Read Online What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage - Free Book Online

their immediate bonding only depressed the rest of us, who should have had a glass of wine to toast their good fortune and gone home to our memories and our vibrators. But we didn’t. We went on around the circle: teachers, waiters, a musician, trying to sound casual and knowing none of us were attracted to any of the rest of us, except the first two guys, who had already made a date for Friday night, excused themselves, and left.
    When it was finally over, I skipped the post confessional cocktails, went home, ran a hot bath full of the bubbles I used to save for
serious
seductions, made myself a good, strong drink, and sat in that water until it got stone-cold, thinking about all the fucking I had done and all the fucking I wasn’t going to do, and I realized that the only thing I was sorry about was that I never had a chance to
make love.
    Joyce told me that she had been in love with Mitch since she was sixteen years old so that in addition to being the only man she had ever had sex with, he was the only man she’d ever even kissed. I envied her that. I still do. I remember looking at the words in Mama’s suicide note in her neat little handwriting and thinking to myself, well, if that’s the price,
fuck true love.
It’s too scary and too complicated and way too much weight to carry as fast as I intend to be moving. Some people weren’t cut out for it, I told myself, and I was one of those people. The problem was, once I started running, I never slowed down long enough to be sure.
     
     
• 12
     
    it’s almost noon and the day is as pretty as any I can remember. I spent the morning like a cat, moving from one patch of sunshine to the other, turning my face to the softness of the breeze off the lake, stretching the last city kinks out of my shoulders. I’ve been here a week and Joyce has been at the hospital more than she’s been home. She invited me to come with her to see the baby, but hospitals are the best place to pick up something random and that’s the last thing I need. I haven’t had any problems,
knock on wood,
but I don’t take chances. Besides, the truth is, I’ve been working so hard for so long, I was enjoying a chance to just do nothing.
    Besides, this little interlude isn’t going to last much longer. Joyce is trying to get Eartha’s baby released from the hospital. She had to get Mattie to sign a form as the baby’s aunt giving Joyce permission to check her out and bring her home until her mother resurfaces or some kind of permanent arrangement can be worked out. All Mattie wanted to know was whether or not what she was signing obligated her to the kid in any way, shape, or form. When Joyce swore to her that it didn’t, literally
swore,
one hand raised and everything, right there on the front porch, Mattie signed it. Of course, she couldn’t ask us in. Crack addicts never ask you in. They’re afraid you’ll want to get high.
    Joyce is ecstatic, although I will confess, I am still less than enthusiastic about spending the summer with a newborn crack baby. But what can I say? When she asked me what I thought, I knew it was a trick. Grown people never ask you what they should do until they’ve already decided for themselves. They don’t tell you that, of course, but they stand there and wait for you to either confirm their good judgment or reveal yourself as not as smart as they thought you were by advising them in the other direction.
    So I avoided all that pressure by pausing as if to truly consider the question, then giving her a sisterly smile and telling her to
go for it.
She was so relieved, she hugged me and promised not to ask me to change any diapers. I probably should have asked her to put that in writing.
    It turned out to be a pretty interesting morning, though. I had just finished making myself a serious screwdriver with some of Joyce’s organic orange juice when the same big brown Cadillac that had been the start of so much high drama at the liquor store a few days ago