The Heart of a Woman - Maya Angelou [55]
When I looked through the window and saw Abbey double-parking her Lincoln sedan, we left the restaurant. Abbey got out of the car and shook hands with my latest fiancé. They drove away and the rest of the afternoon passed like film in slow motion starring a stranger. I answered telephones, signed letters, spoke to volunteers, but my mind hovered somewhere between the Serengeti plains, Thomas's apartment in Brooklyn and the sweet scent of patchouli which rose each time Mr. Make shifted his heavy body.
Max and Mr. Make were talking and Abbey was preparing dinner when I arrived at the Columbus Avenue apartment. Abbey shouted a welcome from the kitchen and both men embraced me.
Make said proudly, “Ah, here is my beautiful wife.”
Max nodded. “Maya, you got yourself one this time. Yeah, you got yourself a man.”
I sat through dinner in a stupor. Max and Abbey's place was no more real than my office had been. A man I had met exactly one week earlier was grinning possessively at me across the table. Max, who had seen enough of life to be healthily suspicious, approved of the stranger. Later, when I helped Abbey dry the dishes, she said that she thought I was better suited to the unknown Make than to the known Thomas. And anyway, I was just wild enough to make it work.
Make slipped close to me over the ribbing of the corduroy couch.
“I am tired, and would like to rest. Max has said I might stretch out in that room.” I was supposed to agree. I did want to grab his hand and lug him to bed, but I said, “Mr. Make, I …”
“Please, we are going to be married, call me Vus.”
“Vus, I'm obliged to clear up the matter with Thomas.” Make leaned against the back of the sofa and kept quiet for a few minutes.
“Yes. I agree. But when you talk to him I want to be present. He might be difficult.”
“I'll speak to him alone tomorrow night. And then …”
“Shouldn't I come with you? It might be dangerous.”
I refused his offer. Talking with Thomas was my responsibility. My pompous idiocy had gotten me into the mess, and rash emotion was further complicating the jumble. And I felt a little excitement at the coming confrontation.
“Then I shall be the one to talk to Guy. I'm going to be his father and we must begin our relationship properly.”
Vus put me into a taxi heading for Brooklyn.
Guy had rocks in the jaws and flint in his eyes. He had called the office and had been told that I had left early. He went to the Killenses' and they had no news of my whereabouts. Thomas hadn't heard from me and Paule Marshall didn't know where I was. He couldn't find Abbey's number. He chided me. It wasn't fair to insist that he be considerate and phone home if I was going to treat him with casual indifference. It was nearly eleven o'clock.
Three men looked to me for proof of devotion.
My son expected warmth, food, housing, clothes and stability. He could be certain that no matter which way my fortune turned he would receive most of the things he desired. Stability, however, was not possible in my world; consequently it couldn't be possible in his. Too often I had had to decline unplayable hands dealt to me by a capricious life, and take fresh cards just to remain in the game. My son could rely on my love, but never expect our lives to be unchanging.
Thomas wanted equilibrium, also. He was looking for a nice wife, who was a good cook and was neither so pretty nor so ugly that she drew attention to herself. I tried his number again. I had to tell him that he hadn't yet found his mate. He didn't answer the ring.
Vus saw me as the flesh of his youthful dream. I would bring to him the vitality of jazz and the endurance of a people who had survived three hundred and fifty years of slavery. With me in his bed he would challenge the loneliness of exile. With my courage added to his own, he would succeed in bringing the ignominious white rule in South Africa to an end. If I didn't already have the qualities he needed, then I would just develop them. Infatuation made me believe in my ability to create myself into my lover's desire.