another."
"Thing I appreciate about you, Ura Lee, you live next door to my Winston all these years and you never once make eyes at him."
Madeline seemed to think everybody saw Winston Tucker the way she did - the handsome young Vietnam vet with a green beret and a smile that could make a blind woman get a hot flash. Ura Lee had seen that picture on the wall in the kitchen of their house, so she knew all about what Madeline had fallen in love with. But that wasn't Winston anymore. He was bald as an egg now, with a belly that was only cute to a woman who already loved him.
Not that Ura Lee would judge a man on looks alone. But Winston was also an accountant and a Christian and he couldn't understand that not everybody wanted to hear about both subjects all the time. Ura Lee once heard Cooky Peabody say, "What does that man talk about in bed? Jesus or accounts receivable?"
And Ura Lee wanted to answer her, Assets and arrears. But she didn't know a single person well enough to tell nasty puns to. So she still had that witticism stored up, waiting.
Anyway, Madeline thought her husband was so sexy that other women must be lusting after his flesh, and she'd be the one to know. They were lucky they had each other. "A woman's got to have self-control if she expects to get to heaven, Madeline," said Ura Lee.
"Meanwhile your boy Ceese is going to have his first experience with recreational herbology."
"If heredity is any guide, he'll puke once and give it up for good."
"Why, is that what happened to Winston when he tried it?"
"I'm talking about me," said Madeline testily. "Cecil takes after me."
"Except for the Y chromosome and the testosterone," said Ura Lee.
"Trust a nurse to get all medical on me."
"Well, Madeline, I say it's nice to have some trust in your children."
"Trust, hell," said Madeline. "I going to tell his daddy when he gets home, and Cecil's going to be sitting on one butt cheek at a time for a month."
She got up from the couch and started for the kitchen with her coffee cup. Ura Lee knew from experience that the kitchen was worth another twenty minutes of conversation, and she didn't like standing around on linoleum, not after a whole shift on linoleum in the hospital. So she snared the cup and saucer from Madeline's hand and said, "Oh, don't you bother, I want to sit here and see more visions of the future out of my window anyway." In a few minutes the goodbyes were done and Ura Lee was alone.
Alone and thinking, as she washed the cups and saucers and put them in the drying rack to drip - she hardly ever bothered with the dishwasher because it seemed foolish to fire up that whole machine just for the few dishes she dirtied, living alone. Half the time she nuked frozen dinners and ate them right off the tray, so there was nothing but a knife and fork to wash up anyway.
What she was thinking was: Madeline and Winston have about the best marriage I've seen in Baldwin Hills, and they're happy, and their boys are still nothing but a worry even after they get out of the house. Antwon, who is doing fine, still had somebody shoot at him the other day when he was collecting rent, and twice had his tires slashed. And the other boys had no ambition at all. Just lazy - completely unlike their father, who, you had to give him credit, worked hard. And Cecil - he used to be the best of the lot, but now he was hanging with Raymo, who was studying up to be completely worthless and had just about earned his Dumb Ass degree, summa cum scumbag.
Last thing I want in my life is a child. Even if I was good at it - no saying I would be, either, because as far as I can tell nobody's actually good at parenting, just lucky or not - even if I was good at mothering, I'd probably get nothing but kids who thought I was the worst mother in the world until I dropped dead, and then they'd cry about what a good mama I was at my funeral but a fat lot of good that would do me because I'd be dead.
Of course, maybe I'd have a daughter like me, I was good to my mama