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Tall, stringy, depleted due to undernourishment, the middle-aged fellow vaunted a booming-forte baritone voice. Employed it adeptly to Bach cantatas and reprimands. Fortunately, that day he too had come in late. By force of camaraderie or simply cold feet, Fab and Alex sat side-by-side in the last empty row of auditorium seats.
Fab then suddenly broke out in--Alex wasn't sure. Her head dropped down between her knees, her hands covered her face and she effected strange strangledy sounds.
"What's wrong?"
As he got no reply he tapped her shoulder, "You all right?"
"No."
"What's the mater?"
"Damn! I'm in the wrong class," more strangling, "I've got him tomorrow."
He had exhailed, then asked for a date.
Those days belonged to other people, he sat thinking rocking and slowly sipping on the torpid beer.
Before she had left for Washington, Fab never missed getting up early morning. He imagined it to be a kind of rebirth for her, to confront the sun as it was peeping over the roofs of suburbia. She'd snap from slumberland to hard dawn in no time. He'd be sniffing the coffee's vigorous brew still in bed, and picture Fab seated at the kitchen table, one foot over the other, to sip her cuppa, smoke her Winston, and receive the day.
Two years after their collision Fab had grown pregnant with Marilena.
Three months before Marilena was born they had to go on welfare and a harsh budget. They spent most of their piggy-bank on baby stuff: cradle, pram, baby clothes.
Alex did not try to find full-time work in New York City. It was the last place he'd raise children. Washington state was too far and too wintry for either of them, and Main, where he grew up, got stiff-cold. So it had been many happy atidings when Alex got the response from Connecticut.
The University of Bridgeport wanted him to teach semantics and linguistics. The package included medical care, moving expenses, and a rent subsidy. He was to notify them a.s.a.p. of his decision.
All this while Fab had worked on a second-hand leg-cranked sewing machine. It got painful sitting all those days through. But he never heard her bad-mouthe or complain. Alex could not help honouring this silent muscle in her.
He went and got a second Bud. It squished and sprayed as he opened it. He came then back to the rocker.
Maria Helen too had this strength. Either because she was of a later generation, or because her youth of twenty-two, it emerged sharper, vibrant, and elusive.
She spoiled him by pampering to his whims the minute her mother said good bye. This wisdom of womanhood he now, at fifty, was becoming aware of. He would weigh and study her. She intrigued him as she went about the house; her dreams and hopes undetectable, undefendable even.
"How could we have engineered this child?" was his favored challenge. When exploring Marilena, the chasm between Fab and him shrunk to a sliver-thin cranny.
Three years now they lived together. She made his bed in the morning and breakfast when she didn't have overnight duty at the Academy. Like her mom Marilena was lean and tall and her hair was curly and ebony and cut short.