Second Chances And Other Short Stories
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The grouchy old nurse in the Emergency wing at North York General had made me lie down in the examination room while I waited for the doctor. They had treated and bandaged the cut on the side of my head where the pavement had hit me. I could go once the doctor double-checked me for a concussion.
A pair of feet walked lightly past the open door and slowed. They came back, but I didn't look down from the ceiling tiles as the person pulled the chart out of its slot on the door for a moment before returning it. The feet walked toward me.
"Hi Jordan, are you alright?" It wasn't the grouchy old nurse. I could hear the voice smiling and I turned toward it.
My heart stopped for a moment and so did the corresponding throbbing in my head. It was Smiling Beauty. She wore a look of concern on top of her smile.
I couldn't answer, not with her flawless face and bouncy hair and perfectly fitted scrubs so close to me. She leaned over me and held my head softly in her hands and tilted it to inspect the bandage on my wound. She smelled subtly wonderful. She rested my head back as it was and inspected my eyes.
"Do you remember me Jordan?" She asked it in a way that implied she'd be deeply hurt if I didn't. I could never hurt her. So I nodded yes, because I wasn't ready to try words yet.
"You do? That party was at least three months ago, the weather was still nice," she said. "I looked different though, my hair was straight, I think. I can't remember for sure."
What is she talking about? Is she saying that we met before this morning? My confused look must have made her think I was trying to remember how her hair looked too.
"My friends pointed you out to me," she went on. "They know I like tall men, and you were so cute, but I ignored them, and you too."
"Really?" I made words come out finally.
"Yeah, but I watched you out of the corner of my eye," she whispered, and giggled a little. "You were having so much fun with your friends, enjoying the party and dancing like hell when your favourite songs came on, not just standing around staring at pretty girls like a creep. I wanted to meet you, but..." Her face reddened a bit. "I guess I can be shy."
This can't be real, I thought. For a few minutes we talked and laughed and she smiled that smile until I was sure I was awake. She told me how her first couple months as a nurse were going; I told her about my radio audition.
"I hope you get it," she said genuinely. "Then we can go out and celebrate," she beamed.
"I'd love that," I said, smiling and forgetting the soreness in my head.
She wrote her name and phone number on my arm.
“Karen,” I read aloud.
"Call me after seven, okay? Don't forget Jordan!"
"I’ll remember," I said truthfully.
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Have A Nice Summer
Jerome was beautiful.
He was a freshman on the basketball team, but not one of the freakishly tall players or big-headed stars that scored all the points and messed with all the cheerleaders. He was six-three or six-four, slim and cut from stone. He rarely played, but people on campus were always saying he was really good for a freshman and he should play more. But I didn't know anything about basketball; I only went to the games because there was nothing else to do on a Saturday night in the tiny sleepy Southern town where my tiny Black college slept. But the first time I saw him I knew I'd never miss another game.
I thought I already knew everything about him when he walked into my English class second semester. There were five freshmen on the basketball team that year, and apparently that was a big deal and both the school newspaper and the local daily paper did special features on them. I read both several times and secretly hid them in my binder to re-read again and again.
Jerome's last name was Wright; he was from Toronto (that's in Canada); his parents were from the islands; he was an English major; his favourite books were The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Native Son; and he chose to come to our school because he wanted to go to a Black college ever since he saw the movie School Daze. He didn't seem like the average basketball player. None of the other freshmen featured had even declared a major, much less listed a favourite book.
That first day in second semester Freshman English, when the teacher asked everyone to introduce themselves by telling the class their name, major and hometown, he said, my name is Jerome Wright, my major is English and my hometown is Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the most beautiful, cleanest, safest big city in the world, the fourth-largest in North America, home to almost five million people between the city and its suburbs. Its people, he said, hail from every corner of the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Europe and live in houses, apartments and condominiums (not igloos), drive cars and ride subways, streetcars and buses (not dogsleds) and don’t have pet bears or moose. And no, I do not speak French, he added, although I got a B when I took it in tenth grade. No wait, he said grade ten. Canadians say it that way.
Before that I didn't know he was so funny! He even cracked up the teacher with his class clown act, but he also seemed to know all the answers in class. He was so smart! I'd kill to be his study partner. We could book a private study room in the library—the kind with walls and a solid wooden door, not the ones surrounded with glass where everyone could see us, and I'd impress him with my own combination of beauty and intelligence. We'd play footsies under the table and then touch each other warmly when explaining especially difficult literary concepts and eventually I'd massage his shoulders and bury my face in his short afro smelling of shampoo. By then he'd be telling me that he wished he'd known me first semester so he could've asked to me the Homecoming Banquet (he hadn't asked anyone, I'd asked every girl in the freshman dorm). What would I wear to study with him, I wondered? I couldn't change just to see him; he'd notice and think I was high maintenance. I'd have to be dressed to his taste from my first class in the morning. But how did he like his girls dressed? Would he think it was cute if I showed up in a sweatsuit and Timbs? Or men's jeans and the Jordans my little brother outgrew? And pretended I’d just thrown something comfy on to study?
The truth is I didn't even know him. Everything I knew I read in those articles, found out by harassing girls in the dorm that were in his major or conjured out of thin air with my own imagination. I considered saying hi, maybe asking him about some upcoming assignment and giving him the opportunity to ask me if I wanted to work on it together, but that might make it look like I liked him. I didn't want to look desperate. It was so much easier and classier to just look cute every Monday and Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. and wait for him to make his move.
But he never did. I didn't understand. I saved my best outfits for Mondays and Wednesdays and smiled when he looked at me—never too bright though, and I tried to participate in class so he'd notice me and see how smart I was. But he never said a word to me and if I ever caught him looking at me, he always looked away. What the hell was wrong with him?
The whole freshman girls’ dorm knew about my crush, so girls started to tease me about him. They'd come to my wing to ask me if we’d set a date for the wedding yet or joke that they'd seen him with some upperclassman girl. Others would yell his name when they saw me walking across campus and laugh if I turned around. It was all good-natured though, and I laughed along even though I really was hurt that he hadn't noticed me.
There was one girl that was really mean about it though. She was from New York and wasn't pretty at all, but she had a body like a girl in a rap video, so she got as much attention from horny freshmen guys as I did. Her jokes were so much harsher and cut so much deeper than everyone else’s. She'd say that Toronto was a big city and Jerome liked city girls, not hick southerners like me. When I’d try to tell her that I was from Atlanta and it’s a big city, she said I was still a dumb 'Bama.
I wanted to cry, but my roommate told me that she acted like that because she had an even bigger crush on Jerome. Rumour had it that she'd paid one of the student receptionists at his dorm to give her his extension so she could call his room at night lik
e a stalker. She was obsessed with him and she was intimidated by me because I was pretty and smart, my roommate insisted.
But the jokes both friendly and unfriendly chafed at my self-esteem. I wasn't bitter or upset with Jerome, I could never be mad at him. But I was hurt and people were constantly rubbing salt on my wounds.
One day I was hanging out with the twins from California in their dorm room up on the third floor. I loved the twins because they were funny and always knew what was happening on campus. They had been the best sources of information in my research about Jerome. They were mostly making fun of each other that day—one had been on a date with an upperclassman from Chicago the night before and the other was trying to get her to admit how far she'd gone with him. But they eventually turned on me.
One twin asked what Jerome said about the cute dress I'd worn to class the day before. I laughed and told her to shut up. Did he even see you, she asked? Her sister giggled. He doesn't even know she exists, her sister said. They were both laughing now and it stung.
Sometimes I wonder if he's gay, I said.
The twins stopped laughing, eyebrows raised.
I asked them the last time either of them had seen him with a girl. He didn't ask anyone to the Homecoming banquet either, I reminded them. He went by himself, like he did to everything. Not to mention he was an English major. Creative writing!
I told them I was pretty sure he was gay. They looked at each other and covered their mouths in shock. I left the room. I don't know why I said all that. Why did I let the twins get a rise out of me? Oh well.
When I got to my hallway downstairs and turned the corner toward my room, someone was writing on the mini-whiteboard on my door. It was a girl I had English with first semester who was good friends with Jerome. I'd once asked her if she liked him and she'd answered, Ewww, never! She had a boyfriend that was a sophomore and they'd been together since high school. But she said he was an amazing guy and a loyal friend. Not your average basketball player, she said. She was a really genuine girl.
I was looking for you girl! We hugged and I unlocked the door and she followed me into my room. I lay down sideways on my bed with my feet on the ground and she sat on the chair at my desk.
She heard about my crush on Jerome, she said with a big smile. I braced for more jokes, but she said, I think he'd like you so much.
Really? I sat up.
He likes girls like you, with your complexion, she said. And you're so cute and really smart and he'd absolutely love your southern accent. He's obsessed with accents! She laughed as if she were remembering a joke.
I was so confused. I told her he never said a word to me in English class, or even looked at me!
As goofy as he can be in class, he's actually really shy, she said, especially with girls. They had to do an assignment together the first week of class and she had to ask him why he had such a big mouth in class and barely spoke to her when they were alone. Eventually she pulled out of him how thrown off he was by the American girls on campus. In 1990s Toronto, he said, girls were rude and publicly tried to embarrass dudes that tried to pick them up—it was literally a source of pride that women were so feisty, and only the most confident guys had any success. American girls were open, forward and aggressive in comparison, he said, and they scared the hell out of him, as much as he loved their accents.
It all sounded crazy to me, but I always welcomed any info on Jerome, so I listened. I told her that he hadn't even noticed me either way.
If you have class with him he's noticed you, she said, trust me, you're his type and you’re gorgeous! You're just gonna have to say hi one day!
I thanked her and hugged her again and again. I didn't know why she was helping me. Did she really think I was a good match for him?
You're not going to tell him I like him, I asked as she left?
No, she said, you are. Good luck!
I truly believed she was rooting for me, unlike the rest of the clucking hens in the dorm.
I was flying high the rest of the week, and looking forward to watching Jerome play on Saturday night. On Saturday morning I went to the cafeteria for breakfast with my roommate and ended up smack in the middle of a long table with several girls from the dorm, including Jerome's friend at one end and that spiteful bitch from New York at the other. I didn't feel like being teased and was trying to think of an excuse to move to another table when a girl from the third floor asked me if I'd heard that Jerome was gay. That's supposed to be yo' man, her roommate joked. It's all over the dorm, the first one said, how haven't you heard?
My roommate was shocked. The girl from New York laughed an evil, hearty laugh. My roommate shot her a rude look. That’s not funny, she said. Imagine how he'd feel if he heard that!
She looked dead at me with shiny dark eyes and said, ask your sprung-ass roommate, she started the rumour!
My roommate let out an awkward, involuntary exclamation. I looked down, avoiding the other end of the table where Jerome's friend was eating. I tasted salty tears mixing with the Honey Nut Cheerios in my mouth and couldn't think of anything harsh to reply with. So I left the table and the building and waded through the tears to my dorm. As I struggled to stick my room key into the lock, I saw the message still on my whiteboard from a couple days before:
Southern Belle... Holla at me Gorgeous!
Her name and extension were in brackets with an unfinished smiley face below it, only a circle with two round eyes in it.
I didn't go to the game that night. I didn't want to go to another game ever again. I didn't want to see Jerome's eyes, hurt-filled as they must've been. I avoided them in class too, and kept my thoughts on the lectures to myself. I didn't sense or feel anything for weeks, except the wet, salty guilt.
My roommate wouldn't let me ignore her. She’d jumped in my bed with me that day, pulled my covers over us and held me. My God, she whispered over my pain, you really love that boy!
She forgave me. That's the only way I was ever able to leave the room and go to class or sit in the cafeteria; because she wouldn't let me drown in that guilt. When the twins got expelled for being caught with an upperclassman guy in their room and a girl from Florida got pregnant it appeared the campus had other news to report and I'd be able to forgive myself and move on. Jerome still didn't notice me two rows in front of him up against the wall to his right, so I could just bury myself in computer labs and library aisles like everyone else as term projects and finals loomed.
The English final was my last of the semester and I had an A so I floated into it lightly, not a cloud in my mind or the sky. My classmates were passing around their yearbooks for people to autograph while we waited for the professor to arrive, so I passed mine to the four or five people near me and I signed theirs as well. Everyone was all smiles.
The exam was easy, just a couple of essay questions about the short stories we'd read in the course and I was the first one to finish. As I left the building I turned and saw that Jerome was right behind me.
I said hi.
He smiled. How did you do, he asked raspily?
It was easy, I blushed. I mean, I kinda liked those stories, so...
He blushed back. Me too, he said.
Wanna sign mah yearbook, I blurted?
He laughed, but seemingly not at me, and accepted the book. I wish I'd brought mine, he said. Are you from Atlanta?
Ye-es, I said with as much peach fuzz as I could.
When I first got here my favourite thing about this school was the accents, he said. Everyone sounded like they were on T.V. The guy at the front desk of my dorm sounded like Ice Cube! And everyone was telling me I had an accent too, and I said I didn’t until I went home for Christmas and really heard how we talk for the first time. It was like not realizing your dorm room smells stuffy until you go outside and come back in.
He found a spot to write and started scribbling. Amber, right?
He knew my name! I nodded brightly.
Amber from Atlanta, he said.
His pen froze briefly, almost imperceptibly, and then continued across the page. He didn't speak or look up until he was finished.
He handed the book back and smiled. Thanks, I said, smiling awkwardly, hoping he'd reach for a hug. But he put his hand up for a high five, still smiling, and I softly obliged.
Take care, he said, and bopped down the path to the cafeteria.
I looked down at my yearbook, flipping through the pages to find his message.
Hi Amber from Atlanta
Have a nice summer.
Peace,
Jerome Wright #21
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First Snow
It had never occurred to her why it was called a picture window until now. The view out of the bare window of her—out of their brand new third floor apartment looked like the back cover of a book of Christmas stories. The white snow-covered pointy roofs; the bluish-black night sky; the round, fuzzy yellow lights; and the thick flakes swirling happily.
She was almost happy that he hadn't come home on time and put up the horizontal wooden blinds like he promised. Almost.
The more she looked out of the picture window at the fluffy tree-lined suburban streets behind their faded brick apartment building the more she wanted him to be there with her. They had moved into this apartment together so they could see each other more, but it felt like she saw him even less than before. Was everything in that winter postcard not as beautiful and peaceful as it seemed either?
She had not let her unhappiness shatter their picture-perfect home yet. He had no clue that she spent hours in front of that picture window craning her neck to see every car pulling into the building, fretting when it wasn’t him. He didn’t know how many reasons she’d come up with to distrust him in just the three weeks they’d lived together; that she’d replayed nearly every date, conversation and interaction they’d had in the months since they met and tripped and fell in love, if not with each other, then with the idea of being in love with each other.
He didn’t know that she’d seen him at the mall with her best friend one day when he’d said he’d be home late because he was working on something really big. She’d gone to the mall to get him food from the new burrito spot he liked so much, to show him she was proud of how hard he was working. She couldn’t believe he’d lie. She was so angry and hurt that she hadn’t talked to her best friend since.
She didn’t know that he was at the mall with her best friend working on something so big that he couldn’t even tell her and he’d made her best friend promise not to tell her, cross her heart and hope to die sad, childless and alone.
He had no idea that her cousin that had never met him in person had seen him, “sitting at the bar in a restaurant with a white girl!” “Which restaurant? Did the girl have brown hair,” she tried to ask, wondering if it was his good friend from college, who’d got him a job waiting tables at the restaurant where she worked, so he could pay his way through school for a second time and get the job he always wanted, that he finally had. “Does it matter? It was a white girl! And they were acting all secretive!” “Do really think he’d…” She couldn’t even say the word.
She had no idea that he’d never quit that part-time job at the restaurant when he started the full-time job he really wanted. He hadn’t lied, just hadn’t told her, and she’d assumed he was hiding something, and had no idea what it was, and how many hours he was working so he could get it.
It had never occurred to him that when she’d called him from work while he was with his boys having the realest conversation they’d ever had and he told her he was with his boys having the realest conversation they’d ever had, that she’d wondered what on earth boys had to talk about that was so real and she’d let her co-worker that she didn’t even like but always let in her business convince her that he was with someone else, doing something else.
It had never occurred to her that what he needed to talk to his boys about would be real to her soon enough. That at once they had convinced him and he had convinced them that he was doing the right thing, that he was making the right decision and that it was the right time. That a lot of men never even came close to having that conversation and that their boys laughed off those conversations, and shook them to their senses, no matter how much sense there was to be made.
He definitely didn’t know that she’d never gotten over the grade 12 boy she’d lost her virginity to in grade 10, who’d strung her and her adolescent emotions along until she was in grade 12 and he was a dropout with an indelible record of criminal activity and he’d impregnated her and forced her to abort their child instead of forcing it to share him with the other two children he’d fathered since they’d been (sleeping) together and the other one that was on the way. That she was still angry at her father for lying to her mother about having a family back home—two sons and a not-quite-wife that managed to suck half of his paychecks out of his pocket before they ever made it home to her mom and her, that he used his three weeks’ vacation to go and visit every year and even snuck away from their family trips home to go see. Or most of all that his baby was growing in her belly.
She definitely didn’t know that he’d never gotten over the constant yelling, screaming, arguing and fighting of his parents throughout his childhood, over big stuff and small, and that he’d vowed never to fight with the person he chose to be with, never to be with someone who wanted to fight over everything, and to never hold things inside, to always tell that person the truth and communicate his feelings to avoid pain and anger. That he’d never be the cause of the kind of pain he watched his mother endure when his father finally had enough of fighting and left them for the women he’d been escaping to in secret for years; that his infidelity had made him feel just as inadequate as a son as his mother felt she was as a wife. Or that his biggest dream was to start a family.
He couldn’t tell that she didn’t believe him when he called to tell her that there was an ugly accident at Victoria Park and York Mills, right where everyone tumbled off the 401 and clogged up the artery so tight that you couldn’t breathe on regular days devoid of snow or tragedy. That she was tired of being in their new apartment alone every night and fed up with his tired excuses.
She couldn’t tell that the strange tone she detected in his voice was not deception or dishonesty, but nervousness, because today was the day, the time was now and the red and blue lights delaying their destiny were torturing him. That all the work and secrets and conversations would be over with if he could just make it home to her.
“I want to tell you about this dream I had the other night,” he said aloud.
“I dreamt that I came home from work, to a brand new apartment, and the girl of my dreams was sitting at the picture window, in front of a beautiful view of snowy rooftops, round streetlight halos and big, white flakes of falling snow under a dark blue night. She was so happy to see me and she smiled so brightly and hugged me so tightly and kissed me so softly. I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me too. I asked her how much she loved me and she said more than anything! Then I got down on one knee and asked her if she loved me enough to marry me… And she said… Yes.
“Will you make my dream come true?” He asked, “Will you say you’ll marry me?”
He sat in the car and read the words out loud off the screen of his phone over and over again. When he finally got out the car it occurred to him that he should have practiced a couple of times without the phone, but he slammed the car door shut anyway and stomped through the snow toward the back entrance of the building.
Usually he looked up to see if she was looking out the window so he could wave at her, but he kept his head down until he got to the door. He opened it and took the steps one at a time to try and control his breathing, and turned the corner toward the apartment and took out his keys. She never opened the door for him; he liked that for some reason. She always waited for him inside. He untied his boots, pulled them off, unlocked the door and pushed it open.
T
here she was, looking out the picture window. Perfect.
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About The Author
Jeff Roulston, also known as Jeff The Writer, is a social service worker, coach and proud Torontonian. He is a graduate of Oakwood University, an Historically-Black College, where he studied communications, played varsity basketball and edited the Spreading Oak newspaper. His poetry, short stories, essays and articles have appeared in The Huntsville (Ala.) Times, Urbanology, HipHopCanada.com, Sway, OmitLimitation.com, BKNation.org and F-You: The Forgiveness Project’s anthology Memoirs of Violence and Compassion.
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Other Books By Jeff Roulston
Toronto The Good. Poetry Chapbook, published September 2013
Teammates: A Long Story. Coming March 2014
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Connect With Jeff
…On the web: https://www.jeffroulston.com/
…by e-mail: info@jeffroulston.com
…on Twitter: @JeffRoulston
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