by Amber Foxx
Mae agreed to cook dinner five Sundays in a row and gave Hubert his three backrubs on three Saturdays—something she enjoyed a lot more than cooking.
At the conclusion of the third backrub, he rolled over and pulled her close for a kiss. “I liked that bet. Want to bet on something else?”
“Sure, if it’s something where I win the backrub.”
Losing a bet to Hubert wasn’t so bad. She’d proven to herself what she could do, and that was enough. Maybe more than enough.
She gave up on convincing Hubert and stopped the experiments. They felt too much like what she’d promised her mother she wouldn’t do—spying on people, getting into their business. Sooner or later, if she kept it up, she’d see something she shouldn’t, even if it was just something embarrassing like seeing the person on the toilet or in the bathtub. She’d done all she could. It was time to put it away again before she got into trouble.
What she didn’t give up on was finding a job.
Her mother knew it and called all too often with suggestions.
“Sugar, why don’t you try for this? I know it’s all the way in Greenville, but you could be a receptionist, couldn’t you?”
“Mama, I can’t drive an hour back and forth five days a week. Jim and Sallie can’t keep the girls all afternoon.”
The next day, another call.
“Rhoda-Mae, honey, you’d be a wonderful model, you’re so tall, and look, they need models for something up in Virginia Beach.”
“Mama, I weigh more than a model. My left boob weighs more than a model.”
“You have very nice boobs, sugar. I hope you’re not complaining about them. Some girls would be very glad to pay to have some like that put on, you know.”
“Fine, but I can’t be a model. Please stop trying to find me these jobs.”
“I’m always looking anyway, it’s no trouble. Arnie needs something better. God knows at least he's finally working again, but ... well, I’m not one to complain, but you know ... From that good job at the Newport News shipyard to how many years of nothing and now finally a dollar store?”
“At least he’s got work.”
“It still bothers me that he was laid off when you wanted to go to college. Seems that man could have found something. I swear, I have to push him to do anything.”
Mae felt bad for Arnie. He’d had been depressed while out of work, and the situation in the trailer had been miserable when Mae, divorced and broke from life with Mack, had been stuck having to move back in with her mother and step-father. “I think he’s just glad to be earning again.”
“Well, don’t you settle like that. Look, this one’s good for you.” Rhoda-Rae kept pushing her job agenda. “The Health Quest Center needs a personal trainer. You’re in such good shape, honey, you’d be great at that.”
“I’d love it, Mama, it sounds perfect if I was qualified, but I don’t have the education. I don’t think working out counts as qualifying. People have to be certified, have a degree—”
“Are you just saying no to spite me? Call them. I don’t mean to insult you, sugar, but they have to be desperate around here. I mean who’s gonna stay to work here if they can go be a personal trainer in Greenville or Norfolk? Call them.”
Mae knew she wasn’t qualified, but to get her mother off her back, she agreed to call.
It went better than she could have imagined—meaning her mother, for once, was right.
“Hubert, if I get a certification, they’d hire me.” Mae picked the best time to bring it up, while she and Hubert worked out in their home weight room, a space meant to be a sun room or parlor in the old bungalow, if its owners lived that kind of lifestyle. They’d furnished it from yard sales, so the weight bench had duct tape on its worn vinyl and the dumbbells sat in a row along the floor without a rack. The big fitness balls served as toys for the twins as much as exercise equipment for Mae and Hubert. “Jen Baird’s the fitness director now.”
“She okay with you?”
“Why not?”
“Jen and I had a little something going once upon a time. Community college.”
“I don’t care about that. She was on the softball team with me and we got on great. She knows I was smarter than her in high school, she even said so. She wouldn’t take the chance on most folks before they got certified, but she knows me. And they really need someone.”
She picked up a pair of dumbbells and started a set of overhead shoulder presses. Brook and Stream grabbed their tiny pink half-pound dumbbells, another yard sale purchase, and imitated her, chatting about how they would have “muscles like Mama.” Their birth mother had run off when they were infants, so Mae was the only Mama they’d ever known.
“And where are you going to get this certification?” Hubert asked, pausing at the top of a pushup.
“I looked it all up. There’s a course I can take at the community education center at CVU—”
“In Norfolk? You’d pay out-of-state tuition.” Hubert continued his set, up and down. Mae admired his arms as he moved. His body wasn’t the only reason she’d picked him out of the crowd at community league softball, but it was one of them. The fact that he noticed and complimented her when she outran his throws helped. He didn’t go out for drinks after the game, and Mae liked that, along with his smart, laid-back, off-beat parents and those little baby girls they took care of while they watched the game. She’d fallen for him slowly, not head over heels, but looking at him had definitely kick-started the process.
“It’s not a college course, it’s a community education course for six weeks. And it’s in the evenings, so I could ride up with Patsy Johnson. She works with Mama at the hospital, and she’s getting a Master’s in Community Health at CVU. She and Mama already worked it out that I could ride up with her.”
“What’s it cost?”
Mae steeled herself. Money was always tight. “My whole tax refund and some help from Mama.”
Hubert said nothing as he struggled through a few more reps to muscle failure, then sat, stretching his shoulders. “I guess we could swing that. Nice of your mama.” He sounded a bit surprised that Rhoda-Rae had made the offer. “Six weeks.” He stood and walked over to the row of dumbbells. “How many nights?”
This was another hard part. “Three. And I'd have one long workshop on a Saturday.” She put her weights down, and Brook and Stream did the same, asking what exercise came next. She showed them, changing to a lighter weight for a bicep curl. “But I’d have a good job as soon as I passed the certification exam. The certification organization gives the exam at CVU, too, so that’s my one last trip up there. Jen says the test’s hard, but I’m good at taking tests. I’d have a real job, sweetie. I’d do something I care about.”
“I reckon you’d ace that test, that’s true.” Hubert picked up one of the largest weights, leaned an arm on the bench, and drew the weight back in a bent-over row. “You really want this, don’t you?”
“Like water if my ass was on fire.”
“Could you work times we wouldn’t need a babysitter? It wouldn’t make sense to get a job and spend all the money on child care.”
To her it would. They’d be the same financially, but she’d be different—using her mind, seeing adults, feeling productive. Much as she loved her step-daughters, being a mother was never something she’d planned on for a career. “Maybe. Sometimes. I’d be new. I’d ask, but I’d be low man on the totem pole for schedules.”
“We need to think about it.”
“Hubert, I want to work. I’m going crazy not working. It’s the best thing that’s ever gonna come along around here and you know that. Look at Arnie, making minimum wage at his age. If I see one more downtown go belly-up and boarded up, I’m just giving up on this place. There’s nothing. I need this.”
Both paused in their routines and their eyes met. She hoped he’d agree. After all, he’d gone to the tech for his automotive trade degree. He had what he wanted. He had his parents’ farm, his house, his family,
work he enjoyed. His life was complete. Hers wasn’t.
“I don’t like to hear you say you’d give up on this place. This is home.”
“I meant for work. I didn’t mean for life.” She resumed her lifts, and so did he. Brook and Stream lost interest in their pink toy dumbbells and asked if they could go play with their toy cars.
“If you stay in your room, yes,” Mae said. “Don’t bring ’em in here and get underfoot.”
“Yes, Mama.” The girls scampered out to their room, whispering to each other and squealing.
“Good,” Hubert said. “You had me worried for a second.”
Each completed their sets. Mae sat on the weight bench when she had finished, still feeling the tension of the unresolved decision to be made. Seeming to take the cue, Hubert sat beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and slipped his arm around her. “Talk to me.”
“You gonna be good with this even if we need to get a sitter during the summer?” she asked. “Can I do this and not have anything come back at me? I don’t like feeling I have to ask you if I can have a good job, if I can do something important. I kind of want to just go do it. I know we have to think like a family, about money and everything, but if I don’t get to think like me once in a while I won’t be much good to the family.”
“I’ll make you a deal.” He ran his hand along her back, his voice soft. She could tell by that tone and that touch, he was getting ready to make a joke, and that he was giving in to her.
“What deal?”
“If you can pass this test, I get a free personal trainer.” His hand caressed her hip. “Maybe real personal.”
She laughed, and turned and kissed him on the mouth. “Deal.”
He held the kiss, bringing his hands up to her neck and then into her hair. Finally releasing the kiss, he drew back a little. “I want you to be happy. You know that, don’t you?”
Looking into his soft brown eyes, she said, “I do. And I love you. I’m not unhappy, I just need to be ...” Nothing seemed to say it right. Independent. The person she could have been if she’d never married Mack, the person she could have been if Arnie hadn’t been laid off and she’d gone to college. The person she’d be if she was more than a wife and mother. “I need to be me.”
Rhoda-Rae, barefoot but still in nurse’s scrubs, crowed with joy at the news when Mae stopped by the trailer in Cauwetska to tell her. After a hug, Rhoda-Rae sat on her thrift-shop colonial sofa, and Mae in the matching rocker. Belle’s inadequate replacement, a white Persian with a pink ribbon, jumped into Mae's lap.
“Look at that. Gigi likes you. That’s so sweet. Well, I guess your mama trying to find you jobs wasn’t so bad after all, now was it, sugar?”
“No, it wasn’t. Thanks. You set me up good.”
“I always felt bad about not being able to even send you to the tech, with Arnie being out of work so long. And you are so smart, Rhoda-Mae, you are such a bright, bright girl.” Lost in some inner drama, Rhoda-Rae pressed her hands together and rocked, her large green eyes misted, but Mae knew her mother’s scenes too well to take the tears seriously. She’d noticed over the years of little mama-dramas that Rhoda-Rae wore too much eye make-up to let the tears spill over unless the emotion was deep and real, worth spoiling her face for. This wasn’t.
Mae moved on to practical matters. “I guess you should give me Patsy’s number so I can work out the car pooling.”
“I’ve got it on a magnet on the fridge.” Rhoda-Rae dropped her mood briskly, stood and went into the kitchen, returning with a scrap of paper. She handed it to Mae and resumed her seat.
Taking her cell phone from her purse, Mae programmed the number into her contacts list. “Patsy Johnson. I don’t know her at all. What’s she like?”
Rhoda-Rae’s hand went to her cross. “I don’t think she’s a bad person, sugar, but ... she’s not church folk. Bless her heart, she’s good with the patients, good with the other nurses on the floor, but she’s got some funny ideas since she’s been in that graduate school. Don’t listen to her if she runs on about that crazy alternative medicine course she’s taking. She’ll talk your ear off about that stuff if you let her.”
Petting the purring white cat, Mae felt immediately intrigued by anything her mother disapproved of. “What’s wrong with it?”
“My word, sugar, some of the things those professors have her reading are as witchy as your Granma. And I think Patsy halfway believes it.”
Chapter Two
January 2010
Mae dropped Brook and Stream at her in-laws’ farm and drove the long empty road from Tylerton to Cauwetska. This would be her drive to work in a couple of months. She was excited about starting her certification course and hoped she could get Patsy talking about the class that Rhoda-Rae thought was so dreadful.
The winter-bare trees formed a lacy tunnel spotted with sky as she drove past the painfully beautiful, poverty-scarred landscape that was northeastern North Carolina. Deep wet woods, road-kill deer, corn stubble, cotton stubble with plastic bags snagged like stranded seagulls, graceful old barns and houses sagging into brown, paintless oblivion, trailers, and empty space. After thirteen years here, she still felt a tug of the same sadness, the same disappointment in it, that she had her first night in the dank green house.
She parked in the visitor lot at the hospital in Cauwetska. The weather had turned cold finally, making it a brisk walk to the front door to meet Patsy. Outside the hospital, an elderly black woman leaning on a walker waited for someone to come pick her up, a small suitcase near her feet. She looked frail, as if she might be going home to die. The front doors swished open, and a nursing assistant rolled out an obese man in a wheelchair. Cars pulled up for both patients. An obese white woman came for the obese white man, a strong-looking young black man for the elderly woman.
Startled, Mae recognized Shawn Richardson, her old boyfriend that Rhoda-Rae had run off for being black. Shawn had gone to college, so it was strange to see him back in Cauwetska. This must his grandmother. No one came back unless they had to. His granma must be dying.
Not sure what to say, Mae said a soft hello, and Shawn smiled at her, a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He then turned his attention to helping his grandmother into his car. A nice car. Virginia plates. He’d made it, gotten out of here. Good for him. Too bad about his granma, though, and about how awkward this was. He didn’t even say a word to Mae, like he didn’t want to.
Mae stepped through the automatic doors. She wished she could go back and make it right with Shawn, but his polite coolness had made it clear he had no room for that.
A short, broad-hipped woman in jeans and a snowflake sweater, with questionably youthful blonde hair framing a fifty-plus face, rose from a chair in the waiting room. She seemed tentative, as if going on a description she’d been given, afraid she’d address the wrong five-foot-ten-inch redhead. “Rhoda-Mae?”
“Hey. You must be Ms. Johnson. Nice to meet you.” Mae approached to shake hands. Patsy’s was dry and rough, yet seemed freshly coated with lotion, too.
“Call me Patsy. Please.” Not a local accent. Southern, but not eastern North Carolina. Softer, quicker-spoken. “Nice to meet you, too. I’m glad to have some company on this drive.” Patsy shrugged her coat on, slung a purse over her shoulder, and strode towards the door.
They hurried through the cold and into Patsy’s small car. Once they were on the road and the heater had begun to thaw them out, Patsy said, “So you’re going for your personal training certification. That’s great. I go to Health Quest and they need some more people.”
“That’s why I’m doing it. Jen Baird said I could have the job if I did this course.”
“That works out well, then. They’re probably the last place in the world that still hires trainers without a degree.” Patsy stopped at a red light, then turned left towards the highway north. “Of course, if you ever want to work outside of this dismal swamp, you’ll have to go to college.”
“I know. On the we
b site for the course it said it’s better to have a degree, even to pass the course. But I’m not looking for a job away from here.”
“I am. I can’t wait.” Patsy unbuttoned her coat and wriggled out of it, keeping one hand on the wheel as she worked an arm out of each sleeve. “I’m from Virginia and I’m going back. I’m making contacts while I study.”
“Is that why you’re going to Coastal Virginia instead of East Carolina?”
“That, and the program. It’s better tailored to the administration job I want. The out-of-state tuition is a squeeze, for sure, but I know what I want.”
Mae tried to imagine Patsy’s life. The same hard job and long hours as Rhoda-Rae, but she had somehow saved up or borrowed and found time and money to go back for more education. “You got family?”
“Happily divorced, two daughters grown and living in Virginia, one in Richmond, one in Williamsburg.”
“I bet they’re happy you’re aiming to move back up there.”
“They’d better be, ’cause I’m coming. One more year.” Patsy smiled. “I’ve heard about you from your mother for years. Sports. All though high school, always about sports. I’m surprised you didn’t get recruited by some colleges.”
“I did. But there were no full scholarships.”
“She says you were smart, too. All A’s and B’s. You don’t think you could have gotten a scholarship?”
Mae looked out the window at the blank stretch of flat land, more farm stubble, interspersed with what the Ridleys called chicken prisons and hog prisons, windowless factory farms set back from the road. Patsy was probably right. Mae could have pushed, fought for it, dug in and found a way, and gone off on her own somehow, if she’d looked hard for scholarships.