Love Me Tonight

“Sounds good to me,” he said, “but be very careful of your choice of words. What did Judson say about this?”

“I haven’t had a chance to tell him.”

“Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”

“Scott, do you mind if we cancel today? I don’t much feel like eating. I need to go someplace and blow off steam.”

“Heather, this is your first disappointment here. Let me tell you that you’ll have to learn to take the lumps and still walk as if you just won a presidential election. By tomorrow, everybody will have heard about this. Half of the staff will think you got what you deserved. The other half will know you didn’t. But not one will ever say anything to that effect. Some people are ignorant, some are cowards, and the others just don’t give a damn.” Scott turned to the door. “See you later.”

“I’d better do this before I lose my nerve.” She wrote the letter, read it once, printed it out, signed it and called for a messenger. It’s what I believe is right, and I’m going with it. I’ll take the consequences.

She’d just begun to outline a plan designed to introduce self-help programs to women in sub-Saharan Africa when her cell phone rang.

“Hello, sweetheart.” His deep velvet voice had the ability to comfort her. Somehow, hearing it made everything right. “I have the most wonderful news.”

“You found something?”

“No, but I found someone.” She listened to his tale about Cissy Henry. “That’s wonderful. Judson, I’m so happy for you. The pieces will all come together. I know they will. When are you going there?”

“Tomorrow morning. If I thought you’d be free, I’d invite you to come with me.”

“That probably wouldn’t be a good idea. She’ll speak less freely if another person is present. I have some news, too. I’ve been offered a post in Albania, and I just signed a letter turning it down. Well, not in precisely those words.”

“Congratulations. And since you don’t want the post, congratulations for having the courage to turn it down. I’ll be anxious to see you when I get back from Hagerstown tomorrow, so can we have dinner together?”

“Yes. Do you think you can come to dinner at my place? I’m a fair cook.”

“I’d love that. What should I bring? Do you have wine?”

“Yes, but bring whatever you like to drink. Seven o’clock.”

“All right. I’m…I’m anxious to see you. I’ll have to work tonight. Otherwise, I’d suggest that we get together this evening.”

“Call me and tell me good-night.”

“I’ll do that. Bye for now.”

“Bye.”

Cissy Henry stood at her front door when Judson parked in front of her house, a white, green-shuttered bungalow with a well-manicured lawn. A profusion of seasonal flowers marked the property lines.

He strode up the walk to the steps and stopped. “Come on up,” she said. “You must be Judson Philips ’cause don’t nobody around here dress up this good on a Saturday. How’d you do?”

He shook hands with her. “I’m fine, ma’am. How are you? I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your agreeing to see me.” It surprised him that she seemed so youthful and fit. He indicated as much.

“I’m eighty-four. All my life I ate right, never smoked or drank. Went to bed early, got up early and said my prayers every morning and every night. Why shouldn’t I look well?” And certainly she had her mental faculties in order, too, he observed.

“Let’s sit out on the back porch where it’s nice and cool. I don’t turn on the air conditioning till around three o’clock. Money don’t grow on trees.”

He sat beside her on the swing in the screened-in porch, and gazed at the irises, peonies, roses, daises and other flowers that beautified and perfumed the garden. “This place is enchanting,” he said.

“I’m happy here, Judson. Now, tell me what I can do for you.”

“My adoptive mother passed on about a month ago. It’s been a terrible blow to me, especially since my dad died a couple of years ago.”

Cissy’s eyebrows eased up. “Who was your dad?”

“Louis Philips. He was a wonderful father, and I still miss him.”

“I imagine you do. What do you need to know?”

“As I told you, I’m adopted. I’d like to know who my birth parents were. I never asked my parents, because I didn’t want them to think I was unhappy. I wasn’t. They gave me far more than my share. However, I need to know who I am.”

“You look like a prosperous man, and the way you talk tells me you’re educated. What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m a lawyer, and I have a degree in law from Harvard.”

“Good, then I know you’ll know how to handle what I’m going to tell you. I don’t know how it applies to you, but this is what I know about Beverly Moten. She had a baby out of wedlock when she was, oh, I don’t know, twenty-two or twenty-three. She was going around with this man, but she never married him. After she had the baby, she left the boy here with her mother and moved to Baltimore.”

“It was a boy?” She nodded. He started adding. Twenty-two or twenty-three. He was thirty-four, and his adoptive mother was fifty-seven when she died. Was that the other child? He shrugged.

“That’s not the end of it,” she went on. “When the child was about three, I guess, she married and she came back and got the child from her mama. After that, she never returned here.”

His adrenaline shot up, and he could barely manage to remain seated. “Who was the man who fathered that child?”

“Well, you know, that’s not something anybody can swear to, but I remember she was in love with the man, an architect, who designed and built the Americana Hotel. They can tell you his name. It wasn’t a common name. My daughter-in-law might remember it. I’ll recognize it if I hear it. A lot of our young girls were after him, because he was one good-looking man, tall and… If I’d a been single, I’d a gone after him, too.” She laughed. “A bit older than Beverly, but that didn’t seem to bother her.”

He wanted to know about the man’s character, in case he was on the right track. “Did he date all those girls?”

“Not to my knowledge. It looked like he was as crazy about Beverly as she was about him. Nobody ever could say why they didn’t get married. Come on in here while I get our lunch together. I hope you like home-cooked food.”

“I certainly do, and I haven’t had any since my mom got sick.” He took a bottle of perfume out of his coat pocket and gave it to her. “I didn’t know what to bring you, but I figured every woman likes this.”

Her eyes rounded to twice their size. “This woman certainly does. This is quite a gift. Thank you so much. I don’t know when I last had any perfume.” She handed him the bottle. “Would you please open it? I’ll just put on a little dab of it. I always used to put it on my handkerchief, but nowadays it’s so dear.” She put some on her index finger, sniffed and a wide smile covered her face. “This is just the kind of scent I love.”

She put the food on the kitchen table, turned on the air conditioner and handed him a face towel. “You can wash up right around there.”

Cissy said grace holding his hand and then passed him a platter that contained barbecued baby back ribs, broiled lamb chops and grilled pork loin. “Help yourself. There’s plenty more.”

His gaze took in a pan of baked corn bread, string beans, rice, sliced tomatoes and pickled beets. “I know I’m a big guy, Aunt Cissy, but this is enough food right here for six people.”

“Oh, go on. Who cooks for you?”

“I’m thinking about getting a cook, but right now, I do. I also eat out a lot.”

“And you take home a lot of pizzas and beer. Right?”

“Bad, huh?”