by Ford, Julie
“There are better ways of getting a man’s attention,” Gina said.
Twisting the top off a bottle of beer, Josie poured most of it into the gumbo and then drank the rest. After a shallow belch, she said, “Well, John left me alone. He was off somewhere paving the way for his own campaign,” she explained and then tried to justify her actions. “You try being locked in a room with two hundred republicans and not get smashed.”
“You married a republican,” Gina deadpanned.
“He’s different,” Josie said quietly—she wasn’t laughing anymore.
“He’s just like your father.”
Shocked by Gina’s candor, Josie looked up and saw that her best friend’s eyes were fixated on her. For a moment they just looked at one another, Gina clearly willing Josie to say something—anything to indicate that she was aware of what a mess her life had become. Josie looked away, removing the bowl of whipped cream from the blender. She didn’t want to talk about the judge. He’d passed nearly ten years ago, but the wounds she carried from living under his disapproving watch would always be raw.
Gina continued her interrogation. “And your birthday?” she asked with one hand on the counter, the other on her hip.
Getting annoyed with Gina because she wouldn’t lighten up, Josie sighed. “John forgot again. Could we just talk about something else?”
“The other times?” Evidently Gina wasn’t willing to drop it just yet. “What about your kids?”
“They don’t know.”
“Did you? When you were their age?”
Josie couldn’t take it anymore. First, she married a man exactly like her father, and now she was turning into her mother.
“I don’t know. I really don’t remember. Can we change the subject?” Josie gave Gina a weak smile. “Please?”
“Fine.” Gina turned her back to Josie. Opening the deli spirals, she began arranging them on one of the serving platters.
Josie both welcomed, and cursed, the silence. Thankful that Gina’s interrogation had taken a reprieve, she was now thinking about how she did remember when her mother used to drink. How she hated the smell of alcohol on her breath. How isolated and alone she felt as a child when her mom was drinking. But Josie had been careful—she thought—to better hide her “problem” from her own kids.
“Okay— So, what’s Montgomery getting in return for his very generous contributions?” Gina asked nonchalantly.
Josie pursed her lips and glared into the back of her accuser. “Don’t know. What makes you think he’s getting anything?” She placed some dark chocolate squares into the microwave to melt before they could be mixed with evaporated milk and butter to later drizzle on the plates under the Red Velvet cake.
Spinning around, Gina faced Josie, eyes blazing. “Come on, Josie! You, of all people, know how these things work.”
Josie let out a groan. “I don’t know… I didn’t even know about that damn commercial, okay? Why are you doing this?” She fumbled through her cupboard of cooking liqueurs, knocking a few over, and when she couldn’t find what she was looking for she pulled out a bottle of Kahlua. Slamming the cabinet door shut, she dumped some into the chocolate mixture, now churning in the mixing bowl, before pouring a little into her wine glass.
The brown liquor gradually swirled down, muddying the color of the wine, slowly turning it to amber.
“Why are you? Why are you doing all this?” Gina asked, gesturing around the kitchen.
Josie didn’t respond right away. Instead, she began looking around her kitchen, overwhelmed by what she’d allowed John to bully her into. And, for the first time since her phone call to him this morning, she was wondering the same thing.
Gina’s right, why am I doing all this for a man who barely acknowledges my existence anymore? Josie bit her lip to hold back the tears welling in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Gina crossed to her, her expression softening at the sight of tears. “Girl, you’ve got to face these things sooner or later.” Wrapping her arms around Josie, she gave her a gentle squeeze.
“What’s happened to the Josie I used to know?” Gina said in a soothing voice. “Where’s my fearless friend who, in college, stood up to that pretentious sorority when they forced your roommate out because they thought she was too fat—and when they ignored you, you spiked the sugar-free punch at their big Greek Week party with ipecac?” Gina asked.
“Yeah, remember they colored the punch crimson,” Josie said with a little giggle, wiping a tear from her eye. “They were barfing all over each other. I probably overdid it a little.”
“Ya-think? Some of them didn’t even make it to the bathroom. It looked like some “B”-rated sorority massacre movie,” Gina said with one hand on the counter for support, the other resting on her abdomen as she started to giggle.
From tears to laughter, Josie said, “There weren’t very many white togas by the end of that party.” Hysterical now, Josie couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a good laugh.
When Gina’s laughter subsided, she asked, “Does he know who you are?”
“Who?”
“Montgomery,” Gina responded in a don’t-play-dumb tone.
Josie sighed. “I don’t know how he could. I mean back then I was Josie McClain, radical human rights activist. Now, I am simply Jocelyn Bearden—wife, mother…” her tone grew sarcastic, “…and apparently doormat.” She paused, thinking a minute. “How could he recognize me? I mean, half the time, I don’t even recognize myself anymore. Besides, Brian was really the one who took down Old Man Montgomery, not me.”
“Right, but he couldn’t have done it without you,” Gina reminded her.
“And you. Besides, we couldn’t let Brian rot in jail. What choice did we have?” Josie was lost in thought for a moment, remembering how scared she was when they took Brian away, until the present summoned her back. Popping and sizzling on the stove top, the gumbo was starting to bubble over.
Moving quickly over to the stove, Josie reduced the heat. While it was true there was a time when she would have told John to “go to hell”, though probably not in those exact words, this morning, the fact was that, for whatever reason, she didn’t and now she must maintain the status quo—for now, anyway.
The chiming of the clock in the hall reminded her that time was running out and Josie decided they’d better get on with it. “Thank you,” she said, “I never could have done this without you.”
“Oh, I think you could. The Josie I know is capable of anything once she puts her mind to it,” Gina said with a supportive smile. “And besides, what are friends for?”
* * * *
While navigating the windy roads between her children’s schools, Josie used this time to get a few things done. Before Gina left, she’d recruited the rest of her family to come and help that night. Despite what John might have thought, Josie was a pro at multi-tasking, but she wasn’t that good. Driving and writing instructions for Gina and family, she listened to Beth talk about her day.
“…then Miss Debbie put shaving cream all over the table so we could write letters and numbers in it…” the child said, twisting a blonde curl around one of her chubby little fingers.
Josie pretended to listen while, on her cell, she begged forgiveness from her hair stylist for not only missing the appointment, but for neglecting to even call.
“But we didn’t really want to write borin’ old letters; it was more fun to just squish it. A’ccept these two boys kept eating it. Ooh, gross.” Beth wrinkled her freckled nose and pursed her full lips in the rearview mirror.
“Ooh, gross,” Josie mimicked as she clicked her phone shut and turned into Bobbie’s school.
Before she’d left, Josie had noticed she hadn’t yet polished her toenails for the evening, so she had grabbed a bottle of polish on her way out. The carpool line at Bobbie’s school was moving pretty slow, so she whipped out the polish, propped one foot up on the dash and started painting while the other foot worked the bra
ke, inching them along.
She finished painting her other set of toenails just as Bobbie hurled the door open. Rocking the whole van, he tossed his backpack to the other side and jumped in excitedly. “Guess what, Momma?”
Beth was still talking, but now her topic had switched to why she thought Princess Fiona couldn’t possibly stay turned into an ogre—after all, princesses weren’t green. “Hey, butt head, I was talking,” she objected, glaring at her brother.
“Language,” Josie reminded her, realizing how painfully obvious it was that Beth had two older brothers.
Bobbie ignored his sister. “Guess what, Momma?” he said again.
“What?”
“Mom! I’m not finished—” Beth and Bobbie were talking at the same time but Beth stopped when she realized that Bobbie’s story was more interesting.
“Brandon said his uncle Ernie sat down on the toilet, and there was a snake in it. And it came up and bit him right on the butt,” he reported, eyes wide, enunciating every word. “Isn’t that cool?”
“I don’t know if I would go straight to ‘cool,’” Josie said, cringing.
“Momma,” Beth whined, “what if a snake gets in our toilet and bites my butt?”
Oh, Good Lord, Josie thought, knowing she didn’t have the energy for this right now.
Taking control before the conversation got out of hand, she said, “Son, I really don’t think Brandon’s story is completely accurate.”
“But he said—”
“Then he was probably in an outhouse or something.” Josie turned her attention from the road momentarily to Bobbie, with a look letting him know she didn’t want any more argument.
“Beth… Baby, we have never had any snakes in our house,” she said in a soothing voice. Which wasn’t entirely true, they lived in Alabama, but at the moment that information was on a need-to-know basis.
As they drove on to Jack’s school, Bobbie couldn’t stop talking about the snake, what it looked like, what would happen if it was poisonous, and whether or not venom could be sucked out of a person’s butt…
When Jack got in, the first thing he said was, “Did you wash my blue basketball shorts? I need them for tonight’s practice,” brushing his straight, sandy-colored bangs, in need of a trim, off of his forehead.
“Uh, no. I didn’t have time. My day was obscenely busy. How was yours?” Josie said into the rearview mirror with just a hint of sarcasm.
“Mo-om,” Jack said, rolling his eyes.
“Besides, no basketball today, little man. Your daddy’s important dinner is tonight.”
A ten-year-old going on twenty, Jack started in. “Why do I have to be there?” he whined. “They aren’t my friends. And why do I have to stay in the guest house with the babysitter—I’m not a baby.” He crossed his arms, sat back in a huff and glared at Josie through his father’s eyes in the mirror.
“Yeah, Momma, I’m old enough, too…” Bobbie chimed in, following Jack’s lead.
As the complaining continued, Josie felt like someone had dumped a pile of bricks on top of her and was continuing, slowly, to add one at a time.
“All right, that’s enough. You’re having a sitter and that’s final,” she said firmly, cutting the tone of their complaining to quiet groans.
She thought about an episode of Murphy Brown she’d seen a long time ago where Faith Ford’s character—a perky southerner—reported that her excessive cheeriness was due to the fact that her mother had told her, and her siblings, that their father kept a suitcase packed in the closet, and that if they weren’t happy all the time, he would simply take his things and leave. Although border-lining on emotional abuse, right now Josie was considering this scenario as a viable option, knowing that there were moments in every mother’s life when she had to stop and ask herself: “Is a little dysfunction too high a price to pay for a few moments of peace?”
Outside a light sprinkling of rain began to fall. Turning the wipers on low, she headed for home.
* * * *
After last-minute preparations for the dinner, Beth whining about wanting to wear her princess dress, with a tiara, the dog getting loose in the house and leaving a trail of muddy paw prints, and various other shenanigans that occur at the most inconvenient times when one has three children, the metaphoric alarm in Josie’s head finally sounded, indicating that she’d reached her maximum capacity for stress and could now explode.
“What’s the matter with everyone around here?” Josie yelled when one of Bobbie’s karate kicks tipped over Beth’s Barbie house in the family room. How it got into the family room was a completely different issue.
“Get over here and clean this mess up,” she said, her face hot, jaw set, and feet stomping as she made her way toward the mess.
Bobbie and Beth stood frozen, eyes wide, near-terrified.
“Now!” she commanded, kneeling on the floor, gathering up the shrapnel that was strewn about her feet.
When the Barbie house was back in Beth’s closet, Josie sat them all on the couch to watch that little yellow sea sponge dressed in square pants. It was on an hour earlier than usual. Thank the lord. “And don’t move, even an inch, until it’s time to get ready,” she said through clenched teeth before she stalked off, putting some much-needed distance between herself and her offspring.
Once inside her bedroom, Josie sat down on the bed and took a few long cleansing breaths. She always felt bad when she lost it with her children. After all, they were just being kids and it wasn’t like they sat around scheming to sabotage her every move. Or did they?
It was six o’clock, only one hour before supper and dangerously close to when John would be making his appearance. Exhausted, both mentally and physically, Josie couldn’t bear the thought of having to change and make herself presentable. And, to make matters worse, she didn’t even have her new dress and shoes, which were the only reasons she’d been looking forward to tonight at all.
Josie puffed out her cheeks, then released the air as she scanned her closet for something suitable. She’d already been seen more than once in most of her nice dresses. The other women coming tonight dressed very stylish, and she always felt a little frumpy next to them. What’s a woman to do?
Make do, as usual.
Slipping into a classic black dress she hadn’t worn in years, with a square neck and three-quarter length sleeves, and plain black strappy sandals, she headed into the bathroom to finish getting ready. Too exhausted to wrestle the mass of curls staring back at her from the mirror into something stunning, she twisted her hair up and secured it with a plain black clip. As she was pulling out a few wispy curls from around her temples, she looked up with a start when John appeared in the mirror’s reflection.
Standing in the doorway of the bathroom, he was slipping a cufflink into the sleeve of his crisply-laundered shirt. Around his neck, his tie hung, waiting to be knotted. Their gazes met in the mirror.
Butterflies formed in her stomach as she wondered when he planned to surprise her with the bracelet—before the dinner, maybe?
“Is that what you’re wearing?” he asked as he crossed the travertine floor and stopped next to her.
“Uh…yeah,” Josie said, not sure if that was a question or a statement, while looking down at her fully-dressed body, right down to the shoes.
Chin raised, he looped his tie around, and said, “Thought you were going to buy a new dress or something.”
Her stomach sank, crushing the flutters. His demeanor gave no hint that he’d come bearing gifts.
“Well, you know the caterer cancelled, and I had to—”
“I was short with you today,” he said, now attempting to smooth down his hair that by nature wanted to be messy.
Is that some sort of lame excuse for an apology? She decided to let it go. Opening her lipstick tube, she said instead, “I saw your ad today.”
“Yeah? What did you think?” he asked.
As she applied her lip color, she wanted to say, Why was everyone in
it but me? Only, even in her head she sounded like a whiney four-year-old. “It was good, but I thought you could have focused more on your qualifications and less on—”
“Jocelyn, what do you know about writing a campaign ad?” he asked as he turned and exited the bathroom.
“Well, not a whole lot, but I’m an intelligent person and a savvy voter.” She closed her lipstick and followed him out. “I just don’t think you need to appeal to the lowest common denominator,” she was saying until she realized he was no longer there—she was effectively talking to herself.
She exhaled heavily. Why can’t he listen to me for just one second? Then she remembered reading somewhere that when women talk to men they should use as concise statements as possible because the sound of a women’s voice lulls a man into a minor state of unconsciousness, or something like that. What am I supposed to do? she wondered, speak in Internet Messenger language?
“B tw, ur ad sucks,” she muttered to herself. “And, idk, I don’t have an appropriate dress b/c I didn’t have enuff time b/c I was buying food to feed urbffs.”
That should be concise enough, she decided as she started out after him. “John, I think we should talk about—”
Josie stopped when, to her surprise, she was met by three smiling faces all dressed in their Sunday best, standing side-by-side in the hall outside her bedroom. Her own smile materialized as she swelled with pride, looking at her little darlings. The same darlings who, a half-hour ago, were little monsters.
“Y’all look pretty as a picture. Thank you for helping your momma all by yourselves.” Their smiles grew wider still. “Come on now, let’s go see what we can do with that hair.”
* * * *
After Beth’s hair had been fastened up with a black velvet bow, she hopped off of the stool and out of the bathroom, swishing her black and white checked taffeta dress as she went. Returning only minutes later, she carried a sparkling tiara.
“This too, Momma,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “I want to look perty for Daddy’s important guests.”
Josie looked down into the expectant eyes of her darling girl. She knew as a Southerner she was supposed to revere her sons. After all, didn’t every Southern woman feel that it was her duty to God, society, and her husband to rear, and then pamper beyond belief, at least one son, knowing all the while no other woman could ever take her place? The truth was that she loved her sons as much as Beth, but the simple fact remained: Beth was a female and their double Y-chromosomes would forever bond them on a level she’d never share with her sons.