I decided to skip the tater tots and just grabbed the spray cheese and the box of crackers made with nut flour from that one time I thought I might try to eat gluten-free. It had lasted a day and a half, and now all that was left in the pantry to eat were these leftover cardboard crackers I couldn’t bring myself to eat otherwise. Oh well, the cracker was just a vehicle to get the cheese in my mouth without being a complete troll and spraying it directly down my throat. A fancy edible plate. Oh, the sacrifices we make for manners.
“Okay, so spill it, girlie, it’s been a long time since we’ve had story time. I’ve been about bustin’ to go over some new material, too. I’ve been waiting so long.” Jolene swirled the contents of her glass before taking a long drink. “Ooowee,” she cackled as only the elderly could, “that’s a good batch today, Gerta.”
Gerta smiled and nodded before she took her own drink. Gerta didn’t talk much, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have anything to say. Gerta liked to live through actions and expressions, not necessarily through words. She also made a bomb ass margarita.
“I’m in a complete slump,” I admitted, sinking into my ratty green recliner and popping the footrest up. The chair was older than Jesus and my favorite place to sit. Ever. I’m pretty sure there is a permanent impression of my butt in the cushion. Sometimes, if I’m up late writing, I even sleep in it, and I don’t care how geriatric it makes me seem.
“Does it have anything to do with that handsome young man who was here before?” I was surprised Gerta brought it up, not because it was about Gabe, but because Jolene was usually the one who shamelessly asked exactly what was on her mind.
I nodded, she was right of course. Gabe had me wrecked right now. I was happy, but I was also terrified. What if I couldn’t be the woman he thought I was? What if I destroyed whatever good thing we were doing and I lost him again? There were still all these issues between us. Things that were painful to think about. Maybe I was confusing my anger with hurt, but pain was pain and it was hard to separate the two. The squeezing in my chest hurt, and I rubbed the heel of my hand over the spot, willing it to go away. I was doing that a lot lately. Why was loving so uncertain and painful? Why did I feel like a teenager again, longing for something I wasn’t supposed to have?
“Oh, that Anderson boy. He certainly is a handful, isn’t he?” I raised my eyebrows at the remark from Jolene. What did she know about Gabe?
“How do you know anything about Gabe Anderson?” I asked, taking another long drink of my margarita, letting it swirl around my mouth before enjoying the slow burn as it trickled down my throat. Ooh, Jolene was right, it was a good batch.
“Marlene Anderson gets her hair done at Charity’s the same time we do, dear. It’s been that way for years.” Jolene acted surprised I didn’t know. I got my hair done at Charity’s, it’s how I met my friend Regina. Did everyone get their hair done there for crying out loud? She was one of about thirty hairdressers in town for goodness sake.
Although I loved her salon and all the girls who worked there. Including Evan, the shampoo guy, who tried his hardest to be one of the girls, too. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Gabe’s mom went there. She could afford the best, and everyone who worked at Charity’s was top notch in their field. I clearly agreed because I would eat cup ramen for a month if it meant I had the money to get my hair done. She kept my blonde curls shiny and bouncy, and for that she could have my money and my soul, vain though it was.
“Oh, she’s a nice one, that Anderson girl.” Gerta chimed in, her voice soft and melodic as always. That Anderson Girl was in her fifties, at least, but I suppose when you are as old as Jolene and Gerta, everyone younger is known as boy or girl. “She talks about her son all the time. Is it true that he saved a princess from an assassination attempt?”
Oh, they were talking about Gabe’s mom, all right. I had heard the same story, and to be honest, I believed her. “Probably,” I said as I squirted a mound of cheese onto a cracker. Then I squished it down with another cracker on top and popped the whole thing in my mouth. Ugh, I should have only used one cracker, those things are foul. I washed it down with another slug from my glass, only to find out that it was empty.
“Refills, ladies?” I asked as I headed back to my tiny kitchen to grab the pitcher. Both women held up their glasses and I sloppily poured the refills. I had only had one so far but those things were potent, holy shit. Good thing none of us were driving anywhere, because Gerta did not fuck around with her adult beverages.
“She talks about you too, sometimes,” Jolene piped up. It made me feel guilty, hearing that Mrs. Anderson mentioned me on occasion. Besides when Mr. Anderson passed, and my mom came up from Florida for the funeral, I hadn’t really spent much time with Gabe’s mom. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her, I did. I actually loved her like another mother figure, but it was hard because every time I would visit her she talked about Gabe, and it just fucking hurt. That’s all.
I knew it was selfish of me, but it was self-preservation. And now Gabe and I were, I don’t know, seeing each other, I guess? I didn’t even want his mom to know. I mean, what if it didn’t work out? She’d always had some innocent fantasy of us getting married and having her grandchildren. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was a pipe dream.
“I don’t want to talk about Gabe right now, okay? It’s complicated, and I think I’m in love, or never really fell out of it like I tried to and I can’t really dwell on that right now, because there is just so much going on,” I said the words in a rush. Getting it out felt good, but I also didn’t want anyone to really call me out on it because I wasn’t ready to talk about it in depth yet. It was still too scary. Too new. “I also got attacked by a junkie in an alley but I don’t want to talk about that either okay? What I really want to hear is more terrible date stories. I need inspiration or I am never going to get over this writer’s block. I gotta eat, you know?” I said the last part while laughing but it was true. I didn’t want to talk about those things. I wanted to escape that for a little bit, and yes, I really did need to fucking get back to work.
The ladies accepted that explanation and didn’t pry further. Instead, we got three margies deep as Jolene regaled me with several tales of dates gone wrong, and they were hysterical, as they always were.
“I’m not kidding you,” Jolene said, waving her arms around because even though she was maybe five foot three, everything else about her was big, even her expressions. “We were sitting at that fancy Mexican place, the kind with the homemade tortilla chips and salsa on the table. We hadn’t been there but fifteen minutes and I had been watching him just…shovel the food in like he hadn’t eaten in days. All of a sudden, he rears his head back like a horse and snorts. He snorted! A damn tomato chunk right up his nose!” I had to set my glass down at that one, I was laughing so hard tears were streaming down my face and I was afraid I was going to spill my drink.
“And this was before cell phones, girls, I couldn’t call anyone to come get me out of it. I’m telling you, I had to sit at that table while he went to the bathroom to farmer blow it out. Then, when he took me home he tried to get me to kiss him goodbye. Really. Like I wanted a kiss from tomato face. Hardly!” I laughed so hard I started choking, and it took me a few moments to regain my composure.
“I call bullshit, Jolene,” I said between coughing and clearing my throat. “No way that happened, that is too off the wall.”
“Okay, you got me. It wasn’t one of my dates.” She looked suitably embarrassed that I had called her out.
“See, I got you. But that really was funny Jolene. It was a really good story.” I meant it, something like that could definitely fit into one of my books.
“Oh no, that really happened,” Jolene was quick to amend. “It just wasn’t one of my dates. It was Gerta’s.” The other woman nodded sadly, as if admitting it cost her something, and I thought I was going to keel over and die from laughing so hard.
“And the best part of all was that
she married him!” We all collapsed with laughter then, and I couldn’t recall in all of my thirty-two years of life ever having as much fun with someone older than me. Well, Gabe was a year older than me, and we had quite a bit of fun recently, but that wasn’t the kind of fun I was thinking of.
My eyes almost bugged out of my head when Gerta added softly, “Look, Angel, he was only husband number three. I was still practicing then.” I looked wide-eyed at Jolene, expecting her to call Gerta’s bluff but she just nodded in agreement.
“Gerta, how many times were you married?” I don’t know what I expected her to say, but was completely unprepared when she primly responded,
“Five.”
“Holy shit, you have got to be messing with me.” I was so stunned I forgot to be careful with my words, but instead of chastising me on the proper language for a lady, like she normally would, Jolene just laughed and waved off my skepticism.
“Go ahead and show her, Gerta.”
Gerta smiled softly and unbuttoned her peach cardigan, pulling her left arm out. She had on a sleeveless peach blouse underneath, the same color as the cardigan, but it left her arms bare. Well, it would have been bare if it had not been covered from wrist to just above the elbow with the most stunning tattoo I have ever seen up close.
"Oh my God, Gerta, you are a badass,” I exclaimed. “Who knew you were hiding something so boss under that twinset? Tell me all about it.” I was so excited, I couldn’t tell what it was from where I was sitting, but there was some black and white shading, with vivid splashes of color.
“Of course, come here and look,” she said, motioning for me to come closer. Normally timid and quiet, she had a look of happiness on her face. Like she would love nothing more than to show and talk about her tattoo. The first thing I noticed were the flowers, that made up the bulk of the tattoo and were a myriad of colors from red and yellow to purple and pink. “The flowers are for Gerald. He worked at a greenhouse. We were married in 1948 when I was seventeen years old. It was arranged by our parents and he was quite a bit older, but he was kind to me and we had a nice life. But in 1951 he was called to fight in Korea and was killed in combat.” She ran her fingers over the petals of a pink peony as she spoke and I could hear the sadness in her voice.
“Three years later I married Vincent, he owned a gas station down in Memphis. I thought I might like being the wife of a businessman, but it really wasn’t that great. Vincent liked to drink much more than he liked to be married, and he liked loose women more than he liked to be faithful. One night he got drunk and went home with the wrong woman and her husband found him. Shot Vincent dead in his wife’s bed. I can’t say he didn’t deserve it, but I did do my best by him when I was his wife.”
She pointed out the whiskey barrel hidden amongst the foliage on her arm. It didn’t sound like she missed Vincent very much, but Gerta still found a way to honor him, anyway, in the ink on her arm. “I was married to Eddie for eight years,” she continued quietly, fingers dusting over a tattoo of a pile of gold coins hidden under some leaves. “We we tried our best for a family, but I miscarried four times in those eight years and Eddie couldn’t quite handle being married to someone who couldn’t bear him children. Eddie took his own life in 1968 and left me widowed. I was alone, but he was a successful man in other ways and I had enough to live on. I didn’t need to get married again to live a comfortable life, but then again, loneliness doesn’t pick and choose based on your class in life.”
It must have been the margaritas, but I was emotionally distraught at the story she was telling. Five husbands. Five husbands she had gone through and I had only heard about the first three, but it didn’t look like she had experienced any love at all with any of them. I wanted her to finish telling me about all of them, though, so I held back the tears so she wouldn’t stop talking. “Bruce was a manager for musicians in Tennessee and, oh, but he was so handsome!” Gerta exclaimed, blushing a little as she remembered the face of that long gone man. “He swept me right off my feet, and I loved him so much. Bruce didn’t care that I couldn’t have children, we were traveling for his job all the time anyway. He took me with him everywhere—did you know he introduced me to Elvis Presley once?” Gerta placed her hands on her cheeks, imitating an embarrassed young girl. “I could barely even speak to him, I was so star struck. I only had ten years with Bruce,” she said sadly as she traced the microphone that was inked on her arm. It was an old-style microphone, similar to what was used at that time in her life, I supposed.
“I’d been ill so I was staying at our apartment in Cincinnati, so I didn’t get to go with him on that last trip. It was his first international trip with the group he was representing and I was so sad to miss it. They were performing in Spain and I had never been, and we had a pretty emotional goodbye. I didn’t know it would be the last time, although no one ever does, do they?”
I didn’t answer her. I don’t think she expected me to. But I did finally have to reach for the tissues because there was no way I could hold back the tears anymore. So much loss, just when she finally thought she had found her love.
“What happened to Bruce?” I asked quietly, more so to hide the trembling of my tear-filled voice than to avoid being loud.
“The plane went down somewhere over the Atlantic. They only ever found pieces of the wreckage. None of the bodies were ever recovered. Oh, don’t cry for me, Angel.” Gerta paused to pat my hand gently. “I don’t tell you these stories to make you sad. I’ve had a lovely life, rich with experience. There is so much more to my memories than just these pictures.”
“What about this?” I pointed to what I recognized as a medical symbol, the staff with the snake curled around it. I wasn’t sure what it meant, other than something related to the health and wellness field.
“Jeffrey was a physician at the Toledo Children’s Hospital,” Gerta said, a wide smile spreading across her face. “And we had thirty-four wonderful years together before they found the tumor in his brain. Jeffrey had been married before but lost his wife to ovarian cancer. By the time we met each other, we were both past the age of having any children, but being a pediatric physician, he helped so many. He worked long hours at the hospital, but that was okay because I volunteered there too. I still do, twice a week. I like to go hold the babies in the NICU. They are the ones who need the extra snuggles, you know?”
It seemed wrong, somehow, that I was the one bawling my eyes out and Gerta was sitting on the sofa, patting my hand and smiling serenely. What a wuss I was to be stressing out over imaginary problems with one man, when she had been through hell and back with five of them. Five! I couldn’t even imagine being able to trust in love at all after having even one husband die, but she kept trusting. She kept going back for that pain—why? I couldn’t wrap my brain around it, so I asked her.
“For the sex, dear.”
I couldn’t believe those words had come out of her mouth. I just sat there with my eyes bugging. I was sure I was catching flies. Jolene burst into laughter and then so did I. It was okay to laugh now. If Gerta could feed me a line deadpan like that, then she wasn’t wallowing in sadness over the losses of all of those husbands. Actually, it seemed like all that loss only spurred her on and made her live more fully.
“I wish I could get a tattoo,” I said with a wistful sigh, pouring the last of the margarita from the pitcher into my glass. It only filled the glass about halfway, and Jolene laughed at my disgruntled face.
“You drank almost all of it yourself, Angel. That’s not becoming of a lady, you know.” I knew better, she was just jealous that I got to it before she did.
“I don’t want to hear that from you, Gramzilla,” I shot back, then giggled at my hilarious name for her that I had just made up on the spot. I was so fucking funny.
“Why don’t you get a tattoo, then? What’s stopping you? You’re young,” Jolene countered, ignoring the awesome nickname I had just bestowed upon her.
“Yeah, I know I can go anywhere, but the place
I really want to go takes forever to get in. I feel like I would lose my nerve if I had to wait for four months just to get my appointment.”
“The best place to go is Gallery B,” Gerta murmured, putting her sweater back on and pulling it tight so she could button all the buttons again.
“That’s exactly where I was talking about.” I turned my attention to Gerta again, downing the last of the margarita in the glass and mourning that there wasn’t anything left to fill it with. “Do you know Beck? He’s dating my friend Regina. You would think I could get in earlier being friends with the boss’s lady but that isn’t how it works.” I was joking, kind of, but if that were an option I would have totally taken it.
“I have an appointment with Beck next week,” Gerta said nonchalantly. “You can have my appointment time if you want. He was just going to do some touch ups and shading work, I don’t mind waiting longer on that. If you get something small, I bet he could get you in.”
“Are you kidding me?” That wasn’t just badass, that was serious badass because Beck’s wait list was no joke. He didn’t do it to be a prima donna, he literally had so many people who wanted appointments with him that he was actually booked out that far. And Gerta was just going to give up her time on a whim? How could I be so blessed?
“Spontaneity is best gifted to the young,” said Jolene, and Gerta nodded her head in agreement.
“What does that even mean?” I asked, and all three of us dissolved into giggles again. I didn’t even hear the knocking on the door, I was too busy sitting on the floor rocking back and forth with laughter. I can only imagine what we looked like to Gabe, who was standing in the doorway with his mouth hanging open when I finally became aware that he had let himself in. He looked uncertain. I hadn’t expected him and he hadn’t called, but there he was, holding a dozen pink roses in his hand.
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