The Sweet by and By by Todd Johnson

Author:Todd Johnson [Johnson, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780061853654
Google: KclOHwjGKmMC
Amazon: 0061579513
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2009-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

“Well he wasn’t lyin. He was a year ahead of me, I found out later. Randy Roper. I didn’t know him but I had seen him around. He played baseball. When he asked me didn’t I want to get somethin to eat, I said, ‘Not here. Have you ever seen anybody eat here?’ We didn’t go to a restaurant. I knew we weren’t gonna eat as soon as I said ‘not here.’ He had a scar on his chest, told me he got it from the blade of a band saw that snapped off. Next morning, he left me lyin in bed at the Super8 and went to get coffee and didn’t come back. So much for ‘I-know-you’ Mr. Randy Roper.”

Margaret and Bernice sit staring at me, silent as two corpses. “Don’t y’all feel sorry for me. I got what I wanted and so did he. Hey, I do what I need to do and I take what comes along with it.”

“What did you get,” Margaret says, “other than the obvious?”

I want to snap at her, it’s like I hear my grandma in her voice, not that she said it mean, but I heard it that way. Judge and jury rolled up into one, that was Grandma. Instead, I feel the pressure start to build up behind my eyes, then tears. “I need Mike to be different.”

Bernice picks up the whole stack of magazines she has piled on her lap and puts them on the f loor. She gets up, slightly wobbly, and takes hold of my hands, still in the yellow rubber gloves that I use to clean sinks. She doesn’t try to say anything, maybe somehow she knows it’ll come out crazy, so she doesn’t want to. Then she kisses me, on the mouth, and standing perfectly still, smiles the biggest smile you can think of before going back to her chair like absolutely nothing happened.

“You need to bring Mike around here, Rhonda,” Margaret says. “When you feel ready to.”

“He said he wants to come. He’s heard me talk about y’all ’til I’m blue in the face and he wants to see y’all and everything else for him- self. I said to him, ‘Should I want to see where you work, cause I have to tell the truth, I don’t really.’ ‘Darlin,’ he said, ‘anytime you want to

see, just go stick your head in the truck, that’s my place of business.’ ” Margaret clears her throat. “I’m going to say something, sugar, and

I assume you will bother to listen since you took the time to tell us that story in the first place.”

“You’re scarin me now.”

“Rhonda.” She pauses. “You deserve to be noticed. Not once or twice, always. Now that’s a tall order, because when you stop acting like there’s something worth noticing, then you can be sure every- body else will follow suit.”

“We’re just datin,” I say.

Margaret goes on. “You want somebody to be different, you’ve got to be different. I myself didn’t learn that. I spent a lot of time waiting for my husband to change, and I’m not so sure that he didn’t actually try.

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