Where Does My Heart Belong? (10 page)

CHAPTER
26

June
1973

   When I get home from
work the next day, I’m as nervous as a whore in church.  The phone rings at
5:30 and it’s Red.  Is it okay to come now and can he bring a 6-pack?  Yes, but
come to the front door instead of the back.

  He couldn’t have been
far away because he’s here in five minutes.  I watch him get out of the car.  God,
he looks good, still slim and his red hair is still vibrant, it hasn’t started
to fade out the way most redheads do.  I open the door and he’s standing there
grinning.

“Hey, good looking, it
sure is good to see you.  You look great.”

“Hi, Red, come on in.”  I
reach out my arm to shake his hand.

 “Forget that, come
here.”  He grabs me in a bear hug.  I can smell the beer on him and I notice there
are only five bottles in the 6-pack he brought.

  We go into the kitchen
and I pour us each a beer into frosty glasses and hand him one.

  “You’ve got some nerve
coming here after all this time and thinking I’m going to rent to you.”

  “I know, but I need a
place in the worst way, I haven’t found anything else and wow this is something. 
This house is beautiful and you have a tremendous view, plus top notch security
and everything.”

  “So what do you want to
talk about?”

  “The management company
said you don’t want to rent to me.  Is it because of the way things ended 5
years ago?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I want to tell you what
happened.”

  “Shut up, just shut up,
I don’t want to hear it, there’s nothing you can say.  You left me plain and
simple and didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face.  So unless you lost
your memory or were abducted by aliens there’s only one explanation, you wanted
to.  I tried to call you on your birthday but your number had been
disconnected.  I called the dealership where you were supposed to be working
and they said you had quit.  I didn’t know if you were dead or alive.   Then a
few months later, I see your marriage announcement in the paper.   I never want
to go through anything like that again.  You bastard, you lousy bastard.”  I’m
screaming at him now.

  “Yes, Libby, I left you
but now I’m here.  When Bob told me you were back in town, I came back, I want
to set the record straight, and I didn’t leave you because I wanted to.”  He’s
staring down at the floor and when he raises his head, I see a tear running
down his cheek.  It’s the first time I’ve ever said an unkind word to him.

  “Legally I can’t stop you
from moving in, but here’s how it’s going down, we each live our own lives and
go our separate ways.  I’ve heard that you’re a drunk; well you won’t be one
here.  There’ll be no drunkenness or wild parties.  Don’t eat my food or drink
my booze.  And don’t ever try to get me to sleep with you again.  If you don’t
think you can live with that then just get the hell out.”

  “I can live with it,” he
says.  “I’ll do whatever you want.  Will you show me around the rest of the
property?  John didn’t show me the outside yesterday.”

    I give him a tour of
the rest of the house; tell him how to change the combination on the keypad
locks for the doors that go to his side of the house and introduce him to my
little Jack Russell dog Zip and the calico cat Lecia.  I take him outside and
show him the property.  He’s delighted with my fishing spot on the river and my
little boat.  “You can use it, it’s just sitting there dry rotting.  I don’t do
all that much fishing,” I tell him.

  We go back to the house
and he pours us another beer.  “We’ll make this work, Lib.  I’ll stay out of
your way but I want us to be friends again.  We were best friend once.”

  “Yeah, and look where
that got me.  You’ve made a mockery out of everything I thought we had
together.  All that talk about being soul mates, how much you loved me and
never wanted to live without me.”

  “Please, just give me a
chance to explain, you really need to hear me out.”

  “I don’t need to do
anything.  We had everything going for us and you broke us.  I’ll never believe
anything you say again.  Just get out of here.”

  After he leaves, I pour
the last beer and sit at the kitchen table.  The truth is I still love him; I
still want to be with him.  But I can’t forget what he did to me and the pain
it’s caused.

  Why didn’t I let him
tell me what happened?  I guess I’m just too afraid to hear the truth. How in
the world is all this going to work out?  I can’t stand the thought of seeing
him every day, and knowing that he’s right here just a few rooms away.  I take
the beer, and my little dog, Zip, and go into my bedroom.  I get in bed,
snuggle with Zip, and cry myself to sleep.

CHAPTER
27

It’s Sunday, Red is supposed
to move in today, and I’m pet sitting for my friend Cathy.  She’s left me with
a blue and white parakeet named Screech, a large green parrot she calls Clarabelle,
and Earl the capuchin monkey.  Why can’t I learn to say no to her?  These guys
are a train wreck waiting to happen.  The parrot has a vocabulary of about 150
words, a lot of them profane, and I swear the monkey understands every one of
them.  Clara will cuss him out and Earl will give her the finger.  Then he
tries to grab her so I have to watch them like a hawk or cage one of them up
which they hate.

I hear a car, it’s Red. 
He comes into the kitchen just in time to see me chase after Earl who is going
for Clara.

“What the hell is that
thing?”

“A capuchin monkey, I’m pet-sitting
until tomorrow.”

“That is the ugliest
critter I’ve ever seen.”

Earl flips him the bird
and moons him.  Clara flies from the top of the refrigerator and lands on my
head.  “You finally got a man, you finally got a man,” she squawks.

“Shut up, Clara.  This is
my new neighbor, so behave.”

 “Where’s that fucking
monkey?” she screams.

“Jesus, this is totally
unbelievable.  Have I moved to a funny farm?”

“If you don’t like it,
tough. They’ll be gone tomorrow morning. My friend Cathy trains these monkeys
for the Helping Hands organization but Earl flunked out so she bought him.”

“Of course he did.”

Earl has managed to make
his way to the top of the refrigerator and sits there starring down at us, his
long tail swinging back and forth like a pendulum.  Then he focuses in on Red,
stretches out his arms, and makes kissing sounds.

“He likes you.”

Disgusted, Red makes a
wide berth around the refrigerator, and goes back to his side of the house
where he starts bringing in his stuff.  Later I hear him drive off.

I coax Earl down off the
refrigerator with a cookie and put his little bib overalls on him.  He grins
his monkey grin and hugs my neck.  He likes wearing little clothes and hats.  I
hand him his favorite, a straw one, and he puts it on, admiring himself in my
bedroom mirror.  I too put on overalls and a straw hat. 

“Come on, Earl, let’s go
out and get the mail, I didn’t get it yesterday.”

Leaving Clara asleep on
her perch, I snap on his leash, and we walk the ¼ mile to the mailbox.  On the
way back I hear a car behind us, it’s Red bringing in another load.  He stops.

“You two are quite a
sight, wish I had a camera.  Do you want a ride?”

“No, we’ll walk, I need
the exercise.  See you back there.”

When we get home, I fix
tuna sandwiches and tomato soup along with potato chips for lunch and give Earl
a ripe banana. 

Red comes in and I ask him
if he wants something to eat.  He sits down at the table and says “Sure, but do
I have to eat with the monkey?”

“No, I’ll put him back in
his cage.”  But Earl has other ideas.  He gets off his chair and climbs up on
the table across from Red, reaches out and strokes Red’s face with his little
black monkey hands, then hugs his neck.  I swear to God I thought Red was going
to cry.  How long has it been since anyone has shown him that kind of
affection?

“Come on, Earl, let’s go
nighty-night.”  He shakes his head no.  I give Red his soup and sandwich and
try to pick Earl up, but he screams and bears his teeth at me.

“It’s okay, I can eat with
him, but he needs to sit in his chair.  What kind of food do monkeys eat
anyways?”

“They eat mostly fruits,
vegetables, nuts, seeds, some bread; they train them with peanut butter. But
his guy will eat anything.  His favorite is pizza.  Maybe I should get one for
tonight.”

“Do whatever but don’t
count on me, I don’t know what time I’ll be home.  There’s people to see and
cars to sell.  Thanks for lunch.”  Earl picks up a potato chip and offers to
put it in Red’s mouth. 

“I don’t believe this
guy.  I hope you’re not planning to get one.   I’ll see you both later.”

CHAPTER
28

It’s a Saturday morning. 
I haven’t seen Red since last Sunday when he moved in.  Maybe the funny farm
was too much for him. I’m sitting at the kitchen table in my bathrobe with my
nail clippers trying to remove a hangnail from my thumb when in he comes.  He
watches me struggle left handed with the clippers and then takes them from me
and gently cuts the hangnail off, then kisses my thumb.  I stare at him
dumbfounded; why did I let him do that?  He tells me that his brother Bob and
his wife are coming over and he wants to show them around the place.   

“Great, it will be good to
see them.  Then I’m going to the florist for plants. “

“What are you doing
tonight?” he asks. 

“Nothing, I’m staying in.  What
about you?”  He says he made a date last night but was so drunk he can’t
remember her name.

I go to my bedroom, get
dressed and then into the bathroom to do my hair only to realize that I can’t
find my hair gel, so I pull my bushy mane into a ponytail and go into the
kitchen to look for it.   Bob and Mary are just coming through the door.

“Have you seen my hair
gel?  I know it was out here somewhere.  Guess I’ll just have to go as a bush
woman.”

Red heads out the door,
saying he will be right back.  Bob and Mary sit down to have coffee with me and
discuss Red. 

“Did Red tell you why he
left you and what all happened in Ellensburg?” Bob asks me.

“He started to but I told
him I didn’t want to hear it.  Nothing can change the fact that I got dumped.”

“I agree, but you need to
hear the story.   He botched by not telling you what was going on and he knows
it.   It’s been driving him crazy for 5 years.  He should have told you.   I
know it looked like he left you for another woman but nothing could be further
from the truth.  So please, let him tell you what really happened.  He’s never
stopped loving you and he never stopped looking for you after you left here.”

Red is back.   “Who’s your
daddy?” he says as he hands me a tube of hair gel.  “Oh, bless your heart,” I
exclaim.  Now I know exactly where
my
hair gel went, on
his
hair. 
We always did use the same kind.

“Come out on the deck,” he
says opening the sliding glass door.  “Sit down.” 

He stands behind me and
removes the rubber band from my ponytail releasing the curly mass.   

“Wow, your hair needs a
hot oil treatment bad, this feels like a horses tail.”

Then he sprays my hair
with water and gently works the gel through it with his fingers.  When he’s
done, I look like a new person with soft sexy hair falling around my
shoulders. 

His wife, Carol, was a
beautician and she taught him how to cut and style so he could do her hair.  He’s
really pretty good at it and except for the one time when he cut my hair too
short on top and bushed it out on the sides so that I ended up looking like Larry
from the 3 Stooges, I’ve always trusted him do my hair.

He gets out his wallet
and hands me five dollars.  “Pick up a hot oil treatment and I’ll do it for you
tonight.” 

“What about your date?” 

“I’d rather do you, eh…
your hair.  Hey, how about we pick up some KFC and play cards tonight?”  

“Yeah,” Bob says.  “I can
bring along a home movie of our trip to the Grand Canyon.  Do you have a movie
projector?”

I don’t want to do this
but I know Bob & Mary would love for Red stay out of the bar so I agree.  I
leave them all there, go to the florist, and spend some $200.00 on plants, colorful
perennials, annuals, and shrubs.  I want to create a showplace on my beautiful
property.  I can’t wait until the sod is in and all the landscaping is done.  

They’re still there when
I get home.   Mary has taken a headache so she and Bob leave for home,
promising to come back later for dinner and to watch the movie. I couldn’t
believe it, Red spent the entire afternoon helping me plant flowers.  We didn’t
talk much.  He was kind of distant like something was bothering him.  He only
spoke when he asked me where I wanted something planted.  After finishing up we
both went our separate ways to clean up.  Bob and Mary arrived at 4:00 and the
guys took off to pick up the food at KFC.  When they got back, Bob suggested
that we watch the movie first since it was early so I got out the film
projector and the screen and got everything set up.   Oh, my god, it wasn’t movies
of the Grand Canyon; the first scene was two naked men kissing.

“What the hell
is
this?” I gasped.

“Turn it off,” Mary
screamed at Bob.   “You cretin, I’m going to kill you.”

Bob looked like he wanted
to hide.

 I took the movie reel
off the projector and told Red I wanted to talk to him alone and dragged him
into my bedroom and closed the door.  I shook the reel in his face.

“Have you seen this
before?  Did you know this is what he brought?”

“No, I thought it was
their vacation pictures, just like Bob said. Libby, I would never dis-respect
you like this.  I didn’t know about it.”  I believed him.

“Come on, let’s go find him,”
I said.  He sadly followed me out of the room.

But Bob and Mary were
nowhere to be found, they’d left, leaving behind the huge bucket of chicken,
cole slaw and biscuits. 

Red said he wasn’t hungry
and went to his side of the house.  I put the food in the refrigerator, pulled out
a beer and sat at the kitchen table.  A short while later I heard his car start
up and saw him drive away.  As I sipped my beer, I tried to make sense of him. 
He was caring and sweet this morning; distant and non-communicative in the afternoon
and now couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here.  What was going on in his
head?  I worried about Bob and Mary too.  They’d always had a rough marriage
and this movie thing wouldn’t help matters.

I finished my beer, threw
away the empty, and grabbed another one.  Taking it into my living room, I
locked the door behind me and leaned on it.  I wondered where he was.  Did he
go on his date?  Or was he out getting drunk?

I went into my bedroom
and turned on the TV.  It was some kind of music program.  Roberta Flack was
singing
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
with tears running down her
face. 

I sure didn’t need to
hear that song or think about the first time I saw Red so I turned it off.  If
he wanted to be here, he would.  Tomorrow would be another day and I planned to
spend it out at the ranch with my horse and as far away from Red as I could get. 
I snuggle under the covers with my little Zip dog but sleep is a long time
coming.