Cool sounded confused, “Well . . . what you doin comin down here to talk to me for? You sposed to wait til I get out there to see you.”
“I had to talk to you today. I didn’t know when I’d see you so . . . And every time I try to talk to you, you’re runnin, so you don’t have time to listen. You eat, sometimes hand me a dollar or two and then . . . you run out the door. It’s been that way a long time, Cool. Since I didn’t know when I’d see you, well . . .”
Cool’s voice came up a little louder and I was glad cause I was strainin my ears. “Now, Irene, don’t give me no speech bout no marriage. I told you I am goin to marry you . . . someday. But not now! I’m not ready to come out there in the country where you live and waste my life. I got to get ahead, while I’m young, and do somethin big for my sons. But when I gets bothered like this, you breaks my stride! I got a big business deal—”
Irene cut him off, “Cool, I want—”
Cool cut her off, “Irene, don’t make me mad! I don’t want to get married now! I have my life to live! Now you choose your way . . . and I’ll choose my way!” I noticed he checked her face quickly to see if his psychology was workin.
Irene was gettin exasperated, “Alright, alright, Cool. Cool, stop a minute . . . give me a chance to talk.”
“Okay, but whatever it is, I ain’t got much time right now! And don’t complain bout me runnin all the time. A man was born to go runnin. That’s what he is; a man! A woman was born to stay at home and tend the house and his sons.”
Irene stood up to leave, sayin “I . . . Cool, I just thought it would be fair to talk to you . . . if you’re busy . . .”
He grabbed her sleeve and pulled her back down. “You done come this far, go head and talk, cause I ain’t plannin on comin out there for a bit. I got a new . . . job I’m trying to do. Stop bein stupid! Just keep your voice down. I don’t like people knowin my business. Hurry up, talk! But remember, I don’t like my woman comin in no place like this! Don’t come again! If it takes me a year to get out there, just wait! You know I’m comin . . . sometime!”
I think everybody was tryin to hear what they were sayin because everybody almost jumped when Irene hit the table with her fist. It was her first sign of any emotion. She hit that table and said, “Then be quiet!” Cool was so surprised his mouth dropped open and he hushed! “Now,” she sat back in her chair and continued quietly, “I think I did everything I could to give our . . . love . . . a chance.”
Cool spoke quieter too. “Irene, don’t worry. I’m satisfied with you. You don’t need to do nothin else . . . just stay out there in the country in that house and keep goin to work.”
She ignored his words and kept speakin, “We . . . were happy . . . a lot when we first started all those years ago. Leastways we laughed a lot. But I’ve been unhappy a lot . . . with you.” Cool looked around to see who was hearin all this, but she kept talkin like she didn’t care who heard her. And I can tell you this: everybody’s ears was ten feet wide.
“And, Cool, that don’t make me mean and mad at life, or you, anymore.”
Cool patted her hand, “Irene, that’s good, that’s good.”
But Irene wasn’t through. “But, I believe in people bein happy . . . if they can . . . in life. That’s why I never really bothered you.” Cool smiled and nodded his head, sayin, “That’s good, that’s good.”
Irene continued, “But, now, I want to be happy . . . all the time I can.”
Cool pat her hand again, “Things gonna get better, Irene.”
Irene waved that away easy like, “I’m not gettin any younger. And you always told me to live my life cause you was livin yours.”
Cool leaned back and laughed softly, “And someday they gonna come together. Get it? Come together?”
Irene didn’t laugh nor frown nor smile, she just kept talkin. “I know . . . there are gentle, nice, kind men in the world. Men who give love to their woman. I want to be loved.”
“I be out there in a few days, Irene . . . be cool.”
Irene just let his words fly on out in space. She kept talkin. “Men who love their children, their family. I want somebody . . . grown up, mature. Somebody who cares about me and our sons. You know, I’m learnin a lot from my sons. And I hope I’m teachin them somethin about life . . . and women and love.”
“You a good mother, Irene, but you got to stay home to be a good mother! And don’t you worry bout my boys and what they need to know bout women. I’m gonna teach them everything they need to know. They gonna be MEN when I get through with them boys!”
Irene looked down at her hands and smiled. “I want them to be tender and affectionate . . . like their father.”
Cool’s scowl changed to a prideful look of pleasure; if he had been standin up he would have strutted and preened his wings. “Why, sure,” he granted.
Irene looked up at him, earnestly. “It’s gonna be very important to them. See . . . I have learned that it’s okay to kiss somebody’s ass . . . but only if that ass belongs to you. See . . . Cool, some people can love . . . and some people can’t. Those that can’t are always lookin for some love to stuff into their own heads and pockets out from other people’s hearts. While those who can love is always givin . . . always givin.” She shook her head slowly and sadly, then, just as sudden, her face brightened up. “But when you get TWO givers . . . together, Lord, you really got somethin!”
“What you been readin, Irene? I told you to stop readin all that trash!”
“Cool . . . a lot of things start with mother’s love . . . and father’s love.”
Cool laughed, happy to be on comfortable ground again. “I love my sons!”
Irene was lookin past Cool into her thoughts she was speakin out loud. “That’s where you have to learn to love first, sometime.” She looked straight at Cool then. “For a long time, I thought I loved you. People been tellin me they love me . . . while all the time I be tellin you I love you. They show me their love while I showed you my love and the people who love me suffer.”
Cool’s laughter had long faded. His face and his voice changed. “You been messin round on me, Irene?”
“Cool, I needed to see you.” She stopped to take a long swallow from her drink. “You’ve been by my house twice this month . . .”
Cool tried to sound angry, “I know! And you wasn’t home! Where were you? I figured you was in church, cause it was late.”
Irene took a sip of her drink, said, “I was, we were, going to wait until you came by again, but since I knew you were comin again sometime, we thought I better tell you before you did. I have moved anyway. I don’t live there anymore.” She smiled and took another sip of her drink. “I have a marriage now, Cool.”
I liked to fell off my own legs. Yes MAM!
Cool, annoyed again, didn’t seem to understand. “Now, Irene, I just got through tellin you that I . . . You moved? And didn’t tell me? Where? And what you mean ‘married’? I keep trying to tell you I ain’t ready to get married.”
She softly interrupted him by holding her hand up. “Not to you, Cool . . . to someone else.”
Cool stood up (Mr. Summer did too). Cool knocked over his chair and asked, “Woman! Are you crazy?!”
Irene stayed calm, bless her little brave heart. She said, just as calm as could be, “Now, don’t get excited, Cool, and we can talk. Otherwise, I’ll have to leave.”
Cool remembered the other folks in the bar and glanced around quickly. He pulled his chair back up and sat right down in it, leanin toward Irene, urgent like. Mr. Summer sat back down also. Cool was lookin angry, not so cool. He said, “You ain’t goin NOWHERE!”
Irene’s face was just as calm and bright, she still wasn’t scared. “No. That’s where I been. I ain’t goin there no more. Now, I got some things to do so . . . let’s finish this out.”
Cool’s eyes was all bucked when he said, “You damn right! We gonna finish this out! Who you been listenin to? Who been lyin to you? I ain’t got to tell you, you know who your man is! You love me! All this shit you talkin . . .”
Irene held her hand up again, calmly. “Now . . . let me talk. We never have had much time to talk. When you come to see me, talkin ain’t much on your mind.”
“Well, who’s the fault of that? You! You don’t hardly let me touch you no more; you always sick . . . or busy . . . or the boys need somethin, or you got to go to your mama’s house for somethin! It ain’t my fault we don’t talk . . . or nothin. Don’t lay that on me!”
Irene turned her face away from all them words and held up her hand again. When she turned back to Cool, she said, “If we did talk, it was just games. Your games. Lyin games. You never took the time to think about if what you gave me was what I needed and wanted, or what I just took from you.”
“Well, you was happy. And you loved me.”
“I was not happy. And . . . I don’t love you anymore. Not for a long time. Life with you ain’t life.”
Cool’s face got ugly and he raised his voice in anger and indignation. “Well, in them nights when you used to let me be alone with you, you sure did seem to be enjoyin yourself!”
For some reason, nothin Cool said seemed to make Irene lose her cool. “Oh, Cool, the first few years there were times we could enjoy each other.” She placed her hand over one of his. “But in the good times, I was burdened with all the things I had to try to understand.” She moved her hand away from his and his hand lay on the table looking alone and forlorn.
Cool must couldn’t think of what to say because he asked a foolish question, defensively, “What did you have to try to understand?”
“Oh, Cool, you are way pass me. You have your own . . . dreams.”
“You got that right!”
“I know.”
Then he must have remembered, “What’s all this about marriage? What you talkin bout? Who did you meet that would marry you?” He leaned back in his chair, gettin his manhood back. “And take care of my kids . . . my sons?!”
As cool as could be, she said, “Nobody.”
In his joy, Cool laughed and said, “That’s what I thought. Well, then . . .”
Irene held up that hand again. “Cool, let me talk and try not to interrupt me. This is not easy for me.”
Cool stopped laughing, abruptly, said, “Don’t say nothin you’ll be sorry for! Cause I might not come to see you for another few weeks!”
Irene took another big swallow of her drink and a deep breath.
Cool, somehow feelin better and thinkin he is in control again, said, “Come on now. Have your say, then I got to go and you better get on home to my sons and stop talkin all this sh—mess!”
Irene started out talkin slow as she moved one of her fingers through the water drops on the little table. “You know I go to church, regular, because that is the place I choose to find my wisdom . . . find my way . . . to live by. And for years I been prayin for what I want . . . for what every woman wants, I think.”
Tan had been listenin without seemin to, but now she turned a ear round closer.
Cool interrupted again. “Let’s talk about this marriage you talkin bout doin, cause . . .”
Irene interrupted him back, sayin, “What I’m sayin is you are not enough for me.”
Cool, right away, looked over at Tan and Joe.
Irene looked down at her lap, kinda in space with her thoughts. Even her voice seemed to come from a distance. “Ohhhh, I was lonely. So lonely. Many times I looked in that ole cracked mirror in my room and said to myself what a fool I was. So many things I wanted to do . . . with you . . . before the children and . . . even after the children.” Then she raised her head to look at Cool. “I was young, I am young, and there were so many times I wanted to make love. In the middle of the night . . . or early in the mornin . . . or even in the afternoon, outside on the grass . . . in the rain . . . by the creek . . . in a tree. Not just sex, Cool . . . love. But, you wasn’t there. You were with me when you wanted to be ’cordin to your feelings, not when I needed you . . . ’cordin to mine.”
All I could say was, “Humph!” as my heart clapped in my breast for her.
Cool looked confused, well, he wasn’t used to thinkin hard bout the right things, so all he said was, “Well . . .” Like he was tryin to say somethin smart back.
But Irene was not through doin her own thinkin. “Sometimes when you came to my house, you were tired. You came where I was so you could sleep . . . or eat. And when you wake up, you’d be on your way out.”
Of all things, Cool asked, “What has that got to do with you gettin married?”
Still lookin in Cool’s face, she answered, “It’s the reason I found somebody else. I found out what real love is. You always ran your life ’cordin to your own music, now I can live my life ’cordin to the music I hear and feel. My own music. I can even touch it.”
Well, that Cool jumped up again, upsettin his chair again, and his lucky hat fell off. Mr. Summer stood up, too. Joe looked a little worried and I knew he was thinkin of that gun Cool had in his pocket. But Cool looked over at Joe, then reached down for his chair and tried to look nonchalant, or somethin, as he sat back down, forgettin his lucky hat. But his voice forgot to sound easy when he asked in as low a voice as his anger would let him use, “Somebody else!!! What you mean? You been givin my . . .” He looked at Joe again, then he had to ask anyway, “You been givin my stuff away, Irene?”
“Not yours, Cool. Mine. I’m the one was born with it.”
Cool scrunched his chair closer, “To who? When?”
Up came Irene’s hand again, “If you’re quiet, I’ll tell you . . . if you’re not, I’ll go.”
Cool’s voice was low and sinister when he said, “Baby, you ain’t goin nowhere!”
Irene leaned back in her chair and looked at Cool thoughtfully. “Cool, I know I ain’t so good lookin . . . and I know fellas like the good-lookin kind. But I can’t worry bout that cause I’m young, and I got a lotta feelings that I left up to you to satisfy for a long time. But, you didn’t satisfy em. I don’t feel like sleepin around . . . so . . . well, so while I was doin housework for some of the church members . . . I met . . . someone . . . else.”
Cool sneered, “The preacher?!”
Irene smiled and looked at her hands as she answered, “No. But a very nice gentleman, who was very kind to me, helped me in so many little ways, big ways too. He was patient with me, treated me like I was somebody special. And all the time it was really just love he was showin me.”