CHIK-LIT
for
FOXY HENS
* * *
Sharon Ervin
Peggy Fielding
Jackie King
Paula Jean Watkins
Diva
Denton, Texas
Rose © 2006, Sharon Ervin
Giving Up Panty Hose © 2006, Peggy Fielding
Flirting at Fifty © 2006, Jacqueline King
Second Best © 2006, Paula Alfred
Published by Diva, an imprint of AWOC.COM Publishing, P.O. Box 2819, Denton, TX 76202, USA. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author(s).
ISBN: 978-0-937660-75-1
For Our Daughters
Brandi and Cassie; Audrey Annette; Susan and Jennifer and Amanda; Sarah
and
for our friend,
Nan
ROSE
by Sharon Ervin
A former newspaper reporter, Sharon Thetford Ervin has a B.A. degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. Her published novels include, Jusu and Mother Earth, released in 2000; Bodacious, 2002; Counterfeit Cowboy, 2005; Weekend Wife, 2005; and her first hardcover murder mystery, The Ribbon Murders, scheduled for release in March, 2006. Sharon also contributed to The Sooner Story 1890 to 1980 and The Published Author’s Guide to Promotion, 2003. Her articles and short stories—fiction and non-fiction—have appeared in dozens of newspapers and national magazines. Sharon is active in Romance Writers Ink (Tulsa), Romance Writers of America, The Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc., Sisters in Crime, The Lesser North Texas Writers and McAlester’s McSherry Writers. She is married, lives in McAlester, Oklahoma, and has four grown children.
Chapter One
“Age and fat are not the problem, girlfriend.” Stevie flashed me her wizened look. “At our age, it’s gravity inflicting the real damage on our feminine forms.”
I gave her the requisite little laugh, encouraging her to continue her chatter as we briskly circled the walking track.
“From twenty-five on,” Stevie prattled, “a woman fights the sag. If we make it into the final rounds of life, it’s gravity that drops chins,” she patted her throat with the backs of her fingers, “encourages jowls and,” she flapped her arms, “produces these batwings. Yes, my friend, for the post menopausal, gravity deserves the blame.”
I rewarded her with another little laugh, appreciating her a hundred ways for her efforts to lift my spirits, no matter how deep in the doldrums I sank.
Walking the track that particular Monday evening was her idea. When she phoned me at work, she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
She was right, of course. I needed the therapeutic benefit of being outside, inhaling that seventy-five-degree Indian Summer evening, respite from brooding in the nursing home where I kept constant vigil, overseeing my husband’s death. And I did still call Charlie my husband, in spite of the recent legal maneuvers.
Legend has it that being childless makes a couple closer and Charlie and I proved the rule.
Stevie and her husband, Francis, were our best friends, even though they had children. Years ago, we had fallen for the scam this couple foisted on new acquaintances by introducing themselves as Stevie and Francis, without specifying which was which. The confusion led to awkward moments and, eventually, giggles and guffaws, which was their standard icebreaker. We’d been close ever since, which meant I didn’t feel obligated to hold up my end of a conversation with Stevie.
As we made the far turn of the track near the junior high parking lot, I noticed several men engaged in quiet conversation near a bench. Even in the darkness, broken only by the lot’s security light, the loiterers didn’t look threatening, more like solidly built farmhands—in Levis, T-shirts and worn cowboy boots—man who had strayed from their beaten path. Two of the men were average. The third, who stood with his back to me, was unusually tall and had an abundance of white hair. He had broad shoulders that narrowed to a great tush. I had no business noticing, of course, but human nature being what it is, I did.
“Nice butt,” Stevie said, and her deep voice carried in the nighttime quiet.
The fellow with his back to us turned around and glowered a moment before he settled his stare on me. I could not look at him. There was absolutely no graceful way to deny I was the one who had voiced that tasteless comment.
Stevie laughed, that bawdy laugh I accuse her of practicing in private. She patted my arm and said, “Oh, you,” reinforcing the impression that the observation had come from me.
Mortified, I focused on the asphalt in front of us and stepped a bit faster, forcing Stevie, whose legs are shorter, to trot to keep pace. She could embarrass the fire out of a person. That particular ability really was the most aggravating thing about being friends with her.
When we were out of earshot, I couldn’t stifle the complaint. “Stevie, why did you do that?”
Her teeth glittered even in the dim light as she flashed her trademark impish grin. “I saw you looking at that guy’s booty. It took your mind off Charlie for a minute, which is the whole point of our being out here in the first place, right?”
I had to give her that. The walk and her orneriness had rescued me—temporarily—from my perpetual wallow in self-pity. I should have been praising her effort instead of complaining about her teasing.
I was nearly twenty-six when Charlie and I married, a first time for both. He was thirty-two, one of those elegantly eligible bachelors who had dodged the matrimonial bullet until, he claimed, Cupid scored a direct hit when Charlie set eyes on me.
Charlie hadn’t played the field in cavalier fashion because he was so discriminating. He was heir-apparent to a genetic flaw that crippled and killed. He was the only survivor of a family which had included two brothers and a baby sister, all of whom had succumbed to the disease before adolescence. In that, it looked like he had successfully dodged more than just the marriage bullet. This apparent paragon of manhood did not want to risk producing children and subjecting himself or a mate to that potential horror.
I had nieces and nephews who had long since soured my attitude toward the importance of reproduction, so that little wrinkle did not discourage me at all. When he asked, I said, “Yes!”
Both of us were ambitious and had good jobs. We buzzed along deliriously content for years pursuing the American dream. The pill allowed us to enjoy the spontaneity of sex without the possibility of a sickly child disrupting our idyllic lives.
As my biological clock ticked down, however, we reconsidered the no children policy. Soon after that, the bomb fell.
Charlie was in good shape when he was diagnosed, but in a year, he had withered, although he remained mentally alert. Less than two years later, it was necessary for him to quit his job: vice president of a large pump company which required international travel.
In another year we sold his Jaguar, his pride and joy. It was silly to pay the insurance and tag it when he could no longer drive. A collector’s item, it sold quickly, at an exorbitant price. By then, we needed the money.
At his doctor’s urging, Charlie became part of a national test group. Experimental drugs come with astronomical price tags. Participants did not know if they were paying two thousand dollars a month for the drug or for a placebo. Our high-dollar health insurance did not cover being a human guinea pig.
As the illness progressed and medical research devised even more expensive potential cures, I traded my late-model Lincoln with all the bells and whistles for an old Taurus,
without.
Stevie startled me out of my reverie. “You haven’t told me how things went at the hearing. How did you hold up?”
“Fine.”
“You wipe out nearly twenty years of wedlock in one court session and your summary is, ‘Fine?’”
“A ten-minute hearing in a courtroom and a judge’s ruling cannot cancel feelings.”
“Ten minutes?” She whistled. “Is that all it took?”
“Yes. I had to swear that Charlie was physically ill but mentally alert and knew what was going on. Apparently you cannot divorce someone who is incompetent, unless he has a guardian, which requires more court hearings and more paperwork.”
“And did Charlie know what was going on?”
“Yes, he did then, but that was more than a month ago. He’s gone downhill in a hurry since then. I suspect that’s why his doctor urged us to get on with it. I think he knew Charlie might not be communicating much longer.”
Stevie was slowing our pace. “I don’t mind telling you, that whole deal seemed strange to me. Charlie’s own cousin, steamrolling through a divorce for the world’s most perfectly matched married couple?”
“You know what’s strange to me is that you and I have talked a dozen times since then and you never even asked about it. Why didn’t you?”
She looked almost embarrassed. Odd for Stevie. “I figured you would talk when you were ready.” Stevie frowned into my face. “Did you break down at the hearing?”
“Nearly. The judge put me under oath, made me identify myself for the court record, then asked me to verify that I had filed for the divorce. My chin quivered, but I said, ‘Yes,’ and it was over. Ted had discussed our situation with the judge in chambers before the hearing, which was why he didn’t press it. I think the judge could tell I was barely keeping it together.”
“But you’re right, Jan, a legal ruling can’t change the way you feel.” Stevie’s unusually sensitive comment didn’t require a response, which was the way she often worded her sentences these days, deferring to my feelings as if trying to lessen the pain.
“I got some calls when the notice ran in the paper,” I said. “People from church didn’t know we were having problems, didn’t think we were the kind of people who would ever get... a divorce.” I whispered the last word which was still repugnant. “You know I was keeping all the balls in the air, juggling as fast as I could. I sold everything I could, gave up my job when I had to quit going out of town. When Marlene offered to make me first deputy, I tried not to be disappointed about the money. That’s why it was such a fist in the gut when the doctors said Charlie needed more. Professional, round-the-clock care.”
“And you were already putting in twenty hours a day,” Stevie piped, an indication she was paying attention. “How could you do more than a full-time job, extra typing and bookkeeping, and taking care of Charlie at night? People expect too much.”
“They were right. At night I couldn’t give Charlie the care he needed. His voice got so weak, I didn’t hear him. Didn’t wake up when he called.”
Stevie and I had slowed to a saunter. “I wasn’t making enough money to pay for his medication and someone to come in and still pay utilities.”
Stevie grabbed my arm and stopped our steps as she spoke directly into my face. “We would have given you the money, Jan. We still will. Honey, we want to help.”
“For how long, Stevie? Until we break you, too?”
“I doubt that would happen.”
“Oh, yeah, well don’t bet on it. I thought we were pretty well insulated financially.” I eased my arm out of her grasp. “You and Francis have been wonderful but the convalescent center, finally, was Charlie’s choice. He insisted.”
I began walking again, slowly, allowing Stevie to contemplate a minute before she noticed and trotted to catch up.
“Your friends knew the old folks home wasn’t your idea,” she said, catering to me as usual. I hated calling the center “an old folks home,” but Stevie still used the dated term and it sounded charming in her south Texas drawl.
“I couldn’t talk him out of it,” I said, remembering the quarrels. “I didn’t have a feasible alternative to offer. Ted would have helped financially, but he knew we needed a hard solution, not more stopgaps.
“When Ted suggested the divorce and Charlie agreed, my sagging morale took a nosedive. I went on the mother of all crying jags. Ted logically explained if we were divorced and Charlie had no income, he could be declared indigent, made a ward of the state and draw public assistance.”
It was my turn to stop and look intently at Stevie without actually seeing her. “Charles Nelson Hartley on welfare. Great God in Heaven, who ever would have imagined our perfect lives could come to this?”
“Jan, you could have kept the house.”
“Ted and Charlie arranged the settlement so I got everything and Charlie got... the shaft. By then, I didn’t even care. It was no fun living in our dream house without Charlie.”
Stevie never got maudlin—she simply wasn’t the type—but I heard the strain in her voice as she turned away from me and began walking again.
“Honey, I bawled like a baby before we went to the auction that morning. I swore to buy every stick of furniture, every towel and pan and give them all back to you. And Francis agreed. But Ted warned us not to make it harder on you than it already was. He said you were holding back some items for Charlie’s room at the old folks home and for your... apartment.”
Stevie didn’t like my apartment. In the middle of downtown, it was at the opposite swing of the pendulum from our lovely home in the suburbs. Selling our house and most of the contents was like selling bits and pieces of myself. Of course, there was no reason for me to continue living in sprawling luxury alone, especially when I only went there to sleep.
Being first deputy to the county treasurer the last three years had not been the mental challenge to which I was accustomed. I cruised through workdays there on autopilot. Working with legal descriptions and statistics does not require deep mental or emotional involvement.
After hours, I did word processing and bookkeeping for two young lawyers and several small businesses. My boss, Marlene, was a friend. She not only put me on payroll, she loaned me her personal laptop which I used while I sat at Charlie’s bedside evenings and weekends.
“Jan, honey, you had options other than that icky little apartment,” Stevie said, again interrupting my woolgathering. “We meant it. We really wanted you to move in with us. We’ve got all the room in the world in our empty nest.”
“But you’re too far out. Besides, your kids come home occasionally, wagging spouses and babies.”
Stevie started to argue, but I put up a hand to stop her. “I like my apartment. It may not be luxurious, but I feel secure there. A person doesn’t need alarms on windows three floors up. I never worry about Peeping Toms.”
“Not unless you get a re-eally tall one.” Stevie giggled, shaking off some of our dark mood.
“It’s small enough to be cozy and large enough to accommodate me and the essential furniture.”
“I wish you could have kept the dining room set.”
I smiled. “It needed its own apartment.”
“But you loved that group.”
She was right. Charlie and I had enjoyed collecting those mismatched pieces of mahogany, creating a kind of family, then found the perfect chairs which we ordered especially built and covered to belong. That set had brought enough money at the auction to buy three months of the newest wonder drug. That made giving it up much easier.
“And why did you get a place in such a low part of town?”
“Because the low part of town has the low rents.” The only thing I regretted was that where a person lives pretty well determines her social circle. In the months since I had moved, I had lost contact with most of our old friends, neighbors and coworkers, except Stevie and Francis, of course.
There were other benefits, too. The apartment was near the
courthouse, where I worked, and not nearly as far from the convalescent center as our home, which had been twenty minutes out the toll way. Also, I didn’t have to fight rush-hour traffic every morning and evening.
As we again circled by the parking lot, the farmhands apparently had gone. In a moment, however, I saw him, the one with the great tush, sitting in the dark, his arms stretched along the back of the bench both directions, his long legs crossed at the ankle. He looked completely at ease, eying us as we ambled by, not thirty feet from him.
Was he looking at me? So, what if he was?
I was trying to decide if he was or not when he waggled his index finger, inviting me—us—closer. He patted the bench next to him, an invitation to sit. I looked at Stevie to see if she had noticed. Gazing off the opposite direction, she had not even seen him. I looked back at him. He grinned and beckoned again.
I shook my head ever so slightly. No.
He crooked his finger again, but I set my eyes forward and again quickened my pace. Stevie scurried after me, practically jogging to keep up.
“What’s your hurry?” she asked, breaking into a trot.
“We’re walking too slow to get our heart rates up to give us the aerobic benefit.” I glanced back. The man in the shadows grinned broadly, as if he suspected he had sent my heart rate up a notch already.
“I thought we were doing this for our psyches.” Stevie was becoming breathless.
“Well, we might as well kill both birds, don’t you think?”
She was breathing too hard to argue.
I didn’t look back at the man again, although I wanted to. No adult, red-blooded male had paid that much attention to me in a long time. I had forgotten how to respond. At the moment, snubbing him seemed best.
When Stevie and I finished our second lap, however, I suggested we stop at two rather than going the usual three. The man probably wouldn’t still be hanging around at the far end, but I had had enough ogling for one night.
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