The Lovely Chocolate Mob - By Richard J. Bennett Page 0,42

how nuts am I?” I asked her. Miss Planter smiled at this attempt at humor; I continued. “Do people get over this?”

“Like I said, different people do different things. I don’t think anybody ever ‘gets over’ a romance gone bad. I think they deal with it, but I don’t think it ever ends. It’s much like children of divorce; they deal with it, they have no choice, they have to deal with it. But many of them never really get over it.”

“Wow, so now I’m a child,” I said.

“I didn’t say… Mr. Owen!” she laughed. Her laughing made me smile.

Miss Planter continued, “I can tell you of one case I had long ago. A girl, or a grown woman, I should say, whose parents had divorced some 30 years prior was still affected by it. When she visited her parents for holidays or special events, she had to go to one house and visit her dad and his second wife for awhile, and then she had to drive across town to visit her mother, who also remarried. She adjusted to it, she was used to it, but she still had to deal with it.

“So what you’re saying is, there’s no cure, Miss Planter.”

“What I’m saying is, you’ll learn how to deal with it, if you haven’t already done so.”

“So there’s hope.”

“There’s always hope, Mr. Owen.”

I suspected that Miss Planter had given me another insight into her life.

David and Spouse

My quiet friend, David Boudreaux, was at home with his young wife, Mae Ling. They were watching a re-run of “The Andy Griffith Show,” with Mae Ling discovering the joys of American television, curled up next to David on the couch, with David reading a book, looking up every now and then. The show ended after awhile, and Mae Ling looked over at Dave and asked, “Where you go the other night?” David looked at his wife, a bit surprised. “I call apartment; you no answer,” she said.

“I was with an old friend,” said David, “someone you haven’t met yet; you should have called me on the cell phone. Remember me telling you about Randall Owen? We went to college together, along with Walter Dale.”

“Where you go?”

“I met Randall at Lucy’s Place, a Mom & Pop bar and grill in town. We talked about old times.”

“You talk about good old days, before you marry me?”

“Well, they were the old days, and sometimes they were good, but sometimes they weren’t so good.”

“Tell me what you mean.” Mae Ling understood and read well enough, but she still spoke English in a broken fashion.

“An old flame came back into Randall’s life, and it seemed to upset him a bit.”

David looked at Mae Ling, who didn’t quite get it.

“An old flame is an old girlfriend,” said David. “This girl attended college with us also.”

“Oh, you mean old, old days,” Mae Ling said, without catching the humor. David smiled. “Yes, I mean the old-old days, back when we were young, back when you were still a child.”

Mae Ling waited for a story in anticipation. She’d wanted to hear about this mysterious Randall Owen, the engineer who lived by himself. “Why you no see Randall Owen? He your friend, right?”

“Yes. He’s my friend. But he lives a different life than we do. I used to hang around him because we had something in common; we both were single and could share ideas; we knew people in common and thought the same in some ways. We both…” he stopped, then continued, “…but those days are long past, at least for me.” He hugged his Mae Ling. “You’ve made up for all my empty years.” Mae Ling smiled at this.

“Why Randall Owen no marry?” asked Mae Ling, echoing the question Randall’s church ladies wanted to know. “Don’t he want to be happy?”

David smiled. “I think Randall just wanted peace and quiet; that makes him happy. He once told me that if God had put Raquel Welch in front of him…”

“Who Raquel Welch?” Mae Ling enquired. “She go to school with you?”

David laughed at this. “No, Raquel Welch is a famous American movie star, and…”

Mae Ling was staring.

“She’s very beautiful, known for her beauty all through the land. American little boys loved her. So did American big boys.”

“Oh,” said Mae Ling. “Beautiful woman make good wife.”

David stifled another laugh. “She was beautiful and a rich and famous actress. She didn’t need Randall, or me, or anybody else to make her happy. But Randall told me once that if God set him