CHAPTER SEVEN
"I had a lump in my breast once," Mrs. Bartle said, setting a plate of peanut butter cookies down on the table.
"You did?" Diana asked, hoping to hear one of those little, happy-ending stories that Mrs. Bartle was so famous for. The scene at Dr. Mason's that morning had replayed itself over and over in her mind until all of their voices were in slow motion. She really needed to press Pause for a while.
"Take a cookie, dear. I just baked them this morning."
This was the first time Diana could ever remember not fighting the urge to devour a plate of cookies in Mrs. Bartle's kitchen. But she didn't want to hurt her friend's feelings, so she selected one and watched it tremble in her hand as she waited for the burning, nauseous sensation in her stomach to give way to appetite. And then she saw the concern in Mrs. Bartle's eyes and forced herself to try a small piece. "Tell me about the lump," she said, quickly realizing just how damn good freshly baked peanut butter cookies were—even to someone who had just received a death sentence. They truly were a cookie for all occasions. She took another one.
"Well, I was fifty-three years old, and I was terrified," Mrs. Bartle said. "But the doctor removed it, and it turned out to be benign, as I'm sure this cyst or tumor will be in your case, dear."
There was that word again—tumor. It was such an ugly word, uglier than fat, uglier than loneliness, uglier than a thirty-two-year-old woman who hadn't had sex since high school. Diana wanted to change the subject and ask Mrs. Bartle what sex was like when two people were in love. But for as many things as she could talk to her friend about, she could not talk to this ninety-three-year-old woman, however hip and lively and amazingly liberal she was for her age, about sex. Actually, she didn't feel much like talking at all. She just didn't want to be alone. That was one of the many great things about having a friend like Mrs. Bartle. She understood Diana in these quiet and reflective moments—she had them, too. It was an unspoken, but very sacred law between the two women never to ask what the other was thinking about at these times, but just to remain silent, sipping tea and nibbling on cookies, each leaving the other to her private meditations. Sometimes during these pensive periods, Mrs. Bartle's magnificent blue eyes would rise from their cradle of age spots and wrinkles to meet with Diana's, and the old woman would take a shortcut into a secret world where happiness was seldom and self-torment exhausted itself in an endlessly steady supply. Mrs. Bartle was the only visitor Diana would permit to enter this world—she was the only one with a pass. Diana allowed her to have it because she liked their connection; in fact, she treasured it—especially in light of her theory that if someone as exceptionally functional as Mrs. Bartle could understand and appreciate the screwed-up world inside of her, then she couldn't possibly be as out of touch with inner normalcy as she thought. However, right now Diana really hoped her gracious mentor wouldn't link eyes with her and commiserate with the debilitating plight of her lonely existence. This was because she was thinking about Barry, and thoughts of Barry were tremendously private.
Barry was the guy who took Diana's virginity in high school. He didn't exactly take it—she gave it to him. And thank God she did, or else she wouldn't be a thirty-two-year-old woman who hadn't had sex since high school—she'd be a thirty-two-year-old virgin, which would be even creepier. Diana gave herself to Barry when she was seventeen, in the back of his powder blue pickup truck at a neighbor's New Year's Eve party. It wasn't a high school party, but was actually at the house of a family that Diana had done some baby-sitting for during her freshman and sophomore years. Even though Diana was a senior at the time, and no longer the Suttons' regular Saturday-night sitter, Mrs. Sutton had invited her to the party so she could look after the kids while she and her husband pretended not to have any. Apparently, the thirteen-year-old who normally watched them had plans already. Diana wasn't technically a guest, but she was permitted to have fun as long as she kept an eye on Sarah and Jack and made sure they didn't bother anybody. Aside from the Suttons' nine-year-old twins, Diana was the youngest one at the party. She'd planned on leaving after she put the kids to bed, but upon hearing that she had no other parties to rush off to, Mrs. Sutton had invited her to stay, which was when she officially became a guest. And as a guest, she began talking to Barry, the Suttons' mechanic and family friend. She'd noticed him looking at her throughout the night—while she was braiding Sarah's hair, while she was cleaning up a spilled glass of chardonnay, and when, on numerous occasions, she was caught staring at him from across the room while the adults fawned over the twins, leaving her awkward and alone with nothing else to do. Once she was done working, she noticed that not only was this a man who noticed her but that this was also a man with the deepest brown eyes and the warmest and sexiest grin she had ever seen. She'd overheard one of the guests teasing him about only being twenty-eight and therefore too young to listen to the dirty joke being told, which still made him eleven whole years older than Diana, but she didn't mind. All the guys her own age at school were immature anyway and wouldn't have given her the time of day even if she'd asked for it. Barry was different. By the way he kept looking at her, she could tell he didn't care about shallow things like whether or not she was thin. The fact that he saw through the surface, which was more than anyone else had ever bothered to see, meant that without exchanging a single word, he already understood her better than anyone else ever had.
After nearly an hour of glances and coy smiles, Diana had promised herself that the next time she and Barry made eye contact, she would approach him. The promise had driven her into the bathroom, where she'd stared at herself in the mirror, racking her brains for some last minute trick that would make her appear twenty pounds thinner. When she came out, Barry was standing in the hallway, just a few feet from the door. They approached each other simultaneously, both saying "hi" at the exact same time, which spawned laughter on both sides—a perfectly scripted icebreaker if ever there was one.
"Let's start over," he had said, leaning one hand against the wall just above Diana's head, and placing his other hand on the woodwork beside her waist. "Hi, I'm Barry."
"Hi Barry," she'd said, lifting her eyes to meet the gaze of the handsome older stranger who'd just trapped her with his territorial stance.
"You're Diana, right?"
"How did you know my name?" Diana had asked, wondering if her breath smelled. She hadn't been that close to a boy since Billy Jackson had kissed her in his tree house when they were ten, which had only lasted eight seconds and had only happened at all because one of their other friends had bet Billy three packs of gum that he couldn't go through with it. This was very different, very romantic . . . and very adult.
"I've done my homework," Barry had answered. "I've been asking about you."
"You have?"
"I sure have," he'd said, showing off that million-dollar grin again. "You wanna take a walk outside with me for a minute?"
"I hope it's more than a minute," she had teased, having absolutely no idea where the remark had come from and what she was getting herself into—while at the same time having every idea and not being afraid.
"I like the way you think," he said with a laugh, putting his hand on her back as he let her lead the way to the Suttons' front door.
The air outside smelled like leftover snow and the full, frosty moon was so beautiful it looked fake. Something big was about to happen. Maybe it was the full moon or the freshness of the cold during those first minutes of 1988, or maybe it was just her, but she knew something was about to change and she was ready.
Barry took her to his truck and immediately leaned her against the passenger side door, not even pausing to notice her reaction before he began kissing her—with an eagerness and intensity Diana had only seen directed at size-six actresses in the movies. But before she could even comprehend the magnitude of the moment, they'd moved on to another one, and Barry was guiding her to the back of the pickup, where she could see there was a blanket already laid out. The major embarrassment came when she realized he was trying to lift her but couldn't. So to salvage the moment, she'd climbed in herself, stepping onto one of the truck's rear tires while Barry helped her along, pushing her in by way of her own rear tire and climbing in right behind her. Diana lay down on the blanket as Barry settled on top of her, unbuttoning her blue-and-white-checked flannel shirt as he kissed his way down her neck. Diana prayed she looked sexy enough in her white cotton discount store sports bra, although she really wished she was wearing something more vixen-like, like one of those black lacy numbers worn by the perfect-breasted women in her mother's mail-order lingerie catalogs. When Barry began unzipping his pants, Diana figured she should do the same, remembering as she reached for her jeans button that she wasn't wearing good underwear either. Not that she owned any. Diana's drawer was forever stocked with the big, comfortable, cotton ones that women like her mother owned just one or two pair of and only wore when it was "that time of the month." But unlike these women, Diana didn't feel she could afford to be picky for those other three weeks when life was less cruel, and besides, sexy underwear didn't even come in her size. Not that she knew this for a fact or anything, because if it did come in her size, she'd have been too mortified to go shopping for it anyway. Regardless, it didn't matter in this case: Barry seemed to be completely unaffected by her choice of underwear. Maybe it was because he never saw them. Diana had experienced so much difficulty trying to shimmy gracefully out of her pants that when they'd gotten stuck around the bottom of her butt, she'd just left them there, and Barry had yanked them down, her underwear included, the rest of the way to her knees, where they'd remained for the duration of the act. It had all happened so quickly—the stares, the smiles, the cold, the moon, the warmth, the kisses, the nakedness. And then there was a sharp, penetrating pain.
Diana had tried not to scream. And when the hot blood began to trickle down her inner thighs, she'd tried not to faint. It didn't feel very good physically, but emotionally, she felt like she'd just been given a free year's supply of self-esteem. She had never been so desired by, or so close to, a man. And that part felt terrific. As for the hips down, she went numb after a while, and while Barry continued on top of her, she allowed her eyes to fixate on the glorious stars that had crowned this monumental rite of passage into womanhood.
Barry finished his business on Diana's stomach and collapsed onto her chest, which had made her feel masculine because in the movies, it was always the woman cuddling on the man's chest. Not that she and Barry had really cuddled afterward. It was more like he just lay there like a vegetable for a couple of minutes before standing up abruptly, hopping out of the truck, and walking around to the glove compartment. He came back with a wad of tissues.
"Here," he'd said awkwardly, his eyes as guilty as a naughty child's, "you can . . ." He didn't say the words. Perhaps he couldn't—he seemed so flustered. All he did was make a wiping motion in the direction of her stomach, clear his throat, and say "here" again as he handed Diana the tissues.
"Thanks," she'd said, watching Barry as he stood there trying not to watch her, scratching his face nervously and sniffing a lot. Every once in a while he'd steal a sideways glance at her, perhaps to see if she was done cleaning herself off yet. Diana didn't feel awkward at all. She was too busy wondering if anyone had seen her leave the party and marveling over the fact that she had just done it—finally! She was elated, and glowing in a way she'd only read about. When she was done with the tissues, she'd reached out her hand for Barry to help her down from the truck but had to clear her throat loudly when she realized he couldn't see her—he was still avoiding eye contact.
Once they were both on equal ground, there was one moment, one brief yet forever-to-be-remembered moment, in which Barry's eyes met hers—and they looked terrified. Diana couldn't figure out what he could be so scared of, but then again, since the reality of sex was so different than anything she'd ever seen or imagined, maybe all guys got that terrified look in their eyes afterward and no one ever talked about it. She certainly didn't plan to. Just because they'd just had sex didn't mean they had to start talking about their inner feelings. Besides, Barry looked like he was in more of a hurry to get out of there than he'd been to actually get out there. And Diana was in a hurry to begin replaying every single detail of what they'd just done over and over again until it became a permanent fixture in her brain.
"Why don't you get back inside before you catch a chill," he'd said, breaking the silence and patting her lightly on the shoulder, like after all that, it was the only physical intimacy he could muster, which wasn't offensive, just ironic.
"Okay," she'd agreed, smiling lightly as Barry gave her one last quick shoulder pat to remember him by and walked around to the other side of the truck. He drove away a few seconds later, and Diana never saw him again. And that was the first and last time she'd ever had sex.
She spilled the news to her mother over New Year's Day salads during some local parade on the community cable station. She hadn't intended to tell her, but the memory was still shooting butterflies through her stomach and Mrs. Christopher kept insisting she say what was on her mind. She wasn't used to seeing Diana so happy—especially not during bland diet lunches and good-natured programming. The teenage daughter she knew was into junk food and trash TV—this bright, sunny attitude was extremely out of line. She worried that Diana had gotten her hands on some kind of weight loss amphetamines and the speed had gone straight to her brain. After some prodding, Diana finally admitted that she was sorry to burst her mother's bubble—she wasn't on a diet—but that she was extremely happy because she'd met a man at the Suttons' party. And, yes, by "man," she meant older. And, yes, they did have sex. Of course, Mrs. Christopher did not share in Diana's jubilation. In fact, she'd staunchly disapproved, forcing Diana to spend an entire day at the free clinic testing for pregnancy and diseases because she was too embarrassed for Dr. Mason to know that her daughter had been "loose." Diana didn't really know much about AIDS then, but looking back now, she could see why her mother was so upset that she'd had unprotected sex with a stranger—information she hadn't volunteered when she'd told her about Barry, but had been forced to admit when asked if he'd worn a condom, which was a question she hadn't expected and, since she was terrible at lying on the spot, was also a question her mother had known the answer to before Diana could even think to make one up. But after all the tests came back negative, it was no longer the fact that she'd risked her health and safety that Mrs. Christopher so harshly objected to, but the fact that Barry was so much older and that Diana had essentially acted like one of those women that every girl's mother warns her not to become—a slut. And this was the disapproval that had gotten Diana through so many of life's boring moments, which there never seemed to be a shortage of during her teenage years. For months, even when the most exciting event in her day was dessert, she was able to walk around like she had a life. And better yet, a romantic life that her mother resented. Many lonely walks home from school and countless sleepless nights were passed fantasizing about similar opportunities she might have to incur her mother's disapproval in the future. But unfortunately, most men she met with were not as desperate as Barry, and the only way Diana would ever manage to provoke her mother's disapproval again, besides with her weight, was in her not being able to find a man since she lost her virginity at age seventeen.
"Would you like some more cookies, dear?" The sweet sound of Mrs. Bartle's voice pulled Diana away from the memory of the one passionate thing that had ever happened to her and drew her attention to the embarrassing reality that thinking about sex had caused her to unknowingly devour an entire plate of peanut butter cookies. She wondered if Mrs. Bartle had even gotten a chance to eat one.
"Okay."
As her friend headed to the pantry, Diana made a promise to herself. If I kick this cancer thing, she vowed, I WILL have sex again . . . and it won't be in the back of a pickup truck this time.