Just Like Suicide pt. 11

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[cont.]
“And you accepted that?”
“Oh, I marched right out and put a down payment on the gallery building and told him he could either co-sign the loan and remain partners or I would pay off the loan myself with the divorce settlement.”
Maggie started laughing. “How long did it take him to sign it?”
“He signed it first thing the next morning. I think the tone of my voice jarred him back into reality. From that day on, he made a point of listening to me, asking my advice. And our marriage got stronger. We really were a team. He was such a gem, such a dear sweet man. Most men don’t respect strong women.”
“Men do tend to marry someone like dear old mom, don’t they? Grandma Beulah was a strong woman.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m like your grandmother. Strong is not the word I’d use to describe her. She was heartless and totally crushed your poor mother and tried her level best to do the same with Dennis.” Odessa bit her tongue. Sometimes she spoke without thinking.
“Yeah. She sure did a crackerjack job on Momma.”
”You know, as mean as your Grandmother Beulah was, she was sugar and spice compared to her own mother. And your mother must have tried in her own way to treat you better than what she got from her mother. It’s all we can do really, just trying to pass on something better than what we were given. Besides, all families are messed up in their own way, Maggie: everyone becomes damaged goods to some degree. What’s that joke Dennis used to tell – there are two kinds of people: the abnormal and the ones you don’t know very well.”
“Barbara was just raised so differently. She celebrated her sixteenth birthday in a castle outside of Prague with a dozen friends. They had a Medieval tournament for entertainment. Did you know that? Knights and jousting on real horses. Sometimes I wonder what she sees in me.”
“You are as exotic to her as she is to you.”
“Do you think her sense of entitlement will change?”
“It might soften with time, but when I first met her and she was seven, she did not compromise. She was one stubborn little girl. She knew what she wanted and that was that. She has always gotten what she wanted.”
“She’s pigheaded, that’s for sure. And you might be right – I am dazzled by the differences, but I can see a wonderful person under all the gruffness. I guess I want to help her be that wonderful person.”
“Oh, darling girl, changing someone is not love.”
“Oh I know. I can’t change her but I can be a catalyst. No one has ever told her no and she needs that. And we both know that one person caring can change a person’s life.”
“Well, darling girl, I’m sure you’ll figure it all out. But until that bright shiny moment magically appears, don’t you think we deserve ice cream? How’s that for a solution to all of life’s problems?”
“If Barbara were here, she’d insist on something exotic. What I want is a big bowl of frozen yoghurt and some of those cookies you said you made.”
Dennis had always consoled himself with frozen yoghurt, the kind with hunks of strawberries in it. “Well, I happen to have an entire carton in my freezer.” She picked it up by reflex the last time she went grocery shopping and discovered her mistake at the check out counter. She bought it anyway, just to be able to see it when she opened the freezer.
“I know. Do you mind if I stay overnight? I think I need a time out.”
Driving away from the building, listening to Odessa sing along with a golden oldies song on the radio, humming the lines she didn’t quite remember, Maggie stepped back in her mind to reflect upon the conversation. Playing games like hard to get with Barbara might keep them together short run, but in the long run, that would just be too exhausting and demanding. She didn’t want her life to be a constant drama. She didn’t want to spend all of her waking hours figuring out how to make her partner happy. That’s what her momma had tried to do, devoting herself to making her husband happy. It’s not much of a life. Sometimes it seemed that humans were only capable of making each other miserable and the potency of that misery makes us feel alive so we cling to it, nursing it, passing down the need to the next generation. “I want more than that,” she told herself. “I want more.”
She was so absorbed in her own thoughts she didn’t notice that Odessa was fighting back tears while singing along with that old love song on the radio.
 

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