Helen Yglesias - The Girls

Jenny inquired politely of the lone Latino if she might sit with him. He inclined his head in a yes, never leaving off the phone conversation. From the friendly, talkative, fat, hairy waiter she ordered a salad called Tropic Fantasy. It cost $6.35, and when it came was quite beautiful and deliciously fresh, fruits and nuts on a bed of mixed greens.

The Latino put through call after call, some in English, some in Spanish, about a deal so complicated she could not follow in either language. He was Cuban, dropping vowels and consonants freely in both languages. “Nahyea,” he kept cautioning. “Don tell noboda. Nahyea.” Not yet, probably. As she was finishing her salad, a deeply tanned blond American young woman in a dress that barely covered her slim, bosomy torso joined the Cuban. She had an infant on her flat hip, a little girl as dark as her father. Lovingly, he took the child on his lap while repeating the message, “Don tell noboda. Nahyea.” He must have made twenty such calls before Jenny settled her bill and left.

The bed surprised. It was comfortable. She kept the windows closed and the air on, trading one discomfort for another. It was a hot night. Heat made her horny. Cold made her horny. Memory made her horny. Music made her horny. Eighty-year-old women weren’t supposed to feel horny. They were supposed to be serene, wise, resigned. But here she was, raging in bed, for love, for lost love. At eighty. Grieving. For the loss of her husband of forty years. Nobody believed in that. One love. The love of one’s life. She felt a fool talking to anybody about her love for him. Anyway, he was dead and gone. The man she had left her first husband for; the man she had endangered the safe lives of her first two children for; the stepfather they resented, admired, loved, and sometimes hated; the father their shared son loved, admired, resented, and sometimes hated; the man she had lived with, worked with, laughed with, quarreled with, shared every penny with, his or hers; the man she shared bed and board with, day and night, mind and body. Could you call missing all that being horny?

She was suffused with the memory of a night in Florida, in a sleazy place in Clearwater much like this one. She couldn’t remember why they were so lucky as to be there alone. No kids — not the two older ones or even their younger one. Probably all left in the care of Grandmother, Abuela, in the larger sleazy place up the beach they had rented for the whole family and a cousin. The Cuban side of Paul’s family was jammed with cousins.

One night, one lovely undisturbed night with the love of her life. They had shrimp for dinner at a restaurant on the bay. Then a leisurely walk to the beach, jabbering away. They were both big talkers. Paul had reserved a room in an odd round structure originally conceived as a tropical paradise resort. Built in the twenties, it had bedrooms overlooking a circular court that boasted a palm-thatched bar and dance floor with live band. A central staircase rose to the bedrooms, whose rounded windows romantically faced the ocean. Now the outer walls let the wind and rain in, the dance floor was warped, the bar and band were no more. The Round of Pleasure had been a dream place for Paul in his adolescence. It was a gas to come to it in their middle age.

How she enjoyed him, his effervescent talk, his brilliant laughter, the angry, funny play of his mind, his long, lean, strong form, his full cushioned lips, his tongue, his electric hands, the silky hair covering his body, the more wonderful silk of his penis. And his feet. His beautiful feet.

Yes. And not to forget the violent temper, the sulky childishness, the ego, the lust for recognition of his work— my work, my work —the restlessness, the incessant demand that he be Numero Uno, the deliberately inflicted hurts when he imagined she had humiliated him. She hadn’t forgotten. She wasn’t romanticizing her life with Paul. She had loved him with her eyes wide open for the man that he was, not some dreamboat she invented after he was dead.

They had had a good time together. A good life. She never wanted it to end. Why couldn’t it have gone on forever?

He’s dead, she told herself, and felt her body lifeless. He died at age seventy-eight of prostate cancer. Your mother and father are dead. All your brothers are dead. And Naomi is on her way, and Eva, and Flora is eighty-five and you’re eighty. Nobody lives forever. Don’t be a child. Get on with what you have to do.

What do I have to do? Hopelessly awake, she thought again of Naomi’s whispered on-and-off request. She clicked off tomorrow’s chores: calls to her children to tell them she was fine, calls to doctors, a phone conference with Eva’s children, a visit to Naomi’s bank, more quarrels with Flora.

Eva’s bloated, hairy face appeared. What were they doing to her? What were they medicating her with? Elegant, grown-up Eva. Already married when Jenny was six years old, settled into a life complete with husband, children, and even a girl from Ireland to help with the housework. Her comfortable apartment was a refuge for adolescent sulks as Jenny grew up in turn. Eva helped her find her way in the world. She even gave Jenny money for extravagances, gave her a dollar fifty to see the first live play she had ever seen, Cyrano de Bergerac, with a terrible ham actor whose name she had forgotten. Long-lived Eva. Had her husband of fifty-six years been the love of her life? Impossible to tell. Eva never talked intimacies. She listened. What a comfort to talk to Eva, who knew how to listen. Carrying on her steady, responsible life, always there for Jenny when Jenny needed her. She had two children as solid in their lives as Eva had been, and from the two, a bumper crop of eight grandchildren, fourteen great-grandchildren, all doing what they were expected to do. Eva talked of them, but not too much. Eva, correct in all her ways.

And what of Flora? Flora’s love life? Four marriages — five, technically. She had been married twice to one husband. Three divorces, one annulment. Two husbands now dead. Two floating around, one a good old friend, but infirm, the other lost somewhere. Four children, three grandchildren. She had had other men in her bed, too many to keep track of. Flora used the word “love” a lot. “He fell in love with me.” “I’m in love with him.” “We’re in love.” Along with the down-to-earth talk. “He can’t get it up. He’s the original limp-penis guy.” “He wouldn’t know a clitoris from a clementine, he thinks nipples are strictly for babies, he’s a two-minute-flat guy.” Often about the same man. “He’s passionately in love with me, but the poor thing can’t get it up, no matter what I do to help.” “He used to be good a couple of years ago, real good, but medication or something did him in, he can’t do a thing anymore. It would be sad if it weren’t funny, because he’s desperately in love with me.”

Any of those the love of Flora’s life? And what if there were no such thing as the love of one’s life? If Jenny’s own sexual existence had been nothing but romantic illusion? How about those geese who mated for life? Was she the only monogamous human being on earth? (Leaving aside her first marriage, when she was too young to know which end was up.) Because she couldn’t swear for Paul, naturally. She knew Paul had loved her. But apparently exclusive love could be a straitjacket. There were no open signs of others in her husband’s life. She had never asked. She was afraid of the answer?

And then there was Naomi’s love life. Women, men, old men when she was young, young men when she was old, at least one black and one Asian (but who was counting colors?), a gay man offering companionship and marriage but no sex, a husband of twenty years, a pickup on the boardwalk when she was in her eighties, of a suave Italian con man looking for marriage, the whole stormy relationship complete with sex, lies, professions of love, theft of a diamond ring, betrayal, and an operatic breakup. Two long-ago abortions, illegal. Two marriages, one annulment. No children. The love of Naomi’s life? Another question Jenny didn’t ask. Naomi would probably name Sam, her handsome musician husband.