Walter Mosley - Fortunate Son

“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.”

“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 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 extensions 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.”

“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?”

“Leave now, Elton. I don’t wanna lose this job over you.”

Elton gave Branwyn a hard look that she withstood with stony silence. Finally he turned away and walked out.

Elton came back four more times before Branwyn agreed to have lunch with him. The florist was on Pico, near Doheny. There was a hotel a few blocks away that had a restaurant Branwyn liked. They prepared a delicious tuna salad that she made sure to have twice a week.

Elton was wearing a T-shirt with a three-button collar and tan pants that hugged his butt. Branwyn had been dreaming about his lips and those hips for the two weeks since he’d first appeared at Ethel’s.

Why does he come by so often? she wondered each night. On one of those nights, the doctor had made love to her. And while he did, she closed her eyes and remembered the fever that took her over when Elton was in her bed. And when she remembered Elton and the things he did to her, she got so excited that she had one of those soul-shaking orgasms that left her shivering like a leaf — and crying too.

Afterward she couldn’t even talk to Minas. He lay back with his hands behind his head, proud of the way he’d made her holler and cry. He didn’t know, she thought, that she was cheating on him even while they were making love.

That was why she refused the doctor’s proposal of marriage that day after Eric took the blame for her son’s misdemeanor. If he knew the passion in her heart, he’d never give her a ring.

It wasn’t that she wanted to marry Elton. She didn’t dream about a house with him and Thomas anymore. She knew that as time went by, he’d come home later and later each night until finally he’d start skipping nights and then weeks and then he’d be gone. Her mother was right the first time when she compared him to heartbreak. But none of that changed how much she wanted him to kiss her and lay the flats of his hands on her sides.

How could she say yes to Minas Nolan when she was wanton in her heart? And why wasn’t Elton the kind of man that she could run to and live with until she was old and half-blind?

On the day she was to meet Elton for lunch, Branwyn brought Thomas to work with her. She made him wear his nice gray cotton pants and the maroon sweater that Eric, with the help of Ahn, had given him for his birthday.

Ethel Gorseman loved little Thomas because he never got into trouble when he was alone. If Eric came into the shop for any reason, the florist kept her eye on him every second. She liked Eric too, but he was a “walking disaster” in her opinion. If Eric ever came in alone with Branwyn, Ethel would hire Jessop, who owned the small arcade across the street, to look after him. She’d give Eric five dollars so that he could eat hot dogs and play video games instead of breaking her vases and tipping over her shelves.

Tommy wished that she would give him five dollars and send him over to visit Jessop when he was there, but she never did. Instead she would tell him about how florists keep flowers alive and why it was such a good job.

That day Branwyn had kept Tommy out of school. The excuse she gave Minas was that he had a cold, but that wasn’t so remarkable. Thomas was used to runny noses and coughing. Most of his life he’d been sick with something.