The Seaside Café

by Rochelle Alers

  Pushing back her chair, Leah stood up. “I need to stop eating or I’ll blow up and won’t be able to fit into my clothes.” She went completely still when the other two women stared at her. “I used to have a weight problem. I’d gained more than seventy pounds when pregnant with the twins. Instead of losing the weight after they were born, I gained even more, tipping the scale at two hundred and eighteen pounds.”

  Rising, Cherie picked up bowls and serving pieces. “How did you lose it?”

  “I began with hypnosis and a nutritionist. Then I hired a personal chef who prepared pre-cooked meals for me. The first six months I managed to lose thirty-five pounds, and then when I appeared to plateau, I joined a health club to kickstart my metabolism. It took more than a year for me to lose seventy pounds. I now weigh one thirty-five and feel better than I have in a very long time. But I must confess that bread is my weakness.”

  Kayana stood and began clearing the table. “Desserts are my weakness, and that’s why I steer clear of them.” She smiled at Cherie. “You definitely don’t look as if you have a weight problem.” The young woman’s slender body did not appear to have an ounce of fat.

  Cherie rolled her eyes upward. “Whenever I am ovulating, it’s salty snacks, which causes me to retain fluid.”

  “I’ll definitely keep in mind to cut down on the carbs and sodium whenever we get together for our meetings,” Kayana said, as she walked in the direction of the kitchen. She hadn’t had a weight problem like Leah, but as she grew older, she’d discovered it had become more and more difficult to lose a few extra pounds. If bread was Leah’s weakness, then it was sugary desserts for her. And now that she didn’t have access to exercise equipment, she tended to limit her intake of cake, pie, and ice cream.

  Chapter 7

  Kayana opened the door to the apartment and was met with a blast of frigid air. When she’d gone down to the restaurant earlier that afternoon, she had forgotten to adjust the thermostat.

  “Whoa! It feels like Siberia up here,” Cherie said.

  “I’m going to turn off the air conditioning until it warms up.” She tapped a button on the thermostat, shutting off the cool air.

  Leah walked into the living room and set her tote on the floor next to a side table. “This place is charming.”

  Kayana felt a rush of pride. Other than family members, Leah was the first person to compliment her for turning the space that had been used for storage into a comfortable apartment. “Thank you. I really like it.”

  “What’s not to like?” Cherie said, as she strolled over to the wood-burning fireplace. “If I had a place like this, I’d never think about going on vacation. Do you mind if I look around?”

  “Not at all.”

  Kayana smiled. Leah thought the apartment charming, while Cherie liked it enough to want to move in. Kayana wanted to tell the two women it was a far cry from the house with all the amenities she wanted and needed at her fingertips, yet when she looked back, she realized it hadn’t been a home but a showplace. And, not for the first time, she reflected that she had been relieved to uncover her ex-husband’s infidelity, because it had given her a reason to end their sham of a marriage.

  To the public, she and James had been the perfect couple, while behind closed doors, they had begun to grow further apart. They’d continued to share a bedroom and a bed, but their lovemaking had decreased dramatically from three to four times a week to once. As a woman in her early forties and without the concern of possibly becoming pregnant, Kayana wanted and needed physical fulfillment from her husband. Other than falling in love with James, she had agreed to marry him because they had been so well matched sexually.

  Leah ran her fingertips over the needlepoint throw pillow on the sofa. “Have you ever thought about renting this apartment during the tourist season?”

  Leah’s query broke into her musings as Kayana gave her an incredulous look. “Rent my home?”

  “People around here do it all the time.”

  “And where would I live, Leah?”

  “Couldn’t you stay with your brother?”

  “My brother has his life, and I have mine,” Kayana countered.

  “Are you saying you don’t get along with your sister-in-law?”

  Kayana successfully hid a grin at the same time she turned her head. What she’d suspected was suddenly manifested. Leah was attracted to her brother and wanted to know about him. “I don’t have a sister-in-law. Derrick is a widower with a seventeen-year-old daughter.”

  Leah sank down to the sofa in slow motion, one hand pressed to her throat. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me for being insensitive.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive. You had no way of knowing my brother lost his wife four years ago.” Kayana held up a hand. “And before you ask, Derrick is not seeing anyone.”

  “Why would you, a supposedly happily married woman, be interested in another man?” Cherie asked, as she strolled back into the living room.

  Leah sprang up, her face flushed with high color. “Maybe it’s because I’m not that happily married.”

  “Damn,” Cherie said under her breath.

  “Yes, damn!” Leah spat out. “I’ve had to work my ass off for the past twenty-eight years to be the perfect wife and mother to my sons, but it is never enough for Mrs. Adele Stephens Kent.” She paused. “My mother-in-law had planned for her son to marry another woman, so when I came onto the scene, she blamed me for ruining her life and her standing in society in Richmond, Virginia.” She pressed her palms together in a prayerful gesture. “Enough talk about me. I’m ready to discuss Kindred.”

  Kayana was ready to discuss the book, but she was also intrigued by the woman who’d professed that “not all cheating ends in divorce.” An inner voice told her that not all of Leah’s problems were the result of her mother-in-law’s disapproval. The older woman’s son had to have been complicit for the hostility to have endured for nearly three decades. It was only their second meeting, and Kayana knew that before summer’s end, she would come to learn more than she needed to know about her book club companions.

  “Let’s go into the reading room, where we’ll be a lot more comfortable.”

  Leah’s eyes grew wide as she glanced around the space; two of the four walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling built-in shelves filled with hardcover and paperback books. “I thought I had a lot of books, but you’ve got me beat.”

  “It’s more like a library than a reading room,” Cherie chimed in.

  Kayana smiled. “It’s my favorite spot in the entire apartment.”

  Cherie walked over to the window and peered out. “I can understand why. You have everything you need here to kick back and relax.” And she turned and smiled at Kayana. “I like the prints.”

  “Thanks. I have a few more I need to frame and put up.” She pointed to a trio of tubes in a corner. “I like them because they’re unabridged works of literature on one page.”

  “Which ones do you have?” Leah asked.

  “Othello, Beauty and the Beast, and Romeo and Juliet.” Kayana crossed the room, opened one of the tubes, and handed the single sheet of paper to Cherie. “The print is small, but it still can be read.”

  Cherie nodded, smiling. “This is better than downloading a book because everything is on one page.”

  “The selections are limited, but Shakespeare’s plays are the most available.”

  Leah folded her body down onto the love seat. “Have you read all of these books?”

  Kayana took her favorite chair, while Cherie slipped the page back into the tube and then sat on an armchair with a footstool. “Most of them. However, after a few years I tend to reread some of my favorites.”

  “Speaking of reading, we should begin our book discussion before it gets too late,” Leah suggested as she reached into the pocket of her slacks and unfolded a sheet of paper. “I took down some notes,” she explained when Kayana and Cherie looked at her.

  Kayana bit back a smile. “If that
’s the case, then why don’t you start?”

  Leah exhaled an audible sigh. “I loved the writing and the evocative storytelling, but the subject of slavery really disturbed me.”

  “Did it disturb you because you’re white, and some of your ancestors may have been slaveowners, or because you live in the city that was once the capital of the Confederacy?” Cherie asked her.

  Kayana knew Cherie had struck a nerve with Leah when a large vein became clearly visible in Leah’s forehead. When she read the novel, she knew the subject matter would be controversial and provocative. Cherie didn’t like it, Leah had found it disturbing, while she’d come away with mixed emotions of frustration with the characters, but was left in awe at the author’s vivid depiction of slavery in America.

  “It has nothing to do with my race,” Leah said, between clenched teeth, “because none of my ancestors ever owned human beings.”

  “Did your husband’s folks own slaves?”

  “Whether Leah’s husband’s folks owned slaves is irrelevant,” Kayana interjected, when she realized Cherie was going off topic.

  “I think it’s very relevant,” Cherie countered, “because Leah is coming from a different place than me. She has to ask herself whether she is disturbed by slavery because perhaps she’s harboring some guilt that her race is responsible for not only America’s original sin, but also for the genocide of the native people and the fact that they were robbed of their lands because of a phony-ass claim to so-called Manifest Destiny.”

  Closing her eyes, Kayana slowly counted to five. “Cherie, I know where you’re coming from, but I thought we could discuss this book without getting personal. I don’t know where you’re from, but I was born, raised, and lived in the South all my life. I’m aware of racism, even though it’s not as overt as it was in prior generations. What I refuse to do is let it bog me down to the point where I get up every morning angry and looking for a confrontation with a white person for what they’ve done to our people. And I don’t need to know what went on with you and the man who hurt you, but take it from someone older and wiser—you have to let it go before it eats you alive.”

  “Was he a white man?” Leah asked, after a strained silence. Cherie closed her eyes and nodded. “Have you taken a good look at yourself? You’re young, beautiful, and smart, and you could have any man want, but what you have to do is learn to choose wisely and understand that it doesn’t matter who or what he is. There are SOBs in every race, and I’m here to tell you because I’m married to one.”

  Cherie’s shock was apparent from her stunned expression. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, my dear. I wish I was.”

  “If he’s an SOB, why do you stay with him?”

  “Because he’s never flaunted his affairs. And it doesn’t bother me if he sleeps with other women as long as he’s discreet.”

  “Are you saying it’s all about money?”

  Leah smiled. “Not for me, because I earn enough to take care of myself. But for Alan, it’s money, reputation, and family honor. My husband is a judge, as were his father and many others in the family before him. The Kents are old-money Virginians who trace their roots back to before the American Revolution. And they were slaveowners. In fact, they owned hundreds of them until the Civil War. None of the Kent boys fought for the Confederacy because they paid others to fight for them, which perpetuates the theory that it’s always a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. After the war, they went into politics and slowly rebuilt their reputation as one of Richmond’s leading families. And what no one could understand was how an eighteen-year-old girl from a trailer park had managed to ensnare one of the city’s most eligible bachelors who was seventeen years older than her.”

  Kayana covered her mouth with her hand in an attempt to smother a gasp. She never would’ve guessed that Leah’s husband was that much older than her. “Were you his first wife?”

  “Yes. Alan belonged to an exclusive club of very eligible bachelors who had an unwritten rule to date but not marry until they turned thirty-five. Then they would select a woman within their social circle who on average was ten years younger than their prominent wealthy suitor. Alan was engaged to the daughter of one of his father’s colleagues, but he was forced to break the engagement once I told him I was pregnant with his baby.”

  With wide eyes, Cherie stared at Leah. “How did you meet?”

  Crossing her feet at the ankles, Leah sank lower on the love seat. “It was my last year at Vanderbilt, and I’d come home during winter break. A couple of months before, my parents had moved out of the apartment and into a rental house after my father was promoted to head mechanic at a used-car dealership. It was the first time I’d had a bedroom and didn’t have to share with my younger brother. I’d driven to Dillard’s in downtown Richmond to buy a Christmas gift for my mother. I bought her a nice blouse and perfume. When I walked out of the store, I ran headlong into a man and dropped the bag, shattering the bottle. At first, I didn’t recognize him as Alan Kent, but he apologized and offered to replace the bottle because it was his fault; he hadn’t looked where he was going. The salespeople were fawning over him because they were more than familiar with the Kent name. He bought not only a larger bottle, but also the matching body lotion, and paid for it to be gift-wrapped.

  “He invited me to have lunch with him, but I turned him down with the excuse that I had to get home to help my mother get the house together for the holiday. He asked me what I did, and I told him I was a senior at Vanderbilt. And because I didn’t tell him I was eighteen, he probably assumed I was at least twenty-one or twenty-two because I was a senior. That’s when Alan asked if I would see him before I went back to Nashville, and again I said that wasn’t possible, but I promised we could get together after I graduated for a celebratory meal. What I didn’t count on was his showing up at my graduation ceremony. That’s when I introduced him to my parents, who were shocked that a Kent was interested in their daughter.

  “Once I returned home, Alan reminded me of my promise to have lunch with him, and although I knew he was engaged to another woman, I rationalized it would only be the one time. He took me to a small hotel with a wonderful restaurant thirty miles outside of Richmond, and for an eighteen-year-old young woman being wined and dined by a worldly, thirtysomething handsome man, it was nothing short of magical. Years later, I discovered it was a place where most of his friends had conducted their clandestine affairs.”

  A knowing smile parted Kayana’s lips. “And it was where he seduced you.”

  “Yes,” Leah whispered. “I’d had only one lover before sleeping with Alan. We met several more times over the next two months, and when I didn’t get my period, I knew I was pregnant. The one time we had unprotected sex, he got me pregnant. When I called Alan and told him I needed to see him, he must have heard something in my voice and asked me if I was carrying his baby. I told him I’d taken a home pregnancy test, and the results were positive for pregnancy. He said not to worry and that he would pay for the abortion. Things got really testy when I told him I was not going to get rid of my baby, and he didn’t have to worry about me naming him as the father. It was apparent he didn’t believe me, and to protect his family’s name, we were married in a private ceremony at his parents’ house with his uncle as the officiate. That’s when Adele told me if she’d known I was sneaking around with her son, she would’ve offered me enough money to leave the state and never come back.

  “It was a less than joyous occasion, with the Kents dressed in haute couture, while the Berkleys, in their Sunday best from JC Penney, looked as if they were attending a funeral. Adele was very vocal that she hadn’t approved of her son marrying me after Daddy told her that I was much too good for him. Meanwhile, I saw the nasty side of Alan whenever he accused me of tricking him into marriage while refusing to accept any blame for getting me pregnant. Adele was his cheerleader, and she got into his head that I didn’t have the social breeding or home training befitting a Kent woman. She
’d been widowed several years before I married Alan, and she convinced him to move into the family mansion because he was going to need more room once a sonogram indicated that I was having twins.”

  Cherie had pulled her lip between her teeth during Leah’s monologue. “Where were you living before that?”

  “Alan owned a two-bedroom condo in a trendy section of the city. The family mansion, known to the locals as Kent House, is listed on the national register of historic homes. From the day I moved in, my life was no longer my own to control. Adele hired a nanny to look after the twins and insisted I go back to college to earn a graduate degree. Meanwhile, she also had a life coach give me lessons on how to host formal and informal dinner parties and select the appropriate attire for different social occasions. The few times I’d complained to Alan that his mother was controlling my life, he said she was only trying to make certain I wouldn’t embarrass the family, because, after all, I was a Kent and, as such, needed to keep up appearances.”

  Kayana could not believe what she was hearing, because there was no way she would have permitted someone to regulate and control her life as Leah’s mother-in-law had done. “Didn’t you get tired of being manipulated while the puppeteer pulled the strings?”

  “I put up with it until my boys left for college. That’s when I moved out of our bedroom and into one in the opposite wing of the house. From the day we married, we never agreed on anything that didn’t have to do with our sons.”

  “You’re a better woman than I am,” Kayana said under her breath, “because I would’ve cussed the hell out of my mother-in-law and left my husband so long ago that he would’ve forgotten what I looked like.”

  “Would you, Kayana,” Leah questioned, “if you’d had children?”

  Leah’s query gave her pause, because whenever children were a part of the equation, it wouldn’t be that easy to pick up and walk away. “It would all depend on the circumstances. If I’d been in a verbal or physically abusive relationship, then yes, because I wouldn’t want my children to witness that type of behavior.”