Free Crazy People: The Crazy for You Stories by Jennifer Crusie Page B

that I’ve let Darrin Mueller do some of those things with me that he wanted to, I can tell you that longer would be good, too.
    So I’m feeling pretty good right now, especially since Darrin’s asked me to marry him. I told him I’d have to think about it, but I think I’m going to because I’m not getting any younger, and Darrin is a good man with a good imagination, if you know what I mean, and like Mama says, women are meant to be married, although thinking about you does sometimes make me wonder why. Which reminds me, I filed for divorce today, and I put the house on the market, seeing as how it’s in my name so the creditors couldn’t take it away from you if the bowling alley folded. Remember when you did that, back when we were first married? You said it didn’t matter whose name the house was in because we were going to be together forever, Ronnie and Debbie until the end of time.
    I’ll make sure you get half.
    Your soon to be ex-wife,
    Debbie Headapohl
    PPPPS: Well, Ronnie, I’m about to leave for church, and then I’m having lunch with Mama, and then Darla and I are going to the movies, and then she’s going to drop me at Darrin’s where he’s going to barbecue me a steak for supper. I figure that should give you enough time to pick up the car and find this letter taped to the windshield and then go on over to Barbara’s to spend the rest of your life. I know this letter has some harsh things in it, and I thought about tearing it up, but then I thought, “No” because those things are also true things, some of the truest things I’ve ever said about us and especially about me, and I think you should see how I got to where I am now so you won’t make any dumb mistakes like trying to come back when you change your mind. Because the thing is, Ronnie, you can’t come back. I’m really different now. I didn’t know how different until Darrin was over here last night.
    He was sitting on the sectional, watching the Bengals get creamed again, and he was screaming, “No, no, no,” and I thought about how happy Mama would be to see me watching TV with a man and a wedding ring, and how much more kindly disposed she is to Darrin now that she’s seen your letter. She read the part about how you couldn’t stand looking in her mean little eyes when she found out, and she said, “A second husband is no sin, Debbie Jo,” and I thought, “All right, it’ll have to be Darrin.” And I felt sad for a minute about us being over, and I wished we could be like Darla and Max together for twenty-eight years with all the time they’ve spent knowing and loving each other, and how sweet Max was to Darla at the wedding when Daddy wasn’t there to give her away, and he told her that the only one who could give her to him was her anyway, and how twenty-eight years later, he’s still being sweet. And I almost cried, Ronnie, because I would have liked for us to be together like that forever.
    But I didn’t cry because that’s when it hit me. Max and Darla have been married for twenty-eight years, which means that Daddy has been gone that long, which means Mama hasn’t been married for that long. That woman who has been nagging me to be married and telling me my life is over if I’m not and bitching at me to get you back, that woman has been single for
twenty-eight years
, and in all that time, she’s never even gone to so much as a church mixer. And I realized then that the reason she’s so hot to have me married is so she can hold her head up high in public and then go home and eat Cheetos and watch Harrison Ford at three o’clock in the morning. And I sat up and said, “God
damn
,” and Darrin said, “I know, aren’t they pitiful?” thinking I was talking about the Bengals, and I looked at him sitting on the sectional, and he looked just like you, Ronnie. He doesn’t look anything at all like you, but he looked just like you. And all of a sudden, I knew that if I married Darrin, a couple of years