Sweet Water

by Anna Jeffrey

  “Women,” he mumbled.

  Then he sighed. No, not women—Marisa.

  ****

  Marisa stood in the café’s tiny kitchen, breaking eggs onto the griddle’s hot surface, appreciating each one’s sizzle not rising above a whisper. How many eggs had she cooked on this griddle, she wondered as she lifted the bacon press and checked the strips of bacon. The familiarity of doing it day after day had given her roots in a rootless world.

  She had half expected she might not hear from Terry again. He had been mad last night. He didn’t say so, hadn’t thrown a tantrum, but she had seen anger in his eyes, in his tightly controlled body language as he left the apartment.

  She hadn’t been in the best of spirits herself and the night had been forty hours long. And to compound her distress, today she had awakened from her few hours of sleep mortified beyond words by what had happened in the café kitchen. A matter of seconds and she had gone off like some damn rocket. He must think her a sex maniac. He had even called her “easy.”

  And now he was asking her for a date? What was up with that? An old saying she had heard all her life came to her about a man not taking the cow when he could get the milk for free. She sighed and scooped breakfasts onto four plates. She wanted to cry, but she didn’t have time.

  He must be serious about a date if he had volunteered to find a sitter for Mama. It was true that the woman from Pecos Lanny had hired to stay with Mama was available on almost any evening. Her day job was working as a home health nurse, so she was fully qualified to contend with a patient like Mama. Marisa could make Terry’s life easier by giving him her name. But a crotchety part of her didn’t want to make his life easier. Besides, he could also get the woman’s name from Ben. He seemed to get all sorts of other information from Ben.

  She grabbed a couple of biscuits she had baked earlier and slid them into the microwave. She hated re-warming her light-as-a-feather biscuits in the microwave and turning them heavy-as-lead, but it was the best she could do with the equipment she had. Customers didn’t complain.

  Besides being disgruntled with herself, she was unhappier than usual this morning with Ben. He and Mama had played music and danced for hours.

  Marisa felt a nagging annoyance at Terry, too. Yet, where he was concerned, an even deeper conflict roiled within her. A tiny traitorous part of her supported his development and wanted him to succeed. In fact, she had come to worry over the financial risk he had taken in this desolate part of the world almost as much as she worried about her own future.

  He came in at noon, took a seat at the lunch counter and ordered a hamburger. She had no time to sit, but managed to talk to him as she flitted back and forth cooking and waiting on customers. And overshadowing her every activity and even her conversation with total strangers ordering food was the picture of herself hanging on to the edge of the kitchen sink lost in an incredible orgasm.

  “I found someone,” he said on one of her passes to the kitchen. “Ben gave me the phone number and the woman’s name who stayed with your mom before.”

  She stopped and looked at him.

  “She says she can stay from six to midnight,” he said. “That gives us enough time to drive to Odessa for dinner. Or we could skip dinner and see a movie if you like.”

  Why was he doing this? Hadn’t she already proved that with her being “easy,” wining and dining were unnecessary? “Look, Terry—”

  “This isn’t about just wanting a hot body, Marisa. I want to start over. I want to do this right.”

  “And you think going out to dinner somehow changes something?” The response was a gotcha, for sure.

  He sat there looking at her, his hamburger poised above his plate. She didn’t have to be a genius to decipher what she saw in his eyes. Nor was it necessary to give him a speech on raw animal attraction.

  He shook his head once, then turned back to his burger. He bit out a chunk and chewed. “Okay, think about this. I want us to get acquainted, build some history.”

  Ha. That was a new one. Men were so dumb. But bless his heart for trying to be gallant and trying to put a puritanical face on what they both wanted. She couldn’t keep from chuckling. “Okay, so we spend an evening lying to each other about our life stories. Then we fall into bed. Or the backseat. Or something.”

  “No backseat. I don’t have a car and the crew cab’s too small.”

  She chuckled again. “Haven’t you ever heard where there’s a will, there’s a way?”

  He grinned. “C’mon. Stop giving me a hard time. I’m trying to be a gentleman here.”

  Now that her daydreams about him loomed as a reality, in truth, she felt confused and not up to acting out the fantasy. “Honestly, I’m not trying to be difficult. I just feel like I need to say, ‘Why me?’ You must know a bunch of glamorous chicks who’ve got a lot more to offer than I do.”

  “It’s true I know some glamorous chicks, but that’s all they are. It is not true that they’ve got more to offer than you. You’re one of the few women I’ve ever met that I trust.”

  So who had broken his heart? She felt a frown tug at her brow. “You must have been keeping some pretty bad company.”

  “I’m trying to change that. Let’s go to dinner tonight and enjoy an evening out. No strings, no obligations.”

  After he had touched her intimately and driven her to fall apart in his arms, she didn’t believe the last part, but what did she have to lose by going to dinner? She lifted a shoulder. “Okay. But only if it’s somewhere the food is decent. I don’t want to see you pay good money for bad food. And I’m a tough critic.”

  Terry grinned and the whole room grew brighter. “Lady, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Marisa’s heart melted. Damn him. He wasn’t just a devil. He was Satan himself.

  ****

  Marisa closed Pecos Belle’s early. Before dressing for her date with Terry, she carried clean bed linen to the apartment and made up the bed. Just in case one of her aunts might show up to spend the night, she told herself.

  Then she showered and shampooed and debated if she should just wear clean jeans and a shirt or one of her few dresses. She had shaved her legs in the shower. Just in case it became important, she told herself. As she creamed them, she checked the yellow rose showing on the outside of her left ankle, wondering how many women Terry had dated who had tattoos. On her olive skin, the tattoo wasn’t as obvious as the ones on Tanya’s pale skin, but it still could be easily seen.

  Men had told her they thought her yellow rose sexy. In her own opinion it didn’t compare to the happy face at the edge of her pubic hair. She shared the story of how and when she had acquired the happy face with no one.

  She put on a yellow cotton sundress with white daisies around the hem. Very girly and un-Marisa. She pinned up her thick straight hair with a plastic claw clip, from which tendrils escaped immediately and hung down her neck. She considered her only pair of high heels, but she hadn’t worn them on in more than a year. She could break an ankle. She slipped her feet into tan sandals.

  The sitter came, the same one as before. She brought a crochet project to pass the time. Terry soon followed, wearing khakis and a peacock blue button-down and drenched in Safari, the whole package as luscious as a rich lava cake. Hmm. Blue was definitely his color. Those fantastic sky-colored eyes roamed over her appreciatively, making her glad she had decided to wear the dress.

  On the drive to Odessa, he talked about his years as an Army Ranger and living in Europe and Italy and the Middle East. He talked about the joy of skydiving and hang gliding. He had to be nuts.

  She had no such adventures to relate. Nevertheless, she told him about her half-assed efforts to become a chef and the years she had spent turning out rubber food in the better-known family restaurants in Midland and Arlington.

  They dined on filet mignon broiled to a perfect medium rare. Perhaps she could have done it better; then again, maybe not. They talked, they laughed, they looked into each other’s
eyes and found no time for being distracted by a movie. They even danced. The tension mounted between them. Some things were just inevitable.

  Toward the end of the evening, he pulled a brochure from his shirt pocket and slid it across the table to her. On its cover was a colorful array of hot-air balloons. “Breakfast in heaven,” he said. “Anytime you say.”

  She gave him a look. “I don’t get it.”

  “Open it.”

  She opened the brochure, read about a champagne breakfast package with a hot-air-balloon company in Albuquerque. “Wow. I know people who’ve done this, but—”

  “Two or three days. I’ll find someone to stay with your mom.”

  “Terry, it isn’t necessary for you—”

  “It is necessary, Marisa. C’mon. Say yes. You aren’t afraid, are you?”

  She studied him across the table. It seemed logical that a man who would skydive and hang glide for fun would just naturally invite a date to go soaring in a hot-air balloon. Of course they would sleep together during the two or three days. All that had prevented it before now was a lack of convenience. “Not of riding in a hot-air balloon.”

  “What, then? Is it me? You’re afraid of me?”

  “I have to be, Terry. There’s nowhere for you and me to go. You’re already wiping out mine and Mama’s livelihood, but you could wipe out more than that.” She pressed her palm against her chest. “You could wipe out me, Terry. It wasn’t as scary when I thought we were just going to sneak a little recreational sex.”

  “You’re not the recreational-sex type.”

  You don’t know everything, she thought, but she laughed.

  “Oh, right. What was it you said? I’m one of those honest women? I’m also easy, remember?”

  “Facts are facts, pretty lady. I happen to believe you’re not nearly as hard-assed as you try to make everyone think. In Agua Dulce, you mother-hen the whole damn place, but as far as I can tell, no one looks after you....And something tells me no one ever has.”

  His last statement jolted her and left her feeling starkly exposed. It was true. Marisa had always known it, but never acknowledged it aloud. Mama had never been June Cleaver. The two of them had been more like friends looking out for each other than mother taking care of daughter. Even as a child, Marisa had frequently been the decision maker in their two-female household.

  Marisa had accepted long ago that her mother marched to a different drummer. Born the year Hitler invaded Poland, Mama had turned twenty-one in 1960, which meant she had a foot in each of two drastically different social camps—the generation of responsible, dedicated Americans who fought and won World War II and the “if-it-feels-good-do-it” movement of the sixties and seventies. Indeed, the clutch of eccentrics around whom Marisa had grown up included her mother.

  Some truths were just too hard to face. An unexpected burn flashed behind her eyes. “I don’t need looking after.”

  “Everyone does, Marisa, at some point.”

  “That may be true for some, but I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. And I’m the only person I know who’s one hundred percent reliable.”

  “Try me,” he said, his eyes holding hers. “I’m reliable. I promise I won’t wipe you out. I’ve already said I’m after more than fun and games. I didn’t used to be, but I am now.”

  Was that a warning or a promise? Her pulse surged. “Is this a new urge or something you’ve been thinking about for a while?”

  “All I know is I want to see where we can go. If you’re as gutsy as I think you are, you’ll stick with me.”

  Without a doubt, Terry Ledger was the most exciting and interesting man she had ever met. And now he had shown an insight and depth of understanding that was almost overwhelming. She, too, wanted to see where they could go, though she didn’t trust either him or her own emotions. Looking into his beautiful gentle eyes, she couldn’t keep a smile from sneaking across her lips. “I guess we could start with Albuquerque.”

  He grinned like an elated little boy and she imagined him jumping from his chair, pumping his fist and yelling, “Yes!” He took back the brochure. “Okay, then. It’s done. I’ll put it together.”

  And she had no doubt he would. Just like that, she had a date to spend a day or two with a millionaire. Mere months ago, such a possibility was more remote than a trip to China. She wanted to be flattered and thrilled, because he aroused emotions totally new. Unfortunately, they were as frightening as they were new.

  They held hands all the way home and he continued to talk—about his high school years in Odessa. He had played quarterback at Permian High School, had received several college scholarship offers, but to spite his parents, for whom he harbored anger to this day, he passed up college, joined the army and had never been sorry.

  He dragged information from her about her life. She told him about dropping out of culinary school in Dallas because she felt guilty taking money from her mother, but when she couldn’t make enough at a part-time job to sustain both school and herself, it was school she sacrificed.

  He smiled at her across the cab and squeezed her hand. “That would be like you.”

  After Mama’s sitter departed, they stood wrapped in each other’s arms at her front door and smooched like kids for what seemed like far too short a time. Only supreme will kept her from hauling him inside the mobile to her bedroom, but something inside her wouldn’t allow her to take the risk.

  Long after she went to bed, she found herself staring into the darkness, thinking. In her whole history with men, what guy had ever been better company than Terry? The answer: none. What guy had been more honest? Again, the answer: none. He had made her no promises, just openly and honestly asked her to step out onto a tall building’s ledge. With him. Was she the daredevil he was?

  They did have something in common. Their childhoods had been hauntingly similar—each filled with lonely hours and insecurity and a powerful instinct to survive. She dared to let herself fantasize how a future could be with a man like him.

  Her thoughts drifted to Albuquerque. Since moving back to Agua Dulce, she hadn’t left Mama for more than a few hours at a time. Terry had said he would locate someone to stay with her, but she could think of no one acceptable. Unless...

  Unless one of her aunts would be willing to come and stay a couple of days. Of course. That was the answer. Neither of them had been to see Mama in months. Aunt Rosemary and Aunt Radonna—they were the solution.

  Chapter 22

  “I know you’re busy.” Marisa raised her voice to be heard over loud laughter coming through the receiver and a female voice belting out “Redneck Woman” in the background. Marisa’s aunt Radonna had managed a raunchy bar in Odessa for several years. “I tried to reach Aunt Rosemary, but Uncle Duane said she’s in Missouri.”

  “Yeah,” Aunt Radonna yelled. Marisa was forced to hold the receiver a few inches from her ear. “The woman burns up the highway visiting her kids and their rug rats. She’ll do anything to get away from that asshole she married. I’ll bet those poor kids hate to see her coming.”

  Aunt Rosemary’s three daughters and a bevy of grandchildren lived in three different states. The aunt had a reputation for starting trouble wherever she went and quarreling with her daughters and sons-in-law. Just as she did with Mama and Aunt Radonna. Marisa laughed at her aunt’s quip, though she suspected it was no joke.

  Marisa had never understood the three Rutherford sisters relationships. They didn’t see each other often and rarely had good things to say about each other, yet they considered themselves a fiercely loyal family. Growing up listening to the back-biting and spitefulness among them, Marisa had often thought that if she had been lucky enough to have a sister, she would have made certain they got along and were pals. To Aunt Radonna’s credit, though she didn’t frequently come to Agua Dulce to visit Mama, she did call occasionally.

  While her aunt Rosemary had been unhappily married to her first and only husband for years, Aunt Radonna had been married
several times. She had no children and at present was between husbands.

  Marisa knew only surface facts about her mother’s family, but she surmised something had gone badly awry for all three of the sisters to have such screwed-up relationships with men. Maybe it was in the genes. Maybe a genetic component explained her own failures with the opposite sex, Marisa had often thought. “So how about it, then, Aunt Donna? Can you stay with Mama a couple of days?”

  “Sure, darlin’. I need to come see her anyway. How is she?”

  “Probably worse than when you saw her last. To be honest, I don’t know if she’ll know who you are. She still mentions Aunt Rosemary sometimes, but—”

  “But not me, eh?...Well, we were never close. Nearly ten years difference in our ages, you know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love her. Hold on, darlin’, while I close this door. Damn drunks.” The background noise shut down and Radonna came back on, speaking in a normal voice. “So my little niece is going off to shack up with some guy, huh? I hope he’s a good lay.” She cackled.

  Marisa winced. “It’s not like that. He’s just a friend who—”

  “Baby doll, you won’t get any criticism from your ol’ auntie. Life’s what you make it. I say take every interesting chance you get. I can’t come over there on a weekend, sugar. Weekends are when these boozehounds sow their wildest oats. It’ll be Tuesday before I can get some help in here to corral ‘em.”

  Marisa agreed to Tuesday and they disconnected. Afterward she hesitated before calling Terry to tell him she had found a sitter. Even at this late date, she had misgivings about a two-or-three day trip with him. Wild and crazy sex for a few hours was different from spending days and nights with someone. Sharing the morning after was a new—and possibly dangerous—threshold.

  Terry didn’t come into the café all day, which was just as well, Marisa reasoned. She had more customers than usual and thus was extremely busy. Still, all through her evening closing procedure, she speculated on why he hadn’t come. All through getting Mama’s supper, she worried.