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The first time I saw her, a long, long time ago, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She’d just got into town from West Virginia. She and her boyfriend and a tiny, tiny baby, whose father was back home. She had a soft coal country drawl and big eyes that made her look like a reticent, renaissance madonna (the religious painting kind, not the pop legend kind).<\/p>\n
It’s undoubtedly a sad commentary on my fit in the human race, but I usually avoided women with kids. And it was for that reason — that I thought I was safe, that I let myself get sucked in, just a little.<\/p>\n
She jettisoned her boyfriend within two weeks. I tried sympathy but she declared that he was a nice guy but a loser. She gave every sign of being a callous manipulator but I would look into those eyes and melt and think it was just the hard, tough life she’d led so far. I mooned around for awhile, unwilling to make any move (a kid… she had a kid… I was a kid… it couldn’t work) but secretly hoping (I suspect now, to my chagrin) that something<\/span> would happen to force the issue.<\/p>\n It did, in the form of an older guy with a house and a good job. All of a sudden she was married and less than a year and a half later they were selling the house and splitting the proceeds in a moderately nasty divorce.<\/p>\n Not quite the situation in the song below… but if I told that<\/span> story, I’d be in trouble.<\/p>\n\n