CHAPTER 27
M
AUREEN HAD BEGUN TO FEEL LIKE SHE WAS LOSING HER MIND
. S
HE
was in the process of cooking her own goose. That was the only explanation she could come up with as to why she felt so attracted to Mrs. Freeman's mysterious son. She had not even met him and had seen him only once, but he'd been on her mind ever since. She was having the kind of erotic thoughts about him that she should only have been having about Mel!
If that wasn't proof that her goose had been in the oven for too long, nothing was. Therefore, just like Mama Ruby had predicted years ago, Maureen was losing her mind. “If you get too hung up on a man, you'll go crazy just like Satan planned,” Mama Ruby had told sixteen-year-old Maureen when she confessed that she had a crush on Al Pacino. Had Mama Ruby been right?
Is this the beginning of the end for me?
Maureen wondered. Despite how she felt, she was determined to keep things in perspective. She had a daughter and a husband who needed her. She didn't want them to have to visit her in the state mental institution.
On her second day at the nursing home, Maureen endured just as many unpleasant mishaps as the day before. Some were quite violent. Roy Fitzgibbon, a toothless eighty-year-old who refused to keep his false teeth in his mouth, grabbed her arm and gnawed on it with his gums until two orderlies ran into his room and rescued her. A few minutes after that, seventy-five-year-old Lois Borden deliberately ran over Maureen's foot with her wheelchair.
Maureen and two other fairly new aides spent most of the morning in the ladies' room wiping vomit and snot off their shoes and clothes and dressing an assortment of scratches and bite marks that each of them had sustained.
“This is it for me,” one of the aides said, inspecting a bite mark on her cheek in the mirror. “Part of my parole agreement is that I have to keep a job, but I'd rather go back to prison than put up with this kind of madness. I'm out of here.”
“I'm right behind you,” the other aide said, applying a Band-Aid to a minor wound on her arm where a patient had stabbed her with a fork. “Maureen, girl, you are insane if you stay around this madhouse.”
Yes, I am insane,
Maureen thought to herself. At least temporarily. She had already decided that. But her mental condition had been caused by a different reason, and if she didn't see the source of her insanity again, to try and determine what it was about Mrs. Freeman's son that had her feeling like a fool, she would stay crazy.
Maureen continued making her rounds, humming Luther Vandross tunes and smiling as she went along. Her cheerful attitude annoyed some of the other frustrated aides, but that didn't bother Maureen. She arrived at Mrs. Freeman's room a few minutes before noon. She was stunned and surprised to see the same well-built man she had seen in the parking lot the day before sitting in a chair by the side of Mrs. Freeman's bed. Not only did he look stunned and surprised to see her again, too, but this time he looked downright happy. She didn't want to stare at him too long, but she looked at him long enough to see that he had nice, average-looking features and a smile that seemed to light up the room.
“Oh, Maureen! I want you to meet my boy Jay,” Mrs. Freeman said, bursting with pride. Then she said to Jay, “After that baboon you married, don't you wish you had a woman this pretty on your arm?”
“Uh, yes,” Jay managed, looking embarrassed. As soon as Maureen got close enough, he extended his hand. “I noticed you yesterday,” he told her. “My mother has been talking about you ever since I got here.”
Maureen blushed. She was glad her skin was not light enough for Jay to see the blood rising in her face. “Sayin' good stuff about me, I hope,” she responded with a nervous chuckle, looking at Mrs. Freeman. “I can come back later to read the Bible to you like you asked me to.”
“I'd rather you give me a bathâand it better be real soon. I'm feeling real ripe right about now,” Mrs. Freeman said, wiggling her nose.
“Um, that's one of the other aide's responsibilities right now. That's part of the trainin' I still have to go through,” Maureen explained.
“Say what? Why do you need to be trained to wash my booty?” Mrs. Freeman hollered, slapping the side of her hip. “What do they need to
train
you to do that a woman your age don't already know?”
“Well, they have rules here and I have to follow them. I'm still new on this job,” Maureen explained. She glanced at Jay. She could see that he was clearly embarrassed. “I think that by next week I will be up and runnin' and anything you need done, I can do.”
Mrs. Freeman stared at Maureen. “Horse feathers!” she shrieked. Then she turned to Jay and calmly asked, “You paid my bill for this month?”
Jay nodded. “Mother, you behave yourself. This young lady is only doing her job the way she's been told to do it.” He gave Maureen a wan look.
He had eyes like an angel, she thought.
“Horse feathers!” Mrs. Freeman shrieked again, kicking her covers.
“Mother, you promised me that you'd behave,” Jay reminded in a weary voice.
“Oh yeah.” Mrs. Freeman looked puzzled, looking at Jay. “I did tell you that, didn't I?”
“After the other girl gives you your bath, I'll come back to read to you,” Maureen told Mrs. Freeman.
“All right, then. Lynda is coming to give me another damn enema after I have my bath,” Mrs. Freeman snapped. Then she shot a hot look at Jay. “I told you that doctor didn't know what he was talking about. My bowels are still obstructed. I haven't had any success in six days. If ever there was somebody full of shit, it's me!”
“Um, I'll let y'all have some privacy,” Maureen fumbled, looking at her watch.
“Honey, nothing is private around here,” Mrs. Freeman laughed. “You don't have to leave. I want my boy to get to know you better.”
“That would be nice, but it's almost time for me to go to lunch anyway,” Maureen said nervously, forcing herself not to look at Jay.
“Don't you move, girl!” Mrs. Freeman ordered, shaking a gnarled finger in Maureen's direction.
Before Maureen could respond, Jay shook a finger and his head at his mother like she was a surly child. She flicked her tongue out at him before she bowed her head and poked out her bottom lip.
Jay turned to Maureen and rose from his seat. “I was about to go out and get some lunch myself. I would like it very much if you'd join me,” he said with a hopeful look on his face.
“Oh, uh, I was only goin' to get some fries and a burger at that place next to the big woman's dress shop,” Maureen mumbled.
“Good. That's where I was going too,” Jay lied, already ushering Maureen out of the room with his hand on her shoulder.
Maureen gasped and almost tripped over her own feet. Somehow she managed to look normal as they strolled down the hall.
By the time they reached the lobby, Jay's arm was around Maureen's waist and he was holding her so tightly, it felt like the inside of her stomach had turned upside down. Peggy was playing games on her computer at the front desk. When she saw Maureen with Jay, she gasped and stood up. She folded her arms and stared at Maureen in slack-jawed amazement until Maureen and Jay left the building.
“I would sure hate to get you in any kind of trouble, so I hope it's all right for employees to go to lunch with visitors,” Jay said as he and Maureen walked across the parking lot toward the burger joint. He had a strong, deep voice but no identifiable accent. There was not even a hint of a drawl, so Maureen knew that he had not been raised in the South. As a matter of fact, his accent was a lot like Mel's. Just thinking about Mel made Maureen feel guilty. She was not exactly sure what she was guilty of, but she knew that the way Jay made her feel was wrong.
“I don't know if they have a rule against it, but I doubt very seriously if they'll fire me,” Maureen said with confidence.
She was glad that it was a short walk. They remained silent the rest of the way.
“My mother has already grown attached to you, you know,” Jay told Maureen after they had been seated in a booth in the back of the burger joint and ordered. “You remind her of someone she cared so much about.”
Maureen nodded. “Her late niece. She told me a little about her.” Maureen couldn't remember the last time a man had made her feel nervous. She had to cross her legs to keep from tapping her toe on the linoleum floor. Then she began to tap her fingers on the tabletop. When she realized she was doing that, she folded her arms.
“I can see that I'm making you nervous,” Jay said with one eyebrow raised. He reached across the table and cupped Maureen's clammy hand in his and squeezed it. “If I'm being too forward, I apologize and I won't bother you again after today.”
“Oh, no, you don't make me nervous!” Maureen blurted, her free hand in the air. “I just have a few things on my mind, that's all.”
Jay nodded.
“I'm glad you invited me to have lunch with you,” she told him. “I don't like that dinin' room or the vending machines in the break room. Those ready-made sandwiches look right deadly.” Maureen smiled, and that made Jay feel more at ease. “I . . . I really like your mother. She's the only one of my patients so far who has not bitten, kicked, or vomited on me.”
Jay made a face and shuddered. “I don't know what all you said to Mother, but she's been here a little over three months and yesterday was the first time I saw a smile on her face.” Jay paused and looked Maureen in the eye and gave her the most sincere look of gratitude that he could manage. “That was because of you.” For a moment, she thought he was going to shed a few tears. That told her he was sensitive, a quality she admired in a man. Something she didn't see enough of in Mel . . .
A tear formed in Maureen's eye. She had to blink hard to hold it back. “This job is not for me, so I won't be around here that long, but I will try to keep a smile on your mama's face until I leave.”
“Well, Mother won't be around too much longer either. I hope you stay until she goes. I sure would appreciate that.”
“Oh? You goin' to take her home and hire a home-care nurse or put her into a different facility?”
Jay shook his head. “She's got a rare form of bowel cancer. She could go any day now.”
“Oh my goodness! I'm so sorry. I didn't know she was that sick. She doesn't look it and nobody told me.”
“She is that sick. She won't be leaving this place alive.” Jay paused and looked away for a few moments. “Hey. Let's talk about something more pleasant.” He let out a loud breath and gave Maureen a look that made her heart flutter. “When can you have dinner with me? I'd love to see you again.”
Maureen was so taken aback she almost fell out of her seat. “I wish I could,” she replied with a bashful smile, meaning it from the bottom of her heart. “But I can't. My husband wouldn't like that.”
CHAPTER 28
J
AY'S BROWN EYES DARKENED. HIS BREATH CAUGHT IN HIS
throat.
HE
was so disappointed now he could barely talk. “I should have known,” he managed. “Well, you can tell your husband that I said he's a very lucky man. Do you have any kids?”
“I have a daughter. She's eighteen and her name is Lo'retta. Other than my older brother and his wife, and my husband, she is the only close relative I have in Florida.”
“If she's half as pretty as you, she is a lucky girl.” Jay paused. “Other than my mother, I don't have any close relatives, period. At least none that I know of. It's just been Mother and me since I can remember. You must be really close to your daughter. Like I said, if she's half as pretty as you are, she's very lucky.”
“Oh, she's much better-lookin' than I am. She's one of the most successful models in Miami. She's been workin' since she was fourteen. She started out doin' department stores and local magazine ads for various products. Now she does catalog work and TV commercials, and she's on billboards. Eventually she's goin' to do runway and the major fashion magazines, and I hope she'll be doin' things even bigger than that. Maybe even movies.”
Jay gave Maureen an incredulous look. He was thoroughly impressed. He knew of so many black youngsters who were either in jail or dead. “Oh my! You and her daddy must be very proud of her!”
“We areâand he's her stepdaddy.”
Jay nodded. “Maureen, I don't care about you being married. I respect that, but I would still like to get to know you a little better. Just knowing how much you mean to my mother and how it's lifted her spirits suddenly makes my job easier. I promised her that I would make her last years as comfortable as possible.”
“What about the rest of your family? Are they helpin' you out in any way?”
“Like I said, it's just my mother and me. I don't have any siblings or children. My wife couldn't deal with how committed I am to my mother, so she divorced me a couple of years after we got married.”
“I'm sorry to hear thatâabout your wife, I mean. I'm still a newlywed. I've only been married for about a year.”
“I see. Well,” Jay said with a heavy sigh. “As usual, my luck is still in the toilet. I have a lot of friends at the cable company I work for, so I keep myself busy. Once Mother is gone, it's going to be hard. We've always been very close. She had me late in life after several miscarriages,” Jay said with a wistful look on his face.
The more Maureen looked at Jay, the better looking he got. She couldn't understand why she was sitting here thinking about this man's looks when she had a husband at home.
“We've lived in a lot of different placesâBoston, Cleveland, and Milwaukee to name a few. My dad left when I was still in diapers, so I don't even remember him at all. Mother got restless and had to keep moving from one place to another. She cleaned houses for wealthy families for all those years.” A puzzled look slid across Jay's face. “She had other skills, but that was the only kind of work she would look for and she would never tell me why.” Jay shook his head. “Who can figure out older people and some of the strange things they do? Most of them have skeletons in their closets that we'll never know about.”
“Tell me about it. Before my mother passed, she did a lot of mysterious stuff too. She never had a real job. She did a lot of domestic and field work. But she had a whole lot of men friends helping her out so I'm sure she had a few skeletons lurkin' in her closet too.”
“I just wish my mother had told me more about herself. She's completely estranged from her family, so it's been a real lonely life.”
“Have you ever tried to find any other family, Jay?”
“I wouldn't know where to begin looking. Like I told you, my daddy left when I was a baby and Mother refuses to talk about him. I didn't even know his name until I saw my birth certificate when I was eighteen. Mother told me she had some kind of falling out with her siblings over money, and that divided her family in a way that couldn't be fixed. One thing led to another and by the time I arrived on the scene, she had stopped associating with everybody in her family, except the niece she mentioned to you. When the niece died, Mother packed up our things and we started roaming around like gypsies.” Jay cocked his head to the side. “I was glad when she decided to settle down in Florida.”
Maureen felt sorry for Jay. He seemed like such a nice man. She wished that she could get to know him better, but she couldn't. Mel was too good to her and she would never do anything to risk losing himâespecially because of another man.
At the same moment that Maureen was telling herself she would never cheat on Mel, Loretta was tumbling into the front passenger seat of Mel's SUV. She had left school during lunch and met Mel in a grocery store parking lot a couple of blocks away.
“I don't know why you can't pick me up in front of the school. We are family now, you know, so we don't have to be sneakin' around to hook up the way we do,” Loretta complained, twisting her itchy behind from left to right in her seat as she struggled to make herself more comfortable.
“If somebody sees me picking you up during school hours, they might start asking questions,” Mel explained. “It might get back to Maureen and we'd have some explaining to do.”
“So? Like I just said, we are family now. What's suspicious about you pickin' me up from school and us bein' seen together durin' school hours? We live in the same apartment. We
work
together. What's the big deal, Daddy?”
“We have to be careful, sweetie. All we need is for the wrong person to see us checking in or out of a motel and mentioning it to your mother. She might check up on my appointment schedule, and if she doesn't see that we had a job on the books, there is no telling what she'll think. Now, we agreed that if we have to get together during school hours, we don't want anybody to know about it. The good thing is, it'll all be over soon. Just a couple more months and we can take off and never look back.”
“That's good to hear,” Loretta cooed. “Because I'm sick and tired of sneakin' around like some lowlife criminal!” she complained. “I'm just a woman in love and that is no crime!”
Mel silenced Loretta by leaning over and kissing her firmly on the lips. “I'm a man in love. Just be patient a little longer. Soon we can shout our love from the rooftop,” he whispered. “You are the best thing that's ever happened to me.”
“I know,” Loretta whispered back. She looked around and then she looked at Mel like he was the sexiest man alive. As far as she was concerned, he was. “Mel, I love you to death.”
“I know you do, baby, but you need to stop cutting class to be with me. I can't keep interrupting shoots to come spend a few hours with you. We can't afford to keep pushing our luck.”
Loretta leaned back and gave Mel a petulant look. “I thought you wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with you. You even tried to get me to stay home from school today so we could spend the day enjoying ourselves. What's up with that?”
Mel shook his head. “Shit, baby. I wasn't thinking straight this morning. I mean, oh, babyâyou really laid some good loving on me before you left for school this morning. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I couldn't help myself when you called and told me to pick you up.”
“So then why are you complainin'?” Loretta ran her finger along the side of Mel's face.
“I'm not complaining, honey,” Mel replied, grabbing her hand and sucking on her finger. “It's just that we need to keep this thing we got going under control.”
“This thing?” Loretta snapped, snatching her finger out of Mel's mouth. “So now our love is âthis thing' to you?” You didn't say stupid shit like this before you married my mama! Maybe we should have left âthis thing' the way it was. Maybe you shouldn't have married her after all.”
“You practically
forced
me to marry your mother so she would let me move in!” Mel reminded her. “And that's so I can have some legal rights when it comes to some of the jobs you do. There may be contracts that'll come up that she might not want to sign. She's refused to sign too many already, and that was a bunch of money we lost out on. As your legal guardian now, I can sign them and she wouldn't even have to know about it. We don't have to sneak around and forge her signature on releases and contracts like we sometimes used to when she wouldn't.”
“Well, I realize all of that, but I'm startin' to feel a little guilty about fuckin' you in my mama's apartment. I hope you're right about us bein' able to go public soon. I wouldn't want her to find out any other way. That nosy-ass Mr. Ben next door keeps lookin' at me like he knows somethin'. Maybe he heard us makin' love in my room or somethin'. His bedroom is on the other side of my bedroom wall.”
“That's why we should continue to rent motel or hotel rooms when he's home. Or do our business on the living room couch or your mama's bed.” Mel paused and started the car. “Now that we got that all out of the way, give me some sugar.”
Loretta kissed Mel long and hard, and they remained silent until they made it back to the apartment. They were disappointed to see Mr. Ben's car parked out front. That old goat was usually out and about this time of day.
“Shit! Mr. Ben's home. You want to go to a motel?” Loretta hissed, marching alongside Mel as they made their way up onto the front porch.
“No,” Mel answered, looking up and down the street, glad he didn't see anybody he knew nosing about. “Your mama won't be home for a few hours, and her bed is much more comfortable than yours anyway. We just have to remember to change the sheets before she gets home.”
Loretta started to undress as soon as they got in the front door. “Baby, don't do that!” Mel hollered, shaking a finger at her and giving her a stern look.
“Why not?” she giggled, kicking off her shoes. “I do this all the time.”
“Your mama or that nosy oaf of an uncle of yours could come here unannounced. If we just had enough time to get out of the bed, and they see your panties and clothes on the floor by the door, what would they think?”
“Oh,” Loretta said with a pout. She snatched up her clothes and shoes and followed Mel to the bedroom he shared with Maureen.
They spent the next hour making love in Maureen's bed. Afterward, they got dressed and moved to the living room. Loretta brought Mel a beer and they piled onto the couch to watch a couple of TV game shows with Loretta sitting on Mel's lap.
“I can't get enough of you,” Loretta whispered in Mel's ear during a commercial. “I can't stand the thought of my mama gettin' what's mine. I think we should tell her todayâor tomorrow. I can't wait another couple of months for my graduation.”
“Are you crazy?” Mel yelled, almost choking on some beer.
“I'm tired of sneakin' around with you,” Loretta whined. “Why don't we run away to Costa Rica or Mexico so we can be together out in the open
now
? I want the whole world to know about the man I love, Daddy!”
Oh, how Mel loved it when she called him Daddy. It was music to his ears. A symphony! He had this little gold mine hook, line, and sinker, but there were times when she tested his patience. Like now. “You don't want to graduate? You didn't get this far in school to drop out when you have only two more months to go. That would be insane! What about your career? What about my career? I'm a lot older than you, and if I don't make it big soon, I probably won't. Stop talking crazy. Things are going just the way we planned.”
“Mel, you are the only man I will ever love,” Loretta vowed. “You're the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Mel had heard words to that effect so many times before from so many different young girls, it didn't even impress him anymore.
“I know, sweetie. I appreciate hearing you say that. I am a lucky man.” Mel kissed Loretta on the tip of her nose and slapped her butt. “Now get up and get dressed and let's take a ride to the beach. We're going to be shooting down there this weekend for the Gardner swimsuit ads. We can pick up some ribs on the way home so your mama won't have to come home and cook today. That's the least we can do.”