A Different Kind of Blues

by Gwynne Forster

  She went down to the hotel’s breakfast room the next morning thinking it best that she head to Atlanta and get back home as soon as possible. She took a seat near the window so that she could see the ocean.

  “I’ll have grits, sausage, scrambled eggs, biscuits, and coffee,” she told the waitress.

  “I’ll be happy to get you all that except the grits,” the waitress said, and soon returned with the order. Petra ate breakfast, hardly tasting it; her mind had traveled back to the years when she struggled to raise Krista, worked hard, and had no social life. She sipped the coffee long after it had become cold.

  “You’re not from out this way, are you?” the waitress asked.

  “No, ma’am. I’m from Maryland. Ellicott City.”

  “Back East, huh? I thought so. You can always tell a Southerner; they have good manners, and they love their grits. Can I top off your coffee?” She added hot coffee to Petra’s cup. “You look kinda lost. Can I help?”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think you can.” The waitress didn’t move from the booth.

  Petra took a good look at the woman who stood there smiling, tall, around sixty years old, and still very beautiful, her face etched with experience. “I’m thirty-six years old,” Petra said, “and for nearly all of my adult life, men have been content to ignore me. But in the past month, two men have fallen in love with me, and two others might have if I’d hung around. I don’t get it.”

  The waitress leaned against the edge of the booth. “That’s because there’s something different about you, something that attracts men. You’re good-looking, that’s for sure, but I see something sad in you, a kind of vulnerability, and men are drawn to vulnerable women. You’re probably much less independent and self-sufficient now than you normally are. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Did you fall in love with either of those men?”

  Petra gazed beyond the waitress and into the past. “Oh, yes. Head over heels.”

  “I’m sorry.” She patted Petra’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right. In the long run, life just goes on, and we tolerate whatever it dishes out.”

  “Yes. Especially when we don’t have an alternative,” Petra said after the waitress walked away. She put a one-dollar bill on the table, paid the cashier, and, on her way out, she waved at the waitress.

  Back in her hotel room once more, Petra leafed through her brochures. She had a date with the lifeguard for her first swimming lesson, but what would she do after that? She tried to plan the day, but couldn’t concentrate on it, for the memory of those minutes the evening before when she thought the end had come loomed large in her thoughts. Each time the pain was more unbearable, and each time it lasted longer. She reached for the telephone and dialed her mother’s number.

  “Hi, Mama. I thought I’d call to see how you and Krista are getting on.”

  “We’d be fine if we weren’t worried about you. This is not one bit like you, Petra. You got some explaining to do. Where’s all this money you spending coming from? Jack practically took my head off yesterday telling me what he thought of you. When you coming home, child?”

  “I want to go to Atlanta to see Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tomb and museum. That’ll take a day, and then I’ll fly home from Atlanta. So it won’t be but about four days, I guess.”

  “You come on home, now. I don’t need to worry my head about no almost forty-year-old woman. Why Reverend Collins always asking about you? I sure hope you didn’t confess nothing bad to him. I never was sure about Reverend Collins. Lord forgive me, but if you can’t trust a man around women…Never mind. The Lord don’t want me to judge Reverend Collins. He’ll do that.”

  When her mother got on her sanctimonious horse, there was no stopping her. With her mind on the cost of the phone call, Petra hastened to get Lena off the subject of Jasper Collins. “I’ll call him when I get back, Mama. You don’t know how I appreciate your looking after Krista while I’m away.”

  “Of course I know. You take care and hurry back. I got to get to work now.”

  “Mama, let me speak with Krista.”

  “Krista’s at work. Before that she was out jogging. That’s something else she started here lately. Every morning, she’s running over there in the park. I’ll tell her you called. You got that cell phone, and you should’ve taken it with you. Then, your family could keep in touch with you. I declare! Well, you stay safe now, and come on home.”

  “I will, Mama. Bye.”

  Was everybody else’s mother a trial? She had needed some solace, a little nurturing, but even when Lena tried to be motherly, her effort had the quality of a sermon. Still, her mother was a good woman who worked hard and who did her best for her only child. She opened the window and inhaled deeply of the fresh ocean breeze. Strangely revived with a burst of energy, she skipped over to the television, turned it on, and saw there the competition for national swimming champion.

  “That’s for me,” she said aloud as visions of herself skimming over the ocean floated through her mind.

  Chapter Eight

  Petra put on her bathing suit and the hotel’s white terrycloth robe and took the elevator down to the hotel’s Olympic-size pool. Blue was not her favorite color, and the blue tiles covering the walls around the pool and the hallway approaching it reminded her of a painting she once saw hanging in the foyer of an otherwise dull-looking hospital room.

  She looked at the water, blue-green from infusions of chlorine intended to neutralize the assorted germs it received from human bodies. Did she want to get into that?

  Oh, heck! I’ve always wanted to swim, and my fears wouldn’t let me. What have I got to lose now? Nothing but a few weeks, and that’s not much. This is hardly the time to protect myself from adventure. Do it, girl. She jerked around at the sound of footsteps coming behind her, and saw the young lifeguard approaching.

  “Hey,” he said. “I should have told you not to be in here alone. It’s not a clever thing for a woman to do.”

  She stared at his six foot height, washboard middle, rock-like biceps, beautiful legs, and handsome face. “What a sin,” she said to herself. “He can’t be a day older than eighteen, if he’s that. Thank God, I’m not stupid.”

  “You’re a great ad for bathing suits,” he said and, as if his comment was nothing personal, he added, “let’s go around there to the exercise room. I want to show you some important strokes.” For about twenty minutes, he had her practicing the crawl and breaststrokes while she stood facing him. “All right. Let’s get into the water.”

  An hour later, Petra left the pool feeling that she could conquer Mount Everest. “You’re a quick study, Petra,” he said. “Not an iota of fear. See you same time tomorrow morning.”

  As the day progressed, Petra decided to skip the next swimming lesson and leave Santa Cruz the next morning. She went back to the pool late that afternoon and, though she didn’t see a lifeguard, waded into the children’s end. She managed to stay afloat with the breaststroke and was soon swimming in deeper water. She got out of the pool an hour later, buoyant with the knowledge that she had actually stayed afloat and that she hadn’t been scared. She left payment for the lifeguard at the registration desk, went to her room, and packed. Time was passing, and she had two more important stops to make. In the end, she wanted to be at home with people who loved her. As she packed, she worked at banishing the hollow that had opened up inside of her. If only she had gotten Winston’s address, she could have written him a note asking his forgiveness for having left him the way she did. She stiffened her back. What was done was done. The next morning, she got into the rented car and headed for Highway 1 and Monterey.

  A few minutes out of Santa Cruz, Petra stopped for gasoline and did something that, a month earlier, she had never attempted, possibly because she had never owned a car, although she was an experienced driver. She put the fuel in the car, checked its tires, and then washed the windshield. She drove off, feeling chipper; she later supposed that her success with the fuel pump must certa
inly have accounted for her frivolous mood, for she passed a man who thumbed for a ride, stopped, and waited for him. She turned and watched as he approached the front passenger’s door, told herself that nothing could happen that wasn’t going to happen anyway, and opened the door for him.

  “Hi. Thanks for stopping. How far you going?”

  “Haven’t decided. I’m Petra, and I’m headed for Monterey, but I’ve a mind to see Malibu. Where’re you headed?”

  “Los Angeles. My dad’s not doing too well.”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry. I hope he improves.”

  “Not much chance of that. Say, it’s not a good idea for you to pick up strange men. It never occurred to me that you’d stop. I’ve been out here for a while, so I decided to thumb everything that passed. You better be more careful.”

  “Not to worry. My days are numbered. I don’t expect that anything you or any other man can do to me will be worse than what I’ll face in a few days or weeks.”

  He turned so as to see her better and asked, “You serious?”

  “I sure am.”

  “Well, look here, babe. If you’re expecting me to do your dirty work, you can just forget it. I’m a law-abiding citizen. I wouldn’t even steal a package of gumballs. Besides, I love women, and when I put my hands on one, I do it to give her pleasure. What’s wrong with you? You look the picture of health to me.”

  “As my grandfather used to say, ‘Don’t let looks fool you.’ The doctor said I had six months maximum, and a big part of that time have passed. I’m getting tired of waiting; I want it to be over with.”

  “Yeah? Where you from?”

  She told him.

  “Well, what’re you doing out here on the other side of the country?”

  “I’d never been out of Ellicott City, except to go to Baltimore a few times, and I wanted to see the places I’d dreamed of visiting, and do some of the things I’d dreamed of doing, so I declared myself on vacation and bought a ticket to Rapid City, South Dakota, ’cause I wanted to see Mount Rushmore. I’ve been vagabonding it ever since.”

  “I hope you’ve been staying out of trouble,” he joshed. He pulled out a bag of potato chips and offered her some. “I can’t imagine a woman doing what you say you’ve done.”

  “I’ll bet you never met a woman going through what I’m going through,” she said, biting into a large, crispy potato chip. “I try not to dwell on it, but sometimes it drops down on me real hard, and then I just…just want to be done with it.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess that’s the way my dad feels, but he’s seventy-one with a full life behind him and you’re what?…Thirty?”

  “I’m thirty-six. You know, the funny thing is that I have enjoyed life more in the past couple months than in the rest of my life combined. I even fell in love back there in San Francisco.”

  “You’re joking! If that’s the case, how come you’re out here by yourself?”

  She wiped the moisture from beneath her left eye. “This is no joke, friend. I love that man. I’ve been thinking about him every minute when I’m awake. My feelings for him are haunting me. The problem is that I don’t have anything to offer him, not even a date for Christmas. I know he feels rotten now, because he loves me, too, but I couldn’t dump all this misery on him, and I couldn’t bring myself to say good-bye, so I sneaked out while he was asleep. The awful thing is that I left him there after the only time he made love to me.”

  The stranger let out a sharp whistle. “I feel you, babe, but you sure gave it to him where it hurts. A guy gets it on with his woman, wakes and finds out she gone, and he has no idea where or why. Babe, you definitely didn’t help his ego.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I loved him too much to let him sweat through this with me.” She released a long sigh. “But let me tell you it hurts like hell. Every nerve of my body and all the pores of my skin miss that man.”

  He offered her a sip from his half bottle of ginger ale, and she accepted it gladly, figuring that most ordinary germs needed more time than she had to do their damage.

  “I think you ought to go back to him,” he said.

  “I wish I could, but I can’t. He was so kind, so gentle, and so loving. I never felt with a man what I felt with him. I knew him only a very short time, but I felt as if I’d always known him. I was completely comfortable and at ease with him. Funny thing is that we made no demands on each other. I told him about my prognosis, but he didn’t want to accept that, and I knew he’d either detain me in San Francisco, or follow me. So, like a coward, I ran away. Why am I telling you all this?”

  “A good psychologist will tell you that the best therapist is a stranger who you know you will never see again. You’re not worrying about what I think of you. You don’t even care. Strangers give us the opportunity to have a genuine catharsis.”

  She turned on the windshield washer, realized that her tears caused the blur before her, and turned them off. “Oh, well. At least I won’t have long to hurt. You know, I always wanted to swim in the ocean. I took a swimming lesson in Santa Cruz, learned the breaststroke, and I’m going to swim in the ocean. I know you’re in a hurry, but it would be great if you’d stop off with me for a couple of hours. I can see Monterey by car, get a swim, and we could head on to Malibu.”

  “Works for me, but I still think you ought to go back to that guy. If he fell in love with you, he’s going through hell. You ought to let him measure out his own poison. If he’s much of a man, he can take it.”

  “He’s a whole lot of man. Let me tell you. But in these last few weeks, I’ve become less self-centered. I don’t want to hurt anybody, or do anything to cause other people unhappiness.”

  “You wanna be sure you get into those Pearly Gates, huh?”

  “I guess so. My pastor told me to confess to all the people I’ve wronged and ask forgiveness, and I have.”

  “Humph. How did that go?”

  “Most didn’t take it so well.”

  “Of course they didn’t. What you did was unload your guilt at the expense of individuals who are left to deal with your transgressions. As far as I’m concerned, that sucks.”

  “Maybe, but I’d rather go through those Pearly Gates than to hell, wouldn’t you?”

  “I never thought much about it,” he said, appearing pensive. “Let’s get off this serious topic. It’s enough I have to worry about my dad.”

  They rode on to Monterey in silence. Once there, he guided her to the places she wanted to see and the areas that tourists found most attractive. She asked if he needed money for lunch, but he didn’t. “Then why were you hitchhiking?” she asked him.

  “I’m a graduate student. Oh, I know I’m as old as some of my professors, but I dropped out of college, realized how stupid I’d been, and went back. I’m paying my own way, and that means not spending what I don’t have to spend.” They ate a lunch of hamburgers and French fries, then changed into bathing suits in rented cabanas.

  “I thought you said you had only one swimming lesson,” he said, “but you’re not acting like it. Get too cocky, and you could drown in a minute.”

  “Might as well go happily,” she said, grabbing his hand. Her gaze swept over his hard, masculine body. He exuded power and virility. Then she said to herself, “Don’t even think it.”

  “You lose interest rather fast,” he said in a mocking tone.

  “Not really. In these last days, I’ve become very honest. God made many lovely things, and when I see one that’s pretty near perfect, I happily genuflect in reverence. But my heart’s still back in San Francisco.” She spun away, plunged into a small wave and, because she didn’t think to hold her breath, came out of the wave gasping. Alarmed, he carried her to shore and signaled for a lifeguard.

  “I don’t need that,” she protested, still gasping, when the lifeguard began giving her artificial respiration.

  “Maybe you don’t, but I need this job, and you are definitely not conking out here on my watch, lady,” the lifeguard said
. “If you can’t swim, stay out of the ocean, especially if you’re not wearing a life jacket. Experienced swimmers have drowned right out there.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.” She declined the lifeguard’s offer of medical assistance, saying that she didn’t need it.

  She and the stranger walked back to the cabanas that they had rented, dressed, got into the rented car, and headed for Malibu. “I have to tell you, that after that stunt you pulled in the ocean, I don’t feel comfortable riding with you,” he told her. “But I’m scared that if I leave you, you’ll do something really dumb. Petra, if you do anything else that foolish, I’ll try getting a ride with somebody else. You scared the bejeebers out of me.”

  “But I told you I had only one swimming lesson and that was in a pool.”

  “Yeah. You did. I should have stuck closer to you. Where’re you going after Malibu?”

  “If I’m still all right, I’ll go to Atlanta. I want to see the Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Site. I feel like paying homage to the man who did so much for people like me.”

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, when she slowed down, his voice low and urgent.

  “I had such a sharp pain in my head, the worst I’ve had yet.”

  “Pull over to the shoulder,” he said, and she did. “Is it still painful?”

  Petra shook her head. “No. But it’s as if a dagger went through my brain.”

  “Look, Petra, be sensible. Let’s go back to Bakersfield, turn the car in, and you skip Malibu and get a flight or a train to Atlanta.”

  “But you’ll be that much farther from Los Angeles.”

  “Not to worry about me. I’ll get a ride. If push comes to shove, I can always take a train. Turn around, please. I can’t leave you here on the road.”