Excerpt - When You Dance With the Devil

Chapter one

            In the darkening mist of that cold December afternoon, Sara Jolene Tilman stared down at her mother, peacefully reposed amidst  red and yellow carnations—flowers suggestive of joy rather than sorrow—and whispered, “Yes, Mama.” She had avoided putting her mother away beneath a blanket of white flowers for, to her, white symbolized purity, and nothing—not even death—would lead her to link Emma Tilman with purity. To her mind, meanness was incompatible with purity, and meanness was the one word that, since her early childhood, she had always associated with her mother.

            “Yes, Mama,” she said, almost sneeringly, turned away dry-eyed and left Emma Tilman to the undertaker and grave tenders.

            Sara, do this and Sara, do that. Sara, bring me this. Pick up that. Sara, come here. Sara, go there. Commands that she would never here again, and that she would not miss.

            From the little she had seen of other children with their mothers–the little because Emma did not allow her to visit other children, kindness was the least she should have received from Emma Tilman. Kindness? She pulled cold air through her teeth. If Emma had ever smiled at her, Sara Jolene had not been looking. But Emma had been adept at mental torture. She didn’t engage in abuse, at least not the kind that bruised the skin; she used her tongue to inflict the punishment.

“You’re not worth the lard that goes into the biscuits you eat,” Emma would say when Sara Jolene asked her mother for shoes or other basic necessities. “You’re useless.” She would never forget the times when, in one of her frequent rages, Emma would scream at her. “Go hide your ugly face. I wish I had never seen your daddy. I couldn’t even abort you, hard as I tried.”  Maybe now, the hatred and resentment she felt for her mother would cease hammering at her head, like day-long migraines, and churning in her chest like acid reflux.

            Tears? She had no tears for Emma Tilman. For five long years, she had nursed and cared for her bed-ridden mother, and not one word of thanks, not one gesture of appreciation. But as she stumbled away from the grave, she dabbed at the liquid brine dripping from beneath her eyelids, blinding her as she walked. The tears that finally streamed from her eyes were tears not of mourning but of relief, and tears for the dark unknown that lay ahead of her.

            Sara Jolene was not afraid. The hard life she’d lived had inured her to anxiety about possible calamities. Before her mother’s seemingly interminable illness, she’d had for six terrible years the burden of caring for her stroke bound and bed-ridden maternal grandmother, a woman every bit as domineering, mean and lacking in feeling and warmth as Emma Tilman.

            She threaded her way past tombstones and crosses, over ground hardened by Hagerstown, Maryland’s icy winter, struggling with her shoulders hunched forward until she reached the black Cadillac where her mother’s pastor detained her.

            He grasped her upper arm. “I’m truly sorry, Sara Jolene. I know this has been difficult for you.”

            Sorry about what? Neither he nor his parishioners had done a thing to ease the burden she’d struggled under all those years. She looked over toward the small group of people walking down the hill and raised her hand in a weak wave at the seven individuals who had cared enough to tell her mother—a woman without friends—goodbye. “I’m no worse right now, Reverend Coles, than I ever was. This is just different.”

            “But you’re all alone now.”

            “Wasn’t I always alone?” She attempted to move on, but he detained her.

            “I know. You can make a fresh start now, if you will. Move to another town and do something with your life. If you don’t get out of that old house, you’ll waste away, a bitter woman like your mother and your grandmother.” She watched as he wrote a few lines on a card and handed it to her. “My sister has a place on the Atlantic Ocean not too far from Ocean City. You can make a living over there. Just tell her I sent you.”

            She looked at the card before slipping it into her pocketbook. “Thank you, sir. I may need it.”

            “Use it,” he called after her, “and be careful, now.”

            Careful, huh? He didn’t have to worry about that. From now on, she was looking after number one.

            She walked into the house, turned on the hall light and closed the door behind her. Maybe the preacher was right. She had no reason to remain in Hagerstown. When she hung up her coat, the cold seeped into her. She started to her room, shivering, to get a sweater and remembered that there was no one to tell her she couldn’t turn up the heat. As the room warmed, she walked through the house turning on all the lights, banishing what seemed to her like eons of darkness. Then she turned on the radio, unable to remember when she had last heard music in that house. Laughter poured out of her until, in tears, she collapsed into a dinning room chair.

            “Don’t you want to keep some souvenirs of your mother?” the real estate agent asked Sara Jolene three months later when she sold the house with everything in it except her clothes.

            “You’d be surprised at the souvenirs I have,” she said, ignoring his quizzical expression. “I wish I could give you the memories that go along with the house.”

            “Too bad. Where can I reach you if I have any problems?”

            She stared at him. “What kind of problems you expecting? We just closed the deal. I got my money and that’s all I want from you.” At his expression of surprise, she added. “And my house is all you’re getting from me.”

            “Why, Miss Tilman, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

            “Everybody knows I’m on my own for the first time, but maybe y’all don’t know that I’m not dancing to anybody’s tune but mine. When they buried mama, they threw dirt on the last person who’s going to exploit me. I’ve met all the conditions of sale. The house is broom clean. I had the chimneys swept, new locks put on the doors and the back steps repaired. So, mister, you don’t need to get in touch with me for a frigging thing. My business with you is finished.”

If he thought her fair game, she’d show him. She knew people believed her to be timid, even cowardly, but she wasn’t; she was Emma Tillman’s unwilling victim. Not even the local sheriff stood up to her mother, and Emma got off Scott free when, in anger, she’d dashed hot water on a neighbor, leaving the woman permanently scarred.

            The preacher’s car approached, and she was certain that he would go on wherever he started, but he parked in front of the house she’d just sold. She walked toward him.

            “I just closed the sale at the bank this morning. Your sister is expecting me tomorrow, sir.”

            “Yes. She called to tell me. I’m glad you decided to go there. I don’t think you’ll be sorry. God bless you.” His gaze roamed over her for a second, and then he ignited the engine and drove away. She wondered at his interest. He visited her mother only to bring communion once every three months, and hadn’t visited but once, for a short while, during her last days. Well, few people had seemed able to tolerate her mother’s company. And who could blame them? She quickened her steps and headed for the inn where she would spend the night and where she’d left her few belongings.

            Thirty-five years and not a thing to show for them. Well, that’s all in the past. Tomorrow, I’ll start finding out what life is really like.

#

            The following afternoon, Sara Jolene opened the back door of the taxi, went around to the trunk and unloaded her three suitcases and two shopping bags. Then, she went to the driver’s side of the taxi and gave the man sixteen dollars and eighty cents, the amount on the taxi meter.

            “Don’t you people tip?” he asked, his face red with anger and his blue eyes flashing with what she didn’t doubt was scorn.

            “We tip when you people get off your behinds and earn it,” she said, looking directly into his face, a face mottled with furor. “I‘m not paying you to sit on your behind while I lug these heavy suitcases from the trunk of your taxi. Being black doesn’t mean being stupid.” Lord, how good it felt to speak her mind. She was through with “yesing” people.

A tall, brown-skinned woman with large brown eyes, a pointed nose and pouting bottom lip, Sara Jolene wore arrogance easily, thought she wouldn’t have defined her attitude as such. Her good looks had never interested her; what effort she’d made on her own behalf had been directed toward the simple matter of existing. With her mama gone, she easily found avenues for her life-long resentment

            When the taxi driver drove off with a powerful burst of energy and speed, Sara Jolene had a felling of immense satisfaction because she had infuriated the man.  Looking up at the big white wooden structure, it’s green shutters gleaming as if they had all been painted that morning, and at the white rocking chairs scattered along the front porch beckoning like the “house by the side of the road,” a shiver or two shot through her body. Undaunted, she picked up the heaviest suitcase and started up the walk. The front door opened, and a stocky African-American man of about thirty rushed out to meet her.

            “Afternoon, ma’am. I’m Rodger. Miss Johnson is expecting you. I’ll get your things up to your room.”

            “Thank you, Rodger. You’d a thought that taxi driver would at least have taken my things out of the trunk for me.”

            “No, ma’am. I wouldn’t. They take your money, but they sure don’t do much for it. You go on in. I’ll look after this.”

            She wanted to ask Rodger who he was and what he did at Thank the Lord Boarding House, but the bite of her mother’s tongue had taught her that it was best not to ask questions.

A matronly woman about five feet, six inches tall and who bore no resemblance to the Reverend Philip Coles met her at the front door. “Welcome, Miss Tilman. I’m Fannie Johnson. Your room’s right at the top of the stairs, and it’s on the front. Course, if you want to face the bay, it’s fifty dollars more per month.”

            She imagined Fannie Johnson’s age to be somewhere between fifty and sixty although, her prudish appearance might have added more years that she had earned.

            Sara Jolene stared at the woman, wondering if she was going to like her. “I don’t have fifty dollars to throw away. I’ll take the front room.”

            “Come on. After I show you your room, I’ll get you a sandwich. You must be tired and hungry after your trip. I sure hope you’re not a vegetarian. And no smoking . If you do, you’ll be responsible for cleaning your own room and bath. No liquor in public rooms, other than wine with dinner at the table, if you want it, and no bad language. No men in your bedroom, but they can visit you in the lounge, and if you want to invite a guest for dinner, it’ll cost you ten dollars. Try to get along with the other residents. We’re a happy family. If you get sick, we’ll take good care of you. Breakfast at seven thirty, lunch at one, but let the cook know you’ll be taking it, and supper at seven. As of now, there are no roaches and no bedbugs in this house. I hope you didn’t bring any.”

            What a mouth! Sara Jolene looked hard at the woman, deciding whether to be insulted and tell her off or to bide her time and see whether she wanted to stay. She did neither. “Miss Johnson, I just buried my mother. For thirty-five years, I did as she commanded. When I left her grave, I vowed never to let anybody else treat me as if I’m a child.  I’d appreciate a sandwich and your apology. Thank you.”

            “No point in —“

            “I’m not unpacking till you apologize for that crack about the roaches and bed bugs.”       

            “Oh, all right. I’m a Christian woman, and I believe in peace. I apologize, and I’m glad to have you with us. Baked ham or turkey in your sandwich?”

            Sara Jolene could feel her bottom lip drop. The woman could switch gears like a race car driver. “Ham, please.”

            “It’ll be on the dinning room table in ten minutes.” She started from the room, turned, walked back to Sara Jolene and put an arm around her shoulder. “I’m sorry about your mother. May the Lord let her rest in peace.”

            Unaccustomed to such gestures, Sara Jolene flinched at the woman’s touch. “Not a chance,” she muttered, and Fannie’s eyebrows shot up.

Then, Fannie lifted her right shoulder in a long shrug. “Well…uh what do you want us to call you? We use first names. I’m Fannie.”

            “My name’s Sara Jolene, but I …uh…like to be called Jolene.” She hoped she never heard the name, Sara, again. “This is a huge house, Fannie. How many boarders live here?”

            “Ten with you, and I have one vacancy. When I’m full, there’re twelve of us living here.”

            “Twelve. I hope I don’t go out of my mind.”

            “You won’t. You’ll find them very friendly. The Lord put us all here together for a purpose. Just let him do his work, and you’ll be happy. “

            As she watched Fannie trip down the stairs, Jolene couldn’t help wondering if the Lord was doing his work all those years when first her grandmother and then her mother abused her continuously as if doing so was their right. She doubted it. What she didn’t doubt was that from then on, she was going to get some of her own, and if that meant stepping on a few innocent toes, so be it.

            She unpacked, shook out her clothes and put them away. With pale yellow walls, white curtains and bedspread and two comfortable over-stuffed chairs upholstered in pale yellow, the room appealed to Jolene, especially its cheerful and sunny appearance, a drastic change from the house in which she spent her first thirty-five years. When she went to wash her hands, she discovered that her bathroom was also yellow and white. She hurried down to the dinning room where the sandwich, a glass of iced tea and an apple rested in the middle of a place setting. She blinked back the tears. At last, somebody had done something for her.

            After she finished eating, Jolene took her soiled dishes to the kitchen, where she encountered a surprised cook. “You don’t have to bus your dishes, honey,” the woman said. “You start doing that, and Miss Fannie may decide she don’t need some of the help. My name is Marilyn, and I’m the chief cook.”

            “Uh, sorry. I’m Jolene. It may take me a while to figure out how things work around here.”

            Marilyn stuck her right hand on her enormous right hip. “Ain’t nothing to figure out. Just come to your meals on time, don’t smoke, stay sober and don’t take your man to your room. If you can remember that, you’ll be the apple of Miss Fannie’s eye.”

#

            With no chores to do for the first time in memory and no commands to follow, Jolene wandered into the lounge where an older man and two women sat watching television. She hadn’t ever watched an entire television show. She had rarely visited anyone, and Emma hadn’t seen the need for a television nor had Emma’s mother. Jolene sat in a chair some distance from the other boarders and watched. Fascinated.

            “Judge Mathis is just leading that woman on, letting her hang herself,” one woman said.

            “He sure is,” the old man said. “He’s laughing and joking, and she’s just digging her grave. But if you don’t know the difference between virtue and immorality, and if you’re so involved with yourself that you don’t care, you get what the judge is about to lay on that woman.”

            “Come on, Judd,” the woman replied, “it’s just a television show.”

            Judd leaned back in the rocker—the only one in the lounge and the seat that, by tacit consent belonged to him. “It may be a TV show, but that woman is being her real self, arrogant and self-absorbed. I’m glad she’s there and not here.”

            Jolene stood and headed for the door. “Is she the new one?” Jolene heard one of the women ask.

            “Looks like it. She sure could use a little manners. Walk in here and don’t say a word. Get up and leave just like she came. A dog would at least have wagged his tail.”

            Jolene realized they were talking about her, and wanted a place to hide. From the corner of her eye, she saw the old man and two women who she presumed to be the house gossips. The thin, pursed lips of one woman reminded her of her mama’s attitude toward the rest of the world. “I’m not going to like that one.” She said to herself. She dashed up to her room, closed the door and let it take her weight. What did they want from her? She didn’t know them.

By supper time, she had become well acquainted with the view from her window. The park that faced her, a wide open space with scattered trees, a pond, flowers, a narrow, river-like stream that was host to a small bridge. And she could see the edge of the bay. It was a place where a person could be free to embrace the world.

            “Don’t be so fanciful,” she admonished herself as twilight set in and, in the distance, she could see fireflies and hear croaking bullfrogs. “It looks good, but it may turn out to be like everything else: something to sap your will, eat up your energy and consume you. “I’m not getting attached to anybody or anything.”

            She dreaded supper for it meant meeting ten strangers, and after having seen three of them in the lounge, she’d as soon eat her food in her room. But that wasn’t an option, so she washed her face and hands, added a lip gloss, combed out her hair–mama had insisted that she braid it or wear it in at knot at the back of her head–and treaded down the stairs. The laughter and talking reached her before she got to the bottom step. After a deep breath, she laid her shoulders back and headed for the dinning room. At the door, she saw an empty seat at one table, judged that to be her only option and took it.

            Total quiet ensued, and she gazed at the empty plate before her, certain that all ten of the boarders were staring at her. But when Fannie finished saying grace, the chatter resumed.

            “That’s my biscuit, Miss,” a man beside her said. “Yours are over there on the left where your fork is.”

            Heat flushed her face and neck. “Sorry,” she murmured.

            “Oh, that’s all right. Where’re you from?”

            “Hagerstown.”

            “That’s a nice city. How long you staying.”

            “I don’t know.”

            “My name’s   Joe Tucker. What’s yours?”

            “Jolene,” she said, barely loud enough for him to hear it. Joe turned his attention to Judd Walker, who she’d seen in the lounge that afternoon. What kind of man slicked his hair with conkaline? Her mama would have dismissed as worthless any black man who straightened his hair. She glanced at Joe’s fingernails and wondered; they looked like the work of a manicurist. He was a big man, too, she mused, at least six feet four inches tall, and wearing a red corduroy shirt, at that. She shook her head from side to side. “Mama always said ‘it takes all kind,’ and maybe it does.” She concentrated on her plate.

            At least the food was tasty, Jolene thought and, even if it hadn’t been, at least she didn’t have to cook it. She focused on the food and didn’t allow her gaze to meet anyone else’s. As soon as she finished the strawberry shortcake, she left the table with the intention of escaping to her room. However, she remembered having seen newspapers in the lounge and went there to get one.

            “Where’re you going?” Fannie asked, effectively waylaying her. “We all sit here in the lounge after supper and have coffee or tea and watch the reality shows.”

            “Well…I’ve uh…had a long day and—“

            Fannie’s knotted right fist went to her hip. “Listen, Jolene, if you’re going to stay here with us, you must try to be friendlier. You walked in tonight and didn’t say hello or anything else, and then you walked out without saying excuse me, good night, cat, dog or pig. And Jolene, please don’t blot your lipstick with my napkins. It’s hard to get it out.”

            Jolene’s stomach began to churn the way it had when her mother berated her. She swallowed the liquid that accumulated in her mouth and reminded herself that Emma Tilman was gone.

            “If I’ve done something to offend you, Fannie, please find a better way to let me know.” She reached down, scooped up the newspaper and headed up the stairs. “Nobody is going to tongue lash me, and if Fannie tries it again, she’ll find out what it’s like.” She hadn’t remembered that the napkins were linen because her mama used paper napkins, and she’d wiped her mouth automatically. Embroiled in misery, Jolene sat on the edge of the bed, holding her belly with both hands and rocking herself. She didn’t remember having eaten in the company of that many people before. What was she supposed to do and say? It had required all the courage she could summon just to walk to that chair and sit down. She took out her tablet and made some notes. If I have to learn how other people live,” she said to herself, “I’d better start now.”

#

            Thousands of miles away in Geneva, Switzerland, Richard Peterson sat alone in his elegant wood-paneled office eating lunch at a mahogany desk that sprawled across more than one-quarter of his thirty-foot wide office. Alone and staring at the Mont Blanc, a rare picture-perfect vision on a brilliant sunny day. Alone in the flesh and alone in the spirit. Although born in Brooklyn near the bottom of the heap, by the age of forty-five, tall, handsome and polished, Richard had scaled the top. However, on the way to becoming an ambassador and, subsequently, Executive-Director of one of the largest and most prestigious non-governmental organizations, he ruthlessly trampled his competitors, ignored underlings who needed his help, and used women for his own ends without regard to their feelings or needs. He also became a snob, a trim, six-foot, four inch, good-looking and flawlessly dressed snob.

            Richard recognized the justice of his own tragedy: a powerful man with no interest in or will to use his power. He glanced at the copy of the New York Daily News that his secretary placed beside his luncheon tray and saw the notice of Estelle Mitchell’s marriage. The account merely confirmed what he had known for months: she was lost to him forever. He stopped eating, leaned back in his swivel desk chair, and made a pyramid of his fingers.

            Hadn’t he brought it on himself with his craftiness, his insistence on treating her as he had all other women, as a person undeserving of his integrity, a woman to be used? This, in spite of the fact that she was his equal in status and position. But Estelle Mitchell had not succumbed to his charm, nor was she bamboozled by his lovemaking, and it was she with whom he fell in love–and too late to correct his behavior. She wanted no part of him.

            “Come in.” He sat up straight, brushed his fingers through his semi-straight curls and angled his square-jawed face toward the door.

            “Mr. Pichat from France is here to see you sir. He has a two o’clock appointment.”

            He wiped his mouth with the white linen napkin, and gestured toward the tray. “Would you remove this, please?” What does Pichat want? I don’t remember.”

            Her eyebrows shot up in an expression of disbelief that he had witnessed often in recent weeks. “Sir, it’s about our contribution to the five-year plan.”

            “Yes, of course.”

            He didn’t see how he could continue the façade, the superficiality, the automatic grins and empty smiles, the shallow women. He no longer cared about the job. He dealt with important world problems that deserved more able attention than he or his cohorts was bringing to it. Oh, what the hell! It wasn’t working, and he wanted out. Maybe he would regret it, but he was tired of it all. And to think of the things he’d done in order to sit in that chair, eat at that desk and see the Mont Blanc from that window. He’d give anything if… He couldn’t tolerate the man he had become.

            He pasted a smile on his face and stood when Yves Pichat entered. “This is a pleasure, my friend,” he said. “Would you like coffee, a glass of chabli or something stronger?” More shamming. He’d done it son long and so well that he wasn’t sure who he was.

            Pichat took a seat. “Chabli would be fine. My wife wants to go to the Caribbean before it gets too warm, and you were ambassador to Jamaica. Where should she go and what should she take along?”

            Wasn’t it always the same? Important men in important jobs running errands for their wives when they should be working to relieve the world’s poor. He let a grin expose his white teeth. “How’s Michelle? I’ve got some fliers and brochures here that ought to do the trick.” He opened the bottom desk drawer, gave the man the material and prayed that he would be satisfied and leave.

            “I presume you’ve accepted the invitation to our official reception for the prime minister. If you’re not there, the single women will want Michelle’s head. Some of the married ones, too, I imagine.”

            Richard lifted his right shoulder and let it fall in a show of diffidence. “You give me too much credit, man.”

            Pichat left without mentioning the five-year plan or waiting for his Chablis. The man’s visit reminded Richard of reasons why he had begun to alter his way of life. Sick of its shallowness, he had begun to reject the high social life that he had once relished, indeed thrived on, to eat his lunch alone at his desk and to confine social interaction to what the job required. He stood at a precipice looking down at the great unknown, his life’s great divide into periods BE and AE, the era before Estelle rejected him and the period after she walked out of his life for good. A watershed, and he had to live with it. If he had known the price would be so high, would he have lived differently? He thought so.

            “What do you mean, you aren’t going to seek reelection?” The Executive-Director of a sister non-governmental organization asked Richard as they strolled along the banks of Lac Leman one March evening at sunset.”

            “Just that. I’ve had enough. I’m going back to the states.”

            “Hmm. Wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain Assistant S-G in New York, would it?”

            “Only indirectly. She’s in the past.”

            “Yes. I know.

            “Where’re you planning to settle?”

            “A small town somewhere, preferably near the ocean or, at least near a large lake or big river. I need to live near the water.”

            “I know just the place. It’s a small town in Maryland right on the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve vacationed there a couple to times, and when I retire I’m going to settle there.” He wrote something on a card and handed it to Richard. Don’t let the name fool you. It’s  a great place if you don’t want your own house or apartment.”

            “May be just what I’m looking for. Thanks, friend.”

#

            Lean, fit and self-confident, as usual, Richard stepped out of the taxi—a bedraggled vehicle that had seen better days—and looked up at the big white green-shuttered house before him. If he got back in that automobile and headed for the luxury he knew he’d find in Ocean City, he would defeat the purpose of his trip. He’d try it for a few days.

            “It’s a nice place, sir,” the driver, an aged and whiskered black man, assured him. “We all know Miss Fannie, a good God-fearing woman who’ll mother any human she comes across. She’ll take good care of you. If I had time, I’d go in and see if I could buy a few biscuits.”

            Richard counted out the fare and added a five dollar bill for a tip. “She’s a good cook?”

            “Somebody there is.” He tipped his old seaman’s cap. “Thank you kindly. If you need a ride, just ask Miss Fannie for Dan. She’ll call me.”

Richard put a bag under his right arm, picked up another one with his right hand, took a third one in his left hand and headed up the walk. Just before he reached the door, Fannie stepped out.

            “Glad you got here safe and sound, Mr. Peterson. I’m Fannie Johnson.” She reached for the bag in his left hand.”

            “Oh, I can manage this,” he said, startled that she would attempt to relieve him of his heavy load. The women to whom he had become accustomed wouldn’t consider relieving a man of a burden. “You just hold the door.”

            “I’ll show you your room. We can talk on the way up stairs.” She punched what proved to be an intercom button. “Rodger, would you please come and take Mr. Peterson’s bags up to his room.”

            He appreciated a business-like person, but the litany of regulations that rolled of the woman’s tongue made him nervous. “At least I’m allowed to have wine with my dinner,” he said, offering a mild protest.

            “It’s late for lunch, but I can get you a sandwich. Ham or turkey?”

            “If you have any warm biscuits, I’d like the ham.”

            “Be down stairs in fifteen minutes. Your food will be on the dinning room table. We use first names here. I’m Fannie. May we call you Richard?”

            Taken aback by her casual use of his first name, a frown clouded his face. “Uh, well…yes, of course.”

            She looked hard at him before adding “Been a long time since I had a full house.” With that she strode out of the room and swished down the stairs singing, “How Great Thou Art,” a religious song that he’d heard his mother sing at least a hundred times.

 He looked at his suitcases and remembered that for the last ten years, his butler had packed and unpacked his bags, hung his clothes and seen to his laundry and dry cleaning. With a quick shrug, he walked over to the window for a view of his surroundings and gasped. There before him lay the vast expanse of ocean, or maybe it was a bay, but beyond the shore, he could see nothing but water. His gaze took in the room, a neat and graciously furnished, though not luxurious, chamber. Beige and white. He liked that. After inspecting the bath room, he decided that if everything else suited him as well, he’d stay a while.

            Richard ambled down stairs and wondered around until he found the dinning room. He stood transfixed at the door, for seeing the twelve places set for a meal discombobulated him. He hadn’t counted on being a member of a community of strangers. His plan had been to stow himself away in a quiet place, write his memoirs and figure out what to do with the rest of his life, a life that didn’t include Estelle Mitchell.

            “Come on sit down before these biscuits get cold,” a plump and heavy-hipped black woman in a white dress and apron said to him. “You must be our new boarder. I’m Marilyn, and if you want to eat good, you got to treat me right.” She flashed him a smile. A flirtatious smile. The weapon of a woman who knew how to handle men. “What’s your name?”

            “Peterson.”

            She put her hands on her hips and looked at him from beneath lowered lashes. “That you first name?”

            As his gaze swept over her, he remembered that they didn’t know who he was or how he was accustomed to being treated. “My first name is Richard.”

            Her white teeth glistened, and the dimple in her left cheek winked at him. For a woman who had to be in her late fifties, this one was a piece of work. But she was also the kind of woman he’d played with in his philandering days, and before he realized what he was doing, his right arm went around her shoulder and the grin that had always accompanied his bursts of charisma captured his face.

            “I plan to eat well,” he said. “Very well.” What the hell am I doing encouraging this woman? This sort of thing is behind me. He pulled a curtain of solemnity over his face. “I’d better get to those biscuits while they’re still warm.”

            “Not to worry, honey. I can always heat ‘em up.” She left and returned with a glass of ice tea and a dish of raspberry cobbler. “Do you have any diet problems like no fat, no salt, vegetarian?” she asked.

            “Uh, no. I eat anything except rhubarb, chitterlings and brains.” He thanked her for the food and, after eating, looked at the two new keys Fannie gave him and struck out for the beach. He’d heard it said that a leopard didn’t change its spots but, by damn, his days of taking women for the sport of it were behind him.

            With his shoes in his hands, Richard stood on the sandy beach and stared out at the ocean. He couldn’t see anyone or anything but water. Shading his eyes from the sun’s rays, his thoughts went to Estelle and what he wouldn’t give to frolic there with her knowing that she was his. He shook himself out of it and headed back to the boarding house.

What did a man do with his spare time in Pike Hill? As he walked back to his new home, it occurred to him that he hadn’t seen a building more than three stories high, no public transportation and that there were very few moving automobiles. Well, he had wanted a change, and he had one. The problem was what he’d do with it.

Over the last ten years, he had dressed for dinner every evening, and fifty percent of the time he wore a tuxedo. He shook the sand out of his socks, threw them on the closet floor, washed up and looked through a suit case for something to put on. He settled on a blue dress shirt with the collar open and an oxford gray suit. He put a red tie in the pocket of his jacket in case he needed it, grabbed the second section of The Maryland Journal and walked down the stairs–he had always loved a winding stair case–to the dinning room. A peep from where he stood at the door assured him that he didn’t need the tie that, indeed, a pair of Wranglers would have been adequate. 

He looked around for a place to sit, saw an empty table for two in the corner and rushed to claim it. Rodger, the porter who carried his bags to his room, had become a waiter, and he nodded slightly to the man who greeted him as would an old friend.

“How far’d you go down the bay this afternoon.? I tried to ketch ya to tell you not to get your feet wet.  We got a lot of jelly fish right now, and I tell you those buggers can sting. Fore you know it, you’ll be hobbling back here with your feet feelin’ like they on fire. Cook’s got some mighty good shrimp soufflé to start, or would you rather have oyster chowder?”

“What? Does she serve things like that every evening?”

“Rodgers broad grin exposed his left, gold bicuspid. “If you like fish and seafood, the eatin’ here is real good. Soul food ain’t bad either. Marilyn’s a fine cook, and she’s got a real good helper.”

“I’ll take the chowder.” Rodger left, and Richard opened his newspaper, as he would have done if dinning alone in a restaurant.

            A brown skirt appeared beside the table, and he looked up into Fannie’s frowning face. “Richard, everybody’s looking at you. This isn’t a restaurant. We’re all family here, and we don’t read the paper during meals; we talk to each other. I’m gonna say grace, and then I’ll introduce you and my other new boarder. A glance around the room and his gazed caught the other uncomfortable person in the room.

 Fannie said the grace and added. “We have a full house now, thank the good Lord. I want you all to meet Jolene Tilman, who joined us yesterday. I neglected to  introduce her last night at supper, and I apologize. This gentleman is Richard Peterson. He came to us all the way from Europe. Switzerland, I believe. Welcome both of you. Now, let’s eat.”

            “No place left for me to sit but right here with you, Richard,” Fannie said, “so you can read your newspaper later upstairs when you don’t have anybody to talk to. These people may not have been to Europe and seen the world, but they’re good folks, and if you let yourself get to know ‘em, you’ll like ‘em and you may even learn something.”

            He had hoped not to have a dinner partner, but he suspected that he’d drawn the least disagreeable one. “Give me time to find my way here,” he said, trying to keep the harshness out of his tone. “I’m a careful man.”

            “Maybe. Just make sure you don’t look down on anybody. You can’t look at a person and tell what he’s like inside.”

            Marilyn appeared at the table, saving him the need for a response. “How’s your chowder, Richard?  You want some cornbread to go with it. My cornbread’s so good it walks all by itself.”

            “I’ll bet it does. The chowder is wonderful. I’ll take the cornbread next time since I’ve just about finished this.” He loved cornbread and he wanted it with the rest of his chowder, but he didn’t want Marilyn in his hair, and he could see that she was primed for it.

            When the cook left the table, he said to Fannie, seeking her estimation of  the woman, “She’s a nice person, very motherly.”

            Fannie’s laugh startled him. “Motherly? Marilyn? That woman doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body. Biggest hussy that ever walked. She’s tried every man in here, except Judd, and I can see that you’re next.”

            “Thanks for warning me.”

            “What you planning to do with your time? You can’t spend all of it on the beach, ‘less you want to look like a lobster. The school could use you. The library, too. You look like a person with a lot of good experience.”

            A person with good experience. What the hell! He had signed his letter to her with his title, Executive-Director Didn’t she know what that was, for heavens’ sake? “I’m hoping to find the peace and quiet I need in which to write my memoirs, and this seems like the perfect place.”

            She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and pulled air through her front teeth. “Humph. So you planning to spend your time on yourself and with yourself. That has never brought anybody anything. You get something when you give something. I don’t eat desert. Enjoy yours.

She left the table, but her words stayed with him. For as long as he could remember, he had focused on himself, what he wanted, and how he’d get it. But when he finally reached the pinnacle, his trophy ran like water through his fingers, and only then had he realized what was really important to him. Too late. Much too late.

Encumbered by the weight of his past indiscretions, he climbed the stairs as if he had gained a ton since ambling down those same steps an hour earlier. He took out his cell phone and placed it on his night table. If he could only talk with her just once! He’d promised himself that he would never do it, but he opened the cell phone to call her and then slumped on the bed. It didn’t work in that remote area. Thank God. He’d almost done the unpardonable, and he prayed he would never again be tempted.

#

Jolene could hardly hear her own voice when she slipped into her seat at supper that evening and said.  said, “hi,” hoping that Joe and the woman on the other side of her whose name she didn’t know would hear her. Neither responded, but she’d done her duty, and she contented herself with that fact. Still, with everyone around her telling tales in a jocular manner, she couldn’t help feeling excluded. Alone. At least when mama’s voice had sounded from the rafters, it was meant for her to hear and respond to. A woman across the table reached for the salt, and Jolene hastened to get it and hand it to her, and when she saw that only three squares of cornbread were left on the plate, she passed the plate to her neighbors hoping that they would respond in some way.

“I already had my share,” Joe said. “Take one for yourself, or maybe Louvenia over there wants one.”

            “Sure is good,” Louvenia said. “You know I cooked for years, Joe, but I can’t say mine were any better than these. Marilyn knows what she’s doing.”

            “She does that,” he replied.

Jolene had a sense of defeat. Her gesture had sparked conversation, but it wasn’t directed to her. Maybe she should take a course of some kind. As soon as she ate the last crumb of her apple pie, she said, “Excuse me,” and got up the table. She wasn’t sure that Joe or Louvenia heard her.

 “What a waste!” Jolene thought she heard Louvenia say. “Youth is wasted on women like that one.”

           

As she started to walk away, Joe said, “Look, babe, when we leave the table, we push in our chair, so whoever passes won’t stumble over it.”

            Mortified at having received another reprimand and angry at herself for provoking it, she stared down at him. “No…you look.” She sucked in her breath. “Sorry. I didn’t know it was a custom. Good night.”

            “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you. That’s just the way I talk. Don’t let nothing get to ya, babe. Life’s too short. Good night.”

            “Good night,” she repeated, loud enough for all those present to hear her. She got upstairs to her room as quickly as she could and stood for a long time at the window, staring out at the eerie shadows in the park that faced her. The next morning after breakfast, she received another surprise when Fannie asked whether she was planning to look for a job and whether she wanted any help.

            “You ought to look for a church, too. I’ll be glad to take you along to mine. People there will be glad to receive you. You and Richard need to learn how to get along with people. They’re not gonna eat you. It’s people who make your life good. I know just the person for you to meet.”

            “Who?” Maybe she would make a friend, someone who cared about her.

            Fannie looked down at the floor. “How old are you?”

            “Thirty-five. Why?”