She hadn’t seen him walk that fast since before he had sustained that terrible wound in Yemen. “Luther, please wait! Don’t…” He didn’t stop, so she didn’t finish the sentence, didn’t beg him not to widen the gap between them. She took a few steps behind him, turned and headed to her car. “I’m sure I’ve made a lot of mistakes with Luther, but chasing him was not and will not be one of them,” she said to herself, taking a meager measure of satisfaction where she could find it.
She sat in the car for a time before turning on the ignition and moving slowly away from the curb. “If this thing doesn’t come to a head soon, I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand it. I miss my friend, and I want my lover.”
“That was pretty quick.” At the sound of his father’s voice, Luther stopped in the act of opening the door of the lodge where he expected to rejoin Ruby’s sisters and their husbands.
“Yeah. I looked around for you when I got here. Where were you sitting?”
“I had a seat in the second row beside Ruby.”
“It’s a good thing I didn’t find you. She didn’t want me to walk with her to her car.” He related the incident in which the door had hit her shoulder. “I wanted to be sure she could drive safely.”
His father looked into the distance. “And you took her word for it? You believed she didn’t want you to walk with her to her car?”
“Wouldn’t you have?”
“Definitely not. When your mother says to me, ‘That’s all right, hon, I can do it,’ I use my own judgment. She’s an independent woman who doesn’t like seeming a burden to me.”
Luther threw up his hands. “After almost forty years? How the devil are you supposed to have a relationship with women if they don’t tell you the truth?”
He couldn’t see what his father found amusing enough to laugh about. “They don’t lie, son; they expect you to divine the reality of the situation. You’ll see tears streaming down their faces, and they’ll tell you they aren’t crying. Go figure.”
Suddenly, he remembered Ruby sitting on a high stool in Pearl’s kitchen swinging her long legs and telling him that she went to bed with him because she wanted to and had always wanted to.
He shook his head, thoroughly perplexed. “And sometimes they tell you a truth that’s so stunning you don’t believe it?”
“Yep,” Jack said. “If a man tells you he understands his woman completely, you’re listening to a liar. Still, if you’re willing to give a hundred percent to a relationship, you’ll come out ahead, because it won’t be long before you know whether she, too, is willing to give full measure.”
Jack took Luther’s arm. “I’m parked right down the street here. You know, I don’t think Ruby’s one bit happy. When Pearl was singing ‘My Lord What a Morning,’ Ruby cried, and she was not smiling through those tears.”
“Don’t tell me that, Dad.”
“It won’t hurt you to hear it.” They stopped at Jack’s car. “Come see your mother first chance you get.”
“You always tell me she wants to see me or that I should come see her, but you never include yourself. Why?”
“Twenty years from now, I’ll be old enough to lean on my son. Right now, I’m not. Good seeing you, son.”
Luther walked on to his own car, thinking how lucky he was to have Jack and Irma Biggens as his parents.
As he drove home, he pondered his father’s words. Had he dropped the ball by walking away from Ruby earlier? She’d called him, but he was too annoyed to turn back. He had listened with his ears and not with his heart.
He drove up to his elegant, modern house where not a light shone, and, in its ghostly loneliness, it stood sadly dark and silent in the moonlight. His gaze took in the sleeping trees that made his environment so much friendlier from spring to early autumn when they hung heavy with green leaves, but which now, in their winter nakedness, brought a dreariness to his life.
“If I’m in the dumps, it’s nobody’s fault but mine,” he said aloud, restarted the car and drove into the garage. He entered the house through the kitchen and, as usual, he saw cookies on the kitchen table and a note that led him to the refrigerator and glass of milk that Maggie had covered with plastic wrap. He had told Maggie that she shouldn’t spoil him, but he enjoyed it, particularly on this evening when her thoughtfulness helped to dispel his loneliness.
He enjoyed the homemade oatmeal-raisin cookies, drank the milk and made his way up the stairs. A glance at the telephone in his bedroom and the sight of the red light flashing weakened his knees. He checked his messages and sat down, his heart thumping loudly, and his fingers shaking so badly that he could hardly dial the phone number.
“Hello, Ruby. This is Luther,” he said when she answered. “You called me.” He made it a flat statement not a question, and he didn’t begin with small talk. He’d had more than enough of their shadowboxing with his life. “Talk to me, Ruby.”
“I called you because I don’t want you to feel that you impose yourself on me. That isn’t possible, Luther.”
“Why didn’t you want me to see you to your car? There’s no way that door could have avoided hurting you. Furthermore, unless you’ve taken a strong painkiller, your shoulder hurts right this minute.”
“Yes, it hurts, but not too badly. It isn’t that I didn’t want you to walk with me. I did want you to. I didn’t want you to walk that far with me and then walk all the way back to your car.”
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. Was this the time for brutal honesty? And if he voiced his thoughts, what would it net him? He decided not to risk it. Instead, he said, “That may be true, but it isn’t the whole truth.”
Her silence lasted so long that he wondered if she’d put the phone down and gone away. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here. Luther, I…I can’t take any more of these clinches we get into. They leave me miserable.”
He wasn’t sure how he should take that. “Do you want us to be casual friends, to see each other only by chance encounter?”
“I need some consistency. I’ll be an emotional wreck if this continues.”
“Now, look here, Ruby. I don’t want this call to end with us fighting, but you check that word, consistency, in the dictionary. You’ll kiss the hell out of me when we’re alone, but you didn’t want your sister to hear me call you sweetheart. And tonight, you didn’t want your family to see us leave together. If you think I’m some milquetoast that you can stash away in your proverbial closet and bring me out to play with when it suits you, you can forget it, baby.”
“You…Luther, you’re making me angry.”
“Funny. As close as you and I have been for the better part of my life, I didn’t know you had a temper until after I made love with you. I wonder why that is.”
“I always had a temper, but you always catered to me, so why would I have gotten angry with you?”
“Let’s not change the subject. What is it going to be, Ruby?”
“I’m surprised that you think I’m the one with the answers. I’m not, and you ought to know that. When you left me tonight, I sat in my car thinking how much I missed you.”
“Did you figure out which Luther you missed?”
“I didn’t have to figure it out. I know. I think I’ve always known. Thanks for calling, Luther. I couldn’t have slept knowing that I hurt you. Good night.”
He needed to think about that long and hard. “Wait a minute. What do you mean by that cryptic remark?”
“You think it’s cryptic? You should hear some of your comments. Good night, Luther, and thanks for returning my call.”
“Good night, love.” He didn’t know whether she heard it, because the dial tone sounded shortly after he said the word love. It could be wishful thinking on his part, maybe, but he felt uplifted. Her softness had always made him conscious of himself as a man, always gave a boost to his self-esteem, and no other woman did that for him. She hadn’t previously called him expressly to make amends or to satisfy
herself that she hadn’t hurt him in some way, and there had been times when she could have. He recalled that she had made other gestures in his interest, including her reprimand of his brother Charles.
He had to decide two things: would he regret it forever if she slipped out of his life, and did he want his children to call her mother? It seemed to him that the answer to both had been settled long ago.
His hope for the future persisted throughout the next thirty-six hours. After days of no sales, thanks to the continuing cold and snowy weather, his dealerships sold a total of five cars that day, and when he got home that night, the odor of chicken and dumplings perfumed the house.
“Have you been talking with my mother?” he asked Maggie. “This house smells the way it does when she cooks chicken and dumplings.”
“Maybe that’s because we both know how to cook,” she said, her face aglow with joy. “Comparing my cooking to your mama’s is some compliment, Mr. B. Your mail is on the coffee table. I waxed the table in the foyer, so I can’t put the mail there till I polish that table a few times.”
“Thanks.” He went into the living room, looked at the mail and opened a letter from Amber.
“Dear Luther. We thought you’d like to have a picture of your godchild. We told him to wave at you. Hope all’s well. Amber.”
After looking at Joachim’s picture for a long time, he went to the kitchen and showed it to Maggie. “This is my godchild. He’s about ten months old, but he looks as if he’s a toddler.”
She wiped her hands on her apron, took the picture and examined it. “He isn’t so big, it’s his facial expression that does it. That’s a smart child.”
“Heavens, I hope so. I’d hate to have a backward godchild.”
“Don’t let that thought take up space in your mind, Mr. B. What you want to be thinking about is when you gonna get some kids of your own. A man like you ought to be a father, Mr. B. I know I’m talking out of turn, but I feel toward you like I would my son. Running behind little kids ain’t something you want to do when you’re fifty.”
He looked down at her and a smile floated across his face. “Why didn’t I know you’d use this occasion to get on me about getting married?”
She rolled her eyes. “I sure would love to meet that woman. She’s got more self-assurance about you than I’d have.” Her hands went to her hips and she gazed up at him. “You must work awfully hard at staying single, ’cause you’re a looker, and women in this town couldn’t be that slow.” She threw up her hands. “I do declare.”
He grinned, because he thought that would be nicer than outright laughter. “I need to send my godchild a nice gift. What should I get him?”
She seemed to consider the question for a while, and then she said the obvious. “Since you don’t know what he has, call his mama and ask her what he needs.”
“That’s the problem. I’m sure he doesn’t need anything.” When Maggie treated him to a withering look, he let the laughter roll out of him.
“Ask her anyhow,” she said, in the tone of one thoroughly exasperated. She cocked her head to the side and gazed up at him. “Mr. B, you meddling with me?”
She grew on him daily. “You could say that. You’re easy to tease.”
“Supper’s ready,” she sang out, and it occurred to him then, that he was a central figure in the life of a widowed woman who lived alone, but whose joy it was to do things for others, and that Maggie delighted in making him happy.
“I’ll be there as soon as I wash my hands, Maggie. The fantastic odors coming from that kitchen are making me hungry. You know, this place smells just like a home.” He headed upstairs to wash his hands, for he knew that if he didn’t get out of Maggie’s way, she would start on her favorite lecture.
“I made you some apple turnovers,” she said after he filled himself with chicken, dumplings and turnip greens. “We can have some of them and coffee for dessert.”
He spoke softly, saying the words without weighting them. “You always encourage me to get married, Maggie, but you make things here so comfortable for me, that I could ask you why should I. Your cooking is fantastic, you keep this house in pristine order, you’re good company—when you aren’t minding my business—and you’re even my dinner companion. In addition, you feed us for sixty-three percent less than I spent feeding myself.”
She put her fork on the side of her plate, stopped eating and gazed at him, her facial expression more serious than he had ever seen it. His heartbeat accelerated rapidly, for he feared she might say something about leaving him.
“Mr. B, I was married for thirty-six years until my husband passed away. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it let me know that no housekeeper, no matter how good she is, can substitute for a loving relationship with that one woman who is everything to you and who shares your life. I’m certain that nothing on this earth could be like that.” She looked down at her plate as if deciding to continue. “Don’t you ever think about it?”
He wondered why it was so much easier to discuss his private affairs with Maggie than with his mother, and it occurred to him that it might be that his mother tiptoed around his feelings, and Maggie didn’t bother with such niceties.
“Of course I do, Maggie. Every day. I told you about her once. I have a feeling that it will come to a head soon. It has to, because I can’t continue with her this way.”
She left the table and returned with the apple turnovers and coffee. “It’ll work out, because I’m going to call the Lord’s attention to it every time I pray.”
“Thanks.” He tasted an apple turnover, and looked toward the ceiling. “This is just as good as Ruby’s cheesecake, and I didn’t think anything could equal that.”
A satisfied look settled on her face as she too tasted the result of her labor. “Who’s Ruby?” She held up one hand. “No, don’t tell me. She’s the object of your affection. Right?”
“To put it mildly.”
“I’ll teach her how to make these, provided she won’t think I’m meddling in her business.”
He laughed at that. “Wouldn’t you be doing just that?” He got up and took his plate to the sink, rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher.
“If you do that,” she said, “what are you paying me for?”
“I forget sometimes. Hurry up. I’m calling a cab for you, and it’ll be here in fifteen minutes. It’s too cold to stand out there waiting for public transportation. I’d take you home, but I have a few things to do.”
“The Lord’s gonna bless you, Mr. B.”
“You just be sure and get those prayers in.”
Luther rushed up the stairs and dialed Paul and Amber’s phone number. “This is Luther,” he said when Amber answered the phone. “Thanks for these pictures of Joachim. He’s growing like a weed. How’s Paul?”
“We’re all fine. Paul hasn’t come home yet. It’s not quite five here.”
“I want to send Joachim something, and I’d like to know what he needs or what you’d like him to have. Don’t tell me not to do it. Godparents are supposed to give their godchild a christening gift.”
“He doesn’t need anything. He’s just started crawling fast, and Paul’s talking about getting tennis racquets.”
“He’ll settle down. Proud fathers are known to be nuts. I think I’ll just open a bank account for Joachim. That seems to me preferable to wasting money on something he doesn’t need.”
“That’s a wonderful idea, Luther.” He heard her clear her throat and guessed the direction of her next words. “Uh, when did you last see Ruby?”
“The same night on which I last saw Opal and Pearl. Why?”
“Oh, Luther. For goodness sake, don’t be oblique. You know very well why I asked you about Ruby. Nothing gets past us, Luther. Opal, Pearl and I know something’s going on between you and Ruby, and we know when it started, or at least when it started to show.
“So I don’t see why the two of you insist on pretending you’re just buddies. Buddies don’t do heavy
French kissing. Besides, Ruby’s in love with you, and you can’t walk around pretending you don’t know it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You heard me. If she won’t tell you, I will. I’m getting tired of this nonsense.”
He got up and walked as far as the telephone cord would permit, retraced his steps and began walking faster and faster from his night table to the foot of his king-sized bed. “Don’t tell me anything like that, Amber, if you don’t know what you’re talking about. I know you’re dramatic, but this is not the occasion to display it. Give me some evidence. Did she tell you that?”
“She didn’t deny it, Luther. She loves you, and you love her, and she hurts in one part of Detroit while you hurt in another part. Good grief, Luther, if you don’t know how to make her confess it, talk to Paul.”
He didn’t need advice from Paul as to how to work things out with Ruby. “I may be lacking in some respects, Amber, but that is not one of them.”
“I know, but we’d all be so happy if the two of you would stop playing games with each other.”
“Trust me, Amber, we’re not playing games. What’s Joachim’s social security number?” She told him. “All right, I’ll open the account and send you and Paul the papers.” He said goodbye, hung up and fell back across the bed. Could Amber possibly be telling him the truth? He knew Ruby was attracted to him, because he could make her melt with almost no effort, but loving him was another matter. Could he risk assuming that Ruby Lockhart loved him? At the very thought of it, he rolled over on his belly and gave in to the tremors that shook him.
I’m going for it. I have everything to gain.
Chapter 12
Ruby bundled up that morning. With the temperature hovering around zero and the wind howling like a wounded dog, she put on layers of clothing, snow boots, a parka and her beaver coat. She put gloves beneath her mittens, and hoped she’d be able to drive. She laughed at herself when, finally in the warmth of her office, she began to shed the layers.
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