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Eventually, in the course of preparing to teach schoolchildren, Penelope read The Three Little Pigs and Charlotte's Web and Winnie the Pooh. Annie introduced her to some cartoon adaptations of the above, as well as the Muppet movies. None of them traumatized or horribly offended Penelope. In fact, she rather thought her mother had been overdoing it. It might have been nice to have a literary or cinematic figure with whom to identify when she was growing up. "They totally should have let you watch the Muppet Show," Annie said. "Pigs in space! Don't all little kids want to be an astronaut at age ten? They could have given you the stars. The dream of them."
"I wanted to be a war hero in the Middle East when I was ten," Penelope said. "My parents let me watch Lawrence of Arabia. I had desert scrims pasted to my windows for years."
"You wanted to be Lawrence?" said Annie. "He was a masochistic, self-flagellating, homophobic queer. And didn't he commit suicide?"
"No. He just had problems accepting what he was," Penelope said wisely.
"What else didn't your parents ever let you do?" Annie asked, already full of plans to show Penelope the whole wide world.
"I don't know," Penelope said crossly, because by and large they hadn't told her all the things they hadn't let her do. "Eat pork?"
"We can fix that," said Annie, and brought her crispy bacon and spiral ham and spare rib roast.
Penelope tried a bit of this and a bit of that and decided that overall it wasn't for her. "I don't think it's pig-related per se," she said. "It's just... really fatty, compared to most of the meat I eat?"
"Right," Annie said wryly.
"My mom always had me dieting," Penelope tried to explain. "She was afraid I'd get fat on top of everything else."
"Oh my God, what a bitch," said Annie. "Was she worried you'd grow a dozen tits too?"
Penelope gave a startled gasp of laughter. "Not that she ever said."
"You glad you tried it, anyway?" Annie asked.
"I suppose," said Penelope.
"I think you should try everything once," Annie said. She nudged Penelope under the table with her toe. "You know, in food, in life, in bed..."
"Annie," Penelope said, scandalized and laughing.
"I'd eat human flesh if somebody stuck it in front of me," Annie said, gesturing obscurely with one hand.
"Ewwwww," Penelope said, nearly doubled over with laughter. "You're so sick."
"You know what I mean? You know? You don't know," said Annie.
"What?" Penelope gasped.
Annie made a fish-face, cheeks hollowed out. Penelope shook her head, breathless. Annie crossed her eyes to make Penelope giggle again, then unstuck her mouth to say, "You know, oral sex?"
Penelope gulped and stuck a piece of bacon in her mouth to keep from having to reply.
After that Penelope went back to pig movies and books. Annie gave her Babe to watch and Penelope picked up Animal Farm from the library. "Oh, no," said Annie, "those are bad pigs."
"Don't be like my mom," said Penelope. "Pigs are like people: there's good ones and bad ones. It won't hurt me to read about the porcine condition."
And Penelope didn't think about pig food again for months.
Penelope and Johnny had been together three and a half months when he bought her a big heart-shaped box of chocolate truffles for Valentine's Day. Johnny seemed nervous about giving it to her and Penelope didn't know whether he just felt silly romancing her in a normal way instead of with a nightclub band and a guessing game and book-stealing, the way they'd started out, or whether there was something else. She'd eaten half the top layer of the box and popped the other half into Johnny's mouth by turns before he seemed to relax.
"So you like them," he said, relieved.
"Yes," said Penelope. "Why did you think I didn't?"
"Well, truffles," said Johnny. "I know you don't normally care about being all politically correct about the pig thing but you got upset the other day about Circe, so I wasn't sure--"
Penelope had been rereading Homer's Odyssey, a book she thought she'd known perfectly well since girlhood, since her namesake came from its pages. (During her seven years of repelling unwanted suitors, Penelope had always hoped that seven wouldn't, couldn't stretch to twenty.) Instead she'd discovered her mother had expurgated it on her behalf, omitting the tale of Circe the sorceress turning all of Odysseus's men into pigs.
"I was mad at my mom, not Homer," Penelope told Johnny.
"Really? I thought you meant Circe when you said 'that bitch,'" Johnny said.
Penelope blushed because she really was ashamed of picking up Annie's mode of address for her mother. She knew her mother really did only want the best for her. "Anyway, what have chocolate truffles got to do with pigs?" she asked.
"Chocolate truffles? I guess nothing," said Johnny. "But you know, real truffles?"
Penelope tilted her head, baffled. "What's a truffle?" she asked.
"What's a--" Johnny laughed, not happily. "Annie's right about your mom, you know. Truffles. They're sort of underground mushrooms, real snooty gourmet stuff. I bet your parents had them all the time before they had you. They use pigs to look for them, 'cause, well, pigs love truffles."
"Oh," said Penelope. "I think I'd like to try some." She lifted out the empty top layer of the box and popped another layer of the box.
"You--" Johnny laughed. "They're not sweets."
"'know," said Penelope around a mouthful of chocolate. Dark, thick, and delicious, it melted all over her tongue. "You sai' they're muthrooms."
Johnny laughed and kissed her. It was very messy and chocolatey, and very very nice. In fact, it was so distracting that when Johnny came home from the market that weekend and said, "Guess what I've got?" Penelope hadn't a clue.
"Cheese," Johnny said. "Truffle cheese--sorry, I couldn't afford an actual truffle, oh my God I had no idea--"
"You really should talk to my dad, he wouldn't mind," Penelope said. Johnny held out a slice of cheese to her and Penelope lipped it off the knife.
"But your mom's kind of creepy with her curse," Johnny said. "She totally wants to yell at me and she can't."
"You just don't like to ask my dad for money," said Penelope. "I'll go ask. This is delicious. I want to try them straight."
"Seriously?" said Johnny. "'Cause it's like, a hundred pounds for the tiny cheap ones."
Penelope fed Johnny some truffle cheese and kissed him.
"Okay," said Johnny. "Okay, I can kinda see this..."
"Yeah?" said Penelope.
"This whole claiming your cultural heritage thing is still hilarious, by the way," Johnny said.
"Oh! Annie gave me some old Looney Tunes today," Penelope said. She dragged him off to the couch to watch the adventures of Porky Pig and Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny.
"You're ruining my childhood," Johnny grumbled when Penelope wanted to make out in front of the TV, with the lights turned down.
"Do you care?" Penelope asked.
Johnny brushed her hair back with his fingers and murmured, "No."
This was Penelope's life: Annie to pal around with all afternoon, Johnny to play with when she got home, and as much pig food and pig literature and pig movies as she liked. She was happy, and they were happy, and that was really the most important thing.
(Th-th-th-th-that's all, folks!)