Laurinda D. Brown

Sitting at the intersection of Ponce and Peachtree, I found myself consumed with how I had spent my evening. The backlight from my cell phone had been blinking with missed text messages and missed calls from home. I knew most of those calls were from Walter and my grandbabies, telling me they were going to bed. Somehow, over the past several months, I’d lost concern over keeping up with their schedules. My husband of thirty years told me of his whereabouts daily, and I had grown tired of hearing the same old things, day in and day out. I often found myself mouthing his every syllable, his every word, whenever he spoke to me.

A provost at Howard University, his life didn’t have much excitement. He got up in the mornings, did five miles on the treadmill, took a seven and a half-minute shower, splashed on the same Grey Flannel aftershave and cologne he’d worn for thirty years, put on a pair of black slacks and a crisp, white dress shirt with black socks, made himself a bran muffin, a glass of apple juice and a cup of black Sanka, and drove his 1973 Dodge Charger to Lot D on the university’s campus. In the evenings when he got home, he’d talk my ear off about his day and his colleagues who had gotten on his nerves.

The only one who ever caught and kept my attention was Lee Matthews, a young African-American woman who’d received her MBA from Georgetown. She was in her thirties from what Walter had told me, and the administration was giving her hell about her radical stance when it came to sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. The university’s position was like the military’s—don’t ask, don’t tell. Lee’s attitude was that there was nothing in place to protect gays that worked for the school in the event such a problem ever arose. While she didn’t come right out and say she was a lesbian, the higher-ups, including Walter, worked long hours to devise a plan for relieving this young lady of her duties.

I first met Lee in Walter’s office one afternoon while I was waiting for him so we could go to lunch. She was standing at the photocopy machine in a gray pin-striped pantsuit with a pink blouse and a pearl choker clenching her neck. Her open-toed buff pink, three-inch-high slip-ons comforted the most beautiful feet I’d ever seen with toes perfected with an American pedicure. Lee wore her sandy hair in a nice fluffy ponytail that bounced when she moved. As she removed her papers from the document tray, I realized I was staring and turned shyly away. Looking out the window high over Georgia Avenue, I felt her approaching me.

“Dr. Woodson? ” she asked.

I, at the age of forty-nine with four grown children, was like a schoolgirl. I had an Ed.D. from the University of Maryland that had seemed to go to waste over the years because Walter wanted me at home when the kids got in from school. I’d sacrificed who I’d worked so hard to become because my husband didn’t want to be outdone by his wife. I drove what he wanted me to drive—a Black Lexus LS430, and, I wore what he wanted me to wear—Dolce and Gabbana, Versace and Prada. I looked like a million dollars whenever I stepped out of the house, and today was no exception. I was wearing Michael Kors.

“Yes? ” I answered.

I’d say she was about six feet tall in her heels. She towered over my five-foot-five frame, and, as she walked closer to me, I was stricken by her beauty. Like Marvin Gaye said in “Trouble Man, ” I was coming apart, and the room was suddenly a little warm for me. It wasn’t the hot flashes I’d grown used to, with menopause around the corner.

Extending her hand, she politely said, “I’m Lee Matthews.” She firmly shook my hand and introduced herself as the new director of university advancement. “I recognized you from the picture your husband has on his desk. They need to fire whoever took that photo because you’re way more beautiful in person.”

Blushing, I replied, “Well, thank you, Ms. Matthews.”

“No, please, call me Lee.” She smelled divine. “Are you here to see him? ” she asked, pointing toward Walter’s office.

“As a matter of fact, I am. We’re supposed to be having lunch.”

Lee looked puzzled. “Today? ”

“Yes, we talked about it just this morning before he left.”

Lee got up and walked over to Walter’s secretary’s desk. “He must’ve been confused then. He and some of the deans are over at Catholic University for a meeting. They’ve been there since this morning, and, according to his calendar, he’ll be out all day.”

On a normal day I would’ve been pissed because I hated driving into D.C. from Manassas. I’d told Walter I wanted to move out of Virginia because of all the taxes we had to pay, but he was never listening to me.

“Well, I guess maybe he forgot.” I was ashamed to admit he’d actually done it to me before.

Lee, flipping through the stack of papers she was cradling in her arm, headed toward the door but stopped and stole a look at her watch. “Look, I’m about to go to lunch myself, and I’d hate for you to have come all this way for nothing. Would you mind joining me? I mean, I can understand if you don’t want to; since you just met me like five minutes ago.”

“Oh, no, no. I wouldn’t mind. I was actually going to ask you the same thing.”

I laughed, collecting my purse and car keys. The moment we stepped out of Walter’s office I knew I was entering a new realm.

We’d agreed upon Union Station for lunch since she wanted seafood, and I wanted a good salad. In the ten minutes it took us to make it there, I’d learned that Lee had gone to Mount Holyoke for undergrad, had one brother, had interned at Marriott Hotels and had been instrumental in helping them develop more stringent diversity inclusion programs. In listening to how passionate she was about the protection of gays in the workplace and the occasional references to her “ex-roommate, ” I concluded she was in the life. My sister, Melba, was gay, and, before opening up to me about her lifestyle, all of her former lovers had actually been ex-roommates. I’d envied my sister for being able to have some spice in her life and for being able to do different things, and different people, whenever she wanted. In this short period of time, Lee had become something different for me. Anyway, when we pulled up the ramp to the parking garage, I noticed Lee looking around at all the cars.

“Seems a bit crowded today, you think? ”

Wrapping around the curves in search of an empty parking space, I agreed. “Yeah, it is, but I’m sure we’ll find something in a sec.” Right then an Escalade, with its reverse lights on, floated from its space. “Here we go. I told you it wouldn’t take long.”

Walking through the door, I glanced over the railing and saw people entering the train station from the platform. Lee, taking a glimpse at her watch again, walked over to the monitor and scanned the departure schedules. Standing by waiting for her to get finished, I was completely caught off guard when she turned and grabbed my hand.

“Come on! It leaves in ten minutes! ” she shrieked.

“What? ” I said, taking off my heels as she tugged me along.

Lee didn’t say anything else; scampering through the crowds. We ended up at the ticket window.

“Two to New York City, please.”

“What are you doing? ” I asked.

“Hold on, ” she shushed.

Accustomed to doing whatever I was told, I moved aside and leaned against the vacant counter to put my shoes back on and catch my breath. No sooner than I had relaxed, Lee grabbed my hand again and took off toward the platform.

“I hope you don’t mind the sleeping car. That’s all they had left.”

“Sleeping car? New York? What’s going on? ” I asked. “I thought you wanted to go to lunch.”

Again, Lee didn’t say anything. She pulled me through the crowds like a Yamaha on the Beltway, and, when we got to the steps of the train, she turned to me with my hair dripping wet with sweat and simply smiled.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you? ”

I wanted so badly to tell her yes, but my spirit, in need of this liberty, put its hand over my mouth.

“No, I don’t.” I giggled, grabbing the handrail and lifting myself onto the train.

Giving our tickets to the attendant, Lee and I followed behind him as he led us up the stairs to our accommodations. I was pooped and dropped my weary bones into an awaiting chair.

With a kind but curious smile, I asked, “What are you doing, Lee? ”

I wasn’t one who was used to spontaneity. There was a time and a place for everything.

Standing before the mirror, wiping tiny beads of sweat from her brow, she snickered. “I decided I wanted some seafood from City Crab, and I thought you might like that, too.”

Lee, taking off her jacket and hanging it up in the closet, jumped up onto the top bunk and stretched out across the bed on her stomach.

Confused at why we had to travel all the way to New York for seafood, I said, in amazement, “Dear, we could’ve gone down to the wharf, if that’s what you wanted. There’s plenty…”

“I wasn’t really feeling that today, Dr. Woodson. The bosses are out of the office, so I felt like goofing off. Sometimes I think they have it in for me anyway.”

“Uh, it’s Meena. You can call me Meena.”

“Oh, okay, Meena. You know those papers you saw me with when you came in? ”

“Yes, I recall them.”

“Well, that was my resume. I’ve been interviewing for jobs in Atlanta. Those stiff-shirts don’t realize I’ve known for weeks that they’ve been plotting to get rid of me without causing a big stink. When I leave, it’ll be on my own terms.”

I kept to myself what I knew. “So you’re going to leave? Just like that? ”

“As soon as something comes through, I’m gone.”

All the way to New York, Lee fired questions at me about my life, my kids, and my career I’d left behind for Walter. “So you mean to tell me you left a hundred fifty thousand-dollar-a-year job, so you could stay at home and be a trophy wife? ”

“In a nutshell, yes, I did. I loved Walter at the time, and…”

“At the time? ”

I’d slipped. “Well, what I meant was…”

“You don’t have to explain. That’s your business.”

But I wanted to go on. “No, I need to say this. I have given Walter the best of me over the years, but some days I feel like I’ve given him all of me, and that there’s nothing left for myself.” Before I knew it, I was weeping.

Lee propped up on her elbows and pulled a tissue from her pocket. “Don’t worry, it’s clean.” She laughed.

Gently, I took the tissue from her hand and continued pouring out my soul to her.

What began as a late lunch ended up becoming an early dinner at City Crab. Perusing the menu with my glasses pulled away from my face to see the fine print, I said, “Oh, the salads look nice. Old women like me have to get all the vegetables we can get.”

Lee, peeping over the top of her menu, stared at me like my twenty-year-old had a tendency to do when she was fed up with me. “Will you stop it? You’re not old. You’re absolutely gorgeous. Now, I know you aren’t going to come all this way to still eat a salad, Meena.”

Sitting in a seafood restaurant at the corner of 19th and Park Avenue with a woman who, in all of five hours, knew more about me than my own husband knew, I finally took a chance. “Okay, you’re right. I’ll have the Maryland Crabmeat Stuffed Idaho Rainbow Trout.”

Slowly rubbing my thigh underneath the table, Lee ordered for both of us and requested the waiter bring us a pitcher of Sangria. I wasn’t a drinker, but I didn’t want her to know that. When the waiter left, she brought her hand back to the tabletop and gestured for me to put my hand in hers. At first I hesitated because I wasn’t comfortable with holding another woman’s hand in public. “Relax, Meena. No one knows us here. Besides, it’s none of anybody’s business what we do.”

I liked Lee’s attitude. Walter had always been concerned with what other people thought, and it made our outings together very uncomfortable for me. With Lee, I felt like it was right. “Okay, okay, ” I said, giving them to her; trembling and all.

Stroking my knuckles and the veins in my ageless hands, Lee softly asked, looking into my eyes, “You know why I did this for you? ”

I’d been asking myself that for hours, and I was overdue an explanation. “Why, yes, I’d like to know, ” I responded, squeezing her soft hands.

“From the moment I laid eyes on you in that picture, I’ve thought about you. I hear Walter talking about you as if you’re some type of permanent fixture in his life with no opinions, no say in anything. One day, after he and his secretary had finished talking about an event you two had attended, I asked her what you did. She referred to you as Doctor Woodson, and I was floored when she told me how heavy you were. The way he talks about you, I would’ve never guessed that about you. So I googled you and found out about this amazing stuff you’d done.”

I was speechless. No one had ever talked to me about what my life used to be like. It was always about Walter, Walter, Walter.

“I don’t really know what to say, Lee. You looked me up on the Internet? ”

Quickly, Lee jumped on the defensive. “I’m not a stalker, if that’s what you’re asking. I wanted to know more about you, without having to ask your husband. Your work with Children’s Hospital and GW should’ve gotten more recognition than what I saw.”

“Well, at the time, Walter was up for provost, and I had to devote all of my time to him. I passed the torch to a colleague, ” I said humbly.

Lee had a death grip on my hands, and I was afraid for her to let them go in fear of never having someone hold them like that again. On the wall over the bar was a clock that displayed seven o’clock. Considering we hadn’t eaten yet, it would be well into the morning before I got home, but I didn’t care. I only wanted to spend as much time with her as I could.

“This was good for me, ” I said. “I needed to get away.”

I searched in her eyes for an unspoken response, and I found it.

It was ten o’clock by the time we made it back to Penn Station, and we were back in another bedroom car.

“Meena, I hope you enjoyed yourself tonight. I’m sure I scared the hell out of you with my impromptu lunch date.”

Once again, she jumped up to the top bunk, but this time in her heels. Her long legs were dangling over my bunk.

Chuckling to myself, I relaxed my body on the lower berth, and I sought no forgiveness for what happened next. Solemnly, I took those same hands that had trembled during dinner and removed Lee’s shoes from her feet. I grabbed her pinky toe with my tongue and caressed every single toe with my lips until her entire foot was saturated with my essence. Lee slid down from the bed and met my lips with hers.

“I want to make love to you over and over again, until you scream my name like doves.”

I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that it felt right. Button by button, I exposed Lee’s bosom to me and cupped her voluptuous curves with my hands. I reclined her against my bunk and removed every stitch of her clothing until I’d reached her bare skin. Standing in the moving car as we bustled across the tracks extending north to south, I disrobed my thousand-dollar frock and lay next to her. I kissed every part of her, every part I could get to, and, in my mind, I made her all mine.

Lee, returning my affections, mounted me and rested her body against me. Motionless, our hearts beat synchronized with time. I held her nipples between my lips and softly planted my palms around her buttocks. I didn’t know what I was doing, but, as she rocked back and forth in my lap moaning and whimpering my name, I knew what I had done. With my body stretched against the sheets, Lee slid between my legs and spread them; landing kisses inside my thighs that eventually landed onto the lips of my pussy. Riding a wave of lust, Lee and I journeyed into a place where our erotic souls met and fell in love.

I got home early the next morning with a barrage of questions from Walter. I told him I’d spent some time with Melba and had lost track of time.

Two months after that evening, I got a call at home from Lee telling me she had gotten a job offer from Emory University and wanted to know if I’d meet her in Atlanta to help her look for an apartment. Walter had told me she was leaving but refused to go into any details. Did they get her a job? Did any of her leads come through? I missed her and jumped at the chance and took the Red Eye out from Dulles.

Lee picked me up from the airport, and, because we hadn’t seen or talked to each other since New York, I was all giddy inside. I’d thought about her and wondered where she’d fit into my life, if at all possible. We rode back to her hotel room at the Hilton and went down to Trader Vic’s for a nightcap.

“Meena, I’ve been thinking about you every day for the past two months, and I can’t get you out of my head. I want to ask you something.”

Secretly, I yearned for Lee unlike I’d ever yearned for anyone. In the shower, in the tub, in the bed—everywhere, I had to have her. “What’s on your mind? ”

“I want you here with me.”

“As in leave my family and move to Atlanta? ”

Teasing a piece of ice with her straw, Lee softly answered, “Why, yes, that’s what I’m asking. That night on the train meant everything to me. I’ve had lovers in the past, and none of them were ever able to do what you did.”

“And what was that? ”

“You made me fall in love, ” she said tearfully.

While Lee slept into the wee hours of the morning, I decided to brave the streets of Atlanta to think. I walked through the lobby and got a cab, asking to be driven up Peachtree and back. As we made a left on Ralph McGill and a right onto Peachtree, I contemplated my unhappiness and where it had gotten me thus far. I was nowhere. In thirty years of marriage, I’d found nothing close to what I’d found with Lee in those few hours I’d been with her. I’d experienced something I wanted with me for an eternity, and, if it meant leaving Walter, my kids, my grandbabies, and my miserably boring life, then so be it.