Page 13 of Love Me Carefully
“You know I like to have more than enough,” Rosie chuckled. She filled a mug with hot coffee from the kettle and placed it in front of him.
“Boy, it’s good to be home.” Terrell stretched his legs and reared back in the chair, which he knew had to be about twenty years old. The design was so seventies, he noted, high metal backs on teal and white leatherette seats. The Formica tabletop matched the chairs, with a swirling teal design on a backdrop of white, accented with specks of glitter.
“Yeah, I miss seeing you sittin’ there watching me cook. You used to do your homework right there in that very chair every night while I fixed your dinner.” Rosie remembered it as if it were yesterday.
“And every time I tried to sneak a cookie when your back was turned, you’d scold me something terrible,” he grinned. “Never did figure out how you could see me with your back turned.” Taking a quick sip of the hot coffee, he closed his eyes to the memory.
“Mama’s got eyes in the back of her head, I told you.” Rosie moved the large strainer filled with potatoes over to the table, then went to the refrigerator to retrieve the mayonnaise, relish and eggs she’d boiled earlier. Coming back to the table, she sat across from her son.
“So tell me what’s been going on with you.” Opening the jars, she scooped one ingredient after another into the bottom of an empty pan.
“Not as much as what’s been going on with you,” he quipped.
“Probably not, but I asked you first,” she responded with definitive authority.
Agreeing with a shrug, Terrell figured he’d go first, but he had questions for his mother, and he planned to ask them. “I just broke up with my girlfriend.”
“Really? What happened?” She remembered the woman who’d answered his phone and the tension she’d sensed that day.
Expelling a deep breath, Terrell propped his elbows up on the table and slid his glasses further up on his nose. He didn’t want to talk about his problems; well, he did, but not just yet. He wanted to hear about her first, about the man in her life. But she was still the mother, so he obeyed her request. “I don’t know. I guess I was good enough to spend my money on her, let her live in my house for free and pay most of her bills, but I wasn’t good enough to be loyal to or honest with.” He sighed. “She was cheating. Said I wasn’t paying enough attention to her. I wasn’t giving her what she really needed.” Letting his palms rest flat on the table, he figured that summed up his relationship with Tanya pretty accurately.
“Well, were you?” Rosie poured the potatoes into the pan and began to stir. “Giving her what she needed, I mean?”
“I gave her everything. I paid all her bills, I gave her money to buy clothes, she didn’t even really have to work. I took good care of her.” He shrugged. “What else could she have possibly wanted?”
Rosie shook her head, stared at him in disbelief. “Son, please tell me you aren’t shallow enough to think that material things are enough to keep a woman satisfied. Not a good woman, anyway.”
“What?” Terrell looked at his mother in question. “I was showing her that I could take care of her, that she would never have to worry about things like that because I would handle it all. That’s what a man’s supposed to do, right?”
Rosie sucked her teeth while stirring the potato salad. “Yes, a man’s supposed to take care of his woman, but that doesn’t only mean seeing to her every material need. Women have emotional needs, Terrell, and if you were so busy working and paying all the bills, then you probably were too busy to see hers.”
“So she decided to cheat on me, and I should accept that as my fault?” He looked incredulous at that notion.
Rosie rolled her eyes. “Now, I’m definitely not saying that. She should’ve tried talking to you first. Cheating was wrong, and it sounds like both of you needed to do a little growing up.” Rosie paused, thought a moment. “But you know, this might be a good sign. Maybe she wasn’t the right woman for you. Maybe the right woman is just waiting around the corner for you to sweep her off her feet.”
Terrell smirked. “Yeah, right. I’m beginning to doubt that.”
“What are you talking about? You’re a good-looking man, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders and just as soon as you learn that life isn’t all about accomplishments, you’ll be a good catch for any woman. Any real woman, mind you.”
He grinned into his coffee cup before taking a sip. “You’re biased.”
“I’m still a woman, and I got good eyes. You look fine, and you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. I see them girls down at the shop running after every flashy car and good dresser they see. And then when I leave the shop, I see those same flashy cars and good dressers running after every woman they see. So sometimes you gotta re-evaluate what it is you want in a mate.” Rosie stood and went to the cabinet to grab the big container of salt, the pepper and a bottle of celery seed. Returning to the table she shook some of each into the pan and began stirring the salad again.
“Is that what you did? Re-evaluate what you wanted in a mate?”
Rosie stopped to look at her son. So much like his daddy, staring at her with those pensive dark eyes, barely holding on to his anger. “I haven’t had a mate in a long time, Terrell,” she told him.
“I know. That’s what amazes me most about this sudden jump to matrimony. You never seemed to care that you didn’t have a man before. What changed?”
“When your daddy died, I was so devastated I thought I would die right along with him. But I had you to take care of. So I dedicated myself to doing just that, taking care of you. I didn’t have time to sit still long enough to figure out what I needed. But when you went away to school I was here, in this house, alone. I went to work and I came home and that’s it. I didn’t have a lot of friends to go out with ’cause they were all married and had their own lives to live.” Sprinkling more salt and pepper into the pan, she spared her son a glance before she continued. “I figured I’d better make a life of my own before I got too old to enjoy it. So I took those classes at the beauty school and I went to work at the shop. All those young people and energy got me going again. Those girls down there became my friends, well, more like my daughters, but it felt good all the same. Then when Donald asked me out, I didn’t see anything wrong with it, he was nice enough. But slowly things began to change, and I found myself really wanting to be with him.”
“And now you find yourself really wanting to marry him?” Terrell watched his mother’s big arms working the mixture together, knowing exactly how the finished product would taste. He had to admit his mother sounded pretty damn happy. Which made his position in this matter even more disconcerting.
“Now I find myself in love with a good man and tired of being alone,” she said simply.
“What about Daddy?” Pushing his glasses up on his nose, he sat back in the chair and waited for her reply.
“Terrell, your daddy’s been dead and gone a long time now.” Her heart ached for the little boy that used to sit in his room and cry because all the other boys on the block had their fathers and he didn’t. But he was a grown man now, and she couldn’t hold him in her arms and tell him that things would be all right. She could, but she doubted that would make him feel any better.
