Fortunate Son

Wa l t e r M o s l e y

that he needed her for Eric and not himself. His headstrong son would only heed her for the first few years. She thought that maybe Dr. Nolan looked on her the way he saw Ahn, a domestic with a few other qualities. But as time passed, she came to believe that he loved her as a woman. They went everywhere together. When they stayed in hotels, she was automatically registered as Mrs. Nolan. After a time marriage seemed like the right thing.

But then Elton came into Ethel’s Florist Shop not long after Tommy’s sixth birthday.

She hadn’t seen the tall, fine-looking Elton in Tommy’s whole lifetime, but he still made her heart skip and her breath come fast.

“Hey, sugah,” Elton said as if he’d only been away for the weekend.

“Don’t sugah me, Elton Trueblood. That’s the last thing in the world I am to you.”

Elton smiled, and Branwyn kept herself from bringing her hand up to still her breast.

“Don’t be like that, baby,” he said. “You know I just wanted to come an’ see how you doin’ an’ what’s goin’ on.”

“Your son is six years old an’ he hasn’t even met you,”

Branwyn stated.

“That’s why I’m here,” Elton said. “I want to know about my boy.”

“Why?”

“Does a father need a reason?”

“The way I see it, you’re less a father and more like a sperm donor.” Branwyn had been waiting for years to hurl that insult. But the minute she did, she realized that all it proved was how strong she still felt about the man.

“Baby,” he said. “Tommy is my son.”

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“How you know his name?”

“Your mother told me,” Elton said with a sly smile. “I know all about you, sugah. Your doctor boyfriend who won’t marry you —”

“At least he don’t mind a woman with a child. At least he don’t mind if that child sit on his lap and ask what the stars is made’a.”

But Elton would not be hurt.

“Come on and have lunch with me, girl,” he said. “Tell me about my boy.”

She said no and told him that she had to get back to work.

When he left, she breathed a deep sigh but still didn’t feel that she had gotten enough air.

The next day Elton came back. The first time he appeared he wore sports clothes — a black dress shirt under a lime-green jacket. But today he appeared with gray-and-black-striped overalls.

“I got a job as a mechanic trainee at Brake-Co,” he told her. “In eighteen months I’ll be a licensed mechanic. I could even fix that Volvo you drivin’.”

“That’s very good for you, Elton,” Branwyn had said. “I’m sure that May must be very happy that you’re thinking about your future.”

“May? Shoot. I moved that heifer out. You know, she quit her job, got big as a house, and had the nerve to tell me that I was supposed to provide for her. Shoot. I provided a open door for her to go through and bus fare to take her home to her mama.”

“You just kicked her out? An’ she ain’t got no job?” Branwyn asked. “How’s she gonna live?”

“She moved out my house and three doors down to August Murphy’s apartment. Never even got on a bus. Just 2 9

Wa l t e r M o s l e y

walked down the street, knocked on his door, an’ went in.

Now you know she had to know the brother pretty damn well to move in with only five minutes’ notice.”

“What did you do about that?”

“Nuthin’. I was glad she was gone. All she evah did was lie around the house and talk about how this girl had bad exten-sions and that one was a cow.”

Branwyn remembered how May, when she was in a bad mood, had a sour nature. She would bad-mouth everybody except the person she was talking to at the moment.

“So you got tired of all that mess she talked, huh?” Branwyn asked, forgetting for a moment that he’d walked out on her when she was pregnant with his child.

“Even before we started fightin’ I was thinkin’ about you, Brawn,” Elton said. “ ’Bout how you always had a good word to say ’bout ev’rythang. An’ I was thinkin’ ’bout my son. You know, as soon as I found out that he was home I come ovah . . . but you’as already gone.”

Branwyn loved Elton’s simple language and his artfully told lies.

“Why didn’t you come after you found out where I was?”

she asked, swinging her words like an ax.

“I didn’t know, Brawn,” he said, his voice rising into a higher register. “I swear. I went to your mama, but she was mad at me for bein’ a fool. It was only when she seen I was serious about a job and I left May, then she told me about where you was.”

“What do you want with me, Elton?”

“I just wanna see my son, baby.”

“Now how am I supposed to believe that? You left me three weeks after the doctor told me I was expecting. You never came to the hospital once to see your son.”

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“I was scared, honey,” Elton said in a forced whisper. “I didn’t wanna see my boy with a hole in his chest, in a glass cage.”

The bell over the door rang, and a small white woman, who had a tiny hairless dog on a leash, came in.

“Hello, Mrs. Freemont,” Branwyn said. “I’ll be right with you,” and then to Elton, “You got to go.”

“What about Thomas?”