by Nella Tyler
Gilda shrugged, but the look was all over her face.
“That’s what I figured,” Mary nodded and dipped a cookie in her tea. Mary had Cherokee blood and her dark eyes held concern. She played with the locks of thick, black hair that streamed down her back.
“Honey, Carson’s got you. You’re not going to let any of that rotten Scott come out in him.”
“God doesn’t always take my advice, unfortunately,” Gilda pointed out. “He puts things in people that are good and bad. Sometimes you have to live with the bad, no matter how much you don’t want to.”
“That doesn’t mean he put any bad in Carson, sweetie. He could have made up for all the bad you had to go through by filling him with you.”
“You think so, Mary? Do you really think that could have happened?”
“I know it, sweetie. That little boy in there on the sofa is all you. And you know what else? He doesn’t ever see his daddy, which is the best thing that could be. He sees you and the role model you are, and that is what will make him lean toward being like you. No, Gilda, you got nothing to worry about when it comes to Carson. He’s not like Scott.”
“Lord, I hope not. I need to get some sleep, Mary. I’m bushed.”
“Sure, darling, you go on in and get cuddly. I’ll shut out the lights and make sure Carson is covered up well. Leave your door open in case he wakes in the night and gets a little scared. I put a night light in the hall outside your door, so he’ll find you.”
“Night, Mary,” Gilda nodded and hugged her. “It feels good to be home.”
“I know it must, but don’t get too settled in. You need to go back to the city and let Carson grow up away from his daddy. Scott is still around town, you know. He’s going to hear you’re here.”
“No,” Gilda protested, shaking her head vociferously and making it clear she wasn’t having any part of it. “He’s not going to get to me or my son. I’m going to go and see Mama tomorrow, and then I’m out of here. This is just a short trip to let Carson know his roots and his granny. I’m not sticking around.”
“Glad to hear you say that. Who knows? Maybe one day, I’ll pack up a suitcase and come visit you in the city!”
“I’d love that. There’s so much to do and things to show you,” Gilda said excitedly. “Let’s do that, shall we?”
“Sure thing; we’ll keep in touch and plan on it. Now, go on to bed.”
Gilda eased between the covers on Mary’s guestroom bed and thought about how lucky she was to have her as a friend.
Chapter 16
“Hello, Mama,” Gilda said softly to the woman who stood opposite her in the doorway.
“Gilda?” Beverly came forward into the doorway, holding out one hand. “Is that really you, honey? Whatever are you doing here?”
“We came to see you, Mama,” Gilda told her. “You won’t remember him, but this here is Carson, your grandbaby.”
“It is?” She came closer and looked at the boy, noting his features and coloring. “Why you look just like your mama did when she was a little girl.”
“Does he? Come on, Mama? Does he really?” Gilda’s eyes glowed with pride and the idea that maybe there was little of Scott to be seen in her son.
“Well, he sure does. Course, I never got have many pictures made of you then, and I’m sorry for that, but you know how things were.”
“Yeah, Mama, I know how things were.”
“Well, come on in and sit down. How long are you staying?”
“Just for a few hours, Mama. Carson and I have to catch the next bus out of town.”
“Why haven’t I heard from you, Gilda? Why don’t you ever write?”
“Mama, you know why I can’t write to you. I don’t want to talk about it here in front of Carson, but you know.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. Seems a shame to me that I have to be the one to pay for that, but it is what it is.”
“Nothing I can do about it, Mama. I’m taking care of my baby, and that’s what I have to do.”
“I suppose.”
There were the unspoken years of Beverly not having been the ideal parent lying between them. Gilda wasn’t sure if Beverly had ever acknowledged that, but there was a tension surrounding the subject that never dissipated. Gilda knew that was another reason she could never bring Carson back.
The women visited, and Beverly paid extra attention to Carson; he was, after all, her only grandchild and she knew she would never see him but sporadically. She had already lost four years with him. She knew she was at a disadvantage and tried to make the most of it.
The time had come to get to the bus station. Mary’s vehicle was idling outside, although she knew she didn’t need to honk. Gilda looked around the tiny house: the peeling wallpaper and the mid-century furniture that had been earth-green and gold, but now was faded by sun that had cracked the window shades in the heat of summer. She tried to soak it all in; as shabby as it was, it had always been home to her. She knew there was a strong likelihood she’d never see it again.
Her mother was like the faded wallpaper; her youthful beauty had paled and left in its place the ravages of not just time, but the self-abuse she had incurred. Gilda knew in her heart that her mother’s “boyfriends” would thin out in numbers and eventually, she’d be alone and most likely unable to cope with it. There was no way to predict how she would end up. Gilda would have to depend on Mary to let her know. Her mother couldn’t be trusted with the knowledge of her location — she could be bought off too easily.
“Gilda, you write, now, you hear me?” Beverly was saying.
“Mama, this is for you,” Gilda handed over an envelope. “It’s not much, but I don’t have much to spare. I hope it helps.”
Beverly nodded, taking the envelope as though it was expected and certainly her due. “Okay, Gilda, now you look out for the young boy. Promise?”
Gilda nodded, took Carson by the hand, and headed for the door. Beverly called out, “Hold on there. Carson, you come here a minute and let me hug you one more time.”
Gilda let him go, but felt distraught inside. How badly she wanted to be held one more time by her mother. There had been very, very little of that as a child. “Carson, we got to go, honey, or we’ll miss our bus.”
Carson turned from Beverly’s grasp to go back to Gilda, but Beverly grabbed a ceramic angel from an end table. Its wing was chipped and covered in dust. Gilda immediately recognized it; she had saved up money from soda bottles she’d found discarded and bought it for Beverly on Mother’s Day from the dime store on the corner. She’d been hurt when Beverly had turned her mouth down at it, muttering that she could have put a pack of cigarettes to better use.
“Here, darling,” Beverly coaxed Carson. “Now you take this home with you, and you remember your Granny when you look at it, hear?” She held it out and Carson looked to Gilda for approval to take it. At her nod, Carson gingerly took the angel. Gilda knew perfectly well he didn’t want it, but he minded his manners and thanked Beverly with a hug around her thin, sweat-smelling shoulders before running to Gilda’s side.
“Bye, Mama,” Gilda said, her voice choked with a mixture of emotions before she turned to leave the tiny bungalow with its cracked windows and mildewed roof.
Chapter 17
Cole was more than halfway through recruit training before Gilda saw him again. After she had refused his gifts, he had cooled down and was more objective by the time she returned. What he couldn’t figure out, though, was why she had left. He wasn’t able to reach her by phone and recognized she had blocked his number. Unperturbed, he simply bought a second phone, one whose number she wouldn’t recognize. He was prepared to continue changing his number until she realized it was useless. He caught her unaware one night after Carson had gone to bed and she sat on her bed, studying.
When her cell rang, she answered it absent-mindedly, her focus on a chapter discussing the function of antibiotics in general. “Hello?”
“Don’t hang up,” were the first word
s out of his mouth.
“Cole?” She knew his voice, but was surprised to hear from him. She thought he’d given up on her after she’d returned his gifts.
“Yes, it’s me; but please, don’t hang up. You know I will find another way to get in touch, so please just hear me out.”
“What do you want?” Her voice was neither kind nor gracious, despite all the trouble he’d gone to. She felt badly for behaving that way, but he was becoming more than she wanted to deal with at the moment.
“Hold on,” he said again. “I know you don’t want my gifts and while I think you’re being foolish, I respect your decision.”
“I told you, Cole. I’m not your kind of people. I earn my own way.”
“It’s more than that, Gilda. We’ve been all over that topic and I thought we’d settled it. There’s more here that you’re not telling me.” His voice was calm and reasonable, and all the arguments Gilda had prepared suddenly seemed unfair. She felt at a loss as to what to say. She was determined not to tell him about Carson.
“Look,” he continued, “we don’t have to talk about this on the phone and I have to get back. Have dinner with me on Friday? Please, Gilda?”
She hesitated. There she was, being begged for a date by a handsome, intelligent, honest, and very wealthy bachelor and she had severe reservations. What is wrong with this picture? she asked herself. “I don’t know, Cole. What’s the point?”
“The point is that I want to spend time with you, and you’re fighting me for no real reason. Even if you don’t want to be with me, you owe it to yourself to figure out why that is. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life entirely alone, do you?”
“I’m not alone.”
There was a heavy pause from the other end of the line. “What do you mean? Is there someone else?”
“See? This is part of the problem. It feels like you’re trying to control me,” she objected, searching wildly for a way to rationalize her reluctance.
There came another pause. “You’re right, Gilda. As much as I’d like an exclusive commitment from you, we’re not to that point, at least not for you. I have no right to expect you to only date me, and I’m sorry for suggesting otherwise. But I can’t get my foot in the door if you won’t see me at all.”
Gilda felt awful for making him beg like that. It wasn’t fair to him. He’d done nothing wrong, except perhaps to be a bit more enthusiastic than she was prepared for. It wasn’t his fault — he’d been the perfect gentleman.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay? You’ll have dinner with me?”
She waggled her head at her end of the phone. “Yes, okay, I’ll have dinner with you on Friday. Where shall I meet you?”
“I can pick you up.” He was pressing again.
“Where can I meet you?” she repeated, ignoring his offer.
He sighed and named a restaurant and time, to which she agreed. “I’ll see you then. Now get back in there and train!” she chided him. “Your life could depend on it.”
* * *
Gilda arrived early at the restaurant. She’d ridden the bus to save money; her trip home had put a bigger bite into her budget than she’d anticipated — particularly after she left Beverly with money. She had taken a booth toward the back. The Studebaker was a retro-themed, casual eatery, modeled to look like the drive-ins from the ’50s era. Each booth was red vinyl pintuck and featured a jukebox selector.
She saw Cole enter before his eyes acclimated to the dimmer interior enough to spot her. She admired his tall, muscled form and once he saw her, the way he waved in an almost military salute and carried himself erectly as he walked toward her. Everything about the man screamed ethics and honor; she couldn’t understand why she tended to attribute all men with Scott’s character, when clearly this one didn’t deserve it.
“Hi, there!” he said as he arrived, leaning forward to kiss her quickly on her cheek. He heard her tiny, indrawn breath, but wasn’t sure whether it came from surprise, revulsion, or desire. He didn’t want to press the issue by asking. “It’s great to see you again, Gilda,” he said in an authentic tone. Immediately, he fell into take-charge mode and flagged a server, noting that Gilda’s side of the booth was empty. The server approached and he quickly requested two glasses of wine, which were quickly served in quaint, cola-shaped glasses. They were handed iPads for menus as the server roller-skated away.
“Living in New York City is like being in a thousand different worlds,” Gilda commented. “Here we are, ordering old timey burgers and shakes from an iPad!”
Cole laughed. “Two points!” He took a sip from his glass of wine and asked, “So, how have you been?”
“I’m fine, Cole. Thank you for the gifts,” she said, taking control of the conversation before it went somewhere she didn’t want it to. “Naturally, I couldn’t accept them.”
Cole ran his hand over his dark-brown military haircut in frustration, but he tempered his words. “Yeah, about that… Gilda, I think I owe you an apology.”
He was interrupted by the arrival of their dinner, and once alone again, he continued talking as Gilda squirted ketchup on her basket of fries. “I know I came on too strong, and I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m tied up in training and can’t look after you the way I want to. So, I did the next best thing I could think ofand sent you some things I thought would make your life a little brighter.”
“Like a car?” she drawled, rolling her eyes and munching a fry.
“Okay, so that was going overboard and I didn’t think it through,” he admitted. “I realize now that I wanted to help you and was trying to fix things in the only way that I’ve ever known things to be fixed: by pouring money on them.”
“Which is why I’ve said that you and I come from two different worlds,” she reminded him. “Cole, you have to see that the way I was brought up, I had to earn everything I’ve got. Nobody ever gave me a single thing. And while that may not seem such a big deal to you, it means a lot to me because it’s proof that I can make it on my own! I don’t need to team up with the likes of Scott in order to get by. I can walk away…and stay away. Do you understand?”
Cole was watching her face as she spoke and saw the flicker of defiance in her brown eyes. He loved that — even if it was aimed at him. She had coincidentally, or perhaps purposefully, worn her hair in a ponytail and the effect left him feeling like they were dating teenagers quarreling over going steady. “Yes, I guess I do get that. But, at the same time, you need to understand that while your pride is certainly worth recognizing, the fact is I can help you and what’s more, I want to help you.”
“Why?” She spat the word with suspicion and an almost venomous verbal slap. He realized there must be an awful lot of history packed into her defiance.
Cole held up his hands. “Honey, I’m not trying to do anything to undermine you. I respect what you’ve accomplished. Hell, this is a tough city! Look at you! You came here, alone, with no one to help you out. You found a job, and you’re damned good at it!” He realized he was getting louder as he defended her. It also told Gilda more than words ever could have.
“I get it, Cole,” she said softly to counter his rising volume. “I get that you might be attracted to me, and it’s probably partly because you’re not a native here, either. We tend to see things different than people who grew up here. But even so, we’re still different, you and I. I have to build my self-respect on the things that have value in my way of thinking. Do you get that?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do. I’m sorry, Gilda. I really am.”
"So, what is it that you want from me, Cole?”
He realized his answer had to be dead on. He wasn’t going to get another shot at it. Therefore, he waited a few moments and watched her face as she munched on a fry and chased it with a sip of the wine. The deep red of the wine accented her strawberry-blonde hair, and he wished he had a camera.
“I want to take care of you. I am more than just interested in you, and I think you kno
w that. I want to earn your trust, and I don’t want you to feel like anything that I do for you, or give to you, takes away from what you have earned for yourself. Does that make sense?”
She nodded. “Yes, I guess it does.”
“Will you let me do that for you?” He was holding his breath; he was pouring out his heart to her, sitting in the middle of a drive-in restaurant. She had never once, as much as he raked his memory, said that she cared the least bit for him.
“I guess we can start down that path, Cole,” she agreed. “Just keep in mind that even the tiniest bit of care from you is awesomely big to me."
“I can understand that. Why don’t we do this? You make up five rules and I promise never to break them.” He felt good about his inspiring thought. It put the power in her hands, yet let him be a part of her life.
“You mean, like I can tell you five things that you aren’t allowed to do and you promise you won’t do them?" She liked the idea that she might actually have control over something or someone for once in her life.
He nodded. “Just like that.”
“So that would be like three wishes from the genie in the bottle? Is that right?”
“That’s right. But there is one condition.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I knew there would be. There always is."
“Hang on, hang on. It may not be as bad as you think. Look at it this way: if I didn’t have at least one condition, you wouldn’t trust me to keep my word, would you?”
She considered this as she munched on a bite from her burger. “Good point. Okay, what’s the condition?”
“Well, I want to hear the five rules first." His eyes were sparkling.
“So, that’s how it is? I’m going to take the time to make up five rules, and you’re going to bowl them all down with one condition?” Her eyes were sparkling in a challenging return.
“No one said that this is etched in stone. You have the right to make up the rules, and I have the right to make up the condition, and then we each have the right to accept or refuse. Deal?”