Read Online Blackbird Fly by Lise McClendon - Free Book Online

market.
    One of the old widows gives her two eggs; another
woman grudgingly offers her some cream. It won’t go far but she is
grateful. The men will have nothing to do with her, call her ‘gypsy
blood.’ The priest won’t even speak to her. On her walk home she
wonders what she’s done to offend them all. And thanks the Lord for
kind old ladies with good hearts.
    Weston arrives home that evening in a singing mood.
He swings into the house, takes her into his arms, and gives her a
green scarf and nylon stockings from Paris. He had made a deal with
someone abroad. They fronted him money for a big delivery of wine,
many cases, he says. She is happy but afraid he’s already spent the
money and the businessmen will be angry. He laughs when she tells
him that, saying he’s already paid for the wine, and has plenty
left over. “Although you’ll never know where, my pretty,” he laughs
again, tweaking her still-sore chin.
    Just as quickly, he is gone again. American husbands
didn’t have to say where they were going, she thinks bitterly. He
hasn’t touched her since the beating, much too long for him to be
without. She imagines the perfumed whores he’s been with in Paris,
the trinkets he bought them, the wine they drank, the beef they
ate, until she curls up in her bed and cries.

Chapter 10
     
     
    Friday came, like every week. Merle walked into the
Legal Aid building, five stories of reassuring brick, utilitarian
and unfussy, and ran through the day in her head as always. She’d
come in early, hoping to actually take a lunch break today. Then,
at ten o’clock her boss, the head of the Harlem Neighborhood
Office, called her into his office. She was on her second cup of
coffee.
    Jeff O’Donald, once a campus radical at Columbia, was
now balding and plump with an unruly beard and wire rim glasses. On
his window sill white orchids bloomed.
    “ How are you, Merle? Things okay at
home?”
    “ Sure. The bed’s a little cold,
Jeff. You looking for some action?”
    He cringed. “Sorry. I said that wrong. Are you coping
all right?”
    She was sounding more and more like the scary widow.
Ready to bite off the head of anyone who dared to be nice. She
tried to smile. “Thanks for asking.”
    He let her sip her coffee then leaned forward. “I’ve
got something on my mind.” He was an intense guy, and this was his
intense way of preparing you for his pronouncements. “This Skadden
fellow, Cortez. Crackerjack, according to her rec’s. Her proposal
is a new intake system that could really shake things up for us.
We’re very excited.”
    “ I’m excited too.”
    “ Super. I’d like you to train her to
take over your job.”
    Merle set down her cup and stared at him. He squirmed
and explained. “She’ll be full-time, you’re still part-time. She’s
fully funded by this fellowship. Then we use you in Development.
Get us more fellows, and all that.”
    “ You want to send me to Development.
After all these years. Just what I need right now in my life, Jeff.
Because I don’t have enough changes.”
    “ It’s called a promotion, Merle.
They can really use help liaising with the big firms in
Development. You know those corporate boys from your Byrne &
Loveless days, right? Lillian thinks the world of you.”
    She knew ‘those boys’ all too well, and never wanted
to break bread with them again. She and her coffee steamed for a
full thirty seconds. Lillian Wachowski, who Merle had met once or
twice at social events, was rumored to be a bitch-on-wheels.
    Jeff blurted, “Can I set up a meeting with Lillian
this afternoon? And of course it’ll take at least a week to train
Cortez.”
    A week to learn what she’d been doing for almost
fifteen years. She felt old, useless, unwanted. And tired. She
hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in weeks. She didn’t have it in
her to fight. What would she say? She couldn’t leave because she
had the next two months blocked out in her mind? That she needed to
work to stay