When Alma broke up with that good-for-nothing, I said to myself, “There. That’s settled, and we will just write this off as a phase.” I am often quick to do that, and it is one of the many things upon which I pride myself. I am good at moving on, tying ties – bowties, ascots, Windsors, Four-in-Hand, Pratts—whatever you want. I am also very good at giving advice, a skill I think goes underused in this day and age when people can just type in “why did he leave me?” into Google like there’s a smoky blue genie in their computer screen that will hand-pick an answer for them out of the ether of the internet. People are awfully silly, so I try to keep that in mind as I dispense advice.Alma and I were sitting in Panem et Circenses –which means Bread and Ciruses in Latin, which I know because I learned Latin while I took classes for my Confirmation when I was thirteen—and she had spilled the whole sob story about old what’s his name, Travis, who I thought was a total bumble-puss, which is Catholic for asshole, which I also learned in Confirmation classes. Alma’s doing this thing where she picks at her eyelashes, smudging up her mascara so she looks like a crank addict, so I say, “You look like a crank addict when you do that,” and then, even though I’d paid for lunch and bought us two bear claws and fancy whipped coffees, she goes, “Why do you have to be so judgmental all the time?”
One summer Alma and I went up to New Jersey for this volunteer junior missionary camp when we were fourteen, and I wouldn’t let her borrow my red and white polka-dot bra to wear under her flimsy little t-shirt to meet up with Danny McGuin after lights-out. She didn’t even accuse me of the normal stuff —you know, being jealous, acting like a prude, being a flat-out bitch—but instead said, “It looks like chicken pox anyways.” So ungrateful! She decided she didn’t need a bra, after all. So when I look at her, and I look at her flakey lipstick and smushed hair, which I can only hope is what heartbreak does to you, I feel sorry for her. I always feel sorry for her.
“Baby, I’m not judging. He doesn’t know how to act like a man. You don’t deserve that.” I think I must have Googled that some time, too, but I sure learned a hell of a lot else on the Internet. Nooses, you know. That’s all ties are, and I don’t need anyone on some forum explaining the difference between half-Windsor and whole. Alma wonders if maybe Travis will grow up for some woman, just not her. There are at least ten men in the diner staring at her, watching the red of her nail polish sparkle under the lights, as she tears another sugar packet for her drink. I watch the mascara settle into her skin like an old habit, and I take her hand.