UP NEXT: New York Revisited

Back to New York? So soon? Will Debbie stay? Or will this be one of many trips she will take in her future? And when, oh when, will Debbie ever make it big? And, um, find that other thing called love?

CONCLUSION: Single Mom of Cactus County

On her last day in Arizona, Debbie and Carlotta stopped by Toni's house. On the way out, Charlene said,"Bye, Debbie, I love you. See you tomorrow."

At the airport, Carolotta and Debbie hugged.

Black clouds came into view as the airplane nose dived into Logan Airport.

"The most beautiful sight I've ever seen," Debbie confessed to the girl sitting next to her.

"Not me!" the girl laughed. "I want to go back to Arizona." She wanted to start her own business in massage therapy.

"I missed the ocean so much," Debbie said.

"What sign are you?"

"Pisces."

"Of course. That's a water sign."

HOME SWEET HOME

"Did you go to the beach?" her sister Nicole asked her, sitting at the kitchen table.

"No, there's no beach!" Debbie laughed.

"Well, are there lakes?" Nicole asked.

"No! That's just it! You can't go to the beach. There are no oceans. No lakes. All the rivers are dried up."

Nicole looked at the table and frowned.

"There are palm trees," Debbie said. "They remind you of the beach, but there isn't any beach!"

"It's like a teaser," Nicole nodded in understanding.

"She'll be back," her father had told her mother. "There's no ocean."

UP NEXT WEEK

See you all here next Monday or Tuesday, after the Easter holiday. UP NEXT: The dramatic conclusion to THE SINGLE MOM OF CACTUS COUNTY. UP UP NEXT: New York Revisited. UP UP UP NEXT: More from Corporate Headquarters: "McGrath & O'Connor," New York, NY...from late 1980s midtown Manhattan.

Until next week,

Debbie, ah....

Denise(...Dances...2011)...21 years later!

UP NEXT: Back East

UP NEXT: The dramatic conclusion to THE SINGLE MOM OF CACTUS COUNTY, here on the Fool's Gold book blog! I hope you've enjoyed reliving Debbie's travails in the Desert Southwest as much as I have. I'm going to miss it, aren't you? And when, oh when, are we going to get some nice weather "back east?" This weather is enough to make anyone want to pack up and leave. Sarasota, FL, anyone?

See ya here. Same time, same place. Next week. Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Until next time,

Denise

MEET...THE SINGLE MOM OF CACTUS COUNTY!

"We don't want you to leave. We want you to stay," Toni insisted. Debbie sighed. Carlotta had introduced Debbie to Toni and her three kids. Toni loved to go out. One night, they had all met at a Mexican Restaurant for happy hour. Carlotta grimaced teasingly at Mindy and Charlene as Bruce fell asleep on his mother's lap.

The next day, Toni drove Debbie and the kids to Cave Creek. Desert plains and olive green cacti surrounded them for miles. This was not the leafy green lush existence of New England. The desert Spring had already passed when cactus flower graced the now barren landscape.

"A filming crew was out here one day," Toni told her. "They were filming Real Life Adventures."

Upstairs in the Treehouse Restaurant, aptly named, Toni, Debbie, Bruce, and the girls had lunch. In the back seat of the car, the kids dozed in the heat. Bottles of juice and koolaid, half finished, lay on the back seat. Toni drove into a greenhouse parking lot. She knew the people who owned it. The man gave Debbie a small potted cactus to take home.

MEET THE SINGLE MOM

Toni wanted to have a child.

"You can be as involved or uninvolved as you want," she had told the prospective father.

Driving her pizza delivery car gave way to her own at-home daycare business. "I don't much believe in babysitters," Toni told Debbie, and then, "Get away from the windows!"

Five tots scrambled off the old couch and sat sedately on the rug in front of the television set. A striped cat lay under the end table. Mindy smiled at Debbie, at once shy and sly. Charlene asked Debbie what colors she liked. She colored a blue gown onto Cinderella.

"Elizabeth is a beautiful child. She and Bruce could read books all day. Todd likes to climb trees, get dirty." The girls eyed a lovely long-haired slender girl. At age seven, Elizabeth was the oldest of the daycare kids. She reclined against the edge of the couch, sitting on the floor next to Bruce.

"I tried leaving him with a sitter when I delivered pizza. He cried all day," Toni said. Bruce read silently, his white-blond hair neatly framing blue, long lashed eyes, his mother's eyes.

"Their mother calls every Easter and Christmas to talk to the girls." Toni nodded toward Mindy and Charlene.

"But you won't let her, right?"

"No. People ask me why I get involved with other people's children."

"At least, they have somebody." Debbie eyed Mindy and Charlene, sandy-haired; watching cartoons quietly. Their mother had left them at Toni's at home daycare center one day and had never returned. The adoption papers were complete and Bruce, Mindy and Charlene had formed a natural stairstep trio at ages three, four and five. "I didn't tell Terry I have three children under six. Think that would scare him away? Get away from the windows!"

The toddlers had flocked to the couch again and had become entranced with a sewer truck outdoors. A tree grew out of the dirt front yard. There were no lawns here, just yards. An arrangement of cacti twisted out of the sand in the front yard across the street. It was a yard; there were no lawns here. Well, Carlotta did have a lawn over at the apartment complex. Holes had been bored into the curving sidewalks on the grounds so that pink petunias could be planted at Carlotta's apartment complex.

Debbie needed to use the bathroom. She closed the door. The knob turned from the outside. Mindy peeked in. "No!" Debbie said. It was a dilemma she was to deal with for the rest of the day. The bathroom door didn't have a lock on it andthe girls were accustomed to opening the door at their convenience.

Debbie imitated a cat, fingers for ears, and went through the kitchen after the two girls. They howled with delight, their blue eyes round with fright. Debbie was inspired by the tabby cat wearing a coat of unusual, distinct markings, hiding under an end table in the living room.

The heat was stifling. Mindy and Charlene kept coming over to sit close to Debbie on the couch.

"She doesn't want you around her! Go watch TV!" Toni commanded.

Debbie looked up from Charlene's colored picture she had given her. Elizabeth was inside the screen door, her eyes swollen, trembling with tears. The tears kept flowing out of her already puffy eyes. "Bruce and Todd are making fun of me." She sobbed in disbelief.

"Bruce! Todd! Get over here now! Look at her! How does that make you feel?"

Both boys stared at their shoes and squirmed.

"Well? It should make you feel pretty yucky. What are you going to say to her now?" Toni demanded.

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth," Bruce said politely.

Todd hesitated. "Sorry, Lizzy."

At four o'clock, Debbie glimpsed Carlotta through the screened window.

"Doesn't Toni make it look easy? How does she do it?" Carlotta wondered.

Debbie agreed. "One, maybe two kids. Definitely not three or four."

UP NEXT: BACK EAST.

UP NEXT: Meet...The Single Mom of Cactus County!

Motherhood is the most important job there is. To do it singularly is quite a feat! Up next, meet Toni of the Desert Southwest. Through the sands of time, I will never forget her.

SOUTHWESTERN BELLE / No Resume Needed

The line went out of the glass doors of the lobby. Young women in dresses, students in shorts, housewives husbands formed the line that snaked through the lobby into a huge cafeteria like room. It moved fast and she signed the book and entered the room, careful not to make eye contact. An overweight woman with long hair sat at a table. Debbie looked at her, hesitated, then joined her. Her smirk did not escape Debbie's glance.

"You can wear shorts," she explained. "I've been to these before. It was for an administrative clerk."

"Yeah, I'd much rather wear shorts. I brought them," Debbie said. She looked down at her nicely pressed navy skirt, her black sleeveless with string of pearls. Outside the large windows, young men walked around the outdoor employee patio in shorts and tee shirts.

The woman smirked, her eyes far away. "See?" she said.

"They say NO RESUMES NEEDED but I always bring mine. And they always take it," she nodded.

Debbie looked into her eyes. They were aquamarine with a crazed, unfocused look.

"I was at McDougal Douglas for six years. Making fifteen dollars an hour. They layed us off and the next thing, they had hired all temporaries in our place," she said.

"If I don't get this job, I know where I can go. Up the street. Picking oranges for five dollars an hour," she smirked.

"It's a job," Debbie said.

"They called me," she said. "I couldn't believe it. They wanted me to work in Casa Grande. You know where that it?" Debbie nodded, concealing her tiny pink address book. "They wanted me to work the third shift," she said.

"The job no one else wants," Debbie said in understanding.

"My daughter...she wants to move out. She's eighteen. You know how much her friends want? They live in California!" she said.

"Does she have a savings?" Debbie asked.

"No," the woman smirked.

Debbie wanted to leave. She didn't want to take the test. She just wanted to get out of there and go home. She thought of the plane flying out of this desert. But she did not want this woman to see her walk out. She wanted her to stop talking.

She filled in the answers quickly, in the circles, with her pencil. Some of the questions, she did not bother to read thoroughly. Some, she did. When she knew the right answer, she darkened the corresponding space.

The woman started to erase vigorously, blowing off her paper so that Debbie could feel her breath on her hands, her cheek.

Debbie calmly finished the tests and stared at the clock. At four twenty, she left without looking back, through the glass doors, past the employee patio. When Debbie was sure the woman had gone, she returned to the patio and waited for Carlotta. She took off her heels and took her thongs out of her packed pocketbook.

"That was ridiculous," Debbie said as she got into Carlotta's car. But she knew Carlotta would not understand. The test was too confusing to explain.

As they reached the huge grocery store parking lot, a storm was kicking up. The sky was darkening. The sparse trees were being whipped around by the wind. In the distance, lightening struck. On her small enclosed adobe patio, Debbie watched the trees and wind in fascination. She grabbed her black Izod sweater to pull over her white halter top. It poured for exactly twenty minutes and then it stopped, to rain no more for a long time. That was it. At the first bar, cowboys wandered restlessly, indistinguishable from each other in their big cowboy hats.

"Meat!" Debbie said. They left quickly. "The Lonely Cowboy Bar," Debbie joked. "Maybe they'd take us back to their ranch. Make us their wives."

Carlotta frowned in distaste as she drove to the next bar.

"My parents always say, do what you like," she said.

"Mine don't. They say, make money," Debbie said wearily.

"My father doesn't have a very high opinion of reporters, anyway," she said.

"But you've showed him," Debbie said. "You got promoted to Editor."

"Yeah, I think he's gotten used to it," she agreed.

"Someone took my chair. There were four chairs and somebody took all of them!" an irate girl shouted in Debbie's ear.

Debbie turned to her. "You do not own this chair," she said. Carlotta was on the dance floor.

"What?" she said.

"You do not own this chair," Debbie repeated.

"I'm not saying I own it! I'm just saying that we were sitting there!"

Debbie slipped off the chair and walked away, not desiring a fist fight before she left Arizona.

Two young men were talking to them. They wanted to go to another bar.

"You're sure you'll be there," the young man asked Debbie.

"When Carlotta got in the driver's seat, she asked, "Do you want to go there?"

"No," Debbie admitted and they decided to go home.

"My friends tell me I'm too paranoid. When this girl moved here from New Jersey a year ago, she was found in a park. She was de-capitated. It was really sad. We figure she had a fight with her boyfriend, went to the park, and wanted to be left alone. It was really sad."

"I don't think you're too paranoid," Debbie said.

The next morning, she heard the cat's incessant, haunting meowing in the apartment next door. A sad, crying meow behind the locked door.

Haunting.

"Oh, isn't that annoying. I'd like to get rid of that cat," Carlotta said.

"No, I feel sorry for it. It sounds so sad."

In the outdoor jacuzzi that night, Debbie announced that she was going home.

"I drove her away," Carlotta said. After a few minutes, Debbie caught Carlotta eyeing her sadly through her long hair and tanned face. She looked away.

UP NEXT: Meet...finally...THE SINGLE MOM OF CACTUS COUNTY!