by Tamar Myers
A small resident rat, or possibly a large visiting cat, ran out into the street when I opened the lobby door. The combined odors of urine, vomit, and boiled cabbage rolled over me like waves, nearly sweeping me back into the street along with the rat. No wonder the poor thing was in such a hurry.
The fifteen-watt lightbulb in the stairwell was a blessing. The obscene phrases scrawled on the wall were hard to read. Unfortunately I could still make out the crudely sketched body parts—most of which exuded fluids—but someone had kindly scrubbed several feet off the top of a giant, erect penis. I hoped it was Susan.
I had to walk up to the third floor. There was an elevator in the building, but as usual, it was occupied. I don't mean that someone was using it as a means of conveyance. I mean someone was living in it.
There wasn't any lightbulb on Susan's landing, the third, so I felt along the wall counting doors. I would have kicked myself for not bringing a flashlight, but I was still wearing my pointed-toe shoes. I knocked on the third door to the right. After five minutes and sore knuckles someone responded.
"Yeah?" The man who opened it was wearing only gray sweatpants, cut off above the knees. His calves were hairy, his belly was like a sheepskin, and he had very few teeth.
"I'm here to see Susan Timberlake."
He stared at me as if I had spoken in Mandarin Chinese.
"I'm her mother."
The door closed. After five more minutes and a sore right foot it opened again. Susan was standing there, clutching a bathrobe. Apparently she couldn't find the belt.
"Mama!"
"The very one. The same one who carried you through nine long months—during the hottest summer the Carolinas have ever had, mind you—endured seventeen hours of excruciatingly painful labor, sat up with you—"
"Do you want to come in, Mama?" Susan was always more deferential over the phone than in person.
It was a difficult choice. I couldn't figure out which was the frying pan and which was the fire. Foolishly I chose to see what I was getting into.
The apartment looked like it had been stripped. The brand-new sectional sofa Buford had bought for her at Sofas on South was missing. All the furniture was missing. The only thing in the living room was a decrepit mattress on the floor only half covered by a twisted sheet.
"Susan!"
"Now chill, Mama. Don't get all bent out of shape. It was only stuff."
I took a deep, chilling breath. "Stuff your Daddy paid for. Stuff your roommates—speaking of which, where are they?"
Susan shrugged. It was the first gesture she ever learned.
"I guess Lori's living with her boyfriend. Tanya joined the National Guard, I think."
"What?" I needed to sit down, but I wasn't about to sit down on that mattress. The lobby carpet had less stains on it.
"Mama, these things happen. It just didn't work out rooming with them, that's all. It's no big deal. Everything's fine, honest."
"But you can't live here like this. Not by yourself."
She clutched the robe tighter across her chest. "I'm not alone, Mama. I have Jimmy."
"Jimmy?" Cerebral lightning hit. I wish it had knocked me brain dead. "That was Jimmy? That pathetic old mange bucket was Jimmy?" Fortunately the man in question had retired to another room. Probably the bathroom.
"Mama! I'm not going to talk with you if you're going to say things like that."
I took a deep breath. Somewhere in the universe somebody went without air for a minute.
"Okay. I'm sorry. Now, who is this Jimmy?"
She was studying my face to see if I was really sorry. I thought about Aunt Eulonia's death and the pain it was causing Charlie. It must have worked.
"Mama, Jimmy Grady is the sweetest, kindest man alive. I'm in love with him, Mama. And I know he loves me!"
I kicked my left leg with my pointed right shoe. "How old is he?" I asked calmly.
She was able to look me in the eyes, I'll grant her that. "Thirty-eight."
"Where did you meet him?"
Her gaze wavered slightly. "He's a custodian at school. I mean, he was a custodian there. Last year. It isn't his fault that his wife sued him for child support and he ended up getting fired."
"His wife?"
She nodded. "But he's going to get a divorce. He never even loved her, you know that? He said he knows he couldn't have loved her, because it didn't feel at all like it feels for me. He says he's waited around his whole life for someone like me."
"I bet he has," I muttered. "How many children does your Jimmy have?"
"Five, Mama, but none of them were his fault. His wife kept tricking him into getting her pregnant. She's extremely manipulative."
"Sounds like Jimmy needs to keep his pecker in his pants."
"What?"
"Uh, what I—what did happen to the furniture?" It was a useful tactic, learned from Susan herself. When trapped, change the subject.
"Oh that. Jimmy said it would be a good idea to sell it and put the money into a better car. I need a good car if I'm going to drive to work every day, not a sofa."
"I see. But what happened to the car your Daddy gave you?"
"Oh that? Well, you see, Jimmy and his friends were driving around one day, obeying the speed limit and everything, and this old geezer runs a stop sign and totals it."
That certainly accounted for Jimmy. Thank God Susan wasn't along.
"What about insurance? Didn't you tell your daddy?"
She put her hands on her hips, a gesture learned from me no doubt. "Well, you know how Daddy's always yapping about high rates and all. I didn't want him to get upset, so I didn't collect."
"But Susan, dear, you don't have insurance on this better car, do you?"
She sighed patiently. "I will, Mama. Just give me time. It's my life, you know, and my car. Daddy didn't have a thing to do with this one."
She meant her car. I wish I could say the same thing for her life. I don't know what possessed me to marry Buford Timberlake right out of college. Possessed—maybe that was it. I was possessed by something. After all, there was this Haitian girl, into voodoo, who lived right down the hall.
Mama saw straight through to Buford's core. Knowing her, she probably smelled how rotten it was. I was so in love I couldn't smell or see. Of course, comparing Buford with Jimmy was like comparing girdles with peanuts. There wasn't any relationship there at all.
Buford had a college education and a place guaranteed him in law school. Buford had plans. Buford even had some money. Not much, but enough so that I didn't have to work when Susan was born.
What did Jimmy have? He didn't even have a whole pair of jogging pants. I would have to come back to Susan's apartment building in the daytime, with a high-powered flashlight—maybe connected to a high-powered rifle, and do some sleuthing. It was beginning to look like that Haitian girl, the one into voodoo, might be living under Susan's roof.
I kicked myself into consciousness.
"Susan, are you—I mean, is this something more than a platonic relationship?" I am willing, no eager, to talk myself into believing anything that will make life easier for the ones I love. And for me.
Her eyes widened. She was always good at feigning astonishment.
"Mama, no! Of course not! I would never do such a thing. Not without getting married first. Jimmy sleeps out here on the floor. I sleep back there in the bedroom. Mama, really!"
She had thrown me enough scraps to concoct the meal I desperately needed. I was momentarily grateful. It wasn't as late in the game as it could be.
"Well, dear, if you do decide to sleep with him—which I sincerely hope you don't—please use protection. Promise me?"
She nodded vigorously. "Oh, I will, Mama. If I ever do, I will. But I won't, so I won't need to."
There was little else to say. I was not emotionally prepared to sit down on Jimmy's mattress and have a pleasant chat. First, I would have to sleep on what I had just seen and heard. Maybe hibernate for a winter or two. Susan should tha
nk her lucky stars that her daddy was too busy, or selfish, to pay her a visit unless forced. I certainty would do nothing to force Buford out there until I had thought things through thoroughly.
I hugged her. She smelled like male sweat.
"Aunt Eulonia's funeral is the day after tomorrow. Two in the afternoon at the Church of Our Savior in Rock Hill."
"Okay. I'll come if the car can make it."
I refrained from asking her if that was the better car Jimmy had talked her into buying. That conversation could wait. It was worth biting a small piece of my tongue off just getting out of there without a major confrontation.
"I love you, Susan."
The quick nod from her was a reciprocal declaration I'm sure.
I am ashamed to say I hadn't been to Aunt Eulonia's house in over a year. Okay, so it was almost three years, but I had a lot of water rush under my bridge in those three years. Tweetie made a big splash in my life. In fact she almost drowned me. Of course, I can't put all the blame on her—Buford was twice her age and should have known twice as much. Factor in their relative IQs and Tweetie comes out almost innocent.
Don't give me that crap about the home fires being out and that's why Buford went looking. My furnace was roaring when Buford decided to trade it in for a newer model, whose pilot light has yet to be lit. Who knows, maybe Buford couldn't take all that heat. And don't even suggest that the furnace was rusted on the outside and in need of cosmetic repair. I weigh exactly the same as I did the day I was married, and my various parts are within an inch or two of their starting positions. How many other forty-six-year-old women can make the same claim?
So what does Tweetie have that I don't have? Blond hair? Bigger boobs? A firmer butt? I could have bought all those things if I had wanted to be someone other than who I am. The only thing she has, that I can't buy, is a pair of legs that stop at the armpits.
Well, I seem to have digressed, which, in a way, is exactly my point. If Buford's affair makes me this mad now, imagine what it did when I first found out. I didn't know one could hate that much. Or hurt that much. And speaking of pain, I can't begin to describe the depth of the abyss I fell into when Buford won custody of our children. I am still climbing out.
And that's why I hadn't been to Eulonia's in almost three years. I had, however, seen her at Mama's house on holidays, and of course I'd see her professionally from time to time. Like before she dropped out of the Selwyn Avenue Antique Dealers Association.
September in Charlotte is not yet autumn, and the only leaves that have fallen have been whacked out of the trees by errant baseballs and clumsy birds. Aunt Eulonia's street is overgrown to begin with, and I may as well have been bivouacking in the jungles of Southeast Asia. As a woman living alone, I should carry a purse-size flashlight with me at all times—perhaps I do, and just might stumble across it sometime when I have a week to clean out my purse. At any rate, I had a devil of a time trying to find Aunt Eulonia's back faucet, much less a clay pot hidden in the weeds.
"Can I help you?" a man asked.
I jumped at least three feet, which is quite a feat considering the length of my legs. I had once attended a seminar on self-defense for women and had gone away, after a mere two hours, feeling like I could disable Goliath. Now, while I would encourage other women to take similar self-defense courses, I feel that I must warn them about something I didn't learn in my class. It is possible to get so frightened that you wet your pants.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you," the man said.
It took several seconds for my brain to sort through a myriad of quavering stimuli and come to the conclusion that most muggers and rapists are seldom that polite. After a very brief period in which I lay collapsed in a bush (they were not azaleas, but hollies!), and several minutes of the heaviest breathing I had experienced since the advent of Tweetie, I was able to speak.
"Who the hell are you, and what are doing here?"
"Funny, I was about to ask you the same," he said.
"I may be small, but I've been trained in the martial arts," I puffed. "You want a demonstration?"
"That would be very interesting," he said. "I haven't seen a good demonstration of that since I was in the marines."
"Move over there to the light, buster, where I can see your face."
If a bird could bluff to defend her nest, then so could I. Only I didn't have a nest to defend, and unlike a bird I couldn't fly away if the bluff failed. What was I doing? I would have been much better staying in the holly bush. Make him at least get his arms prickled when he tried to get me.
To my astonishment he obediently moved away from the shadows and into the relative light cast by a distant security lamp. The good Lord was right: the light did set me free. The guy might have had a voice like a robust young mugger, but he wasn't a day under ninety. Willard Scott was going to he wishing him happy birthday on national TV before it was time for me to clean the lint out of Aunt Marilyn's dryer again.
"My name is Tony D'Angelo. I'm a neighbor. Who are you?"
"Kimberly McManus," I said. For some strange reason it was the first name that popped into my mind. She's a gal who works at Franklin's printing shop down in Rock Hill. But it may as well be her this old codger stalked, rather than me.
"The hell you say. You're Abby Timberlake, aren't you?"
"Who?" Perhaps I'd found that clay pot after all—hit my head on the damned thing.
"Abby Timberlake. Eulonia's niece."
"I am not."
"You weren't looking for this, were you?" He reached into his pocket and held up something shiny.
"What?"
"Her back door key. The one hidden in the clay pot, back in those nasty hollies. Figured that's what you were looking for."
"Give me that!" I charged at him. We were approximately the same height and weight, and except for our ages, evenly matched. I know, he was a male and might still be producing a little testosterone, but he didn't have Buford as an ex-husband. One clear image of Buford and Tweetie doing the unspeakable in my bed, and I had enough adrenaline to run a triathlon.
Fortunately the old coot derailed me by laughing. "Here, you can have it."
"What?"
He gently tossed the key at my feet. "I suppose you have as much right to it as anybody."
I scooped it up, along with a handful of clay. Aunt Eulonia and grass did not get along.
"You're damn right. What were you doing with it?"
"Keeping it safe, that's all. Folks been stopping by, you know. Wanting to get in, but I wouldn't tell them where the key was."
"How did you know where it was?"
He laughed again. If I hadn't seen him, I would have thought he was twenty. "I was the one who suggested she hide it in the holly. Make that burglar work for his take."
"And her, too, then, if she ever needed it," I pointed out wisely.
"Ha. She wouldn't have ever needed that, unless something happened to me first."
"Just what do you mean by that?"
"I have my own key," he said smugly. "Eulonia gave it to me."
"When?" The nerve of my aunt, passing out house keys to every old Tom, Dick, and Harry, and then asking for mine back.
"Hmm, let's see," the old geezer pretended to think. "It was a while back, that's for sure. I think it was the day Nixon resigned from the Presidency."
"Excuse me?"
He was still thinking. "Yeah, it had to be in seventy-three, because I was living in Atlanta in seventy-two. That's when my grandson Cody was born. Wouldn't forget a thing like that now, would I?"
"I'm sure you wouldn't." Maybe I did let a little sarcasm show through, but Aunt Eulonia had no business having a man friend for twenty-three years and not even mentioning him to me.
He took a step forward, but I held my ground. "Look," he said, "it's muggy out here, and there's too many damn mosquitoes. How about we go on inside and continue this conversation there. The power is still on, and so is the air-conditioning."
Well slap me silly with a two-by-four and then call me grateful. Talk about nerve! Imagine being invited into your own aunt's home by an ancient neighborhood gigolo. I would have kept my mouth open longer if a mosquito hadn't flown in.
"There's tea in the fridge, already made up," he coaxed.
"I beg your pardon!"
"No trouble at all," he said. He trotted over to the back door, unlocked it, and then flipped on the porch light. You would have thought he lived there.
"Mr. D'Angelo—"
"Please, call me Tony." He had the impudence to usher me inside.
I strode angrily into my aunt's kitchen. There was indeed a pitcher of tea in the fridge, and I made damn sure I was the one to hunt up the glasses and pour it. Then I invited the little man to sit at the breakfast room table.
He took the tea without saying thanks. "It's more comfortable in the den."
I took off the silk boxing gloves. "Look, buster, this is my aunts house, not yours. Stop acting like you own the damn place. I'm inviting you to sit here, in the breakfast room."
He drained the overly sweet tea in three gulps. He did not sit down. "Charlie looks exactly like you, you know. Of course he's bigger."
"Charlie?"
"Your son. Still, Euey and I were worried when he hadn't hit his growth spurt by the end of ninth grade. But he's sure the hell made up for it this year, hasn't he? How much has he grown, anyway? Five inches?"
"Six," I said. "And his sneakers are size thirteen."
We sat in the den while we polished off the rest of the tea. The man had made his point.
"I can't believe Aunt Eulonia never mentioned you," I said. It was a careless thing to say, and I regretted it immediately. I apologized all over myself.
"No need," he said, waving a wrinkled hand with enough liver spots on it to make me dizzy. "Anyway, we've met before. Euey probably talked about me but didn't bother to mention me by name. Thought you knew who she meant."
