Letting Loose. Joanne Skerrett

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 dancing 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 СКАЧАТЬ