AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But then he changed. Again. And I’d had enough. I couldn’t do this anymore.
I saw that he’d called me and I’d ignored his calls all day.
Felix had called me earlier from the airport and I took his call.
“I wanted to thank you for going out with me the other night,” he said. “That was probably the highlight of my trip.”
“What a shitty time you must’ve had!” I said with a laugh.
“It wasn’t the best trip ever,” he admitted wryly. Then he said, “Actually, Tate and I had an argument before I left.” He told me about the words that had been exchanged and how he felt their friendship had suffered a fatal blow.
“But you know, I was thinking this morning, Tate never wanted to get married. He told me years ago that he preferred to be alone, that he found people too noisy.”
“Noisy?”
“Ja, I always thought that was a strange word to use. But I think he meant, people make demands, they interfere with his life, they intrude in his thinking. He doesn’t know how to deal with people.”
“He deals with Summer just fine.”
“Does he, really?” Felix asked me. “Don’t you find he doesn’t really talk to her, he lets her do whatever she wants. But how much time do they spend together? I think that is why she liked you so much. You watched TV with her, did stuff with her.”
“You mean, I let her eat ice cream and junk food.”
“You let her be a kid.”
And I let Tate be a man, I thought. I let him be a sexual being. But there was more to life and I wanted more from life. I wanted someone to treat me well, to talk to me, to trust me. The kind of relationship my parents had, where even if people weren’t the same, when they did get together, it was good. You could see from a mile away that my parents loved each other. It was in the way my mother rested a hand on my father’s shoulder at the dinner table, the way my dad brought her coffee in bed in the morning.
It was in the small things.
I wanted small things, not big gestures or romantic experiences.
I spent the rest of the day at Mrs. Gomez’s place, helping her tidy the place, water the ferns, move a chair that was in the way. We did some laundry and then I helped her neighbor, Mrs. Cabrera to do her laundry. There was a communal washing line and I hung up the elasticated pants and faded bed linen.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” I promised, “Help you take it down.”
“You could get a job here any day, you know,” Mrs. Cabrera said. “They pay peanuts but it’s better than nothing.”
“I happen to like peanuts,” I said but she waved a hand, “Give me terrible gas, nuts do.”
I had to laugh again.
But spending time with the old ladies had cheered me up.
Mrs. Gomez told me about her years on a Californian avocado farm, where she had spent most of her adult life, until her husband had managed to get his Green Card. They moved to the city, sent their kids to school, and she watched her sons get married and her daughters get divorced.
“You young people, you expect too much of the men,” she said.
“We do?”
“Oh yes,” she nodded sagely. “Men are like goats. Stubborn, dumb. But you need them around. What is a home without a goat?”
I smiled all the way home. I had never had much to do with goats. The little I knew of goats extended to them being smelly and rather dirty, not exactly the kind of creature you wanted to have around. But according to Mrs. Gomez, they were very handy creatures, and their milk made good cheese. You could even eat the meat when you fell on hard times. All this according to Mrs. Gomez, who said if she had to choose between having a goat and having a man, the goat would win every time.
Chapter 20
Tate
My phone rings as I’m driving in to work a bit late, feeling great after an early morning surf.
