Women Drinking Benedictine (5 page)

He was at the end of the block. In a minute he would disappear from her sight. “Did you hear me?” Winnie shouted. “Jumbo beers. Hot dogs with onions and relish. Soft pretzels soaked in mustard. She's a hungry woman. Let her go for it.”

The coffee drinkers sitting at the outside cafe were staring at her. She turned away, lest they mistake her for a ranting, raving bag lady.

She walked quickly to the Uni-Mart on Ellsworth Avenue. The sign on the door told her that this franchise strictly enforced the “Only TWO children at ONE time rule.” She shopped the three aisles quickly. She picked up some frozen microwavable burritos that were decent if you used a good sauce and a bit of canned black beans. To drink, she chose a bottle of raspberry-flavored sparkling water.

When she handed him a twenty-dollar bill, the cashier asked her if she had anything smaller.

“Just some change,” she said and shook her wallet so he could hear the jingle of pennies and nickels.

He shrugged and held out his hands as if to say that there was nothing he could do to help her.

To go home without her purchases would have been pathetic. She wrote her name on the receipt and handed it to the cashier, whose blue uniform jacket was unzipped to reveal a wrinkled white button-down.

“Here you go,” she said, her voice sounding bossy. “I'll come in tomorrow with something smaller. I live around the corner.”

“I don't think my boss will go for that.”

“Don't worry. You'll get your money,” Winnie said. “You can count on me.”

“I'm not sure,” the guy hesitated. Winnie scooped up her purchases and walked out of the store with a big friendly wave.

That was it. She had nothing more to say to anybody. Her day was done.

 

O
NE WAS CALLED
J
ANE AND WAS
a divorcée. The second was born Margaret Mary but had her name legally changed to Amber when she turned twenty-one. Sally was the third. She had never been married, never been engaged, never even had what others would consider a longtime serious boyfriend. A virgin, yes, though she no longer admitted or complained about it.

The women were in their late thirties and comfortably overweight, so when they talked about food (and who doesn't when traveling, especially when traveling in France?) they spoke not in terms of enjoyment but in terms of negotiations, as if everything they ate or drank had a price.

“We must have walked five miles,” Jane said.

“At least,” Sally sighed, as if they had just finished exercising.

“If you count what we did on the boardwalk, add that to the museum tour, I figure it's more like six,” Amber said. She recorded her daily activities in a compact datebook she carried in her purse. Most nights she exaggerated her exercise and lied about her caloric intake.

“Maybe more,” Jane said.

“But at least five,” Amber said and snapped the rubber band around her little black book.

The three were good friends. They understood each other's foibles, tolerated each other's moods. They were kind to each other. Usually.

This was their fourth trip abroad, and they traveled well together. They were intelligent enough to understand that women were complicated, sensitive creatures, who sometimes had to be dramatically unreasonable. Almost a week into the trip, and no one had cried or thrown a hissy fit. There had been moments—the tiff at the Picasso museum had been particularly tense—but even that had passed after early evening cocktails.

The women were at their best when it came to food. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were things they never argued about. Unlike some tourists who opted to share meals, the trio from Pittsburgh always ordered full dinners. They were not shy about a third bottle of wine. Dessert was included in the price of the meal and would have been wasteful to refuse. After-dinner brandies, certainly a special treat, were never considered an indulgence.

Night six of their two-week excursion, and they decided to treat themselves to dinner at Les Vieux Murs, an expensive seafood restaurant near the castle in Antibes.

The waiter, who later identified himself as the owner of the place, greeted them in English, tripping over verb tenses until Jane urged him to speak French. The women were well educated. All three were fluent in French, and each spoke a smattering of another language. It was one reason they enjoyed traveling together—things were so much easier to obtain when you had the vocabulary.

“The chef has not yet arrived, but rest assured, he will be here momentarily,” he told the women. “When he comes I will tell him to cook his best for three women who look like angels.”

He presented them with a tray of pretty pink aperitifs—complimentary Kir Royales in champagne flutes. They forgave him for his tardy welcome, but when he walked away from the table, Sally wrinkled her nose. “My god. What a cheeseball,” she said.

“I don't know,” Jane said and sniffled. “I think he's kind of cute.”

“You think everyone's cute,” Amber scolded. “But you never do anything about it.” She would have liked to talk to Jane about her lack of love-life, but men was a subject they had given up discussing because it was the same record playing over and over again.

“No. Oh no,” Jane said, blushing and stammering like a little girl. “I don't. I never would.”

Amber knew that Jane had been married. But the ex-husband was persona non grata except in the vaguest of terms. He entered conversations as a whispery shadow of the past, mostly as a warning to stay away. Sally, on the other hand, had never slept with a man, and, even when inebriated, was coy about the future of her virginity. They thought Amber was loose—too eager to meet men. They were not afraid to criticize her for at least trying to change her life. A spinster was not something one aspired to be. Amber wished they admired her more for her courage to go after what she wanted. She had bad luck with men, but she was always the first to admit it.

The three women had met at an Attr-ACTIVE Women's Group at the Jewish Community Center in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill. The brochure described the once-a-week meetings as a unique opportunity for women who wanted change in their lives. “Here is a physical fitness approach to emotional and spiritual well-being.” The meetings would consist of discussions about diet, exercise, and an attitude adjustment, which would—hopefully—result in a more attractive woman.

The group leader was a large, talkative woman named Rosemary, who established in the first few minutes of the initial meeting that she was not a leader, but an encourager. “Attr-ACTIVE women do not want or need leaders. We are not lemmings. We are our own growing and developing women—we are ourselves.” She stood, then bent over and moved her hands up and down her feet. It was a remarkable physical feat for such a heavyset woman. A few members stood and tried to touch their toes. Amber stayed in her seat. As Rosemary had encouraged, she was not going to follow.

Rosemary was in favor of strong declarative statements. They had punch but not much meaning. She used these key phrases in her own speech and tried to get the group to adopt them.

“Turn the beat around,” she advised when a group member complained that she could not find time in her hectic life for a workout. “Accentuate the positive.”

“Get a pet,” Rosemary suggested. “A dog is an exercise machine with hair and a warm tongue,” she claimed. “I used to come home after a stressful day at work and go straight for junk food and television. Now I come home and take my dog for a long walk. I've made new friends. I've gotten to know my neighborhood. I've turned the beat around and couldn't be happier.”

Amber had joined the group to meet educated women in similar socioeconomic situations, not to listen to the obvious pathologies of those in need of professional guidance. She got enough of that from the “Dr. Laura” radio show every afternoon. Amber did not know what her “unique stuff inside,” another of Rosemary's phrases, was, and she did not understand how canoeing would help her find it. Still, she had paid her seventy-nine dollars and thought it best not to quit midstream.

“If you can organize your kitchen, you can organize your life.” Rosemary announced one night. A canceled pet-sitter had forced her to bring the new puppy to the meeting. He sat at her heels, slowly chewing the hem out of her skirt.

Jane snorted. “Oh come on. Get real.”

Sally giggled, though whether she was amused by Jane's retort or by the puppy was not clear.

Amber, who had been napping with her eyes open, woke to the sound of irritation and ridicule.

“No fighting,” Rosemary said and began touching her toes frantically.

“All I said was I wasn't sure I followed the logic of that statement,” Jane said. “Surely you agree that someone can have a perfectly neat house and a cluttered life.”

Rosemary stopped exercising and began to whimper. “Anger is so tiring. It just wears me down.” She grabbed the Kleenex box and buried her face.

Jane stood. “I'm not angry. I simply asked a question. You're not afraid of discussion, are you?”

“I'm not having a good week,” Rosemary sobbed. “I used to come home after a stressful day at work, have a junk-food bonanza complete with reruns on “Nick at Nite.” Now I come home to find that my stupid dog has chewed my new ninety dollar black pumps into bite-sized pieces. The minute I walk in the door he starts barking, begging for a walk. Even when it's zero degrees outside. I can't cope. He's making my life a miserable mess, and I don't know what to do.”

“Why don't you get rid of him?” Sally asked.

“This is ridiculous,” Jane judged, walking out of the room.

The other Attr-ACTIVE women scurried to form a protective ring around their leader. “There, there, dear,” they comforted. “There. There.”

The Squirrel Cage, which was less than a block from the JCC, served a Cheeseburger Platter that included french fries with a choice of gravy or homemade ranch dressing for $3.95. Amber, Jane, and Sally ordered full platters and a pitcher of draft beer, not caring that the hand-washed mugs tasted of dishwashing soap. There they decided a trip abroad would do more to enhance their lives than a two-hour meeting in a chlorine-smelling, windowless room of the local JCC.

“Don't go to the hardware store for milk,” Amber quoted their leader. Rosemary's adages worked best when taken out of context.

“The best thing about a cocktail party is being asked to it,” Jane remembered.

“Gluttony is not a secret vice,” Sally said.

Her new friends agreed.

The owner/waiter at the restaurant in Antibes served them a second round of Kir Royales, then scurried away from the table before they could ask him for anything else.

“Maybe he could bring us a photograph of some food,” Sally said sardonically. She had taken her scarf and tied it around her head. The style might have been reminiscent of Grace Kelly in
To Catch a Thief
, but Sally looked more like an old woman suffering from a bad toothache.

“Should we go somewhere else?” Amber said.

“Leave? After two free drinks?” Jane said. “That would be rude.” Jane returned to her menu. Amber wouldn't be surprised if her friend had it memorized.

Amber raised her glass of Kir and held it at eye level. “Look,” she told her friends. “I'm looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.” Jane and Sally were deep in discussion about the next day's plan. If they heard her, they were ignoring her.

Amber was slightly disappointed by the trip to the Riviera. They had chosen Antibes because it was supposed to be the spot where the really really rich and the very very successful still lived. But Amber had not seen anyone who did not look like a tourist. Everyone walked around in comfortable tennis shoes or dull-colored Rockports, their compact passport carriers slung over their shoulder. Mostly Americans, none of them exotic or interesting.

The general feeling of the area was not successful or rich, but gray—like rain on a Sunday afternoon.

Amber lowered her glass and the soft-colored world disappeared.

“I'm going out for cigarettes,” she said, and dumped her purse onto the table and began separating the francs from the U.S. coins.

“You begged us never to let you smoke again,” Jane reminded her.

“I'll buy the pack but just smoke one,” Amber said, holding up her two fingers in the Girl Scout promise. Cigarettes were not potato chips. It was possible to be satisfied with one or two.

“Fat chance,” Sally snorted. She tucked her chin back into her scarf.

“It's not my fault they don't sell them individually,” Amber said, wondering why Sally had chosen the word fat.

“Do what you want, but don't bitch to us tomorrow when you wake up with a nicotine hangover from your largesse.” Jane said.

“Right. Right. Right,” Amber said, now convinced that Sally's word selection was below the belt. She scooped up a handful of coins and left the damp restaurant.

The tobacco shop was closed, its front door locked. A man stood beside the cash register counting money and smoking a cigarette. Amber knocked.

“Fermé,”
he mouthed and pointed to the sign hanging in the doorway.

She put her hands together as if praying.

He smiled. His teeth were white and beautifully straight. He unlocked the door and let her in. “Hello, pretty woman,” he said.

Amber finally found what she had been looking for. Jackpot. Right here in Antibes.

He would not give change, so she bought four packs of American cigarettes. He did not charge her for matches but asked if she would like a tour of the city.

“The beach is particularly beautiful at night,” he said.

Europe was magical. This would never have happened to her in Pittsburgh.

Amber could see the expressions of curiosity when she and Maurice walked into the restaurant.