Helen Yglesias - The Girls

Flora appeared in the little hallway from the bedroom, naked, carrying a white terrycloth robe.

“God,” she said in her loud normal voice. “You scared me to death. How’d you get past security? Some security. You can’t depend on anything or anybody these days. How’d you get in? Did I give you a key to the apartment? I don’t remember giving you a key to the apartment. I’ll have to have that back if you have one.”

Flora was carrying a glass of colorless liquid. Water? Vodka? There was no suggestion of the hushed woman on the phone.

“Are you alone?” Jenny said. “I don’t have a key. Don’t you remember calling me?”

“Are you crazy? Of course I remember calling you.”

“Well, where is he? Is he still here?”

“Of course not,” Flora said. “Do you think I’d be so calm?”

Jenny sat down, her legs trembling, her heart shaking wildly.

“What’s the matter with you? Are you all right? Do you need some water?”

“Yes,” Jenny said. “A glass of cold water. It’s very hot in here.”

“I know. You like the cold. The air, the water. Ice water. Air conditioning. Shall I turn on the air? I don’t like it too cold myself.”

“He left? Quietly? What about the gun?”

“Here’s your water. Shall I turn on the air? Answer me about the air, because I can do without it. What about the gun? What about it?”

Jenny sipped the water, slowing her heart, cooling her head. She pressed the icy glass against her hot cheek, first one side, then the other, and when she turned her attention again to Flora she found her sister slumped against a wall, sobbing.

“I don’t care, I don’t care what you think of me. I know very well what you think of me, and I don’t give a damn.”

Shorter and slighter than Flora, Jenny nevertheless rose to the occasion, getting out of her chair with difficulty and gathering the fleshy terry-wrapped bundle into her arms, rocking and soothing, shushing and smoothing away the sisters’ common anguish that none of them really valued the others.

“What happened, darling? He didn’t hurt you, did he? That’s all that matters. You’re safe now, you’re okay — unless you’re hurt. Are you hurt?”

“My soul is hurt,” Flora moaned. “My soul, my woman’s soul.” And asked for a tissue.

Fetching the tissues was an excuse for Jenny to check out the bedroom and the two bathrooms. They were empty of a man with a gun. Had he ever existed? She heard Flora emoting from the living room.

“What am I going to do? What can I do? I must have love, I must. But men are nothing but trouble. He went crazy when he couldn’t get it up. He went out of his mind, stamping around the apartment waving the gun. I think we had too much to drink. And how would I know that liquor didn’t go with his medication?”

Flora was sobbing again. In between gasps Jenny heard, “He wanted me to take it in my mouth, but I don’t do that. There are some things I don’t do, and that one’s at the top of the list. I don’t care how much he said he loved me.”

“How’d you get him out?”

“He’s crazy. He just went. Picked himself up, got dressed, and went. Right after I called you. Maybe he heard me calling. He said, ‘Goodbye, Flora, you’ll never see me again. You humiliated me, and I am not a man who puts up with humiliation.’ Poor thing, he’s mad about me.”

Flora burst out laughing. In a second Jenny joined her.

“You should have heard him,” Flora said, mimicking the stance and voice of an outraged male. “‘I am not a man who puts up with humiliation,’” and went off into another peal of laughter.

“But why the gun? Why did he have a gun?” Jenny said.

“What a funny question. Lots of people in Miami carry guns. Mostly men, but women too. For safety. It’s common practice. He had a jewelry store on Lincoln Road. You need a gun in that case. Would you like some frozen yogurt?” Flora was suddenly in a new mode. “I’m dying for real ice cream, aren’t you, Jenny? But I’ve got some very good fat-free stuff.”

They ate the smooth, cool cream with two chocolate Mallomars each.

“To hell with arteries and waistlines,” Flora said. “I love Mallomars ever since I was a kid. Remember how poor we were, how hard Mama and Papa had to work in the little grocery store? No joke raising seven kids.”

Jenny bit into a cookie and lost herself in her own memories of Mama and Papa. How distant and forbidding their disciplinary father had seemed when they were little, and how powerless and pitiful when he was old, how tender their mother always, scrubbing, cooking, bathing, and feeding with no thought for herself, wrapping every service to each of them in a packet of love.

“No joke raising me, for sure,” Flora said, and reminded Jenny of a scary night when they were fourteen and nineteen years old and had picked up two grown men at a movie house. Or Flora had picked them up, with Jenny standing by, too frightened to get into their car on the offer of a ride home. Flora flounced in, calling Jenny a big baby. Jenny went home alone, so afraid that she cried all the way and sat on the apartment stoop waiting, numb with despair, sure that her sister was dead, or worse, as good as dead. When she had given up on ever seeing Flora again, the car came to a stop at the curb and Flora was ejected, sobbing. They had pawed her, torn buttons off her blouse, ripped off a stocking, and slapped her face when she bit them (Flora was a biter), but her shoes came flying out the door after her, and the stocking, and once they were safely upstairs it was clear that she wasn’t badly hurt.

“It’s your soul, your womanly soul they attack,” Flora said, wrapping the Mallomar box in a plastic bag. “That’s why we weep. That’s why I wept then and why I weep now. They’ll never understand. Never. They think we have no right to a sex life, not even when we’re young. If you want sex then you’re bad, and now if you still want sex you’re still bad, just because in their eyes you’re old, and out of your mind as well.”

“Who?” Jenny said.

“Men,” said Flora vigorously, almost cheerful. “Men. Any man. Doctors especially. Men psychiatrists. The worst. Don’t let a doctor know you’re still passionate. At age eighty-five? Sex is a sin. It’s proof that you’re mad. If I called the cops, like you said, they’d put me away, not that crazy man I got rid of by the skin of my teeth.” She began to cry again.

“Want more ice cream?” Jenny said.

“Would you have done it? Would you have done what he wanted me to do?”

“If I loved him,” Jenny said.

“You mean you have?” Flora was astounded.

“When I loved them, or believed I did. If they asked.”

“Did you like it?”

“I don’t know. Who remembers the things you do in bed.”

“In bed. You can’t even talk sex. Fucking,” Flora said. “Call it fucking. And who is this ‘they’? You always said you only loved one man.”

“Well, I had two husbands, remember, and I thought I loved them both. I did love them both. Differently.”

Flora laughed harshly. “You’re hopeless. You have to make everything nice, smooth, beautiful, romantic. True love shit. You can’t stand the idea of straight sex — lust, plain old lust. That’s all it is, there ain’t no true love.” And after a pause, “Did both those bastards make you do that for them?”

“Hey,” Jenny said lightly, “you’re behind the times. Lots of people like oral sex. Nobody thinks anything of it anymore. Anything goes. And they weren’t bastards.”

“It’s not a question of think. It’s disgusting. Don’t tell me that women enjoy that. You’re lying. I bet you never did anything but lie under your man and let him come in you. You’re just showing off, posing as a look-how-liberated-I-am female. And they were bastards if they made you do it, but I bet anything you’re lying. Next thing you’ll be claiming you’ve had abortions, just to be in with the times. I know you think that it’s perfectly okay to kill.”