Mary could have thought of lot of other things to be doing on Mother’s Day. But paying the bills and maybe putting away a little extra, as if that were ever possible, were the first priorities. So, when all was said and done, it would be just another Mother’s Day she’d spent without her children. She hadn’t even been able to go to church.
Bill always liked Sundays because Mary usually came in having gone to church and dressed in her Sunday best. Sometimes, when he could, this of course after they’d been intimate, he would sit and watch her change. She wore stockings and a garter belt and heels and nice underwear. It drove him crazy just to look at her. It drove Mary crazy that it drove him crazy to be looking at her.
To her credit, his fiancé would dress up for him if he asked her to. In fact, to her credit, she would do anything for him that he asked of her provided it didn’t upset her sensibilities. She wasn’t a freak or anything like that. Marie had been a freak. Alfreda was pretty close to being a freak. Mary, like Lorraine, was simply a getting-toward middle-age woman equipped with all those things most women of her age were equipped with, one of those things being patience. His fiancé was someone he was intimate with in ways he was intimate with no one else, and those ways were not particularly sexual. They were a couple, and like a couple who lived together, some of the urgency of having their needs fulfilled was gone.
Maybe that was why his fiancé did not feel it such a priority to be home when he got home. Maybe that was why she chose to go out with her friends and hang out with them even though for once he had a chance to be home early and spend time with her.
All of Mary’s thoughts were in her eyes, in her expression, when Robert wished her the happy Mother’s Day. It was like there was an un-sighed sigh and like Robert could feel the sigh. Maybe, in the scope of things, Robert wanted to sigh as well.
They didn’t have much time to talk. Robert asked about the day, about how the boy had done, about how it had all gone from her point of view. Mary kind of echoed what Tommy had said, that it all went very smoothly, that they didn’t fall behind, that the boy had done stunningly. Then, as she sometimes did, she told Robert that her dogs hurt and that she sometimes felt as if all she wanted to do was lay down and go to sleep. As was her way, she finished what she was saying with “Lord have mercy on these bones.”
Soon as the meat was loaded, Robert and Alvin left in the van. Mr. Bowman had come over in his own car, a brand-spanking new Caddy, state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line. So he left alone, not unhappily since he did not relish being with the funky Alvin. He gave Tommy an envelope of cash before he left. In that envelope were fifty dollar bills for each of the cooks and pantry girls. That was their bonus for doing slightly over 1500 covers, 1200 of which were steaks. Fifty dollars was almost a half week’s salary for a lot of people. To Bill and the other cooks, it could be a month’s rent, or close to it. It could certainly be a good load of the month’s groceries.
Knowing they were gone, while it was quiet, Bill went down to the meat room. Henry Lee was busy working away. But that did not stop him from putting down his knife and accompanying Bill into the deep freeze to smoke a joint. Done with that, they came out and drank bourbon. Bill took a double hit and told Henry Lee he would bring him down a beer.
