Baby Girl

by Bette Lee Crosby

  ~ ~ ~

  On Christmas Day I pulled a water-stained canvas tote from beneath the bunk, loaded it with toiletries, a towel and clean underwear, then headed for the marina clubhouse. The facilities at the yacht club were fairly nice, not luxurious but way better than sitting on the toilet while a trickle of lukewarm water sprayed my shoulders.

  When I returned to the boat, I felt clean and refreshed. Determined not to sit around feeling sorry for myself, I got busy packing away the clothes I’d brought from the motel. There was barely enough room for a stack of jeans and tee shirts in the cubbies, so I hung two of the suits I’d use for work on the hook and packed the remainder back in the suitcase. For the time being I’d keep it in the trunk of my car.

  Once that was done, I boiled some water, made myself a cup of tea and sat down to read Angela’s Ashes. It was a dreary story, a book I normally would not have bothered with, but it was the only book on the boat. I flipped through the pages, glossing over words and capturing none of their intent. After rereading the same paragraph a dozen times, I set the book aside and snapped on the TV.

  I clicked past one channel after another, but every station was celebrating Christmas. There were Christmas movies, talk shows about Christmas on the farm, glittering examples of Christmas in the city, chefs cooking up bountiful holiday dinners—a thousand reminders that it was Christmas, and I was sitting here alone with a half-empty bag of potato chips.

  A cabin no wider than you are tall can be somewhat of a prison, so that evening I climbed out of the boat, pulled the hatch shut and walked back to the marina clubhouse. When I heard laughter coming from the bar I walked in, boosted myself onto a stool and ordered a beer. I looked like a single bookend, sitting alone and without purpose. The laughter I’d heard came from a group on the far side of the bar.

  A blonde woman said something, and the crowd laughed louder. Minutes later the tall man at the center of the group caught my eye. He raised his arm and waved me over.

  “Come join us!” he called.

  I picked up my glass, walked over and stuck out my hand to introduce myself.

  “Cheryl Ann Ferguson,” I said, going back to the name I’d used for the first eighteen years of my life.

  “Joe Montello,” he replied.

  From across the bar he’d looked younger, but up close I could see he was probably in his late fifties. He had a graying beard and a paunch that hung over his belt, but that wasn’t what you noticed. The warmth of his smile was the thing that caught your eye.

  “You live here?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Now I do. East end of the dock, the twenty-six-foot Lyman.”

  “I’m two down from you. The 3650 Cruiser.”

  I knew the boat. It was half again the size of mine.

  I finished my beer. Joe ordered a second one for me then introduced the others in the group. Mostly just first names.

  People who live on boats come and go; a marina is not a place where you’re likely to make lasting friendships. Some people you saw once and then they were gone. Others stayed a week, maybe two, then they too disappeared. Joe was one of the few who, like me, went nowhere.

  Individually we were lonely people, people without a place to be or someone who cared; together we became part of a whole, a band of friends. I was one of them. I belonged. We drank, laughed, told off-color jokes and pretended it wasn’t Christmas. This was the new me, the different me. The me who could no longer be hurt by Ryan or anyone else.

  Two days after Christmas I had my hair cut. Not the shoulder-length trim I usually got, but a sharp angular style that hugged the nape of my neck. That same day I bought two pairs of black jeans and four stretchy black tops. They suited my mood—dark and heavy.

  I packed away my pink shirts and ivory-colored blouses. Wearing pastel shades made me vulnerable. Black was a powerful color, a suit of armor that made me feel less of a girl and more a force to be reckoned with. Black was the new me.

  A New Millennium

  The fourth of January was Baby Girl’s second birthday. I thought about it all day and that evening drove over to Lawton just to cruise past the Stuart house, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. I knew by now she would be walking and talking, probably following LeAnn from room to room and calling out, “Mama.”

  I circled the block three times, and when I passed their house I slowed to a crawl. Inside the lights were on, and I could see people moving but they were nothing more than shadows because the window was covered with a lacy curtain. If I thought it would go unnoticed I would have parked on the street and stayed all night for a chance to see my baby, but the Stuarts lived in an area where cars were tucked away in garages at night and guests parked in the driveway. A lone car sitting alongside the curb would have been as obvious as a bonfire in the middle of the street.

  After nearly an hour of circling the block, I left and drove back to the marina. Joe Montello was at the clubhouse bar, so I went in and plopped down on the stool beside him.

  “Crappy day,” I said.

  “It happens.” Joe smiled and ordered me a Budweiser.

  That night after a few beers at the clubhouse, we went back to Joe’s boat and drank tequila until we were both blind drunk. He told me about the ex who was milking him for all he was worth. I told him about Ryan and how I hated myself for letting Baby Girl slip from my life.

  “Today’s her second birthday,” I said, sobbing. “She should be with her mama.”

  “She is,” he said solemnly. “And if you really love her you’ve got to accept it.”

  Drunken people seldom make sense, but Joe’s answer was more sensible than any thought I’d had over the past two years.

  “You’re right,” I whimpered and threw back another shot of tequila.

  That night we slobbered tears on each other’s shoulders and swore sooner or later things would get better. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning we gave up the tears and fell asleep, him on one bunk, me on the other. In the morning I woke to the smell of coffee.

  There are times in life when everybody needs a friend like Joe. A friend who will listen without being judgmental; a friend who is right where you are and can feel the anguish in your heart.

  Friendships you make in a bar are somewhat like disposable towels. You need them and you’re thankful they’re there, but you never expect them to last. This was a thing Joe and I both understood.

  Throughout the months of January and February, we were best friends. It wasn’t something planned; we just sort of happened upon one another. He was always there at the clubhouse bar, and I was always looking for a friend.

  Joe wasn’t my only friend; there was a whole group of us. All misfits of a sort. People with a first name and no last. In a single night we became best friends, and before the bar closed we’d be hanging on to one another like lifelong buddies.

  The clubhouse bar was a place where no one had a past and no one cared about the future. We were all living for the moment, the right here and right now. Hugs were given freely, and parting was never sorrowful.

  In early March Joe told me he was leaving at the end of the week.

  “Heading over to the Bahamas,” he said. “I’ve got friends there.”

  I wanted to grab onto his arm and hold him back, to say that he had friends here also, to say that I was his friend and didn’t want him to go. But I couldn’t. Ours wasn’t that kind of friendship.

  “Cool,” I said and smiled. “Think you’ll be coming back?”

  He shrugged. “Depends.” He didn’t say on what.

  That Friday after work I stopped in at the clubhouse. Joe wasn’t there. I ordered a beer, drank it down quickly and left. As I headed back to the boat I passed the slip where Joe’s 3650 had been. It was empty.

  The weight of him leaving was heavy in my chest, but it was a luxury I couldn’t afford to keep. I changed into my black jeans and returned to the clubhouse. The only person in the bar was a silver-haired man sitting alone. I walked over and sat on the s
tool next to him.

  “Hi,” I said and smiled. “Name’s Cheryl Ann. You new here?”

  He told me his name was William Potter. He was newly retired and working his way down the east coast.

  “I’m figuring to spend summer on the boat then settle someplace in Florida,” he said.

  We spent the evening together, buying drinks for each other and talking about all the things we were going to do. I lied and he lied; then we hugged each other and went our separate ways. We both said, “Let’s do this again tomorrow,” but I didn’t go back and I’m pretty sure he didn’t either.

  ~ ~ ~

  It took over a year for the divorce to become final. The lawyers argued over everything imaginable. I was angry with Ryan and wasn’t willing to budge an inch—not because I actually wanted any of those things, but because I didn’t want him to have them. I wanted him to feel the pain of missing his prized possessions the same way I felt the pain of missing my baby girl.

  In March of 2001 the decree came through. A few weeks later Ryan and his girlfriend were married; by then their son was over a year old.

  I had been living on the boat for almost a year-and-a-half, although you would scarcely call it living. I did nothing more than sleep there. Being in that cabin was like living in a closet. I couldn’t take a shower, cook a meal or have a friend over. It was a prison of my own making.

  Hating someone forever is a difficult thing to do. It uses up all your energy and wears you down. It forces you to be someone and something you’re not. You drink more and laugh louder just to prove you’re happier than he is. You’re the only one who cares about this, but you ignore that fact and continue. Sooner or later the weight of carrying such hatred becomes a burden too great to bear, and you start to realize that you’re hurting yourself way more than you’re hurting him.

  On the second Saturday of April I called the house to tell Ryan I was ready to sell the boat and he could buy it back. His new wife answered the telephone.

  “Is Ryan there?” I asked. I heard the shrill screams of a toddler in the background.

  “He’s working today,” she said. “You can call him at the Fairmont Store.” She hung up the receiver without ever asking who I was or what I wanted. I can’t say whether she knew it was me or simply didn’t care. There was an all-too-familiar weariness in her voice.

  I called the Fairmont store and spoke with Ryan. It was the first civil conversation we’d had since the night he’d looked me in the eye and said he didn’t love me anymore.

  “I’m going to sell the boat,” I said. “Are you still interested in buying it?”

  There was a long silence, and for a moment I thought maybe he’d hung up.

  “How much?” he finally said.

  “Twelve thousand.”

  Again silence.

  “Do you want it or not?” I asked.

  “I want it,” he said, “but I need a few weeks to get the money.”

  “Okay.” I gave him the address of my post office box and said when I got the check I’d send the ownership papers.

  During the time I’d lived on the boat I’d made hundreds of new friends—old, young, some sober, some not so much. All of them had come and gone through my life with the intensity of a thunderstorm passing by on a hot summer day. Two weeks later, like many of those friends, I was gone from the marina.

  The Apartment

  You might think once a truckload of misery is dumped on you that you’re destined to live with it forever, but that’s not true. Just like everything else misery has an expiration date, and when it comes around you get to choose whether to leave it behind or hang on to it. I held on to mine for way too long.

  I didn’t call it misery; I called it freedom. I let it hide behind loud music, alcohol and the flimsy friendships of people who were little more than strangers. The day I drove out of the marina for that last time it was as if a bag of bricks had been lifted from my back.

  After being squeezed into a cabin the size of a doll’s house, I wanted space. A place with closets to hang clothes, a kitchen to cook meals, a bed not shaped like the bow of a boat, one where I could sit up without banging my head on the ceiling.

  ~ ~ ~

  I liked Margaret Foley the moment I met her. She was a plumpish woman with streaks of silver in her hair and the smell of cookies clinging to her.

  When she opened the door I said, “I called about the apartment.”

  She pushed the door open and said, “Ah, yes, come sit for a few minutes. I’ve got cookies in the oven, and they’re ready to come out.”

  “I can smell them,” I said as I followed her through the hallway and into the kitchen. It was a cozy room with potted plants on the windowsill, plaid wallpaper and chintz curtains tied back with a ribbon.

  “The apartment’s upstairs,” Margaret explained. “It’s three-fifty a month including everything but a telephone. If you want a telephone, you can have one. The jack’s already there but with not knowing who might come in—” She pulled the tray from the oven, waited a few moments, then one by one began transferring the cookies to a cooling rack. “You like cookies?”

  “Love them.”

  She moved two of the warm cookies to a plate and set it on the table. “Try these.”

  I broke off a piece and stuffed it into my mouth. “Delicious,” I garbled.

  Once she had all of the cookies on the rack Margaret said, “Come, I’ll show you through the apartment, then we’ll have tea.”

  “Oh, no, that’s really not—”

  “I can make coffee if you’d prefer.”

  “Tea is fine,” I said and followed her up the stairs.

  The apartment was everything I wanted and more. The kitchen, a mirror image of the one downstairs, had the same plaid wallpaper, only this one was rose-colored rather than blue. I could already imagine chintz tiebacks at the window. Every room was freshly painted, the larger bedroom in pink, the smaller one in the palest yellow imaginable.

  “I love it,” I said with a sigh as we walked from room to room.

  “Lots of closets,” she said and opened one door after another.

  We circled through the rooms and came back to the kitchen. “The laundry center is here…” She pulled open a set of double doors to show the washer and dryer sitting side by side.

  “It’s small,” she said apologetically, “but quite efficient.”

  Before we started down the stairs I was already thinking of what kind of furniture I’d need.

  We returned to her kitchen, and as I sat there having tea and cookies I could feel a new kind of happiness sprouting inside my soul.

  With the money Ryan paid for the boat still warm in my pocket, I went furniture shopping. This time I bypassed the Salvation Army store and headed for Baker Brothers, a furniture gallery where Mister George, the sales manager, dashed over to greet you the minute you stepped through the door.

  I spent almost ten thousand dollars that afternoon and got one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of pleasure in doing it. I felt like Missus Vanderbilt pointing my finger at this sofa and that chair, then matching them to end tables and lamps. When I finished picking out furniture for the living room, I moved on to the bedroom.

  I’d always thought a bed was simply a bed, but after I followed Mister George through the Sleep Center Gallery I knew better. With him standing beside me I kicked off my shoes and began testing out mattresses. After almost two hours of mattress testing and studying one room after another, I selected a pale ash queen-size bed with a six-foot-long dresser and two nightstands. I finished off my shopping spree with a round table and four captain’s chairs for the kitchen.

  Once he’d made note of everything, Mister George escorted me to the Customer Courtesy Lounge and had his assistant bring us cups of coffee while he sat writing up the order.

  “You can expect delivery in six to eight weeks,” he said.

  “Six weeks?” I said. “That’s too long.”

  I’d already turned the b
oat over to Ryan and the apartment had nothing but carpeting and appliances. The only things I’d brought with me were a bunch of plastic bags filled with clothes and a twelve-inch television.

  “Everything comes from the factory,” he explained. “It’s made to order.”

  There was several minutes of back and forth negotiations, but after I’d made clear my predicament we came to a compromise. The next day Baker Brothers delivered a truckload of discontinued floor sample furniture for me to use until my special order furniture came through.

  That night when I stretched myself out on a real bed I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I plumped both pillows beneath my head and lay there watching Jay Leno interview Rodney Dangerfield. It’s funny how a simple thing like laughing along with the television can change the way you look at life.

  Moving into that apartment was the start of me getting back to the person I once was. In the evening I’d come home from work and settle in with no desire whatsoever to go carousing. Little by little I began to discover the things I had once enjoyed: listening to music, crocheting and reading. Two years earlier I’d given up on Angela’s Ashes, and then I’d just quit reading altogether. I can’t even remember why. Maybe I’d forgotten how comforting the feel of a book in your hand can be.

  Then one evening I came home and found a copy of John Grisham’s novel A Painted House on the steps leading to my apartment. Margaret had left it for me. She did things like that. Almost every day I’d come home and find some nice little surprise: a ripe tomato, a loaf of her banana bread, a plate of cookies. Sometimes there was a note, sometimes not.