With Jazz

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30 pp. Illustrated by LaNelle Mason. Chrissy, about to become a granny, "never paid attention to current events," as she "was too busy raising a family. But my children have all go ne now and I've started to think about things that go on." She goes to a weekly neighborhood group to "talk about life, in a sort of talkshow format." She gets together with a friend named Peter, called Jazz, who works construction and saves his money and then quits and lights out for France...and brings back suitcases full of French underwear. He sells it to boutiques and occasionally to friends... What Jazz needed, I thought, was a woman who felt romantic about him. But he's never made a claim on a woman who cared about him...." Chrissy thinks about her previous marriages, to George and to Jim Ed, about the death of her youngest daughter from meningitis, about her sons, Don and Phil, named after the Everly Brothers. She and Jazz go to visit Don one night but find his cabin empty; they find some fine drawings of zoological subjects, and Chrissy then writes Don a note which she tells Jazz is "stilted and phony." She wants to cry, and Jazz holds her. It occurs to her that "it takes a long time to know a person." She and Jazz spend the night together, and he promises to take her to France. Show more