A New Kind of Bliss (23 page)

“Lots of luck with
that
move. You know it won’t go over big with Beverline.”

I was just falling asleep when the phone rang. I frantically groped for the extension on the end table, hoping the ringing wouldn’t wake Mom up, since she’d always had difficulty staying asleep once she got there.

It was my nephew Michael. He’d cut his ankle on the bottom edge of the door to the terrace of his studio apartment. “Emmie, I really don’t want to go to the ER,” he said. “My insurance charges a high co-pay for ER visits, probably because people use them as primary doctors. But it’s bleeding a lot. Is there any way you can come and look at it? I’ll give you forty bucks.”

I heard the anxiety in his voice. “I’ll be there in about a half hour.”

Once I was at Michael’s I examined the cut. “It’s pretty deep.”

“Am I gonna need stitches?”

“It could probably stand to be sutured, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The bottom of that door is probably filthy. Suturing it will only seal in the dirt, and that might lead to infection later on. I’m going to irrigate it with saline and bandage it for you.”

“Um…I don’t have any saline, Emmie.” My sister’s and my brother’s older children simply called me by my first name, since I wasn’t all that much older than they were.

“That’s all right. I brought some with me. Bandages, too. When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

“I had a booster about two years ago.” Michael chuckled. “Don’t tell me you brought that along, too?”

I knew his joking was an effort to cover his obvious fear of just a few minutes before. I was glad to see he was feeling better. Even grown-ups got scared sometimes, and as he said, there’d been a lot of blood.

“I think you’ll be fine,” I said as I taped the bandage in place over the cleaned-out wound. “Just make sure to watch out for any of those signs I told you about. And try to stay off it. At least tomorrow’s Friday. Take the day off if you can.”

He kissed me as he pressed two twenties in my palm. “Thanks a lot, Emmie. You’re a lifesaver.”

“So, where’d you rush off to last night?” Aaron asked.

I put down my fork and stared at him. The light tone he used did nothing to disguise the fact that he was prying. And, since I hadn’t yet mentioned to him my nephew’s emergency, that meant he’d been spying on me. “You keeping tabs on me or something?”

“No, of course not. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay, especially with your mother.”

“Aaron, I would have called you if there’d been any type of emergency with my mother. I mean, you are a doctor.” I tried to hide my annoyance. We were in a public place, a local seafood restaurant. I fought back the urge to tell him that I’d gone out and made forty dollars and see how’d he react. “It just so happens my nephew in Euliss cut his ankle on his terrace door. It was a deep cut, and there was a lot of blood. He wanted to avoid an ER visit, so he called me.” I stopped to take a deep breath. “Now, would you like to tell me how you knew I’d gone out, Mr. I’m Going Upstairs to Bed Now?”

He appeared speechless for a few moments. “Wow.”

“Wow, right. I’m very upset, Aaron.” It wasn’t like him to monitor my movements. I remembered that I’d worried about that momentarily as I was considering his offer for Mom and me to rent his guesthouse. Granted, that was because I was concerned with how I’d continue to see Teddy, an activity I’d since abandoned like a sinking ship. But I still didn’t like it. Aaron and I were supposed to be in love. That meant he wasn’t supposed to check up on me.

“Calm down. I’d woken up and decided to put on the ten o’clock news when I saw headlights in the driveway. I got up and saw you pulling out.” He paused. “You know, Emily, I don’t ever want you to hesitate to call me if you need my help for anything, no matter what time it is, no matter where you are.”

Maybe that was supposed to be reassuring, but to me he was recalling the incident—okay, the
fabricated
incident—with Teddy that Tanis so sneakily brought up New Year’s Eve. I’d thought I’d reassured Aaron when I’d looked him dead in the eye and lied to him about being involved with Teddy, but had he been thinking about that all these months? Did he lie awake last night waiting to see what time I came home and wondering if I’d gone to Euliss to meet Teddy because of lingering doubts?

Damn Tanis.

“Aaron, I want to go home,” I said.

“Emily, I think you’re over—”

I tossed my cloth napkin onto the table. “Maybe it’s best that you stay. I’ll get a cab.” I grabbed my purse and left.

I
still steamed as I unlocked the door to the guesthouse. I hadn’t had to answer to anyone for anything I’d done for many years. I’d be damned if I’d begin now. Who was Aaron to start acting like he was my father? Was he confusing me with Kirsten or Arden? I was forty-three years old, not some damn teenager.

I heard the sound of voices as soon as I swung open the door, voices that sounded too real to be coming from the television set. The scent of collard greens filled the air. Perhaps Mom was contributing a dish for a church potluck or something.

The voices came from the kitchen. I closed the door quietly and headed in that direction, stopping in my tracks at the sight of my mother wearing an apron and one of her prettiest blouses—the kind she took off immediately after returning home—standing over a pot, a tall, heavyset gentleman spoon-feeding her. Mom was giggling like a fourteen-year-old. And neither of them even noticed me.

I quickly stepped back into the living room, then said loudly, “Mom, I’m home!”

Seconds later she appeared in the doorway, her guest close behind. “Oh, hello, Emily. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know. Aaron and I had a fight. There didn’t seem much point in continuing the evening.” I turned my gaze on her companion. “I didn’t know you were having company,” I stated innocently, trying not to smile at Mom’s visible nervousness, the way she kept rubbing her palms up and down a five-inch span of her thighs.

“Emily, this is Henry Johnson. Henry, this is my daughter Emily.”

We met each other halfway, our arms extended. Henry Johnson was a big bear of a man who dwarfed my mother. He’d lost most of his white hair, but the wide sideburns and big belly reminded me of Santa Claus. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Johnson.”

“Likewise, Emily. Your mother’s told me quite a bit about you.”

I didn’t point out the obvious, that she hadn’t said a word about him. Instead, I sniffed the leafy pork-tinted air. “Are you two cooking?”

“Yes,” Mom said, a little louder than necessary. “You see, Henry and I met at church, and one day we were discussing cooking. Henry said he makes the best collards in New Rochelle, and I told him I make the best collards in Euliss, and well…we thought it would be fun to have sort of a cook-off.”

“Actually, Emily, now that you’re here you can serve as a judge,” Henry suggested.

I still couldn’t believe it. My nearly eighty-year-old mother had a gentleman friend? A friend she’d invited over when she thought I’d be gone for the evening? That sounded like something I would have done when I was seventeen. Had we changed places? “Uh…sure.”

Mom retreated back into the kitchen, with Henry following. “Now, Ruby, she can’t see which greens came out of which pot, or she’ll know which ones are yours.”

“All right. I’ll just spoon some from each into a bowl.” Mom turned to me. “Emily, you go sit in the living room so you can’t see.”

When we saw each other in the kitchen Sunday morning, Mom wore an expression of a kid who’d been caught munching on potato chips when she’d been told not to snack before dinner. “Well, what’d you think of Henry?”

“He seemed very nice. But why didn’t you tell me you had a date?”

“It wasn’t a
date,
Emmie. We were cooking, that’s all. And I’m still mad at you for saying his greens were better than mine.”

I knew she’d have something to say about that. “I can’t help it, Mom. Those were the best greens I’ve ever tasted in my life. What
does
he put in them?”

“He won’t tell me,” she said, obviously sulking. Then she changed the subject. “So what happened with you and Aaron?”

My jaws immediately tightened as I bit into my English muffin. “Oh, he made me so
mad!
” I recounted the events of the previous evening.

Mom listened intently. “Emmie, I know you treasure your independence, but do you think you might have overreacted a bit?”

“No, I don’t. I know cheating is a serious offense, Mom.” My ex-husband’s duplicity still hurt, even after all these years. “But if I let him off the hook too easily he’d think he could start questioning me at any time. And I can’t have that.”

Teddy showed up at the Norman medical offices the next morning. “It’s April, Emily, and I’ve seen you maybe five times since New Year’s, with not many more words than that between us in all that time. How about lunch today?”

“Sure,” I said without hesitation. It was true that I’d always managed to be in a rush to get somewhere whenever we saw each other in the building or parking lot. He brought back too many memories of lustful nights of abandon so different from the orderly sex Aaron and I had, and I still didn’t trust myself around him. But it was time to stop ducking him. He deserved better.

The timing of his invitation had an undeniable irony to it. I had used the excuse of being on the outs with Aaron for sleeping with Teddy, and Aaron and I had just had our first real fight last night. Regardless of my dissatisfaction with Aaron’s performance in the bedroom, my dalliance with Teddy had come dangerously close to ending it all, and thanks to Tanis, the seeds of doubt had been planted in Aaron’s head. I knew myself well enough to know I wasn’t going to chance that happening again. I was a woman in love, even if I was still pissed off at the object of my affection at the moment…and at myself for previously being unable to stay out of Teddy’s bed. I’d known Teddy most of my life. The sexual side of our relationship was behind us. We were too much alike to ever be able to carry off a romantic relationship, but we were still friends, and hopefully would always be.

We went to the café on the street level. We’d barely put in our orders when Wayne came in, wearing his work uniform. We waved him over. The look of surprise on his face at seeing us together told me that he, too, recalled Tanis’s so-called drunken outbursts of nearly four months ago.

“What a coincidence,” I said. “This is the first time Teddy and I have spent any time together all year, and who do we see but you, Wayne.”

“Yeah, how ’bout that. I had a doctor’s appointment to get my blood pressure checked. I figured I’d pick up one of their steak sandwiches and take it back to work with me.” He flagged a waitress and placed his take-out order. “I’ll be sitting here with my friends. Can you bring it here when it’s ready?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“So,” Teddy said after the waitress left, “what’s new with you, Wayne? Are you still seeing Tanis?”

I averted my eyes. I knew from Rosalind, who talked to Tanis regularly, that Tanis was no longer seeing Wayne. According to Rosalind, Tanis had decided Wayne was getting too serious and she’d dumped him. She’d since found a new boy toy, a twenty-nine-year-old technician who worked on her show.

“No, not for a while now,” Wayne was saying. “Not since the middle of January. You know, ever since I saw Tanis at Rosalind’s dinner party last spring I was just…” his voice trailed off as he remembered with a rueful little smile.

“Yeah, I know
that
feeling,” Teddy said, his eyes on me.

I frantically shook my head, not wanting Wayne to notice.

Wayne grunted. “We started seeing each other the night of our class reunion. But it didn’t take too long before I started to notice, shall we say, flaws in her personality. For one, she always had an excuse to keep from introducing me to her kids. She also seemed a little inconsiderate. I mean, she knows I work for Con Ed. She wanted to go out to dinner two or three times a week, and I’m not talking Applebee’s, either.” He shook his head. “I must have put over a thousand dollars on my Visa card. But when I figured out that she really wanted some other dude, I let her go.”

I blinked. “Wayne, are you saying you broke it off?”

“Yeah. A man can take only so much. I felt like shit—excuse my French, Emily—when I realized she was just with me until she could get who she really wanted. And that’s someone who can afford to drop a couple of hundred dollars a week on dinner.” He paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, Emily, but it’s Aaron.”

I shrugged. “She’s never made a secret of wanting him, ever since Rosalind’s dinner party when she announced she and her husband were divorcing. And then there was her ‘accidental’”—I held up my hands and made quotation marks with my index fingers—“outburst New Year’s Eve.” I didn’t add that that outburst was presently causing static between Aaron and me.

“What outburst?” Teddy wanted to know.

“That’s right, you were dancing with Elias’s date,” Wayne said. “We were talking about how so many of us at the party had known each other since childhood, and how neat it was that we’d formed couples as adults. Tanis had been drinking almost nonstop, and she blurted out that you and Emily were a couple, Teddy.”

“Son of a—”

“When I asked what she meant by that, she said she’d seen Emily out with you last summer at a convenience store in Euliss. It sounded kind of convoluted. She said something about Emily trying to hide from her, and then she said that whatever you’d bought, Teddy, it was too small to go into a bag.”

“She said
that?
”

“I told her you stopped to get some gum,” I said quickly.

“I got her out of there quick,” Wayne said, “but I’m afraid she left a vivid impression on everyone’s mind on what might have happened that night.”

“Well, as I told you New Year’s Day, Wayne, there was no harm done,” I said. “Aaron said he remembered my telling him about my car breaking down and how I’d called Teddy to bring me home.”

“Tanis said she felt awful about it when she woke up, and I believed her, but I’ve since learned what a little schemer she can be,” Wayne continued. “You know, I’m tired of all the plots black women have run on me. I think I might find me a white girl.”

I lowered my chin to my chest. “I know how Tanis can be, but don’t judge all black women by her.” I must say I was getting a bit tired of seeing black women portrayed by black men as evil, scheming creatures.

“First there was Tracy, getting pregnant on me like that.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And she did this by herself?”

“No, but she took advantage of me one morning, and I ended up operating without my gloves. She knew exactly what she was doing. Then she got an attitude when I told her I wasn’t marrying her. Hell, I didn’t even
like
her all that much. I sure as hell didn’t want to get stuck with her forever. I think part of the reason she wanted to hold on to me was because I had a steady job. I’m sorry to say, Emily, that it’s been that way for me in every relationship I’ve had except with my ex-wife—and that relationship had a
different
set of problems. I’m tired of being viewed as a security blanket.”

Maybe he had a point. I knew from myself and my friends that the older we got and still remained single, the more fearful we tended to become, and one had to work at not appearing desperate. Nonetheless, hearing it expressed made me cranky. I was tired of seeing good black men run to the other side. Who the hell were black women like my friends supposed to hook up with? In my annoyance I glared at Wayne.
At least you’ve got
something
that makes you desirable to women. Your looks alone sure as hell aren’t going to attract anybody.

“I don’t know, Wayne,” Teddy said. “White women can be just as bad. I don’t think it’s a color thing as much as it’s just a female thing.”

The waitress brought our food and handed Wayne a bag and a check. “I’m gonna pay for this and get going,” he said. “It’s good to see you both. Take care.”

“At least he found out about Tanis in time,” I said to Teddy after Wayne had gone.

“That bitch. I still can’t believe I fell for her telling me that you knew she was inviting me to your party. I told her when the clock struck twelve that she’d better not be up to anything to try to make trouble for you or else I’d see she regretted it.”

“Teddy! You
threatened
her?”

“Damn right. I knew she was up to something. I guess she didn’t believe me.”

“She knows you wouldn’t do her any harm. But it doesn’t really matter now, Teddy. Wayne dumped her—” I believed his version of the breakup more than I believed the one Tanis had told Rosalind—“and she hasn’t been heard from since Aaron backed me up at the party.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

As Teddy and I ate, I inquired innocently, “So you’ve revised your opinion of black women as being gold diggers?”

He rolled his eyes. “Why am I not surprised that you still remembered that? All right, you got me. I told you that I’d have to cut back on my social activities once my rent went up.”

“And that didn’t sit too well with the woman you were seeing.”

“No. I bought a co-op on Maynard Street. I decided that if I was going to pay all that rent I might as well get some equity in something.”

“Congratulations, Teddy!”

“Thanks. I just moved a month ago. It’s a nice place. Garden style, with a big patio and views of the river. It’s got hardwood floors and granite countertops in the kitchen, and there’s a pool and a gym.”

“It sounds wonderful.”

“I’m pretty happy with it. The previous owner made some nice improvements, like mirrors on the bedroom closet doors and a step-in shower with glass door instead of a bathtub. But the lady I was seeing already had a house that went to her in her divorce settlement. To her, buying a one-bedroom apartment is no big deal. She just wants a man who’ll spend money on her.”

I hesitated, not sure if I should ask what I wanted to know. “Teddy,…it was Shelly, wasn’t it?”

The startled look on his face made confirmation unnecessary. “How did you know?”

“Because I saw the two of you in the parking lot here last year. I guess I wasn’t the only one who was seeing someone else simultaneously, huh?”

“I told her she needs to take up with one of those doctors she comes in contact with. She’s a leading salesperson at her company. Easily makes six figures.” He smiled. “So how have things been going for you these past months? How do you like living on Aaron’s property?”

“It’s not bad, but it’s not perfect, either.”