A Perfect Romance

by Layce Gardner

  Dana threw the magazine against the wall. She didn't need advice from a bunch of skinny magazine women. She could write her own quiz. After so many failed attempts, she was an expert on rocky relationships.

  Dana laid back on the cot with her hands behind her head and imagined the type of article she would write for Glamour. It would be titled “Ten Telltale Signs That Your Girlfriend is a Cheating Whoredog.”

  1. Does she come home wearing different clothes than she left the house in?

  2. Does she text while she's talking to you?

  3. Does she answer her phone, leave the room and talk to somebody for hours at a time and then tell you it's her mother even though you know her mother is dead?

  4. Does she disappear for hours or days at a time and not tell you where she's been?

  5. Does she come home from "work" smelling like pussy?

  6. Does she never have sex with you anymore?

  7. Has she started calling you pet names (like Monkey Girl or Biscuit Butt) even though she's never done that before?

  8. Does the passenger seat in her car keep changing from its usual position?

  9. Has she developed a sudden interest in the mail and try to look at it before you do?

  10. You follow her late at night and find her talking to somebody in the back of the beauty shop and a cop stops you and she runs away and you get shot at and arrested?

  Dana sighed and put the magazine back under the cot for the next woman who found herself in jail because of a broken heart and shattered dreams. She flopped back down onto the cot and wished there was room service.

  "Dana?"

  She blinked her eyes a couple of times to try and wake up. She didn't realize that she'd fallen asleep, but she must have, because she was having a nightmare that her mother was looking at her through the bars of the cell.

  "Mom?" Dana muttered.

  "I oughta known you'd end up in jail," Leona said through the bars.

  Dana sat up and rubbed her eyes. "That really you?"

  "They say you accosted a police officer," Leona said.

  "I sneezed on him," Dana corrected. "It's not like I hauled off and hit him."

  A fat cop (Hardy) squeezed by Leona and unlocked the cell door. He swung the door open and said, "Your mother here paid your bail. You're free to go till your court date."

  Dana eyed her mother warily and didn't move.

  "C'mon," Leona said, "let's go have breakfast. I'm buying." She turned and swished away. Hardy leered after Leona's ass. Dana shook off her stupor and followed her mother down the hallway.

  She heard the cell door clang shut behind her like in all those old prison movies. Dana studied her mother's back as they walked down the hall. It wasn't fair that Leona got the svelte gene and didn't pass it on, leaving Dana to fight the battle of the bulge alone. Leona didn't even look like how a mother was supposed to look. She looked like a country and western singer all dressed up to go onstage at the Grand Ol' Opry—red cowboy boots with silver wingtips and roses stitched into the sides. The boots matched her red jumpsuit, which had a belt that hugged her hips. Rhinestones marched up and down every seam. She had bangles and bracelets on both wrists, several necklaces and enough cubic zirconia in her ears to blind a person. All flash and trash, Trudy would say. When Dana was little she thought Leona looked like starshine. But what was bright and shiny to a little kid looked faded and jaded to an adult.

  The policemen who were gathered around the coffee pot stopped talking and watched Dana and Leona as they walked by. Leona held her chin high and defiant, daring the men to stare. Dana shuffled along behind her mother with her chin tucked into her chest like she was walking into a dust storm.

  As soon as the door shut behind her, Dana heard the policemen break into loud laughter. She wrapped her bathrobe-cape tightly around her butt.

  ***

  Dana marveled that her mother was still driving the same white and red Thunderbird convertible that she remembered as a kid. It was an old car even back then. The Thunderbird had not only survived, but it had passed through the stages of being cool, uncool and old and now was regal in its vintage status.

  Leona drove with one hand, the other holding her cigarette. The interior of the car filled with smoke. Dana rolled down her window and let the cool air slap her face.

  "Still smoking, I see," Dana said, feeling rather uppity about quitting but wanting a cigarette all the same.

  "Smoking helps keep me slim," Leona said. "You should give it a try."

  Dana flinched. "No, thanks."

  Leona ran her eyes up and down Dana and frowned. "Nice costume," she said.

  "I like yours too," Dana said back.

  Leona stared straight ahead for a long while. After several turns, she lit another cigarette off the butt of the last one. She crushed the old one out in the overflowing ashtray, pointed her nose in Dana's direction and laughed softly.

  "What's so funny?" Dana snipped.

  Leona shook her head and her words curled around a stream of smoke. "Nothing. Not a thing." She flipped the Thunderbird into the parking lot at BJ's Diner. She parked, filling up two spaces, and didn't seem concerned about it.

  Judging by the size of the crowd, BJ's Diner was the place to be at six a.m. There was about ten years’ worth of grease on the walls and counters and the place smelled like the bottom of an old cowboy boot. Near the front door sat an old man who looked like Yoda except Yoda had smaller ears. He was sitting before that old type of cash register with the round buttons that are hard to push down. There was a yellowed sign taped to the front of the register that said "If our food and service don't live up to your standards, please lower your standards."

  Scotch-taped to the wall behind the old man was another sign. This one read "Guys...No shirt, no service. Gals...No shirt, no charge."

  Dana pretended she didn't see all the stares aimed at her Wonder Woman costume.

  Haven't you ever seen somebody dressed up for Halloween?

  Leona scooted into an empty booth by the window and left Dana the seat that had a big duct-taped X where the brown Naugahyde has been slashed. Dana took a menu out of the holder and studied the dull pictures of pancakes and eggs like she was going to be tested on it later. Anything to not look at her mother.

  Leona lit another cigarette and blew a stream of smoke at Dana's menu. Brenda, the waitress, sidled up to the table with an order pad and pen poised. She squinted through the gray cloud. "You all want coffee?"

  Dana nodded. Leona looked up at Brenda's tall beehive hair-do and mumbled, "Bring me some tomato juice and some ‘what's-this-here’ sauce."

  Brenda used her pen to point at a bottle of Worcestershire sauce that was sitting on the table next to the ketchup and the Tabasco. She asked, "You all know what you want?" She used the back of her pen to scratch at the thigh of her shiny support hose.

  "The two by two by two, please," Dana said.

  "Juice," Leona said without taking the cigarette out of her mouth.

  "Be right out." Brenda moved to the next table.

  "You could hide something in that tall hair of hers," Leona said, not bothering to lower her voice. "There could be a whole nest of rats in there. Or a bag of spiders." Brenda shot her a look that drilled twin holes in the back of her head.

  Dana looked at her mother's cigarette and wished she had one. She avoided Leona's eyes and whispered, "She's worn her hair that way for thirty years."

  "That don't make it right."

  Brenda moved on to the back room and Dana breathed a sigh of relief.

  Leona stared at Dana until she looked at her. "You're all grown up," she said.

  "That happens over time."

  "I don't know where you got those boobs. Sure wasn't from me."

  Dana glanced at her mother's plunging neckline. She was right. "Why are you here?"

  Leona shrugged and squished her cigarette out in the ashtray. Brenda appeared at the table, setting a glass of tomato juice in front of Leona and a coffee by Da
na's elbow. Dana smiled at Brenda, but she only walked away. Leona added three shakes of Worcestershire sauce to her juice and gulped a third of it down in one long swallow. She pulled a silver flask out of her big purse and added vodka until the juice turned pink and was level with the rim. She stirred it with a butter knife and then drank deep. She smacked her lips a couple of times and asked, "What's the matter, aren't you happy to see me?"

  Dana ignored Leona's tomato mustache and shrugged. "I don't know what you want from me is all." She made a big show of adding a package of fake sugar and some dry creamer to her coffee.

  "A thank you would be nice. Seeing as how I bailed you out of jail."

  "Thanks," Dana mumbled. She mashed the dried clumps of creamer in her coffee with her spoon.

  "That didn't sound too sincere."

  Dana looked at her mother. "What do you want me to say? You want me to ignore the fact that you're an alcoholic? You want me to tell you that my life is all peachy keen and swell? You want me to absolve you of all guilt for abandoning your children?"

  Leona took her time lighting another cigarette even though there was still one burning in the ashtray. She picked a stray piece of tobacco off her tongue and wiped it on a napkin. "I'm not an alcoholic. I'm a drunk."

  "What's the difference?"

  "Alcoholics go to meetings."

  "That joke wasn't funny the first time I heard it." Dana added five spoons of real sugar to her coffee. She sipped it and grimaced.

  "I hear you're a lesbian now," Leona said.

  "No," Dana corrected. "I'm not a lesbian now. I've been one for a long time."

  "You have a girlfriend or whatever you call them?"

  Dana let her eyes wander. She looked out the window and her gaze settled on the Thunderbird. "Sort of," she answered.

  "What's that mean, sort of?"

  Dana shrugged. "I have a girlfriend, but she's cheating on me."

  "Kick her ass out. My third husband was a philanthropist too. That's what I did to him, kicked his ass out."

  "You mean he was a philanderer."

  "That's what I said."

  "It's not that simple, Leona."

  "You want me to get rid of her? I know a guy who'll do it for a hundred bucks and a six-pack."

  Dana looked at Leona. "You talking about killing her?" she whispered harshly.

  Leona shrugged with one shoulder and blew a stream of smoke at Dana's left ear. "She'll be gone is all I know. I never asked him where they go off to."

  Dana rolled her eyes. "I can kill my own girlfriend, thank you very much."

  Brenda put Dana's order in front of her, asking, "You going to kill your girlfriend?"

  "No." Dana picked up her fork and knife and cut her eggs.

  "Somebody will," Brenda said. "She's going to piss off one wife too many and somebody'll kill her. Might as well be you."

  Dana clanged her knife down on the table top, saying a bit too loudly, "I said I'm not going to kill her, Brenda."

  "I understand." Brenda winked at Dana and made that gesture like she was locking her lips and throwing away the key.

  "Another round," Leona said, holding up her almost-empty glass. Brenda pretended not to hear and marched away. Dana giggled at the snub.

  Leona watched Dana put away her breakfast in silence. Dana picked up a triangle of toast and slathered jelly on it. The act of eating made her feel better. Not so cranky. Now that her blood sugar was higher, she decided to take a magnanimous approach. "You married?"

  Leona pushed back her cuticles with a toothpick. "I was. Then I wasn't. Then I was. Now I'm not. I've been living in Nashville for the most part. Writing songs."

  "Any money in that?"

  "Ever heard of the country song ‘Time Sure Flies When You're Having Rum’?"

  "Sure. It was top ten for like a year."

  Leona leaned across the table far enough that Dana could smell the alcohol on her breath and said, "I wrote that song." She tapped her red fingernails on the Formica table-top. "That song was stolen from me."

  Dana mopped up egg yolk with another toast triangle and considered what Leona said. "Hmmm…" She took a big bite.

  "I wrote it, all right," Leona said like Dana had said otherwise. She set her empty glass down like an emphatic period at the end of a sentence and pointed her pinky at Dana. "I was at the Bluebird Café and I got up on that li'l stage and sang the song I'd just written down on a cocktail napkin. A big, really big, music producer who shall remain nameless was there. After I sang and went back to my table, the music producer was gone and so was my napkin."

  "I invented the Roomba," Dana offered.

  Leona squinted at her over her cigarette smoke.

  "I did," Dana said. "I had an idea one day to make a robot vacuum cleaner and I wrote it down on a paper towel. The paper towel got thrown in the trash and a couple of months later the Roomba came out on the market." She took a bite, chewed and swallowed. "I also invented the spork, except I called it a foon, but somebody stole that from me too. Just goes to show you—you should always wear your tin foil hat."

  Leona didn't blink. "You think I'm a liar."

  Dana shook her head. "No, not a liar. Crazy maybe. Insanity does run in the family, you know. Everybody in our family is crazy. Why should you be the exception?"

  "Not true. My daddy was as sane as the day is long. He died from melatonin. It said so right on his death certificate."

  "You mean melancholia."

  "That's what I said."

  "He was too crazy," Dana said. "He killed himself, didn't he?"

  "True. But he was sane when he did it."

  Dana reached for the last piece of toast, the one she had coated with strawberry jelly, but Leona slapped it out of her hand. "You'll thank me later." Leona patted her thighs and clucked her tongue a couple of times.

  "I'm not fat," Dana said without conviction.

  "I'm not an alcoholic," Leona retorted. She reached across the table, picked up the toast and wadded the whole thing into her mouth like Helen Keller but with fewer manners. "Saving you from yourself," she mumbled with her mouth full.

  "How long you planning on staying in town?" Dana asked, not bothering to hide her disgust.

  "Didn't you know? I moved in with you."

  Crapola. Just when I thought my life couldn't get any worse.

  "One big happy family," Dana said under her breath.

  "Yep. The whole famn damily is back together." Leona slapped fifty cents on the table for a tip and headed for the cash register.

  ***

  Leona guided the Thunderbird up in front of the house. When Dana saw Kimmy's Mustang in the driveway she let out a sigh that sounded like a slow leak in an air mattress.

  "That her car?" Leona asked.

  "Yep."

  Leona looked both ways up and down the street then turned to face Dana. She barely moved her lips as she said, "All you have to do is say the word and poof, she's gone."

  "I don't want you to poof her. Understand?"

  "Whatever you say." She looked unconvinced.

  "No poofing. Promise me."

  Leona held her hand over her heart and said solemnly, "No poofing."

  Dana opened the car door.

  "Unless—"

  "No poofing!"

  "Okay." Leona sighed. "I'll be back in a little. I'm going to Walmart to pick up one of those rototiller chickens for supper."

  "You mean rotisserie."

  "That's what I said."

  Dana got out and shut the door. She watched the Thunderbird peel off down the street, ribbons of black smoke curling out its tailpipe.

  ***

  Dana found Kimmy in the kitchen, sitting at the table with her entire hand stuffed inside an olive jar. Kimmy was nuts over green olives. She liked to drink the juice out of the jar after the olives were gone. She filled up ice cube trays with olive juice and used the ice cubes to spice up her drinks.

  Kimmy was wearing red go-go boots, thong underwear and a white T-shir
t two sizes too big. She wasn't wearing a bra and her boobs were droopy and sad.

  Looks like it's time for that 3,000-mile tire rotation.

  Dana sat down at the table and watched as Kimmy struggled to get her hand out of the olive jar without opening her fist. If she opened her fist, she lost the handful of olives. If she kept the olives in her fist, she couldn't get it out of the jar. It was a Kimmy conundrum.

  "Use a pickle fork," Dana suggested.

  "These aren't pickles, Miss Smarty Wonder Woman Pants."

  "It'll work on olives too."

  Kimmy gave up, loosened her fist and took her hand out of the jar. She flapped her hand in the air, flicking juice everywhere. Then she lifted the jar to her mouth and drank the juice. When the juice was gone, she shook the jar a little and several olives plopped into her mouth. She set the jar down and chewed happily. "There's more than one way to let the cat out of the bag."

  Dana retorted, "A bird in the hand catches the worm."

  Kimmy licked her juicy fingers like a preening cat. "What were you doing last night?

  "What were you doing?"

  "I was at work," Kimmy said in a "duh" tone.

  "Work, uh huh. Working out your nether regions."

  Kimmy scrunched her nose. "My what? You know I don't speak Spanish."

  "I want to know what you were doing at the beauty shop last night."

  "I was doing inventory for Wanda."

  "I bet. I guess that's why you left so fast when you saw me. I guess that's why you tried to outrun me in the police car."

  "That was you chasing me?"

  She plays stupid really good. Not much of a stretch, though.

  "You were all alone in the shop?"

  "Yep."

  "I saw you through the window. Talking to somebody."

  "That was you who tried to break in?"

  "Don't play stupid, Kimmy. It insults us both."

  "I'm not playing stupid, Dana, I really am stupid. Wait. I didn't mean that like how it sounded." She speared an olive with her fingernail and popped it in her mouth. She seemed pleased with her newfound ingenuity as she speared another. "Easy as shooting fish in a haystack."