by Carr, Suzie
I’d never seen eyes sparkle like diamonds before. Hers did. “Well, all right then,” she said, cradling her gentle arm around my shoulder, “Tommy can stay with you then.”
Grace rose early in the morning, just like Grampa and me. The first morning, she opened the front door and stepped outside onto the porch without eating breakfast. Grampa grabbed her and objected. “Indulge me, will you? Please eat a muffin, at least.”
He teased with her and she teased back. By nighttime when I returned home from school, they were still sitting in the same spots as they were when I left. Grace’s leg crossed and touched Grampa’s and Grampa’s hand rested on the small of her wrist. The two wore peaceful smiles and tipped their heads to me as I passed them by without anything more than a hidden smile on my face. I traveled all the way to the kitchen and broke into a giggle.
On her third night, with Tommy tucked under my arm as I strolled into the kitchen for some milk and cookies, I spied on them. Soft music played on the turntable and Grampa embraced her as they danced. Grace’s silver hair was swept up in a gentle twist. She wore a pretty, rose-colored dress with small eyelets at the hemline. They giggled as they circled around the room. My grampa loved her. I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life.
For two years, Grace visited us on the weekends. We’d spend the time hiking through the trails out back by the river, fishing, or stopping along the side of the road to watch the horses graze in the yellowed grass. Grace added color to our life. She helped me read, taught me to sing soprano notes, and showed me how to bake a proper meat pie. She simplified my life, purified it, and filled in all of its empty pockets with sunshine and laughter.
My grampa adored her. He made her things all the time—flower pots, garden accessories, wooden shutters for the kitchen with painted flowers. He beamed when she entered the room and gushed over her. He fluffed her pillows and offered her the best seat at the table, the one overlooking the rolling, dandelion fields.
Grampa praised her delicious apple pies every Sunday and the flowers that she would dress up our house with every spring. Life balanced itself out for both of us and we finally tasted long-lasting, sweet joy.
He whispered to me one night while we did dishes and she watched the news, “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
I squealed. Then we jumped around together in circles, hushing our giggles.
I imagined things like her styling my hair for prom one day and painting my nails with her bright red nail polish.
Later that night before we all went to sleep, I pointed to a new pile of books I found in the attic. “Maybe we can read one together?”
She gazed at them and stretched her eyes. “Wow, that’s quite a stack.” She walked over to them and traced her finger along their spines. “I can’t tonight.”
“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow!”
Her smile sat on her face like a wilted rose. She nodded and walked down the hallway.
She woke up the next day and left the house early.
Later, she called Grampa and told him she left our laundry in the washing machine.
“Okay, sweetheart. I’ll be sure to take the clothes out and put them in the dryer.”
I was peeling an apple and admiring my grampa’s bright smile.
“Oh, on your way home can you pick up some fresh blueberries from the market?” he asked her.
All of a sudden, his face grew a set of deep wrinkles. “I see.” He turned his back to me. “California?” He nodded. “Why?” He walked down the hallway, and I could hear only his quiet, muffled voice.
When he returned a while later he told me she left for good. He bit his lower lip and washed the dishes in the sink.
“What did you do to her?”
“Ruby, dear, she left on her own.”
I searched his stressed eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
He slammed a plate against the kitchen sink and it broke. “It happens.”
“You ruined everything,” I said. “Everything.” The tears erupted.
“He wiped his hands on his jeans and grabbed my shoulders. “Listen to me. No one ruined anything.” He paused. “Ladies like Grace aren’t meant to be tied down.” His eyes softened and a smile reappeared on his face. “She can’t stay tethered to this place.”
“But, I loved her,” I said.
He hugged me. “I did too.”
I eyed the pile of books on the shelf and suspected I had pushed too hard. I hugged my grampa tighter, hoping my love would be enough to keep him smiling until we could find him someone new, someone I wouldn’t chase off next time around.
Those days seemed so long ago.
What did I worry about now? Silly things like whether the apples at the farmer’s market were really organic and whether my teeth were white enough.
Speaking of, I loved discovering natural remedies for things. I used to spend a fortune on teeth whitening products that never worked as magically as the boxes claimed they would. Now, I whitened my teeth every other week using regular household items. I dug out the peroxide from under my bathroom cabinet and doused my strawberry with it. I pressed my fork into it, smashing it. Then I dumped a teaspoon of baking powder on it all to form a pasty mixture. I dipped my toothbrush into the whitening concoction when my cell rang. A number I didn’t recognize. I got a little excited. Perhaps it was one of the jobs I applied to a few weeks prior wanting to interview me.
“Hello, Ruby speaking.”
Silence.
I checked my teeth in the mirror waiting on the caller’s response, then picked up the dental floss. “Hello, anyone there?”
“Hi Ruby,” a woman said, stretching out her voice full and wide. “This is Nadia Chase, the uptight woman from the lounge.” She chuckled. “Shawna, your waitress, gave me your card.”
I adored her name. Nadia. It sounded so eloquent. I tossed the dental floss back down. “I see Shawna convinced you that I wasn’t a whore.” I accentuated this last word so she could hear how ridiculous it sounded. I stared at my reflection, at my ripe nipples.
“I acted foolishly that night.” She spoke slowly, deliberately. “I let my emotions go unchecked over something that happened earlier and you just happened to be in the line of fire. I felt really—”
“Ridiculous?”
Silence.
“I suppose I could’ve stomped a little less.” She laughed. “I hope you don’t mind that I called to explain.”
I loved her sexy tone. “Apology accepted.”
“Well, technically I haven’t apologized, yet.” Her voice teased.
“Well, you should. You can’t leave a girl hanging back like that screaming out words like whore in the middle of a hotel lounge.” I stirred the toothpaste into the whitening paste. “So, as far as I see it, now you owe me.”
“Yes. Absolutely, yes.” She marched her words out. “I owe you a beer next time you’re around.”
I wanted her to agree to a massage. “Is that all?”
She cleared her throat. “Hm. What more did you have in mind?”
I loved her charge. “No potato skins or wings?”
She whispered a laugh and my tummy rolled.
“So why did you run anyway?”
“I just had a bad day.”
Her raspy vulnerability pulled on me. “I could’ve helped you very easily.”
“I just didn’t know where you were going with it all. It’s not every day I sit in the lounge of the hotel I help manage and have a girl place her hands on my skin.”
“So you thought I was coming on to you?”
Silence.
She cleared her throat. “We’re getting off topic here. I just wanted to call and apologize for running off and calling you a whore. That’s it.”
Too much hesitation teetered on the edge of her words. “If you say so.”
“What is it that you want Miss Ten-Minute Masseuse?” Nadia asked.
My endorphins flew. “I want ten minutes with you.”
She chuckled. “Ten minutes?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Tomorrow night? Same place? Same time?” she asked.
“Shall I bring my massage chair?”
“Just bring your pretty little self,” she whispered before hanging up.
I stared at my reflection and a silly grin stretched across my face. I loved guarded, strong and intense women. They didn’t cling or wrap their possessive ideals around my life.
This could be fun.
* *
That next morning, I ran out of the door to pick up my grampa for Sunday mass. I dashed down the side steps and rushed past my landlord’s door. Just as I cleared the front landing, he popped his head out to pick up his Providence Journal. He waved to me and asked, “Got a second?”
I owed my rent payment a week ago. My mind whirled trying to find an excuse to bolt. “I’ve got to run. My grampa is probably pacing his front window. I’m already late.”
He formed his lips into a silent whistle. “Okay, I guess I’ll just catch up with you when you return?”
“Yes,” I said with confidence. “Yes, we’ll catch up then.” I skipped off wishing him a cheery day and undoubtedly leaving him to question why he ever rented his top-floor attic apartment to me in the first place.
His wife hated me. She always flagged me down with squinty eyes. Whenever we crossed paths, she’d plop her hands on her pregnant belly and complain about life’s expenses and how money didn’t grow on trees. They owned an upscale house with a top-floor attic apartment across the street from a gorgeous tree farm and she acted like she slept on a park bench every night. She hated me. Of course it didn’t help that her husband, my tall, scrawny, ruffled-looking landlord, always groped me over with his wandering eyes. She caught him every time. I pretended never to notice and would always end the awkward moment with a friendly tap on her shoulder.
I climbed into my car and contemplated my next move. Beg grampa for a loan again or cancel on him and go beg for some money on a street corner, doling out ten dollar massages?
I started the engine of my pride and joy, my yellow Camaro. Grampa bought her for me the day I graduated high school. She idled, purring like a kitty. I opened my console and pulled out my dust wipes and wiped down the dashboard. Then, I pulled up a few pieces of lint from the passenger seat and tossed them out of the window. I adjusted my rearview mirror and noticed the trail of grime leaking down my back window. I climbed out, opened up my trunk, pulled out the Windex and paper towels and wiped the stains from the overnight storm. Just like always, once I started cleaning one part of the car, everything looked dirty to me. So, I tore off more paper towels and started wiping the smudges from the bumper and then the trunk and then the side windows.
Before I knew it, half an hour had passed. Poor Grampa had probably already eaten his blueberry muffin and was standing in his front door waiting on me.
When I finally arrived, my grampa swiped his hand across the polished dashboard, approving with a smile. I loved that he noticed. I did it for him. We ended up enjoying our Sunday mass and breakfast that day just as we did every week.
He talked to everyone who walked by our table. He started with a smile, and then he would comment on something a person wore or on the child a mother cradled in her arms.
My grampa loved to talk. That man could converse with an ant all day if it would stay put on his fingertip and listen. The women at the senior center treated him like a king because of it. They liked to joke around with him. Once he told me one of the ladies placed a whoopee cushion down on his chair and when he sat down on it, she choked with laughter over it all. The ladies always complimented him, calling him a gentleman and raving on and on about his handsome face and gorgeous thick hair. They begged me to keep bringing him by so they could continue to enjoy him. My grampa would grumble as we shuffled away and tell me that these ladies would soon drive him to drink, and then two seconds later he’d wink and laugh. The man adored these ladies and all of their attention.
I loved people of his generation. They got life. They’d lived it. They carried in their aged brains the answers to those questions most of us young people sought. My Grampa turned eighty-five this year, and he understood life more than anyone else I knew. This man had seen more in his lifetime in terms of advances in technology and in basic human comfort products than any other generation that came before him or after him.
“You should have seen the time I first saw an airplane,” he said time and again. “I couldn’t have been more than twelve, maybe, I don’t know. This thing, it just swooped over my head one day when I was out collecting firewood. I dropped to my knees.” He always lowered himself when he told this part of the story. “I didn’t know what it was. For all I know it could’ve been a giant bird or something. My instinct told me to shoot it. Just get my shotgun and shoot the darn thing down and figure out what it was later.” He always waited for a reaction at this point. I always giggled.
Nothing in my lifetime had ever lifted me with such awe and intrigue as this airplane did for my grampa.
Now, here was a man who had lived a serious life and yet still maintained daily doses of laughter. Most people were miserable and whiny and self-absorbed in their plights as they interacted with the harsh world around them. Not Grampa. To this day, I had only seen the man lose his cool once and that was when he broke his plate in the sink the day Grace left us.
He had lost lots in his life—colossal losses that would drive most men to drink massive quantities of alcohol, to walk around the streets carrying justified chips on their shoulders, and to sink into pity from time to time.
Not him. He had witnessed the death of three daughters, the death of his beloved wife, the loss of his beloved girlfriend, the demises of too many family doggies to count, and then inheriting me.
Chapter Four
Ruby
I always attracted clingy women who tipped the balance between lust and going overboard by wrapping themselves around me like a chain, choking all the life out of us before we even got started. I suspected Nadia catered to her busy, important life too much to cling.
I looked up at the clock. I had two hours before I would meet her.
I crossed my legs over each other and inhaled, raising my arms way over head and taking in the fresh air blowing in from the open window. I saw her pretty face, her soft lips, her adorable cheeks, her smooth skin, and that long, soft hair, flipping over her golden shoulders.
My heart fluttered.
I stood, in a meditative pose, stretching tall and wide and peeking through my window at a tree against a blue horizon. Nadia’s face popped into my mind again, sending my heart on a pulsating journey. I refocused on the leaves. They waved and flapped, dancing with the wind.
I bent over at my waist and stretched my hamstrings. The energy flowed. I clued in to the subtle, sensual tickles dancing inside of me. My mind wandered to Nadia’s long legs, imagining her toned calves and thighs balanced by a pretty pair of undies on top and freshly painted red toenails on the bottom.
What a tango we could leap into.
I loved the lure of the dance; the initial eye ballet, the gentle graze of the skin, the intense heartbeat, the delicious flutters, and the gentle guide into that first soulful, mind-blowing kiss.
I would get this girl to dance. It had been two years since my last twirl. A girl needs to twirl. I deserved this.
Nadia
I arrived at the lounge first. It smelled like chicken wings and garlic. A few stragglers sat alone at the bar huddling over beers and whiskeys, picking at pretzels and staring up at the game on the overhead screens. I joined them. I loved blending into this scene to get a customer’s perspective. I sat inconspicuously in the same spot as the night we first met. Shawna strolled up to me and cleared the last customers’ drink and napkins. She wore her hair in a low, side ponytail.
She wiped the counter. Her green eye shadow complemented her olive eyes and soft rosy lipstick. Shawna was a transgender woman w
ho outshone most women I knew. She brushed me off whenever I’d tell her this. “You’re just trying to raise my confidence,” she’d say and quickstep away unable to accept the compliment. Her jawline didn’t curve like most women. Instead it squared off with her neck, pitching sharply, as if positioning to fight off the stubble she worked so hard at trying to hide through brutal IPL Laser treatment sessions. Despite this, her cheekbones defined her face with such beauty, sometimes I stared, mesmerized by her.
“Hey, so how did it go?” she asked.
“How did what go?”
“I’m assuming you called that girl Ruby, right?” she asked.
“I did.”
She arched one of her green shaded eyes at me. “That’s it? I did?” She mimicked me. “You’ve been sitting at this bar telling me your Jessica woes, and you aren’t going to elaborate on this?”
I didn’t want to jump into a silly conversation about how this girl’s beauty, sweet fragrance and innocent smile lit my nerves on fire. “I apologized. The end.”
Shawna looked past me and chuckled. “That’s not the end, my friend.”
I stiffened. I couldn’t even see her yet, but I felt Ruby. The room came to life behind me. The air freshened. The lights radiated more brightly as if smiling at me. I turned and watched as she pranced her way over to the bar. She headed to me with her eyes aglow, her bounce bright, her skin the perfect tone of ivory with a splash of rose.
My breath cut short. My body turned to mush.
She walked straight into my personal zone. “Thank you so much for calling me,” she whispered and embraced me. She smelled as fresh as daisies.
I patted her back, taking up pleasure in her golden waves. “Not a problem.” Not a problem? WTF?
She slid back and wandered her soft blue eyes around my face. “You know what I’m going to make happen?”
“I can only imagine,” I muttered.
“I’m going to get you to smile.” Ruby’s voice was warm and amusing.
I purposely remained impassive. “Oh really?”
She climbed on the bar stool next to mine. “Women look prettier when they smile.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, then rolled out a softer, sexier smile.