Bitter Sweet Read Online Free PDF Page A

promising they’d plan a trip to Florida together for Easter vacation, the shock of hearing that the plane had gone down with fifty-six people aboard, the agony of sending dental records and waiting for the names of the dead to be confirmed, the bizarre sense of phantasm attending a memorial service without a body while television cameras panned her and Katy’s faces.
    And of what happened afterward.
    ‘It’s really strange what happens when you’re widowed. Your best friends treat you as if you have leprosy. You’re............ ,..,.,..uqa, yuu know? The fifth at bridge. The one without a scat belt. Phillip and I belonged to a country club but even there things have changed. Our friends - well, I thought they were our friends until he died and I got propositioned by two of them while their wives teed off less than twenty feet away. After that I gave up golf. Last spring I finally let one of the faculty members talk me into going out on a blind date.’
    ‘How was it?’
    ‘Disastrous.’
    ‘You mean like Frankie Peterson?’
    ‘Frankie Peterson?’
    ‘Yeah, you remember Frankie Peterson, don’t you? A finger in every hole?’
    Maggie burst out laughing. She laughed to the point of weakness until she was lying back in the chair with the phone caught on her shoulder.
    ‘Good lord, I’d forgotten about Frankie Peterson.’ ‘How could any girl from Gibraltar High forget Frank the Crank? He stretched out more elastic than the Green Bay Packers?
    They laughed some more, and when it ended, Brookie said seriously, ‘So tell me about this guy they lined you up with. Tried to put the shaft in you, did he?’
    ‘Exactly. At
one o’clock
in the morning. On my doorstep, for pete’s sake. It was horrible. You get out of practice at fighting them off, you know? It was embarrassing, and belittling and.., and.., well, honest to God, Brookie, it made me so angry!’
    ‘So what’d you do, punch him out, or what?’
    ‘I slammed the door in his face and came in the house and made meatballs.’
    ‘M-meatballs?’ Brookie was laughing so hard she could scarcely get the word out.
    For the first time Maggie found the humour in the situation that had seemed so insulting at the time. She laughed with Brookie, great shaking laughs that robbed her of breath and left her nursing a sore stomach while she curled low on her spine and grinned at the ceiling.
    ‘God, it’s good to talk to you, Brookie. I haven’t laughed like this in months.’
    ‘Well, at least I’m good for something besides spawning.’ Still more laughter before the line grew quiet and Maggie mined serious again. “It’s a real change.’ Slumping comfortably, she rocked on the leather chair, toying with the phone cord. ‘You’re so hard up - not just for sex, but for affection. Then you go out on a date and when he tries to kiss you you stiffen up and make a fool of yourself. I did it again last week.’
    ‘Another blind date?’
    ‘Well, not quite blind. A man who works at my supermarket who lost his wife several years ago, too. I’ve known him as a passing acquaintance for years, and I could kind of sense that he liked me. Anyway, my grief group kept after me to ask him to do something, so I finally did. You don’t want to think that doesn’t feel awkward! The last time I dated it was the men who did the asking. Now it’s everybody. So I asked, and he tried to kiss me, and/just... I just froze.’
    “Hey, don’t rush it, Mag. They say it takes a while, and that’s only two dates.’
    ‘Yeah... well...’ Maggie sighed, braced her temple with a finger and admitted, ‘A person gets horny, you know. It clouds the judgement.’
    ‘Well, listen, you horny old broad, now that you’ve admitted it and I haven’t died of shock, do you feel better?’ ‘Infinitely.’
    ‘Well, that’s a relief.’
    ‘Dr Feldstein was right. He said talking with people from the past was healthy, that it takes us back to a time when we didn’t have much to worry