Sweet St. Louis

by Omar Tyree

  CHINNNGGG! WHAP!

  “Boy, you have quite a line here.”

  “I sure do.”

  TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP.

  “Four thirty-six…. Thank you.”

  CHINNNGGG! WHAP!

  “How do you like your uniforms?”

  “They’re dark, gray, and ugly.”

  TAP.

  “Sixty cents.”

  “Well, at least you’re honest.”

  “Thank you.”

  CHINNNGGG! WHAP!

  Thank God! she told herself when the cashier returned.

  “I’m sorry,” the young, vivacious woman told her.

  “We all have to use the bathroom,” Sharron responded, happily stepping away from the register. And unfortunately, we all have a jones for men, she thought. Because some cashiers loved to flirt. It wasn’t just the young ones either. With all of those progressive and tempting men who flowed through the airport, flying around the country and around the world, Sharron had a new understanding of why so many knowledgeable parents had a real distaste for allowing their daughters to become flight attendants, including Celena’s parents and her own. But somebody had to do it. Business was business. Besides, the majority of the flight attendants whom Sharron and Celena met were astute, respectable, and totally professional women.

  When Sharron jumped back to her duties, stacking and rearranging the shelves, she found herself in full vision of a very familiar man.

  “Sharron? Sharron Francis!” he called to her. Then he melted into her arms before she could prepare herself for a response, as if he had been waiting for years to see her again.

  She was shocked by his outward affection and immediately pulled away. But she was gentle enough with her disengagement to keep his male ego, that soft pillow of a thing that men would die to protect, intact.

  “Hi, Sean. How have things been?”

  He looked twice as good as he did when they were boyfriend and girlfriend back in high school in Memphis. He was twice as confident. Twice as smart. And he was all grown up. However, he shook his head and gave her a face filled with pain when she asked about his life. She only meant it as a “Hello.”

  “I have to get your number,” he said, pulling out a business card from a gold-plated holder with his name on it. “There are so many things I have to tell you. I don’t know where to begin.”

  Sharron looked down at his card and was impressed. With everything! Sean Love was only twenty-four, and had already moved up to a management rep position for a hotel chain. She was just as smart as he was back in high school. But now she worked at the airport while he carried his own business cards inside gold card holders, while dressed in tailored suits with fancy ties. Not to disrespect herself or the other thousands of employees who worked at international airports, but often Sharron questioned if maybe going back to school and finishing her degree in nursing would be more fulfilling to her.

  Of all people in the world to bump into, why oh why did it have to be Sean. Sean L-o-v-e of all things. Oh, sure, his last name was fun to talk about when they were teenagers in high school. But not anymore. And instead of losing her virginity to a young man named Love on prom night, after they had dated for three years with only kisses and no pressure, Sharron made the age-old mistake of moving on, only to lose herself to a college jock from California in her freshman year at University of Missouri at St. Louis. He transferred from St. Louis University to UCLA that next semester with not even a letter or a phone call.

  “You know I have a beautiful daughter now,” Sean said, snapping Sharron out of her daydream. He was pulling out his wallet-sized pictures before she could compose herself. It was all too fast and unreal, as if she were watching her own movie on fast-forward search.

  “She has your eyes,” she commented. His daughter looked as bright and as caring as he did.

  Sean added, “I’m trying to gain custody of her. Her mother’s a nutcase. We were supposed to get married, and I caught her cheating on me a week before the wedding. Can you imagine that? A week before the wedding!”

  Actually, Sharron could imagine it. But only from men.

  “Yeah, that is crazy,” she responded.

  Sean just stared at her, blankly, as if he couldn’t believe his own story.

  “What’s your number?” he asked her again, pulling out a platinum-and-gold pen and a monogrammed notepad. “I just have too much to tell you.”

  With all of his fancy knickknacks, Sharron began to think of him as an Inspector Gadget or James Bond character. She smiled at her thoughts and gave him her number.

  “I’m up in Chicago now,” he said.

  She nodded. “I see that on your card,” she told him, holding it up to her face.

  “So how long have you been in St. Louis?” he asked. “I wish I would have known. I could have taken you out to lunch or something. I’ve been here for three days at a conference.”

  “I stayed here in St. Louis after going to school here,” she answered. Evidently he didn’t remember. And why should he? She’d broken his heart when they separated. He had probably forced himself to forget. He’d ended up attending Purdue in Indiana, on an academic scholarship. Another recipient had decided not to attend at the eleventh hour, and Sean happened to be next on their list but was still undecided. Mainly because of Sharron.

  All of those painful memories came back to her. She wondered if Sean remembered any of them. She was hoping that he did not. Because it all reminded her that she was definitely not a saint, and that she had not made all of the right decisions regarding love. Even with Mr. Sean Love. A smart, patient, caring, affectionate, and damned good man! The kind of man that women often bragged about. Or bragged about wanting. Because once some women received a man with the desired characteristics of such a “catch,” they lost their interest in him. He found himself well on his way to being considered the most dreaded word in the male vocabulary: Weak.

  “Anyway, I know you have to get back to work here, Sharron. But I can’t wait to talk to you. Okay? So when’s the best time to call you tonight? Do you work early tomorrow? What are you doing this weekend? I could even fly back down and spend time with you face to face. You’re not married are you? I don’t want to intrude on anything.”

  WOW! Sharron thought. Sean used to be a little stuffy with his words. But as a man, they were pouring out much faster than her mental cup could handle. His words were spilling all over the floor on her. Slow down, horsey! Slow down!

  “Ahhh, let’s decide all of that once we talk. It’s just good seeing you again,” she told him, trying to create some space for herself. Funny how desires can catch you off guard and then have you on your heels when they arrive a little too quickly for you.

  “We’ll do that,” he told her. Then he forced her into another big hug before he hustled on his way, leaving her bedazzled eyes with too strong of a smile for comfort. A smile that she would be forced to deal with for the rest of her shift, and while awaiting his phone call that night.

  Celena said, “Shit! I need some popcorn for all of this. So what time is he supposed to call you tonight?”

  Sharron aired out her laundry while she and her girl took a shared break from work. She didn’t know what else to do. She felt guilty. For whatever crazy reason, she didn’t look forward to talking to Sean. Nor did she look forward to being with him again. It all seemed too forced. Love wasn’t supposed to be about forced situations. Love was just supposed to happen. Like an accident. But most accidents seemed to hurt. Forced situations, however, seemed unnatural. And if it was unnatural, your body tended to reject it. But could we actually plan to wait for an accident of love to occur? It all seemed ridiculous as Sharron ran through a thousand different thoughts in her mind.

  “Damn it! What is wrong with me?” she asked her friend rhetorically.

  Celena just laughed at her. “I told you, girl. You might as well just let shit happen. As long as you don’t get pregnant or catch no AIDS.”

  Half of the time,
Sharron disregarded whatever Celena told her. She just needed someone to talk to, like most people.

  “Well, I guess I’ll just talk to him. I mean, it’s not like I have to promise him a date or anything,” she said, trying to convince herself.

  Celena grinned at her, her mouth filled with tuna fish and chips, twisting in her elevated stool. “He’s gon’ want to do way more than talk if he makes a trip back down here to see you.”

  Sharron cringed. “Please. Can you finish eating your food first. You don’t even know Sean. He’s not like that.”

  Her girl frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “So how come you don’t want to see him then? That is what you told me, right? You don’t wanna see him.”

  Sharron let out a long sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want to see him, it’s just that … Well, this really caught me off guard, and I need more time to think it through, that’s all.”

  “So you can find out a way to dump his ass,” Celena said with a chuckle. “You dumped his behind before, and now you’re trying to dump him again.”

  “And you would think that I had matured,” Sharron stated.

  “Matured to what?” her girl asked her. “I mean, a boring guy is a boring guy. It doesn’t make a difference if he’s twenty-five or forty-five for that matter.”

  “But we don’t know that yet.”

  “You don’t know that,” Celena responded. “Because if you’re having problems trying to decide if you want to go out with this guy, then I know he couldn’t stand up to me.”

  Sharron smirked. “I don’t know how any guys can stand up to you. That’s why you keep getting those knuckleheads. You force them to be that way.”

  “Only the strong can survive, baby,” Celena bragged. “I don’t want no weak man. A weak man can’t do nothin’ for me but compliment my outfits and stare at my ass, wishing that he could have some. And that’s exactly how I plan to keep ’em, watching and wishing.”

  Sharron chuckled and asked, “But don’t you want a man who you can just chill with instead of fighting with all of the time? Because that arguing and stuff gets played out. Fast!”

  “Yeah, I want a guy I could just chill with. But not right now. I still have to figure out what I want to do with my life.”

  “You don’t know that by now?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t be talking about it. I’d be doing it,” Celena snapped. “Have you thought about going back to nursing school?”

  “All of the time,” Sharron answered.

  “Me too. I’ve been thinking about going back to get my business degree. I just have to make up my mind to do it.”

  “You better make up your mind soon. Because if you keep throwing your money down the drain on outfits, pocketbooks, and fancy nails, you’ll be too much in debt to go back to school.”

  “I’m not worried about that. My father would pay for school.”

  “Oh, well, what are you waiting for then?” Sharron asked her.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  In fact, Sharron had been saving up to make her move soon. Real soon. She just didn’t want to announce it until she had figured out all of the details.

  “Anyway, that’s another thing that makes me hesitant with Sean,” she said. “I mean, he’s always known what he wants out of life, and he just goes for it. He may think that I’m confused. I hate when guys start talking to you as if you’re a child who needs to get her life in order. I’m scared to find out if he’s like that now.” She even worried about what Sean Love may have thought about her working at an airport, without being a computer systems manager or pilot or something.

  Celena said, “Didn’t you just tell me that he had a daughter, and that the mother had cheated on him right before the wedding? Well, I think he knows that the world ain’t perfect, so I wouldn’t even worry about that. You’re not less than him.”

  “I know I’m not less than him. But you do start thinking about how you measure up as a couple.”

  “So what? That’s a part of life.”

  “Well, some people judge you on that.”

  “And you think he’s gonna judge you because you work at an airport and he’s some hotel rep? Because I would never let a guy think he’s better than me”

  Their discussion began to lead into an argument of egos. Sharron decided to back out of it.

  She jumped down from her elevated stool and said, “I have to get back to work now,” and grabbed her lemonade from the small counter.

  “All right then,” Celena told her, not budging. She just knew that no man would play some upmanship game with her. And if her roommate felt that way about herself, then that was her damn problem.

  Sharron thought about the question of parity for the rest of her shift, and then while riding home on the train, nervously awaiting Sean’s phone call that evening.

  Did she really feel less than him? The truth was that she did. She couldn’t fight it. She just didn’t want to be swallowed alive by him. That’s all. She wanted to have her own space and dignity, and not have to cater to his thoughts, his aspirations, or his career. When she continued to think about it, she remembered that Sean was an Aries, and that he was always running forward with his head, banging into things. Not that she was particularly into zodiac signs, but Sean Love had always talked about those things, as if he knew it all. He had an answer for everything, and it all came back to her right before his phone call.

  She took a deep breath and answered, “Hello.”

  “Did I catch you at a bad time?” he asked her.

  Yes, at a bad time in my life right now, Sharron thought.

  “No, you’re right on time,” she told him. Funny how we think one thing and say another. Fortunately, Sharron wasn’t much of a phone talker. She would rather speak with people face to face, so that she could read them and feel them out.

  “So how has life been treating you?” Sean asked. “Now that we have time to really talk to each other.”

  Miserably, Sharron thought. Can’t you tell?

  “I can’t complain too much. I can’t jump up and down about anything either,” she answered.

  “Well, life hasn’t given me much to jump up and down about.”

  “What about your job?”

  “What about it?”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s the problem then?”

  Sean said, “You think that a good job is all that you need to be happy in life?”

  Good question.

  “Well, I guess not. Income isn’t all that you need to survive.”

  “It’s definitely not all. I mean, I expected to have a family by now, and all I have is a beautiful daughter who I have to fight for to even see.”

  “All you have?” Sharron questioned.

  “I didn’t mean to put it like that. I just expected a lot more. I expected to be a married man,” he said, correcting himself. “But at least she has my name.”

  “Is that important to you?”

  “Yeah, that’s important to me. It’s very important. Do you know how many kids are walking around today without their father’s name? And do you realize that cuts them off from their history?”

  “What about the mother’s name?”

  “Oh, we’re seldom cut off from our maternal line, especially in the black community. I was around my mother’s family all of the time. But if you’re not married, and the child doesn’t have the paternal name, then your side of the family may not even be thought of.”

  Sharron thought about her own family, and how many maternal cousins she was connected to as opposed to her paternal cousins. In her case, Sean was right. If her parents hadn’t married, and she had not been given her father’s name, her paternal line would have definitely been on the back burner, because her mother had a large and overbearing family.

  “I see your point,” she told him. “So marriage is about keeping your history in order.
”

  “Not only that, but creating a legacy for yourself and for your children.”

  But what about love? she wanted to ask him.

  Sean hadn’t changed a bit. Sure, he was older, a college graduate, gainfully employed, and even a father, but he still talked more about things, concepts, and ideas than he did about real people, feelings, and ordinary life. His daughter was more than just a legacy and a name. She was flesh, bone, and blood, with a new heart that needed to know what love was.

  No wonder Sharron didn’t want to talk to Sean. He didn’t have what she wanted. He didn’t have what she needed. And speaking of names, she figured that he needed to change his from Love to something else, because he surely didn’t project what his name alluded to.

  “Have you ever been in love, Sean?” she finally asked him. He sure didn’t sound like he had been. He sounded uptight, like a man who needed to release himself. His enthusiasm at the airport was just a front. The real Sean Love was revealing himself as damaged goods. She felt sorry for him. She felt sorry that he couldn’t seem to have his way with life, a life without love.

  He took a deep breath and said, “I’ve tried to. Lord knows I have. I even got saved and started going to church in Chicago to find myself. To find what I really needed out of life. That’s where I met my daughter’s mother, in church. Do you believe that? Even when I thought that I had someone to love, it turned out all wrong again.”

  Sharron couldn’t believe her ears. Granted, she knew that all church girls were not what they portrayed through their tightly held Bibles. Nevertheless, the stories about them were shocking.

  “Now she feels ashamed of herself, and she says that she can’t take being around me after what she did,” Sean continued. “She said that it was like the devil’s last test, and she failed. So now I have to chase her around to even be with my daughter.”

  Sharron began to smile and couldn’t help herself. At the same time, she felt so wrong. Sean was reaching out to her, like she wanted to reach out to others, and yet she was pitying him and rejecting him at the same time. The strength that one needs to love the brokenhearted is unbelievable. She was realizing that she didn’t have it.