Tru-Lily: The Summer of Curves and Laughter

It was the summer of 1935 when my buddies and I first discovered that our weekly barbecues would never quite be the same again. Truman, the jokester of the group, had always hinted that something peculiar ran in his family, but none of us paid much attention. Then, on one muggy July afternoon, we saw for ourselves just how peculiar things could get. The barbecue in question was particularly memorable; it was when we first laid eyes on Miss Lily Fairchild—the latest form of our dear Truman.

We gathered, as tradition dictated, in Robert’s backyard, the smell of sizzling burgers mixing with the faint scent of magnolia trees. Robert, the local blacksmith, was nearly as good with a grill as he was with an anvil, and the rest of us contributed in our own fashion. There was Jimmy, the town’s bank teller; Sam, who ran the general store; and me, an aspiring journalist always looking out for a story.

“Honestly, Truman, you were joking about that curse, weren’t you?” Sam asked, flipping through the radio stations to find some big band music.

Just then, the back door of Robert’s cottage creaked open, and out stepped a vision—or more accurately, Truman's mother, in all her curvy glory, wrapped snugly in a red, white, and blue bikini that seemed entirely too modern for the times. Her—rather, his—red hair bounced in the sunlight, the curls cascading around her—his—tanned shoulders.

“By Jove, Truman!” Jimmy exclaimed, nearly dropping his beer. “You weren’t pulling our leg.”

“Never do!” ‘Lily’—or rather Truman—winked, his mom’s ruby-red lips curving into a mischievous smile as he sauntered toward the grill.

The awkwardness of the situation was palpable at first, our eyes darting to each other and then to the transformed Truman. The jazz tunes wafting from the radio seemed oddly out of place with the bizarre scene before us.

"You boys going to leave me to handle all the grilling?" Truman asked, though his voice carried the same old humor, albeit in a sultrier, higher pitch.

Robert wiped his brow, half from the heat and half from trying to think of something polite to say. “Not at all, Truman, er, Lily. Need a hand?”

“Relax,” Truman’s mother’s body shook with laughter—a sound that was becoming eerily familiar as Truman's own laugh echoed faintly within it. “You can call me Tru-Lily if that makes this easier.”

Immediately, we all burst into laughter, the ice breaking like a dam, and the hurdles of our acceptance crumbling in the face of Truman’s (or Tru-Lily's) tough-spirited humor. Sure, Truman looked like the town’s vivacious widow, but he was one of us through and through.

“I tell you one thing,” I remarked, unable to hold my grin. “Nobody works that bikini quite like, well, you.”

Truman—er, Tru-Lily—turned, sassy hips swaying as he flipped a burger with a spatula. “Liking what you see?” he teased, batting his lashes. He wiggled his mom’s figure in a manner that was both disturbingly funny and weirdly hypnotic.

Jimmy gulped his beer down. “Damn, Truman, you oughta be careful with that body. Might give one of us a heart attack.”

“Oh please,” he quipped, tossing back a lock of curly red hair. “I’m still one of the boys, and I appreciate you not ogling too much.”

We settled into an uneasy but eventually enjoyable groove, enjoying the sort of friendly banter that had always been our hallmark. Sports were hotly debated, girls in town were admired, and plans were hatched for next weekend’s fishing trip, Tru-Lily cracking jokes and providing much-needed comic relief in a swimsuit that hardly seemed era-appropriate, but it served its purpose in challenging societal norms with Truman’s whimsically carefree spirit.

Toward evening, as the sun dipped low and fireflies began their nightly dance, I found myself sidling up to Truman as he scrapped the charred bits off the grill.

“You know, Truman, this is one for the books,” I said. “Might even write about it someday.”

He flashed that cheeky smile, his mom’s lips curling brilliantly. “You do that, friend,” he chuckled. “Just don’t call me Lily in the headlines.”

“Deal," I nodded, raising my beer in salute.

None of us ever forgot the summer when the Fairchild family’s curse made our barbecues legendary. Life might have seemed ordinary in our small town, but with a friend like Tru-Lily shaking things up—quite literally—ordinary was a term we could no longer claim.

This story was generated by user zach3 with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

AI Prompts