Girlfriends (Patrick Sanchez) (16 page)

“Guess you’d better. If you lose your job, who’s going to help me pay my bills?” Shirley said, only half joking. “So what’s new in the world of young people? Young people with buff bodies, I might add,” Shirley said, smiling and giving Peter a good once-over. Even on Shirley’s worst days she was still sexy. A little cheap-looking, but always sexy. She even made Peter turn on the charm sometimes if she wasn’t making him blush.

“Pretty good,” Peter said. “Although my throat is a little scratchy today for some reason. Hope I’m not getting sick.”

“We just did a little shopping,” Gina added. “Our high school reunion is coming up, you know. Linda and I were trying to find something to wear.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Just a cheap whore in the bookstore,” Gina said, smirking at Peter.

“And who might that be?”

“Cheryl Sonntag, Gina’s nemesis,” Linda said, answering Shirley’s question.

“I don’t remember her.”

“She’s the girl I went to American University with. She was one of my roommates in college. She was around the house a lot the first summer after we graduated. I think you were living with Stan at the time, or maybe it was when you moved out for the umpteenth time to live with that guy whose mother was younger than you,” Gina said, slightly slamming Shirley for her history of repeatedly moving in and out of the house she had occasionally shared with Gina and her mother, not to mention Shirley’s taste for younger men.

“The black girl your grandmother didn’t like you hanging around with?”

“Yes, Shirley, the black girl.”

Gina’s grandmother was a nice woman, but she did have one major flaw. She was a bit on the racist side. She didn’t spend her evenings in white sheets burning crosses or anything, but she certainly didn’t approve of Gina rooming with an African American. Gina’s grandmother had old-fashioned ideas about how an upper-middle-class girl should behave, and it didn’t include mixing with people of other races. But compared to Shirley’s antics, Gina being friends with a minority seemed like small potatoes.

Growing up in such a strict household, Shirley learned to abhor rules and discipline. As a child she felt like she wasn’t allowed to have any fun. Her mother would tell her it wasn’t proper to play in the dirt with the boys or run through the sprinkler on a hot summer day. She constantly pestered Shirley as a child to sit up straight, cross her legs, and conduct herself as a lady. She also forbade Shirley to wear pants outside the house, loaded her up with books on etiquette and proper presentation, and would not allow her to date until she was eighteen.

Looking back on her childhood, Shirley felt like she had been forced to stand on the sidelines, trying not to get dirty, while the other children played and were allowed to be kids. As she progressed into her teenage years and developed a mind of her own, she protested her mother’s strict rules more and more, almost as often as she disregarded them—rolling her pants up under her skirt until she was on the school bus, passing on the etiquette books in favor of trashy novels and television, and sneaking around with boys long before her eighteenth birthday.

At first she violated her mother’s rules only behind her back, but as Shirley got older, she became bolder and sometimes blatantly ignored her mother’s wishes. If her mother wouldn’t let her go to a school dance or get her hair permed, Shirley would do it anyway and be perfectly willing to face whatever punishment was doled out when her mother learned of her actions. It almost became a routine—Shirley would go to a party she wasn’t supposed to or get home past her ridiculous ten o’clock curfew and then be grounded for a week. The following week she’d get caught with a cigarette or chatting on the phone after nine o’clock and be grounded for another week. The cycle continued for years until Shirley just plain wore her mother out. Gina didn’t know if her grandmother’s strict nature was really what made Shirley end up as such a wild woman though. Anyway, it couldn’t have been totally to blame. Shirley’s nature seemed so fully ingrained, it was probably just who she was.

Luckily for Gina, her grandmother mellowed with age and had been thoroughly exhausted by Shirley. And, after witnessing Shirley’s tremendous rebellion against her efforts, Gina’s grandmother did her part in raising Gina with a more relaxed attitude—and, for the most part, she, not Shirley, raised Gina. Although her grandmother wasn’t thrilled about Gina’s friendship with Cheryl, she couldn’t have been nicer to Cheryl when she came over to the house. She just occasionally raised her concerns to Gina and asked her not to spend so much time with that “nice colored girl.”

It amused Gina that racism was usually handed down from one generation to the next, but not in her family. Her grandmother’s feelings certainly didn’t get passed on to Shirley, who Gina sometimes referred to as an equal opportunity slut. Shirley slept with guys of every race, color, and creed, although there was always the notion that she did it just to get under her mother’s skin. Simply to amuse herself, Shirley would occasionally buy her mother ethnic gifts for her birthday and holidays. Last year she gave her a black animated Santa Claus figure. She was also sure to send her mother Hanukkah and Martin Luther King Day cards every year just to aggravate her.

“Oh, yes, Cheryl. I met her once or twice. Seemed nice enough to me,” Shirley said.

“Yeah, well, she’s
nice
all right,” Gina added sarcastically.

“What? What did she do?”

“It’s a long story. I can’t believe you haven’t heard it already.”

“I’ve got all day, sweetie.”

“Some other time, Shirley.”

“Just tell her, Gina. What’s the big deal?” Linda interjected.

“I think it can wait,” Peter said, agreeing with Gina.

“Now you’ve really got me curious. Do share, Linda.”

Realizing that Gina and Peter would be only slightly angry if she spilled the beans, Linda decided to go for it.

“Gee, I don’t know where to begin. I guess it was the first Christmas after Gina and Cheryl graduated from American. Gina, Cheryl, Peter, and I had just spent Christmas Day with Peter’s parents out in the boonies, somewhere in Calvert County, Maryland. After dinner with Peter’s parents we went to a local bar to have some drinks and shoot pool. Well, obviously, with it being Christmas Day, the bar was pretty empty. To liven things up, the bartenders started giving away free drinks and tequila shots. We certainly weren’t going to give up free drinks.”

“Certainly not,” Shirley said as if it would be a tragedy to pass up free tequila.

“Needless to say, the four of us got schlossed. Oh, oh . . . I forgot one important detail. This was just a few weeks after Peter dumped Gina. Well, he did dump you, Gina,” Linda said, looking at Gina, sort of apologizing for putting it so harshly.

“Whatever, Linda.”

“Anyway, the four of us were three sheets to the wind by midnight. None of us were in any condition to drive, so I had the brilliant idea of catching a cab to Denny’s. We were going to go there and have coffee and something to eat. After we sobered up we were going to grab a cab back to the car and drive back to Peter’s house. So, anyway, we got into the cab. Peter sat up front, and us girls climbed into the back. I was sitting in between Gina and Cheryl, and not five minutes passed before I heard Gina make some quiet grunting noise like she was choking or something. Then I heard something splatter on her shirt like she had just spilled a drink. It was dark, and she was so quiet about it, I really wasn’t sure what had happened. I was like ‘Did you puke?’ and she nodded her head. Then our lovely cabdriver asked if she threw up. He sounded rather annoyed. I told him that she did, but she mostly got it on herself and not on the cab. . . .”

Peter cut her off. “You would have been really proud, Shirley. She puked in a very ladylike manner. She was very quiet about it and just sat there with barf all over herself like nothing had happened.”

“That’s because I was hoping no one would notice, you jerk,” Gina snapped at Peter.

“Why didn’t you roll down the window and puke outside the cab?” Shirley asked Gina, trying not to laugh.

“Aaah, dah . . . I was drunk. I wasn’t exactly thinking logically.”

“When we finally got to Denny’s, the cabdriver let us out. It was only after he took off that we realized it was closed for Christmas.”

“Yeah,” Peter said as Gina looked at him and Linda with a snarl. “It was freezing, and the place was closed, and we were too embarrassed to call the cab company again, so in our drunken stupor we started walking along the highway. I’m not sure if we knew where we were going. We just kept walking, in between laughing at Gina for blowing chunks in the cab. At some point Cheryl stumbled in a ditch and twisted her ankle.”

“And she bitched about it the rest of the night and wanted Peter to carry her ass,” Gina added.

“Well, this is where it gets interesting,” Linda started again. “We finally got to some Super 8 Motel along the road and went in to get a room. Of course I ended up sharing a bed with Puke-Tisha, and Cheryl somehow finagled her way into sharing a bed with Peter. We were all so cold and tired that it didn’t seem to matter anyway; however, shortly after the lights went off, strange noises started coming from Peter and Cheryl’s side of the room.”

“Strange noises, eh?” Shirley said, looking at Peter with a grin.

“Strange isn’t exactly the right word. I guess the noises were more erotic. The kind of noises your parents make when you’re a kid and they don’t want you to hear them going at it. Come to think of it, it didn’t even seem like they were really trying to be that quiet about it. Gina and I didn’t know what to do. We just lay there like we didn’t notice and—”

Gina didn’t let her finish. “Basically, Cheryl fucked Peter’s brains out right there in front of us like a paid whore.”

“Wow, what a night,” Shirley said. She was inclined to ask why Gina held a grudge against Cheryl for the evening’s events, but not Peter. After all, his behavior was just as inappropriate and rude. But she knew better. Gina wasn’t going to give up Peter’s friendship for any reason. Cheryl was dispensable. Peter wasn’t. Besides, he was a man. He was supposed to think with his dick.

“So you and Cheryl haven’t spoken since?”

“She’s tried to speak to me. I just ignore her. Who needs friends like that?” Gina said, stopping to think about Cheryl for a minute. Truth was, Gina was the one who needed friends like that. Of course, Linda was her best friend and probably always would be, but she and Linda didn’t have the same roaring good time Gina had been known to have with Cheryl. Linda wasn’t into gossiping and ragging on other people the same way Gina and Cheryl were. They had perfected it to an art form. They didn’t mean any harm by it. It wasn’t like Penelope could hear them trashing her new haircut or making fun of her taste in clothes. It was just something they did to entertain themselves. “If you’re not going to talk bad about people, what are you supposed to do over lunch?” Gina would tell herself, trying to rationalize the gossip sessions she and Cheryl would have. In reality, Gina didn’t actually hate Cheryl—at least not anymore. She was over the whole incident with Peter but was too proud to reconcile with Cheryl.

“Not me. That’s for sure,” Shirley said, getting up from the table to help herself to the buffet with the gang following.

They reached the food bar, and Gina and her friends meandered around, adding small samples of different items to their plates. Peter avoided anything that looked like it had dairy products in it. He’d recently come to the conclusion that he was lactose intolerant, and he’d forgotten to bring his dairy digestive supplement.

Compared to the others, Shirley was a woman on a mission. She quickly filled one plate with lumpy mashed potatoes and Jell-O salad. Then, while balancing that plate on her forearm, she filled another plate with turkey stuffing, and some sort of chicken with cream sauce all over it. She passed over the fried fish—it wouldn’t keep well in the refrigerator. When she returned to the table, she just left the two full plates and immediately returned to the buffet to start again.

“Mother!” Gina said in a condescending tone as Shirley returned from her second trip. “Not again? I thought you gave this up?”

“Don’t worry, sweetie. They don’t care,” Shirley said to Gina as she whipped out a gallon-size Ziploc bag and started spooning in the mashed potatoes. “What do they get paid? Five bucks an hour? Do you think they’re going to confront me for five bucks an hour?”

“Mother, it has nothing to do with whether or not these people notice you shoving mounds of food into your purse. It’s embarrassing. I should have known something was up when you came in with that duffel bag.”

“I don’t think it’s embarrassing,” Peter said.

“I don’t either,” Linda added smartly. “Want me to steal something for you, Shirley?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, can you grab some of the roast beef? Make sure you get the rare pieces. That way, when I heat it up, it will be medium, just like I like it. And if you can also get me some of—”

Gina cut her off. “No, she would not like you to steal something for her. For heaven’s sake, are you that broke, Shirley? I’ll go to the store with you and buy you a whole mess of TV dinners or something.”

“I ain’t eatin’ that shit,” Shirley replied, stuffing the last of the tuna casserole into another plastic bag as if what she was doing were completely appropriate.

“Gina,” Shirley said, putting a couple of stuffed Ziplocs into the duffel bag. “I can eat for a week on this food, and it cost me only nine ninety-five.”

“Nine ninety-five and your dignity, not to mention mine.”

“Don’t be such a whaaa baby. We don’t all make big banker’s salaries.”

“I
hardly
make a big salary, and I’d be happy to help you out with groceries if you really need it. You work in a restaurant, for God’s sake. Can’t you eat there?”

“Just drop it, Gina. Would ya?” Shirley asked.

“Fine,” Gina said, lifting her hands in exasperation, trying not to lose her temper with her mother. It wasn’t like it did any good anyway.

“Here, sweetie, hold this. Will you?” Shirley said, handing a plastic bag to Gina. “I need to take my Zoloft while I’m eating. It upsets my stomach otherwise,” she continued, looking through her purse for her antidepressants.