The truth was Mabel never cooked Fred’s favorite meal just to please him. She made it because it was the easiest thing to prepare. She could throw a hunk of beef into the roasting pan, chop up some potatoes, carrots, onion, and celery, salt and pepper it good, and bake the hell out of it. Fred didn’t insist she peel the potatoes and carrots the way her father had. So long as they were cooked near-about to mush, he never complained. Fred purred every Monday when Mabel made a roast and bragged to his buddies how his wife spoiled him. Leftover beef filled his sandwiches until Wednesday.
Mabel had picked out the best rump roast she could find for tonight’s supper. It wasn’t Monday, but she couldn’t wait four more days to tell him what burned in her chest. A good roast beef supper always put him in a good mood.
Round about four, Fred came in and laid his soft-sided, insulated lunch pack on the counter. Years ago, Mabel always knew he was home when the steel lunchbox hit the Formica counter. She could set a clock by him—home from the garage by four-fifteen, supper on the table by four-thirty. Heaven forbid the kids should not be back from their neighborhood meanderings by the time he arrived, and death to their social life should they be late for supper. The kids were long gone, but supper was still on the table by four-thirty.
“Smells like a roast, Mabel.” Fred paused in the kitchen, sniffing the air with a bewildered expression. “It’s only Thursday.”
Mabel wiped her hands on the apron hanging over her lopsided chest. “Just wanted you to have a special dinner tonight.”
“For what?” Fred’s eyes flicked to the calendar hanging next to the Frigidaire. “It’s not my birthday.”
“No, something else. Just go on and wash up.” Mabel nodded toward the bathroom and then scanned the table. After umpteen years of supper on the table by four-thirty, she hadn’t forgotten a thing. White bread and butter, salt and pepper, sweetened iced tea and lemon.
Mabel heaped a load of vegetables onto Fred’s plate and plopped a lump of beef beside it. She poured a ladle of gravy over everything and set it in front of him. Before Mabel could sit at her place, Fred was cutting up his beef and poking it into his mouth.
Fred looked up from his plate after three or four bites. “You ain’t gonna have anything?”
“Not hungry.” Mabel folded her hands in her lap.
“The doc says you’ve gotta eat.”
“Can’t. I’ll puke again.” A wave of nausea rose up her chest and settled just below her throat. “I’ll drink some Ensure, later.”
“That stuff smells like puke. Drink puke to keep from puking. I just don’t get it.” Fred grabbed a piece of white bread and smeared a layer of butter across it. “So what’s this special occasion about?”
“I have something to tell you.”
Fred dropped the bread in his plate and looked up with a horrified expression. “God, Mabel, the last time you did this we had a baby seven months later.”
 |
“Was that such a bad thing?”
“Not then, but it sure as hell would be now.” Fred dipped his buttered bread in the gravy and swept it dripping into his mouth.
“Well, I wish it were such a beautiful thing as a baby.” Mabel glanced at the hutch, her eyes drifting across dozens of framed faces, from infant to teen, to bride and groom—her kids and her grandkids, all smiling and happy and looking to the world for life.
“It’s not the cancer, is it?”
“I suppose it is, but it’s more than that. Dr. Bauer says cancer patients have to clear themselves of guilt in order to beat cancer; he says cancer feeds on guilt and lies.”
“Dr. Bauer?” Fred looked up with an eyebrow raised.
“You know, old Dr. Bauer, Ed Bauer, on The Guiding Light.”
Fred rolled his eyes. “Mabel, that’s a soap opera. He’s not a real doctor. He’s an actor.”
“Yes, but they have consultants. Medical experts help them write the scripts, and they say guilt makes cancer worse. And I’ve gotta get some things off my chest.” Mabel ran her hand unconsciously across the vacant spot where her breast used to be.
“Then what, for chrissakes?”
Mabel took a sip of her green tea; it had a bitter taste, but she’d heard it had healing properties—a natural cancer fighter. “Fred, you’re not the first.”
Fred shoved a piece of potato into his mouth. “Not the first what?”
Mabel took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “Not the first man.”
“Not the first man for what?”
“For me.” Mabel dropped her head and played with the corner of her apron.
Fred cocked his head sideways and narrowed his eyes. “Huh?”
“Hell, Fred, do I have to spell it out for you? I wasn’t a virgin when we married. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen then, just like you’re not listening now.
For the first time in their married life, Fred put down his fork and pushed his plate away, with bite-size portions of beef lying uneaten across it. “Mabel, this ain’t exactly dinner conversation.”
“That’s about what you said when I tried to tell you forty-five years ago. You and I were sitting on the swing in the back of my folk’s house on a Sunday afternoon. We’d just come home from church and were waiting for Mama to serve lunch. We were already engaged, but I was burning with guilt after the sermon Rev. Hanson gave about being the pure bride of Christ. I tried to tell you I wasn’t as pure as the bride of Christ, but you put your finger to my lips and said, ‘That’s all just preachin’.’”
“How come you can remember that forty-five-year-old conversation, but you keep forgettin’ to pick up my new lures from Fisherman’s Hut?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doin’ what?”
“Avoiding the issue.”
Fred waved his hands before him. “Mabel, a man’s gotta keep a few things uncorrupted in his mind.”
“I just wanted you to know I wasn’t any different from all the other girls you’d been out with.”
“Hell, Mabel, you were the bride of Christ—at least to me.”
“But you wouldn’t let me tell you.”
“I guess it’s that man kind of pride.”
“Don’t you want to know who it was?”
“Hell, no!” Fred pushed away from the table and crossed his arms. “Ain’t it enough to find out after forty-five years that the bloodless virgin you’d married wasn’t a virgin at all?”
“Well, if I’m gonna conquer this cancer, I’ve gotta tell it all. And you’re the one who needs to hear it. Remember Betty, that waitress with the wide behind? He was her cousin, a football player from USC. Name was Randolph. Drove up in his daddy’s Cadillac convertible—a brand new one with the big fins and red-rocket taillights. I waited on you all the time when you brought your different girlfriends into the Coffee Cup. I’d had my eye on you for months, but you didn’t even know I existed. Clarence, the line cook, told me you only went out with ‘willing’ girls. He said you were like that Help Wanted sign in the window: ‘Experienced Only Need Apply.’”
“That ain’t true. I took out plenty of virgins.” He slid his seat back to the table and chugged his coffee like it was beer.
“Those gals you brought in the Coffee Cup looked plenty experienced, if you ask me. That night, I’d seen you twirling the hair of some blonde squeezed beside you in the booth. So I sidled up to Randolph and asked him for a ride home in his Caddie. He took me by way of the pull-off at the top of Euclid. We parked and he put the top down . . .”
Fred shook his head as if he were the one with something to deny. “Mabel, you don’t have to tell me this.”
“No, I do. You sit there and plug your ears if you want, but I’m gonna say it. I knew the minute I got into his Cadillac that I wasn’t getting out a virgin. If you wanted experienced girls, then I was gonna get some experience. And I did. It was nothing exciting, either. Randolph and I necked until I felt I’d wet my panties. He musta always been prepared, ’cause he had a rubber in his wallet. After we were done, I cleaned myself up as best I could—and, boy, was I glad that red leather wiped clean—then Randolph drove me home. I remember thinking, ‘So this is it?’ Odd now, I can remember his name, but I couldn’t pick him out of a line-up if my life depended on it.”
“Well, maybe your life does depend on it.” Fred sighed and fiddled with his wedding ring. “This ain’t such a surprise, you know.”
“What?”
“I’d plugged a few virgins—I knew what to expect on our wedding night. Your excuse about a wayward tampon just didn’t ring true. Fact is I didn’t want to know, but now that I do, I’m just sorry you went and did that for me.”
“I’m not sorry. You’d never have noticed me if I hadn’t. It worked like magic. The next day I waited on you, I swear you looked up at me as if my face said, ‘Take me out. I’m experienced.’”
Fred picked up his fork and stabbed a piece of beef. “It wasn’t that. Something I’ve never told you, but here it is. You came out of the lady’s restroom that night with your uniform skirt stuck in your panties. I saw your garter hugging those creamy white thighs and I popped to attention. You didn’t even notice, but, God, Mabel, I remember it like it was yesterday. Betty slid behind you and pulled your skirt straight and you never even knew. When you came over to my table, it was like I’d never seen you before. I said to myself, ‘This ain’t bait; this is a keeper.’”
“Then you’re not mad?” Mabel studied the plastic lace tablecloth and picked at a crack before sneaking a glance at Fred.
“Mad? Hell, I just want you to get well. We’re gonna beat this cancer. I loved you then, and I love you now.”
