How could they not talk about changing it, she wondered. What was she supposed to do, sit in a one-bedroom apartment for the next who knew how many years? Was she supposed to keep reporting in a town with no news, in a state with nothing to cover? Was she supposed to spend weekends in his mother’s guesthouse, sneaking across the lawn after the rest of the family went to bed? Is that what was worth keeping the same?
“Things have to change,” she told him. “That’s the way it is.”
“That’s bull,” he snapped. “Nothing has to change unless you want it to and I don’t like changes.”
Their first and only fight came soon after, following a day filled with too many hours of drinking. Drinking or not, she felt she was goaded into it.
They were at Carl’s apartment, a friend of Ronnie’s, when the men began making comments about the woman in the television movie they were watching.
“I always liked big tits,” Carl said. “You did too, didn’t you, Ron? Once, I mean,” he said with a loud shout of laughter and a pointed look at Ellen’s chest.
“Hell, why not,” Ronnie agreed and reached for another beer.
“What about that little lady from Midland? Darlene, that was her name, Darlene the barrel racer.”
Darlene’s name and phone number were written on the wall above the guesthouse phone.
Ronnie laughed.
“She was built,” Carl said.
“Remember her, Melissa?” he called over to his fiancé. “Like Dolly Parton.”
“Sure, sure,” said Melissa with a grimace.
“Like those big ones,” Carl said again.
“Tend to drag a bit,” Ellen commented.
Ronnie looked at her. Melissa smiled.
“Sure. About forty they are down to your knees,” Ellen continued. “In fact,” she sipped from her glass of wine, “women with big breasts have more breast cancer.”
She didn’t mean to say that exactly. She meant breast cancer was harder to find in large-breasted women. She let it stand.
“Really?” Melissa leaned forward in her chair.
“That’s bullshit,” Carl said, but he didn’t look so sure.
“Could be,” Ellen said and paused. She was about to pay them back for the breast comments along with the hours spent in a bar where she and Melissa had been ignored while the men swapped stories of mutual friends. Yes, she was going to tell the sportscaster’s story.
“Let me tell you,” she leaned close to Melissa, “what this sportscaster once told me.”
“What’s that?” Ronnie called from the kitchen.
“It’s about this size thing,” Ellen said to Melissa. “You know, this size thing men have about themselves. They all have it. This sportscaster told me they check each other out, even if they say it doesn’t matter.”
She could see Ronnie standing in the kitchen doorway.
“You know, all those magazine stories telling them it isn’t the size that matters, not the size of the baton that makes the music. All that Playboy stuff. Well, the guy says it’s all bull. He said he looked. I mean, he spent a lot of time in locker rooms, so he looked.”
She gave a hoot of laughter.
“What, what?” Melissa demanded happily.
“He said it was exactly what you’d expect. He said the weightlifters have these real little ones.” She made a measurement of about an inch with her thumb and forefinger.
Carl turned from the din of the television.
“What?” he demanded.
“They are tiny, really, really dinky. And he said football players are normal, no big deal, but basketball players are …”
Ronnie now stood over them. Ellen looked up, met his eyes, and went back to Melissa.
“That basketball players are enormous. That’s what he said.”
They both laughed.
“What the hell are they talking about?” Carl asked.
“The size of dicks,” Ronnie spat out. “Who has the biggest dick.”
“Oh,” Carl shrugged and turned back to the television.
Ellen looked up at Ronnie. There was no challenge in her eyes, no mocking, only a question. What would he do with her now?
“It was cheap, that’s all,” he said when they were back in the guesthouse bed.
“It was a story,” she said. “You and Carl sit around and talk about breasts and old girl friends. That’s okay, right?”
“It isn’t the same thing, Ellen, and for some reason you don’t get it.”
“It is exactly the same thing. You talk about breast size and Darlene. Okay, I’ll talk about men.”
“And cocks,” he spat. “That’s real nice. That’s the kind of woman a man wants to introduce to his friends.”
She lay in the darkness. She did not remind him of Melissa’s open laughter or Carl’s indifference.
“You embarrassed me and you embarrassed yourself,” he finished.
He raised himself on one arm and pounded his pillow into a desired shape.
“Ronnie, please.” She put her hand on his shoulder.
“Ellen, go to sleep or go into the house. I want to get some sleep.”
She waited for his touch, for him to roll over and reach for her. He did not.
“I had too much to drink last night,” she told Joan McBain and Sara the next morning over coffee at the kitchen table. Neither of them responded.
Ronnie came in later and read the paper as she sat and stared at the table. She started to apologize, to give her mumble about too much to drink.
“It’s not important, Ellen,” he said from behind the paper. “Forget it.”
She wasn’t sure why telling the sportscaster’s story was so wrong, but the hangover and Ronnie’s words in the guesthouse bed left her resolved to be more careful. She would try to act the way Ronnie expected a woman to act. She would tell fewer stories and do a lot less drinking. She couldn’t risk losing this man.
In the weeks that followed, she found herself trying to move closer to him, to be touching him, his back, his shoulder, his arm. She moved into him, watched him, waited for a sign that he had forgiven her and that she was doing things right, the way his woman should.
He gave no indication that his feelings for her had changed, but she sensed a difference. She believed he had seen something in her he didn’t like and the damage could not be undone.
Not long
