The Turner House

by Angela Flournoy

  He could have cheated on her hundreds, if not thousands of times in these thirty-some-odd years, on trucking runs at least twice a month. And if he ever had, Tina would have liked to believe it was a single indiscretion, never an affair. Something not worth telling anyone at all. She would never tell her girlfriends, but Tina was an avid believer that one transgression, one night of succumbing to the weaknesses of the flesh, need not be confessed, dredged up, and displayed to ruin what two people had built through child rearing and sacrifice. She’d told this to Lonnie right before he went and confessed to that smart girl he’d somehow convinced to marry him out in California. Had he listened, they might have not divorced. It was selfish to confess to such a trifling thing. But what Cha-Cha had done wasn’t a one-time slip. It was a full-blown emotional and maybe even intellectual affair. How could this be forgiven?

  The front door opened and Cha-Cha walked into the living room with what looked like a spring in his step. A self-satisfied smirk on his face. Then he noticed Tina at the desk in the corner and his face collapsed. He looked like a large child, she thought. A big, fat, philandering baby. She opened her mouth to say the most hurtful thing she could think of—she didn’t even know what, maybe just a loud groan—but Lelah walked into the room. The two of them looked like they had been jumped, drugged, and tossed out the back of a van. He would come home with her, Tina thought, or anyone who could delay the confrontation he knew was coming. Cha-Cha thought decorum would always overrule anger for Tina, and he was usually right, but today there were sufficiently hurtful things she could say in mixed company.

  “Your mother has cancer,” she said.

  “What?” Lelah said. Tina watched Cha-Cha’s face for a response. She’d broken a cardinal rule of their relationship: never talk about any big family development without running it by him first, so that he might determine the best way to disseminate the information.

  “What?” Lelah said again. She dropped her duffel bag on the living room floor.

  Tina ignored Cha-Cha’s death glare and explained.

  “Last time we went to the doctor she was complaining about pain in and around her armpits, and after the doctor felt some swelling there they did a scan. Well, today they said it looks like something is there in her lymph nodes, which means it’s gonna spread fast.”

  “Something?” Lelah asked. “They don’t know for sure? Can’t they do a biopsy?”

  Cha-Cha rubbed his temple but didn’t speak.

  “She’s probably awake in her room right now, Lelah,” Tina said. “Go on in and ask her what they said and what she said too.”

  “Okay,” Lelah said, as if finally registering the tension in the room. “Good idea.”

  Can a human being ever truly know another person’s heart? Tina had thought it possible. How could she have been wrong? Cha-Cha sat on the arm of the love seat closest to her and knocked the folded-up printout of Alice onto the floor. Tina ignored the proximity of the knees of his dirty pants to her face and focused on the paper. He smelled like beer and dirt and mildew. She refused to speak first. Back when she had been closer to her sisters-in-law, Francey and Netti in particular would tease Tina for her inability to hold Cha-Cha accountable for his mistakes. “You give in too easily,” Netti used to say. “I love Cha-Cha, but he’s the type of man that’ll only change if you put him in the doghouse for a while.” Tina never did. Some women put men in the doghouse, she thought, and others just up and quit when they’ve had enough.

  Cha-Cha touched her forearm.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Mama sooner? I woulda gone with y’all yesterday. I had no idea—”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Tina swatted his hand away. “I’m not about to sit up here and explain anything to you.”

  “I’m just trying,” he started, and stopped. “Cancer is serious, Tina—”

  “And what, I don’t know that? You must think I’m so stupid, and weak. But I’m not.”

  Cha-Cha stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and sighed. As if he somehow thought he’d get around this.

  “Nothing happened, alright? I should’ve called to check in, but nothing happened yesterday, or any other day. I swear to God.”

  “Don’t you swear for my sake. You and me must have very different definitions of the word nothing.”

  “I slept on the east side at Mama’s house,” Cha-Cha said. He turned around and pointed toward Viola’s closed door. “Ask Lelah. She was there. I found her there and brought her back with me. She’s messed up, Tina. She just needs a place to stay—”

  Tina jumped up from her chair so that she was eye level to Cha-Cha’s chest.

  “I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care! When have I ever cared about somebody staying here, huh? You didn’t go to work, Cha; I called. And you didn’t pick up the phone all day long.” She took a deep breath before asking: “Did you go see Alice?”

  Cha-Cha’s jaw hung open, which was answer enough.

  “That doesn’t mean I slept with her! It just means . . . I needed to work some stuff out. Truth be told, I needed alone time more than anything.”

  Tina laughed.

  “Alone time? You needed alone time? That’s all you do, Cha. You’ve got to sleep alone to figure out your haint situation. You’ve got to weasel out of helping me with your mother on account of an argument y’all had. You’ve got to keep your Alice conversations to yourself, and you walk around here like somebody’s teenager, resentful of me like I’m your mother. Well, I’m not, alright? I’m sixty years old, and I’m not about to be anybody’s fool anymore.”

  Tina jabbed a finger at her own chest.

  “You got no right to humiliate me just cause you’re having a crisis. Especially after I offered to listen, to help, to do whatever, and you pushed me away.”

  “Alright,” Cha-Cha said. “I think we both need to calm down some. At least come outside before Mama gets upset.”

  He walked over to the sliding glass door leading out to the deck, gestured for Tina to follow him. Tina picked up the folded printout on her way and pushed it against his chest.

  “Matthew five twenty-eight,” she said. “I know you know what it says.”

  Cha-Cha unfolded the paper. The Rothmans looked up at him. For a moment he considered capitulating; he had indeed been unfaithful under Matthew’s parameters, and by proxy Jesus’, but then he saw an opportunity for leverage.

  “See, that right there is what all of this boils down to, Tina. You don’t even see me as a person anymore. I’m just a body to toss scripture at and guilt-trip all the damn time.”

  “Oh, that’s real clever—”

  “You act like I’m not saved enough for you, but that’s not how belief works. Just cause you wanna spend all day churching with your friends doesn’t mean I’m not worthy. It doesn’t make me the devil.”

  “All day churching? You never come to church anymore, Cha. Not ever. And I know it’s not cause you don’t believe, it’s cause you think you’re better than everybody there. Smarter than everybody there. But you can’t even figure out why you’re seeing ghosts! I’m not gonna let you blame me and what I do at church for this. Try something else.” She turned her back on him and walked to the far end of the deck. Cha-Cha followed.

  “It’s not about blame,” he said. “It’s about giving each other what we need.”

  Tina spun around, incredulous.

  “What we need? Sounds like some stuff you got from that shrink. For the majority of my life I’ve given you everything you’ve asked for, and a whole lot more you didn’t, and I don’t think you ever really thought what it took for me to give all that. The other night you acted all miserable because your body wouldn’t cooperate when you were ready to make love. Well, guess what, Cha? That’s been the story of my life since menopause! But do I blame you and ruin things? No, I blamed myself. I got hormone pills and crazy bottles of lube and stuff from the ladies at church—oh, I know you think they’re too stuck up to have tha
t kinda stuff, but they do—and I made it work. I did it for you, not to keep you, but because I love you. But I bet you thought it was all magic, huh?”

  “Tina, I . . . this isn’t . . .” Cha-Cha tried. “Nobody ever said—”

  “And the thing that’s really embarrassing is that I still want you, old as we both are. Last night and too many nights. I’m embarrassed by it, Cha-Cha. Really.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand and stifled a sob. Cha-Cha knew better than to say anything else. He could elicit pity by telling her about his trip to the hospital, simply lift up his sleeve so she could see where the IV had been. But that did not negate the feelings he had for Alice—feelings that had not quite disappeared—and he was not interested in Tina filling the role of caregiver anymore. She walked back to the sliding glass door.

  “Your mother is dying, Cha-Cha. Ain’t no more quick fixes left for her. And you two don’t even talk. More than everything else, that’s a problem. I’d like to be here for her until she’s gone, but after all of this—”

  Tina did not finish the thought. She slid the door open and left Cha-Cha outside.

  LELAH AND Viola sat on the edge of Viola’s bed, perfectly still, trying to eavesdrop. After Cha-Cha and Tina moved to the back deck and out of earshot, Lelah convinced her mother to lie back down. Viola’s weight loss was evident: her thick blue diabetic’s socks, usually tight, pooled around her knobby ankles. The springs in the bed, which Lelah recalled being loud, made no noise under Viola’s weight. When Lelah first walked in she had found Viola sitting on the edge of the bed trying with all of her body to listen to the argument unfolding on the other side of the door. She was trembling from the effort, her torso sloping to one side.

  “Were you even supposed to be sitting up, Mama?” Lelah said. “I thought you had to rest your neck.”

  “It don’t hurt. I’m all doped up now,” Viola said. “I been telling them doctors I need stronger medicine. They didn’t never wanna give it, but now cause I’m dying for real they went on and gave me everything.”

  They heard stomping through the living room, then the hollow clang of the garage door slamming.

  “What exactly did the doctors say?”

  “Cancer in my lymph nodes, and some in my lungs, too.”

  Lelah sat down in the little armchair wedged between the bed and the window. She picked up bottles of lotions and nail polish and pretended to read their labels.

  “And what did you say to that?”

  Viola blinked several times and yawned.

  “Oh, I don’t know. It was cold in there. You remember how that chemo did Marlene? All that weight gone, then back, then gone. Ain’t enough of me for that.”

  Lelah nodded. She had often detected an undercurrent of melodramatic dread in her mother’s words. Growing up it was if Viola had expected to lose a child, or that she’d never expected her own life to go on for as long as it had. How to act when the end was truly near?

  “So you got more drugs for now,” she said. “Then what?”

  “Nothing. Cancer takes too long. That’s why I’m not foolin with no treatments. It’s just gone drag it out more. Naw, baby, not for me.”

  Viola closed her eyes and wiggled her feet under the blanket. She was high off of pain meds. Not enough to be incoherent, but enough to make her sassier than Lelah had seen her in a long time. Lelah climbed into the bed next to her mother. The corners of Viola’s mouth turned up in a smile.

  When Cha-Cha rescued Lelah and Brianne from Missouri, he had brought them to this house. Lelah had slept in this room for an entire day, and Tina had looked after Brianne. Lelah had heard Brianne’s cries through these walls, or thought she did, but she could not muster the strength to go to her daughter. It was like she’d been drugged. The weight of her own body, thinner than she would ever be again, was too much to maneuver. Lelah had not cried; she just stared at the ceiling and tried to figure out why she’d married Vernon in the first place, why she hadn’t thought of any other plan for herself. At the twenty-four-hour mark she sat up, a new question in her mind: what would she do now? She was twenty-two years old, and the only answer that came was work and raise your daughter. Now, back at this place, Lelah saw it had cost too much to aim for so little.

  “You’re not even afraid to die?” she asked.

  Viola scrunched up her nose and shifted her torso as if trying to get away from Lelah. Without the upper-body strength required for a full scoot, she ended up rocking from side to side for a moment and resettling. She opened one reproachful eye.

  “You smell like smoke. Like a pool hall or someplace. When you start that?”

  “You know I don’t smoke, Mama. I was around some smokers yesterday. I need to take a shower.”

  “I don’t know what’s worse, smokin or drinkin. Your daddy used to drink, you know.”

  “Everybody knows that.”

  “Your daddy was always worried, worried himself drunk. So worried about what didn’t happen at his job, with the house, on the street. Worried about heaven and hell. Waste of time.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Lelah said. “When’s the last time you seen Marlene?”

  “Marlene came by and gave me some lace gloves. Lace! They was pretty, but where I’m goin with lace on? I threw them under the bed. Troy been by too. He get your fingerprints yet? He came by for mine, but I know he was lyin about something, I don’t know what. He can’t lie to save his life.”

  Lelah looked. No gloves under the bed. A good thing. It would have been cruel of her sister. Viola’s hands were too knotted and her nails too thick for lace. She had no idea what she meant about Troy, but she hoped Viola was mistaken about him too.

  “Now, your daddy,” Viola said. “Maybe if he didn’t buy so much liquor, he’d of had less to be worryin about in the first place.”

  “Yeah, well, he stopped drinking eventually, didn’t he?” Lelah said. “Plenty of people never stop, Mama. It’s hard.”

  “Shit,” Viola said. She looked to the left and right of her, and whispered, “Your daddy ain’t stop nothin. That doctor told your daddy his liver was about to up and quit on him. And you think he wanted to stop? No.”

  Viola made a clucking noise in an attempt to scratch the back of her throat.

  “I made Cha-Cha follow your daddy around, and sure enough he was drinkin still. Got to the point I told him if he had another drink, I would kill him dead myself. I’da done it, too.”

  Lelah propped herself up on an elbow.

  “What are you saying, Mama? You know that’s not true. Daddy quit cause he wanted to. I remember he used to carry his flask around for show, but he never—”

  “He didn’t quit nothin!” She shot Lelah an impatient look. “He just chose to stay alive is all. And lucky for him his liver held on. Mmm-hmm. That’s why you need to quit that smokin now, girl. Fore you mess around and get sick.”

  And just like that, Lelah’s last illusion died.

  Viola muttered to herself about tobacco pipes and beer money and something Lelah couldn’t decipher about ham hocks. Other Turner children would have forced Viola to remain alert, ply her with questions aimed at sharpening her focus and fighting the morphine- induced confusion, but Lelah saw no point in making her mother work hard at anything anymore. Soon Viola fell asleep, heralded by a soft whirring from her nose. Lelah turned over in the bed and grabbed her phone out of her purse on the floor. No missed calls. She wanted to call someone up and tell them the truth about Francis Turner and his drinking, but really, who cared but her? Better to let the myth of the man who beat his demons live on. She called Brianne instead. The phone went straight to voicemail, and Lelah wasn’t sure what message to leave. She hung up.

  In the living room Cha-Cha sat with his head in his hands. Lelah came and sat on the arm of the couch next to him.

  “Tina’s gonna be fine,” she said.

  Cha-Cha shrugged. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

  “Okay,” Lelah said. She
stood up to leave, but Cha-Cha grabbed her arm. Even with his red-rimmed eyes as proof, Lelah couldn’t imagine him crying.

  “You can’t tell anyone about Mama. I’m not ready,” he said.

  “Huh? You mean don’t tell her other eleven children that she’s dying? That’s not fair, Cha.”

  “Now hold on a minute. Nobody said she was dying. Just give her some time. We can get her to do the chemo, I know we can. She just likes to be dramatic.”

  Lelah sat back down. She pictured her mother, wide awake once more, straining to sit back up and eavesdrop on them. She lowered her voice.

  “She’s dying, Cha. Sooner than you realize, I bet. Go ask her and she’ll tell you herself. It’s not even about the cancer as much as it’s about her being ready to go. You know once somebody her age decides to stop fighting, it’s pretty much over.”

  Cha-Cha slapped his leg and Lelah flinched.

  “Gotdamnit, regardless of that, I’m asking you not to tell anybody, alright? Not until we have some sort of plan. Can I trust you to keep this between us?”

  Seeing as how she was staying under his roof, Lelah did not consider herself in a position to disagree.

  A Multiple-Man Operation

  He wanted to tell her that every second she stayed away he felt bereft. But Chucky, his own son, was playing bouncer. His shorter, stout body was planted on the threshold, his arms crossed. His face—more Tina than Cha-Cha, with small eyes and narrow nose—was veiled in artificial indifference. Cha-Cha would have punched him if he didn’t love him.