Women Who Stay, 7

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6

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That night, I called up a friend to vent. I paced around my kitchen with my cell clenched between my shoulder and my ear.

"I ask her... well, I can't give you any details, but I ask her a simple question about well-established facts, and then she storms out of the diner."

"Is she just jerking you around?" Eleanor asked. "Like, is she lying?"

I hummed, wavering briefly. "No, I don't think so. But how am I supposed to tell her story properly if she won't even let me ask a question?"

Eleanor laughed. "You know, the thing that makes you a good writer is that you see the story through the facts. You draw it out and build it. But I think that might make you a bad interviewer."

"Um, fuck you too."

"At least in this case. With this mystery woman. Look, you think this is a long-term project, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then let it grow. She doesn't like you asking questions? Stop asking them. You're not telling the story yet. She is. Let her."

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The next morning, I arrived at the Somerset Diner twenty minutes early. Sheila seemed to have the day off, and the new waitress' face was friendly. I scribbled in my notebook, but I wasn't writing questions. I was writing a mantra, again and again. You will listen. Listen. Listen. It felt counterproductive. The word was losing all meaning.

"Good morning, Miranda." I looked up to see an imperious Janie looking down on me. "Have you thought about how we'll continue?"

I tucked my journal away. "Yes. I'm sorry for making assumptions yesterday."

She waved my apology away as she sat across from me. "Water under the bridge. I know that some things I say aren't... easy to understand. That's why I insisted on easing into the subject of Antonio. But I have every intention of speaking on him, and the complexities of our arrangement."

"And I'm ready to listen," I said. The word still felt mushy in my mind, but she smiled to hear it.

"Then let's try again."

While we waited for my pie and her omelet, she sketched the circumstances of her childhood. She was an only child. She had a handful of neighborhood friends, but she kept them at a distance. "I prized social capital, but never craved a bosom buddy," she explained. "I found it easier to rise alone, or rather, to hold myself above the others."

"Sounds lonely," I said.

She raised an eyebrow. "Only if I didn't like my own company."

I risked a question. "Were you ever sad?"

She looked out the window. "Silly bitch," she muttered. I cringed, thinking she meant me before I followed her gaze to a woman behind the wheel of a Mercedes, struggling to parallel park. When she turned back, I saw her eyes were watering. It was no longer clear to which of us she was referring.

"Of course. All children are sad, in their own special way. I blamed mine on my mother. She died when I was eight. Ovarian cancer. Terrible way to go. For me to watch, too. But now, I think even if she'd lived, I'd still have felt some level of sadness. It wasn't just that I didn't like my classmates, but also that I was too different to make a real friendship work. It took me twenty years to find an age-mate I could call a peer."

The food arrived. Before she picked up her fork and knife and dropped the conversation, she looked at me knowingly. "And yes, that was Antonio."

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Read on to Chapter 8