Penelope Lemon

by Inman Majors

  But James was already dating? He’d taken the divorce hard, even though he was the first to show his displeasure with the state of their matrimony. His strategy had been to be as mopey and lethargic as possible until no one on God’s green Earth would want to keep disappointing him with their presence as Penelope apparently did. She’d ultimately been the one to propose splitting up, two full years after Mopey Boy had emerged.

  The moping had always been there, of course. It was part of his makeup. But where once it had been balanced with a kind of hyperactive intelligence (Did you know that a baby opossum only weighs 1 ounce at birth? They can literally fit onto a teaspoon! I just find that awesomely cool), for the last years of their marriage the moping had been juxtaposed only with ennui, the ennui accompanied by bouts of constipation. She thought at first that the constipation was psychosomatic, or just something for him to blame his hangdog look on (I’m a little, you know . . .). If that was the case, he’d gone all in, for the next thing she knew the pantry was chock-full of Craisins and prunes and weird little fiber tablets. And the juicing! Dear God, the juicing!

  James was dating someone.

  And now he was standing in his new yard with his new garden hose and looking as if he was whistling a jolly tune, more than likely the theme from Shaft, his go-to when feeling frisky and alive.

  She parked and Theo bolted without a backward glance.

  “What do you say, Sport?” James said. “How many homers did you hit?”

  Any other father asking a boy like Theo such a question would seem sadistic. James had seen him play, after all. But this was just James being whimsical and came with a palm for high-fiving and a wide smile. Then he was tousling Theo’s hair and play-wrestling him, hugging him more than anything, as Theo giggled and copied his father’s mock face of intensity.

  Penelope sat in the car, her fingers on the door handle, witnessing this scene with mouth ajar. Smiling James? Tactile James? James in a fit of whimsy? What the hell?

  She opened the door and stood behind it, some part of her convinced that Whimsical James would bear-hug her if she came nearer. This despite his professed dislike of the hug, and the European cheek kiss, and any other gesture that put him in contact with a fellow human being. For him it was a starchy handshake or a firm cowboy head nod. The exceptions to this were the moments when he was berobed or otherwise in a preconjugal state.

  “Penelope,” he said with a rakish grin as he crouched and continued to engage Theo in horseplay. “How in the world are you?”

  “I’m fine, James,” she said, surveying the scene before her: the smiling stranger roughhousing—like a mechanic or an insurance salesmen or any other normal man—with their son, the hose dropped behind him, water spraying willy-nilly, after being kicked in their athletic (athletic!) maneuvering. How many times had he lectured her about the length of her showers? Or dropped the water bill with a disapproving stare onto whatever book she was reading?

  All five of her senses were alive now and it took only an instant for them to uncover the hidden truth behind this smiling James, this touchy-feely James, this normal-man James. There could be no doubt. Kimono silk was thick in the air, wafting silkily and with a hint of jasmine through the open window of his new living room. Her nose was fairly aflame with the scent. Nothing else could account for the jovial display before her. She felt an urge to rush past him and hell-for-leather to his bedroom where she would throw back his closet door to discover that slinky bit of yellow nothing.

  Even standing in the driveway with no hard evidence before her, she wanted to shout, Aha! in the worst possible way.

  So who exactly was this new strumpet of his?

  She shook her head clear, having decided that what she needed was a glass of wine, and quick.

  “Okay, fellows,” she said. “I guess I’m off now. I’ll see you Sunday around five, Theo.”

  James stopped wrestling now and simply stood Theo upright from his former upside-down position. He’d been threatening in a ringside announcer’s voice to pile-drive the boy. Penelope felt dizzy. Where was the man who bemoaned the emphasis on sports in American society, the one who thought the only sport worth watching was archery because it had a practical application? That is, if/when society broke down, an experienced archer could still find his own food, in ways that even a man with a gun couldn’t, bullets eventually/inevitably becoming scarce over time.

  Maybe she should have a Cosmo instead.

  Now speaking in the voice of a gruff but gentle father as often seen on TV, James said, “Go give your mother a hug good-bye, son.”

  She almost lost it with that “son” bit. But summoning all her self-restraint, she threw on a thankful smile befitting every wonderful matron she’d ever seen on television. She had the sudden desire to sing, the hills are alive / with the sound of music, but managed to fight off the temptation.

  Kissing Theo on the cheek, she climbed into the car and was preparing to get the hell out of Dodge when James trotted over, calling out as he did, “Theo, why don’t you run in the house and make yourself a snack? I want to talk to your mother for a second.”

  Penelope watched her son climb the front porch steps, passing en route two planters with fresh pansies. A ceramic gnome had been placed beside the door and bright window treatments added to the living room since last time she’d dropped Theo off. James had always been a stickler for just the right kind of window treatments.

  “I’d like to give you this,” James said, standing at the car door and reaching into his wallet for a hundred dollar bill.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “I know. But I figured you could probably use it. Just till you get your feet under you. I know you’ve got to be looking for your own place by now.”

  Penelope thought of the times when James had offered her money, unasked for and unprompted, even when they were married. Those times added up to zero. She felt flummoxed and off-kilter, and it didn’t help that the gnome was giving her a pervish smile. That’s why she didn’t like garden gnomes. They didn’t look cutely mischievous, as James argued, but like lusty little trolls, eager for a skirt to scurry up or a calf to sniff.

  “I don’t want it,” Penelope said.

  “Just take it. Go out to dinner this weekend. Take Sandy and Rachel with you. Buy something. I don’t care. Just please take it.”

  This was beyond strange. What was his new girlfriend doing for him? His-and-Her shorty robes? The high-heel, bra-only plus cowboy-kerchief thing that was his favorite? Or maybe even that roping lasso number he’d once suggested, with her in Indian moccasins, beaded necklace, and nothing else.

  Her mind reeled at the possibilities of James’s quirky, complicated mind and someone willing to indulge a good portion of it, even the portion that revolved around James Fenimore Cooper.

  The fact was she could use that hundred like nobody’s business. She’d yet to chip in on the bills at her mother’s house and that was starting to drive her crazy. After the cell phone and credit card and buying shoes for Theo, who needed a new pair every week it seemed, she went through the child support and the tips she made waiting tables in a flash. The notion that she was anywhere close to looking for her own place was laughable. As was the fact that she was a forty-year-old waitress living with her mother.

  “No thanks, James,” she said. “And sometime this weekend, maybe on Sunday, we need to talk about Theo and what’s happening on the bus.”

  “The Fart Boy stuff?” James smiled at this in a way she found irritating. “It’s just idiot boy stuff. It’s not a big deal.”

  She almost said, right, Strange James, but that would have been a low blow. The confession he’d made about his middle-school nickname had come out of the blue one night after an episode of The Sopranos. She was trying to figure out whether the new bad-guy rival of Tony’s was as good, as hateable, as the one previous when James had made an unexpected lunge toward her pajamas. The Sopranos often got his blood flowing. She’d reacted with a start
and a shriek, the end result of which was the deflation of gangster-fired James and the arrival of the dreaded Mope Boy.

  Feeling guilty and trying to get over the awkward moment of being groped without preamble, she’d offered that she loved all the nicknames on The Sopranos. It was a throwaway line, a stall to try to get herself in the mood should the moping man beside her suddenly morph into a confident, post-apocalyptic archer. Already, however, James was wearing his constipated face. A wheat-germ smoothie looked imminent.

  Then, from nowhere, out came the admission of his schoolboy sobriquet.

  She’d not known what to say while her husband brooded beside her, other than something about how mean boys that age can be. Eventually, she’d given him a vigorous handjob just to move on from the subject of Strange James.

  But back to the present nickname situation.

  “What if I do think it’s a big deal that kids are ganging up on my son and calling him names?” Penelope said. “I’m considering talking to Theo’s teacher.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary. The year’s almost over. Let’s just ride it out. His teacher can’t do anything this late anyway. If it’s still going on next fall, then yes, definitely, we take action.”

  “I want to think about it some more this weekend.”

  “Okay,” said James, as if everything in his life was kimono-new. “We can talk Sunday if you like. And I’ll see what I can get out of Theo about it. Frankly, he doesn’t seem too bothered by it.”

  “Exactly,” said Penelope, and pulled out of the driveway.

  4

  Penelope was now at her friend Sandy’s house, slurping down a glass of chardonnay at the kitchen table. She’d decided against the Cosmopolitan even though Sandy had offered, but had no regrets about her choice. She found chardonnay both medicinal and delicious. Though Penelope had dropped in without warning, Sandy needed no encouragement to join her, all but ripping the cork out with her teeth when Penelope came in. It was Friday afternoon, which meant a two day respite from cracking the whip to get kids fed, dressed, and out the door for the bus without resorting to corporal punishment. They’d earned this glass of wine and more where that came from. Almost in the same instant of opening the bottle, Sandy had called Rachel, her next-door neighbor and another of Penelope’s pals. Now they sat, long-stemmed glasses in hand, feeling better about things than they had only moments before.

  “And now he’s got this garden gnome in the front yard,” Penelope said, finishing up her opening remarks on the recent meeting with James and his zippity-do-dah ways.

  “On top of everything else, he has lawn statuary?” said Sandy. “Well that just takes the cake.”

  Sandy was smiling as she said this, as if she found Penelope a trifle unhinged. Penelope realized she’d been talking for a long time and felt a little out of breath.

  Thinking she should eat something, she went to the counter where Sandy had set out pretzels, cheese, and crackers. Behind her, she knew her friends were swapping looks. A pep talk was in the air, she could feel it. Since the divorce, the topic of how Penelope might improve herself and her life always came up during these impromptu get-togethers. Usually it took a while to get there, but the last few weeks Sandy had been impatient to dive right in. Penelope didn’t mind. Sandy was a good gal and as loyal as they came. They’d met six years ago during children’s story time at the library when Theo got kicked out for incessantly requesting Thomas the Tank Engine during the stern librarian’s read-aloud session of the Berenstain Bears. Sandy and her three boys got the boot not long after, and the two moms found themselves laughing together in the stacks about their shared ignominy. She met Rachel that same week.

  Penelope came back with a handful of crackers and plopped them on the table.

  “We have plates,” said Sandy.

  “I know,” said Penelope, “but I’ll just eat these real fast.”

  “You obviously have no idea what my kids put on that table.”

  Penelope didn’t like the thought of this so she didn’t dwell on it. “Oh, and James is dating someone.”

  “What?” said Sandy. “Who in their right mind would date James?”

  “I have no idea,” said Penelope. “Theo just let it slip when I was dropping him off today.”

  “Why was Theo talking about his dad dating?” said Rachel.

  Penelope weighed telling her friends about the flying phone and Theo getting a look at the shirtless man of faith. They already thought she was something of an outlier as a suburban mom, and that was before her current incarnation as a middle-aged waitress.

  “Well,” said Penelope, crunching a cracker and gulping it down with a sip of wine. “I have this new dating app on my phone, and this guy popped up on the screen today when I was driving to James’s house. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.”

  “Wait. What?” said Sandy.

  “Just hold on,” said Penelope. “Anyhow, my phone ended up flying over the seat and Theo saw the guy who had candied me.”

  Her friends were looking at her as they did when she told a story too quickly or in a fashion they found incomplete.

  “Anyway,” Penelope said, waving away their quizzical looks with the nub of a cracker, “one thing led to another and I thought it was as good a time as any to mention to Theo that his father and I might date other people someday, and he just says, Oh, Dad’s already had lots of dates, or something like that.”

  “Someone candied you?” said Rachel. “Did I hear that right?”

  “Yeah, if someone’s interested, they send you an icon that looks like a little box of chocolates. That means you’ve been candied.”

  Rachel laughed at this, putting her head on the table in the process. Sandy glared in disgust.

  “Candied?” she said. “That’s gross. What is this thing?”

  “It’s the Christian dating app my Mom got me.”

  “LoveSynch?” said Rachel, smiling that cheerleader smile that could fool anyone who didn’t know her well.

  “No, that’s the online dating thing. Mom sprung for both of them. So I have a dating app for my phone, Divote. And also the online dating service. That’s LoveSynch. I think me being single on my fortieth birthday really bummed Mom out. Anyway, if you’re interested, you candy them back.”

  “Please stop saying that,” said Sandy. “I’m not sure I’m prepared to know everyone you give your candy to.”

  She and Rachel laughed pretty heartily at this. Penelope had been trying to explain in a manner that didn’t make it seem ridiculous, but realized that was unlikely to happen with these smart-alecks.

  “Every single dating app should be named Booty Call,” said Sandy, laughing. “I mean, who’s kidding who?”

  “No,” said Rachel, smiling in her most insincere manner. “This is Divote. You only get devoted guys. Guys who want to give you chocolate and roses all day long. As long as you live nearby and can meet up in like five minutes.”

  Penelope smiled at this. Rachel had been raised Baptist, after all, and Penelope knew she had some experience with the set of boys who couldn’t, or didn’t, drink/smoke/curse. What was left for them to do but think about girls?

  Sandy got up huffily from the table and Penelope’s mind wandered back to the one straight-laced boy she’d dated in high school. Poor, sweet Dale Mercer. Who would lead her shyly down to his basement, put on a James Taylor soundtrack, then dry-hump her till the cows came home, dry hump himself to climax, she was pretty sure, with the framed photographs of Jerry Falwell and Ronald Reagan cheering him on from the mantel. Afterwards, Dale would talk about their fallen state and about the fallen state of man. Sometimes he’d turn to the Bible for guidance, often while still flushed and breathing hard.

  Thinking of those nights now, Penelope realized she hadn’t felt particularly fallen, hadn’t felt fallen at all, even the next morning at church. What she had felt, keenly and distinctly, was zipper-sore after Dale’s hunchathon on her Levi’s.

  “Okay,” said Sa
ndy, sitting back down with a newly opened bottle of wine. “Back to these good Christian boys who are looking to Divote themselves to you.”

  Penelope smiled and offered her glass for a refill. She normally wouldn’t have a third drink, especially before sundown, but the thought of heading home to her mother and George and whatever crappy programs were on TV kept her arm extended and her happy glass calling for more.

  “The only thing about Divote,” she said, “is that I feel like I’m false advertising. I go, but I’m not super-churchy. I’m pretty sure I’m not the type these guys are looking for.”

  “Sure you are, sweetie,” said Rachel in a wry tone that conveyed the exact opposite of what had just come out of her lips.

  “Anyway,” said Penelope, “it’s just too much pressure. Those guys want a hot supper on the table every night and about fourteen kids. They’re just too lusty and good.”

  “Lusty Christians?” asked Rachel, still feigning ignorance. As if she hadn’t been dry-humped by a million Dale Mercers in whatever Georgia high school she’d attended. That little cheerleader smile wasn’t fooling anyone at this table.

  “Yes, Rachel,” said Penelope. “Lusty Christians. That’s why they all live so long and have such good skin. They don’t do anything that’s bad for them, other than eating steak about five days a week. Just fuck night and day. I’m starting to think I’m too old for that shit.”

  Dropping the f-bomb at the table where Sandy and her husband and kids would soon be having their nightly nourishment seemed to act as a catalyst, or maybe it was just the new bottle of wine. Regardless, they were now on a true laughing jag, one which Penelope divoted herself to entirely.

  5

  “Okay, back to the unfathomable idea that James is dating.”

  Penelope must have frowned without knowing it, for Sandy said: “I know he was your husband, but don’t look at me like that. We’re all sure you were hypnotized or something. You really have no idea who the new tart is?”