“You’re a generous spirit, Flo.”
The women sit quietly for a while, and then Teresa says, “I have been thinking about how someone like me is regarded. A spinster, you know. An old maid.”
Spinster! Flo thinks. Old maid! Oh, poor Teresa. She says, “I can’t imagine that anyone would think of you that way.”
Teresa shrugs. “I don’t mind. It’s what I am.” She smiles, but Flo doesn’t believe Teresa doesn’t mind.
“Teresa, tell me. Are you unhappy?”
“Isn’t everyone, sometimes?”
“I’m asking because of something you said. Are you unhappy about being alone?”
Teresa thinks for a moment. Then she says, “I resent the implication that a person has to be with anotherpersonto be happy.”
“But people do seem to need each other. Would you agree with that?”
Teresa leans back in her chair. “You know what, Flo? I was in McDonald’s the other day and there was a really old woman working there. She was clearing tables and wiping them down. And sometimes I wonder about what’s going to happen to me when I get too old to do what I do, and I saw that woman and I thought, Well, I could do that. I wouldn’t mind that job, wiping down tables, seeing what the people ate, listening in on the conversations that are going on. Plus I’d get a free lunch! I imagined where that woman might live; a small apartment, probably overheated, a nice chair to sit on, sliders onto a little balcony just loaded with plants, a lamp in the window. And—”
“Oh, Teresa,” Flo says, shaking her head.
“It’s notsad,” Teresa says. “I really wouldn’t mind it. A job where you see people all the time, and you don’t have to think too much. A job with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. No complications to think about when you get home. You live as you want to live.”
“What about friends?” Flo asks. “Don’t you think there’s some value in having friends, at least?”
Teresa looks over at her. “Aren’t we friends?”
“Well, yes, of course,” Flo says. “But wouldn’t you be happier coming home from your McDonald’s jobtosomeone?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Teresa says, and at that moment she seems to Flo to look just like a little kid.
Flo says, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to push you intomyway of thinking.”
“It’s okay. Sometimes I…” She turns to face Flo more directly. “When I was growing up, all my friends had the same ideals for the man they would like to marry. Rich, handsome, witty…you know. But all I ever wanted was a man who was true.”
Flo sighs. “Yes. But how do you ever know for sure?”
“Did you ever hear that saying, ‘You can never know the whole man, but you can know the true man’?” Teresa asks.
“Never did hear that. What’s it mean?” Flo shifts her position slightly. Her stomach hurts, but she doesn’t want to tell Teresa. She wants to know the answer to the question she asked.
Teresa picks up Flash and puts him in her lap. She strokes the cat’s back, long, slow strokes, and he closes his eyes. “I think it means you can never really get to the bottomof knowing a person,” Teresa says. “There’s so much inside each of us. But you can get a strong sense of certain fundamental qualities. You can come to a point of knowingenough. I guess what I wanted was a man with a sense of integrity. A willingness to share. And a kind of vulnerability.”
“You talk like it’s too late.”
“It is too late.”
“Oh, Teresa, it is not.”
“It is!”
“You want to step outside and we’ll settle this thing?” Flo asks, and a cloud of tension dissipates.
Flash hops down from Teresa’s lap. He is wearing a little harness Teresa got for him that Flo thinks even he cannot escape. He has a leash on, too, and for some reason Flo finds this funny, and she laughs.
“What?” Teresa asks.
“A leash on a cat!”
