The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue: A Novel

by Barbara O'Neal

  14

  TRUDY

  The Allman Brothers CD is over and the next one spins into place. I pour a third glass of wine. Still no tears, just a hard knot of undissolved emotion in my throat. My stomach is not feeling all that thrilled at the gulped wine, and I get up to get some cookies. The last of the Pepperidge Farm. While I’m in there, I make a plate of cheese and fruit, too, and carry it all back in with me. If I’m going to wallow, I may as well cover all the bases.

  I settle the plate on the coffee table and hear a step outside on the porch. Shit. If it’s Rick, I’m in trouble. But the bell rings, and when I open the door, it’s Jade. There’s weariness on her cheeks, in her eyes. “Hi,” she says, holding up a bottle of wine. “I brought spirits. Am I interrupting anything?”

  I let go of a short laugh, swing my arm around to the wine and cookies. “I was having a wake for my marriage. You’re welcome to join, but I’m warning you now, I’m in a very maudlin mood.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Did Dante call again?”

  She nods miserably.

  “Sit.” I take her coat. With my toe, I kick the CD case over to her. “Pick something that makes you the most maudlin of all. I’ll get you some wine.”

  She lifts her head, smiles bitterly. Nods to herself. “I’ll be right back.”

  I tuck her bottle of wine into the fridge, get out another wineglass, which I have to wash because it’s so dusty. I only ever use one.

  Jade comes back in, waves a CD at me. “Alicia Keys. You heard her?”

  I shake my head.

  “Oh, girl.” She bends, all long limbs and power, and puts it in the CD player. She takes the glass of wine I’ve filled and we sit down. “Listen.”

  A woman’s soft voice, surrounded with poignant piano, fills the room. At the sound of a second voice, rising behind the main, tears spring to my eyes. I look at Jade, blinking. She nods. “Just wait.”

  We settle on the floor, and both of us let the music just slide around and into us. The sound is pure sorrow, mixed with resolution. Mightiness. “I don’t know how many nights this song got me through,” Jade says. “It’s like she’s singing my life story.”

  “Her voice is fabulous.”

  “And she’s young, not even twenty-five. This is her first album—it won about ten Grammys.”

  The song ends, and she picks up the remote control that I’d left on the table. “This is the song, though. It was song of the year.”

  A song comes on that I know, vaguely. I’ve heard it on the radio, but not like this, not at this level. Jade turns it up, so the sound of that rich, soul voice and delicate piano fills the room, the hollow of my chest. Jade sings along and I close my eyes, feeling the real tears coming on now. They stream down my face in a hot wash, and I just let them, because I sense that Jade is doing the same thing, letting it go. The song ends and she plays it again, and then another time, lowering the volume.

  I can’t speak for a moment, and hide my face. My shoulders are shaking with the violence of the sorrow in me. Choking, I say, “I don’t know how … I’m going to do … this. Go on … without him. I … don’t … want to.”

  Jade reaches over, and she’s got tears in her eyes, too. “I know.”

  “It’s not … fair. I don’t know what … I … did. Or … didn’t … do. I don’t understand any of it, and I don’t know how to do this, and it just hurts so much.”

  She turns the music down a little more and lifts her glass, sniffing. “It does,” she says, toasting me.

  I click my glass to hers, wipe a gathered collection of tears from below my chin. “How do we go on, Jade?”

  “Not there yet,” she says. “I want to tell somebody why I loved him first. And then you can tell me.”

  I laugh a little. “Group therapy?”

  “You better believe it.” She takes a breath. “Dante called tonight supposedly to check on me, but he was asking for money, you know? And I was disappointed all over again for falling in love with such a player.”

  I nod.

  “It’s just that … he’s not a bad man in his heart. He learned to hustle young and he doesn’t know another way, and even in the middle of all his hustles, I know he loved me.” She stops, looks at the ceiling, narrows her eyes. “Or loved me as much as he could, I guess. That’s what’s hard. That I was out there, so earnestly believing all of it, and he’s just not capable of really loving anybody.” Her face crumples. In the background, Alicia sings about a woman’s worth. “But that doesn’t change how much I loved him.”

  “I know,” I say. But I’m thinking that Rick really is a good man, and he’s capable of great love. I’ve felt it. My stomach is feeling better and it crosses my mind that it was held-in tears making it hurt. I meet Jade’s eyes. “I had a really good marriage. That’s what I don’t understand. I mean, not just okay. But real. Peaceful and full of love and conversation and sex and everything.” I shake my head. “What I can’t understand is where was that moment? You know, that moment when it could have been changed, when I could have done something. When there was a chance.”

  “It’s not about you, Trudy.”

  “It has to be! I mean, a happy man doesn’t do that—have an affair. How could I not have seen that he was so unhappy?”

  “Why couldn’t he just come to you and say that he was unhappy?”

  I look at her. “That would have been a lot easier.”

  We listen to music quietly for a while, drink some more wine. Weep a little more. In an hour, we’re both getting drunk, and it’s better. The wounds are open and bleeding, making a big pool of gore on the floor between us. But we dip our fingers into it and write on the air. I’m leaning against the couch, my feet sprawled out in front of me. “I wasn’t going to marry Rick. I was getting my master’s and I thought eventually we’d just drift apart. But he came up to see me about two weekends a month, and on the ones he stayed in Pueblo all I could do was think about who he might have met, and I’d drive myself insane with jealousy.” I purse my lips. “Then I got pregnant, and the rest of it all seemed so small in comparison.”

  “I never knew that, that you got married because you were pregnant.”

  “Yeah. Everybody thought I was crazy. He was too blue collar, drank too much beer, blah blah blah, but I knew it was the right thing to do.”

  She turns her head. “Knowing everything you know now, would you still do it that way?”

  The answer is very simple. “Yes.”

  “Then that’s all you need to know.” She pushes away from the couch. “I guess I should go. The masses are going to be gone tomorrow. Need to get some sleep.”

  I stand up and hug her. “Thanks, Jade.”

  At the door, she stops. “I’m going to the boxing gym with Tony next week. Maybe find a trainer.”

  “That’s great!”

  “Yeah. I’m excited.”

  She zips her coat.

  “Knowing everything you know, Jade,” I say, “would you do it again?”

  She ducks her head. Studies the floor. Nods. “How could I be where I am if not for that?”

  “There you go.”

  As I close the door, I think I should go to bed, and I’m honestly headed that way, but the CD player moves to the next CD in the lineup and it’s Lucinda Williams. Bonnie Raitt meets Keb’ Mo’, stirred with J. D., as Dr. Anthony, the professor who recommended her, said. I’ve been listening to her a lot, and now I pour the last of the wine into my glass—might as well finish it up—and settle back down on the floor.

  And I think about Rick. Not then, not long ago. Now. I think of the threads of silver in his hair, each thread appearing before my eyes. I think of the way he makes love, with such easy abandon, forgetting everything and making me forget about my flat chest and my freckles and everything else.

  Oh, God! I miss him so much. Everything about him. The smell of his skin, the way his mouth looks when he’s sleeping, the sight of him sprawled on the couch, his
long legs out in front of him ending in gray socks. I miss him coming into the kitchen with a greasy rag and greasy hands and a sparkling, unrecognizable motorcycle part to say, “Look at that!” in awe and happiness. I miss my big, hearty, man’s man biker getting tears in his eyes over something and trying to hide it. I love that no one knows this about him, that he has to duck his head at the end of movies or when the music is great.

  “Admit it, Trudy,” I say. “Say it out loud: He left me for another woman. Get over it.” I shake my head, hearing the words everyone keeps saying to me: Get over it, life goes on, not everyone has it this easy, take this chance to build yourself a new life.

  And it’s true, all of it. I know that. I have some comfort, will not want for money. Rick will never be one of those disappearing fathers. It’s a good chance for me to assess my dreams and see what else I want of life. My kids are practically grown, even. I’m free.

  Lucinda is singing about a man who once loved a woman, and I sing along, loudly, letting more tears come. I think, a little blearily, that this might be the best heartbreak CD ever in the history of the world. I rock and sing, sip the wine to make it last through the album.

  Then she gets to the one that pierces me. It says everything. The days go by, but they don’t seem the same.… Still I long for your kiss.

  And I realize with a sudden, dead-on clarity that I didn’t get drunk tonight to grieve. I got drunk so I would have the courage to:

  Pick up the phone. Punch in the numbers to Rick’s cell phone. Wait for him to answer.

  Which he does, sleepy and worried. “Trudy?”

  I take a deep breath and say, “I miss you. I hate this. I wanted you to bury me or me to bury you and it doesn’t seem fair and I don’t know how to make it right.” And now my tears are as hot and real as they ever have been in my life, and I know I’m going to hate myself in the morning, but I have to just say it this time, out loud. “I hate this, Rick.”

  He’s stricken. “Trudy, are you okay?”

  “No, no, no,” I say. “I’m not okay. Can I just tell you, on the basis of the fact that we are best friends, that I would trade everything, Rick—not the kids, but everything else, to make this right? I’d be fat. I’d be ugly. I’d cut my hair and go to a Southern Baptist church and bake brownies.”

  On the other end of the phone, he laughs, very gently. “I don’t think anyone would want to eat them.”

  “You are totally ruining my complete humiliation of myself, you know it?”

  “Well, if you really want to, I’ll let you.”

  And suddenly, I can see him, shirtless, his hair messed up from sleeping, and my grief swells up like a monster and swallows me. For a long time, I just weep on the phone, deep, heartfelt sobs that I haven’t shared with him.

  He doesn’t hang up.

  Finally, I whisper, “I’m sorry,” and break the connection.

  When the phone rings a minute later, I don’t answer. Instead, I click off the CD player, take the glasses into the kitchen, turn off the lights. The phone rings a second time, and I leave it, going upstairs to wash my face.

  That was productive, I say to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My eyes are red and my nose is sloppy and there are blotchy marks all over my chest. Gorgeous.

  I shake my head. Time to move on. As I crawl into bed, I realize I’m warm for the first time in days. Must be the wine.

  I am dreaming that I’ve found an entire shopping mall between the dining room and the kitchen. I often dream I find extra rooms—probably an offshoot of the space problems we had all those years—but the mall is a first. It’s elegant, hung with crystal chandeliers, the floors lined with marble. There are jewelry stores everywhere, and for some reason, I have a platinum card, because, after all, it is my house. In my dream, I’m standing by a fountain, trying to decide between the possibilities, when Rick pops in. He’s wearing his turquoise shirt.

  “Trudy,” he says, and there’s a sound of laughter in it. I shake my head, go back to contemplating the rich jewels awaiting. “Trudy.” Then again, singsong, “Truuuu-dddeeee.”

  I jerk away to find him standing, flesh and blood, at the foot of the bed. He has a large latte in his hand. “Good morning.”

  The light, yellow and cheery, stabs into my right eye and I close it hastily. “You’re not supposed to be in my bedroom,” I say, and pull the pillow over my head. My humiliating phone call comes back to me, and through the feathers, I say, “And I really don’t want to talk about it, okay? G’way.”

  He pulls the covers down, and I’m wearing a very ratty old nightgown, so I leave the pillow and grab the covers and glare at him. “I know the latte’s mine, and I do deserve it, so hand it over and then let yourself out.”

  Chuckling, he sits on the bed, on his side. I notice it’s undisturbed. I wonder if he does. “I just wanted to be sure you were okay,” he says, handing the coffee over.

  “I’m fine.” The coffee is perfect. Three sugars and whole milk. “Mmm. Thank you.”

  He inclines his head, smoothes his hand over the covers. “So, I saw Mo, obviously.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He was in rare form.”

  I raise my eyes.

  “He says to me, ‘You’ve been a bad boy, eh?’ ” Rick imitates Mo’s Iranian accent perfectly.

  “Really.” This is an interesting development.

  Rick touches his mustache with one finger, smoothing away a grin, and keeps going in Mo’s voice, “ ‘You know what you do with a wife? She say it’s morning, and it’s midnight, you say, “Oh, yes, dear! It’s very bright this morning.” ’ ”

  I laugh, and Rick joins me.

  “It’s midnight,” I say.

  “So it is,” he says, looking at me. “Look at that moon.” There is something I don’t quite understand in his eyes, a pleading or an apology. After a minute, he looks away, hops off the bed. “I’ve gotta get to work. So do you.”

  “Canceled. Some kind of plumbing disaster. I don’t work until Monday.”

  He nods, walks to the door. “Talk at you later.”

  “Thanks for the coffee.”

  At the door, he pauses, that long hand resting against the threshold. “Whatever you think, Trudy, it’s never had anything to do with you. Or us. Or anything like that.”

  I want to protest. How could it not? But I take it in the spirit he intends it—he’s trying to make me feel better. I just nod.

  WOMEN IN BOXING

  1904: Boxing was introduced at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis. Women’s boxing was a displayed event at the third Olympic games.

  1920s: Boxing became part of the physical training of young ladies in Boston.

  1954: Barbara Buttrick, one of the most famous women boxers of all time, became the first female boxer to have her fight broadcast on national television.

  15

  JADE

  On Friday afternoon, I put on my gym clothes. A pair of black sweats that have seen better days, a heavy-duty sports bra, an old T-shirt of Dante’s that has a cigar logo from New Orleans on it. The sleeves are ripped off. I put my hair in a scrunchie and wash off my makeup and put on my oldest workout shoes. A female in a gym has to look serious. No cute little spandex, no tight T-shirts, no perfect eyeliner. Leave it at home, baby.

  I cross the street to Shannelle’s house. There are paper ghosts taped to the window, and a string of pumpkin lights around the window. On cue, a silky black cat rubs against my ankles. “Hey, you.” I bend down and rub him. Soft as a cloud.

  Shannelle opens the door. She looks about a million times better. The swelling from her extraction is gone, and the faint gray of pain has evaporated, revealing skin as clear as a milkmaid’s. “Hi!” she says. “Come on in. Tony’s just putting on his shoes. We’ve been kind of lazy around here this morning, so excuse the mess.”

  The “mess” is a scattering of newspapers on the couch. There is a toy truck under the table. The boys peek around the corner, giggle, pull back. I shoo
t a grin toward their mother. These two boys have been flirting with me all week long. I tiptoe to the doorway and scrunch down. When they peek out again, I roar and grab them both, tickling them, loving their shrieks.

  “Mom! Save us, save us!”

  Tony shakes his pant leg down and stands up. “You sure you’re feeling okay, baby?” he asks Shannelle. He’s a tall, good-looking man. His children are his spitting image. I like the way he puts his hand on the back of Shannelle’s neck.

  “I’m fine,” she says with an edge of exasperation. “It’s been days.”

  “All right, then. Sure you don’t want to come with us?”

  “No, sweetie.” She waves at the computer. “I told you I want to spend some time writing today. Okay?”

  He’s scared of me. Of the way I look. Of what he might think about my body when he’s sitting next to me in a car. Maybe that sounds vain, but I don’t mean it that way. He’s one of the good guys. He doesn’t ogle and wants not to think about anybody but his wife.

  Or maybe he’s not that kind of guy, and he’s worried about what people will think of him escorting me.

  I say, “Shannelle, I forgot—do you have a ring of some kind, something that maybe looks a little like a wedding ring?” I lift a shoulder. “Keeps the bullshit down.”

  “Oh, pretty smart. Sure.” She comes back with a silver ring, carved and set with turquoise. I put it on and it fits perfectly. She winks when Tony’s not looking.

  I’m nervous on the way down there. So is Tony. It’s weirdly quiet. It only takes about ten minutes before we’re pulling up in front of a block of storefronts on Northern. There’s a Mexican bodega with pink and green goods in the window and the signs all in Spanish. Tony pulls open a door next to it and gestures for me to go in first. We climb a narrow set of stairs to the second floor. It’s dark and smells of sweat. At the top of the stairs, I have to pause a minute to get my bearings.

  By then, our entry has been noticed. I’m suddenly thinking I’m an idiot to want this. These are tough guys here, most of them black or Mexican, dressed in the same kind of uniform I’m wearing. At least I got that right. Sun is coming in from a wall of windows toward the back. It’s not terribly crowded. Some young guys on the speed bags, a sparring match in the ring, some guys jumping rope and taping their hands and doing push-ups and crunches. I’m the only woman. They notice.