AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So, don’t hide from him,” I said plainly. “Let him see the real you, Alice. I know you don’t think so, but being intimate with someone and letting them behind the curtain is the real testament of a relationship. Of trust. Of love.”
She shook her head so hard I thought it might fall off. “No. Oh, no. I’m never letting Alejandro find out about what happens behind the scenes. He’d be horrified. I don’t ever want him looking at me the way I looked at Harry Hayes.”
“Harry Hayes was wearing a diaper and about a hundred and sixty years old,” I laughed.
Alice tightened her lips. “Someday, that will be me, and Alejandro, who is twenty years younger than me, would look at me the way I looked at Harry.”
“He would never look at you that way.”
“No. He won’t. Because I won’t let him.”
I was shocked to hear her certainty. “So, you just ended it with him before you even gave him a chance to make his own decision? Did you at least say goodbye, or did you just leave him?”
Alice’s normally stoic face flushed pink as she dropped her gaze back down to her feet. “I just left him.”
“Without a word?” My voice lifted.
Alice nodded, still fixated on the ground.
Marge scowled. “Wow. That’s cold. Here we were, ready to go punch Alejandro for being an asshole to you, but it turns out you were the asshole to him.”
“I had no choice!” she defended, looking up and passing a warning gaze over us all before her face softened. “I had no choice. I was too embarrassed to ever face him again. I ...” She closed her eyes and took a breath. “I can’t believe I’m admitting this. I blame the pot.”
Doris tipped her head. “What happened, dear? You can tell us?”
“I ... I wet the bed.” She flung her arms in the air. “There. I said it. Okay? I wet the bed. I’m a monster. I’m a monster with an overactive bladder that sometimes leaks a little urine at night, and that night, I was sleeping naked without an overnight pad, and I woke up and saw that I had wet the bed. I snuck out and never saw him again. See? Now you understand. I had to. I couldn’t face him. I’m a disgusting, horrific, incontinent, decrepit old monster.”
We all looked at her and then at each other.
“Alice, sweetie.” Doris pursed her lips. “I have accidents all the time. Ever since I had kids, I leak anytime I laugh too hard or sneeze. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
I lifted my hand. “Same. In fact, most ladies I know our age, especially those with kids, have some leaking issues. You ladies make me laugh so hard I always have to keep spare underwear in my purse when we’re together.”
Marge tossed her head back in laughter. “I pee every time I dance too hard. That night we were dancing at the resort bar, I must have pissed myself half a dozen times! I was like, ‘Dancing, dancing ... peed a little bit. Dancing, dancing ... peed a little more!’” she sing-songed. “Alice, almost every woman who has had a child gets incontinence issues. It’s normal!”
“Not for me, it isn’t!” She scoffed, looking away. “It’s different for me, okay?”
“How so, hon?” Doris asked.
Alice let out a defeated sigh. “It’s different for women like me who have spent their whole lives sexualized and celebrated for their looks. Because for me, my beauty and my elegance isn’t justpartof who I am. Itiswho I am. You ladies all have these whole other wonderful parts of you that don’t rely on just your looks. Me? Nothing.” She tossed her arms up.
“You’re selling yourself short. You have so much to offer, Alice.” Doris tipped her head and frowned. “I hate that you feel that way.”
“I feel that way because it’s the truth. My whole life, I’ve never had anything else to offer other than my looks. It’s all I’ve been valued for, and now ... it’s leaving me.”
“It’s not leaving you. You’re still beautiful, Alice. You always will be.”
She shook her head. “It’s leaving me. I can’t keep up. Women who look like me aren’t allowed to age, but we’re ridiculed for fighting it. If I age gracefully, they whisper, ‘Oh wow. She used to be so beautiful. She really let herself go.’ And if I keep pulling and tightening everything with plastic surgery, they ridicule you for that, saying you don’t look natural. And then we go too far and end up looking like that crazy cat lady with the jacked-up face. I don’t want to look like an overpulled, over-injected cat lady, but I don’t want to fall apart either.”
“Oh, man. I’ve seen that cat lady,” Marge said. “You better not go that far. Being a cougar is one thing. But looking like you’re turning into one?” Marge shuddered. “Yeah. I’m not hanging out with you anymore if you get so much plastic surgery, you look like a crazy cat monster.”
Alice tossed up her arms. “But that’s the thing! When is it too much? When does the fight to maintain my beauty end up turning me into a different kind of monster? I can’t win! There’s no winning! All that awaits me now is ridicule no matter which way I turn.”
“No one is ridiculing you, Alice. I mean, I do all the time, but I’m just teasing,” Marge said, her voice softening. “But in reality, I think you’re beautiful. And I always will.”
Doris and I nodded in agreement.
“I just don’t want to go back to not being envied anymore. Before I grew into my lanky legs and became a beauty, I was tormented constantly. But then I blossomed, and suddenly, my beauty got me everything. I’ve never walked into a room where I didn’t feel like I could lift my chin proudly and stand there admired as the most beautiful. Any man lucky enough to have me on his arm stood a little taller because I had chosenhim.”
