Member-only story
Four Rooms, Absent a View
It was the summer of 1977 and I had graduated from UCLA at the beginning of June. The world was my oyster, supposedly, though it didn’t quite feel that way at the time. I was married with two young stepchildren and my future was up in the air. We had returned to south Florida the day after my graduation to be closer to his parents and sisters.
Bob Green was a wonderful husband, devoted to taking care of me and the kids and providing what we wanted and needed with his work in construction. Matthew and Amanda had been shuffled back and forth between their birth mother and their paternal grandparents during the two years their father had been in Vietnam. It had taken a year to get things sorted out and they couldn’t have been happier to now be a part of a loving, nuclear family.
I had been raised by a single mother and had little contact with my father growing up. As an only child I wasn’t accustomed to the dynamics of family life but so wanted to make it work and to fit in. I relished the simple moments, like brushing Amanda’s hair and finding just the right sneakers for Matthew. And my cooking improved, to the point that Bob smiled one evening at the dinner table and told me my fried chicken and collard greens tasted better than his mother’s did. The children giggled and I beamed.
