Tampa

Kelly was concentrating on the road, presumably while thinking over what I had just said. I sat in the comfortable MB-Tex covered seat in her Mercedes. She had bought it new, not long after getting her associate Professorship at North Dakota State. Now she was a full professor and assistant Dean of the mathematics department- at 25! She was truly incredible.

I don’t know how much money she made working there, but I believe it was substantial. She had already bought a house in Fargo to use during the week when she was working. On weekends, she lived at Cheryl’s house, along with our daughter Little Rachel. It was too far to commute daily, even with the car’s 38 mpg fuel economy.

Little Rachel primarily lived with Cheryl. She felt lonely in Fargo. She loved being with the rest of the family. I think Kelly picked her up to bring her to see me. She had always been a daddy’s girl, and she, more than the others, really missed me. Perhaps some intuition told Kelly I wouldn’t be heading to Cheryl’s farm this time around.

We drove from the train station, a nearly straight shot via 4th street. She had just bought the house and it was the first time I had ever seen it. It was a big sucker on 5th street. Four bedrooms, a usable storage attic with dormers, a finished basement, about 3000 square feet. All the original circa 1900 fittings were in the house as built. It was really a beautiful house.

As I got older roaming the country I have become fascinated, perhaps even obsessed, with old architecture and antiques. I loved museums. I suspected when Cheryl described the house to me during a phone call, that Kelly had bought it with the intention of impressing me. It was the kind of house I would want to live in. Coming up to it with my own eyes, I was even more convinced.

She parked the car in the old carriage house behind her home, and showed me in the front door, a massive thing in oak and stained glass. It looked original to the house, and was even equipped with an antique turn-style door bell and a mail slot. The entry foyer was magnificent. The floors were wood with intricate patterning around the edges of the room, and the walls were all oak.

In the center of the room was an elaborate Persian rug in blue and white. There was a coat and umbrella rack by the door. On the center of the rug stood a table with flowers on it. Rooms went off to both sides. Off to the left side was a staircase that went up halfway and then landed with a 90 degree turn, and then went up the rest of the way. There were railings from the second floor surrounding the room on three sides. It was amazing.

She told me to put my things in the master bedroom- I guess she wanted me sleeping with her tonight. That wasn’t shocking. We were always together when I was in the Fargo area. That room was fully furnished with a four poster full size bed with a canopy. The room also had an intricate Persian rug, but in this case the primary color was red, with blue, yellow, green, creme, white, and purple worked into it. It was a large rug, perhaps 10 x 12. It must have cost a fortune.

Little Rachel’s room was finished in pink and white, with a single color pink rug, white furniture, and white quarter, chair, and crown moldings. It was a very girly room, and the furniture was not particularly old. Of the four bedrooms on the second floor, the other was finished as a utilitarian study, and one was completely empty. I found how girly it was to be amusing. Her namesake was many things, but girly was not among them.

The bathroom had a clawfoot tub with a shower curtain and, I presume a shower. There was an elaborate pedestal sink, and a pull chain toilet. Its floor was done in the traditional black and white flower mosaic tiling expected in that kind of room.

There was a small lavatory under the stairs in the foyer, which also had a pedestal sink and another pull chain-style toilet. To the left of the foyer was a basically empty room. To the right was a living room. There was a hallway from the foyer leading back into the house. The left side held what would have been a formal dining room, but that was also empty. The right side of that had a butlers pantry and a kitchen, as well as a servant’s staircase.

The kitchen was the most shocking part. It looked, well maybe not entirely original to the house. But it looked like it had last been redone in the 1920s. The stove was enormous, with 8 burners in two rows, two ovens under it, and a stack of two ovens and a warming compartment beside it to the right. There were no built in cabinets in the kitchen, but it had a pair of pantries, a dish rack, a dry sink, and a Seller’s built hoosier cabinet. The sink was a big double basin drain unit hung off the wall. There was a wooden table with chairs around it. Stunning.

Afterwards I walked down to the living room where I sat next to her on an old Victorian couch she had refurbished in a yellow fabric. The living room was fully furnished, complete with yet another large Persian rug of considerable vintage. I knew why she hadn’t finished the remaining rooms; she was furnishing those she had very authentically- and therefore very expensively.

“I know you don’t want me to consider you as a daughter, my love,” I said, “But I am incredibly proud of you. Look at you, honey. A doctor. A professor. An assistant dean. A nearly new Mercedes. This beautiful mansion. This is a long way from Joliet.”

“This isn’t a mansion,” she countered, “But thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

She smiled. She was wearing relatively tight jeans and a turtleneck. She looked fabulous. I pulled her close to me and kissed her tenderly on the lips. Birthing Rachel had been kind to her figure. It had been kind to her eyes, to everything. There was no longer that sense of dullness to her presentation. She was more animated, more alive, than she had been before our trip to Oklahoma.

“I love you,” I told her, looking in to her eyes, and feeling comfortable. I was with a woman who understood me. Not as well as Rachel did, but that had been ... it was over whatever it had been. Kelly was here now.

I have become comfortable with the change in our relationship. It has always had a slightly incestual quality to it in my mind, and I hadn’t been able to fully banish it. She calls a woman “mom” whom I have two sons with. And she was raised by that woman. As was another of my sons- and our daughter for the most part, too. But she wasn’t really my daughter, and it wasn’t a father-daughter nature in that relationship, except for the fact that I’m 42 and she’s 25.

“Now about your father,” she changed the subject back to what was at hand, “What happened?” She usually knew how to keep me on topic.

I told her. All about Jake, and the trip I had taken, and the ride to Hornell. I cried telling it. I couldn’t come to grips with the fact that my mother was dead. I had kissed her, but we had never said good bye. I hadn’t seen her in 25 years, and I never would again.

Kelly held me in her arms, and helped me cry myself out again.

“I’m really sorry,” she told me, “But Johnny, you put this on yourself. You ran from your family and never looked back, no matter how much they loved you. You never went back to see them. You have to accept that. You made a new family a thousand miles away, and you were too scared to connect them together.”

“I know,” I croaked.

“And you have had a taste of what everything is going to be like if you don’t fix it,” she growled, “You need to go see the woman who loves you so much she has waited 22 years in celibacy for you to finally come back and marry her, who has raised two of your children, alone.”

“I know, god damnit,” I roared.

“You have to introduce that woman to the family you have,” Kelly continued, “To my mother, who has mothered so many of your children, who bore you two of them. The person who takes you in without question. Who brought us together and saved you from yourself over and over. And you have to introduce all of us to your father, before you no longer have the chance to do so!”

“I really should,” I admitted.

“Then fucking do it!” she practically screamed at me.

I looked down on the floor. I felt three inches tall.

“What if she rejects me?” I asked.

“She won’t.”

“But what if she does?” I persisted.

“Then you will come right back here into my arms, and I will marry you, and we’ll have some more children together, and we’ll grow old together, til death do us part. You won’t be alone, Johnny. I love you. My mom loves you. Your children love you. And trust me, Jenny loves you.”

“You’ve never even met her.”

“Give me her phone number. I’ll call her.”

“And Rachel-”

“Listen, Johnny, before I call her, we need to go back over that story. You need to accept that she died, and that her death wasn’t your fucking fault!”

Rachel and I boarded the Capitol Limited from the Metropolitan lounge. We had a Bedroom all the way down to Florida. We ate dinner with a couple who couldn’t be assed to talk to broke Hobos, and couldn’t believe it when they found out that we were staying in the bedroom next to theirs after we went back to our rooms. Fools.

The train pulled through the Indiana night as we lay together on the lower berth, kissing and snuggling. We only tried sex once, but we managed to make love to each other on a physical level many times. Over the years, we had gotten older than our ages suggested- high stress lifestyles do that to you.

She was 43 years old. Her hair had long gone from black to dark silver. Her skin was wrinkled and craggily from her sun exposure, showing up mostly in exaggerated laughter lines on her face. Her eyes had gotten a little deeply set. Her nose had drooped and grown even bigger. All of her exaggerated features seemed to only get more exaggerated with age. Scars and dents from fights showed on her face. But she was still immensely beautiful to me. I loved her, even though most people would probably guess her age in her late fifties to early sixties.

She was still her general nature. She was tall and skinny, almost fragile in appearance. She was still deceptively strong and durable. She still was shockingly fast and coordinated. She was still my Rachel. The girl I fell in love with, and for the same reasons I did all those years ago.

The next afternoon, we were sitting in the Sightseer Lounge, looking down at the Virginian scenery, as we snuggled together on a love seat.

“Why were you waiting for me for two weeks?” I asked her. It was still a question that was nagging at me. She had never waited for me before. We set up meeting places, usually, through messages. Our whole lifestyle was based on being laid back and not rushed about anything.

“I needed tuh see yuh, yuh know?” she told me.

“Not that I’m not flattered,” I said, “But you’ve never needed to see me that urgently.”

“De last time I saw yuh was ‘bout a year ago, remembuh?”

“How could I ever forget?” I said, “I felt terrible that I had hurt you.”

“Yuh hurt me a little,” she said, “But dat’s not de impawhtant ting. Okay? I mean, I didn’t tink it was possible. Ya’ dig? Didn’t yuh see dat new scar down dere, or what?”

It hit me like a ton of bricks. Yes, there was a new scar. A C-section scar. The reality of what that meant hit me like a ton of bricks. I passed out for a little while, until she managed to shake me awake.

By that point we were almost in Washington, and she personally led me by my hand into the Club Acela, and sat next to me. I couldn’t speak. I was too shocked. I was scared by this new development. She knew about my other children; I had no secrets from her. Well except how much I wanted to marry her, and be with her forevermore.

I still lacked the courage to tell her that part. Sometimes our relationship reminds me of the Spaniel’s “Everyone’s Laughing.” Except nobody was really laughing.

She led me, again by the hand, to the Silver Star, where she made me go up the stairs first, and then led me, again, into the bedroom. I was lovesick. I was in shock. I was ecstatic. I was terrified. I was paralyzed.

She pounced on top of me on the sofa, and kissed me very passionately.

“ ... Rachel... ???” I moaned, still dazed.

“Yes, his name is Joshua,” she smiled at me.

“Wh-Where is he?” I asked.

“He’s at my grandmudders, in Tampa. Yuh dig?”

“I thought you didn’t get along with-” We were going to see him. I got butterflies.

“I don’t get along wit’ my parents, but I reconnected wit’ my grandmudder a few years ago. Okay?”

I wondered how her parents feel about her now. I wonder if they wish they had acted more sanely. I wondered if they missed her. I wonder if half of what they lived for was a chance to see her just one more moment so they could say sorry. She wasn’t an only child the way I was. She had several siblings.

I don’t think I really disappointed my parents. I think they missed me. I know my dad didn’t really blame me for losing my temper. I mean, I don’t think he didn’t think was my fault. But I think he chalked it up to me being an emotional teenage human who made a terrible mistake. I don’t know exactly what my mother thought...

My mother ... Sorry, I’m digressing from the story.

“I love you,” I told her, and meant it.

“I know,” she said, “I love yuh, too.”

I was tired, physically and emotionally, and the porter put down my bed, and I fell asleep. In the morning, I got out of bed, leaving her in the top bunk, and went to breakfast. It was an Ambreakfast of the time, I had scrambled eggs and bacon, When I got back she was just getting up. I kissed her again.

I loved her even more knowing she was mother of my child. It complicated things. We didn’t have the capacity to settle down and raise a child properly the way we were. I think we were still too full of wanderlust and iconoclasm to become the terrifying prospect of an ordinary family. But I knew how we could. I just needed to figure out how to explain it to her.

She knew who Cheryl was. As I said, I had no secrets from her. They had never met, much to my regret. I wanted her to know that part of me. She was scared of meeting Cheryl. I think, somehow, in her insecurity, she thought that Cheryl was some kind of competition for my affections.

That was a ludicrous assessment, but I don’t blame her for it. She’d have to see us together to understand it. The sex between Cheryl and I had a sort of nostalgic quality to it. We enjoyed each other physically quite a bit. And I loved her very much, as she did me. But our sex life and our love for each other were not tied together. The love between us was familial.

We could give up sex with each other without losing what was important, and if I had Rachel with me, I wouldn’t need sex with Cheryl. I had assumed this then, and shortly thereafter this was proven true when my romantic relationship with Kelly came to fruition.

What I thought would be the logical solution would have been for us to move to Cheryl’s farm. We could have lived in my room until we got a chance to build a home for ourselves. We could work on the farm. Cheryl could help us raise Joshua. We would need help with that; we weren’t really fit to be parents. It would be a source of the things we needed in life.

I knew, too, that we would need to drop out and wander from time to time. The rest of my family up in North Dakota would help us with that. I mean when you marry, you bring your betrothed into your family; this was my family. I knew Rachel would have to adjust a little, and that would be hard for her. But we could still run around, still go to our fine restaurants, still do crazy things.

“We will make this work,” I told her, “We will do this together, I promise you.”

“Yuh don’t have tuh marry me just ‘cuz we have a kid,” she said,”Yuh want me tuh be your ball and chain, or what?”

“You aren’t my ball and chain,” I retorted with laughter, “You are my wings, you let me fly. Being away from you for the past year made me see that in close focus, Rache. I won’t make you, but I want to be with you because I want to be with you. Raising our son will be the greatest adventure we have ever undertaken.”

“We can be togethuh, fawh as long as yuh like, Johnny. Okay?” she said, joyful tears in her eyes, “Thats what I always wanted. Yuh with me? Since I metcha. I love yuh so much. Ya’ dig?”

At noon, we pulled into Orlando, only a few minutes late, and she still sat with me just like in Washington. She didn’t want me running away this time. We boarded the bus for Tampa, a Greyhound. We sat together until we got out in Tampa.

I was a bit angry at myself. I had sort of known in the back of my mind that she had never really wanted to be apart from me. I was scared of it not working. Like if we were together for too long at once, it would just break. I couldn’t lose her. She meant too much to me.

She dragged me to a payphone, and called her Grandmother. About 30 minutes later, a 1998 Cadillac DeVille D’Elegance pulled up, and we got in the back seat. Her grandmother looked too damned much like Sadie for my comfort. So did the car, for that matter. I think they stamp out the Jewish Grandmother kit somewhere in Jacksonville. Boring condo, flashy Cadillac, intense woman with funny accent. Bundle it all up and sell it in Walmart for $29.95.

Her house was the kind of boring retirement home semi-wealthy people seem to own in Florida. The child was barely two months old, and looked like a two month old baby boy. He was pretty quiet. Not taking after his mother much, at least from that metric.

“So, you find a nice Jewish boy, Rachel?” her grandmother asked.

Rachel looked angry. I suspect there was an argument about this long before I showed up at this house.

“I’m not Jewish,” I said.

“Oh, so you’re a nice goiyum boy, then?” she smiled.

I smiled. “Yes, or at least she keeps telling me I’m nice.”

I went in to look again at the child, and I heard in the other room her grandmother saying some things that sounded annoyed, and Rachel sounding even more annoyed in response. I was deeply offended. And then I felt it. I felt that horrible horrible feeling.

Dear god no, I thought to myself, please not now. Not now!

But I couldn’t listen to myself, I franticly went for the back sliding glass door, opened it, and started running.

Rachel saw me, and started out the front door.

“JOHNNYYY!!!!” she screeched, “PLEASE, DON’T LEAVE ME, PLLLLEEEEEAAASSSEEEE! NOOOO! DOON’T LLLLLEEEEEAAAAAVVVVVEEEEMMMEEEEEEE!!!!!”

I wanted to stop. I tried to stop. But it was like the command wasn’t going to my feet.