Loose Screws by Karen Templeton Page A

back to him. ” I look up, fighting the tears prickling my eyelids. “He humiliated me. If, by some chance, he wants me back, he’d have some major groveling to do. But…”
    â€œOh, Lord. Here we go.” Terrie lets out an annoyed sigh. Shelby shushes her.
    â€œBut what, honey?”
    â€œYou weren’t there,” I say. “You didn’t see Phyllis’s face when she told me that I was the best thing that ever happened to Greg. That I would have been more of an asset to him than he could possibly have understood. That…” I take a deep breath, setting up the punch line. “That women are always the ones who have to fix things, that pride is a commodity we can’t afford.”
    â€œThat’s true,” I hear Shelby whisper beside me, although Terrie lets out an outraged, “Oh, give me a freaking break. ” Her eyes are flashing now, boy, as she leans across the table and buries herself in my gaze.
    â€œGirl, men have been able to get away with the crap they have for thousands of years because women like Phyllis Munson feel they have some sort of duty to perpetuate that myth. God—it makes me so mad, I could spit.” At this, she gets up, grabs her handbag from the buffet along one wall, rummaging inside it without thinking for the cigarettes that aren’t there, since she quit smoking a year ago. So she slams the bag back down onto the buffet and turns back to me, one hand parked on her hip.
    â€œWhat that man did to you isn’t forgivable. Or fixable. I mean, come on—he calls you up and apologizes on the phone? ”
    Shelby actually laughs. Terrie and I both turn to her. “Well, of course he did,” she says. “He’s a man.”
    â€œNo kind of man I’d want hanging around me, that’s for damn sure. Besides, none of us is ever gonna break these chains of male domination and oppression if we don’t change the way we think about who’s gotta do what—”
    â€œOh, get off your high horse, Terrie,” Shelby says, a neat little crease between her brows. “Women are the peacemakers, honey. We always have been. That’s a sociological, not to mention biological, fact.”
    â€œAnd I suppose you think that means we have to kowtow to them on every single issue?”
    â€œNo, of course not. But what good does it do for us to back them into a corner, either?”
    â€œMaking them accountable isn’t backing them into a corner.”
    Shelby goes very still, then says quietly, “Says the woman who’s had two marriages crumble out from under her.”
    Uh-oh.
    I stand up, my hands raised. “Hey, guys? This is supposed to be all about me, you know—”
    â€œShut up, Ginger,” they both say, then Terrie says to Shelby, “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
    Twin dots of color stain my cousin’s cheeks, but I can tell she’s not going to back down. “That I’ve watched you with your boyfriends, your husbands, how every relationship you’ve ever had has degenerated into a mental wrestling match. How your obsession with never letting a man…control you, or whatever it is you’re so afraid a man’s going to do to you, has always been more important to you than the relationship itself. No wonder you can’t keep a man, Terrie—you castrate every male who comes close.”
    Terrie actually flinches, as if she’s been slapped. A second later, though, she comes back with, “You are so full of it.”
    â€œAm I?” is Shelby’s calm reply. “Then how come I’m the only one in the room who knows who she’s going to bed with tonight?”
    Holy jeez.
    Terrie glares at my cousin for several seconds, then snatches her purse off the chair and heads for the door, throwing “If you need to talk, Ginge, call me” over her shoulder before she yanks open the front door, slams it shut