Party Doll

She was silent for a minute. With astonishment I saw tears forming in her eyes. She said, “You called me a party doll. So that’s what you thought of me. You thought that before I met Buddy I lived like a pig, did everything bad.” I opened my mouth, then shut it. She said, “My parents raised me very strict. For two years after I graduated high school, I was secretary to a priest. I can type!” Bitterly, she reflected on my two fatal words. “Party doll? I washed that floor you’re standing on. I cooked that food in your belly. I know you laugh at my food, you think,” her cheeks flamed, “that your mother made such great food. Well, your mother’s food almost put Buddy in the ground. Fat and sugar are like poison to him, she just never thought, she poured it all over him like toxic waste. Now, I’ve made up my mind to save him,” she pronounced the words proudly, “and I’m going to, and you sneer at me for trying.”

“No,” I mumbled, “that is—”

She said, “I just want to say one thing about my life before I met Buddy. He was not my first man, but he is my last. That is all any reasonable man can ask.”

In the living room, I put my coat on. My father said, “You and Shirleen talked—?”

“Yeah.”

After a minute he said, “I want you to know I didn’t realize your mother minded so much. About the divorce, I mean.” I said nothing. The stubborn old spud of Bernard’s face looked as hard as ever, but his eyes simmered with the same demand I’d seen all day. Bless Shirleen and me, damn you! Bless us!

Those goofy Romeo eyes were so young I could hardly stand to look at them. It came to me suddenly that, before my father met Shirleen, his eyes looked like sea stones.