A friend asked me tonight if I ever "hung out with a mommy before." In modern day parlance, the term "hang out," in its various tenses, seems to quickly be replacing "date." And that got me to thinking (here he pauses to scratch his chin thoughfully, stare off into space and let the guy in the control room pull the lever to start the swirly flashback thingie...)
Back in 1980 or so, when I was working at a comics shop on Pittsburgh's North Side, I became infatuated with a very comely young mother. Let's call her Mary. The shop was right off the 6th Street Bridge, just across from downtown, and a couple times a week I'd see this attractive young woman walk by and then later in the day walk back. The Allegheny County Community College was nearby and she always had books, so I put two and two together and figured out she was going to school.
And then a strange thing happened. I suppose it was because of a semester break and a change in her class schedule, but she ended up on the same trolley from Mt. Lebanon into downtown Pittsburgh, which I took daily. Turns out both of us lived there. So we became semi-familiar faces, at least a few days a week. One day, she walked by the shop on her way towards school and she waved at me. That day, on her way back, she stopped in. I was behind the counter and she came up to me and with that friendly, open smile of her's, she said something like, "Hi. I always wondered what was in this store." And we both revealed we saw each other on the trolley everyday and recognized each other.
It turned out she was about 5 years older than me (about 30 at the time) with 2 kids, a boy around 5 and a girl, named Cathy, around 4. She was going through a rough divorce with a ne'er do well husband who was in a band that had moderate success in the Pittsburgh area, and one hit song locally. I don't even remember his name. We started to sit together on the trolley rides to and from work/school and slowly got to know each other. She lived about half a mile from me, in a rambling apartment off Bower Hill Road.
I, of course, became hopelessly infatuated with her. She was cute, funny, a little tragic and a little spacy, just like I likes 'em. She had a really hard life at the time, though. Money was tight. She was trying to make ends meet, raise 2 kids basically on her own and go back to school and better herself. I was making very little money, in fact, less than minimum wage, due to the voluminous discount I got on comics, something factored into my salary. (The discount was like 40%--in defense of that job, I must say I got above minimum wage pretty quickly and the owner was very nice when I suddenly gave a day's notice to start my TV designer career).
Anyway, I think she caught onto my feelings and she tried to keep things on a friendly basis. We hung out a lot, but she had an annoying habit of shooing me away when a guy who was interested in her would show up suddenly and unannounced, partly because he always brought "party favors." But we became close friends and I worshipped her from afar, chaste and unspoken.
One Sunday, I was working at the comics shop and we were supposed to get together and go to a movie after I closed the shop. She called me at the last minute to tell me the kids' deadbeat dad couldn't take them, and did I mind terribly if we did something together? I said sure, and she showed up in her beat-up little car with both the kids in tow. We went over to a small park on North Side. It was a warm day and she, against my protests (how do you tell someone "I think that's a bad idea," when you don't have kids of your own and it basically concerns their kids?), let the kids take off their shoes and go wading in the small fountain there. Despite the STAY OUT OF THE FOUNTAIN signs.
Well, the kids were in the fountain all of seconds when they both started screaming at the top of their lungs. There was broken glass all through the fountain, unseen in the fading light. We ended up grabbing both of them and running to a nearby hospital, me carrying the boy, she the girl, with their feet bleeding profusely. The boy was far worse than the girl and had to have glass taken out of his feet and stitches put in. Mary had no insurance, and they hassled her about that. She had to help hold down her son as they took the glass out. The little girl cried in my arms while she listened to her brother scream.
After they were stitched up, I sat with them, a relative stranger, while Mary went and got the car (I didn't drive at the time, another LONG story). We all went home. The boy couldn't walk, the girl could limp on one foot. She put them to bed. She was really shaky. She decided she needed a joint and called her erstwhile boyfriend who quickly came over in his van. She offered me a ride home, via the joint man in his van, but it was obvious she needed the joint and the other guy more than she needed me. I walked home.
After that night, things were different. I saw her in a different light. It sounds horribly judgmental, I know. We all make mistakes, but the fountain thing was something beyond my understanding. How could she let them do that? Maybe I should have been more vocal. I just remembered them screaming...I had a hard time looking at them again. I was a relative stranger to them before that day, and I just felt they thought, "Oh...that guy. Nothing bad happened until he came along."
Time went on. I got a new job, a much better one, as a designer at a local TV station. We still talked, but I saw her less and less. One night, she called and asked me why we didn't see each other anymore and I told her I just didn't want to. She went into a long harangue about how much I changed since I got a better job and what a snob I was now. I said I just thought it would be better if we said good-bye. She mentioned she still had 2 books of mine. I said keep them. (Believe me, I must have been very serious about NOT seeing her again. Those were books about Buster Keaton!)
But saying good-bye wasn't the end of the story.
About ten years later, a friend and I popped into a new restaurant on the main drag of Mt. Lebanon, the Pittsburgh suburb where I lived for almost 20 years. Said friend was cute and younger and I was totally infatuated with her, too (and still love her madly more than 15 years later). From out of the kitchen comes Mary. She's a waitress there. She waits on us. She can't stop talking to me, or about me, to my friend. She is assuming we're dating (we're not, but I wish we were at the time) and finally after the check comes, she says to both my friend and me, "I hope you're dating him, because he is the nicest guy in the world. I'll never forget what you did for me that day when my kids hurt their feet. I was really stupid about you, and I wish I had paid more attention to you, so you better treat him nice, 'cause he's worth it."
When we left the restaurant my friend turned to me and said, "I've never felt this before with you, but now I know what it's like to feel a little jealous."
Skip ahead about 6 more years. I'm in Bruegger's Bagels on Greentree Road. A comely teenager waits on me as I order my bagel sandwich. She looks at me funny. She says, "I know you." I say, "No. I don't think so." I look at her nametag. It reads Cathy. She says, "No. I do. From a long time ago. You're the guy who carried me from that fountain when I hurt my feet. I was really little. You saved me." And with that she launches into the whole story to her friend behind the counter, undoubtedly embellished with age by her mother.
This is not a story indicting confused mothers, nor is it stating that yeah, I hung out with a mommy once, and it was a disaster. I don't envy anyone bringing up a kid on their own these days, even if the other parent is supportive, albeit out of the house. This is just a memory, something I hadn't thought about for years.
And for the record, I wish I had been a better friend after the kids' accident. Maybe I shouldn't have limped away myself.
Dude, we all make mistake and looking back I am sure you realize that whe wasnt for you anyway. She may have been sexy and all but she needed both a provider and a father and at that time in your life you probably werent ready to be either. You have grown as a person and seem wiser now than before, I applaude the person you have become.
Posted by: wesley | July 18, 2005 at 02:30 PM