I had a new level of admiration. That lie had come to her all in one piece.
It was a relief to know I got it honest.
The ad was in the back of a magazine: “Alone and lonely? Looking for a pen pal? Or maybe more? Sign up to Romeo’s Lonely Hearts Club and correspond with the likeminded utilizing our safe and confidential service. Romeo Lonely Hearts Club guarantees your satisfaction one hundred percent or double your money back.”
Here’s how it worked. For a small fee, the folks at Romeo’s Lonely Hearts Club would act as a go-between, relaying messages back and forth. Aunt Lila invested two dollars in her future and sent off the application, including a few words to stir up some interest: “Gay divorcee ready to find true love—this slim, blue-eyed beauty operator is seeking to meet a man of substance. No louts, boozers, gamblers, lotharios, unemployed, or left-handed.”
I asked her what a lothario was and what was wrong with being left-handed.
“Nothing personal against the left-handed,” she said. “It’s not their fault. But bumping elbows with a leftie the rest of my life would sooner or later get on my nerves.”
She didn’t tell me what a lothario was, and I forgot to ask her again.
Before long the Romeo Lonely Hearts Club sent Aunt Lila a letter telling her about the men who were waiting to make her acquaintance. She could write to as many as she wanted, signing each letter with the number the Romeo people assigned to her. You could keep your real name a secret.
She’d done exactly what they said—and she’d told the truth about herself too.
Well, pretty much.
She hadn’t said that she was a smoker or that she’d been married not just once, but twice before. I wasn’t sure leaving out those details was the same as lying, but I hoped she’d crossed her fingers just in case.
After the toupee man, her responses came in batches:
Dear 109,
Let me introduce myself proper-like. I’m a man of medium height and build and means. My job for the better part of two years is to travel around the town filling vending machines with different brands of cigarettes. But I am quitting it since I recently broke the vile habit that I acquired in the U.S. Army, which I am no longer in since I lost my right eye in the War. No more coffin nails for me. Only nicotine-free need answer.
Number 554
She wadded that one up and did an overhand shot into the wastebasket.
Aunt Lila was a smoker, although she pretended not to be, while I pretended I didn’t know a thing about the Lucky Strikes she kept in her purse at all times.
“Nothing worse than a recently reformed man,” she said, looking to me for agreement.
There were two other letters in this batch:
Dear Miss,
I’m a God-fearing man who is seeking holy matrimony with a thrifty woman of quiet nature who is a excellent cook, keeps a orderly house and performs other wifely duties without a rebellious spirit as dictated by scripture. If you doubt this is the true word of God, search out Ephesians 5:22–24.
No. 368
That letter was wadded up too.
Aunt Lila said she hadn’t been divorced twice for nothing.
“I haven’t kowtowed to anyone so far, and I’m not about to start now. Don’t you ever kowtow either,” she told me.
I promised I wouldn’t.
Along with harlot, which Grandpa had used in his last sermon, I added kowtow and lothario to words I needed to look up in the dictionary.
The next letter sounded a little better:
Dear #109,
You must be a beautiful woman with a name such as that. Ha Ha. My hope is that you will wish to further our acquaintance. I am in retail sales with Sears Roebuck & Co. where I am in haberdashery. So, hats off to you. Ha Ha.
#716
After a suitable period of time of letters going back and forth, Aunt Lila decided to meet #716. She liked a man with a sense of humor.
Having learned her lesson by letting the man we called Romeo One come to the house, she arranged to meet up with Romeo Two at the Tip-Top Café downtown. If things didn’t go well, she could make a getaway.
She spent an extra-long time getting ready for her date, although every time I called it that she told me to quit it because it wasn’t one. After she’d tried on most everything in her closet, Mother and Vonnie and I agreed she should wear a fitted navy-blue dress with a sweetheart neckline. Grandma liked another blue dress with a flared skirt. Blue was Aunt Lila’s best color—it matched her eyes.
Ignoring all of us, she decided on a sky-blue dress, topping it with a yellow jacket with white piping and buttons that looked like daisies, saying it made her feel like the spring chicken Mother kept telling her she no longer was. Mother was five years younger.
“Well, you’re right about one thing,” Mother said. “It does make you look like a chicken.”
Aunt Lila took the jacket off and put it back in the closet, and Mother nodded approval.
Grandma said they pecked back and forth worse than me and Vonnie.
As soon as we heard the door bang shut, we all headed to the front room. Aunt Lila was back from her date, or whatever it was she wanted us to call it. She flopped into a chair and threw her legs over the padded arm, kicking her black-and-white spectator heels to the floor and wiggling her stockinged toes.
“He seemed all right at first, real pleasant and easygoing. But then he started in telling jokes. And every one of them about hats. Another hat joke out of him and I’d have gone plumb batty.”
“Tell me a hat joke!” I begged.
“Okay,” she said, “but hold your nose—I wanted to wear my camouflage hat today, but I couldn’t find it.
“After he told that joke he’d thrown his head back and guffawed. No,” she said, “it
