by Pamela Morsi
“Can’t we make some kind of deal with them?” Ellen asked. “We can come up with some kind of compromise. Surely there is something we can do?”
“My advice,” David said. “Start looking for a place to live.”
Ellen closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I can’t do that,” she said, firmly. “We just moved in. I can’t uproot us all over again.”
“I don’t think you have any other option,” he said.
“Then you’ll have to find another one,” Ellen insisted.
There was a long pause before he replied.
“Ellen, you’re going to have to find another lawyer,” David said.
“David, you know I can’t afford another lawyer,” Ellen said.
He chuckled lightly. “You can’t even afford me,” he said. “You’ll have to go to legal aid.”
“I can’t take something like this to the legal aid clinic,” Ellen pointed out. “The kids there will be too intimidated by this law firm’s letterhead to even try to help.”
It was the truth, but it didn’t make any difference.
“I’m a tax attorney,” David said. “I’m not going to be able to win this one. I don’t know anything about this kind of thing and I’m not taking on a prestigious firm like Pressman, Yaffe and Escudero. I’m sorry, Ellen, I simply won’t do it.”
“We’re in one hell of a pickle,” Wilma declared. “And for dang sure, you’re mama is never going to be able to get us out of it.”
Amber was seated with her out on the front porch. They were sharing a morning cigarette as Jet played with her doll on the steps. Jet was completely groomed and dressed, including shoes, socks and matching barrettes in her hair. By contrast the two women had yet to wash their faces or comb their hair and were lounging in dingy, threadbare bathrobes.
Amber was watching her daughter. She didn’t look up as she answered.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” she admitted. “I’m not sure what I should do.”
“Well, somebody has got to start making some plans,” Wilma said. “I’ve been thrown out before and believe me, once that kind of ball get’s rolling, you might as well just pack your bags.”
“You’ve been thrown out before?”
“Well, never like this,” Wilma said. “I’ve never even imagined a situation like this. But I’ve been forced out plenty of times.”
“When Mom lost the house, I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of disaster,” Amber said.
“For a woman like your mom,” Wilma told her, “it probably is. I’m not a woman like your mom. I’ve had to pack up in the middle of the night a half-dozen times. Sometimes, I couldn’t get along with the man or I couldn’t keep up the mortgage. I swear when Bud and Ellen were little, seems like we had to move every time the rent came due.”
“Really?” Amber was surprised. “I knew Mom had a couple of stepfathers, but I didn’t think it was like that.”
Wilma chuckled. “It was exactly like that,” she said. “I was always skirting the rim of disaster. I floated checks on money I hoped to get, got my car towed for missed payments, had my furniture repossessed more than once. And I was on a first-name basis with the folks at the pawnshop.”
Amber was frowning. “That must have been awful.”
Wilma chuckled. “Actually, it was pretty exciting,” she replied. “A housewife with a couple of little kids can be pretty boring. My life was many things, but it was never boring.”
Amber laughed, fascinated. “Is that why you did it? To keep from being bored?”
Wilma shook her head. “No, I kept trying to make things turn out differently. But, somehow you get into a flow and it just keeps on going.”
Amber nodded. “Except for Mom, who is always swimming against the tide.”
Wilma eyed Amber critically. “You’ve got to give that gal some credit,” she said. “She didn’t have much to start with and she really made the best of it.”
Amber shrugged. She was less than eager to give her mother any benefit of doubt.
“Anyway,” Amber pointed out. “It’s all gone now.”
“Oh, the outside wrapping is all gone,” Wilma said. “But inside Ellen’s the same woman she always was. She believes just as strong. She fights just as hard. She just needs to find her a man, that’s all.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Why would I be kidding?” Wilma answered. “A husband, specifically one that’s got his own house, would solve all our problems. She’d just marry and we’d move in. Let Wilbur’s dad-gummed brats have this shack. I never liked it that much anyway.”
Amber laughed and shook her head. “Wilma, you are so totally non-p.c.,” she said. “Women don’t marry to get a house. That’s not even fifteen minutes ago, it’s a lifetime ago.”
“My lifetime,” Wilma said.
“Well…yeah,” Amber answered.
“I may be old,” Wilma said. “But unfortunately the world hasn’t changed that much. The best chance for a woman to have a comfortable life and raise her kids with plenty to eat, warm clothes to wear and good schools to attend is for her to marry a good provider.” Wilma eyed the young woman critically. “It might be something you should give some consideration to.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “Oh, right. Like any guys I’d meet would be likely to provide anything more than cheap drinks, bags of dope and sperm samples.”
Wilma didn’t appear shocked as much as entertained. She gestured toward Jet. “Some of those sperm samples don’t turn out too badly,” she said. “Makes you wonder what kind of man he turned out to be.”
“Oh, just the regular kind,” Amber said. “One who says, ‘I’ll call you’ and never did.”
“Most women wouldn’t let a phone call stand between them and a man they really wanted,” Wilma pointed out.
“I didn’t know him enough to know if he was a man I really wanted,” Amber said. “And I think there was more standing between us.”
“Like what?” Wilma asked her.
“Race, culture, our hopes, dreams, even our personalities,” she said. It sounded lame even to her own ears.
“And then there was the matter of the wife and kids he already had,” Amber added. She’d never admitted that part of it before.
She saw Wilma wince, but she didn’t say a word. That’s one thing she could count on. No matter how bad she screwed up, Wilma always listened, she never judged.
“Anyway,” Amber continued. “Men today just don’t get married if they can help it. And they can help it. With every kinky, pervy thing in the world available on any suburban street for free, guys just don’t have to get married anymore.”
“If you think marriage is about getting people in bed,” Wilma told her, “then I’d say that you’re the one who’s non-p.c. and fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh, well, yeah, people still get married for love, I guess.” Amber’s emphasis on the word was disparaging.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Love is one reason, but there’s a whole boatload of others. And getting a roof over your head certainly qualifies in my book.”
“Who would marry Mom?” Amber asked, almost incredulously.
“A lot of men would,” Wilma answered. “Your daddy did and he thought he’d made a damn good bargain.”
“Well, yeah Daddy,” Amber agreed. “But that was a long time ago.”
“Your mama is still a very attractive woman,” Wilma pointed out. “She’s good natured, even tempered and smart. There are a lot of men in the world who would find that combination irresistible.”
Amber nodded, conceding the point. “But she doesn’t go out. She never meets anyone. Unless you’re going to get Sun Myung Moon to fix her up, who would she marry?”
“Well, I was thinking about that boss of hers,” Wilma answered.
“Really? What do you know about the guy?”
Wilma shrugged. “Not that much,” she admitted. “He owns his own business,” she added hopefully.
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“I thought Mom said he was old,” Amber said.
“Age doesn’t make that much difference,” Wilma said. “No, I’m pretty sure your mother could just snap up that man. But she won’t.”
“Because she’s still not over Daddy,” Amber stated.
“It’s not something you get over,” Wilma said. “It’s something that you live over.”
“Yeah, but Mom’s dragging it out too long,” Amber said. “She’s still stuck in place and it’s going on five years now. It didn’t take you that long to get over Wilbur.”
“Wilbur?” the older woman looked at Amber and shook her head. “I was over Wilbur the day I met him. The man was tightfisted and selfish, just like his kids. He needed a cook, housekeeper and a nurse-maid. It was cheaper to marry me than to hire help. He’d already worked one wife to death. And he figured he’d get a lot less attached to me than he was to her.”
“So that’s why he married you,” Amber said. “Why did you marry him?”
“I didn’t figure the old coot was long for this world,” Wilma said. “I thought a few years taking care of him was a reasonable price to pay for a little bit of security.”
“You didn’t care for him at all?”
“Oh, he was all right,” Wilma said. “He had an interesting mind and occasional flashes of dry humor. But as I said, he was hardboiled and stingy. He had very few friends, even his children couldn’t stand him. He wanted beans and potatoes for dinner every night—with everything. If I was fixing spaghetti, he wanted beans and potatoes with it.”
Her remembered exasperation made Amber laugh.
“And he spent every waking minute working on crossword puzzles like they were the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. The man nearly drove me to drink. But I did right by him. And I’m not sorry that I married him. I’m not sorry for anything I’ve done in my life. Sometimes I’ve been foolish, occasionally downright stupid. But it’s all led me here, to what I’m doing today. I wouldn’t have missed this.”
With a nod she indicated the child on the front steps. Jet was playing grocery store. Lately it was her favorite game. Her Cabbage Patch doll, a red-haired African-American named Sheila Thompson, was getting thorough instructions on the purchase of lettuce.
Amber shook her head. She would never have thought that Wilma would be all that good at child care. She seemed more the kind of woman that other adults could appreciate. Jet had grown attached to her. Almost as attached as she was to Ellen.
“I don’t think it will do any good,” Amber said. “But if you’re interested in Mom’s boss, I think the best way to find out about him is to talk to that receptionist. She sounds like a meddling busybody to me. I bet she’d be absolutely prime for coming clean with everything she knows as well as everything she thinks she knows.”
Wilma gave her a long look. “Amber Jameson,” she said. “That sneaky, low-down conniving part of your personality, I want you to know, you get that from me.”
Amber laughed. “Wilma,” she said. “I know.”
A Chevy Tahoe pulled up to the curb in front of the house. Both women tried to make out the identity of the driver, but the sunlight reflected against the windshield. It wasn’t until he stood up beside the vehicle that Amber’s puzzled expression turned to a frown.
“Look who’s here, Amber,” Wilma said, obviously delighted. “It’s Brent.”
Brent Velasco had been the boy next door when Amber was growing up in Elm Creek. They had been best friends, buds, since childhood. At one time they had shared every thought, every dream, every aspiration. As they got older, of course, things had begun to change. They had remained close friends until Amber had opted out of her Clark High School clique.
He came walking up the sidewalk, thinner, more muscular than Amber remembered. He seemed to have exchanged his chunky fat boy persona for a more confident frat boy role.
He stopped beside Jet and squatted down next to her, smiling.
“Hey there, Little Bit. Do you remember me?”
Jet shook her head.
“I’m Brent, a friend of your mommy’s,” he said.
He offered a handshake. Surprisingly, Jet ignored it and instead literally threw herself in the young man’s arms.
He laughed and anchored the little girl against his hip as he rose to his feet.
“I think I’ve made a friend,” he said.
“It looks like it,” Wilma agreed.
“Jet’s always been partial to strays.”
Amber’s comment was rather snottily made and Wilma gave her a questioning glance.
Brent chuckled.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome?” Wilma asked as she rose to her feet to give him a hug. “I heard that you were up in Austin.”
“I’m home for the summer,” he told her. “I’ve got a job clerking in the Justice Center.”
Wilma raised an approving eyebrow.
“I’m impressed,” she said.
“Don’t be,” Brent told her. “Judge Flores is my dad’s best golfing buddy. I don’t think he necessarily hired me for my qualifications.”
Wilma shook her head. “I’m sure he hired you based on the qualifications that you’re going to have. Are you still planning on law school?”
Brent nodded. “This time next year I’ll either be on my way or rethinking my life.”
The comment was made so calmly, so casually, Amber had to resist the infantile urge to kick him in the shins.
“I’m sure it will be more of the former than the latter,” Wilma told him. “Do you still like coffee?”
“I don’t like anybody’s as much as yours,” he lied.
“Sit here and catch up with Amber while I make a pot,” she told him. He did as she bid him and made himself comfortable in the yellowing and frayed lawn chair. Jet seated herself on her mother’s lap, still clutching Sheila Thompson. The little girl kept all her attention focused on the man in the chair beside them. As if he were some curious unknown creature from a fairy tale.
“You’re looking good,” he said to Amber.
She was already annoyed with him, her response was defensive and skeptical.
“Yeah, I guess most women look good to you wearing underwear and a bathrobe.”
Brent nodded solemnly. “The bathrobe is the clincher for me,” he admitted. “You can see all these near-naked hotties in the lingerie ads, but they never have on old terry-cloth bathrobes and fuzzy house shoes. It’s a shame, really. You get no sense of what they are really like. I wish Sports Illustrated would put out an annual bathrobe issue.”
Amber managed, with some difficulty, not to smile.
“I see that college hasn’t improved upon your sense of humor,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows à la Groucho Marx and faked a cigar. “You can’t improve upon perfection.”
Jet giggled and he repeated the elaborate gestures just for her.
“So what are you doing hanging around here in the slums?”
“Suburbia isn’t necessarily my natural element,” he answered. “So what have you been up to.”
“I work,” Amber answered. “You know work?”
He nodded. “I read about it in school,” he answered. “It’s what drives the economy, creates the tax base, makes America a strong democracy.”
“Gives people something to get up for in the morning,” she added.
“Or in your case, the afternoon.”
Amber wanted to stick her tongue out at him, but managed to restrain herself.
“Everybody asks about you,” Brent told her. “Lissa said she saw you in some pajama store in the mall. She said that you barely spoke to her.”
“It’s not a pajama store, it’s a lingerie boutique,” Amber answered. “And I was way too busy to chat about old times with Lissa. If she was offended then screw her. But then, you do, don’t you.”
Brent laughed. “Lissa and I haven’t been an item since high school,” he pointed out. “When I got into U
T and she picked SMU we just shook hands and went our own way.”
Amber shrugged. “Hey, you don’t have to bare your heart to me,” she said. “I couldn’t care one way or another.”
“Well, you should care,” Brent said. “Lissa was your friend since third grade. She stuck with you long after you drifted away from the rest of us. She went racing to the hospital when Jet was born. She got us all together for that big baby shower. Now you can’t even be bothered to talk to her.”
“I guess she and I have gone our separate ways as well,” Amber told him.
“Okay, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still be interested,” he said.
“All right, all right. I can be interested,” Amber said. “So how’s she doing these days?”
Brent grinned as if he’d just won a big coup. “She’s great. She’s going to summer school this year, hoping to finish by December.”
“Oh?”
“She’s engaged to a really swell guy,” he said. “They’ve set the date for March.”
The bitterness that swept Amber was surprising, even to herself. Lissa was sweet and generous and fun. She’d never, by word or deed, ever been anything but good to Amber. Still, the prospect of her happiness evoked only jealousy and resentment.
“I wish her all the best,” Amber insisted. “I just hope that when the whole world doesn’t just fall down and worship her, she’ll be able to cope.”
Brent’s brow furrowed. “Oh, I think she’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m just wondering if you will.”
Before Amber could respond, Wilma was at the door and Brent jumped up to help her. She carried a tray with four cups of coffee, three were mismatched stoneware mugs, the forth a plastic rabbit with ears that folded into a handle.
“You brought coffee for Jet?”
“It’s mostly milk,” Wilma assured her. “I used to make it for you when you were little, remember?”
Amber nodded. “Mom didn’t approve.”
“I’m sure it’s not something recommended in the baby books,” Wilma admitted. “When I was growing up they said that if you drink coffee it will make you black. So people are probably going to accuse Jet of it anyway.”