The Sixth Installment of Boardinghouse Reach

(with a recipe and a new poem at the end)

The front seat of a truck, while good for side-by-side driving, is a cramped staging ground for really energetic kissing. As I removed one of my knees from between the gearshift and Colby’s thigh, I told him I thought we should wait before going further—that I wanted our relationship to be special. I wanted it to go right.

The thought had come to me from my sister Dori, actually, who was at that time dating a man but refusing to sleep with him. I found her self-control both exotic and admirable.

Colby didn’t have any problem with the idea of postponing sex—whatever I wanted was okay with him. We kissed some more. Then again, Colby said in a husky voice, there was the Mac truck theory of romantic encounters: you never knew when one of them might be barreling down the highway toward you.

As heated up as I was, I didn’t need much convincing. It was enough for me that Colby was letting me be the one to make the decision (which was finally no more than my whispering the words “Mac truck” in his ear). We drove home to my house and made love, on and off, all night long.

***

I’d planned a dinner party in Fernando and Gloria’s honor that would include professional entertainment by Jeffrey, the acoustic guitarist with whom I’d exchanged contact info at yet another coffeehouse in Berkeley a few weeks before. My invitation had gone out before I’d slept with Colby; but I didn’t see that any sort of cancellation was called for. This would be a test of my constellation theory: two men who were interested in me would be present. I was hoping that I could carry it off without coming across as a bitch or hurting anyone’s feelings.

I wore a very short red dress for the occasion and high-heeled black patent leather shoes.

Somewhat to my amusement and everyone else’s, Colby chose that night to introduce me to Enzo, the six-year-old son of his former girlfriend, Sue Ellen. Colby had come into this child’s life when Enzo was two, lived for two years with Sue Ellen (who had part-time custody of Enzo) and promised both mother and son that he would remain available for Enzo when his romance with Sue Ellen petered out to a friendly end. This was freely translated by Sue Ellen as pro bono babysitting.

Sue Ellen and Colby met in a bar when Colby still frequented bars. Sue Ellen tended bar for a living; had a lusty, loud voice; a big body and a checkered past. She was what people who wish to be kind call a party girl. She loved sex and both pursued and discussed it with an astonishing lack of reticence. Although she could drink most people under the table, she sometimes drank to excess, so that Colby’s responses to her babysitting calls—which occasionally involved keeping Enzo overnight—had a chivalrous aspect to them.

It took me a while to acknowledge, with encouragement from Colby, that even a cursory exploration of Sue Ellen’s white trash exterior revealed a keen if unschooled intelligence and, yes, a heart of gold—although I still think she exploited Colby in the babysitting department. When I first met her, all I could think about was how different the two of us were; it was hard for me to fathom how Colby could have gone from her to me. But I’ve come to think that the gulf was not all that great between us. We were both single mothers co-parenting with an older ex-husband. We both had a penchant for self-disclosure, a strong streak of exhibitionism, and rather a wild past. Our styles were different, that was all.

Colby loved children, and was brilliant with them; he was an absolute magnet for kids. Put him in a park and they all flocked around him: he was a veritable Pied Piper. But for complicated reasons—some of them having to do with his schizophrenic middle brother, some with his sense of his own freedom—Colby was determined never to produce a child of his own.

So it makes perfect sense that the quasi-paternal but mostly fun-and-games relationship he had with both Enzo and Kyle would appeal to him. He really adored them. But he never wanted to find himself in the position of being responsible for coming up with their orthodonture money or college tuition.

Anyway, I hadn’t even met Sue Ellen yet on the night Colby showed up with Enzo attached to his hand. Kyle was thrilled, of course: here was an older, more experienced, clearly more streetwise boy who came with a little string bag of fully armed and strictly verboten action heroes. The children immediately sequestered themselves in Kyle’s room. Colby promised to keep half an eye on them while I finished cooking. The other half, he promised, backing me up against the stove in a private moment, would be on my red dress.

The boys ate, by their own request, in Kyle’s room, which—despite Colby’s so-called supervision—was completely trashed in the space of an hour, with food and toys strewn everywhere. When we were done eating and Jeffrey was ready to play, I assembled everyone in the living room, where I’d laid a fire and lit candles.

Jeffrey really does play beautifully, and sings, too, and he did both these things obligingly, even though I think he was somewhat mystified by the Colby factor. Was this man with children climbing over him my babysitter or my boyfriend? I could see Jeffrey trying to size up the situation, testing out different theories.

Fernando and Gloria—and two more Brazilian friends of theirs who joined us—were ravished by Jeffrey’s particularly American brand of blues and gospel music and the easy grace with which he played. With not too much arm-twisting, I was coaxed into singing a few ballads and show tunes while Jeffrey played accompaniment and sang harmonies.

Kyle was lying on some pillows by the fire, nearly asleep, when Enzo announced that he wanted to sing. Expecting something from the primary school repertoire, we gave him the full dose of patronizing adult encouragement.

But Enzo had his own ample supply of self-confidence. Seating himself in the tallest rocking chair, he pointed at Jeffrey and snapped his fingers, indicating that he was ready for his musical introduction. Jeffrey, still smiling, hazarded a few noncommittal bars, than said in a stage whisper to Enzo, “What are you going to sing?” With an impatient shake of his head, Enzo pointed at Jeffrey again and said a few words in Italian, presumably the name of a song, which none of us, in our ignorance, recognized. Looking away from Jeffrey in disgust, Enzo began to sing an aria in Italian, a capella.

The musicality of the thing was questionable. Enzo’s voice, while shockingly passionate for a six-year-old, drifted in and out of tune, so that it was difficult for someone who didn’t know the words to recognize the song. I think it may have been from “I Pagliacci.” What was astonishing was the expertise with which Enzo, who apparently was singing phonetically, had memorized the words. He went on for what seemed to be an interval that was somehow outside of time. I sat there watching him, thinking that this child will grow up to be a very formidable and perhaps even a frightening adult someday. I had the sense—and I think all of us did, sitting there listening to Enzo sing—that we would never forget this experience. Many years later, when Enzo was famous in whatever way he had become famous, we would recall this evening, which would be etched in our memories down to the smallest detail—the crackling of the fire, the subtle creaking of Enzo’s rocking chair, and the fierce, almost accusing, look in his eyes as he sang.

Periodically Enzo would look at Jeffrey again in a pitying, withering sort of way, checking on whether this thick-headed accompanist was ready yet to do his job. But of course it was impossible to play accompaniment to Enzo’s tuneless aria without knowing the music. Jeffrey, with a look of astonished irony, leaned forward over his guitar, as if getting closer to Enzo might help the notes coalesce into something he could support with his guitar playing.  The illusion created was that Enzo was an enormous international opera star and Jeffrey, his accompanist for the evening—most likely a last-minute hire—was on the verge of getting sacked.

We were all rendered momentarily speechless by this performance. Following our applause, Enzo put his hands on his hips and looked at us darkly, each in turn. “Well?” he demanded.

“Well, what, Enzo?” said Colby.

“When are they going to give me my money?”

“There’s no money for this gig, Enzo.”  Colby gathered him in his arms, and the temperamental opera star became a big-earred six-year-old boy once again.

“Enzo used to stand up and sing when Sue Ellen and Pietro had the restaurant,” Colby explained to us. “People would stuff his pockets with ten-dollar bills.”

Enzo glared out accusingly at us from his perch on Colby’s lap. Though I hated to admit it, even to myself, I felt a little afraid of him.

***

Gloria and I had such fun together during her visit—shopping, going out to lunch, painting our toenails, talking about our lives. It was the sort of best-friends, dormitory experience I’d never had in college (I’d early on paired off with a graduate student and moved off campus with him). I was completely ignoring my work, or rather the need to rustle up some more work. I was in party mode, making up in a couple of weeks for the lacks in my adult life during the past two years. As the day of departure loomed closer, I worried that all the fun would soon end: that everything in my life (apart from Kyle) would become a dark struggle once more.

It was hard saying goodbye, but reassuring that at least I didn’t have to say goodbye to Colby. We’d all been so intermingled that I honestly didn’t know whether the fun and warmth of my relationship with Colby would go all to hell once Fernando and Gloria were gone.

But several days after their departure, I began to realize that the good feelings inside me were still there. It began to dawn on me what a stroke of luck or divine inspiration it was that day when I asked Colby whether I could look at his newspaper.

For the first time ever in my life, I was feeling comfortable in my own skin. Not because of Colby—not because of anybody. The happiness and wholeness were inside me, coursing through my bloodstream: they’d become part of who I was.

***

Jambalaya

The dish I served on the night of Enzo’s concert was jambalaya—which seems appropriate, as it’s a rather spicy but utterly delicious jumble of many different and disparate ingredients cooked together in one pot, each lending savor and excitement to the other. Cook and serve jambalaya if you have recently become separated from your spouse and are having trouble adjusting. You may come to think of yourself and others in entirely new ways.

Sauté one yellow onion in a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Add two minced cloves of garlic and one sliced green bell pepper. Continue stirring over low heat with about half a pound of andouille sausage (sliced). Then add about two cups of cooked chicken, one small can of cut-up tomatoes, about a teaspoonful of fresh thyme, about six turns of fresh ground pepper, half a teaspoon or more of chili powder, about two cups of chicken broth and one cup of brown rice. Bake in a heavy, covered casserole in a 350 oven until the rice is cooked and all the liquid is absorbed—about an hour and a half. During the final ten minutes, add half a pound or more of shrimp, peeled and deveined and as big as your budget will allow. Serve with a salad, high heels and, if possible, a very short and/or low-cut dress. (If you are a male of the species, rest assured that simply cooking this will make you infinitely seductive.)

Photo by Stéphane Juban on Unsplash

Here’s to turning broken bones into poems!

Adoption, Adaptation

My right hand must be mother to my left one now,
allowing it to try and fail as I struggle to recover
from my injury.

Sound advice for any parent:
Praise the effort, not the result.
Encourage, above all else, tenacity. 

Tenacity is what I need now, in my efforts to re-master
the simplest tasks of daily life
in the wake of my domestic disaster.

Still too weak and swollen to wield a knife and fork
with more than a toddler’s dexterity,
I need to tolerate my clumsiness and pain.

Able to pinch and hold the left-hand side
of a weightless pair of panties,
but incapable of helping my right hand pull them up.

Too enfeebled to make the nail-clippers snap shut,
I pin an emery board beneath my thigh and make my right-hand nails
take the active role and file themselves.

I’ve become multitudes in my solitude,
all housed in a single injured body, taking the roles
of playwright, director and stage manager, too,
gathering the props for my recovery:
Little sacks of grain, heated in the microwave.
More pillows than any one person should ever need.

I’m growing new neural pathways, these home-bound days,
as I figure out work-arounds, waiting for my bones to mend
and my ligaments to grow lithe and loose again.

Copyright © 2023 by Barbara Quick 

Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s hoping that we wise up and evolve faster than we’re spinning toward disaster!