The Perfect Mistress

by ReShonda Tate Billingsley

  If only her dream had been real.

  It should be against the law for a woman to love a man like Joyce loved Vernon Robinson. She loved him more than she loved herself. More than she loved her children.

  There was something truly wrong with that.

  She knew that now. And she knew it was time to forgive herself for all the mistakes she’d made.

  Joyce threw back the covers and tossed her legs over the edge of the bed. She tried to stand, but felt dizzy and immediately sat back down. She blinked, tried to focus, and still felt she was leaning sideways. Maybe she needed to just sit for a minute. Compose herself.

  Only, ten minutes later, she still didn’t feel any better.

  “Mrs. Joyce, are you okay?”

  She heard the voice, and it sounded near, but she couldn’t make out where it was coming from. In fact, she couldn’t make out much of anything.

  She opened her mouth to tell whoever was in front of her that something was seriously wrong. But no words would form. It was as if her tongue had become too heavy.

  The walls closed in, and everything around her went black. Joyce felt herself floating away. And then he touched her hand.

  “Vernon?” she asked, surprised.

  He smiled. “Hey, beautiful.”

  Her mouth felt pasty. “Wh-what are you doing? Where am I?”

  “Shhh,” he said. “I just wanted to come tell you that I loved you.”

  “Am I in Heaven?” She had a second thought after saying that. “Or, if you’re here, am I in Hell?”

  Vernon chuckled. “No. I came to you. You didn’t come to me. I just came to tell you that it’s not your time.”

  “Huh?” Joyce wondered why he looked the way he had when she met him. Why didn’t he look old and gray, the way he did when she put him in the ground? And what the heck was that white glow around him?

  “I just want to tell you, it’s not your time,” he repeated.

  “I’m tired, though,” she said wearily. Joyce didn’t know what was going on, but she felt drained. And she wanted a white glow around herself.

  “Yeah, harboring hate can do that.”

  “I don’t have any hate,” she said.

  “Yes, you do. And resentment.” He lightly tapped her heart. “And that boils over here and consumes you.”

  Despite all the grief he’d brought her, seeing him made her smile. “Since when did you become so wise?”

  “I haven’t. I learned things too late.”

  “Like what?”

  He took her hand. “Like how precious you are.”

  They stared at each other for a minute, and then she asked the question she’d asked the day she buried him. “Why, Vernon? Why did you hurt me so bad?”

  She saw true regret in his expression. “I don’t have any excuse. I was selfish. Weak. There is just no excuse. You didn’t deserve any of what I did to you. Instead of being there for you when you needed me, I turned my back on you.”

  That brought tears to Joyce’s eyes. He’d said that before, but this time she believed him.

  “All you did was love me,” he continued.

  Joyce nodded. “And I just wanted you to love me back.”

  He wiped away the tears she didn’t know she was shedding. “I loved you. I just didn’t know how to love you the right way. I loved you like my father loved my mother. And his father loved his mother.”

  And my father loved my mother, she thought.

  Vernon continued. “I caused your pain. Me, and me alone.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because I want you to make peace. All of this was me. I was deceitful. I put our daughter in the middle of this. She loves you. She needs you. Don’t shut her out.”

  She felt a pang of regret. She’d been feeling the same way lately.

  He squeezed her hand tighter. “I’m begging you. Forgive our child. I know it’s hard. I hurt both of you and I pray for that forgiveness every day. But I need you to make this right before it’s too late.”

  She wanted to ask Vernon some questions but he started fading.

  “Vernon?” She struggled to sit up. “Vernon?” She squinted, trying to bring him back into focus.

  “She’s coming to,” Joyce heard someone say.

  “Mrs. Robinson, can you hear me?”

  Vernon disappeared and her vision grew even more fuzzy, then cleared.

  “Wh-what happened?” Joyce was lying on the floor, surrounded by a dozen people. Ernest, Pearl, and some other people were standing in the doorway, watching in utter fear.

  “Am I dead?” she asked.

  “No,” the facility resident nurse said with a relieved smile. “You just passed out.”

  She and two other orderlies helped Joyce up off the floor and back onto the bed.

  “Why did I pass out?” She flinched as the nurse shone a flashlight in her eyes.

  “I don’t know. The doctor is on the way. They’ll run some tests. Did you eat this morning?”

  Joyce thought for a moment. Did she? She couldn’t remember.

  “She didn’t,” Ernest announced from the doorway. “I came in here about three hours ago to see if she wanted to go eat before the kitchen closed, but she was still in bed.”

  Everyone looked at Joyce strangely, probably because she was an early riser. The fact that she was still in bed at ten o’clock was a shock itself.

  “I know you don’t like the doctor to visit,” the nurse told her, “but I need you to not fight me on this, okay?”

  Joyce nodded. She just didn’t know. Between the passing out and her visit from Vernon, she was all too ready to cooperate and find out what the heck was wrong with her.

  What is this?” Lauren waved the newspaper in front of Matthew’s face. Her heart had been racing since she’d opened the morning paper and seen her smiling picture blaring at her.

  “Looks like the local newspaper,” Matthew casually replied. He was sitting at his kitchen table working on a budget proposal for the board.

  Lauren thought he was sure doing a lot of work for a job he didn’t officially have yet, but he explained that he had to show the board he was ready to handle the job.

  “I know it’s a newspaper,” she said, waving the Raleigh News & Observer some more. “I’m talking about this!” She jabbed the front page of the Lifestyles section.

  Matthew looked up from the budget report and flashed a smile. “That’s us. Surprise.”

  “Surprise? Really?”

  He looked confused. “Umm, I thought you would be happy. They did a feature story on us.”

  “I don’t want a feature story on us,” she protested.

  “Why not? What’s the big deal?” He took the paper and studied it more closely. “I think this is actually a good picture of us.”

  When the picture had been taken at the Congressional Black Caucus dinner last week, she never imagined it appearing on the front section of a newspaper.

  “I don’t understand what the problem is.” He handed the paper back to her. It had been three weeks since he’d proposed. Three whirlwind weeks. As promised, they’d gone to see Luigi, the jeweler, the day after Matthew had proposed. Not only had he designed the ring of her dreams, but he’d rushed it so that they could pick it up within a week. And now she was sporting it proudly.

  They’d agreed on a one-year engagement, figuring it would give him time to get settled in his new job, which everyone was confident that he would get.

  “Why are we plastered all over the newspaper?” she asked again.

  Matthew kept grinning. “Babe, you need to get used to it. When I become president of Carolina State, we’re going to be in the paper quite a bit.”

  Lauren had never been one for the limelight. Especially with the life she’d led. She’d wanted to quietly marry Matthew. There was nothing quiet about this.

  “You should’ve told me you were going to do this, because I would’ve told you that I don’t want to do this.”
/>   “Why? Are you wanted by the FBI or something?” he joked.

  Lauren cut her eyes at him.

  “I’m joking. But no, really, you’re not, are you?”

  She flung the paper at him. “Of course I’m not wanted by the FBI. I just don’t like my business all over the place.”

  “Well, we’re a public couple now and my position is a public position. We have an image to maintain. We will be analyzed and scrutinized. That’s one of the drawbacks of the position, but it does come with perks.”

  “Ugh,” she moaned. “You sure seem certain that you’ve got the job.”

  “I’m the most qualified. The other guy has the experience, but he doesn’t have the effervescent personality like me.” He closed his work, stood, and stepped toward her. “Babe, sorry I didn’t tell you. I actually thought it would be a nice surprise.”

  She sighed, deciding it would be useless to continue arguing. “I just don’t want anything messing up our happy home.”

  “And what could possibly do that?”

  If only you knew, she thought.

  “Lauren, I don’t know if you understand what I do as a college administrator. It’s almost like a politician,” Matthew said, pulling her into a hug. “This is regulated by the board, so the position is political. Alumni have to like you, the state has to like you, the students have to like you.”

  “What if I don’t care whether people like me?”

  Matthew made a wry face. “Unfortunately, you’ll have to learn to start caring.”

  When she didn’t respond, he gently kissed her forehead. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to upset you. I’m dumbfounded as to why it has you so upset. Are you ashamed? Do you not want people to know we’re getting married?”

  “Of course not.” His words caused her to think. Why was she so upset? Why was she so secretive? Maybe because that’s what her father had always taught her to be. But she wasn’t Matthew’s mistress. She was about to be his wife. A title that she needed to wear loud and proud.

  “You’re right. I’m overreacting.”

  He smiled appreciatively as he returned to his seat. She took a look at the picture again. “First lady, huh?” She finally smiled.

  “The real deal.”

  “So does that mean I get a staff and a budget?”

  “Not quite. It is the number-two HBCU in the country, but they aren’t on that level yet. It’s the Ivy League of HBCUs. Embrace it.”

  She was about to say something else when the phone rang. She grabbed her cell off the counter, glanced down at her caller ID, and let out a sigh.

  “It’s my mother’s facility.” She pressed the ACCEPT button, bracing herself for whatever this call was about. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Lauren, this is Amanda, your mother’s nurse. We wanted to let you know that your mother had a little incident.”

  That caused her to stand at attention. “What kind of incident?”

  “She passed out again.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. She’s come to. We’ve had the doctor check her out. They’re going to run some tests. We’re not quite sure what happened. It might just be exhaustion.”

  Or it might be cancer coming to claim her, Lauren thought darkly.

  “Do I need to come there?”

  “No, she’s fine, but we did want to make you aware.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Troubled, Lauren hung up the phone. The nurse sounded like everything was fine. So why was Lauren’s gut telling her something different?

  Terminal.

  That was the most devastating word in the English language. That was the word Dr. Rodriguez had just uttered. That one word had completely rewritten the course of Joyce’s life.

  “Joyce, are you okay?” Dr. Rodriguez asked.

  She nodded, unable to form any words to respond.

  “So, what does that mean?” Lauren asked.

  “Yeah, Doc. I know you had said it had spread, but we thought . . .”

  Joyce had forgotten that her son and daughter were sitting at her side. Julian had gotten in last night, which should’ve told her this was serious since he’d just left. She vaguely remembered him tiptoeing into her room in the wee hours of the morning. For a moment she thought she was dreaming again. But this morning his smiling face had greeted her. Lauren had been standing next to him. And when a somber Dr. Rodriguez walked up behind them, she knew this wasn’t going to be pretty. She didn’t, however, know it was going to be this ugly.

  “So, you see all of this black area,” the doctor said, pointing to the X-ray of her brain. “This is where the tumor has spread.”

  “So, did the surgery do any good?” Julian said crossly.

  “Surgeries,” Joyce felt compelled to correct. She glared at the doctor. “I mean, why have I been enduring all of this poking and prodding and radiation and pills if I’m just going to die anyway?”

  Joyce was trying to make a joke about dying, but she wasn’t ready to go. Seeing this X-ray put a real time stamp on her life.

  “I’ve always been honest with you. I’ve said from the beginning, nothing is guaranteed. We got eighty percent of the tumor, but the twenty percent that remained was too aggressive. I told you that it was spreading. We just didn’t expect it to go this fast. And it has now wrapped around the optical nerve. At this point there’s nothing we can do.”

  “You can’t take it all out?” Lauren asked. “All of the affected area?”

  “No. Such an operation would be fatal. There wouldn’t be enough left for her to be functional. There really is nothing we can do about it. I’d be surprised if you made it six months,” he said bluntly.

  “So, I’m dying for real?” Joyce finally managed to say.

  “I think your focus should be on being comfortable in these last days,” Dr. Rodriguez said.

  “How is a person supposed to be comfortable when they have a date with death?” she snapped.

  The doctor looked at her sympathetically, then patted her hand. “Let me know if I can do anything for you.”

  “Yeah, you can give me a new brain,” she snapped. Julian’s hand went to the small of her back. For once she wasn’t comforted by her son’s touch.

  “Why is this happening to me?” Joyce cried when the doctor left the room. “What did I ever do to deserve this?”

  She buried her head in her hands and sobbed. Julian immediately moved toward her. Lauren hesitated, but within moments she was hugging her, too.

  Just when Lauren thought the situation couldn’t get any more dire, her mother’s psychiatrist delivered the final blow.

  “I’m sorry; after reviewing all of the doctor’s notes, that’s my recommendation,” Dr. Lawson said.

  They’d returned from Dr. Rodriguez’s office and tried to get their mother settled in the facility. It was grueling because she kept crying that she didn’t want to die in that place.

  Her outbursts had brought out Dr. Lawson, and once they’d gotten their mother settled, Lauren and Julian had returned to Dr. Lawson’s office for this news.

  “What does that mean?” Lauren asked.

  The doctor sighed. “It means your mother is right. The best thing for her right now is to be with family.”

  Lauren instantly balked and turned to her brother. “So, do I need to get her plane ticket or will you?”

  Matthew, who had met her here once Lauren called so upset, put his hand on her leg.

  “Come on, Lauren,” Julian said. “We need to be realistic. This isn’t about us. This is about our mother and making her last days comfortable. North Carolina is her home. She has friends here.”

  “She doesn’t have any friends,” Lauren pointed out.

  “Plus, I’m about to be deployed to Iraq,” Julian continued.

  “Tell them you can’t go,” she replied.

  “It doesn’t work like that. And besides, there is no way Rebecca can handle Mom and the twins alone.”

  “Oh, no,” Dr. Lawson int
erjected. “I wouldn’t suggest putting her on a plane. She can’t handle that trip emotionally or physically.”

  Julian shrugged like that was the end of the discussion.

  Lauren glared at her brother as her eyes misted.

  “We got her,” Matthew said, stepping in.

  “No, we don’t,” Lauren hissed.

  “I know you have your issues, but she’s dying,” he gently said. “Not only do you need to make things right, but you can’t let her die in this place.”

  Lauren glared at her fiancé, but he cocked his head toward the door. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” He didn’t wait for her to answer as he took her hand and led her out into the hallway.

  She didn’t say a word as he turned to face her.

  “I need you to take a deep breath. I know this is stressful,” Matthew began.

  “That’s not the half of it,” she replied. “I don’t understand why this burden has to fall on me. It’s just not fair.”

  “Well, we know that life isn’t fair,” Matthew said. “Your brother is right. A military base is not the place for your mother. Plus, they have two small children. She doesn’t need the stress of rambunctious toddlers.”

  “And I don’t need the stress of a cantankerous old woman who can’t stand the sight of me,” she said.

  “Some of us would die to spend time with our mother.”

  This bit of pabulum had no effect on her. “Some of you don’t have my mother.”

  Lauren knew that Matthew had lost his mother in elementary school to a drunk driver. He’d been raised by an aunt, so obviously, his mommy issues were clouding his judgment.

  “Sweetheart, don’t be like that,” he pleaded with her. “I can’t imagine letting someone you love die alone.”

  Lauren motioned around the facility. “Look at all these people. She won’t be alone.”

  Matthew continued to show that endlessly patient face he had.

  “I just don’t understand why this burden has to fall on me,” Lauren continued as she began pacing back and forth in the hallway.

  “Because there is no one else. It doesn’t mean that your brother loves her any less. It just means that you’re in a better position to care for her.”