Matecumbe (17 page)

“When I wake up with a hangover tomorrow morning,” Melissa added, “I may change my mind. But for now, I have to give Joe the benefit of the doubt. In my current situation, that translates into a donothing decision.

“Up to this point, Joe has done everything honest and up-front in our relationship. So, if I were to make a rash move now that shows I distrust him, or indicates that I’m some sort of a conniving broad, then it would be me, Melissa the Terrible, who wouldn’t be worthy of Joe ‘White Knight’ Carlton.”

Mary Ann experienced a great deal of happiness during the time period immediately following her engagement. For one thing, Paul seemed to spend much more time with her and the girls. He would visit almost every evening—a ritual that helped him learn the role of being a father. He assisted the girls with their homework, gave them advice whenever they asked for it, and even used his skill with a pair of scissors to trim their curls and bangs.

“Melissa is the only one who won’t let me cut her hair,” Paul told Mary Ann.

“That’s all right,” Mary Ann countered, consoling him. “I guess only her Mom is allowed to see her if she bleeds—not her stepfather-to-be.”

For Valentine’s Day, Paul gave Mary Ann yet another gift of jewelry—a pearl necklace. Its beauty added a luxurious touch to her clothing whenever she and Paul would go out to dinner or to a show.

“They’re freshwater pearls,” Mary Ann explained, showing them to her daughters. “That’s why they look like Rice Krispies.”

Mary Ann believed that her ever-glistening engagement ring was having a stoplight effect on unwanted suitors.

“At work, plenty of men, especially the guys in the plant, used to say hello to me,” Mary Ann recalled. “And when I’d be shopping for food or just walking around town, other men would occasionally try to strike up conversations.

“Not anymore. This big engagement ring probably scares them off. I’d always get annoyed when those guys with the dirty elbows and the bad breath would try to be friendly. The words they never said were spoken by their appearance and their facial expressions—dirt, lust, and dirty minds.

“It makes me happy that I don’t have to worry about guys coming on to me much anymore.”

Mary Ann’s tranquil existence, however, was disturbed one Friday afternoon in March when she was laid off from her full-time job at the power plant. Paul picked her up after work and was the first to hear the bad news.

“They say they don’t have enough work anymore for three secretaries,” she explained, trying to hold back her tears. “But I think they got rid of me because I’m always speaking my mind. Boss or no boss, I always let people know how I feel.

“I guess,” she added, reflectively, “that I’d be hell on the Senate floor— because I’m a good complainer. But it’s probably best I’m not in politics. Without a doubt, I’m one of those who would definitely get shot.

“I won’t miss the place, I’ll just miss working with the few good friends I made there. The long hours, the drafty building, and the low pay made it a not-so-pleasant place to work. Yet, my friends will always be my friends, and I’ll get together with them whenever I can.

“Do you realize,” Mary Ann asked Paul, changing the subject slightly, “that most of the waitresses in Pottstown get a salary of only one or two dollars an hour? They have to depend on tips. That’s not fair at all.”

Mary Ann’s tears were visible now, but she seemed determined not to let the layoff get the best of her. Paul was amazed at how Mary Ann, in the midst of a major lifetime disappointment, was able to look out the car window and point to a small storefront only a block or so from her apartment.

“That yarn store over there,” she noted. “That’s where I’m going to enroll in a class to learn how to do counted cross-stitch.”

“Whether you’re working at a job,” Paul added, “or you’re doing this cross-stitch, I’ll be around to help you. Don’t worry about the bills. I’ll pay them. Your role right now is to relax for a while and then look for work. Maybe that convenience store will be able to give you some part-time work again. But whatever you do, don’t take something ‘just because it’s a job.’ Keep looking. Stick it out until you find what you really like. We can afford to wait.”

“I remember the last time I lost a job,” Mary Ann continued, with quivers of a smile slowly replacing her tears. “Back then, whenever I’d cash my unemployment check and go to the supermarket, I’d wind up spending more than half of the money I had in the world on a week’s worth of food. We were poor then, too, and we had bad water in our apartment.

“So I had to borrow water from a neighbor for me and the girls. When you’re working long hours and you’re forced to carry heavy buckets of borrowed water, then that’s when you worry about whether you’re still sane and whether the world around you is still sane.”

“Forget all about the water,” Paul responded, in a positive tone. “As long as I can stay healthy, I’ll do my best to keep all of us in champagne.”

Melissa had every item in her house arranged and spruced perfectly for Joe’s visit.

For several days prior to President’s Day weekend, she attacked every chore—from cleaning the rooms to stocking up on all of Joe’s favorite foods.

Her house was spotless. In the bedroom, she had installed new curtains and matching pillowcases. The yellow on blue pastel designs, she thought, now gave the room an airy, warm, Florida look.

For the three nights of Joe’s proposed stay, she had purchased sufficient gourmet edibles that the two of them would never have to leave the house for dinner.

Her food-shopping spree included the purchase of gigantic sirloin steaks, a huge bag of frozen shrimp, and two cans of expensive backfin crabmeat. A third can she’d bought the week before provided a practice run when she had satisfactorily cooked a crab au gratin recipe—Joe’s favorite entrée. Coke had purred continuously throughout his pussycat sampling.

New clothing was another result of Melissa’s recent shopping. In addition to designer jeans, a pink sundress, and two new nighties—one in basic black and another in yellow—Melissa also picked up some men’s underwear for Joe at a center city department store.

She giggled after walking away from the sales counter, tucking into her bag a sexy, matched shirt-and-shorts ensemble in see-through mesh. The flesh-toned hue was certain to complement Joe’s suntan.

On Thursday, the day before Joe’s arrival, Melissa indulged herself in a haircut, facial, and new makeup treatment at Jeffrey’s Rittenhouse Square Beauty Salon.

“It seems to pick up my confidence whenever I get my hair done,” she told herself. “To me, a cut-wash-and-blow-dry is like a dose of the best vitamin supplements that money can buy. I don’t know why, but I feel better, and I can even think more clearly after a visit to Jeffrey’s.”

Melissa had considered, seriously, being completely nude when she opened her front door to greet Joe. After some thought, though, she decided against it, opting instead for wearing the new pink dress.

“But I won’t have any underwear on,” she smirked, privately. “Plus, for a sexy touch, I’ll paint my toenails hot pink and go barefoot.”

At about eight-thirty Friday night, Melissa peeked out through the living room curtains to see an airport limousine stop in the middle of her street, right on schedule.

She watched, crouched in hiding, as Joe paid the fare and then turned slowly to walk toward the house. Without waiting, Melissa opened the door and stood, smiling broadly, until he walked up the steps and put his arms around her. After several brief kisses, he picked up his suitcase and followed Melissa into the living room.

When they were both inside the house, they embraced again, alternately kissing on the lips and cheeks and finally holding hands while staring closely into each other’s eyes.

Melissa assumed that Joe’s next move would be directed toward her sundress. She expected him to undo the buttons in the back and slide the top part of it down through her arms and hands, letting it drop past her hips and onto the floor. But, instead of beginning such a bawdy attack on her body, he stepped back—and then he posed a question.

“How about a cup of coffee for a weary traveler?”

So, while Melissa puttered in the kitchen with cups and boiling water, Joe led the conversation with small talk about hot and sunny Islamorada weather, cold and damp Philadelphia weather, and the bumper-to-bumper non-Florida traffic he’d encountered during his ride to her house from Philadelphia International Airport.

Finally, when they were seated across from each other in the breakfast nook of Melissa’s small kitchen, Joe looked at her directly, eye-to-eye, and began to speak.

“Melissa, for weeks now I’ve been looking forward to this visit. I’ve daydreamed after coming through that front door of yours, lifting you into my arms, and carrying you up to your bedroom.”

Melissa smiled, sheepishly, because she, too, had shared that daydream. But, as she gazed quickly, back and forth, between Joe and her coffee cup, she decided not to interrupt, waiting instead for him to continue.

“I guess I could have stalled before starting this conversation—like waiting until after we had sex,” he commented, almost in a whisper. “Maybe I should have held off until we got our fill of each other’s bodies. But I have this burning feeling inside of me that says I have to tell you right away.

“What it comes down to,” Joe stuttered, “is . . . is that I’m having second thoughts about us getting married.”

By his hesitation, it was obvious to Melissa that Joe was experiencing difficulty in delivering this blockbuster of a message. Yet, he went on.

“And I want to share these second thoughts with you, Melissa, so that you can tell me either that I’m crazy, or that I should take the next plane back to Islamorada.”

“Come on, Joe, just tell me what your problems are,” Melissa answered, quickly, almost begging.

Then, sensing his disintegrating composure—how he was struggling with his words and fighting to keep his head upright—she reached over and clasped both his hands inside hers. Like a mother might say to a child, she implored of him, “Tell me, Joe, get it all out. I have a right to know.”

“To be perfectly honest, Melissa, things haven’t been going too well for me. And I’m not a very happy person.”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“Lately, I feel as though my life has been turned inside-out and upsidedown, what with the upcoming wedding and that elusive job I haven’t been able to find. Maybe I’m getting too old for all of this upheaval, this sudden change.”

“Are you saying, then, that your unhappiness is my fault?”

“Fault’s not the right word, Melissa. I love you—just the way you are. But I’ve been thinking that maybe I was never meant to be a married man.”

Although by this point in the conversation Melissa had caught the drift of what Joe was trying to say, and though he had said it all so gently, she was still wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the bottom-line meaning of his comments.

“I guess I’ve come to realize, Melissa, that I’ve turned the corner in my life. With all of the rejections I’ve gotten on those resumes I’ve sent out, I can no longer consider myself a young man who has promise. And since this potential for future success doesn’t seem to exist anymore, I feel like I’ve been severed from all of my dreams—and I guess, subconsciously, I’m blaming you, even though it’s not your fault that I feel this way.”

“So, if it’s not my fault, Joe, then why are you trying to cut me off from the rest of your life, if that’s what you’re really trying to say?”

“You don’t want to spend the next thirty or forty years living with a failure, and that’s what I am—one absolute, no questions about it, royal failure.”

“First of all, you’re not a failure,” Melissa insisted, her understanding manner now shifting toward anger. “Just because you haven’t gotten a job yet shouldn’t have anything to do with whether we love one another. And how do you get off telling me that I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life with you? I’ve already made that decision. I do want to spend the rest of my life with you. I do. I really do.”

“Look, Melissa, the job I haven’t been able to find is not just a job. It would be a major career move. And despite all my years of police experience, I’ve gotten a big zero of a response. The reason for this, without a doubt, is because of my age. Simply put, I’m just too old. All of the police departments today want younger men. This is definitely a disturbing situation. It’s not just something that we can ignore by sticking our heads in the sand. Instead, it’s what both you and I have to recognize as a significant, insurmountable problem. And, significant problems don’t go away with time.