no. “Oh, Cheryl, I’m so sorry for reconnecting like this. When I have a problem. I know I haven’t been much of a friend. It’s just that Randall…”
Cheryl and Randall tolerated each other for Lena’s sake. Their common loyalty ended five years ago the evening Cheryl ran upstairs after dinner to say goodnight to Kendrick and Camille and returned to the kitchen in time to hear Randall: “I need more wine. This is the last time we entertain Cheryl. It takes three or four glasses just to put up with her loud clothes and louder mouth.” Cheryl snatched her red cape and silver-studded handbag and told Randall, in a voice more earsplitting than the one he had complained about, that she wouldn’t dignify his comment with a response, loud or otherwise.
“Good friends pick up where they left off without explanation. What do you need me to do?”
“We haven’t talked or decided anything. I’m worried about Kendrick and Camille.”
“I know you love them like they were still babies, but Kendrick and Camille are grown. You need to take care of yourself and get a lawyer, because I know Randall will.”
“I don’t think he’d do that without talking to me first.”
“Ha! Randall didn’t get to where he is today by being timid or indecisive.”
On the dirt path in front of them, leggy, green-wing-tipped geese squawk exclamation points to their conversation. Lena speeds up a small incline, stomps her feet at the top, and yields the right of way to a gaggle of the ubiquitous geese on the graveled path. She sidesteps to her left and away from the bird droppings, and Cheryl steps with her. Any day, rows of downy ducklings will waddle across this same path to the water’s edge. Spring has crept in; bougainvillea buds are fat and primed to burst in sprays of red. Already several new mothers, waists thick with baby fat, determinedly push their newborns in three-wheeled strollers to exercise away their pregnancy weight.
“I’ll help any way I can, but you knew that when you called. You could have told me outright about you and Randall. You didn’t have to make up any excuses.”
“I’m embarrassed.”
“Girl, I knew you when you were still a virgin. Please. Divorce is simply another phase of life.”
“We’re not getting divorced.”
“You sure about that?”
Lena gives the only answer she can: a heavy-shouldered shrug.
Cheryl has had two husbands and no kids. Even though her marriages were short-lived—the first one twenty months, the second three years—she once told Lena that marital bliss was an ideal state. Lena thought so, too. She kicks stones from the path, stoops to pick one up, and tosses it at the geese, dispersing them in all directions. Don’t blame us, their squawks seem to say, it’s not our fault.
“I missed you. We can hang out again, even though…” Cheryl waves her hands around her and stops at the promenade where they started. “At our age you better think seriously before you step back into the single life.”
“What’s age got to do with it?”
“We’ve passed men, and not one of them has looked at us, said hello, or, God forbid, flirted. We’re in our fifties. We’re invisible. And while I don’t give a damn about that, you might, if you were single.”
“I’m not the kind of woman that men have ever fallen over themselves for.” She snickers, her broad shoulders relax. Not fat. Not skinny. Breasts Randall still calls, called, perky, hands without dark spots or lines. “I don’t care. Age is just a number, right? At least that’s what you used to say when we were forty, and you hit on thirty-year-olds.”
“Still do!” Cheryl grins. “Just like you say art ignores color, I have to believe art, and possibly thirty-year-olds, ignore age. That said, do you really want to be single and start over in photography or anything else at fifty-four? It’s going to take hours and hours, maybe years of hustle.” Cheryl looks Lena straight in the eye. “Bottom line: is he really all that bad?”
“If I believed he was bad then I would have to question why I’ve been with him all these years. He’s not good or bad; he’s Randall.” From the arches Lena catches a glimpse of the older couple outlined in the distance, they walk arm in arm now, their pace steady and assured.
“Find another way to find yourself. I assume, unless he’s got someone on the side, that he loves you. So what if he doesn’t say it. He gives it, which ain’t bad,