Can't Get Enough of Your Love (12 page)

I now have new definitions for “trifling” and “nastiest.”

“I would never do that, Izzie. I'm not ready to have any children, and none of my men seems ready, either.”

“Well, just mention that your friend is late to each of them to see which one is still your friend.”

“I don't want to test them.”

“Come on. I know you like drama.”

She's right about that. “I could, I guess.”

“It's kind of a relationship check,” she says. “My money is on Juan Carlos.”

“Why?”

“He's Catholic, right?”

“So?”

“So he'll do right by you—family honor, religion, and all that.”

Izzie lives in a world filled with stereotypes.

She looks away. “What about Karl?”

This is getting depressing. “I don't know.” There's so much I don't know about that man, and I've been seeing him the longest. “But Roger might.”

“Really?”

Izzie has been fundamentally opposed to my seeing Roger since the very beginning, and her only reason is that he's white and therefore wrong for me.

“Really. He's a good man, Izzie.”

“So you keep saying. Would he marry you?”

The “M-word” always makes me shudder. “They would all marry me if I gave them the chance.” But I am not giving them the chance. Not until I'm … fifty.
Wait. Oprah's over fifty now, and she's still not married. Can I wait that long?

“They would all marry you?”

“Yes.” I think.

“So you think. But think of what might happen. If you married Juan Carlos, he would convert you into a Catholic, and you'd be spitting out a child a year until you're forty.”

“Right.” Ouch. A child a year? That would make … fifteen kids? Hmm. I'd have a football team and four subs … and yards and yards of stretch marks.

“If you married Karl, he would disappear on you just as he does now.”

I have to stick up for Karl. “Or, a baby would make him stay put.”

“You really think that?”

No, not really. “You never know.”

“And if you married the white boy, he would come home every night smelling like death. Just think, Lana. He would come through the door and say, ‘Hi, honey, I buried five people today, what's for dinner?' every single night.”

I blink. I have hooked up with three men who are not exactly marriage material. “None of that matters, Izzie, because I am not getting married.” And I hope none of my men ever asks me to marry him. I have no idea what I might say. “Did you ever think that maybe I hooked up with these three guys because I
knew
they'd never pop the question?”

“Which would force you to make a decision, right?” She stood. “I predict that one day either you will have to make a choice or …”

“Or what?”

“Or the choice will be made for you, and it may not be the choice you want.”

I drop off the couch to my knees. “Oh, great psychic Isabel, your words are so wise and could apply to anyone at any time anywhere.” I stand. “You're a walking horoscope.”

She checks her little fashion watch, which naturally matches her shoes. “Speaking of walking, I have to go.”

“You're going walking now?”

“Yes. This is the Sunday the church goes out and witnesses to the heathen in the community.”

I laugh. “You're such a hypocrite.”

She smiles. “Maybe, but I'm not the one with three men in my bed.”

“I don't have a drawer full of men like you do, Izzie.”

“At least my men are always at home.” She smiles. “Hmm. You're a heathen. Maybe I should witness to you, too.”

“Before or after you ask your nasty questions?”

She frowns. “Oh, definitely before.” She smiles. “Same time next week?”

I roll my eyes. “If you insist. Hey, are you coming to my game Saturday?”

“Will any of your men be there? You know I've been dying to meet Karl.”

Izzie sees only one color of man in her world. “Roger never misses a game.”

She shakes her head. “I'll probably be busy, then.”

She pisses me off so much sometimes! “Why do you hate Roger so much? You haven't even met him.”

She moves to the doorway. “I don't have to meet the white boy to know him. If he's a white boy who grew
up in Roanoke, you're only an experiment.” She stops in the doorway and turns. “Take care of yourself, Lana. Wait. That's right. You don't have to take care of yourself anymore, do you?”

I smile. “Nope.”

Izzie sighs. “Some women have all the luck.” I nod. “Ain't that the truth.”

I
feel lucky most days.

I get up with the ducks and drink a mug of instant hot coffee mixed with instant hot chocolate while Sheila starts “percolating.” The walk out to the barn is cold, the ground usually covered with dew, but it wakes me up just fine, especially since I'm naked under my robe. In the shower, I flash the pond with my girls, and later I walk through my house
au naturel
. It is so cool to be able to walk around your own house naked, and when it warms up more, I plan to streak to the barn and back, girls a-flopping. Back inside the kitchen, I sometimes watch my footprints evaporate on the linoleum while I drink my “mocha coffee.”

It's something we country girls do for fun when we're naked at six in the morning.

After my morning ritual, I dress in my standard teacher's-aide outfit—sweat suit, T-shirt, footie socks, and sneakers. Then it's off to work, from country roads to Route 460, from hilly Bedford County to asphalt-flat City of Roanoke. I'm usually at the Roanoke County
line by the time Mama calls me, and she has been calling every weekday morning since I moved away.

My cell phone rings. “Hello, Mama.”

“This is your wake-up call.”

“I've been up for over an hour, Mama. I'm almost to work now.”

“I'm just making sure. How are things going?”

“Fine.” The same answer I gave her yesterday and the day before and the day before….

In a few seconds, she'll ask if she can come for a visit.

“I was thinking, Erlana, that maybe we could get together this weekend.”

I smile. “Yeah, I have lots of laundry to do.”

“No, I meant that I would come out there. I've been dying to give you this housewarming gift and—”

“Like I told you, Mama,” I interrupt, “you can always drop it by the main office at the school.”

“I'd rather give it to you in person.”

“Mama, I have practice all week, we have a game this Saturday, I have plans Saturday night”—though I'm not sure with whom—”and Izzie's coming over Sunday.” How did I get so busy?

“It doesn't have to be for long. I could make us some liver and onions, and bring it—”

“Mama,” I interrupt again, “you know I hate liver and onions.”

A pause. “Okay, then, you tell
me
when I can visit.”

“I'll let you know. Have a good day, Mama.”

And this has happened just about every morning since I moved away. Mama must be going through withdrawal or something.

I work at the construction site known as Patrick Henry High School. We are the only school system in
the state that is building a new school on the same site as the old school. Yeah, it's dusty, loud, and muddy just about every day. Walking from staff parking past the construction workers, many of them Hispanic, is kind of fun. I sometimes get a whistle or two. And once I get past the main-office trailer, I usually get hit-on by freshmen no taller than my hip. “Hey, how ya doin'?” they say, and “Lookin' good, yo.” At first, it boosted my self-esteem. Now that April is here and their little hormones are in high gear, it's just plain annoying.

Most of my “job” involves pushing Bobby Swisher in his wheelchair around the trailer park and the parts of campus that are still standing. Oh, they don't call them “trailers.” They call them “learning cottages.” But everyone here knows they're triple-wide trailers with low ceilings, leaky windows, and ants coming up through the floor. At least they have actual watercoolers, heat, and air-conditioning.

But let me tell you about Bobby whom I've nicknamed “Bobby Fischer” because he can whip my tail in chess. He is the sweetest child in the world. Unfortunately, he has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which is so sad. I can't imagine being Bobby, who suddenly couldn't walk, get off the floor, or climb stairs when he was only four. And instead of getting stronger as they got larger, his calves, buttocks, and thighs grew weaker. Bobby has a brilliant mind, but he has been imprisoned in his own body for ten years. Bobby is mainstreamed in his core subjects—math, science, English, and history—and I either take notes for him or add to the notes his teachers print out for him. They say he used to be able to write, draw, and paint, but now he can barely move the chess pieces around, which is fine by me. It takes him at least a minute to
move a piece, and that gives me more time to make the wrong move. I will beat him one day.

Nah. I don't have the patience for chess, though Bobby is a great teacher. He sits across from me, watching my fingers touch the pieces, humming when I try to move the wrong piece, nodding as best he can when I choose the right piece.

Bobby hums a
lot
.

I need to learn how to play better so he'll keep moving his head, because one day he will stop moving almost entirely and die from heart failure or respiratory complications.

I don't want to think about it.

In the afternoon while Bobby is at physical therapy or in the resource room doing his homework or taking a test or quiz orally—and he
always
knows the answers—I make copies.
Lots
of copies, usually one copy at a time, praying over the machine the entire time, since it seems to jam up on me whenever I'm in a hurry. And since I'm in a hurry most days, the machine jams on me most days. I copy mainly legal forms dealing with special-services compliance with Public Law 94-142 or the stacks and stacks of IEPs (Individual Education Programs) for our kids, but occasionally I have to make one or two copies of every page of a fifty-page workbook. That gets old quickly. I get plenty of evil looks from “real” teachers waiting to copy, and I even get some flirty looks, mainly from coaches who think I should get my education degree and teach gym. “When are you going to join the football staff?” they ask.

I will never be a teacher. That's not going to happen, and not because I don't think I could do it. It's because of Bobby. He's only a freshman, and I want to be there for him until he graduates … or until he dies. He's already
lived three years longer than the doctors said he would thanks to a rigidly monitored diet, physical therapy, and a whole bunch of meds he takes daily.

As for coaching, well, it would be so cool to coach the defensive line for the boys' team. They need all the help they can get! I might even be the first woman in the state to do it. We did have an interpreter join the football staff to interpret for a hearing-impaired player, but she wasn't an official coach. I want to be the first!

But teaching gym or health class—no. I don't want to own the “lesbian” label kids apply to all unmarried, athletic women who teach gym. And I know I'd get bored with what they do for exercise now: ping-pong, basketball games that look more like soccer with everyone chasing the ball, and walks around a track while they gossip. I'd probably pull out the tackling dummies on the second day of school and rough them
^u
p.

And as for teaching health class, well, I might like to teach that. We have so many overweight kids here, and you really can't blame the school lunches. Those haven't changed—the kids have. They are so damn lazy! They're not-so-little couch spuds who probably chain themselves in front of the TV or a computer screen and use their fingers only to play games or surf the Internet after school. The school is even ordering wider-bottomed chairs for the new building because of the students' collective girth. It's such a shame that it's almost a disgrace. Young folks are not supposed to get their second chin before they hit puberty. If I taught health class, they would be getting a heavy dose of diet and exercise information.

And I think I'd actually like teaching sex education, and I wouldn't teach them the way I was taught, with
diagrams and charts and that stupid condom on the banana. I'd tell them the real deal, including lessons on foreplay, “play,” and “after-play.”

And I'd probably get my ass fired.

Today is a typical day, and it starts with picking up Bobby at the curb in front of the main office. His mama—who looks as if she could cry at all times—has a van with a chairlift, so Bobby rolls out in style, bundled up as if it's twenty below. Bobby can't even get the simplest cold without it threatening his life.

“Good morning, Miss Cole,” Bobby says with a smile, his long eyelashes fluttering onto his chubby cheeks.

I know he has a crush on me.

“How is Bobby Fischer this morning?” I say, and then I wink.

“Just fine, Miss Cole.”

He always blushes when I wink, and no, it isn't wrong to flirt with a dying child. I treat him like the man he'll never have the opportunity to be, and if he makes it to his junior year, I'm going to let this polite young man call me by my first name. I may even let him take me to the prom. For a Christmas present, I bought him a book on chess strategy, which I should have read myself. His mama told me that he already had the book, and I felt so dumb. “No,” she said. “It's his favorite book in the world. He reads it every night.”

It's so sad to think this, but Bobby may actually be in love with me. I intend to return that love as long as he's around.

I push Bobby through crowds of young kids (I know I have
shoes
older than most of them) to the elevator. Once inside with the doors shut, Bobby watches the number one change to number two.