CHAPTER 44Philadelphia, PA, December 1952
OZZIE
Contrition crept in as Ozzie relived the fight with Rita.I behaved like an idiot,he thought, folding the blankets and stacking them at the end of the sofa. When he came up from the basement, a pot of coffee sat on the stove, and Rita had left him a plate with scrambled eggs and three pieces of crispy bacon, still hot. Ozzie took that as a good sign. She didn’t hate him, it wasn’t over, and he would spend the whole weekend making it up to her.
After he ate, he slipped into an old pair of dungarees and coat and worked through the honey-do list that she had been after him to tackle for the past two weeks. He changed dead lightbulbs, replaced batteries, fixed the leak underneath the bathroom sink, checked the mousetraps, and sprinkled poison down near the cracks in the basement floor and wall. He was in the yard spraying insect killer around the perimeter of the back of the house when he saw Rita standing behind the screen door.
“You’re back,” he said, with the nozzle for the pesticide dangling from his hand.
“You almost finished out there?”
“Just gotta store this under the house.” He held up the jug.
Once he’d put everything away, he stepped into the box-shaped kitchen. Rita stood leaning against the sink, her hair pulled away from her face.
“About last night,” he said, removing his overcoat and draping it on the back of a kitchen chair. The rubber gloves, he peeled from his fingers and then tossed them into the metal garbage can next to the sink.
“What about it?” She fingered the button on the bottom of her sweater.
“I shouldn’t have said those things about the Alexanders. They are good people. And I’m proud of you for getting that scholarship.”
“I wasn’t keeping secrets from you. I just didn’t want you to be disappointed in me if I didn’t get in.”
“I could never be disappointed in you, baby. Do you realize how far you have come? You have a college degree. You are going to law school. It’s me who should be ashamed.” He dropped his gaze.
“Now you talkin’ foolish.”
He looked up at her, and she stared right back.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. Your letters, the money you sent me. I would have dropped out. I would have been working at the Alexanders’ house, not at their law firm,” she said, and the skin behind Ozzie’s ears prickled as he remembered the pocket-watch man asking him to make him a drink.
“I got a little intimidated is all. So many successful people in the room. Made me feel not good enough and out of place.” He looked down at his feet. Rita was the one person in the world to whom he could confess his insecurities, but the words still scraped at his manhood as they left his mouth.
“That crowd can be a bit daunting, but you don’t have anything to be ashamed about. I use their successes as fuel. People like that let me know that my dreams are possible. That we can reach high and come back with the stars too.”
Ozzie wanted to look at it that way, but sometimes it was hard to see past his own circumstance. “Will you forgive my diarrhea of the mouth?”
“I guess I can get past it.” She tilted her head. “Just don’t drink so much. You’ve been emptying a lot of bottles around here lately. I need you to pace yourself. One, maybe two drinks, and then stop. Six, seven, and you start acting foolish.”
“Okay, I’ll do better,” he said, and then reached for her hand, but she pulled away.
“I mean it, Oz. I work for these people. We are trying to advance right alongside them, and I can’t have them thinking that I’m unfit because of you.”
“I get it. I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again.” He lifted her chin. “And I’m proud of you. Last night showed me that you’re really doing big things. A full scholarship to Penn, damn, girl.”
Rita exhaled. “Now that I’m in the school, the real work begins. I’m going to need your support. I can’t do this without you.”
“You won’t have to.” He kissed her on the forehead. “We are in this together.”
On Monday morning, Rita woke Ozzie up with twenty-four kisses to mark his twenty-fourth birthday. The nearness of her sweet-smelling body made Ozzie swell, but when he tried to bring her back to bed with him, Rita scooted out of reach.
“Put that away for now, cowboy.” She moved toward the closet. “Sadie has invited me to court with her today, and I can’t be late.”
“Five more minutes for the birthday boy.” He reached out his arms to her.
Rita slipped into a knit black dress and tugged up her zipper. “You know you’ll want more than five minutes.” She blew him a kiss and was down the steps in a whirl of perfume, lipstick, and promises of cake before he could give her a rebuttal.
Once Rita was gone, the room turned cold. The quiet of the morning gave his mind too much room to roam. To feel and remember. Despondency opened in the pit of his stomach as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. In addition to today being his birthday, it also marked the two-year anniversary of the last time he had laid eyes on his Kitten.
