CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"How's your mother, dear?"
Mrs. Bartle's question was the same every Thursday. And Diana always appreciated it. Rather than asking how lunch was—because she knew the answer would be negative—Mrs. Bartle simply asked how her mom was, leaving the decision to complain or merely say "fine" solely up to Diana. And usually, unless she really needed to vent, "fine" was just about all Diana ever said. But today was very different. Today, Diana said "good." And Mrs. Bartle almost dropped her teacup.
"Good?" she asked, smiling as she braced herself for a story.
"Good," Diana said matter-of-factly, sipping her tea in an ever-so-nonchalant fashion, and just waiting for her completely unintrusive friend who had innocently taken the bait to swallow it and beg for more. And that's exactly what Mrs. Bartle did.
"Good as in good?" she pressed eagerly. Diana smiled. She knew it had to be the first time in this woman's entire life that she'd ever attempted to pry. She wasn't very good at it.
"Good as in good," Diana echoed, teasing her a little. But seeing that Mrs. Bartle was about to give up, she threw her another line. "Well, good as in I had an enjoyable time."
"An enjoyable time?"
"Yes."
"Enjoyable as in fun?"
"Enjoyable as in fun."
"Fun, huh?"
"Fun, yes."
"Good." And a discouraged Mrs. Bartle turned back to her tea. Diana could see this was going to take a while.
What she did eventually end up telling Mrs. Bartle was that she and her mother had laughed that afternoon. Like really and truly laughed. It hadn't been over anything especially poignant or symbolic, just Mrs. Christopher's inability to understand the waiter's Chinese accent when he'd asked if she wanted a fork to replace the one she'd dropped on the floor. Judging by her mother's startled expression and the blushing manner in which she shook her head no thank you, Diana knew that her ears had heard something different, and she had to explain to Mrs. Christopher that "Wanna fuck?" was probably not the offer he'd made. The relief on her mother's face had caused Diana to smile, which, in turn, made her mother laugh. It was a genuine laugh, freakishly yet comfortingly unlike the usual ha-ha's that every so often emerged from this woman whose sense of humor tended to take incredibly long vacations. The queen of condescending You-had-to-be-there's and I'm-laughing-AT-you-and-not-with-you 's had actually broken into an honest and uncontrollable bout of giggles. And it was one that was intriguingly contagious, for pretty soon their table shook with a rumbling, two-sided laughter that made Diana drop her own fuck on the floor. The waiter then rushed over to offer another fuck, propelling the eye-tearing laugh fest into serious overtime. Of course, Diana didn't tell Mrs. Bartle these details. No matter how close the two of them were, she just couldn't bring herself to mention the f-word in front of her. But it didn't matter anyway because Mrs. Bartle wouldn't be asking what had been so funny—she'd already reached her life's prying limit by getting Diana to disclose the fact that she and her mother had laughed; over what wasn't really important. What was important was that Diana had gotten through a lunch with her mother without wanting to kill anybody—not even herself.
On the way to their cars, Diana had felt an incredible urge to tell her mother all about her new weight loss incentive. She'd wanted to say, Hey Mom, guess what? I didn't eat anything fattening on my break. And I skipped my chocolate banana muffin and large coffee with hazelnut cream this morning. But then her secret would have been out, and Mrs. Christopher would have known that Diana had gotten fat by actually eating fattening food. There'd be no more playing of the innocent I-don't-know-why-I-keep-gaining-weight card, which was the one she always carried around her mother in order to avoid being branded with the added stigmas of being gluttonous, unmotivated and out-of-control, in addition to fat—these other things were easier to hide, and Mrs. Christopher need not know about them. The truth was that Diana knew perfectly well that strawberry shortcake and muffins from The Doughnut Bin were fattening, but she'd always figured that since God had already denied her all other pleasures in life, she might as well indulge herself in the ones that were at her fingertips, even if the gratification she got from them was fleeting. Up until yesterday, that had been her rationale, a rationale she was not about to even consider trying to explain to her mother now that she'd discarded it. So she didn't tell her about that day's dieting triumphs. And keeping her weight loss goal undercover made her feel like she had something important going on, something private, something that even her know-it-all mother didn't know about. For the first time since Barry and the pickup truck, she felt like she had a life.