All her life, Gloria wondered what it would be like to be so beautiful that it made men look hungry, like starving dogs panting over a bone. But they didn’t always look that way—sometimes they seemed angry when they saw her mother, as if her dark eyes and perfect face were purposely made to piss them off.
But Gloria didn’t know what it was like to be beautiful, and she’d never know. She took after her father—tall and thin, plain-faced. When she was young, she’d overhear people say that she’d grow out of it, that ugly girls became lovely women, but that never happened with her; she was the same at forty as she was the day she was born. Her mother never said anything about it, but her father did.
“I always liked the smart girls better than pretty ones,” he’d say, although they both knew it was a lie, because he liked nothing better than to stare at his wife; she was no dummy, but not a genius either. “You’ll be a good wife someday.”
Not that her mother wasn’t a good wife, but she brought out something in her husband, something ugly and stupid and possessive, although no one except Gloria ever saw it. Like the time Gloria was ten, and her father was convinced that the butcher and his wife were having an affair, because she’d smiled as she’d ordered her roast for dinner, and even something as innocent as a smile was suspicious, and he’d asked her about it that night, accused her of being unfaithful, and then he’d pointed a gun at her face for three hours, one of the rifles he used for hunting elk in the fall. They’d been like that for a long time, her mother standing up against the kitchen counter, her father sitting at the table, the butt of the rifle nestled against the meat of his thigh, the TV droning on in the background and the beef in the oven. Her mother didn’t cry out when she saw the gun, didn’t seem at all surprised, and Gloria wondered if her mother had been waiting for that moment, if she’d spent her whole marriage sure her husband would kill her while dinner burned to a crisp.
“Go to your room,” her mother had said, but Gloria had hid behind the couch in the living room instead, curled her knees up to her chest and listened, breathed in the dust bunnies and tried to keep from sneezing. She couldn’t make out everything her father was saying, but she was sure something bad was going to happen. Gloria was a girl, but she’d grown up fast, she’d had to, most girls do, and she’d seen how her father’s love for his wife bordered on obsession, that he treated her in the same way a greedy man treats his money, like he owned her, worshipped her. She needed to be captured, hidden away where no one else could see, like treasure in a vault. Or just destroyed.
Gloria fell asleep behind the couch, listening for a gunshot that never came, and woke up when her mother was carrying her into the bathroom, whispering that she needed to relieve herself before she went to bed, so there wouldn’t be any accidents in the middle of the night. Her mother kept the bathroom light off, so there was only the glow coming from the hallway, yellow and comforting.
“Why did Daddy do that?” she’d asked, swaying as she sat on the cold toilet seat, only half-awake and struggling to make sense of anything. Her mother was kneeling on the cold tile, waiting for Gloria to finish so she could help with her pants and put her to bed, and she didn’t look at all beautiful then, only tired and sad, and very old.
“I don’t know,” her mother said. “I guess it’s because he loves me so much.”
*
When you get married the diner’s yours, her father had told her when she was young, and she’d go in and sit in a booth, one that was toward the back and out of the way, and a waitress would come by with a malted and fries for her, and she’d imagine how it would be to own all of it, how she’d make it better. She’d have the old tables replaced with nice new ones, and throw away the cheap plastic ferns that stood in all the corners. Put different things on the menu. Cakes, or pie. Gloria’s mother could cook anything except cake. It was the altitude, she complained. Denver sat a mile high, and that was too far up for a cake to rise, and hers were always sunken, like someone had come by and thrown a rock in the middle.
But Gloria never had a boyfriend. There were no prom dates in high school, no Friday nights at the drive-in. Her mother tried to set her up with boys from the church, but those always fell through, and her father never said a word about it, but she knew he thought she was a lesbian. She knew because of the way he looked at her sometimes, and when, after high school, he pushed her into college. You need a way to support yourself, he’d said, but halfheartedly, not meeting her eye. Just in case.