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IN MY HUMBLE OPINION ROkie White FEATURED COLUMNIST R Ray Collins FICTION |
Life in my hometown isn’t always as exciting as my first day back. Aspire can be deadly dull. And I spent some time wallowing in that day-to-day inactivity. It was easier than I thought. After I returned from seeing Bobby, Momma noticed I was limping and insisted I stay put in the house to give my knee time to heal. She also wanted me to visit the doctor, but we comprised on resting for a couple of days first. It seemed like a good idea. I dodged Collin’s phone calls by spending most evenings in my room, resting and reading. The timing of his calls was easily predictable. He’d never call during work hours. He would consider that a misuse of company time and money. Every time Momma said he was on the phone I said my knee hurt too much to make the trip downstairs to the only phone in the house. Which was the truth for the most part. Unfortunately, his calls triggered memories. When the phone rang I could picture him tugging his ear with his left hand waiting for me to answer. The line between his dark brown eyes deepening as he listened to the rings or Momma’s voice when she answered. The slouch of his shoulders as he leaned against the wall. And it didn’t do to think of that. If the days were fairly easy the nights were the opposite, holding as much terror as when I was a small child. When I believed a hungry, green, snaggletooth monster crouched behind my closet door. This new night terror, however, had an attractive face and a seductive voice. In the dark hours before sunrise I woke, wide-eyed and shaking. Bruised and fragile. Alone. An emotion I swore I would never experience. Before Collin I never felt lonely. As an only child I’d learned to be self-sufficient. Loneliness is only experienced by those who need someone to be complete. Did I love Collin? I continually questioned myself and struggled to define love. People are different, ergo the experience must be different for every individual. To say that love is the same thing consistently to every person is myopic and ego-centric in my opinion. Still, a month earlier I would have said yes. I used the word as carelessly and as freely as the teenage girls in my biology class who loved Godiva chocolates, Leonardo DiCapro, press-on fingernails, and Mr. Carlisle who taught music with a lovelorn machismo and who was fond of wearing polo shirts that emphasized his biceps. Recently I was beginning to think more like Plato who labeled love a mental imbalance. Saturday, at noon, the phone rang at a time I wasn’t able to dodge. I would have preferred to eat a sandwich on the front porch where I could watch the goings and comings of the town. But Momma insisted we eat a sit-down meal where we could talk, even though we’d done nothing but that ever since I came home. We sat bunched at one corner of the large octagonal table dominating the center of Momma’s kitchen surrounded by varnished pine cabinets and avocado-colored appliances that hugged the walls. She bought the table the year she and Dad were married expecting more than me. Her unfulfilled plan was to crowd all sides of the table with offspring. I wondered if she sat alone at this table when I wasn’t there. Or if she grazed out of pans on the stove. It seemed something forever simmered, boiled or sautéed on the stove. If not a meal then a new recipe for the Home Economics class she taught at the high school. With the first ring Momma jumped in her chair and twisted her head practically backwards to look at the phone placed on top of the upright piano in the living room. When I was a child, Momma had a rule about no phone calls once we sat down at the table to eat. I hoped her rule still held. I had an uneasy premonition about who in town would call knowing it was lunch time. "You have the answering machine on?" I asked and tried to concentrate on my food. It was superb. Classic Momma-style comfort food -- fried chicken, creamed peas and new potatoes fresh from the garden and hot-from-the-oven rolls. "Yes, but not everyone likes to talk into that thing." She was half out of her chair. "It’s so impersonal. What if they hang up?" "Then they didn’t want to talk to very badly. And they would also be very rude." The machine picked up on the third ring. The phone call was from Collin, I was sure. I could hear it in the different way the phone seemed to ring – shorter, shriller, more abrupt. Momma lowered herself slowly into her chair but didn’t relax her grip on the edge of the table. I could see her knuckles go white with the effort of not picking up the phone. We both listened as her voice floated out of the machine flat with an uncertain quaver. Wondering , perhaps, at the time she recorded the message who would be listening to her. "This is Dorothy Tilley and I have recorded this message on my answering machine to let you know I can’t come to the phone right now but your call is important to me so lease leave a message at the beep and I will call you back. I promise." A short pause. "Here is the beep." Another short pause and then the piercing beep. "Jayne? It’s Blair. Call me if you’re there." I fell in love with his voice before I fell in love with the man. A voice like golden honey on a biscuit. It was hard to listen to that disembodied voice. I took a sip of ice tea clouded with sugar. She looked at me and shook her head. "This is so silly. You sitting there, pretending you don’t care. You know your father and I had our tiffs over the years. We were always able to patch things up," she said. "You had to. You were married." She looked at me with eyes as gray as my own. Storm cloud eyes Dad called them. It wasn’t the only thing we had in common. As dissimilar as our physical differences were, she had never been a pretty woman either. I once overheard someone call her striking. I was so young at the time I thought they meant she hit somebody. When I grew older I realized it was a polite way of saying she wasn’t pretty. "Not true," she said. "I never had to do anything. "We patched things up because we loved each other." "Would you rather I went ahead and married him and was miserable for the rest of my life?" "And I suppose you’re not miserable right now?" "No," I lied. "I’m not." She raised an eyebrow and her lips quirked into a motherly, non-smile. Was I so transparent to everyone? No wonder Collin hounded me unrelentingly. "Well, maybe I am a little, but I’ll get over it," I said. "At least I won’t be miserable ‘until death do us part..’" "Sometimes you have to give a little bit, Jayne. You don’t have to win all the time. I know it’s hard. I guess I’m every bit as pit-headed as you are. At least you came by it honest, but you’ll never get married if you don’t make yourself a little more agreeable. Honey attracts more flies than vinegar." "Maybe I’d rather not attract flies." She took a bite of chicken and chewed with her lips pursed. I feared there was more to come. "Please, Momma, I don’t want to discuss it." I’d lost my appetite and regretted it because a strawberry pie lathered thick with whipped cream waited for dessert on the kitchen counter. Momma could out-cook any chef in Kansas City. "You know what I think?" She never waited for an answer when she asked that. If she ever had, I might have occasionally told her no, I don’t care what you think. It isn’t any of your business. But she didn’t pause a heartbeat before continuing. "I think you want him to call. All you have to do is pick up the phone and tell him you don’t want to talk to him, but no – you sit here and listen to him pleading for you to call. You better be careful. He won’t be calling forever. There’s a lot of other girls out there just waiting for a good man." It must have escaped her notice, but I didn’t remember hearing him say please, thank you, I’m sorry or I love you. I didn’t see how she could call that abrupt message on the answering machine pleading. Mentally I was packing my bags although I had no other place to go. A week ago Aspire sounded better to me than hiding out in my apartment for three months until school started again. Now I was having second thoughts. Still, the thought of going back and bumping into him at one of our old haunts or finding new places where we’d never been together and which I probably wouldn’t like anyhow wasn’t appealing. I left because I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist it if he called and asked to be forgiven. I wanted to be far enough away I couldn’t be impulsive. I needed time to come to a decision about this. To come to my own decision. |