Halfway There by Aubrie Elliot Page A

didn’t look as if she was wearing a bra.
    â€œAnd for you?” she asked Ellen.
    â€œI’ll have the same thing.”
    The waitress picked up our menus and turned back toward the bar. She had a nice little butt.
    â€œWhat are you thinking about? I mean all day you’ve been somewhere else. What’s going on?”
    â€œI don’t know. I can’t keep my thoughts straight.”
    We started talking about mundane things: work, the cats, the dog, house maintenance, the usual day-to-day stuff. Our waitress came back and replaced our beers.
    â€œDo you ever think about what it means to be getting older?” I asked.
    â€œWhat about it?”
    â€œI mean, what did it feel like when you got menopause?”
    â€œIt’s not a disease. Why? Do you think you caught it from me?”
    â€œYeah, I do think I caught it from you. You got it first, remember?”
    â€œStill have it. I had a hot flash yesterday so bad I had to change my shirt.”
    â€œHow many times a day do you have those things?”
    â€œIt depends. Have you had one yet?”
    â€œNo. Hey, which sounds older, 46 or 50?”
    â€œBoth sound young to me.” Ellen grinned.
    â€œIt’s going to be okay, isn’t it?”
    â€œProbably, but people say no one gets out of here alive.”
    â€œWow, that’s comforting.”
    â€œI’m here for you, baby.”
    â€œGray hair, absent-mindedness, and all?”
    â€œSure, but you’d better stop looking at the waitress like that. You’re such a man sometimes.”
    Hairy chest, mustache and all. I smiled. What else could I do?

9

Family Matters
    My sister is a breeder. She can’t help it. She was born that way. She tried it my way, but could only get there after more than a few beers, so she decided to do what came naturally to her and settled down in the ’burbs with a nice guy with whom she promptly had two kids. My sister occasionally shares them with Ellen and me, and although I’m convinced they like Ellen better, I love them anyway.
    The first one came into our lives about eight years ago—a little girl named Lynne. We used to hang out a lot. My sister dropped her off at our house for an afternoon when she had to run errands or overnight when she needed some “me” time. I loved it. Lynne and I did lots of things together.
    Of course, I made sure we did all the stuff thatwould make her mom crazy, like eating spaghetti for lunch. I would strip Lynne down, plop her into the high chair, put a bowl of noodles, red sauce, and meatballs in front of her, then turn on the television to
Star Trek: The Next Generation
and wait.
    Lynne would start slowly, pick a bit, and then whack her little fork on the tray. When I looked up, she smiled as if to say, “You’d better be watching because I’m doing this for you.” I always smiled back because I knew what was going to happen next.
    After Lynne had my attention, she raised the entire bowl above her head and with great dramatic timing held it there for a moment, a moment which begged for some responsible adult to say “No!” or “Stop!” or some other silly adult thing. In that moment, with the spaghetti raised high, she looked deeply into my eyes and overturned the bowl and its contents onto her head. With the ritual completed, Lynne and I both returned to eating and watching our show—Lynne eating from her head and me from my plate. My sister usually showed up just as we were finishing. To this day, I’m still not sure if she was angrier at our table manners or at me “indoctrinating” her daughter into
Star Trek
fandom.
    In those early years, Lynne also made it clear shewas going to be her own person and a force with whom to be reckoned. The best example of this has to be when I had the opportunity to keep Lynne for an entire week while her father made an honest woman out of her mother. Ellen was going to be out of