most men, they’re completely freaked out by that. Think he can handle it?’ And you know, I looked at her in a completely different way then, and I said yeah, I thought he could. For sure, I said, and I really believed it and I hoped it was true. She said,

‘How about a hot dog?’ I was full from lunch, but I said sure and reached for my wallet and she put her hand over mine—lord, ten-inch nails, I swear—and she said, ‘I get
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them
free.
’ ‘Oh,’ I said, and she said, ‘Yeup. I’ve worked here for a while, now, so . . .’

“On the way home I told Roy to lose the rug, and he said okay. And I told him to let me know what happened, so he called the next day and said, ‘No go.’ And I said, ‘Aw, really? Why?’ And I was thinking,
I’ll bet it was her kids
after all,
and I was feeling so bad for Cyndi. But what he said was, ‘She doesn’t like that I have four kids.’ Can you believe it?”

“Oh, come on,” Trudy said, “that was just an excuse.”

“I guess,” Joyce says. “But I told Roy I’d go out to dinner with him, and he suggested we start a book club and meet once a month to discuss our choices, and I said okay.”

“So what are you reading first?” Laura asks.

“
Lonesome Dove.
Larry McMurtry.”

“His choice, I assume,” Trudy says.

“Nope. Mine. His choice was
Jane Eyre.
”

Trudy frowns. “Get out.”

“I’m serious. He said he thought it might help him relate better to women.”

“I always meant to read
Lonesome Dove,
” Laura says.

“You can join,” Joyce tells her.

“Can I?” Trudy asks, and Joyce says of course, first meeting is May eighth, seven o’clock, Chucky’s, they can all ride together and won’t it be nice for Roy’s ego to be surrounded by attractive women.

“Well. What a nice story,” Laura says. “I love the ending. I’ve really been wanting to join a book club.”

“
And
Joyce didn’t buy anything at Wal-Mart!” Trudy says. She pours herself a glass of beer. “Can I go next? Because my story is so different from yours.”