“But …” Bethanne spoke up. “It’s not just you on the walk. It’s a group of people.”
Pam nodded slowly as she picked up the story. “And you don’t want to disrupt the pace. You don’t want to ask them to stop for you.”
Kelly wiped a tear. “You don’t want to complain. You don’t want to be difficult.”
“So you go with the flow,” I said, not knowing when the mood of the room shifted, but it did. And everyone shared the same moment … the same thoughts without really saying much at all. “Until you can’t take it. And you say something.”
“And you realize you should have just stayed quiet because when they see the rock … it looks so tiny. And you look ridiculous for making a big deal out of nothing,” Bethanne finished the scenario.
Or you empty your other shoe filled with more tiny rocks. Then … you let them know the rocks are their fault. They leave … and never return.
Fucking tiny rock …
“My husband scratched his junk then sniffed his fingers. I don’t think he knew I saw him, but I did, and it was a total turnoff.” Bonnie wrinkled her nose—so did everyone else. “I mean … it was his junk, not mine. It wasn’t the end of the world. It was just a gross thing he did. I suppose it was no different than someone smelling their armpits to see if they have BO. Right? I suppose he just couldn’t bend his nose down that far.”
A few of us snorted suppressed laughs as Bonnie smirked.
“Rick would gag on his toothbrush … Every. Single. Time.”
“Toby had a few teeth knocked out from playing hockey, and he wore a removable denture or bridge thing in public. But at home, he took it out because it was uncomfortable. And I totally understood. You should be able to just relax at home. But … here’s the awful, embarrassing but … I hated looking at him with missing teeth. So I didn’t. He’d talk and I’d look at anything but his face. Quick glances to make eye contact, but I couldn’t look at his mouth. Terrible. Right?”
A collective head shake moved like a wave around the room. Maybe it was terrible, but we all had our “buts,” so it felt hypocritical to judge—it felt unchristian to admit it aloud.
WWJD? He would’ve looked at Toby’s gnarly smile and seen past it to his beautiful soul. But Jesus walked on water, so I always found the WWJD bar to be a bit high for the average modern-day sinner.
The “I loved my husband but” statements rolled off the tongues of all the sinners/widows that night.
“Eating with his mouth open.”
“Removing his dirty underwear and tossing them on the bed right before getting into bed.”
“Always talking politics.”
“Scoping out women—not so slyly.”
“Assuming I would cater to him like his mom—laundry, cooking, cleaning, picking up after him.”
“Butchering all the songs on the radio by singing to them without knowing the words.”
“Never walking the recyclables to the garage, just leaving them on the counter like they would grow legs and leave on their own.”
“Tea bags on the edge of our clean sink.”
“Long fingernails.”
And then … the original scratch-and-sniff comment took second place as Rhonda arrived late. And she’d heard the next comment all too clearly.
“He wanted to go down on me when it was that time of the month.”
Silence.
So much deafening silence.
Rhonda cleared her throat, clutching it at the same time, eyes like saucers. “Wh-what are we talking about, ladies?” She stressed the ladies as if to remind us that we were in fact expected to act like ladies.
Not whores.
At least, I felt like that was what Rhonda’s tone of voice insinuated. The whore part might have just been my guilty conscience. Abby letting Ryan go down on her during her period didn’t make her a whore. It made her … lucky? I was actually quite horny during my period, especially toward the end. But I didn’t have sex during it. Craig never even suggested it. And oral sex during that special time of the month? No way. But I didn’t like meat that wasn’t charred. Ryan probably liked his steak rare.
Abby, with her back to Rhonda, cringed. We all cringed, even if outwardly we tried to act like Mom didn’t just walk in on us talking about some bloody good sex.
“Abby was just remembering how Ryan would go down to the pharmacy during her menstrual cycle to get sanitary napkins and chocolate. What a total sweetheart, huh?” Bethanne for the save.
I wasn’t sure if Rhonda bought it, but there was no way she was going to question it and risk the actual topic going any further.
“That is sweet.” Rhonda eyed me. ME!
What did I do? Oh, right … I turned our church-based group into a confessional of all the things that drove people crazy about their significant other, instead of the gathering of gratitude and prayer that it was meant to be.