Fiction Fixation: “Flow” (Part 2 of 3)

Read Part One before you dive in….

Cal extended his arm and I latched on to it. We proceeded down the streets of Harlem looking more like a prom couple than two people who just met 5 minutes ago.

The conversation was easy as we walked to the diner. No awkward silences or too personal questions, just smiles and laughter. Cal said it was rare to find someone named Ruby under 90 years old and that he figured I was named after someone in my family. I told him that my name originated from my mother’s jewelry box. My father lavished my mother with jewelry from the moment he started courting her. He always sought the purest and most beautiful stones. By the time I was born the only stone she didn’t have was a ruby and that was only because he hadn’t found one yet that met his standards. So, when I was born I was named Ruby and my daddy said I was the most perfect Ruby he’d ever seen, so my mother didn’t need any rubies for her jewelry box. Cal smiled at the end of my little story and pulled me in closer.

We reached the diner and seated ourselves in a corner booth near the windows. The pink vinyl seats squeaked as we slid into them. Since we were the only customers, the waitress took our orders right away. On the way over, we had decided that one of us would get pancakes and sausage and the other would get a burger and fries and we’d both sample each plate. When the waitress brought back our orders we arranged the plates buffet style and continued our conversation.

“So how’d you come up with the name Prince Charming?”

“Well, I didn’t come up with the name. The other kids on my block gave me that title. I was raised by a single mother and I saw how she struggled and I really just developed this very deep respect for women. I always open doors, carry bags…all that stuff. Chivalry is not dead to me. So because I did all that, the other guys on my block always gave me a hard time about it and started calling me Prince Charming. The name stuck and when I started performing at open mics, I figured I’d just keep the name.”

“Oh, okay. I can dig that. So, how was it growing up in a single-parent home? Do you keep in touch with your father?”

“I was a vacation baby and I don’t even know who my father is. My mother comes from a very proud and hard-working Italian American family. My grandparents paid for my mother to go to Jamaica one summer as a high school graduation present. She had already been accepted to Columbia and they were very proud of her. So my mom was down in Jamaica and she ended up falling for the lifeguard at this beach she swam at every morning.

“After 10 passion-filled nights, my mother flew home with the beginning of me in her belly. She was a couple months along when she told my grandparents. They were furious for several reasons. She wasn’t married, she didn’t even really know my father and he was black. My grandparents refused to support her and my mother ended up dropping out of Columbia because she couldn’t handle me and school and figuring out a way to feed us. Somehow my mother got a job and an apartment on her own and she traded babysitting duties with another single mother in our building who worked a different shift. My mother changed her life just to take care of me. She claims she loved my father for what he offered her for the short time they were together, but she didn’t want to try to make a relationship work based on a 10-day vacation. So, she just went through it on her own. She never talked to my father after she left Jamaica. She never even knew his last name. She says she wanted the time they shared to remain special and untainted by real life.”

I instinctively massaged his hand as he was telling me his story. I had so many questions. Did he ever have a relationship with his grandparents? Was he bitter about not knowing his father? How did he handle his bi-racial identity? These questions swirled through my head with a tinge of guilt. I came from a very loving two-parent home. We literally had a white picket fence in front of our house and I had all the standard violin and ballet classes that every suburban kid had to have. I had riding lessons every summer too. My parents both had PhDs and both of them were college instructors. My father had a JD as well and used to be a practicing attorney. When I got my bachelor’s degree in English from Columbia, my parents fully expected me to continue with school, eventually get my PhD in education and become a teacher. I had other plans. I loved kids, but I did not want to teach for a living.

When I got my degree, I stayed in New York and started taking odd jobs where ever I could that would allow me enough time to develop my writing and get my work out to agents and publishers. Three years later, I was a teaching assistant at a charter school and still trying to find my “big break” in writing. My parents were heart-broken and did not understand why I would choose such a difficult path. They offered to pay my rent, but I didn’t take it. I wanted to make it on my own and not have to answer to anyone but me.

For the first time since we met, Cal and I were silent. The only sound in the diner was the buzz from the fluorescent lights and the rhythmic clatter of someone washing dishes in the back. Cal slowly leaned over the table and whispered “thank you” in my ear. As he drew back, he kissed my cheek ever so lightly. I think I felt his breath more than his lips. If the sun could really kiss a person, I imagined it would be something like that, warm and soft and loving. I was about to ask him what he was thanking me for when I heard a loud bang coming from the front of the diner.

Read the conclusion on Friday at noon.