by Mary Monroe
“I need to run to the liquor store to pick up some Italian wine to go with our Italian dinner.” I headed for the door before Moanin’ Lisa could respond, but there was a puzzled look on her face and I knew why. Wine was one thing that we never ran out of. There had to be at least half a dozen bottles in our wine cabinet.
I drove around like I was lost for about twenty minutes so I could build up my nerve. It was a good time for me to do some more serious thinking about my situation, and what I was going to do about it. I was now thirty-four years old. My life was as raggedy as a bowl of sauerkraut. Everything that I had accomplished over the years was gone. I had no man, no network of friends to speak of, and no place to call my own. Nothing. It was like I was back at square one, just starting my life from the gate.
I had a lot of thoughts to sort through about other things, like what I was going to do about my future? I had already tried to get my job back at the cruise line, but it was too late. The supervisor that I had admired so much had accepted a position with the Princess Cruise Lines. I had to laugh when I heard that. Princess was a fierce competitor that she and I, and most of my former co-workers, used to talk trash about to the point of no return. The new events coordinator for the Encantadora cruise line had come from the mighty Royal Caribbean line and had brought an assistant with him. However, they’d told me that they’d keep me in mind for future opportunities.
The folks at Encantadora had kept their word. When a suitable position became available a few weeks later, they called me up. I immediately accepted a secretary position in the main office, exactly where I had started. I had come full circle. I didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad sign. I was just thankful to have a job. These thoughts danced around in my head as I continued to drive around.
When I finally reached Baylor Street, I got to Viola’s house first. I had not paid too much attention to it during the times that I was in and out of Valerie’s house during the recent years. There was no reason for me to do so. I didn’t know the large Hispanic family that Viola’s greedy nephew had sold her house to. I glanced down the street toward Valerie’s house. Right away I felt a sense of dread. I refused to think about what she’d do or say to me, if she saw me. However, I knew what she was capable of doing. And I was not ready to join Mr. Zeke in a homemade grave.
I was not brave enough to park too close to Valerie’s house. So as a security measure, I decided to park for a few minutes in front of the house where I’d grown up with my late foster parents. I changed my mind as soon as I saw Glodine prance out onto her porch when she saw me. The years had not been kind to her. Her hands looked like meat hooks; her bare feet looked like hairless puppies. She beckoned me with both hands. I backed up and parked in front of her house, forcing myself to smile, something I had not done in a while. It hurt my entire face to do so now.
Like Valerie, Glodine had always been a major source of juicy or useless information. The information she shared was usually unflattering and unreliable, but as long as it wasn’t about me, it held my interest.
“Girl, I ain’t seen you in a coon’s age,” Glodine greeted, opening my car door with hands shiny and dusty with grease and flour. Why such a slovenly woman wore a white apron over a plaid housecoat was beyond me. There was so much sauce, grease, and flour on the front and sides of the apron where she’d wiped her hands, it looked like an abstract painting. There was an anxious look on her moon face, so I knew she had some stories to share that would curl my limp hair. “I just made a fresh pot of coffee to go with my fried chicken dinner,” she said with a proud sniff. She stood in front of me with her arms folded, looking me up and down like I was something for sale. “I’m glad to see you done put on some weight. Black men love women on the heavy side. All that extra meat looks good on you. . . .” There was a smug look on Glodine’s face as she continued to look me over.
I had gained more than ten pounds in the last few weeks, and I didn’t like it, no matter how good the extra weight looked on me. “Thanks,” I muttered, sucking in my stomach, glancing down the street toward Valerie’s house. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering who had rented the room I once occupied.
I followed Glodine into her neat living room. One wall was covered with pictures of all the foster children who had once lived in her home. There had to be at least a dozen. I had to look away when I saw one of Floyd, sitting on the back of somebody’s motorcycle with Glodine frowning in the background like a gargoyle. There were still no pictures displayed anywhere of Glodine’s three deceased children. At least not in the living room, which was as far as I ever got in her house.
“Too bad you show a lot of your weight gain in your face. I do, too.” Glodine grinned. “What you been up to?” Glodine didn’t even give me a chance to respond to her anxious question. With a sniff so aggressive it made her nose wiggle, she launched a one-sided verbal assault on everybody she knew, and a few people she didn’t know. Her husband had run off with an Asian woman. Her last two foster daughters had run off with thugs. The Mexicans who had bought the house that I’d grown up in had to be drug dealers—how else could they afford to buy a house? Her sister’s only son had been arrested for showing his dick to some little kids on a playground. She frowned every time I glimpsed at my watch. “I know you ain’t got no place else to go, or you wouldn’t be here.” She laughed. She poured me another cup of her weak coffee, my fourth, and then she continued. By the end of the second hour I was so exhausted I didn’t care how rude it was to look at my watch.
“I’m meeting somebody for dinner,” I lied, rising from her lumpy sofa. My “fishing” trip to Glodine’s house had done nothing for me but waste my time. Even though she had left no stone unturned, the only person she had not mentioned was Valerie. The only reason I didn’t bring her name up was because the last thing I wanted Valerie to know was that I’d been in the neighborhood asking about her.
CHAPTER 61
My life quickly became routine. I went to work, came home, listened to my roommate’s latest tale of woe, then I went to bed. I did a little socializing, but I avoided most of my old friends and didn’t attempt to make any new ones. A lot of interesting men asked me out, but dating was the last thing on my agenda these days. But eight and a half months after my sordid secret had been exposed, a new male came into my life that I could not ignore. My precious son, Martin Luther. I gave him my last name, because Reese was the only name I wanted to be associated with these days.
“He doesn’t look like Floyd or Paul,” Moanin’ Lisa noticed right off the bat. And he didn’t. He looked like his father, Marvin Russell Meecham. There was no doubt in my mind about who my baby’s father was. Despite the fact that I’d been on the pill during my foolishness, I’d still gotten pregnant. There was the time that Marvin/Russell had forgot to put on a condom, and there was that one other time when he’d broken through the condom at the most dangerous moment.
Each day Martin Luther looked more and more like his father, so there was no way I could not think about Marvin/Russell on a regular basis. But I had no desire to try to locate him. I felt the same way about him now that I felt about Paul and Floyd: I wanted nothing else from him, either. However, I did wonder from time to time if he and Valerie had been able to restore their relationship and get married, anyway. In a sad way I hoped that they had been able to. In all the years that I’d known Valerie and all the men she’d been with, Marvin/Russell was the only one who had made her happy, and the only one who stayed interested in her after a couple of dates. The fact that she had insulted me in the worst way in public because I had inadvertently turned her dream into a nightmare didn’t change the fact that we’d once been best friends.
I missed Valerie, but I knew in my heart that we could never be friends again. All I could do was wish her well.
My son was a little more than a year old when I decided it was time for me to move on. I scolded myself because I should have left Moanin’ Lisa’s apartment a long time ago. She was a lousy housekeeper, and
I was tired of cleaning up behind her. I had to laugh to myself when I thought about how crazy her sloppiness would have driven Paul. She had no friends left except me, so there was nobody for her to visit or cling to. She was beginning to make me feel like her hostage. Despite the fact that it bothered Moanin’ Lisa when I left her alone, I went out on a few casual dates, and I do mean casual. She hadn’t been asked out in more than six months.
And the only people who visited Moanin’ Lisa were some of her relatives. That was another irritating mess, because most of them whined as much as she did! It got to a point that whenever Cousin So and So, or Uncle What’s His Name came in one door, I bundled up my son and went out the other. I still had a few options. I visited a few co-workers and a couple of sisters from the church I used to attend on Baylor Street.
But Moanin’ Lisa’s life outside of her dreary apartment was about as empty as it could get. As hard as it was to believe, her unnecessary complaining had gotten even worse over the years. Other than the job at that insurance company that she’d hated from day one, and somebody’s funeral, she rarely went anywhere. It did me no good to advise her to get some hobbies, change jobs, stop attending so many funerals, and find other things to do with her time. The woman thrived on misery. She was getting old before her time, and I was not going to let her drag me along with her. Every little ache and pain she had had to be cancer or some fatal disease. If that wasn’t bad enough, now she was at a point where she’d burst into tears and howl more than my baby boy did, when I least expected it. When my son stretched open his mouth when he had no reason to, I shut him up by sticking a pacifier into his mouth. Well, the day that my son stopped crying and took his pacifier out of his mouth and stuck it into Moanin’ Lisa’s mouth during one of her outbursts to shut her up, I knew that it was time for me to make a change. I had enough bad habits that he was probably going to eventually pick up. He didn’t need to pick up any of hers.
I moved into a one-bedroom apartment only a few blocks away from Moanin’ Lisa’s, but that was not far enough away. I realized that immediately when I came home from work one day after picking up my son from his sitter’s and found her sitting in her car parked in front of my building waiting for me to come home. I knew I had to move again, and beyond her reach this time.
Two months after I’d moved into a small house in Anaheim with a fenced-in backyard for my son to play in, I retrieved a message from my cell phone voice mail. Candace, my beloved former supervisor from the cruise line, had called me and offered me another job on a cruise ship. She didn’t leave a lot of details, but from the excitement in her voice, I knew it had to be something she knew I’d be interested in. It was too late that night for me to return her call, but by the time morning arrived, I had decided that I would accept the job, even if it was sweeping the ship’s deck.
“LoReese, it’s so good to hear your voice again,” Candace squealed as soon as she answered her phone. “What have you been up to? All kinds of fun things I’m sure.”
“Lady, you don’t know the half of it,” I said, more to myself than to her.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
“So, let me try again. Have you been doing all kinds of fun things, or not?”
“Oh, not much,” I said, making a face. I had to wonder if she’d still be interested in me working for her again if she knew all the stupid shit I’d done during the past few years. “You said something about a shipboard job?” I asked anxiously.
“I heard you were back with the Encantadora—working in the front office.”
“Well, yeah. The new events coordinator already had an assistant, so I took whatever I could get,” I said sheepishly. “How are things at, uh, the Princess Cruise Line,” I said. “Are the big boys treating you well?”
“Like an ugly stepsister,” Candace snarled.
“I guess that means you’re not happy there.”
“Hell no! Don’t mention those assholes! That’s why I am no longer with them. Had I known what I know now, I’d have stayed where I was. But things happen for a reason.” Candace paused and cleared her throat. Then she started speaking in a much louder and more eager voice. “Are you familiar with the DreamBoat cruise line?”
“Of course.” One thing that employees of cruise lines kept up with was news that involved rival lines. “They are a small independent line like Encantadora, but aren’t they based in Miami?”
“The main office is. The cruises primarily cover the Caribbean area with an occasional jaunt to ports along the Mexican Riviera.”
“Like us. Except we do Mexico the most, and the Caribbean from time to time. Is that where you work now?” I asked with an envious gasp.
“It pleases me immensely to say that that is true! I organize the entertainment and all other social events. And, I need an assistant. Patty Boone, the girl who’s going to leave me, couldn’t keep her legs together, or her hands off those island studs, and now she’s jumped ship and run off and married one. If I don’t get another assistant soon, I just might ‘jump ship’ myself.” At this point, Candace started sounding frighteningly serious and her voice got so low I could barely hear her. “Now I don’t know why I feel the way I do, but you’ve been on my mind a lot lately. LoReese, uh, for some mysterious reason I have a feeling that you are ready for a big change in your life.”
CHAPTER 62
“Candace, are you offering me a job?” I was glad that I was already sitting down on the sofa because the news was so incredible I almost passed out, and almost dropped my son off my lap. I held my breath because this sounded too good to be true. From my experiences in life, I had learned the hard way that anytime something sounded too good to be true, it usually was. I braced myself and wondered what the catch was. “What’s wrong with this job?” I asked with a heavy sigh.
“What’s wrong with the job? Why would you ask an odd question like that?”
“It sounds too good to be true,” I mumbled. “Is the ship haunted or something? A person would have to be crazy to give up a job like that in the first place . . . like I was.”
“You’re awful gloomy today. Is this a bad time to discuss employment opportunities? Or are you just not interested? I am sure I’d be able to fill the position in a flash, but you are my first choice . . .”
“I’m sorry, Candace. I guess I’m just being cautious,” I said, swallowing hard.
Candace didn’t reply right away, and that made me wish I had sounded more enthusiastic, because I really was. “Anyway, I’m sure you remember all the fun we had working together. This will be just as much fun, if not more. Now the pay won’t be that much more, but it’ll be enough for you to enjoy a fairly comfortable life. And to sweeten the pot, my retirement is just around the corner, which means you’d be the most likely one to replace me.” Candace paused. I heard her suck in some air, then clear her throat with a hearty cough. “All you have to do is clear it with your husband.”
“Uh, we are no longer together,” I said in a low voice.
“Oh my word! What did he do?”
All five of Candace’s husbands had cheated on her, abused her, and used her for her money, and she was still bitter about it. It was easy for me to understand why she assumed all men were the ones at fault when a relationship fizzled out.
“We just grew apart,” I said, responding in a detached voice.
“Aw, that’s too bad.” Candace didn’t sound the least bit sorry to hear that my marriage had failed. If anything, she sounded happy about it. “Shit happens when you sit on a toilet! Then it shouldn’t be a problem at all for you to move to Miami. A single, pretty young woman like yourself will get a lot of attention down here. Do you have a problem relocating? One of my best clients, and new best friends, manages several apartment buildings in south Florida. Nothing on the Palm Beach level, but something I’m sure you’d like. I could have a place lined up for you within a week that you could afford. And I’ll even help you furnish it, at my expense.”
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��Well, me moving to Miami wouldn’t really be a problem. Not a big problem, I mean,” I said with some hesitation as I caressed my son’s cheek. “Uh, I’m not exactly single anymore, see.”
This time Candace was the one to gasp. “Don’t tell me! Please don’t tell me that you dumped one husband and picked up another already? Are you going to have to sift through five like I did and still end up alone when you could have been using your time more productively?”
“I’m not married, but I have a child to take care of now,” I chirped. I followed that with an extremely proud sigh. I wanted it known that I was delighted to finally be a mother. For the first time in my life, I had somebody that belonged to me in every sense of the word.
Candace breathed a loud sigh of relief, and her doing that made me do the same thing. I loved my son to death, but the last thing I wanted was for him to hinder my progress in any way. I knew women who couldn’t work, date, or do much of anything else because of their children, and they ended up resenting them. I didn’t want that to happen to me. I’d lost too much already, and at this point, my child was all I had left.
“Is that all? I don’t see how it would be a problem. As a matter of fact, I’m the only crew member who doesn’t have any children, and that’s only because no man in his right mind wants to wade into this sixty-year-old pothole of a pussy anymore. Thank God for male escort services and vibrators.” Candace laughed. “Boy or girl?”
“Boy. His name’s Martin Luther. Named after Dr. King and my late foster father,” I said. I looked around the room at all the cheap furniture I had purchased. Then I looked at my son’s face. I was no longer a happy resident of California. I didn’t think that I was going to be happy in the state of California any time soon after all I’d been through. As for me staying in the same area, just moving from one apartment to another, that was not going to help much, mainly because I would still be too close to the things I needed to put behind me.
