“Gross,” Dana grimaced while everybody else laughed at the image that Alice described for them.

“Peeper, Al?” Bette raised her eyebrows.

“What do you want me to say? Pussy, clit, vagina, punani…”

“I like yoni,” Tina said softly and winked at Bette.

Bette smiled shyly, lowering her eyes and then turned back to Alice, “In my days we called it ‘down there’, ‘nether regions’, or ‘lady parts’.”

“Boooooring…anyway, so, this fugly toad was standing there with this huge plume fan, in her white décolleté dress that was showing her enormous and not at all attractive cleavage. I was passing them with a snack tray and heard her saying, ‘My dear Maxine, my esteemed husband, Sir William, is an extraordinary and over scrupulous man. Sometimes he takes a delight in vexing me but he’s not a man to be trifled with. Maxine, darling, this is so astonishing that your daughter is going to be most advantageously married’…,” Alice mimicked a low rasping voice of an older woman while she fanned herself with a napkin as if it was a delicate Japanese fan.

“Yes…those were my wonderful times,” Bette mused nostalgically as everyone else laughed.

“Do you miss it, babe? Do you wish you could go back?” Tina asked tenderly.

“Yes,” Bette quickly replied but then she frowned and added quietly, “No…I don’t know…sometimes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, of course I miss it…my parents, my sister, even my life in some way but I don’t know how to deal with what is left there for me. Christina is dead, my mother cheated on my father with a black man, my sister is going to die at childbirth…” she lifted her head and looked at the faces in the dining room.

“I’m happier here with you. Everything I’ve ever wanted is right here,” Bette continued, “my big sister…” she smiled at Kit, “the best friends anyone could ask for and a woman I love with all my heart and who loves me back,” she squeezed Tina’s hand and caressed it gently with her thumb, “and I just ask myself, what more do I want?”

She paused and closed her eyes, her mind going back to her past for a moment.