Once Upon a Project

by Bettye Griffin

  She nodded acceptance, and at that moment she began to feel sweat form on her brow and between her breasts. Damn it, not another hot flash! She’d been noticing them for the past few months, and her gynecologist had told her she was perimenopausal, still getting regular periods but beginning to experience symptoms of the change. How was she supposed to get through ten minutes of dancing when she was sweating like a pig? Eric already knew she was older than he. She wanted to give an impression of youthful energy, not of a grandmother of two embarking on the change of life.

  Oh, Lord. Were they actually playing “Got to Give It Up,” that marathon number recorded by Marvin Gaye in the late seventies? Even back then she had difficulty getting all the way through it. That deejay had to know this was an older crowd. What was he trying to do, give somebody a heart attack?

  To her relief, the deejay mixed a short portion of the original version by Marvin with a newer, jazzier instrumental of the same tune, then rolled into Michael McDonald singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” When he started mixing in another tune, she gestured to Eric that she was ready to sit down.

  “Grace, would you like a drink?” Eric offered.

  “Chardonnay would be nice, thanks.”

  Elyse was beginning to feel like somewhat of a wallflower. Susan and Charles were dancing. Grace had gone off to the bar with someone who looked like a member of the large Wade family from Dreiser, and the sociable Pat still hadn’t made her way to the table where Elyse now sat alone. She wished Pat would finally get over here so she wouldn’t feel so self-conscious. How much could she possibly have to say to these people?

  “Elyse, is that you?”

  She looked up to see Kevin Nash smiling at her. “Kevin! How are you?”

  “Fit as a fiddle and ready to dance.” He snapped his fingers and did some energetic steps. “Come on and dance with me, girl.”

  She laughed as she got to her feet. She’d known Kevin since first grade. He didn’t live in Dreiser—his family owned a home a few blocks away—but he lived in the same school district, and he and Elyse shared many of the same classes straight through to high school graduation. Kevin had never been the type to tease the girls or pull their hair. He was an all-around nice kid who, she remembered, used to have some difficulty with his studies. She was delighted to see him again. Happily she fell into step opposite him.

  “Oh, I’m exhausted,” Susan said, fanning the neckline of her blouse. “Let’s sit.”

  Charles followed her back to the table, which, save for half-empty drinking glasses, was deserted. “I guess everybody’s dancing,” she remarked as she slipped into the booth.

  He sat beside her this time. “Good. It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

  She smiled at him, her heart racing. The years had been kind to Charles. He was just as handsome at fifty-one as he’d been in his midtwenties. She wondered what he thought of her....

  “It’s good to see you, Susan,” he said quietly. “I’m glad you came.”

  “It was a last-minute decision, but I’m glad I came, too. I would have felt terrible if I’d missed the opportunity to see you again. It’s . . . it’s been a long time, and we didn’t part under the best of circumstances.”

  “Ancient history,” he said easily.

  “How is Douglas, anyway?”

  “He’s hopeless,” Charles said, as casually as if he were placing a lunch order. “He’s broken my mother’s heart. Back in jail again for the umpteenth time. It’s his second damn home.” He shook his head. “When he’s out it gets a little awkward around the house. I live in that basement apartment in my mother’s house. She likes to have me close by, now that she’s gotten older and my father’s gone. And every time I say I’m going to move out when Douglas is there, he gets arrested again for some petty crime and is gone again.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “Yeah, well, enough about him. Tell me about you.”

  “Well, I’ve been married for thirteen years, and I have two children, a boy and a girl.” Susan smiled at the thought of Quentin and Alyssa. “I brought them with me to the luncheon this afternoon, and Elyse’s daughter is watching them up in Lake Forest while I’m here.”

  “What about your husband?”

  Did she imagine it, or was there a hopeful note in his tone, like he hoped she and Bruce had broken up? “He’s at home, but I didn’t feel like driving all the way back there to drop off the kids.”

  “All the way there? Where do you live, out west?” The roads leading to the Chicago’s west suburbs were traditionally jammed.

  She decided to have a little fun with him. “Lake Shore Drive.”

  “Lake Shore Drive? Life must be treating you extremely well, Susan, if you live on the Gold Coast. Wait a minute.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re pullin’ my leg. Lake Forest is farther north than Lake Shore Drive . . . a whole lot farther.”

  “I live on Lake Shore Drive . . . in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.”

  “Oh. I don’t know anything about that area, but I can understand why you didn’t want to drive home and then come back to the South Side.” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “I guess your husband doesn’t know about your great love before you met him, or else he wouldn’t have let you come out alone.”

  No point in saying he was wrong to describe himself as her great love; that’s exactly what he’d been. “We never really did a lot of talking about our past love lives. We were mature people in our thirties when we met. There didn’t seem to be much point.” She suspected Charles wanted to know how much time had elapsed between their breakup and her involvement with Bruce. She wanted him to know it had been quite a while, eight difficult years.

  He seemed to accept her response. “Are you still an accountant?”

  “No. My husband and I agreed that I would be a stay-at-home mother, at least until the kids were in middle school. So I haven’t worked in about eleven years.” Here I am, a flesh-and-blood desperate housewife.

  “Nice deal, if you can swing it. I guess your husband does pretty well. I’ve never been to Pleasant Prairie, but anything called Lake Shore Drive is probably the better section of town.”

  “He owns a credit card–processing service up in Milwaukee.” But she didn’t want to talk about Bruce. “What about you, Charles? Are you still teaching?”

  “Yeah, and a little private tutoring on the side, trying to help these kids make something of themselves.”

  “You aren’t at our old school, are you?”

  “No, I’m at Lincoln Park High. But the kids are just as wild. Sometimes I think I should have gone into the business world and made some big money instead of doing something as thankless as teaching.”

  Susan guessed Charles felt a little inadequate because he clearly didn’t earn as much as Bruce. She sought to console him. “I think teaching is one of the most important jobs there is.” A question suddenly occurred to her. “Charles, did you ever get married or have any kids?”

  His gaze searched her face before breaking into a slow smile. “No. How could I? The only woman I ever wanted to marry left me.”

  Chapter 12

  Grace downed half her Coca-Cola in one gulp. She was glad she’d asked Eric to get her a Coke in addition to her wine, which was for sipping. Maybe some cold liquid would help her stop sweating. When no one was looking she’d wipe her face, neck, and hairline. “That hit the spot,” she remarked.

  “Good. So, Grace, where do you work?”

  She tensed. She’d known this question was coming. Instinct told her to say as little as possible. For all she knew, Eric might hold a position on a par with hers.

  But even as she had the thought, she knew she was just kidding herself. Just from getting a little closer to him, she’d noticed that while undeniably good-looking, he wasn’t quite as flawlessly handsome as she’d first thought. When he laughed a missing upper incisor showed. And he had a little potbelly. Plus his face held hints of that hard look of a man who liked to drink
. . . a lot. His physical appeal had probably hit its peak ten years ago, and ten years from now she probably wouldn’t look at him twice. Still, here and now he was reasonably good-looking, so reluctantly she named her employer.

  “Oh, yeah? What shift you work?”

  Grace blinked. What shift? He thought she worked in the plant?

  At that moment any remote hopes of his being a professional faded away like General MacArthur. If Eric was accustomed to dating women who held blue-collar jobs, maybe she should cut him loose now and save herself from disappointment. She’d been through that before. The men whose eyes widened when they saw her floor-through condo, decorated with sculptures she’d picked up from her travels to Europe, Asia, and Africa, and her Mercedes parked out front. Next thing she knew, they’d ask to borrow her car, or to loan them two hundred dollars “just until payday.”

  Still, she abandoned the idea of excusing herself like a burning building. It had been too long since anyone who looked as good as Eric Wade had paid attention to her, even with his flaws.

  “Actually, I work in their offices,” she said. “I work standard daytime hours.”

  “Oh. Secretary, huh?”

  Oh, God. She wished he’d stop asking so many questions. What difference did it make what she did? She was beginning to think he wouldn’t understand it, anyway. “I work in the global relations office. I kind of . . . run things.”

  He winked at her. “Ah, one of those career women.”

  Grace made a face, her lower lip protruding slightly in a reaction that came naturally. She’d always hated that term. In her opinion it ought to be relegated to history, along with other outdated words and phrases that had no place in the vocabulary of the twenty-first century: stewardess, record player, Betamax, dungarees. The notion that any woman who didn’t work behind the counter at McDonald’s was consumed by her profession struck her as utter nonsense.

  “The way I see it, if a woman expects to support herself nowadays and not live in abject poverty, she’d better be qualified to contribute something positive to the workplace. The days when women relied on husbands to take care of them ended forty years ago. I’d like to do something besides ring up sales at Target.” Her eyes dared him to object.

  Eric shrugged. “So you went to college, huh?”

  “Yes.” She wasn’t about to volunteer that she had a master’s degree.

  “Where’d you go, Malcolm X?”

  “No. I had a scholarship to U of I.” Every muscle in her body plus every instinct in her brain told her to forget about Eric Wade, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. After all, there was nothing wrong with attending a community college. They’d grown up in the projects, not the Gold Coast. For every Deval Patrick, the gifted South Side student who earned a law degree from Harvard and ultimately became governor of Massachusetts, there were twenty who attended one of the City Colleges of Chicago.

  Instead she changed the subject.

  “What about you, Eric? What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a supervisor at a moving and storage outfit.” He met her eyes defiantly. “I guess that sounds lame to a big shot like you.”

  “It sounds just fine.” She raised her wineglass to her lips and took a sip.

  He broke into a grin, his face softening and, under the flattering dim lights of the bar, looking more handsome than ever.

  Grace began to relax. Maybe there was a chance of things working out after all.

  Pat, Grace, Elyse, and Susan left Junior’s at the same time, a little after one. The bar still thrived with patrons, but the four women were all tired. Charles saw them each to their car, beginning with Pat, who had parked just a few doors down from the door, and then Grace, who was the farthest away. Susan and Elyse walked with him, and after Grace drove off with a wave they turned around and walked to the opposite corner.

  Elyse buttoned her checkered blazer and turned the collar up. “I think the wine I drank must be wearing off. I’m frozen.”

  Charles offered an arm to each of them. “It’s not a bad thing about the alcohol wearing off. Are you sure you’re able to drive?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ll be fine. There’s not much traffic out at this hour, except the trucks.”

  He turned to Susan. “What about you? Wisconsin is a long ways away.”

  “Oh, I’m going to stay at Elyse’s house tonight. I knew I’d be too tired to go all the way home, plus it means having to wake up my kids, who I know are asleep by now. We’ll go home in the morning.”

  Elyse unlocked her car doors with a remote control. Charles, ever the gentleman, seated her first behind the wheel, then came around to the passenger side and did the same for Susan. As he had done with Elyse, he kissed her cheek. But he also discreetly slipped a piece of paper into her hand, saying softly, “Put this in your purse. Look at it when you’re alone.”

  “Well, that was a heck of an evening,” Elyse commented after waving good-bye to Charles.

  “I’m glad we came. It was good to see Charles again, real good.”

  “I think it’s safe to say he feels the same way.”

  Susan turned a suspicious eye on her friend. “Do you have something you want to say, Elyse?”

  “No, Susan,” she replied calmly. “I’m just making an observation. No need to get all touchy.”

  “I’m not touchy,” Susan retorted. “I just recognize when someone’s on a fishing expedition.”

  Elyse paused before admitting, “Okay, I’m curious about why you broke up with him. So shoot me.”

  “I won’t shoot you, but I’m still not going to talk about it.”

  “Hey, can’t blame me for trying.”

  Susan chuckled. She was glad Elyse didn’t take offense at her statement. She didn’t want to get into a snit with one of her oldest friends. She’d always been sketchy about her breakup with Charles. One of the important life lessons she’d learned was that the only true way to keep a secret was to not tell anyone. That was why none of her friends knew about her cancer. She didn’t want them planning her funeral or even wondering about her sex life.

  Which had, of course, become nonexistent.

  As far as the reasons for her breakup with Charles, the truth would probably be disappointing to anyone expecting a juicy follow-up to the brothers’ fistfight. Susan had told no one that Charles had proposed to her a few days before that fateful altercation, and that she’d accepted. She wanted to first make sure all was clear with Douglas, who tended to have a possessive nature, before announcing her engagement publicly. Then came the brothers’ fight, which Charles won. He and Susan left the bar, with Douglas being helped up by several men who shouted epithets at their retreating backs.

  That alone gave Susan second thoughts about the wisdom of marrying Charles. A few days later Ann Valentine read her the riot act for disrupting her family, and even though both Charles and his father intercepted, Susan decided she couldn’t live with the shadow hovering over her of a shattered relationship between two brothers.

  Charles had valiantly tried to change her mind, but she had held her guns. Blood was thicker than water, her mother always used to say. And Ann Valentine’s open dislike of her would eventually lead to a showdown. She didn’t want to force Charles to choose between her and his mother. Look what happened to Pat when she had to choose.

  “I saw you talking with Kevin Nash,” Susan said to Elyse. “What’s he up to these days?”

  “Oh, he lives up in Rogers Park. He . . . he works for a pest control company.”

  “Good business. People will always have bugs. What does he do?”

  “Actually . . . He goes around spraying people’s houses.”

  “Oh.” Susan was taken aback. There was nothing wrong with servicing homes for pest control, but she expected Kevin would have done more with himself. His family didn’t live in the projects; his father had been a policeman who owned his own home. From the viewpoint of Dreiser residents, the Nashes were well-off. In spite of that, Kevin earn
ed a living doing something anyone coming off the street could do. And it couldn’t be much of a living.

  “I was surprised to hear that myself,” Elyse said. “I guess he didn’t exactly set the world on fire, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t. But he does provide a vital service.” Susan felt she should say something nice.

  “At least he’s not without ambition. He plans on opening a Laundromat in the old neighborhood. As he said, a nice, shiny, clean place to make for a pleasant laundry experience.”

  “I see.” But Susan didn’t see. She had nothing against a self-made man. Bruce worked as a stockbroker for a dozen years, socking away every penny he could until he saved enough to start the credit card–processing service that made him wealthy. But he was her husband. Naturally she would defend his motives. But Elyse sounded too defensive of Kevin. Susan couldn’t imagine why. Sure, Kevin had always been a nice guy, but Elyse hadn’t seen him in years, and it was doubtful she’d ever see him again. She didn’t understand why Elyse would want to stick up for someone she had no connection to.

  Chapter 13

  Late March

  Lake Forest, Illinois, and Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin

  Susan tooted the horn as she drove off, and she and the children all waved to Elyse and Brontë. She glanced at Quentin and Alyssa in the rearview mirror. Their good-bye waves seemed genuinely affectionate. “Did you have fun, kids?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Brontë’s fun. She’s got neat stuff, too,” Quentin answered.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Mom, why did we have to go home so soon?” Alyssa asked. “I’m hungry.”

  “And Miss Elyse invited us to stay for breakfast,” Quentin added.

  “Oh, I just felt that, since our staying overnight was so last minute, it would be best if we left first thing in the morning.”