Letting Loose Read online

  “Me? Nothing. I’ve gotta make up a pop quiz for Monday.”

  “You’re so mean.”

  “It’s the only way I’ll know they’re doing the reading assignment.”

  Whitney snorted. “You know they’re not doing the assignment.”

  I knew she was right but still…I didn’t mind ragging on my kids, but it bothered me when other people did.

  “Screw the quiz. Let’s go to Milky Way. It’s salsa night,” she said.

  “Salsa as in dip?”

  “No, Amelia, salsa as in dance.”

  I groaned. “I dunno, Whitney. What kind of people are gonna be there?”

  “What do you mean, what kind of people are gonna be there? You live with two stoner hippies and you’re worried about the crowd at the Milky Way?”

  “At least they’re familiar stoner hippies.”

  “Come on, let’s go out. You’ll probably meet a cute guy. Either way, it’s better than staying inside.”

  “Where’s Big D?”

  “Ugh. I think he’s starting to catch feelings. He asked me to go away with him for a weekend.”

  “Really? That was fast.”

  “I’m, like, a whole weekend? With you?”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Too smooth. Too clean-cut. Not spontaneous enough.”

  “Oh,” I said, “no edge.” That was the next requisite to breathing when it came to Whitney’s taste in men: lots of edge, meaning a bad boy.

  “Right. So, you coming or what? I can almost hear the music; I gotta shake something tonight.”

  “Fine. Fine. I’m coming.”

  I couldn’t say no to her. Whitney and I were practically sisters. She’d spent her childhood being shuffled from foster home to foster home and had been through so much family psychodrama it was a miracle that she’d ended up so successful. She was a scrapper, unafraid of anything or anybody. I couldn’t imagine my life without her. I saw her living out all the things that I was afraid to do, and most times all I could do was shake my head in wonder. She was the big sister who I was always trying to keep up with. So I almost always found myself going along with her. Even now when I’d much rather stay in my warm room and reread Drew’s e-mail again and again. I wondered what the temperature was on Dominica. Probably a balmy eighty-five degrees, the moon was probably full, stars big in the sky, and waves lapping at the shore…

  Chapter 5

  A couple of hours later, I was in my Beetle, the gauge read thirty-two degrees; so much for the temporary warm-up. My tires swished over the slushy side streets that led to Whitney’s house.

  Whitney worked for Microsoft, but she hardly ever left her apartment. She telecommuted to Redmond, Washington, and traveled there a few times a year. Her life, when she was deeply involved in a project at work, was actually quite stable. It was when she was in love that things went haywire. I was praying that she would not meet anyone new tonight. There hadn’t been anyone to speak of for about a year and things had been relatively calm. Somehow, she’d vowed to be celibate for a year, and miraculously she’d almost pulled it off. Then that Duncan guy came along. But she’d been threatening lately to get back on the wagon, or was it off the wagon?

  She looked pretty as usual. She’d dyed her dreads a light, light brown, and against her caramel skin it added a touch of exoticism to her prettiness. Whitney, petite and slim, could eat like a linebacker and it never showed on her hips because she worked out like a freak. I’m talking two hours of hardcore cardio six days a week. She wore tight, tight jeans and a pretty pink camisole top with a black leather jacket. I wore my slimmest size 14 black pants and a black ruffly georgette top. I topped it off with a funky necklace I’d bought from Banana and my new chandelier earrings from Macy’s. I felt tall and glamazon-like in my favorite snow-proof three-inch heels.

  I actually felt cute tonight. Those pants actually felt comfortable, and my thighs were not screaming against the seams as they were when I first wore them. Maybe those spin classes—that I could never finish—were working after all.

  “Look at you, girl!” Whitney said, looking me up and down as I stood in the doorway of her Hyde Park house. “You losing weight?”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, I can definitely see the diff,” Whitney said.

  Well, if Whitney’s critical eye could see the diff, then there must be a diff. My mood soared.

  I looked at myself in Whitney’s mirror in her gigantic but spare living room. Yes, I did look a little bit smaller than, than, than, what? Than I’d felt since I don’t know when.

  “When you gonna get rid of that perm and go natural?” she asked, pulling at one of my shoulder-length locks.

  “Girl, my mother would kill me!”

  “You’re a grown woman, Amelia. Besides, isn’t her hair natural now?”

  “Yeah, but she said that look wouldn’t work on me because I don’t have fine features like her. You know, I took my daddy’s nose and some of his color….” I was mocking Whitney, but those were Grace Wilson’s words to me, verbatim.

  “See, that’s why I’m glad I don’t have a family. I don’t need anybody talking to me like that.”

  I shrugged. “Let’s go.”

  I played Amel Larrieux in the CD player and Whitney snorted. “Why do you listen to that neo-soul crap? Why don’t you just go all the way and listen to jazz?”

  “It’s the same thing; besides, I like to hear people singing.”

  “Amelia, it’s not the same thing. And Billie Holiday can sing better than any of those chicks out there today.”

  “Thanks, Whitney. If it weren’t for you I’d probably never have known that.”

  She rolled her eyes at me as we pulled into the dinky parking lot. The Milky Way was just a neighborhood hangout for the most part, nothing fancy. There was a pool table, billiards, a few other game kiosks off to the side, but on Saturdays those were mostly abandoned for the dance floor. I hadn’t danced in a long time and I was feeling the urge.

  Before we had even put away our coats, a tall, green-eyed guy with dark hair approached us. He looked Mediterranean. Well, Whitney did tend to date the rainbow. She gave him her killer smile. Here we go, I thought. If only he knew what he was in for, he’d run in the other direction. Of course, that was my envy talking.

  I ordered a Diet Coke from the bartender, who I could have sworn gave me a dirty look. Sheesh. Sorry I won’t be adding to your bottom line tonight, dude! I had gotten through half the tiny plastic cup of watered-down liquid when I felt a tap on my shoulder. He was a bit short—and old. He was also very Latin-looking, which meant that he would probably know what he was doing on the dance floor and I wouldn’t.

  Did I want to dance?

  Okay. Proceed at your own risk.

  The music was fast and it took me a few seconds to get on the beat. But this guy was good. He was leading and quite well at that. I just let go, and it felt so good. The room was getting hotter, but I was having so much fun. We laughed when one song ended and another came on and we didn’t want to stop. About an hour later, Whitney tapped me on the shoulder.

  “I’m leaving,” she mouthed over the loud music.

  NO! my mind screamed. Don’t leave with this guy. But he was standing there looking at me quite impatiently. He knew he was getting laid tonight and I’m sure he didn’t want to delay the action.

  I asked my dance partner to excuse me and I grabbed Whitney’s arm.

  “Are you sure?” I yelled into her ears.

  “Yeah, chill!” she yelled back. “I think I know him. He’s a doc student at MIT. From Tunisia.”

  As if that made everything okay. Oh, Whitney!!!

  But all I could do was wave as she walked her crazy self away with her Tunisian, who happened to look like a Greek god. I didn’t much feel like dancing anymore, but my dance partner was waiting for me as soon as I turned my attention back to the dance floor. I just couldn’t. Besides it was almost one A.M. I said good-bye to d
ancing guy without even asking his name and hightailed it out of there. I just hoped Whitney would be okay.

  I tried to be quiet as I entered the house, though I knew that James and Kelly would probably be up. I turned on the computer again. Amid all the fun I’d been having I couldn’t get the picture out of my head, and there it sat on my dresser. I’d left it on a MAC compact as I’d put on my makeup. No doubt he was a good-looking brother. While I’d danced with that nameless guy at Milky Way, I’d thought of some things to say. I remembered one thing that someone had sent me in an e-mail and I searched for it. Yes, it was about algorithms. Okay, that was a start. After four or five tries, I sent him this.

  Hi Drew. Greetings from 38 00N and 97 00W, at least the part where the temperature’s only slightly above freezing. It was nice to read your e-mail. I’d love to know more about you—and to tell you more about me. As you may already know, I teach English literature to unwilling students, but I mostly love what I do. I’m terrible at math, but I do know that the word “algorithm” comes from the name of a ninth-century Persian mathematician named Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi. Are you impressed now? Just kidding. Hope to hear from you soon. What made you decide to leave the US and go back home to Dominica? Sounds like you could have stayed if you had wanted to.

  I pondered over this for a few moments. Did I sound pretentious? As if I were trying to sound smart? Or did I just sound corny? But this had been the last of four or five tries. This was the thing I hated about trying to make an impression via e-mail. I didn’t want to sound sappy, too interested, eager, or any of those god-awful things. I just wanted to sound like a teacher who was glad to know someone from another part of the world. That’s all. So this should do? I wasn’t too sure but I hit send anyway and bit my nonexistent nails; that was another New Year’s resolution in its embryonic stage.

  Chapter 6

  I begged off when James and Kelly asked me to go skiing up at Wachusett Mountain. For one thing, I had work to do. For another thing, I didn’t know how to ski and I didn’t want to learn. It was bad enough that I had to endure this cold weather, why would I want to go play in it? Besides, Sunday was my day to mentally prepare for the week ahead. I decided that I’d be kind and not spring a quiz on my ninth graders. Let them have their fun. But they would have to write me a paper on the Joads at some point before their little behinds graduated.

  I made coffee and tried to read the Sunday Globe at the kitchen table, but I couldn’t concentrate. I wondered about the e-mail I’d sent to Drew. I’d woken up at four A.M., panicked and convinced that I’d called him Ramses instead of Drew. Luckily, I’d cc’d myself a copy. Now, I wanted to log on to see if he’d answered. But it was only nine-thirty on Sunday. He was probably hungover from the night before. Those Caribbean people liked to party. Or did they? There were a couple of Caribbean teachers at my school and they seemed a bit too serious and uptight, except for one who was just a little too out there. But maybe they all had a wild side. What was wrong with me? Why was I generalizing about a whole group of people just because I was stressed about some dude I’d never met? I tried to make sense of the blurry newsprint in front of me.

  Then the phone rang.

  “Amelia, I just wanted to say I’m sorry about yesterday.”

  Huh??? Was that Grace Wilson? Apologizing?

  “Ma? Is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s me. I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for calling you ungrateful yesterday.”

  Okay, she must really want some cash.

  “Uh-huh,” was all I could think to say.

  She sighed.

  “Amelia, I want to…I want things to be better between us.”

  Was this some kind of joke? Was I in the Twilight Zone?

  “You want to what?”

  “You heard me, okay? I just been thinking. All this fussin’ and fightin’s not doing me any good. I’m not getting any younger.”

  “Ma, you’re only fifty years old, and you look forty.” It was true. My mother was a beauty, a red-boned, voluptuous beauty with thick black hair she wore proud and natural once my father died. She got hit on all the time by men who were much younger than her. It bothered me much more than I was willing to admit. And, no, I didn’t think it was the source of the tension between us. She was a madwoman. That was enough.

  “I don’t feel fifty, Amelia,” she said. I put my coffee down. I hadn’t heard her sound this down in a long, long time. The last time had been when Gerard had gone to prison for two years for armed robbery. Then she had almost hit rock bottom.

  “Ma, what’s wrong?”

  She sighed. “I just want us to be friends, okay? Don’t let me get into how I feel and all that jive. Let’s just be mother and daughter. Like old times. When your daddy was around.”

  Like old times when my daddy was around? I don’t think I wanted to remember that far back. But she sounded sincere.

  “All right, Ma. No more fighting then.”

  “Okay, Amelia.” She paused. “You heard from Gerard?”

  Here we go. “No, why?”

  She sighed again and my antennae started chirping wildly.

  “Well, Ms. Parker and them found him passed out off Columbia Road last night. If they hadn’t found him he probably would have froze to death.”

  I grit my teeth. Gerard!!!

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s here. He’s fine. He’s laying down. Says he don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  I didn’t want to go over there. I wouldn’t go over there, I told myself. I left all of that behind. If she and Gerard wanted to go on living like this let them, but I would not be dragged into it.

  “Ma, Gerard is twenty-five years old….”

  “Don’t start with me, Amelia. What am I supposed to do, kick him out when he’s down? He needs to go see a doctor, but he won’t listen to me.”

  “He’s not down. He’s a grown man. If he doesn’t want to go to the hospital tell him to go stay with D’Andrea!” D’Andrea was Gerard’s longtime off and on, long-suffering girlfriend.

  She ignored me. “Are you gonna come talk to him or what?” Her furtive tone told me that she knew full well what my answer would be.

  “No, Ma. As long as you say he’s fine, then I’m not coming over there just to get dragged into another fight. Gerard doesn’t need me to tell him he shouldn’t be drinking.”

  “All right then, Amelia. I love you, okay?”

  I rolled my eyes. She knew how to lay the guilt trip nice and thick. “I love you, too, Ma. Take care of you.”

  I felt awful after I hung up, but that was the way of things. I had to leave it, them, behind. They were not me and I was not them. If I really knew what was good for me I would have applied to Berkeley’s grad program and moved to California, far away where none of this could touch me. I don’t know why I stayed. No, I knew. I was afraid that something catastrophic and awful would happen and they would have no one else to save them. This sucked. Why couldn’t I have a nice, adorably abnormal family? Kelly’s folks were bad, but they weren’t this bad. At least they didn’t call her at all. They knew they didn’t get along and didn’t pretend to with a bunch of perfunctory, useless communication.

  I was getting depressed and I refused to get sucked into it. It was another phobia of mine. I saw what that did to my mother and my brother and I didn’t want it to happen to me. First, the depression comes and then the drinking, or was it the other way around. Either way, it wouldn’t happen to me. Better to lose myself in a good book or gourmet chocolate, or even better, a nice juicy fantasy.

  I went online.

  No mail from the islands yet. I browsed the New York Times Web site, lingering on the Sunday book review.

  I checked my e-mail again; nothing but the usual junk. So, where was this Dominica place and what was up with it? And why would Drew give up America for a speck of a place in the Third World few people have heard of?

  According to the CIA World Factbook’s Web site,
which I would take as an authority on the subject since its powers extend so far beyond that of most mortals, Dominica sounded like a pretty nice place: Last of the Caribbean islands to be colonized by the Europeans, mostly because the Carib Indians seemed to put up a really good fight. The island changed hands between the British and French a few times until 1805…. Oh, wait a minute! Dominica! Jean Rhys. How could I have been so dense? One of my favorite authors was Jean Rhys, a Dominican. But somehow I just couldn’t put white Jean Rhys in my fantasy of me and Ramses on our deserted little island. She just seemed so white and French. But I still made a mental note to reread Wide Sargasso Sea.

  The CIA had some great facts and some not so great ones, including the fact that the island was basically a huge volcano waiting to erupt. And that the unemployment rate was as high as, as, well, as my family’s unemployment rate. One thing that really got me all excited was the fact that Dominica in 1980 had the first female prime minister in all of the Caribbean. Dame Eugenia Charles. This got me thinking that the title Dame was so outdated, especially for a woman who’d accomplished so much. Would anyone call Condi Rice a dame, even if she had been given the title by the Crown? But back to Dominica, whose population was a little bit under seventy thousand. That wasn’t even half the population of Dorchester! And for a country four times the size of Washington, DC, that seemed to leave everyone enough space to move around and have a nice uncluttered life. I want to go now!

  Oh! New mail. I took a deep breath before I clicked on it.

  “Hi Amelia. Wish I’d known you’d written sooner. I’ve been busy all day working with an architect on the school we’re breaking ground on in a few weeks, so I haven’t had time to check my e-mail. I didn’t know about that algorithm fella—thanks for that bit of info. (Was he being sarcastic here?) I’ll have to remember not to lay any complex mathematical concepts on you as long as you don’t force me to read any Shakespeare. (Done!) So, tell me more about you. What makes you laugh out loud? What makes you angry? Do you have siblings? Are you close to your family? What’s important in your life right now?