It's August and boring in West Los Angeles. Diane had gotten her hair cut and colored at Studio 210 in Brentwood Gardens. The back bumper was dented when the valet pulled the car up. She wanted to get rid of the thing, maybe now was the time. A BMW with better mileage came with full maintenance for something like three years.
"Are you blind?" Diane snapped. "Couldn't you see how far you were from that other car?" She wanted to scream trying to figure what the repair would cost. Wait a minute. She wasn't liable. Diane had never been into math. She couldn't balance the checkbook, used cash, loved credit cards. It was her mother's fault for not insisting she learn. The teacher never tried to help her after school either.
Diane had cheer leading then dance practice anyway. A math tutor might have been useful, who knows. For now, she was faced with a difficult decision right here in the garage at Brentwood Gardens. All she wanted to do was scream really loud at everybody within hearing distance, especially the parking attendants.
Diane remembered a little picture at home of her and her mother at Sandusky Point, or whatever it was called. The two of them building a sand castle. Her mother was in a two piece bathing suit, fashionable for the time, poised and smiling on bent knees totally at ease with her hands in the sticky sand pushing a stupid bucket upside down on a mound of what was surely disgusting imported dirty stuff.
Diane had stood there in little girl cotton panties either very happy or very bored. It had been a great day like finding a fancy watch buried in that watery mess. It had been so exciting to go back to their motel greasy spoon and eat fish with green beans, tomatoes and radishes. The waitress had been slow and brought her pizza with pepperoni by mistake.
"That's not what I ordered," Diane had said. She hated talking to strangers even way back then. But she wasn't eating pizza with pepperoni.
The waitress had looked right at her and said, "Yes it is, but I'll be glad to get what you want."
A man at the next table said, "Don't be so impatient, cutie-pie. Relax. You'll get it soon enough." That made Diane feel like a fool. She sat there, but wanted to hide under a table, gross chewing gum wads and all.
"I am not impatient," Diane remembered saying to him. He was trying to pick a fight, that's all.
That day was a metaphor for her hysterical life. Panic mode was her usual state of mind. Yet she wasn't going to let a parking attendant get the best of her. Not today or any day. Diane looked around. A woman with two girls under six wearing bathing suits blathered about the heat and dance lessons. A matron with starched yellow hair and a St. John two piece suit leaned on her ebony cane. A companion kept asking the matron if she would like to sit down.
"No, no, no," the matron said. "I'm not that decrepit yet." She looked at Diane and smiled. "Don't you hate it when they ding up your car?" she asked. "Makes me want to scream, but then I think about who works here. Wouldn't want to do it in a million years. They have families to support, you know."
Diane rolled her eyes waiting for the manager to show up. She was offered water and generic chocolates. "My car is dinged up," she said. Willing the corners of her mouths to turn upward only succeded in a twitch, her teeth hinged tightly at the jawbone. "That's not going to repair it."
A Rolls Royce pulled up. The attendant opened the passenger door, the matron's companion helped her inside. The matron shook an arthritic finger at Diane, then stared straight ahead.
On the way home, Diane pondered how she would tell her husband what had happened. He's going to be angry. What if he looked on the internet and saw housewife, 42, dinged up Mercedes in parking garage? Housewife rudely snapped at attendant at Brentwood Gardens.
Everyone would know she colored her hair at Studio 210 and not at some hotsy-totsy place in Beverly Hills. Who would invite them to dinner after that? She could throw a party and no one would come. Her husband's business would be finished. How would they live?
Oh, for the life of an independent woman. Why hadn't she gone to law school like her parents wanted her to do? Or she could have written poetry and become a professor at UCLA, praised for her originality and verve. How she envied those industrious women. They didn't need a husband, so when the car got dented there was no one to care.
When Diane got home, her husband lounged on the sofa in the den reading The New Yorker magazine. The dog, Boxy, his beloved Boxer, on the ottoman at his side. Boxy was asleep, kicking one back leg and whimpering, obviously chasing some squirrel in the backyard.
"How was your day?" Diane asked.
"Fine," he answered. "How was yours?" He didn't look up from his magazine.
"Okay," she said. "The parking attendant dinged up the fender."
"What are you going to do about it?" he said, still not looking away from his reading.
"Get it fixed, I guess," Diane replied.
"There's an invitation to a Chaine des Rotisserus evening on the dining table. No charge, we're guests of what's-his-name at work, you know who I mean, " he said. "The food and wine should be great."
It was over. Diane laughed. "I love you," she said. The gripping in her chest let go.
"I love you, too," he said, looking over from his reading. "What's up with you?"
"Nothing," she said.
