Eric was silent. He looked so sad.
“Baby,” I said, “I’m trying.”
I felt sorry for him, but I wanted him to understand me clearly. It felt good connecting with God. God woke up my dad, He did it right there with me in the room. And He was helping me to be a better person too. I mean, I knew that I could probably be a little high-maintenance, maybe a little high-strung, but I was starting to feel more peace, and I was really trying to be right.
“So the solution is to sacrifice my needs for your promise,” said Eric.
“Well, babe, it’s not like we’re going to go without sex forever. It’s just until we make that next level of commitment.”
I thought maybe he’d catch a hint and ask me something, but he didn’t. Then he blew out such a sigh that I thought his glass of water would tip over. He spoke very carefully. “Chantell. We’ve already been through this. I know that you made a promise to God, and that’s a good thing. I am not knocking that, but you are going to have to chill out on the pressuring me thing. I mean, we’ve already been having sex. Why can’t we keep doing what we’ve been doing?”
“Eric, we’re supposed to be more connected.”
“After two years I think that we are about as connected as we’re going to be.”
“We can be more connected, Eric—”
“Chantell,” he interrupted, “just stop, aiiright?”
On the one hand, I thought Eric was being selfish; on the other hand, I understood. He missed me and he wanted me. I looked up. “Okay. Shh! Here they come. Let’s finish this later . . . Tia! Ron! Over here.”
“Hi, you guys!” Tia strode over in a powder and navy blue pantsuit that had been tailored to fit her little waistline. Ron was right behind her.
“Hi!” I said and gave them both a big hug.
“Hey, how is it going?” said Eric, standing and shaking Ron’s hand and hugging Tia before he sat back down.
We ordered our drinks.
“Chantell, how is your father?” That was Ron.
“Dad is hanging in there. He’s a trouper. On Friday they let him go home, and he was talking about ordering more redwood for the deck out back that he was building but we told him to slow his row.”
Everyone chuckled.
“Thanks for the flowers, you guys.”
“You’re welcome,” said Tia.
At that table, we all wore something that I think we were particularly proud of that day. Tia’s husband, Ron, a forty-two-year-old real estate developer originally from Naw’leans, wore his traditional smile. You heard it when he spoke, almost more than his drawl. And Eric, my handsome, six-foot-two-inch, twenty-seven-year-old boyfriend, wore a new tattoo that resembled a thick bolt of lightning going all the way around his big biceps. I, Chantell Meyers, a twenty-eight-year-old newspaper executive, wore a black wraparound dress that accented my small waist and ample hips. My best friend Tia, a thirty-one-year-old sistah friend, wore a look of admiration, and love, that showed up whenever Ron was anywhere in her sight.
Love. As a naive teenager, I used to say that I’d rather meet my soul mate in my dreams than give my heart to anyone else. But by the time I finished college, I’d determined that my prince had pulled a no-show. I decided that soul mates were relative to your situation. For example, if you were a big L.A. Lakers fan and you went to a game and were attracted to another avid L.A. Lakers fan, and the two of you decided that you were going to be together and spend all of your free time going to games and buying Lakers paraphernalia, then, voilà!—you were soul mates.
That’s why I kept my eyes open whenever I frequented places like the Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton. I didn’t meet Eric at Stoneridge Mall, though. Nope, I met him at the outlets in Vacaville. He came up to me with those Eddie Bauer bags in hand and told me that I reminded him of a beautiful, exotic butterfly. He said I moved with a grace that was only matched by my beauty. I knew that it was love. I didn’t have to look anymore.
“Ay, Chantell, tell them. Tell them how looong I, I mean we, had to wait before we could get in to see the movie the other day.”
“Huh? It wasn’t that long, only maybe fifteen or twenty minutes,” I said.
“Sure it was. I had to wait, and wait, and wait.” Eric fixed me with a stare, and continued sarcastically, “The line ahead of us was so long, I just knew that the ticket sales were going to just suddenly get cut off.”
I eyed Eric and he beamed with this ridiculous smile. “It was okay,” I said. “We finally got to see it.” I looked at Eric and bit the side of my lip.
“Yeah, I guess,” said Eric. “I just think it’s wrong to make somebody wait, then cut them off.” He looked across the table and added, “Ron, man, I bet Tia never cut you off—”
“Stop it, Eric. We saw the freakin’ movie! Okay?”
Eric’s lips went into a bit of a smirk but his eyes looked so serious.
Tia tried to save our lunchtime bonding session before it turned sour. “Chantell, gurl, did I tell you? I am lovin’ that dress on you!”
She was such a peacemaker. I smiled. “Why thank you, darling,” I teased with a deep, sexy tone. “You too look quite lovely, as usual.”
“So true. So true,” she teased back.
We laughed like schoolgirls.
The guys just shook their heads at our silliness.
“So, let me tell you how my father woke up,” I said.
Ron and Tia sat next to each other and shared one cup of water while I talked.
“So then I was crying and I was calling out to God and asking Him to help. It was strange because in some kind of way, while I was crying, I knew Daddy was going to wake up.”
“Wow.” Tia nodded.
“God does do things like that,” Ron said.
“Yep, and maybe God woke him up because He needed to stop you from disturbing the other patients,” said Eric with a smirk.
“Wrong. Whatever, Eric, you’re not funny.”
I looked at Ron and Tia, who sat close together comfortably. I was always amazed because I didn’t think that they even consciously decided to share the cup of water. They just automatically sipped from one glass. I was still trying to figure out what “it” was that Ron and Tia had in common when the waitress came over and took our order.
When the lady asked what we would like, it was Ron’s turn to get silly. “Um, yes, I’ll have the avocado and shrimp sushi roll, and the salmon lunch special . . . And my wife here will have the eel—the unagi.”
Tia, who was taking a sip of hot tea, suddenly put her hand up and tried to swallow her drink quickly. “Um, no, stop! Please excuse my husband. He knows I don’t eat eel.”
Ron laughed. “Aw, baby, I thought you were going to live dangerously today.”
“Stop it, Ronnie. I’m not foolin’ with no eels and you know it,” she said while leaning over and pecking him on the lips. Then she looked at the waitress and said, “May I please have the chicken teriyaki lunch instead?”
Ron just smiled. He was so funny. I teased her often about Ron being her sugah daddy, but they had something great. I scooted over and got a little closer to Eric. We had been together for over two years and were headed into the village of soul mates ourselves. He always made sure he looked nice, as did I, so we shopped a lot, and traveled a lot, and had lots of fun together.
We ate our food and chatted as tiny fishing boats rode past the front counter, circling the kitchen and chefs’ area in a tiny metal pond displaying varieties of sushi. Orange ones, yellow ones, sushi with crab legs sticking out, sushi wrapped in seaweed, and sushi covered with rice.
Yep, I’d adapted my recipe for happiness a couple times over the last five or ten years. The latest version was a lot simpler, and it didn’t really involve a soul mate per se. It basically said, there were three things that you should always keep. Keep your man by your side, keep your game face on, and if at all possible, keep a Coach bag in your hand. If you were a person who could manage all three of those things, then I
’d bet that you were somewhere having a nice life.
Yeah, Eric and I had some good times. He was funny, and he had this really deep, sexy voice. We usually took advantage of all that the Bay Area had to offer. Salsa dancing, Rollerblading, festivals, concerts. We’d do whatever sounded good. He liked to project a bit of a bad-boy image, but basically he was a pussycat. He liked excitement. And although I was happy when we began dating, I sometimes still found myself feeling a little lonely. Sometimes I questioned us. When I found myself doing that, I’d remind myself to stop being silly and look at what I had. I mean, Eric was Boris Kodjoe fine. Eric was make-you-wanna-haul-off-and-slap-somebody fine! He had a six-pack that a lot of models on television would envy, and he was always dressed to the nines.
People always said that I was beautiful too. I don’t think that I ever completely bought into it, though. I didn’t necessarily think that I was bad-looking; I got hit on often. I was five feet eight inches, curvy, and 140 pounds. I had brown skin, the color of caramel, and blunt-cut shoulder-length hair that Tia normally took great care of for me. I was experimenting with it then, though, and had taken to washing and conditioning and just letting the air lock in the body and natural texture. I had curious eyes that slanted, and pouty lips, and a little mole above my right brow that every boyfriend that I ever had found irresistible.
However, of all the people in my lifetime that had said to me, “Wow, that’s a great mole,” or “I wish I had a little mole on my face,” I never forgot a comment from my childhood, made by the little boy next door. Little Timmy said it looked “jus’ like a booger on yo head.” Oh, I laugh now, and I punched him in the stomach then, but that’s the kind of thing that one doesn’t easily forget.
So it wasn’t so much that I thought I was unattractive. No, no, I used what people saw when they looked at me, when I needed to. It was just that, well, I had a good mind. And I worked hard to show people that I was smart. But lots of times folks weren’t interested in that.
My mole, my eyes, my looks, they came from my real mother. I didn’t know her, though, because she died when I was five years old. She had sickle-cell, and she lost so much weight that I thought she was melting. A strange thing about that, however, is that when she died, I started to cry, and Dad told me not to. He’d hug me and say, “Don’t cry, princess, everything will be okay.” So I’d wipe my eyes and try to smile. Every time the tears started to fill my eyes, Dad would get really anxious, and he’d try to tell me jokes or take me to a movie, and he’d tell me to “just try not to think about it.” I didn’t like to see my dad act so strange, so I learned to stop crying. It had been twenty-three years, and I’d never cried another day over my mother.
I suppose I got my theories on soul-mate-ism from my parents. I remember once, my dad told me that he married my real mother because from the moment they first conversed, she tugged at his soul. I wasn’t sure what tugging at your soul felt like, but I’d guess that Eric and I did that, sometimes. Tia herself said that we looked like black models from a Gap commercial. And that’s important. You should look happy and vibrant. People treat you better when they think you have money, or are beautiful. They want to be your friend. Besides that, if you keep up the front, then people never really know how bad you feel.
Dad always said I was a princess, and I believed him . . . In a way I still did. A princess was attractive, and single, and she had beautiful clothes. Yeah, I tried to fill the bill, but I didn’t like it when people called me snooty or stuck-up. I just wanted to put my best foot forward so people saw me in a positive light. Just because you want to look presentable, that didn’t make you “a piece of work.” Just because you didn’t go around showing everybody your pain, that didn’t mean that you don’t have any. People should know that. But hey, if they couldn’t understand that, too bad. I wasn’t going to go around with my hair undone, waving a white flag and looking like I had trials in my life, cuz it wasn’t nobody’s business. With me, everyone got the same story: The life of Chantell Meyers is fantastic!
“So, are you guys going to the big game this year?” That was Ron.
“For sho,” said Eric. “I went down to the Berkeley ticket office last Friday. You guys?”
“Definitely. Ron’s client brought him over some great Stanford seats,” said Tia.
I knew that my real mother went to Stanford. That perhaps should have been something that I was proud of, but it was deep in my past. After you’ve ignored something for so long, the desire to speak about it just subsides. I kept eating in silence.
I’d always been private that way. I had my share of bills, and despite the way things may have appeared, they were hard to juggle by myself. I was getting older and my biological clock was ticking. But I figured, once Eric and I got married, things would fall into place.
I took another sip from my glass and looked over at my beau. The water was refreshing. Eric had let his goatee grow a little thicker than normal. He was talking to Ron about the junker car that he was restoring.
“. . . And I’m going to get two racing stripes painted on the doors before I take it down to the track.” The ice hit the bottom of my empty cup as I set it back on the table.
“Oh, yeah. That’s going to be nice!” said Ron.
“Yeah, it should be. I named her Margarita.” He looked over at me. “Chantell’s jealous. She doesn’t like me spending all of my spare time going to wrecking yards looking for parts for Margarita. But trust me, when she’s all finished and looking beautiful”—he pointed at me—“she’ll want a key.” He chuckled.
I laughed too, because I probably would want a key. Not because I was into race cars or anything, but because he was ready to share with me. I really liked him, though he sometimes was a little inconsiderate, like when he turned off his phone and my dad was sick. He was out at the Pick and Pull under the hood of a car with his phone off at the time. I was so mad at him, but, hey, it was just happenstance, and I was trying to be about peace. I smiled at him while he talked. Eric Summit was a keeper, and I was in it for the long haul.
The back of my throat was a little dry and the waitress hadn’t been back around yet, so I picked up Eric’s glass and put it to my mouth. But before the water could roll down and reach my lips, Eric said, “Hey! What are you doing? That’s not your cup.”
3
Workin’ 9 to 5
It had been three weeks since my father’s collapse, and he was still improving. Yesterday he had even tried to go for a walk, but both Charlotte and I weren’t having any of that. We sent him right back to bed.
So I was back to work still trying to make good on the promises that I’d made to God at the hospital. I adjusted the earpiece to my phone and walked toward my building.
I stood out on the sidewalk for a moment and took my cell phone out of my purse. The bright San Francisco sun towered above. I needed to remind Eric about our plans for tomorrow night before I started what I knew was going to be a hectic day at the office. I looked around the haze-free sky and saw that the San Franciscans were loving it. Everyone had sunglasses on. A couple of ladies had tied their suit jackets around their waists and were power-walking. I dialed the number and Eric’s phone rang. Around me, the tone of businessmen’s mellow laughs appeared to have picked up an octave. People went on about their lives just a bit more animated.
“Hey, babe, it’s me. I just wanted to leave you a quick note to remind you about tomorrow night. The boat leaves at eight, so let’s meet at . . . say, seven o’clock? Okay, that’s it. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.” I hung up and rushed inside to catch an elevator already filled up with people.
It didn’t feel like my life had changed all that much. I mean, with me now being close to God and all. As soon as I got to my cubicle, my desk phone rang. “Hello. Yes, Mr. Felton . . . Sure, no problem!” I said in a bright and chipper voice.
It was my new client, Kauffman’s Sporting Goods. John Felton, the small chain’s marketing manager, was getting jittery about the success o
f their half-yearly sale that was fast approaching that weekend.
He was nervous about the headline that he had chosen for the ad. “Do you think it sounds okay?” He was nervous about the number of readers who would see the ads. “How many people did you say read the paper?”
There was quite a bit of stress in my life, and to be honest, I’m not sure how conscious I was of it. I was busy reassuring him that we could help him get his company’s message around the Bay Area when I overheard two of my coworkers talking.
Mina, a woman whom I had unfortunately worked with for four years, was whispering to Gary, the new account manager in the office. Even at a whisper, her high-pitched voice came right over to my side of the thin cubicle.
“Shhh! Don’t even worry about it. It’s new business,” she said.
I tried to ignore her. She was the kind of coworker that the rest of us could do without. Gary definitely didn’t need her training him.
I jotted down a few follow-up notes and wrapped up the call. “Sure. Your ad will run in the Monday Business edition for three of the six months . . . Nope, I have everything I need.” I closed the file and put my new Kate Spade bag in the bottom drawer of my desk. “Sure. And, Mr. Felton, please call me if you have any more concerns or questions. That is what I am here for. You too, bye-bye.”
I hung up the phone and tried to ignore the woman on the other side of the cubicle. To be fair, it’s not that we hated each other, it was just that we kept butting heads. I couldn’t count the number of times in the past that the newspaper had held contests and Mina and I had fought tooth and nail to win the trip to Palm Springs or the $500 gift certificate to Nordstrom. She was as money-motivated as I was, so yeah, it got personal.
And, yeah, I know that I said that I was trying to live right, but I was not exactly ready to say “God bless you” when she’d just rolled her eyes or scrunched up her lips at me.
I ignored the two and called to check on Daddy. “So how’s he doing this morning?”
Sweet Bye-Bye Page 2