Joyce didn’t know where that had come from.
He said, “I mean, since we’re already here.”
She looked him up and down. He looked vaguely familiar. But she said, “I don’t know you.”
He held out his hand and waited, forcing her to take it. “I’m Vernon Robinson,” he said, chuckling. “I’m a student at Duke . . . Duke Law . . . and everyone says I’m a nice guy. Is that enough information about me to have lunch?”
“Yes,” she said, thinking that he could have stopped with his name. No wonder he looked familiar. This was the Vernon Robinson, Valerie Abraham’s fiancé.
As a waitress led them to a table, all kinds of thoughts floated through Joyce’s head. She’d heard a lot of talk on the street about Valerie, the daughter of one of the most prominent doctors in Durham, and about the up-and-coming man who’d been featured on television and in all the major media when he’d been named editor of the Duke Law Journal.
Joyce was surprised that she hadn’t recognized him right away, though she hadn’t really paid much attention when he’d appeared on TV. But now that she sat across from him, Joyce saw why everyone was talking about Vernon Robinson. Not only was he smart, destined to be one of Duke’s most acclaimed graduates, but this third-year law student was fine—Harry Belafonte sophisticated with extra-oomph fine. And he had class; she could tell by the way he held the menu, then asked her what she wanted before he gave both of their orders to the waitress.
He is exactly the kind of man I want to marry.
The thought of Valerie didn’t enter Joyce’s mind again. She didn’t like thinking much about Valerie anyway. Back in high school, she’d tried to befriend Valerie when she’d worked at a church bazaar and Valerie had sauntered through. But Valerie and her snooty friends had dismissed her with their turned-up noses and sneers.
She’d felt like the lowest thing on earth on that day. Well, today, sitting across from Valerie’s fiancé made her feel much better. And because of the way Valerie had treated her, it was game on!
She’d ordered a chef’s salad while he’d had a cheeseburger smothered in mushrooms. Finishing their meals should have taken them fifteen, twenty minutes, tops. But hours later, when the sun had long ago emerged brightly and dried the city’s streets, the two were still sitting in that booth, chatting and laughing as if they were far more than new friends.
Vernon’s eyes got wide when he glanced at his watch. “Are you serious?”
“What?”
He looked at her with a wide grin. “We’ve been sitting here for four hours.”
“No!” She glanced at her own watch. All that studying she was going to do . . . “It doesn’t feel like that.”
“I know! What’s that cliché?”
“Which one? Time flies when you’re having fun?”
“No. The one that says I want to see you again. I have to see you again.”
“That’s not a cliché.” She laughed, flattered.
He shrugged. “But it’s the truth. So when can we get together?”
From that moment, Operation Make Vernon Mine was in full gear. Actually, it had started the moment he mentioned his name, but now Joyce turned it up to level eleven.
Joyce accomplished her mission before too long. It was a bunch of ones: one discreetly forgotten pair of lace underwear at his apartment, one anonymous phone call, and one kiss that left lipstick on his collar. One month after Joyce and Vernon met, Valerie called off the wedding.
Of course, Vernon did all of his breakup crying on Joyce’s shoulder. Not that he did too much of that. He transitioned from Valerie to Joyce quickly and smoothly, and right away the new talk around town was about Joyce and Vernon.
Although she’d schemed to go after him, it was Vernon who fell first and fell hard. A month after Valerie called off their wedding, Vernon asked Joyce to marry him.
“You don’t even have to finish school,” he told her. “You can drop out now so that you can plan the wedding that you’ve always wanted. It’s not like you’re going to work anyway. I want to take care of you while you take care of our children.”
He didn’t have to do too much convincing. The way she’d grown up—on the side of the tracks that people like Vernon and Valerie knew nothing about—she couldn’t wait to live a different kind of life. And with Vernon, she’d be well on her way. He’d already been offered a position with one of Raleigh’s top law firms at a starting salary of almost $150,000. If this was the beginning, Joyce couldn’t wait to see the middle and the end.
So, against her father’s will and with her mother’s tears, she dropped out of North Carolina Central. A year after they met, Joyce and Vernon vowed to forsake all others for as long as they both lived.
But it took only six months for Joyce to find out two things: what went around came back around, and Vernon Robinson had no intention of forsaking all others. Before they even had a chance to exchange one-year anniversary gifts, another woman was doing to Joyce what Joyce had done to Valerie.
Vernon was so clumsy with his affair. Joyce hadn’t gone digging; no one had left any unmentionables in their apartment. No, he cheated on her right in the open. Granted, Vernon and Alicia, one of the law clerks, probably thought they were in the clear since it was nine thirty at night, but still Joyce caught Alicia easing onto her knees in front of her still fully clothed husband. She had arrived just in time to catch more than an eyeful—she saw a mouthful.
Of course, just like those silly ladies in the movies, Joyce turned and bolted. Vernon took off after her, not catching her until she’d been trapped at the elevator banks.
“Please don’t leave me,” Vernon cried as Joyce sobbed.
He told her the whole story: how Alicia had been trying to seduce him for weeks. How he had resisted her all of this time, and no matter what Joyce thought she saw, what he’d really been doing was stopping Alicia.
Yeah. Right.
She called him a liar.
He begged her to forgive him.
She said she never would.
And he’d said please more times than one would think possible in twenty minutes.
In the end, she rushed home to pack her bags. She was still crying when he came home crying, too.
“I can’t stay with a cheater,” she told him, no longer shouting. Now her voice was soft, filled with pain.
“You can’t leave me!” he cried, sounding like he couldn’t imagine being alone. “Where are you going to go?”
His question made her pause. Where was she going to go? She’d dropped out of college to take care of this man, and they hadn’t even made it one year.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She stuffed as many clothes as she could into one suitcase. “I’m just so hurt right now.”
“I swear I wasn’t going to let it go there,” he said again, as if repeating himself would turn his lie into the truth. “I should’ve stopped her when she came into my office and threw herself at me. I tried, but I was weak.”
By this point Joyce was dumping her toiletries from the bathroom into her overnighter.
He said, “I’ll make sure that she gets fired. I’ll do whatever I have to do. I just can’t lose you. You mean the world to me.”
Joyce emphatically shook her head. She was not going to be one of those women who remained with cheating men. She zipped her suitcase and headed toward the door. Even though she was putting on a show of confidence, inside she was shaking. Where in the world was she going to go? What was she going to do? Besides her possessions in these two bags, she had nothing. No college degree and no money, because she hadn’t done what her grandmother had always said—to build a stash for a rainy day or a quick getaway.
Of course, she did have one place to go—her parents’. But how could she face them after she’d disappointed them so much? How could she stand to hear I-told-you-so when she was hurting so much?
That’s not to mention all the talk around town. Although Joyce had done her best to ignore
it, everyone in Durham knew that she’d come between Valerie and Vernon. Now everyone would gossip about their breakup—and Joyce imagined how everyone would say that she deserved it. After all, if he’d cheated on Valerie, why wouldn’t he cheat on her?
As she stood at the front door, contemplating her choices, Vernon pleaded, “This wasn’t about you, baby. I just had a momentary lapse. Please don’t leave me. I’m nothing without you.”
She had her back turned to him when she felt his hand on her shoulder.
He whispered, “What about . . . our son?”
The word was barely out of his mouth before she covered her beginning baby bump with her hand.
Our son.
She’d hardly forgotten about being pregnant. She just couldn’t think about her son right now. Because then she’d be more distressed, and she couldn’t afford that.
But now Vernon had brought it up.
Our son.
They’d found out the sex of their baby a mere week ago, when she was at nineteen weeks. Vernon had been overjoyed that his wife was giving him what he really wanted. And he’d repaid her by cheating.
Whipping around, she faced him. “Don’t talk about our son. You threw me and him away for your law clerk.”
“Nothing. Happened.” He emphasized those words. “But you can’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. And I promise, I will spend the rest of my life making this up to you.”
She was about to ask him, which was it? Was it that nothing happened? Or was it that something happened and he’d make up for it?
But before she could challenge him with his inconsistencies, he dropped. Yes, right there in the entryway, he fell to his knees. With tears streaming down his face, the powerful Vernon Robinson humbled himself.
When he reached for the suitcase that her hand still gripped, Joyce allowed him to take it away from her. Then he buried his face in her stomach and professed his love again and again.
She’d let him make love to her that night, though it didn’t feel the same. Not even the Tiffany signature pearl necklace that he brought home the next day could mend her heart.
“Hello, beautiful!”
Joyce took in the image of her husband, standing at the deck’s entry. In his hand he held a gift box. He always brought a gift. Always a gift, always an apology.
“Are you still mad?” His tone was tentative.
“Where’s Lauren?” was her response.
He motioned his head slightly to the left. “She went to her room.”
“It took you this long to get ice cream?” Her tone was filled with suspicion.
“Yup. You know I don’t like to rush my time with my princess,” he said easily. “Plus, I had to make a stop. For this. For you.” He held up the silver box.
She frowned. After all of these years Joyce had a hard time believing anything Vernon said. At first she’d thought that he’d left this afternoon, storming out after their argument, to go see some woman. Not until he called a couple of hours ago to make sure she knew that Lauren was with him did she realize that 1) her daughter wasn’t home and 2) another woman wasn’t on his agenda . . . at least not for today.
He said, “You didn’t answer me. Are you still mad?”
Joyce didn’t say a word; she didn’t make a move.
“Bet this will get you unmad.”
As he stepped closer, she could see the large white bow tie on the box. Then he held out the package to her.
Still, she didn’t move. And Vernon didn’t back off because they both knew she would take the box. Abusers always know how to appease their victims. Yes, Vernon had never hit her. Her skin bore no scars, but all kinds of tracks stretched across her heart.
But just like the victim she’d been for ten years, Joyce finally took the gift the way she always did. And then one of her favorite songs of the year filled the air out on the deck:
Compliment what she does
Send her roses just because
Vernon grinned. Joyce hated that this song would have to play at just this moment.
Then James Ingram sang, “Find one hundred ways.”
Vernon had done just that. He’d found more than one hundred ways to manipulate her.
Together, they listened in silence to the song. And as she held the box in her lap, with no plans of opening it yet, her heart cried.
Lauren peeked around the corner. From where she stood, she had the perfect view into her grandmother’s bedroom. Her grandmother sat at her vanity, putting on her makeup. Her Grandma Helen was the prettiest woman in the world. Even prettier than her mother, even though Lauren would never say that. Just like she would never tell her mother the secret she’d kept for the last two years.
She couldn’t believe that she’d kept the secret that she shared with her daddy for all this time. She’d told no one, not even her best friend, Carly, though it had been so hard. She wanted to tell somebody. Just one person. But she had to do what her father had told her.
Suddenly, her grandmother whipped around, and Lauren hopped back into the hallway.
“Sweetie pie, are you out there peeping at me?”
She’d been caught! Lauren stood stock still, closing her eyes, hoping that maybe her grandmother would think that she hadn’t been sneaking outside her bedroom. Maybe if she stood completely still . . .
“Lauren Louise Robinson!”
Uh-oh. When anyone in the family called her by her full name, she was in big trouble. Opening her eyes, she took slow steps toward her doom. Her grandmother stood with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face.
“Were you spying on me?”
“No, Granny. I wasn’t spying. I was just watching you.”
Her scowl became deeper. She wagged her finger at Lauren. “You know you’re not supposed to do that, don’t you? You’re not supposed to sneak around on grown folks.”
Lauren’s head remained lowered. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You know this calls for punishment.”
Punishment? Only her mother punished her. She sent her to her room so that she couldn’t watch TV, or told her that she couldn’t have dessert, or said that she couldn’t hang out with Carly after school. But now Grandma Helen was going to join in?
Her grandmother held her finger to her chin as if she were trying to think of a good punishment. “I got it.”
Lauren looked up.
“Your punishment . . . come over here and give me a great big hug!”
Lauren’s grin was so wide, the tips of her lips almost touched her ears. Even though her grandmother was only a few feet away, Lauren dashed to her like she was running around the track the way she did during recess in school. She wrapped her arms around her grandmother’s waist, and her grandmother held her tight.
“I love you, Granny,” Lauren said into her grandmother’s bosom.
“I bet you that I love you more.” She stepped back from Lauren to take a good look at her granddaughter. “Don’t you look pretty?”
Lauren beamed and twirled in her pink taffeta dress for her grandmother. They both laughed before Grandma Helen turned back to her vanity and sat down. “Well, since you’re dressed for the tea, you might as well stand right here if you’re going to spy on me.”
“I wasn’t spying on you, Granny. I was just watching you ’cause you’re so beautiful.”
“You think I’m beautiful, huh?”
“I think you’re the most beautiful lady in the whole wide world. Everybody says so.”
Grandma Helen laughed, but Lauren meant what she’d said. Everyone in Raleigh did say that about Helen Thornton. Folks said that she was as beautiful as Lena Horne. Lauren had no idea who Lena Horne was, but she bet that her grandmother was prettier than her, too.
Her grandmother dusted light brown powder onto her face, then took the black pencil and colored in her eyebrows. Granny spread more powder on her face before she got to Lauren’s favorite part. She twisted open the tube of lipstick, and slowly, as if she didn’t want to make a mistak
e, spread the color along her thin lips. She did that a couple of times until her lips were the brightest red that Lauren had ever seen. Grandma Helen smacked her lips together and cocked her head from one side to the other, studying herself in the mirror.
“How does that look?” Granny said.
“Fabulous!” Lauren clapped her hands as if she had just watched a performance and wanted an encore.
Grandma Helen laughed and hugged her granddaughter. “You sure know how to make an old woman feel good.”
When Lauren leaned back, she said, “I can’t wait until I can wear lipstick just like you.”
“Oh, you can’t, huh? Well, don’t grow up too fast. You’re gonna look back one day and wish that you were nine years old again.”
Lauren scrunched her face. She couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be nine again. She wanted to grow up fast—at least get to be a teenager. She wanted to be old—like sixteen. “I don’t want to be nine anymore,” she said. “I want to be older so that I can wear lipstick like you!”
“Oh, really?”
Lauren nodded.
“Well,” her grandmother began, then lowered her voice. “What about if I let you wear a little lipstick to the tea today?”
Lauren’s eyes widened.
“Yup,” Granny said. “I think I can find a little something in this drawer here that a pretty nine-year-old can wear.”
As her grandmother fumbled through the dozens of lipstick tubes, Lauren’s heart quickened. This was something she’d dreamed of, something that she and Carly talked about.
“We’ll try this one,” her grandmother said. She twisted open one of the tubes. It was beige, kind of clear. Lauren was a little disappointed. She wanted the red, like her grandmother, but she was willing to start anywhere.
“Okay,” Granny said. “I’m going to put just a little dab on your lips. But first I need you to promise me something.”
“What?” Lauren said.
“You have to promise first,” her grandmother said with a wide smile.
“I promise!”
Granny laughed out loud. “You have to promise that this is our secret. You can’t tell anyone that I let you wear lipstick. Can you keep a secret?”
The Perfect Mistress Page 2