A Long Time Comin'

by Robin W. Pearson

  Careening forward, she caught herself just before dashing her head on the tile wall. Kevin’s leather belt peeked out from the slacks and shirt he’d shed before soaking away his stress in the clawfoot tub.

  “Ev?”

  She squeezed out, “Mmm?” between her clenched teeth.

  “Evelyn? You all right?” He definitely sounded more alert. Covers rustled.

  “Mmm-hmmm.” Evelyn propped herself on the side of the tub and added pressure to her injured, French-tipped toe. She held her breath, listening for, dreading, Kevin’s footsteps. She wasn’t in the mood to talk at half past two in the morning. What she was in the mood for was smothering her husband and sleeping. Well, maybe she’d smother him first, pee, and then sleep. And okay, Lord, I’ll pray for him then. Just for You.

  A full minute passed before the creaking bed and not-so-gentle snores assured Evelyn the coast was clear, if not quiet. Suddenly resolved, she tiptoed to the large walk-in closet that opened off the bathroom and pulled out the step stool. She stood on the top rung and stretched to reach the topmost shelf. Evelyn pulled down an unused loofah, toothbrush holder, box of Dove soap, and her extra bottle of perfumed shower gel. Then she stepped down, clutching her items to her middle. She walked over to the cabinet, opened the bottom drawer, and withdrew her toothbrush and toiletry bag. Arms now full, she slipped to the back left corner of her closet and let her armload tumble out quietly onto the carpeted floor.

  Crouching, Evelyn withdrew a valise tucked under her shirts. Inside it, a plastic bag emblazoned with a red CVS pharmacy logo spilled its contents: a small plastic stick that looked up at her, still showing the same smirking skull and crossbones shaped like a + sign. No lifesaving or in sight.

  Somewhere in the darkness the tree frog she and Kevin had nicknamed Dave uttered his high-pitched mating call. Evelyn gathered her things and stood. She put each in its place and returned the stool. Finally she plodded back to the mirror and stared at her image captured by the moonlight peeking through the windows. The orange-and-white flowers on her satin pajamas shimmered in the reflection.

  So, God, is this Your way of telling me I can’t leave my husband?

  ——————

  “Are you with me, Ev?” Kevin touched his wife’s shoulder. “Evelyn Lester?”

  Gasping, “What?” Evelyn snapped back to the present to find Kevin’s six-foot-four-inch frame looming over her in the kitchen. The soapy dish slipped from her hands and clattered against the bottom of the stainless steel sink.

  “Where were you?” With one hand Kevin flicked away the suds that had splashed onto his striped Italian cotton shirt. “Anything wrong?”

  Everything, her mind screamed. She mumbled, “Nothing. Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  Evelyn forced a smile and voiced her thoughts, if not the whole truth behind them. “Everything. Nothing.” She retrieved the stoneware casserole dish and rinsed it. “Shoot!” She ran her finger along the chip on its edge. Exasperated, she pulled open the cherry cabinet door and dropped the dish in the trash.

  “Evelyn! It’s just a chip. What are you doing?” Kevin bent to retrieve the platter. “Ow!” Hastily he withdrew his hand, but not before Evelyn pinched his fingers as she forced the door closed. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m throwing it out, Kevin. It’s what you do when something is broken.” Evelyn edged around him to clear away the detritus from their dinner. Her silence dropped icicles, chilling the kitchen despite the warmth of the summer day.

  “Okay. But—?”

  She whirled on her husband. Lather dripped from her hands onto the hardwood floor. “But what, Kevin?”

  “What’s wrong with you? You’ve been stomping around here the last couple of days, barely speaking to me. Pulling my hair when I’m sleeping—”

  “I didn’t—”

  “And now you’re throwing away perfectly good dishes and slamming my fingers in the trash can.”

  Evelyn glared at him, her wet hands clenched at her sides.

  Kevin didn’t blink. “It’s me, right?”

  “I didn’t pull your—”

  He trailed his long, tapered fingers down the right side of her face. His voice was a whisper. “Evie, baby.”

  “Don’t.” Kevin’s baby set her jaw as her stomach protested the diminutive use of her name, and she stepped away from the touch that used to thrill her. She dried her hands with the dish towel. “How can you ask me if it’s you? Who else would it be? What else would it be? It’s not like you forgot my birthday or neglected to buy me an anniversary present.” She threw the towel on the quartz countertop and stalked from the kitchen.

  “But it happened a long time ago, Evie!” Kevin followed Evelyn into the keeping room just off the kitchen to find her staring out the window into the backyard. The Japanese maple they’d planted together last year was finally growing. Its thin red leaves shivered in the breeze. Evelyn’s own shoulders, bare in her orange sleeveless shift, drew up as if to ward off the chill.

  It. He summed up his devastation of their marriage with a two-letter pronoun. “It may have happened a long time ago, but I’m just finding out about it. You might as well have slept with her this morning and not six months ago.”

  Kevin inhaled sharply.

  “It’s hard to hear it, isn’t it? Well, that’s how I feel every time I think about you and . . . her. It. Like I’ve been punched in the gut.”

  “But I didn’t actually sleep with her. I just—”

  Just. Just. Just. Just because your body didn’t follow the road your heart had already traveled. Evelyn’s insides twisted again. Her forehead broke out in a cold sweat. “Just go, Kevin. Don’t you have a business trip?”

  “Please turn around. I can’t talk to your back like this.” When Evelyn remained where she was, his demand became an entreaty. “Can’t you forgive me? Doesn’t God—?”

  “Don’t talk to me about forgiveness. About God. Unless you’re going to tell me what He says about the definition of adultery.” Her eyes met his pained stare reflected in the window. “We could talk about His faithfulness, His truth, but you wouldn’t have much to offer to the conversation.”

  “That’s low, Evelyn. I did tell you the truth!”

  She finally turned to squarely meet his gaze. “No, you admitted it when I asked you about it, Kevin. After I’d already found out. Tell me—if I’d never stumbled across those text messages, would you have ever told me?”

  Kevin raked his hand over his face. “Evie.” He moaned her name.

  She flew at him. “Don’t call me that! Stop calling me that! The man who loves me calls me that! The man I love calls me that!”

  One of his large hands wrapped around both of hers and stopped her flailing. His other arm wrapped around her waist and tried to press her close, but she fought him with all she had.

  And then she threw up all over his size thirteen wing tips.

  Chapter Three

  “GAL, WHATCHYOU DOIN’ HERE? This ain’t yo’ time to visit,” Beatrice called out to her granddaughter from her front porch. “And whatchyou got there?”

  Evelyn unloaded the last of the plants she had stowed in her backseat and turned to the woman who’d shared more than the name Evelyn Beatrice with her. Her grandmother had also passed down a fair share of her strong will. Evelyn drew on that strength now and squared her shoulders as she faced her namesake.

  “Hydrangeas. Mama and I thought we’d add some color to this yard.” Evelyn moved to hoist the second rectangular planter to her hip and chose instead to work on first one, then the other.

  “’Lis’beth know I don’t like no flowers round here.” Beatrice glared at Evelyn from the bottom step. “Stuff like that just create mo’ work for me to do. And they just gon’ die anyhow.”

  “But, Granny B, they’ll come back every year, and they’ll look pretty right here framing the front porch. It’s not that much work because Mama can clip them for you once they grow s
ome. And I can help out more often now I’m not teaching. You can enjoy the beauty without being put out.”

  Granny B angled her eyes toward the roses struggling for life beside the road. “No muss, no fuss, huh? I done heard all that before. This my yard, and I don’t need nobody takin’ care of it for me. Hmmmf, plantin’ hy-dran-gees to try and pretty up this yard.” She spread her wiry arms to encompass her postage stamp–size plot. “All this here dirt, with barely a bit a grass to cut. That ain’t even in the neighborhood of good sense.”

  Back when Beatrice Agnew was raising both herself and her children, the woods crept up practically to the back door. But not today. Those small hands and feet had snatched and trampled the life right out of each tiny weed or blade of grass that had dared to grow. Evelyn now swept the yard, using the rake to leave plenty of lines in the dirt so that Granny B would know she’d done as she’d been told, like her own mama, Elisabeth, had when she was a girl. Sweeping the yard was a part of “settin’ things right,” what Granny B called cleaning up.

  Evelyn had left her grandmother sputtering in the front yard while she’d trudged around back to the small storage shed to retrieve a shovel, rake, and garden hose. “Speaking of fuss.” Evelyn leaned the tools against the porch rail while Granny B, still grumbling, stamped off to pick up stray leaves blown over from a neighbor’s tree. “Have you reconsidered coming to Mama’s birthday party?”

  “When I ever change my mind ’bout somethin’? Go with yo’ first mind is what I say and what I do.”

  “If that’s your way of saying you’re not coming . . .”

  “I ain’t got no way of sayin’ nuthin’, gal. I done told you and yo’ husband I ain’t goin’ to no party. And I done told ’Lis’beth already, so there ain’t no need to brang it up again. I was there for her birth. Cain’t get mo’ excitin’ than that. And you need to sweep the yard first befo’ you get to messin’ thangs up.” Granny B pointed to the part of the yard near the mailbox at the curb. “Anyway, where’s yo’ husband? Surprised he ain’t helpin’ you with this. Y’all don’t move without the other one movin’, too.”

  “Uh . . . Kevin?” Evelyn grabbed the rake and walked toward the front curb.

  “Unless you got some other husband I don’t know ’bout.” Beatrice used the ever-present cloth draped through the belt of her chambray dress to flick away beads of sweat from her forehead. She lifted her braid draped across her neck and over her shoulder and soaked up the perspiration. The gold cross hanging at the base of her throat glinted in the sunshine.

  Evelyn managed to chuckle weakly. She’d come to Spring Hope today to escape Kevin, but he’d chased her there nonetheless. “He’s . . . home. Working. But he’s going away.” Immediately Evelyn wished she could pluck the words from the air between them and tuck them into her pocket.

  “Away?” Granny B walked slowly toward her granddaughter, pointing. “You missed that place by the drive, gal. Away where?”

  “Europe.” Evelyn bit off the word but regretted it since her grandma was likely to sniff out her Who cares? attitude. She forced herself to face Granny B. “And South Africa. He’ll be gone about three months. So he’s going to miss the party.” She turned to her task—and another subject. “And since I’m not done, I haven’t missed anything yet.”

  “Europe? Africa? Is that why you here, actin’ all stiff? You mad ’cause he gon’ miss all this birthday goin’s-on?”

  “I’m not mad!” But realizing that she sounded quite the opposite, Evelyn seized the opportunity Granny B had unwittingly thrown into her lap. “Actually, yes, I guess I am. We’ve worked hard on all these plans and now he’s going to be off for three months, missing everything.”

  “Well, so am I. Missin’ thangs, I mean. So I guess you gon’ be mad at me, too.” Granny B retreated to the porch. Her hand trembled as she grasped the rail to pull herself up the short flight.

  “But we’re inviting everybody!” Evelyn rested the rake on her shoulder so she was free to tick off names, starting with her older siblings. “Yolanda and Lionel and their families.”

  Her mama’s birthday celebration at summer’s end would mark the first time the family would come together since they’d buried Graham, Evelyn’s daddy. Evelyn and Kevin had planned to throw the party at her mama’s house in Mount Laurel, where she lived with Jackson, Evelyn’s younger brother, about two towns over from Granny B. Yolanda and Lionel were flying in from Boston and Phoenix.

  Evelyn moved on to include Granny B’s grown children. “Then there’s Aunt Ruthena and Uncle Matthew. Little Ed—”

  “Edmond gon’ be there?” Granny B straightened up. “He’s out already?”

  “Uh . . . uh, I mean, it’s possible. We’re inviting him . . . or at least his children—”

  “Now don’t start to lyin’, gal.” According to Granny B, the back of Little Ed’s head was the last she’d seen of her oldest son, nearly twenty years ago. At the time, he was ducking into the bed of his friend’s pickup truck, heading out of town right after a load of rib eye steaks had gone missing from the Piggly Wiggly. She crooked an eyebrow at Evelyn. “I didn’t know Rikers Island gave out passes for birthday parties.”

  “I didn’t mean that Little Ed was definitely coming, just that he wanted to. Well, Aunt Sarah told him about it when she saw him on visitors’ day . . .” Her words died an unnatural death.

  Granny B gave Evelyn plenty of rope to hang herself—and the time to do it. “You been namin’ ever’body gon’ be at your mama’s party; now you stammerin’ and stutterin’, sayin’ maybe this or possibly that. The truth usually can slip through right easily, but the lie got to be greased up and twisted round to get through yo’ lips.”

  Evelyn ran her fingers through the damp tendrils at the nape of her neck and laughed wryly, thinking about all the oil Kevin had applied to his own lips the past six months. “I’m not lying, Granny B. I’m sure Little Ed wants to come—and who knows what can happen between now and then? Right now, I’m just focused on getting you to the dinner, not your children. When is the next time you can see almost everybody in one place?”

  “Well, according to yo’ aunt Ruthena, the world gon’ be endin’ soon enough, and we all gon’ be together in the sky somewhere. Ain’t no need to go rushin’ thangs down here.” Granny B opened the front door. “Since you determined to do all that work, I’m gon’ head back in to the kitchen.”

  The door creaked shut behind her. Evelyn returned to raking. She knew Granny B had never been one to count her children’s fingers and toes. She had just focused on each tiny, hungry mouth—because somehow, someway, she had to feed it. She had screamed, sweat, and pushed her first child into the world when she was fifteen, right in her own bedroom. After Elisabeth came Little Ed, and then she’d miscarried twins. Meant to be third born, they were the first to die.

  “That was a real bad day,” Granny B had pronounced, shaking her head, when she’d told her granddaughter the story many years ago. Her hands had never paused as they’d cut up tender greens.

  “Girl, those are called mustard greens,” Mama had explained later when Evelyn had asked.

  After the twins came Ruthena, Thomas, Mary, Sarah, and then the last, Milton, born in a blinding rainstorm two months past Granny B’s thirtieth birthday. According to her, soon after, Granddaddy Henton flew the coop. One day, all her grandmother had found were his muddy boots by the back door and his crumpled gray hat in her front room. But he did come back more than thirty years later when he visited each month in the form of a Social Security check, paid to Beatrice T. Agnew, widow of H. A. Agnew.

  “’Course, that won’t never pay his debt. That price only I can pay. Me and Milton,” Granny B was heard to say.

  As the sun climbed higher in the late-morning sky, Evelyn paid for ever laying eyes on those hydrangeas. But she finally completed the work. She then cleaned off Granny B’s tools, replaced them in the shed, and headed to the house. After doffing her shoes on the front porch, she entered Granny
B’s front room. Furniture polish gave her nose a warm, lemon-scented hello.

  “Granny B?”

  “Gal, ain’t no need to be yellin’ fo’ me. I cain’t be but in so many places in this house.” Granny B had moved through the front room, down the short hall, and on to the sunlit kitchen in the back of the house. A breeze from the open window rattled the shade a bit, but Granny B, unflappable, was putting away the broom in the corner to the right of the back door. She removed the cloth from her waist, folded it twice, and placed it atop the small pile of soiled laundry sitting in the basket on the washing machine. She turned her lean, five-foot-one-inch frame in Evelyn’s direction. “You done?”

  Evelyn nodded, then picked up the thread of conversation she’d begun unraveling an hour ago. “You know you’re going to miss out on all the fun.”

  “Fun? Listenin’ to Mary go on ’bout livin’ the high life? Puttin’ up with Ruthena prayin’ for ever’body and layin’ on hands? I can see her now: ‘Lord, bless this, and Lord, bless that.’” With her eyes rolled back, looking skyward, and her hands waving in the air, Granny B did a fair imitation of her daughter. “With all that blessin’ and such, nobody gon’ be able to eat, let alone have some fun. I ain’t got time for all that.”

  Evelyn chuckled. “You’d render her speechless seeing you there.”

  “Speechless? Ruthena? She hadn’t never been speechless. Even when she came slidin’ out from tween my legs, she was screamin’ and hollerin’ ’fo’ anybody slapped her on the behind. I was the one who shoulda been carryin’ on.

  “That birthday party sound ’bout like that grave party you and yo’ mama throw every year, only not as much fun. What’s gone is gone. If you was me, you’d know there ain’t no bringin’ him back.”

  “Him who?”

  “I meant it. The past.” Granny B reached for the broom again and handed it to Evelyn.

  “We don’t plant flowers at the family plot to have fun, Granny B. We honor those things that never die. Like commitment. Love. Tradition.” Evelyn grappled for a hold on Granny B’s eyes. “Like Mama’s birthday, as a matter of fact.” Evelyn didn’t add, but not like my marriage.