Chapter 17

On study group nights, if Trudy was home, she usually joined Bob in childcare duties. Part of that was because her own son was part of the little group. When Bob picked up Brendan and Maeve at Janet’s, he also picked up Chima. He took care of them, which usually involved helping Brendan plan some kind of game that the younger children were involved in, but rarely understood. The one activity all three enjoyed fully was when they sat on Bob’s lap and he read them a book. It was usually a series of books, and getting them all on his lap involved having one on each leg and the third between them. If Trudy was home, then there could be two games going on at the same time. But reading a book required both adults to be sitting side by side, with children draped on them. It was best when both adults traded off reading, or supplied the voices of the various characters in the books.

This demonstrated how well Bob and Trudy were getting along. In some ways, they had a better relationship than they had when they were married. That’s not unusual. Lots of couples make better friends than spouses. It’s the culture, not wisdom, that demands there be a marriage ceremony between two people who have made a baby (or might make one).

There was no sexual attraction between them, at least not that rose to the level of conscious thought very often. Trudy was fit and toned, now, and that kind of woman is attractive to most men. Bob was beginning to gray at the fringes of the hair on his temples, but that gave him a distinguished, experienced look, which is attractive to many women. In that sense, each recognized that the other was interesting, but there was no urge to explore further. To be honest, the lack of animosity between them was something neither wanted to disrupt.

This absence of sexual magnetism between them was evident to at least one member of the study group. That was Chuck. He had noticed the little black boy who called Trudy “Mamma”. That was the only word he spoke, or at least the only one Chuck ever heard him speak. Chuck found Trudy to be attractive, too, even though she was much older than the women he was usually interested in. It wasn’t just that she had a black child. That could be done by adoption, or foster placing. There was something about her that struck the chord in him involving the strings of carefulness. As a black man in a largely white subculture, he had to be careful, sometimes. Racism was always out there, ready to take a bite out of a man like him, and knowing when to fade into the background or avoid attention was a life skill that was important to him. He wasn’t paranoid. He didn’t believe that every white person was racist. Even when he ran into one of them who was unintentionally bigoted, he didn’t take it personally. According to the family history, his Great, Great, Great, Grandfather had been a Buffalo Soldier after the Civil War. He had fought Indians. Had that made him racist?

Chuck didn’t dwell on Trudy. He just noticed her. His subconscious noticed that her relationship with her ex-husband was comfortable, but didn’t contain elements of romantic interest, as if they might be trying to get back together. And he was just being polite one night when he found her in the kitchen when he went to get a glass of water and spoke to her. She was wiping at a stain on her sweater.

“Accident?” he said.

She glanced at him. “Black male” wasn’t on her list of people she wanted to get to know better. She wasn’t being intentionally racist. She just wasn’t interested, based on issues in her past.

“Chima spit up on me,” she said, also merely trying to be polite.

“That’s your baby’s name?”

“Yes.”

That was it. He got his water and returned to the group. Presumably she went back to taking care of Chima. Chima? What kind of name was that?

It stuck in his brain, and during a break he approached Chastity.

“Hey, Trudy said her baby’s name is Chima.”

“Yes?” Chastity looked at him.

“I’ve never heard a name like that,” he said. “Can I ask where it came from?”

“Sure,” said Chastity.

She fiddled with papers on the coffee table. It took thirty seconds before Chuck figured out she wasn’t going to say anymore.

“So ... where’d it come from?” he asked.

“You should ask her,” said Chastity. That name was full of meaning ... personal meaning.

“Okay,” said Chuck. He was confused. “You’re not going to tell me, right?”

“You should ask her,” said Chastity, firmly.

It was the mystery of it that prodded him to actually seek Trudy out. He didn’t go find her. He just waited until her saw her go back into the kitchen. She happened to have the baby with her, and he used that as his excuse. His water glass was still two-thirds full, so he just said, “Be right back,” and got up to go to the kitchen.

When he walked in, he realized Trudy was feeding the baby... breast feeding the baby.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” he gasped.

She turned to face him. She didn’t flinch. Breastfeeding was something so ubiquitous in Africa, at least in the rural areas, that nobody paid any attention to it. That part of her African experience had sunk into her psyche. She wasn’t ashamed of feeding her baby, and didn’t see his presence as an intrusion.

“It’s fine,” she said. “What do you need?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Why are you here, then?” she asked.

“Oh! Um ... I wanted to ask you a question. That’s all.”

His eyes bounced around, going from the baby’s lip-lock on an invisible, but obviously milky nipple, to her face, and back again. He could actually hear the baby gulping. He’d never been around a woman doing this before. It sounded like the child was almost choking as he gulped and gasped.

“Then ask it,” said Trudy.

“I wondered what Chima means ... where it came from.”

“You came in here to ask me why I named my son Chima?”

“Ah ... I guess so,” he said. He sensed she wasn’t pleased.

Trudy wouldn’t have said she wasn’t pleased. She just wasn’t interested. Her female radar sensed a blip that she thought might be “interest” in her, and she wasn’t looking for that.

“It’s African,” she said. “It means I don’t know who his father was.”

“What?” Chuck was startled.

Trudy decided to shock this man into leaving her alone.

“When I was in Africa, I became part of a chief’s harem,” she said. “He shared me with his three sons. One of the four of them is Chima’s father.”

“You were in Africa? That happened while you were there?” said Chuck, still trying to wrap his head around this information.

“Yes, I worked in a refugee camp. I believed he really was a chief. I was trying to act on his behalf so he could go home, back to his tribe. He said he’d take me with him and make me his number one wife. It turned out he actually ran a tire repair business in the DRC. He lied just so he could have sex with me.”

“That must have been difficult,” said Chuck. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? I’m sure they weren’t related to you.”

His jaw dropped. Her remark was so blatantly racist that he was shocked.

“No, we don’t all look alike and we’re not all related,” he rasped. He turned to leave.

“Wait!” she said.

For reasons he couldn’t articulate, he paused and looked back.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “In some parts of Africa, the blame for a wrong done to someone is born by the entire family. It’s one reason there are so many wars going on there.” Her voice sounded normal, as if she were simply sharing a tidbit of information with him. It gave him pause and his assessment of her altered.

“Hatfields and McCoys?” said Chuck.

“Something like that,” said Trudy. “I meant no offense.”

“It’s fine,” said Chuck. The information she’d provided, intended to put him off, had actually sparked his curiosity to find out more about this interesting woman, and her no doubt interesting experiences in the fabled “land of his ancestors.”

“Do you want to get coffee sometime?” he asked.

“Not really,” she replied. “Again, I mean no offense. It’s not you, personally. I’m just not interested in complications in my life right now.”

“Getting coffee is a complication?”

“Getting coffee is the start of a relationship of some kind, and I’m avoiding relationships at the moment.”

“Sounds lonely,” he said.

“Are you here to study, or hit on me?” she asked, bluntly.

“I’m not hitting on you,” he objected.

“Go study. I need to put Chima to bed.”

She picked up the cup of tea she’d come to the kitchen to make, and left.

Chuck wasn’t a ‘ladies man’ per se. Like many students of the law, his studies consumed almost all his waking time. Relationships were relegated, in his case, to light, inconsequential flings, that weren’t intended to last. He didn’t pursue one night stands, exactly. One might say he was always interested in making new friends. And if friendship yielded benefits of the more erotic kind, then that was fine. Most of all, though, he liked finding and getting to know interesting people.

Trudy was interesting.

He was well aware of the gap in their ages. He was twenty-five. Chastity was 23, according to Paul, but she was in the same year of law school he was, so that made her like his sister, in a way. That meant her mother was probably old enough to be ... could have been... his mother, too. Especially since she’d actually had a black child. That was part of the interesting thing. She was nothing like his real mother, as different as a pea is from a watermelon. His mother had walked out on his dad after the third affair, one his father didn’t even try to hide. Chuck was still in contact with her on a frequent basis. In fact, he probably talked to her more often than he talked to his father. All his father seemed interested in were his grades and repeatedly trying to talk him into transferring to Cornell, or Stanford, or Yale, so he could “get a law degree that actually means something.”

Going to law school had been his father’s idea, of course. Charles B. Weatherford Sr. was a big time lawyer in the corporate world. Charles B. Weatherford, of Timkins, Weatherford and Parks, was one of the sharks of the great white variety, whom you hired when you needed to slay the competition, not just win against them.

His son would join him some day. That was assumed. He wouldn’t become a partner immediately, of course. One had to pay one’s dues, after all, even if he was family. But maybe fifteen or twenty years down the road, Charles, Jr. would step onto the plush carpet of an office big enough that his grandchildren could practice soccer in it, and he’d take the reins from his father’s baby-smooth hands so said father could retire in splendor with wife number three, or four. It might be wife number five by then.

That was what his father assumed would happen, but Chuck knew it wouldn’t. He had no interest in working for his father. The man was a bastard, pure and simple. He’d pulled himself up by his boot straps and left everything from his youth as far behind him as he possibly could. Blackmailing a judge, of all people, had gotten him through law school. He had honored his pledge to leave the man in peace once he got his degree. The judge paid the tuition, but Charles B. Weatherford had worked hard for that degree, and he’d worked hard to build his reputation as an attorney. Charles, Sr. wasn’t lazy or complacent. Charles Sr. was simply born a few centuries too late. He’d have made a wonderful knight in the Crusades.

Chuck wasn’t lazy, either. His father had hounded him into the field of law, but as he started his last year of law school, Chuck knew enough about things to realize how vast the world of law was. Somebody always needed a good lawyer, and you could make a decent living at it. He wasn’t interested in the mansions and Bentleys and all that crap. He’d grown up with that and it was all hollow. What he was interested in were interesting people with interesting or difficult problems. Chuck was more along the lines of Don Quixote, rather than King Richard.

Chuck didn’t reflect on it, but his life was sizing up to be the opposite of his father’s. His father was born in a notorious housing project called East Lake Meadows, in Atlanta, and made his life a rags to riches story. The man had a prodigious sexual appetite, and as he grew older his taste in sexual partners became younger and younger. All Chuck’s possessions would fit into one of his father’s walk-in closets, and young, vacuous girls were of no interest to him. He didn’t think of it this way, but he was more of a MILF man. This had nothing to do with normal adolescent curiosity in his own mother as a sexual being. Older women were simply more interesting to talk to. And they were usually appreciative for skills displayed in the bedroom. Young women demanded to be satisfied, sexually. Older women were really thankful when you cared enough to make that happen.

Not that Chuck had a ton of experience with older women in bed. There had been only one, in fact. And, again, Chuck wasn’t looking at Trudy as a potential sexual partner. She was just interesting. A woman her age having an infant child was a good example of why she was interesting.

In fact, after his few short minutes with her, during which she volunteered extremely personal information, and sought no pity at all, she had moved up the ladder and become ... fascinating.

He attended three more study sessions before he interacted with her again. In this case, Chima appeared in the opening between the dining room and living room, and “crawled” toward the group of people. He wasn’t on all fours. Rather, he was sitting up and, to move, he extended one chubby leg, pressed his heel to the hardwood floor, and pulled with that leg, scooting his slick, diapered butt across the hardwood floor. Then he did it again. He was so good at this that he moved faster that way than he might had he been in the more traditional all-fours position, moving on hands and knees.

Chuck intercepted the baby and picked him up. He held him awkwardly, under the arms, making it obvious he had little experience with children. He suspended the little boy with their eyes six inches apart.

“Hey, little man,” he said. “Did you make a prison break?”

“Give him to me,” said Chastity, standing up. “I’ll go find my mother.”

“He’s fine,” said Chuck. “He’s investigating what it’s like to be in a high-powered study group in law school. Curiosity is a good thing.”

Trudy appeared, in the open doorway.

“Did you lose something?” asked Chuck, smiling at her. She did not smile back.

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