Original Love

by J. J. Murray

  “I can’t eat any candy, I can’t drink any soda, Gladys treats me like a damn pin cushion with those insulin shots, and some days I go all day in this bag between my legs.”

  I glance at the blanket over her legs. “God, I’m so sorry, Mrs. Mills.” I stand. “Is there anything you need, anything I can do for you?”

  She shakes her head. “You can’t do a damn thing for me, Peter. You better call Gladys. Ebony ain’t comin’ over today. Gladys’s number is on the fridge.”

  I take the phone to the kitchen.

  “And call Gladys’s cell number. She’s probably still in that mommy van of hers.”

  I dial Gladys and ask her to come back.

  “Is Mrs. Mills all right?” she asks.

  No. I’ve kept her from her daughter. “Yes, Gladys. Ebony, um, can’t come by today.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I return to the living room. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Mills.”

  She rolls to a window. “What you sorry for?”

  “I guess for coming over today. I kept Ebony from visiting you.”

  “I’ll survive.”

  I can’t think of anything to say to her for the next ten minutes. I want to ask if she’s in any pain, if there’s anything I can do to make things right.

  When Gladys’s van arrives, I approach Candace. “Mrs. Mills, I—”

  “I know, you’re sorry.” She spins away from me and rolls toward the kitchen. “See you around.”

  I leave the house on shaky legs, then I stand in the yard looking at the house. They never moved? They were just on vacation? To where? And they took Aunt Wee Wee with them? I thought that Aunt Wee Wee never left her room.

  I look toward the window of Aunt Wee Wee’s old room and see…smoke? Is the house on fire? I rush to the window and am face-to-face with a hundred-year-old woman sucking hard on a Camel cigarette.

  “’Lo, Pete,” she says and spews a stream of smoke through the screen.

  “You’re still alive?” is the only thing I can think of to say.

  “Last time anybody checked.” Aunt Wee Wee cackles. “How I look?”

  Prunelike, I want to say, but I don’t. A thick shock of white hair sticks out all over her head, dark circles under her eyes making it look as if she’s been in a fight, deep wrinkles even on her chin. “You look well.”

  “And you a liar. I ain’t well at all. I smoke too much, and I’m nearly blind as a bat. You still freckled?”

  “Not as much.”

  “I got me a thing for freckled men, you know.” She cackles again.

  “Um, Aunt Wee Wee, do you know where Ebony lives?”

  “Where you think she lives?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Candy didn’t tell you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She takes a long drag. “You are that little boy that used to mess with Ebony when y’all thought I was asleep, right?”

  Aunt Wee Wee wasn’t asleep? “Yes.”

  “You know, I heard everything.”

  “You…did?”

  “Everything. Y’all sure was noisy.”

  I gulp.

  “But I never told her mama. No sense in it, cuz Candy already knew, I expect.” She sucks the cigarette down to the filter, stubs it out on the window ledge, and squeezes it under the screen. I look down and see that I’m standing in a pile of cigarette butts. She licks her ancient lips. “You off to mess with Ebony now?”

  “I guess.”

  Aunt Wee Wee cackles again, ending it with a long, hacking cough. “Good. That girl need someone to mess with her. She so uptight you can’t get a toothpick up in there.” She lights another cigarette with steady hands and takes another long drag. “If I tell you where she is, you didn’t hear it from me.”

  I hear something hit the door to Aunt Wee Wee’s room. “Aunt Wee Wee, you old bitch you! You stop that!”

  “Candy mad.” Aunt Wee Wee cackles. “You causing trouble all over again, Pete. I like that. It’s been too damn quiet around here.”

  I hear the doorknob rattle. “I’m gonna put you in that home, you hear? And you ain’t gonna be able to smoke no more!”

  “She been saying that for thirty years, and don’t worry about her gettin’ in. Chair’s too big.”

  “What about Gladys?”

  “What about that heifer? She won’t come in here. Gladys is afraid of getting cancer from secondhand smoke.” She smiles. “Knew my bad habit would come in handy one day. Now, where you think Ebony’s house would be? Think hard, now. Think stubborn.”

  “I can’t even begin—”

  “Sure you can. Girl had a dream house, didn’t she? Where you two was supposed to live. She drew it all the damn time.”

  The house on Fairchild Street? “She bought that house?”

  “Ain’t that what you supposed to do when you want to live in a house?”

  I thought Ebony was kidding about it being her dream house. It wasn’t much to look at, though it had plenty of windows, and it looked more like a church than a house. Wait. She might be there right now?

  “Thank you, Aunt Wee Wee. If you weren’t behind that screen, I’d kiss you.”

  I hear a steady bumping on Aunt Wee Wee’s door. “I’m gonna break this damn door in!”

  Aunt Wee Wee turns away from the screen. “And then what you gonna do, Candy? Run me over?” She turns back to me. “Go on, git. You got more important things to do than watch an old blind woman whup a crippled woman’s ass.”

  I race back to my old house on Preston only to realize there’s no way to get to Fairchild Street that way. Ebony and I used to cut through people’s yards to get there. I make a U-turn and fly down Tracy Drive to Pam Lane to Margo Lane past Stephanie Court—who named all these streets after women?—to Anoatok Drive—who’s idea was that misspelling?—to West Shore Road then up the hill—

  There it is. I screech to a halt in front of Ebony’s house, two white brick chimneys framing a white brick Cape Cod with more windows than a house should have. It almost looks like a castle or a cathedral. I don’t see a car anywhere. I get out anyway and take a crooked slate sidewalk winding through oak trees and piles of leaves to her front door. I rap on the door with all my might and step back. I wish I had dressed more nicely, and I need a haircut badly—

  A dog the size of Marmaduke appears in the picture window to my left. Is that a Great Dane? I didn’t know Ebony liked dogs. I smile at the dog, but the dog only woofs and slobbers.

  The door doesn’t open, so I knock again. This time the dog begins to bark. That ought to get her to the door. If she’s here. I check my nails for dirt, check my breath—

  The door remains closed.

  She’s not here.

  I peek through the picture window and see framed watercolors, sketches, and oil paintings on the walls, sculptures and brass lamps on antique-looking tables, a red plaid throw blanket on a blue and rust couch. So much color, and nothing matches exactly. That’s Ebony’s style, all right. Glossy hardwood floors. The fireplace mantel is full of pictures, but I can’t make out who’s in them because Marmaduke’s huge head and paws are blocking my view.

  This could have been our house. This should have been our house.

  Damn, I’m depressed.

  I walk around back, and from a slight rise, I can see Huntington Bay clearly. I bet Ebony can see the Sound and even Connecticut from the second floor of her house on a clear day. This is the perfect place for an artist—or a writer. I can even hear the waves kissing the shore. This is perfect.

  Perfect.

  I decide to wait on the porch. What’s an hour or two after twenty years? I’m too close to leave now. As cold as it is, I feel warm inside.

  When two hours becomes three, then four, then five, and the stars come out and I start to shiver, I take the winding path back to the Nova where I write her a note:

  Ebony:

  I want to see you. Just to talk (promise). I’ll be on my dad’s boat. Until I get
a phone, you can leave messages at the yacht club.

  Love, Peter

  P.S. I love your house. What’s the dog’s name?

  I fold and wedge the note into the crack in the front door, salute Marmaduke, and return to my car, hoping the entire time that Ebony will arrive so I can hold her again.

  I wait another hour in the Nova, the heater on high, then I drift aimlessly along West Shore Road to the yacht club, get a taxi to the boat, and snuggle up on my bunk, the creak and my father’s bones serenading me as the Argo rocks me to sleep.

  I finally found her.

  Now if only I could see her…

  Part Two

  Ebony Found

  Ay me! for aught that ever I could read Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth.

  —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  10

  Two sneezes, a hacking cough, and a boat horn wake me on Monday, and I sit up from my bunk too fast and smack my head on the ceiling. Just like old times. A head cold and a headache. I have never learned how to wake up properly in this boat.

  I hear the Captain’s bones rattle.

  “Funny,” I whisper. “Real funny.”

  I look at myself in the little mirror in the head as the boat rolls back and forth. Jesus, Halloween is coming up, and I won’t have to dress up at all if I don’t start getting more sleep. I wrap a blanket around me and go out on deck to a cold, stinging rain, the wind whipping up whitecaps on the bay.

  A lovely day to get one’s life in order. I sneeze again as seagulls drift over the Argo. And a lovely day to sneeze into the wind.

  I go below to brush my teeth and think back to a similar day in Pittsburgh fifteen years ago, when an ice storm raged outside St. James Catholic Church on the day I got married…

  St. James. Named for one of the Sons of Thunder, one of the first disciples who left his nets, his boat, and his father behind to follow Christ. Kind of like me, except for the following Christ part. James, who fled during the crucifixion, who was supposed to be passionate and temperamental, the first martyr of the church, the patron saint of hat makers, rheumatoid sufferers, and laborers. That St. James. Good name for a church, and it’s where all the Meltons have gone since time immemorial.

  I used to joke with Edie that we were attending the wrong church. Her father should have gone to St. Matthew, the patron saint of bankers; her brothers should have attended St. Vitus, the patron saint of actors; and I should have become a congregant at St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Edie should have gone to St. Anne’s, since St. Anne is the patron saint of childless women.

  So there we were, about to be married among Pittsburgh’s social elite, and there I was dodging sleet on the sidewalk outside the church waiting for my best man to show up in his ’74 Ford Country Squire wagon. I was surprised that the Captain had agreed to come at all, and the weather certainly wasn’t cooperating. Mr. Melton kept coming to the door and harrumphing, Father Massey eventually coming all the way out to the sidewalk, urging me to come in.

  “He’ll be here,” I told him.

  “The weather may keep him away,” Father Massey said.

  “He’ll be here. My father has never met a storm he couldn’t handle.”

  Ten minutes before the processional was supposed to begin, the Country Squire rolled up in front of the limousine and bumped the curb in front of me. The Captain got out, muttering “Never could dock one of these,” and slammed the door.

  “Captain.”

  “Pete.” Sleet pinged off his pea coat, the only coat I can ever remember him wearing, and I was relieved he wore a dark suit and tie underneath.

  “Some storm, huh?”

  “Seen worse. Am I late?”

  “No, sir. Right on time.”

  He looked up at the towering spires of the church. “You’re getting married here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He squinted. “You’re marrying a Catholic?”

  I hesitated. “Yes.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  I smiled. I had only told him that Edie was white, loved to sail, and was from a good Pittsburgh family. “Would you have come if I told you that?”

  “You, uh, did you convert?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Why’d you do that, Pete?”

  Mr. Melton poked his head out and harrumphed again, pointing at his Rolex.

  “We’ll be in shortly,” I told him, and as he shut the door, the processional music began.

  “Is that her daddy?”

  “Yes sir. We really ought to go—”

  “Did he say you had to convert to marry, what’s her name, Edie?”

  “No. I converted of my own free will.”

  He blinked a few times, tightening his lips to a frown, his face a tired gray. “I’m not going in, Pete.”

  I tried to put my arm around him, but he stepped away. “Come on, Captain. You’re my best man. I’m not going in without you.”

  He puffed up his chest and rocked on his heels. “I’m not going in.”

  “Why not?”

  He pointed at St. James. “That isn’t the church you were raised in.”

  “Captain, we haven’t been to church in ten years.”

  “Well, that isn’t how I raised you.”

  “Who said you raised me?”

  He took a menacing step toward me, but kept his hands in the pockets of his pea coat.

  “You gonna punch me out on my wedding day, Captain?”

  “I might. Might knock some goddamn sense into you.”

  “Guess you knocked it all out of me already.”

  We stood there on that icy sidewalk having a staring match, his face getting red, the fog of his breath heavy in the air, his hands forming fists in his pockets.

  “You’re not my son. You’ve never been my son.” He wrenched a hand free from his pocket and flapped it at me as he returned to the wagon. “To hell with you.”

  “You’ve never been my father either, so we’re even,” I say, trailing behind. “To hell with you, too.”

  And later, I cried at my own wedding.

  I radio for a taxi, and while I wait, I make a list of all the things I need to do this week. If I don’t make a list, I’ll just wander back to Fairchild Street to wait for Ebony. I need to set up a bank account, return the Nova, buy a car, set up a cell phone account, get groceries and lots of Kleenex for this cold, call Henry, add to Henry’s novel, continue my own novel, get some sleep…

  Why’d it have to rain on the first day of the rest of my life?

  Mr. Cutter again picks me up. “You have quite a few messages waiting for you inside. When are you going to get a cell phone?”

  Quite a few? Did Ebony call? “I’ll try to get one today.”

  “Good.”

  “Um, who called?”

  “Let’s see, some guy named Henry. Sounded too happy for it to be a Monday morning.”

  Hopefully that call will be about money. I’ll have to set up a bank account today. And he’s happy? I thought he’d be mad at me for leaving Cherry Grove so abruptly. “Anyone else?”

  “One from a woman named Destiny and another woman named Cecil something. Funny name for a woman. They girlfriends of yours?”

  Destiny, I understand, but Cece? “No, just acquaintances. Anyone else?”

  “Nope, just those three, but that Henry guy called three times.”

  Figures.

  But none from Ebony. Maybe she didn’t see the note or the wind blew it away…or she didn’t come home at all. That poor dog! I hope Marmaduke has a big bladder.

  I return Henry’s call first, since I can’t do much this week without that advance money. “Henry?”

  “Hey, Pete, how’s the novel coming?”

  “Fine. I’m just getting settled in. I plan to work on it some more after running a few errands.”

  “Good, good. You okay? You sound congested.”

  �
��I just have a little cold.”

  “Well, take care of yourself, Pete.” A few moments of silence. “Hey, Pete, I just want to thank you for the other night. I don’t know how to repay you. Cece and I have our fingers crossed.”

  Your fingers are going to get tired, Henry. But that means…Cece lied to him? “Yeah, um, I’ll be staying here until further notice, so I need to give you the address of the yacht club for my mail.”

  “Why not just open an account and we’ll direct deposit the advance? We could have the money in your account by this afternoon.”

  “Okay.”

  “And could you send me three more chapters by Friday?”

  “Sure.”

  “And add some more sizzle.”

  Translation: More sex.

  “I ran it by the publisher, and she likes it, but she wants more heat.”

  Translation: more nasty, hot-and-sweaty, break-the-bed, back-scratches-so-bad-you-need-a-transfusion sex.

  “I’ll try, Henry.”

  “You know what you could do?”

  Here we go. “What?”

  “Just give us a play-by-play of your night with Cece. From what she tells me, it was a sizzling night.”

  I nearly drop the phone.

  “It would be a nice tribute to her, don’t you think?”

  “Uh, sure, Henry. It would be a nice tribute.” If it ever happened. But how twisted! He wants me to write about the night I slept with his woman! “I’ll try to surprise you, okay?”

  “Okay, Pete. As soon as you’ve set up the account, give us a ring and we’ll shoot that money to you.”

  “Thanks for everything, Henry.”

  “No, thank you, Pete.”

  Destiny didn’t leave a number or a message. The Post-It says only that she called. I’ll have to e-mail or IM her soon. And since I can barely read any of Cece’s many numbers on my hand, I can’t return her call either, even though it’s marked “urgent.” I know what it’s about, and from the sound of Henry’s voice, our secret is safe.

  I first set up a checking account at a Bank of New York and leave the routing numbers with Henry’s secretary. Then I find myself driving once again by Ebony’s house on Fairchild Street. No car in the driveway, but the porch light is on. At 10:15 A.M. Hmm. No note in the crack of the door, so she had to have gotten my message. Maybe she got the message and decided it was too late to call. That was nice of her. Maybe she’ll call later in the day.