by Mary Monroe
“I don’t blame you.” Lola glared at a huge picture on the wall of a white horse standing on its hind legs. “Joan, I have a feeling there’s something you want to tell me—and I hope it’s not something else about Bertha.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked, my voice rattling like a broken bicycle wheel spoke.
Lola was the only person I knew I could trust with my deepest, darkest, and most intimate secrets. And the secret I had been keeping for weeks was that I was already so miserable being married to Reed Riley I wanted to scream.
I loved the child in my belly who was due to be born in about three weeks, and I thought I loved Reed. But he was not the man I thought he was. For one thing, he was stubborn and already set in his ways. He was a neat freak of epic proportions and that really bugged me. Everything in our condo had to be in its place at all times. He checked every day, several times each day, for dust. One time he actually squatted down on his knees and slid his fingers on the floor under the living-room couch. He made sure all of the dishes were neatly stacked in the kitchen cabinets and every condiment had to be in alphabetical order on the shelf. The clothes in the closets, as well as the baby items I had received at the shower Elaine and Lola hosted for me last week, had to be stored in a color-coded manner. According to him, I used too much bleach when I did the laundry and I didn’t fold his shirts properly. I didn’t iron the towels and bed linen well enough. I drew the line when he suggested I iron his underwear and socks! I cussed him out so thoroughly he made arrangements to have his shit cleaned by a professional laundry service until—and these were his exact words—“You learn how to be a real woman. . . .” And my cooking—oh, how that set him off! Everything was always either undercooked or overcooked, and had too much or not enough seasoning. So far, he had not complimented a single one of the dishes I’d prepared. “My mama doesn’t cook like that” was his favorite line. No matter how hard I tried, it was literally impossible for me to please him.
“If your face gets any longer, it’ll be on this bedroom floor,” Lola said as she gently touched my shoulder. “So tell me what’s wrong.”
With relief I looked in her eyes and began to let it all out. “Reed is not the man I thought he was.”
“Uh-oh. I hope he didn’t suddenly get stingy with his money.”
I shook my head. “I wish it was something that simple. It’s much worse.”
Lola gave me a wide-eyed look. “Is it another woman already?”
I shook my head again. “No, it’s not another woman, as far as I know. But I could deal with that.” I exhaled and then I told her in great detail all the things I didn’t like about Reed. “I don’t know how much longer I can stay with him.”
Her response stunned me to say the least. “Is that all?” she asked.
I gasped and had to tap the side of my head because I had a hard time believing the words that had slid out of Lola’s mouth. “What the hell do you mean by that? Did you not hear everything I just told you?”
“Yeah, I heard everything you told me. But I don’t think any of that is all that bad. Hell, other than Jesus, no man is perfect. No woman is either, for that matter. I’m sure that Reed has a list of things about you that drive him crazy. What do you think about that?”
“I think you need to stop while you’re ahead. Whose side are you on, Dr. Lola?”
“I’m on your side, Joan. But give the man a chance. You should be glad he’s not a drunk, a wife-beater, a compulsive gambler—or all three. Him being a neat freak is not that bad. With his money, you can afford a housekeeper.”
“If he did any one of those three things, I’d have been long gone by now, and my brothers and uncles would have beaten his brains out. And I don’t want to be bothered with a housekeeper. What I do want is my old life back!”
Lola looked at me like I was speaking Gaelic. “You’ve only been married to that stud for a few weeks, girl!”
“And that’s a few weeks too long. Reed was a totally different man before we got married. I realize now that he was wearing a mask. That’s the main problem. He tricked me! I was duped!” I paused. The amused look on Lola’s face did not surprise me. I padded to the door, opened it, and peeped out. I had to make sure Reed was still out of earshot before I brought up the next thing on my list of complaints. I returned to the bed and sat even closer to Lola. “On top of everything else, the stud is a dud,” I whispered with a grimace on my face.
Lola’s face froze. “Get out of here! With his long, muscular legs and that tight butt, I never would have guessed they were only for show! I thought Reed was a spark plug in the bedroom.”
“Humph! That’s a laugh. If anything, he’s a butt plug in the bedroom! When we do make love, I’m usually the one who loosens him up.”
“Joan, didn’t you know he was lousy in bed before you married him?”
“I guess I forgot to tell you I made love with him only that one time before we got married. When I told him I was pregnant, we didn’t sleep together again until our wedding night. And get that surprised look off your face. It was his idea for us to wait until we got married.”
“Hmmm. He must have a real low sex drive if he could wait that long.”
“And that’s another thing. Not having sex on a regular basis doesn’t even bother him. He claims he’d only been with four other women before me. I’ve got more experience in my little finger than he has in his . . . well . . . you know what I’m trying to say. I don’t need to get too explicit. I avoid talking or thinking about sex when I can. You know how horny I get when you and I discuss that subject.” I winked at Lola.
“Joan, you didn’t have to get married. I know your mother and Elmo would have let you stay on in the house with your baby. You would have eventually met a man that you would have been a lot happier with—if you had really taken the time to get to know him.” Lola shook her head and gave me a sympathetic look. “I’m telling you now, I am not going to marry any man until I am convinced that I know him inside out. I don’t care how long it takes.”
“I hope I live long enough to see that day,” I snickered. “If you had really developed something with one of those old men in the lonely hearts club, you might have had a chance to enjoy a normal life.”
“Yeah, right. And how would I have had a chance with any one of them?”
“Come on now. You’re not that dense. The way those geezers were coming on, wanting to send us tickets to come marry them and live happily ever after and all, you could have left Bertha’s house right after graduation.”
“I doubt that. Those men thought it was Elaine they were in love with! If I’d been stupid enough to go meet one, I would have had a lot of explaining to do. And what if the older man I wanted to be with already had a wife? Did you forget about that woman who came to beat you up?”
“No, I haven’t. But I don’t think about her that often anymore, and you shouldn’t either,” I said with a dismissive wave. “That’s all in the past. We’ve learned our lesson about playing with people’s feelings.”
“And taking their money.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“We’re lucky we didn’t end up in jail for using the mail to commit fraud. Maybe even elder abuse too,” Lola said. She pursed her lips and blew out some air. Then she stood up and shuddered. “Just thinking about that gives me a chill. We dodged one heck of a bullet.”
“Maybe we did this time, but life is full of bullets. We’re going to do a lot more dodging down the road,” I said.
Chapter 20
Lola
IT RAINED ALMOST EVERY DAY IN MARCH. WE DESPERATELY NEEDED it, but I was glad when it finally ended. I had a habit of losing umbrellas when I went out in public. By the time I’d misplaced two different ones before the month ended, I was at the end of my rope. I was glad when April rolled around. The warm, dry weather did a lot for my morale.
Nothing significant had happened in my life recently. I hadn’t seen Libby or Marshall in weeks, so I was pretty
relaxed and optimistic. And Bertha was currently in a really good mood—for her. It had been more than a week since she’d complained about her health, and she had been unusually cordial to a couple of males who’d come to visit me. That was very suspicious, but I didn’t spend too much time trying to figure out what was really on her mind. My life was much more pleasant when she was in a good mood. On the last day in March, I got real bold and decided to mention something to Bertha that I had been putting off.
“Somebody sent Donald’s mother a nasty note about me,” I said casually during breakfast that morning. I occupied a seat at the kitchen table and had almost finished eating.
Bertha was standing in front of the stove scrambling her second helping of eggs. She was still in her bathrobe and more than a dozen pink sponge rollers dangled from her head. She whirled around so fast to look at me, one of the rollers flew off her head. There was a stunned look on her face. “Huh? What did the note say?”
“A bunch of lies about me having sex with a lot of boys, spreading diseases and stuff.”
Bertha gasped. “Who in the world would say something like that about you? Um, do you have any idea who sent the note?”
“The person didn’t sign it, so I have no idea who. Anyway, it worked. Donald doesn’t even speak to me anymore.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk! That’s a damn shame!” she hollered. “I’ll bet it was some jealous girl that wanted to break you and Donald up so she could have him.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I’m sure that’s who it was.” Bertha looked relieved. There was only a slim possibility that one of my rivals had sent the note. For one thing, the girls I knew didn’t bother with petty things like sending anonymous notes. Whenever they had an issue with another girl, they got up real close and personal in her face and they did it in a very public way so everybody would know about it. I was practically convinced that Bertha was the culprit. I knew she’d never admit it, so I decided to drop the subject and never mention it to her again.
The first Saturday in April, Bertha rented a car for me to drive her to Berkeley to visit one of her friends who had recently moved to the East Bay Area. The three of us had a very spicy lunch at a popular Chinese restaurant, got manicures and pedicures, and spent a couple of hours rooting through the bins in a thrift shop. We didn’t find a single item we liked enough to buy, but it had been an enjoyable excursion. I didn’t miss shopping in the upscale stores, or eating in the expensive restaurants that Joan and I used to go to when we were behaving like greedy idiots. I realized that being broke, or close to it like I was now, was a lot less stressful than having a lot of money. In our case, more money—especially dirty money—had meant more problems. It had been a hassle to keep it hidden from other people, and we were worried about getting in trouble for using the mail to commit fraud to get the money. I wondered how wealthy people stayed sane.
When Bertha and I got home around seven P.M., the first thing I did was check the voice mail messages. Reed was the only one who had called. Joan was due to give birth any day, so when I heard his tired voice telling me to call him as soon as I could, I did. Before I could finish dialing his cell phone number, Bertha joined me in the kitchen, huffing and puffing like she had just run a footrace.
Reed answered my call right away. “Is everything all right?” I asked.
“Who are you talking to?” Bertha wanted to know, standing so close to me I could smell and feel her breath on my face. “What’s happened?”
I held up my hand and shook my head.
“Joan had a really rough time,” Reed said. “She wouldn’t agree to a C-section, like I suggested, but after another hour of that unholy pain, she was screaming for the doctor to cut her open.”
“So she had to have a C-section?” I asked, rubbing my stomach. The thought of being cut open terrified me. I glanced at Bertha out of the corner of my eye and saw a look of relief on her face. I figured she had thought something bad had happened to one of her children or Libby’s little boy.
“No, thank God. Just as they were about to prepare her for that, our son came,” Reed said, his voice cracking.
I unbuttoned my windbreaker and fanned my face with my hand. “Is she all right? When can I see her and the baby?”
“I’m on my way to get something to eat, but when I go back to the hospital, I’ll tell her to give you a call. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but, uh, after it was over, you were one of the first people she wanted to talk to.”
I smiled and tears flooded my eyes. “Well, you tell her I can’t wait to talk to her and meet little—”
Reed cut me off and blurted out with a chuckle, “Reed Junior. We had decided on the name six months ago.”
I didn’t get to talk to Joan until the following Monday morning. She called me a few minutes before I left for school while I was at the kitchen table with Bertha finishing the smoked sausages and grits she had prepared. I got up to answer the phone and she continued to eat, but her eyes were on me. “Joan, I am so happy to hear your voice! How are you feeling? I know being in a hospital is no fun,” I hollered. As soon as I mentioned “hospital,” Bertha’s hand froze in midair above her plate and a concerned look appeared on her face. I held the telephone away from my ear and mouthed, “It’s just Joan.”
Bertha bobbed her head like a rooster and returned her attention to the food on her plate. My plan was to skip my last two classes and go visit Joan. I was surprised when she told me she’d be home in a few hours.
“You’re doing that well?” I asked. “I thought they kept women in the hospital at least two or three days after giving birth.”
“They used to, but they don’t do that anymore, unless there are some complications. A woman who came in two hours before me last night gave birth to her baby girl a few hours ago and she’s already gone home.”
“Then I guess I’ll come see you at home this evening?”
“I’ll see you then, Lola.” Joan sounded so happy and strong, I envied her.
I couldn’t wait to be in her position, more than ever now. Despite my feelings of envy, I was happy for her. I was also happy that she had not complained about Reed in a few days. But I was saddened because things were happening that would definitely cause more changes in my relationship with her. I could feel us drifting apart and it scared the hell out of me.
Reed had bought Joan a brand-new Audi three weeks ago and she’d told me that whenever I needed a ride to let her know. But so far, every time I’d called her for a ride, she was busy. Now that she’d had the baby, she’d be busier than ever.
After school that evening, I attempted to call Joan, but she didn’t answer. I called the hospital to confirm that she’d been released. When the receptionist told me she had been a few hours ago, I took a cab to her new residence. I was about to burst open; I was so anxious to see her and the baby. I was probably as elated as she was. My elation didn’t last long. Reed’s mother opened the door for me with a scowl on her moon face. She wasted no time making me feel unwelcome.
“You should have called before you came over here!” she snapped in a voice that was way too husky for a woman. “What was your name again?” I’d been in Mrs. Riley’s presence half-a-dozen times since Joan and Reed got married. Each time she’d asked me my name.
“My name is Lola,” I answered meekly with both of my eyebrows raised. “I’m Joan’s best friend,” I added in a firmer voice. Since Mrs. Riley was looking at me with such contempt on her rust-colored face, I was not about to waste a smile on her.
“Well, Lola, Joan is taking a nap. She needs her rest, so I am not going to let you disturb her. You can go in the nursery at the end of the hall and take a peek at the baby, but don’t pick him up or touch him. And don’t you stay in there but a couple of minutes. Do you hear me?”
“Can I stay here until Joan wakes up? I spoke to her this morning and she’s expecting me.”
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t have time to entertain you, so it would be better if you
leave and come back when she’s awake. And please be considerate enough to call first!”
Despite Mrs. Riley’s rudeness, I managed to remain civil. “Yes, ma’am.”
Not only was Joan’s son adorable, he was the image of her. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I got to spend about three minutes in the nursery gazing at the baby in the bright blue bassinet before Mrs. Riley barged in.
“Young lady, didn’t I tell you not to stay in here but a couple of minutes? Now scoot!” she barked, waving me out the door.
I let out a heavy sigh combined with a groan and left without another word.
The next day, I got to see Joan a total of eight minutes before her mother-in-law shooed me away again.
Chapter 21
Joan
NOW THAT I WAS A MOTHER, I KNEW THAT MY LIFE WAS GOING TO change in ways I never imagined. I didn’t know what to expect next. For one thing, I didn’t like the way my body looked now. I had cellulite on my thighs and butt too hideous for words. And even with all the milk in my breasts, they had begun to droop! I was still a teenager, so I was not about to walk around with a rack that looked like it belonged on a woman in her thirties! I had already ordered some kind of exercise contraption that was supposed to restore the perkiness.
Another thing I was concerned about was the shape of the rest of my body. I had gained only thirty-two pounds during my pregnancy, but my stomach still looked bloated. And as if that was not bad enough, I had the most hideous stretch marks. Luckily, they were below my belly button and on the lower part of my butt, so I could still rock a bikini.
One thing I had not expected was Mother Riley, Reed’s bossy mother, coming into my house and trying to take over. That woman got on my nerves and I fantasized about slapping her face! I was glad she didn’t live in South Bay City and didn’t like to travel the fifty miles from her home in Monterey, so I would not have to see her and Reed’s whiny, meek father that often.