As always, the talking was like the eating of potato chips, and the next thing we knew, we'd turned on the TV—just for a minute, we decided. “Just to see Cheryl Browne.” “Just till the next commercial break.” “Just till her talent, then we'll turn it off.” Then the pageant was over and we'd watched pretty much the whole thing. It was the only year we all rooted for the same contestant.
We did watch the pageant differently that year—at least there was that. We weren't so wrapped up in ball gowns and bathing suits. We spent the time talking about what femininity meant and what it should mean—not “being smart enough to be dumb around a man,” we agreed.
“Though I've done that,” I said. “With boys I dated in high school before I met Danny.”
“I even put answers I knew were wrong on tests sometimes,” Ally admitted, “so the boy I was dating would do better than me.”
“Maybe I should have done that,” Brett said. “I was great at science, sure, but I never had a date until Chip.”
“It's not just us,” Kath said. “Do y'all ever watch Barbara Walters on the Today show? She waits for the men to finish asking their questions before she says a word.”
“She has to, it's in her contract,” Brett said.
“Seriously?” Ally said.
“I think my problem is I confuse ‘feminine’ with ‘perfect,’” I said. “My hips are too wide, so I feel like a barking dog even though Danny swears he adores my hips. It's tough being raised with the Virgin Mary as the girl I was supposed to be.”
“Virgin, but still she gets the child,” Ally said. “The Son of God, no less.”
“From a Darwinian standpoint, men are dependent on us, too, though,” Brett said. “No women, no babies.”
“But men can have identities without babies,” Ally said. “Jim wants children even more than I do because family is so important in his culture, but he's supposed to be the breadwinner and he is, and I'm supposed to care for the family and I can't even produce the children I'm supposed to care for.”
“I think Frankie is right about this perfection thing,” Linda said. “I bet even these girls on the TV see themselves in terms of their shortcomings.”
“My knees are too big, my breasts too small,” Ally said.
“My little piggy toes are a whopping size nine and a half.”
“My glasses.” I tipped them for effect. “And my hair is downright goofy.”
“Mine is the frizzliest mess—I swear sometimes I might could just shave it all off and be done with it,” Kath said.
“Mine flattens before noon and the ends are all split,” Linda said. “But I don't know about bald, Kath. It'd be like lacking breasts.”
“Without either one you're androgynous,” Brett agreed. She looked down at her own flat chest and started laughing, and we all laughed with her.
“At least you aren't overly intellectual,” she said when she'd recovered from laughing.
“Or ambitious. God forbid I should be ambitious,” I said.
“Heavens to Betsy, I'm just too good a writer to be a girl!” Ally said, and that made us all laugh again.
Okay, our laughter might have had something to do with the cocktails, which also might have been the source of our courage, but we did start talking that night about our own talents in a real way—not the batons we would have twirled in a beauty pageant, but our talents as writers: Linda's graceful sentences, Ally's imagination, Kath's memorable dialogue, Brett's settings, which made worlds spring to life, and my “voice,” which I thought was just the way I spoke (exactly, they said). Then, maybe because we were drinking, the fantasizing began.
“Readers in bookstores and libraries,” Ally said.
“In recliners, or curled up in bed,” Brett said.
“Interviews,” Kath said.
“Bestseller lists—why not?” Linda said.
“The Pulitzer Prize,” I said.
“How about a big ol' monument,” Kath said. “One in our pretty little Pardee Park.”
“After we're all in our coffins for real,” Brett said.
“Something that says the Wednesday Sisters got their start together, right there,” Linda said.
“A fresco,” I said.
“All of us huddled over our picnic table, children swinging in the background,” Brett said. “Like the oil painting of the Round Table regulars at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, but in a medium that will weather well.”
“Not that it's the publishing that matters,” Linda said. “It's the writing that matters. Even if we never publish a word.”