With a kind but curious smile, I asked, “What are you doing, Lee?”
I wasn’t one who was used to spontaneity. There was a time and a place for everything.
Standing before the mirror, wiping tiny beads of sweat from her brow, she snickered. “I decided I wanted some seafood from City Crab, and I thought you might like that, too.”
Lee, taking off her jacket and hanging it up in the closet, jumped up onto the top bunk and stretched out across the bed on her stomach.
Confused at why we had to travel all the way to New York for seafood, I said, in
amazement, “Dear, we could’ve gone down to the wharf, if that’s what you wanted. There’s plenty…”
“I wasn’t really feeling that today, Dr. Woodson. The bosses are out of the office, so I felt like goofing off. Sometimes I think they have it in for me anyway.”
“Uh, it’s Meena. You can call me Meena.”
“Oh, okay, Meena. You know those papers you saw me with when you came in?”
“Yes, I recall them.”
“Well, that was my resume. I’ve been interviewing for jobs in Atlanta. Those stiff-shirts don’t realize I’ve known for weeks that they’ve been plotting to get rid of me without causing a big stink. When I leave, it’ll be on my own terms.”
I kept to myself what I knew. “So you’re going to leave? Just like that?”
“As soon as something comes through, I’m gone.”
All the way to New York, Lee fired questions at me about my life, my kids, and my career I’d left behind for Walter. “So you mean to tell me you left a hundred fifty thousand-dollar-a-year job, so you could stay at home and be a trophy wife?”
“In a nutshell, yes, I did. I loved Walter at the time, and…”
“At the time?”
I’d slipped. “Well, what I meant was…”
“You don’t have to explain. That’s your business.”
But I wanted to go on. “No, I need to say this. I have given Walter the best of me over the years, but some days I feel like I’ve given him all of me, and that there’s nothing left for myself.” Before I knew it, I was weeping.
Lee propped up on her elbows and pulled a tissue from her pocket. “Don’t worry, it’s clean.” She laughed.
Gently, I took the tissue from her hand and continued pouring out my soul to her.
What began as a late lunch ended up becoming an early dinner at City Crab. Perusing the menu with my glasses pulled away from my face to see the fine print, I said, “Oh, the salads look nice. Old women like me have to get all the vegetables we can get.”
Lee, peeping over the top of her menu, stared at me like my twenty-year-old had a tendency to do when she was fed up with me. “Will you stop it? You’re not old. You’re absolutely gorgeous. Now, I know you aren’t going to come all this way to still eat a salad, Meena.”
Sitting in a seafood restaurant at the corner of 19th and Park Avenue with a woman who, in all of five hours, knew more about me than my own husband knew, I finally took a chance. “Okay, you’re right. I’ll have the Maryland Crabmeat Stuffed Idaho Rainbow Trout.”
Slowly rubbing my thigh underneath the table, Lee ordered for both of us and requested the waiter bring us a pitcher of Sangria. I wasn’t a drinker, but I didn’t want her to know that. When the waiter left, she brought her hand back to the tabletop and gestured for me to put my hand in hers. At first I hesitated because I wasn’t comfortable with holding another woman’s hand in public. “Relax, Meena. No one knows us here. Besides, it’s none of anybody’s business what we do.”
I liked Lee’s attitude. Walter had always been concerned with what other people thought, and it made our outings together very uncomfortable for me. With Lee, I felt like it was right. “Okay, okay,” I said, giving them to her; trembling and all.
Stroking my knuckles and the veins in my ageless hands, Lee softly asked, looking into my eyes, “You know why I did this for you?”
I’d been asking myself that for hours, and I was overdue an explanation. “Why, yes, I’d like to know,” I responded, squeezing her soft hands.
“From the moment I laid eyes on you in that picture, I’ve thought about you. I hear Walter talking about you as if you’re some type of permanent fixture in his life with no opinions, no say in anything. One day, after he and his secretary had finished talking about an event you two had attended, I asked her what you did. She referred to you as Doctor Woodson, and I was floored when she told me how heavy you were. The way he talks about you, I would’ve never guessed that about you. So I googled you and found out about this amazing stuff you’d done.”
I was speechless. No one had ever talked to me about what my life used to be like. It was always about Walter, Walter, Walter.