AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I turned to face the window. This shit was hard. There were still a gamut of unanswered questions. I had no job in Jersey. I had no place to live. Taking a deep breath, I braved my boy again. “It’s likely. I don’t have any support down here.”
“You do up there? Your grandmomma’s in a care home, ain’t she? You don’t even talk to your daddy.”
“Yes, and correct.” My father, though now financially stable, and seemingly on the straight and narrow, still lived in my grandmother’s house. I wouldn’t go back there even if he didn’t. “I’ll figure it out, though. When you get my age, and waste so many years on a dead-end road, you develop handicaps. Thankfully, I’m still young. I’ll find another job. I’ll find a place to stay.”
He nodded, expressing his faith in me. “Does MeMaw know?”
I shook my head, sniffling. “You’re the second person I’ve told: the first in the house. I’m waiting to finish developing a plan, you know?”
Scott nodded again, and I hated myself for being another reckless adult in his life. My crime was instability. Kids needed that for emotional development. I was ruining someone else’s child when all I’d ever wanted to do for the kid was give him a semblance of a childhood. We found ourselves finishing our food, allowing silence to swell around us. I didn’t know about Scott, but I didn’t hear the other patrons or the traffic from Capital Blvd on the left side of me.
My mind, instead, traveled to the psycho-pathology I wondered if I struggled with. My mother, by my womanly theory, was broken and troubled. She had to be. If she stayed in a relationship with a man who put his hands on her, there had to be an issue there. And when you add violence to a subsequent relationship, there is, no doubt, pathology there. That would cause me to consider my own shit. Why had I been here in North Carolina so long? I’d been financially independent for most of my marriage, even before Scott came into my life. What was it here, in this pool of toxicity, that I’d chosen to live with?
Psychosis?
Either way, I had to be prepared for my total independence. I didn’t want to jump into a relationship with Tobias with baggage on my back like Santa Claus. I’d have to pace myself to wholeness.
“I hope you find a boyfriend who’s all those good things to you,” Scott’s small voice broke my screaming internal fears. When I gaped at him confused, he uttered, “You. I hope you find a guy better than my dad, Uncle Kel, your dad, and me. You’re too good not to.”
I reached for his hand, wrapped around his soda. “If I ever got wind of you going down the path of those guys, I’ll crawl down here on my elbows and knees to set your tush straight. Please believe that.”
“Well, you ain’t gonna get one with that type of attitude, ma’am.” His one brow peaked.
My head flew back and I howled in laughter.
Dale, on the phone with his teenaged boys from his first wife, strolled over to the keyboard where I was playing, establishing a chord sequence. He plucked a few notes he thought matched.
“You heard me, Dad?” One of the boys asked.
With the phone on speaker and to his face, he answered, “Yeah, boy! I heard ya ass the first time.” Dale was known to sport a permanent smile, exposing shallow dimples. Very few times would you catch him without it to some degree. It was charm mixed with nature. So, when he fussed at his son, I didn’t know if he was serious or not. “If I told you not to do it the first time, why would you go behind my back, and sneak into my room?”
That question reminded me of how Dale had full custody of his sons. Their mother, Tika, had a total of four sons, two before the ones with Dale. Oddly, she had custody of none of her children. I could have pried: he’d given me permission to ask anything about his personal life I wanted. It was an exercise to gut him for the project. But I decided not to. Not everything needed to be shared. In the halls of the industry, I was known as the therapist, but outside of making music, I typically didn’t give a fuck about people.
“Pops—”
“Pops my ass, bro,” Dale interjected. “I’m in the studio. I gotta get back to it. We’ll talk about this shit when I get home. As a matter of fact,” he scratched his chin, looking toward the ceiling, “everything. Give Milagros everything. The phone, remotes, mice, monitors—everything!”
“Man!” I heard the young man groan.
Dale hung up on him, and that’s when I knew he was dead ass serious. “Shit!” He swung back to the keyboard, still trying to add to the sequence. “The shit being in love with the wrong fucking woman will do to you.” He scoffed. Then Dale turned to face me. “You got a kid.” He snapped his fingers. “A little girl. Right?” I nodded. “Ever married?” I shook my head. “Lucky son of a bitch.”
That shit made me laugh. “How?”
“Because too many kids by the wrong woman’ll keep you working until you’re old as fuck. You know who told me that?”
“Who?”
“Luther.”
My face balled. “Luther?”
“Luther, Luther.” Dale laughed. “Luther Vandross, nigga!”
Then my forehead stretched. “Word?”
“Word. Luther saw it all, yo.” He cracked the fuck up. “But you ain’t gotta worry about that. You’ve been playing it smart, which is why I don’t get how you’re able to tune in like you do.” He tossed his hand toward the keys where I was still playing.
“Why?”
