Dolores

Dolores smiled as she entered the book store. She always smiled. Twenty-seven years after escaping her parents' grasp, her mother's words echoed as if they'd just been spoken: No man will put up with a woman with a sour face.

After her father died when she was eleven, her mother had changed. And the man who became Dolores's step father had accelerated her mother's descent. The insanity of her parents became the air Dolores breathed for so long that she no longer recognized their effect.

So Dolores smiled in spite of her losses. The house was empty now. Jeff, the man she'd fallen in love with that first summer out of the house, had left her for a sports car and a personal trainer who looked amazing in Spandex. The kids had left to build their own lives in California and Michigan. Dolores was stripped naked of her life's framework and purpose.

But she still smiled. No man will put up with a woman with a sour face. Or, as it turned out, a smiling one.

After her shower this morning, she'd stopped in front of the mirror and studied her body. Gravity and forty-five years of being a mother and a wife had left their mark. Things that used to be firm now sagged. The battle with gray hair progressed each day toward inevitable defeat and the box of Clarol that went with it. And the face that had once been smooth and innocent now bared the creases of time and disappointment.

But she was forty-five, and maybe she looked good for her age. She was a little thicker around the middle, but she wasn't fat by any means. And the kid at the deli counter almost seemed to be hitting on her yesterday.

So she smiled as she entered the book store, in spite of the internal battle between the part of her that viewed herself as a sagging old maid in waiting, and the part who dared to hope about her newfound freedom.

The first part of the writers' group meeting buzzed by like a drunken, muddled dream. She felt as if she were naked and she waited for people to notice. These people, the ones she'd met with since before Jeff left, seemed to like her well enough. But wait until they got to see the real her, the sagging failed housewife who couldn't keep her husband.

Who cared if she'd been promoted three times in two years. Her Lexus didn't mean anything about her personally. Your value as a woman is based on your value as a wife. That's what her mother had said.

And so she waited and smiled. And when her name was called and she stood up, she smiled in spite of feeling she'd either pee her pants or vomit. She wore the loose-fitting tan khakis that clung just enough to show off her butt, and an oversized white blouse with a light blue t-shirt underneath. Her friend Kerri told her it was her best outfit. She'd spent an extra twenty minutes on her make-up and hair this morning. At the last minute, she decided to wear the pearls Jeff bought her for their twentieth anniversary.

"Now," said Henry, the venerable writers' group leader said, "Dolores will honor us by reading from her novel. I've gotten a sneak peak, and I think you're all in for a treat."

She stepped forward encouraged by Henry's gentle smile. He reminded her of her father, the one whose death had pushed her life off course. But when she turned from him to face the others in attendance, she felt for all the world like her carefully selected clothes didn't exist. Still, she smiled.

When she opened her mouth, the only sound that escaped was "Uhhh."

Count to ten, she thought. You gave birth to two kids; you can do this.

Then she heard herself speak and time snapped forward. She read and finished and received the applause everyone got when they read. Then she sat down and noticed the man watching her. He was younger by about ten years and rail thin. She must have something on her teeth because he kept looking at her. Maybe her lipstick. She died inside and cursed herself for not checking the mirror one last time before she left.

After the medeting, after all the compliments from fellow group members, he approached.

"Dolores?" he said. His voice was deeper than it should have been, but his eyes were a breath-taking light blue.

"Uhh, hi," she said. Without thinking, she tucked her hair behind her right ear.

"That was fantastic, what you read." He wore a wedding ring.

"Gee, uhh, thanks." Idiot, she thought, you sound like a moron.

"I'm Glenn Hurley. Henry said I should come and listen to your work. He said that you're a very talented woman with a beautiful soul," he said. "I'd say he's right."

When he held his hand out, it contained a card with the word agency on it.

"If you can e-mail me the first fifty pages, I'd love to read them."

She put her hand to her chest and fingered the pearls. "Uhh, sure." The smile, her phony one, fell away. And yet she still smiled. Her heart fluttered and then caught, like the lawn mower the day before, when she mowed the lawn for the first time in her life.

She talked with Glenn for the next twenty minutes. When he said he had to go, the rest of the group had left, except Henry. He sat at one of the tables and read something by Dean Koontz. As she approached, he looked up.

"So?" His voice was like warm chocolate.

She sat across the table from him, touched his hand, and told him everything. When she finished, he patted her hand.

"In all the time I've known you, this is the first time I've seen you really smile."

She blushed.

"And if you want my opinion, Jeff is an ass. You're better off free of him."

They talked and sipped coffee until he said he had to go. Later that night when she looked at herself in the mirror, she still sagged and the creases were still there. But the smile extended from her mouth clear to her heart.