The Three Women

by Valerie Keogh

Friendship between women is different than friendship between men. It’s my women friends that keep starch in my spine, and without them, I don’t know where I would be. Jane Fonda

A seasoned woman is spicy. She has been marinated in life experiences. Like a complex wine, she can be alternately sweet, tart, sparkling, mellow. She is both maternal and playful. Assured, alluring, and resourceful. She is less likely to have an agenda than a young woman—no biological clock tick-tocking beside her lover’s bed, no campaign to lead him to the altar, no rescue fantasies. The seasoned woman knows who she is. She could be any one of us, as long as she is committed to living fully and passionately in the second half of her life, despite failures and false starts. Gail Sheehy

They’d been there about an hour when Joanne asked Megan, ‘What height are you? Five feet?’ Beth laughed, but if Megan was taken aback by the question, she didn’t say. ‘Four eleven. Short and dumpy.’

Twenty years. It was a long time to carry a lie.

Joanne had done things and made choices based on what had happened that terrible night. Now, looking across the table to where Megan sat, pale and weary, Joanne knew, given the same circumstances, she’d make the same choices again.

But when we went out it was another matter. I could see the sideways glances people gave as they wondered why two good-looking popular students wanted to be friends with someone so short, fat and ugly.’ ‘I’m sure they didn’t think that,’ Joanne hurried to say. ‘You were always so hard on yourself. We never considered you ugly.’ ‘Short, fat and ugly,’ Megan insisted. ‘You were more honest back then, Jo. Remember you told me I should get my teeth straightened and have laser surgery on my eyes?’

That gang of students was around us like bees to a honeypot or, should I say, they were around you two. I was edged to the side of the group until, before I knew what was happening, I was staring at their tall broad backs. It was almost as if they’d deliberately closed ranks to keep me out.’

‘Sorry for misleading you both in the first place, sorry I didn’t bury the secret and keep my mouth shut.’ ‘That might have been the wisest course of action, honesty is a dangerous blade to wave about.’

Telling the truth had been an unbelievably stupid thing to have done, almost as incredible as her lie all those years ago.

Some secrets were better being kept.

‘The law of cause and effect states that every cause has an effect and every effect becomes the cause of something else.