The Lovely Chocolate Mob (13 page)

Miss Planter began to write on her notepad. She didn’t interrupt.

“I thought we made a good couple. We dated, and I wound up paying for all the dates since I had a part-time job in the engineering building, being a student janitor and sometimes teacher’s aide there. I swept classroom floors, mopped, emptied trash cans, and cleaned restrooms at night. This allowed me to keep my car filled with gasoline and to pay for dates. Anyway, things were going along smoothly with Helen and me, I thought. I became stuck on her, or I became enamored with her; she could have done much better than me, but I figured she liked me because I was older and nice to her, or at least I tried to be. Things were good.”

Miss Planter stopped writing. She looked up from her notepad. She was reading me.

“Anyway, after a few months of this, the next step, or so I thought, again, was marriage. Since graduation was coming up soon, and I was sure to get an engineering job, I thought it would be a good time for matrimony. It was time to pop the question.”

Miss Planter was drawn in now.

“I had saved and bought an engagement ring, the kind of thing girls liked, a nice-looking ring, too. It wasn’t very expensive, but was doable. It was just a temporary ring anyway, until it would be replaced by the real, wedding ring.”

Miss Planter was nodding.

“So I waited until the right time to spring it on her. I was really going to take her some place special, have a nice dinner in a classy joint, and slip her the ring. She’d say yes, and then we’d start making plans for our wedding and honeymoon and life. I’d let her make all the plans for the wedding, of course, because women like doing that kind of thing, and I’d just stay out of the way and watch and maybe help where I could.” I looked at Miss Planter here. “Kind of surprising that I at least knew that much about women at the time. Or I thought I did. Maybe I was doing too much thinking; what do you think?”

“So what happened? Miss Planter asked, anxious to hear more of the romance.

“I blew it,” I said. “I waited too long. Helen, as beautiful as she was, became a target for other fellows who were around. One fellow caught her eye, and in a matter of a few weeks, she dropped me like a hot potato.”

“Who was this fellow?”

“His name was Franklin Burke, a pre-med student. Rich, flashy, good-looking, dressed well, didn’t need to work while at school so he had all the time in the world to woo Helen. And a frat boy.”

“You didn’t belong to a fraternity?” asked Miss Planter.

“No, I didn’t. I was approached, but was too busy and the Greek stuff really didn’t appeal to me. Besides, I’m really a boring and routine kind of guy.”

“You keep saying that. What makes you think that?”

“Because I am!” I admitted, wondering how others didn’t see this. “I like the routine, and routines are boring for other people.”

“So, how did you take being dropped by Helen? How did you find out?”

“I found out about Helen’s interest in Franklin from other people. It’s kind of strange, but when other people see your girl with a different fellow on or around campus, it’s as though they have a moral obligation to tell you. So I was told that she’d been seen with another guy, while I was at work. I later asked her about it, and she said she liked Franklin and they were going to start dating, which left me out of the romantic equation.”

“How did you react to that?” asked Miss Planter, matter-of-factly. Maybe she already knew.

“Poorly.” I said. “I cried. I couldn’t stop crying. She meant more to me than she probably should have. Or else, it hurt me more than it probably should have. It hurt for a long time.”

“How long?”

I waited a moment. “What year is it?”

Miss Planter smiled. “I’m glad to see you can joke about this.”

“Well, “ I said. “After the initial shock, and after years of trying to deal with it, it’s better to joke than to cry about something you can’t do anything about.”

“What was it like for you, Mr. Owen?” asked Miss Planter. “The overall experience, I mean.”

“It’s like someone you loved died, only she’s not really dead, she’s up and about and running around with some other fellow, kissing and hugging some other guy when she used to …” I stopped here.

Miss Planter’s face became serious. “Is that why you never married?”

“I’m sure it was a factor.” I said. “It’s as though a switch was turned to “off,” if you can understand that.”

“I understand that. It’s not uncommon to see in this business.”

“Is that healthy, Miss Planter?”

“Dealing with it is healthy. People deal with emotional shock in different ways. There’s no one way.”

“In your opinion, do you think I’m healthy in this regard?”

“I don’t have an opinion here. I’m merely an observer.”

“So how nuts am I?” I asked her. Miss Planter smiled at this attempt at humor; I continued. “Do people get over this?”

“Like I said, different people do different things. I don’t think anybody ever ‘gets over’ a romance gone bad. I think they deal with it, but I don’t think it ever ends. It’s much like children of divorce; they deal with it, they have no choice, they have to deal with it. But many of them never really get over it.”

“Wow, so now I’m a child,” I said.

“I didn’t say… Mr. Owen!” she laughed. Her laughing made me smile.

Miss Planter continued, “I can tell you of one case I had long ago. A girl, or a grown woman, I should say, whose parents had divorced some 30 years prior was still affected by it. When she visited her parents for holidays or special events, she had to go to one house and visit her dad and his second wife for awhile, and then she had to drive across town to visit her mother, who also remarried. She adjusted to it, she was used to it, but she still had to deal with it.

“So what you’re saying is, there’s no cure, Miss Planter.”

“What I’m saying is, you’ll learn how to deal with it, if you haven’t already done so.”

“So there’s hope.”

“There’s always hope, Mr. Owen.”

I suspected that Miss Planter had given me another insight into her life.

My quiet friend, David Boudreaux, was at home with his young wife, Mae Ling. They were watching a re-run of “The Andy Griffith Show,” with Mae Ling discovering the joys of American television, curled up next to David on the couch, with David reading a book, looking up every now and then. The show ended after awhile, and Mae Ling looked over at Dave and asked, “Where you go the other night?” David looked at his wife, a bit surprised. “I call apartment; you no answer,” she said.

“I was with an old friend,” said David, “someone you haven’t met yet; you should have called me on the cell phone. Remember me telling you about Randall Owen? We went to college together, along with Walter Dale.”

“Where you go?”

“I met Randall at Lucy’s Place, a Mom & Pop bar and grill in town. We talked about old times.”

“You talk about good old days, before you marry me?”

“Well, they were the old days, and sometimes they were good, but sometimes they weren’t so good.”

“Tell me what you mean.” Mae Ling understood and read well enough, but she still spoke English in a broken fashion.

“An old flame came back into Randall’s life, and it seemed to upset him a bit.”

David looked at Mae Ling, who didn’t quite get it.

“An old flame is an old girlfriend,” said David. “This girl attended college with us also.”

“Oh, you mean old,
old
days,” Mae Ling said, without catching the humor. David smiled. “Yes, I mean the old-old days, back when we were young, back when you were still a child.”

Mae Ling waited for a story in anticipation. She’d wanted to hear about this mysterious Randall Owen, the engineer who lived by himself. “Why you no see Randall Owen? He your friend, right?”

“Yes. He’s my friend. But he lives a different life than we do. I used to hang around him because we had something in common; we both were single and could share ideas; we knew people in common and thought the same in some ways. We both…” he stopped, then continued, “…but those days are long past, at least for me.” He hugged his Mae Ling. “You’ve made up for all my empty years.” Mae Ling smiled at this.

“Why Randall Owen no marry?” asked Mae Ling, echoing the question Randall’s church ladies wanted to know. “Don’t he want to be happy?”

David smiled. “I think Randall just wanted peace and quiet; that makes him happy. He once told me that if God had put Raquel Welch in front of him…”

“Who Raquel Welch?” Mae Ling enquired. “She go to school with you?”

David laughed at this. “No, Raquel Welch is a famous American movie star, and…”

Mae Ling was staring.

“She’s very beautiful, known for her beauty all through the land. American little boys loved her. So did American big boys.”

“Oh,” said Mae Ling. “Beautiful woman make good wife.”

David stifled another laugh. “She was beautiful and a rich and famous actress. She didn’t need Randall, or me, or anybody else to make her happy. But Randall told me once that if God set him down at a table, with Raquel Welch, at age 27, on the other side of the table, with an electronic button between the two of them, and said to him, ‘Randall, if you’d like to marry Raquel Welch, all you’d have to do is push that button.’ That’s all he’d have to do! No tricks, no dating, no wooing, no flowers, no candy… all he’d had to do was push the button… and Randall said he wondered if he would push it.”

“What you mean?” asked Mae Ling. “Why he no push button?”

“That’s just it, Mae Ling. Randall is turned off. He’s found he’s comfortable with the way his life is now. He’s seen his peers get married and the struggles they’ve gone through. Some marriages have folded, even with people we both thought had the best chances for success.”

“Why you country have so much divorce?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’ve had it too easy here. Maybe we work too hard to make and keep the things we’ve got, instead of focusing on one thing…”

Mae Ling looked into David’s eye.

“… the family.”

Mae Ling answered, “We no have much. We happy.”

David laughed at that. “I hope we do better one day, one day soon. I’d like to be able to give you more.”

“I have more here than in my country. Here I live like queen.”

This took a great deal off David’s mind. Being married to a contented woman, who happened to be good as well, gave him a sense of peace. One day, eventually, he’d earn more, he was sure of it. But not today.

“What you talk about?”

“With Randall?”

“Yes.”

“We talked about you! I told him all about you and your family and how you cook to make me food every day and make me happy every night.”

Mae Ling laughed at this. “No! No you not say.”

“I not say,” laughed David.

“What you say?”

“We talked about his old girlfriend, the girlfriend who has come back into his life.”

“Why she come back? She no married?”

“Yes, she’s married. She married a long, long time ago and has been gone for many years now. She’s raised a family; in fact, she’s still raising her family. Her husband has been giving her troubles at home.”

“He get drunk? He beat her up?” Mae Ling said. This must have been something quite common in her home country.

“No, he no beat her up. He have girlfriend.”

“Oh, he bad man.”

“Well, now, he may be a mixed-up man. He may be a confused man. He may be a little bad. All men are a little bad.”

“You not bad.”

“Yes, I’m bad, at times.”

“You not bad, today.” Mae Ling made a funny.

David chuckled at this. “I hope I’m not bad today. His girlfriend is very pretty.”

“His wife no pretty?”

David thought about this. “Yes, his wife is very pretty, too. She’s a few years older than the girlfriend, and the girlfriend has a lot of money.”

“But wife have children!”

“Yes, that’s true. Wife have children. Girlfriend have none, at least none that we know about.”

“Why wife want Randall? She go back to him now? Make him happy?”

“No, she just wanted to see him. She wanted to talk. She told him all her problems.”

“She should marry Randall, make him happy man, give him children.”

“She may be too old for children.”

“Why she bother Randall now?”

“She wants to keep her husband.”

“How Randall do that?”

“He’s an engineer; he can arrange things; he’ll fix it.”

“He kill husband’s girlfriend?”

David smiled to himself. “No, he no kill girlfriend. Kill girlfriend is bad. Is wrong.” David found himself speaking broken English a lot these days.

“He tell you this? What he want you to do? You kill girlfriend?” Mae Ling looked worried.

David reached out to calm Mae Ling. “No, I no kill girlfriend. That is wrong. God no like that.”

“Why he tell you this?” said Mae Ling, searching for motives.

“I think Randall was looking for someone to bounce ideas off of.” At seeing Mae Ling’s frown, he clarified, “I think he was looking for the right thing to do. He’s still looking.”

“What is right thing?”

“I don’t know what right thing is. I listened to him, mostly. I think he wants to do the proper thing, the appropriate thing. At least for now.”

“She want him fix things? Why he do that? Why he listen to her?”

“Because he loves her, Mae Ling. He still loves her, even in these bad new-new days.”

Mae Ling frowned. “He not sound very smart. You keep away from Randall Owen; you be like him. My husband smart.” This made David laugh.

“Randall is friend, Mae Ling. He located a paint job for me so we can have a little extra income. He may go overboard every now and then but basically he tries to do the right thing.”

“What overboard?”

“Randall … has a way of locking onto a problem, and not letting go of it until it’s fixed. That’s probably why he’s a good engineer; he stays with a design or problem until he finds a way to fix it. That’s why his employers like him so much. He has designed most of the underground water-drain systems in Lovely, and is known by most civil engineers in east Texas.”