Seen It All and Done the Rest

by Pearl Cleage

  “Of course he does,” I said, “but it’s just one house.”

  “Peachy’s friend Zeke always says all we can do is one house, one street at a time.”

  She looked so small and certain, sitting there cross-legged and serene. Abbie was always the idealist in the group, arguing for the goodness in people when the Marxists made her start feeling pessimistic. She was still trusting in the transformative powers of community.

  “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Neither have you,” she said. “Riding in like the Amazon Queen to rescue everybody.”

  “Don’t get carried away,” I said. “I’m not rescuing anybody. I’m just cleaning up my yard like any good citizen would do.”

  I was teasing her about her recent breakthrough on the citizenship front, but she didn’t take low.

  “Then as one good citizen to another, I will volunteer my services for your crew.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said, immediately picturing those mounds of trash, those grossly graffitied walls. The smell in that place would render Abbie’s patchouli null and void.

  “Of course I do,” she said calmly. “You said you needed five and with me, you, Aretha, and Zora, that’s four. One more is easy. Besides, you don’t think I’m going to let you have this adventure without me, do you?”

  “Is that what this is?” I laughed. “An adventure?”

  “Of course,” she said. “What did you think it was?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A wedding?”

  She smiled and sipped her tea. “The jury is still out on that one.”

  “Well, until it comes in, will the gentleman in question let you stay away from Tybee Island long enough to get any work done?” I teased her.

  “He’ll survive,” she said, and had the nerve to blush.

  “You love him, don’t you?”

  “I do,” she said. “I really do. It’s crazy, but he makes me laugh, he’s got a lot of sense, and the sex is amazing.”

  Five years of self-imposed celibacy had gotten me out of the habit of conversations where current sexual partners were routinely revealed and rated. I didn’t know if I was more surprised that she spoke so frankly or that she was still having sex she described as amazing.

  “Excuse me?”

  “There is an art to making love to a postmenopausal woman, as I’m sure you know,” she said. “And Peachy Nolan is an artist.”

  “You ought to quit,” I said. “I’m talking about home repairs and you’re talking about multiple orgasms. You’re making me jealous.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “How many sad-eyed leading men did you leave throwing roses on the tarmac as your plane lifted off?”

  “Those were the days, but they are long gone.”

  “Nobody special?”

  I shook my head. “Not for a while.”

  “No sex at all?”

  “Not unless you count a little self-pleasuring now and then.”

  She laughed. “Why’d you stop?”

  It was a question we could ask each other. Our long-ago lives had paved the way for an intimacy that came back immediately, like riding a bike. Or having sex.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It just got harder and harder to meet men I wanted to invest that kind of energy in. Then things started drooping down and drying up and I just got tired of all the prep work.”

  Abbie laughed, but not unsympathetically. She knew she was the exception, not the rule. The truth was, I missed having sex. It wasn’t always great, but it was always something.

  “You talk about it like major surgery!”

  “Don’t get me started,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  She laughed again, but I had a serious question. “Are you really going to marry him?”

  “I think so. I just want to be sure. Half the reason I’m spending so much time off the island for a couple of months is to see how it feels to be away from him. We’ve been joined at the hip for the last year or so and I want to give myself a chance to look at what we are a little more objectively.”

  “Without all that great sex to cloud the issue?”

  “Something like that. So you see, helping you with the house would be a perfect way to distract myself while I make up my mind.”

  “All right,” I said. “You may consider yourself an official part of the crew.”

  “Thank you. I didn’t know I was going to have to beg to help you take out the trash!”

  “I’m glad for you,” I said. “About Peachy.”

  “But a little surprised, huh?”

  “A little. I can’t imagine getting married at this age. I’m too set in my ways.”

  “Well, that’s the trick, I think,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Love always removes an element of freedom. All the give and take, the compromises you make. That’s just part of it.”

  “Which is probably why I’d be an awful wife. I’m not even a very good friend.”

  Abbie refilled our cups. “You’re a great friend. I’ve been missing you for the last twenty years.”

  “I’m too selfish to be a good friend,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s an occupational hazard. If you’re going to be in theater, nothing can be more important than the show. Not friends. Not family. Not lovers. Nothing.”

  She was looking at me strangely. I knew it sounded harsh, but it was true.

  “Well, I’ll consider myself forewarned, but don’t let the fact that I’m serving tea and cookies mislead you. I have my moments.”

  “You are the sweetest person I know!”

  “That’s because I usually get my way.”

  The way she said it made me laugh. “What happens when you don’t?”

  “Then I go someplace where I do!”

  “Does Peachy know this side of you?”

  “Of course,” she said. “He’s usually the place I go.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Ever since Aretha and I had opened the door to his room a few days ago, I’d been thinking about the guy who was squatting at my house. There was something about the bleak orderliness of the room that moved me, but there was also something disturbing about it. What was the deal on all those books? Either this guy could be somebody whose life had taken a terribly wrong turn that he was trying to correct, or he could be another Unabomber. I dropped Zora at work so I could borrow her car to go pick up some cleaning supplies and drove straight to the duplex. Morning seemed a safer time to return to the scene of our earlier exchange, and somehow I knew it would go better if I came alone. When I turned up into the yard, he was sitting on the back steps smoking a cigarette. He looked in my direction, frowned, and stood up.

  I turned off the ignition, hoping I wasn’t crazy for coming up here all alone to talk to a homeless stranger. I stepped out of the car, but left the door open just in case.

  “Good morning,” I said, trying to sound like this was an ordinary exchange between new neighbors. “I’m Josephine Evans. I own this place.”

  “You think I forgot who you are that fast?” he said.

  “I didn’t remember if I said my name.”

  “Well, now you’ve said it.”

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t think you said yours.”

  He looked annoyed. “Is this a social call or are you here to put me out?”

  “Nobody’s putting anybody out,” I said quickly, ignoring the issue of whether this was a social call. “But I’m going to clean up the place so…so…I wanted to…let you know.” Was I going to ask his permission?

  He just looked at me for a minute. “Well, it’s about time.”

  I took that to be an affirmation of my plans.

  “And thank you for…keeping an eye on things.”

  “I didn’t do it for you.”

  “But I can still thank you, can’t I?”

  He looked at me and pointed toward Wiley Street. “You see that little white house there, about midway down the
block?”

  From where we were standing on top of the hill, we could see most of Wiley Street below us.”

  “The one with the flowers out front?”

  “I see it,” I said.

  The street had a few houses that were well kept and cheerful, but most of the yards were as overgrown as this one and the homes looked in need of some serious repairs and a new coat of paint.

  “That’s my mother’s house,” he said. “She’s seventy-three years old and she lives alone. Last year, she got broken into twice. Both the guys who did it were living up here in your house. Just sitting up here watching her come and go. Deciding when to bust in.”

  He looked at me disapprovingly.

  “Why didn’t she call the police?”

  “She did,” he said. “They ran those two out, boarded the place up, and nothing happened for a couple of weeks. Then the police got busy someplace else, the robbers came back, broke in on Miss Mance across the street and Miss Thomas next door, and then back to my mother’s house to get whatever the first two hadn’t taken.”

  No wonder he was a little pissed off. What was a question of property to me was a question of his mother’s safety to him. “I thought you said the police boarded up the place. How did they get in?”

  He looked at me and shook his head slightly as if that was the dumbest question he’d heard all day. “It’s not hard to get in when nobody’s watching. That’s why I started staying here. To make sure they didn’t come back.”

  I didn’t know whether he was telling the truth or just giving me a creative excuse for trespassing, but it sounded plausible, except for one small detail.

  “Does your mother know you’re staying up here?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve had some problems with drugs,” he said. “She had to put me out.”

  He said it very matter-of-factly, but I knew it was never so simple for a mother to throw her child to the wolves, no matter what he had done. I remembered one disastrous visit when my son came to spend some time with me after Jasmine had left and told him she didn’t want to see him again until he sobered up. He alternated between being maudlin and full of self-pity and being angry and full of accusations. My maternal guilt translated into a series of excuses for his bad behavior until the night he stumbled in late to a dinner party I had organized in his honor, drunk and disorderly to the point where Howard offered to throw his ass into the canal if I’d just give the word, but I couldn’t. He was still my baby, and even when everybody else saw only a raging asshole, I saw the little boy who used to beg me to read him one more bedtime story or push him just a little higher on the swings in Central Park.

  I hoped what I was getting ready to do was not just another attack of maternal guilt, but I’d come this far trusting my instincts. This was no time to start second-guessing.

  “How are you doing now?”

  “I’m clean.”

  “How long?”

  “Four months.” He hesitated. “And twelve days.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then we can do business.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “What kind of business do you think I have with you?”

  “You’re living in my house. You want to keep living in my house, right?”

  Even a righteously indignant squatter knows the question of sleeping indoors or outdoors is always serious business worthy of discussion.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So this place is a mess,” I said. “It’s going to take a lot of work to fix it up right. I need a crew. You interested?”

  “A cleaning crew?” He sounded like the idea was beneath him.

  “An everything crew.”

  “Well, the place sure could use a coat of paint.”

  I wanted to say, Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?

  “Well, here’s what I propose. You work on my crew and you can keep staying here until we finish the project.”

  “Then what?”

  “After that, I’m going to put the place on the market, so you’ll have to find some other place to stay.”

  “What are you paying?”

  “I’m paying rent.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that he would turn me down. It seemed like the most humane way to deal with a bad situation. I didn’t want to put him back out on the street, and the truth was, I did need a crew. “And fifty dollars a week.”

  He ran his hand over his beard and tugged it as if considering the question.

  “How long?”

  “Two months,” I said. “Maybe three.”

  “Say three,” he said. “That way I can make plans.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said. “But I need to ask you one more question.”

  He was instantly wary. “What’s that?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Victor. Victor Causey.”

  “All right, Mr. Causey,” I said. “Welcome to the team.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Packages from Howard were always cause for celebration. I met the man from UPS pulling up in front of the house with one for me and one for Zora. I propped hers on the front table so it would be the first thing she saw when she got home and sat down in the front window with my own treasure. Inside was another box, tied with a silver ribbon, and an ivory-colored envelope sealed with a real red lipstick kiss. Howard was famous for sending all his most personal correspondence adorned with a smooch.

  “Ma chérie,” he had written in lovely violet ink just to make me smile, which it did. “I know the enclosed is extravagant, but what the hell? I saw it and couldn’t resist. Wear it someplace they don’t expect you to and cause a scene. Miss you more than words can say, as do your many fans. Hold yourself in readiness for a triumphant return. In the meantime, wear this one in good health. Yours in fabulousity, H.”

  I put the note aside and opened the box. There in a nest of tissue paper was a bright red kimono with long, richly embroidered sleeves. The silk was so light that it felt weightless when I slipped my arms in and went to take a look in the hall mirror. It fit perfectly, the ankle length not long enough to stumble over, but wide enough to swirl a little when you walked. The color was so rich and vibrant that it made you want to touch it to see if it generated warmth or just light. This truly was a robe fit for a queen, Amazon or otherwise, and I loved it just like Howard knew I would. Not that I had anyplace to wear it. I’d been spending my days at Home Depot, trying to get the best deals on the supplies we’d need next week when Zora was finally free and we could get started on the house. I smiled at my reflection, wondering what the folks in the paint department would say if I swept in tomorrow wearing this.

  I was about to slip it off and put it back in the box when I saw Zora coming up the front walk, so I hurried over to beat her to the door, swung it open, and struck my best red-carpet pose for her. She laughed out loud and applauded as she took the stairs two at a time and hugged me gently, like she didn’t want to damage my outfit.

  “That’s beautiful! You’re beautiful! Where are you going?”

  “I’ve been where I’m going,” I said. “Howard sent it to me.”

  “I’m jealous,” she said.

  “Don’t be. There’s a package for you, too!”

  “Hooray!”

  She dashed inside, dropped her backpack, and opened the box with her name on it. Her letter was sealed with a kiss, too. She read it to me out loud. “Dear Lil’ Bit, I think if Dorothy had had these, she would have simply kicked that witch’s green ass and headed home a better woman for it. Enjoy! Love you madly, H.”

  Inside Zora’s box was a pair of high-heeled, impossibly pointy-toed ankle boots in the softest red leather. She kicked off her Crocs and slipped them on immediately, smiling with pleasure at her suddenly stylish feet. “Only Howard would send me red shoes! I love them!”

  “We look so fabulous, it’s a shame we don’t have anyplace to go,” I said. “This neighborhood has got to develop some decent nigh
tlife.”

  “Where would you go if you were back in Amsterdam?” she asked, leaning back on the couch, admiring her new red shoes and my flaming kimono.

  “In this?” I said. “Actually, in this, I would probably have people in. I would make Howard fix something wonderful to eat and I’d put on music and tell people to come at midnight after their shows were over so they’d all be keyed up from performing and bring that energy with them. I’d invite the neighbors so they wouldn’t be mad about the noise and encourage loud laughter, tall tales, and passionate kissing in the coatroom.”

  I twirled around for her amusement and my own. “I’d serve too much champagne and make everybody walk home or spend the night, and in the morning, we’d take our coffee out on the terrace and watch the canal boats go by, and everyone would say, ‘My god, Josephine, where did you get that fabulous kimono?’ And I’d say, ‘Howard found it’ and he would say he knew it was extravagant, but he couldn’t resist.” I plopped down next to her on the couch. “And there you have it. A day in the life of Josephine Evans, superstar. Well, the former life, I guess.”

  “Your life is like the best telenovela in the world,” she said, grinning at my impromptu performance.

  “A soap opera?” I rolled my eyes. “I was thinking more along the lines of—”

  Before I could finish that thought, Zora sat straight up. “Oh, my God!” she said. “Oh, my God!”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong! It’s perfect! It’s absolutely perfect!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s you,” she said. “Don’t you see? It’s you!”

  “It’s me what?”

  “It’s your story that makes our place special. The fact that it’s you!”

  “Me?”

  “Don’t say it like that, Mafeenie. You’re a star.”

  “Not over here, I’m not. Over here I’m just another unemployed actress.”

  She looked at me and frowned. “Well, all of that is about to change. You’re going to be the shero of your own story.”

  I groaned. “Shero? You’re not going to start talking like a feminist, are you?”