Time Trials

by Lee, Terry

  She felt way ahead of the game, until the biggie…the crown of all disappointments in her parents’ book of dos and don’ts happened. She got pregnant. Yeah, they’d been together for a while and yeah, she loved Brian, but they hadn’t talked about marriage, and certainly not about having a baby. However, Mother Nature, or their lack of judgment, landed her with a bun in the oven. The pregnancy took, but the marriage didn’t. It wasn’t Brian’s fault. Neither of them were prepared for either situation. She’d gone to her parents for the pregnancy, and then the divorce.

  The first time she’d ever seen her mother cry was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. She had been eight. The second was her pregnancy announcement. And the third crying jag moment was the divorce, which to Frannie meant her mother considered her faux pas as devastating as Texas almost being blown off the map by a hostile Fidel Castro with a nervous trigger finger.

  Why did it seem so difficult for her parents to give her the one thing she needed most? Support. That’s all she wanted. No financial help, nothing. Just their support. Someone on her side. Eventually, they had “come to terms” with each situation, respectively, but shame had been sprayed all over her like splatter paint. At least, that’s how she felt.

  Emily Francis Bennett was born in February, 1979. Much to her parents’ chagrin, mainly her mother’s, Brian was present for the delivery even though the divorce had been finalized. She could have made arrangements for adoption, but for some reason Frannie could explain to no one, she wanted to keep the baby. The split between her and Brian had been amicable, child support settled with Brian paying a minimal amount. This also didn’t bother her. Fortunately, the accounting firm where she worked had health insurance, and her income was sizably larger than Brian’s from bartending.

  Those first couple of years as a single mother had been bittersweet. Emmy soon became the light of her life. And unbeknownst to herself and anyone else on the planet, she discovered she was a darn good mother. The bitter part was the huge scarlet letters “P” and “D”…pregnant and divorced. She had scarred the family name.

  “Don’t you worry, Emmy-girl,” she’d said one night during bath time. The precious baby was still small enough to take bubble baths in the kitchen sink. “If this ever happens to you, I’ll make sure you don’t feel ashamed.” Frannie had wiped a stinging tear from her own face. She pointed a soapy finger at the pudgy little girl, who quickly grabbed her mother’s finger. “Now that doesn’t give you permission to go do something foolish.” She swiped at another tear, leaving a bubble streak down her cheek. “But I’ll be there for you, you hear me? We’ll work through it.”

  Life got a lot easier over the years. When she turned thirty, she married Derrick, the kindest man she could ever have hoped to love. Emily was five then, and before long, Derrick was definitely her daddy. No one could ever convince her otherwise. Brian had sort of fallen off the planet, which didn’t surprise Frannie. He and Emily had never really bonded, although she did appreciate the fact he still paid child support.

  What a blessing her marriage to Derrick had been. Even her parents had to like him. They couldn’t find anything to dislike. He was handsome, genuine, funny, had his own career well underway, and to boot, he loved Frannie and Emily passionately.

  Frannie had been able to go back to school, and several years later she sat for and passed the CPA exams. Working wasn’t a necessity as far as family income was concerned, but she did anyway. She liked the people at the company, and working gave her a sense of her own identity. She made it through her first tax season, which she hated (don’t all CPAs?), when an additional little blessing came their way. Only this time, they got two for the price of one. Not really…two babies are never as cheap as one, but twins they got. Two little boys, Tyler and Trace, which put an end to her CPA job, though she maintained her certification through the years. That had been six years ago.

  After the three way conversation with Janie and Dena, Frannie sat cross-legged on her kitchen floor, ran her fingers through her hair, and grabbed hold. Denise dead? Denise? She tried to remember the last time she’d seen her friend. She’d been so caught up in her own life she’d completely let go of her friends from long ago. Except for Janie and Dena, everyone else had dropped off her radar. All the while she’d been in her own little busy world, Denise had been going through hell. And she didn’t know.

  “I didn’t know.” She remembered Denise was married and had two kids, and couldn’t drop the feeling she had let her friend down. “God, how do you get through something like that?” Guilt made her nauseous and tears resurfaced, burning her eyes. “And Denise…knowing she was leaving them?” She pulled harder on handfuls of hair, trying to physically match the pain she felt inside.

  After a long moment, Frannie sat up and freed her hands to wipe over her face. She inhaled and blew out, trying to calm herself. They’d all be together again in a couple of weeks, but never again with Denise. God, had it really been ten years?

  She shook her head. “Bet Suzanne hates us.”

  Chapter 15

  Regina – 1992

  She stared at the face in the mirror. Using the pads of her fingertips, she touched the overly rounded implants she hoped looked like cheekbones. She raised her chin and tilted it at an angle to survey the recently tightened skin on her neck, and smiled. Her eyes didn’t crinkle or crease. In fact, they remained perfectly fixed. Not a good sign.

  Regina struck a practiced pose and flashed her on-camera smile. Today she felt way older than her thirty-eight years. She’d lied about her age to everyone at the studio, not an unusual tactic for her. No one knew she was less than two years away from the God-awful 4-0. Well, her plastic surgeon knew, but he didn’t count. Then there was her mother, the big mouth, plus the BAGs she’d be seeing in a couple of days.

  “What do you mean, dead? Denise? But, we’re…you know, in our thirties. We’re too young to die.” Regina received the news as if Allison had reported false information, like hundreds of wannabes who tried to get attention from the TV station where she worked.

  “Look, Ms. Media Personality, I don’t have time to convince you that most of the planet lives in the real world,” Allison said. “And yes, people in their thirties do, in fact, die. We’re meeting down at Janie’s bay house on North Padre. You need to be there. Got it?”

  “Well, that was a little abrupt,” she said to the mirror. Slowly, the truth of Allison’s words about Denise began to chip away at the self-imposed protective shield she wore like a helmet around her heart. Something inside her started to hurt. The perpetual dormant wound that never healed had been touched, picked at like a scab. She despised the feeling. Not wanting to tolerate it a moment longer, she switched gears to focus on something else…herself, of course.

  Bringing her face closer to the mirror, her nose almost touching, she examined every inch of her cosmetically constructed face. She smiled and used her fingers to gently pull at the corners of her eyes, trying to coax them into responding to the rest of her expression. Like hardened clay, the area around her eyes remained fixed.

  “Oh hell. Nothing I can do about it, right?” She shook her head and turned, unable to face the image in the mirror a moment longer. “I gotta get out of here.” The news about Denise was taking on a life of its own in that soft part of her, and it didn’t feel good. Donning her Audrey Hepburn oversized shades, she slipped behind the wheel of her car and headed to the station.

  After receiving her BA in communications from Sam Houston, she had taken on all the grunt work for years and earned mere pennies at the ABC affiliate in Houston. She had been moved up to reporter, and then landed the slot of the sidekick for the local morning talk show. Regina Westmoreland finally showed up on the credits, giving her name the credibility she’d always thought she deserved. It may be only a blip on the screen, but as far as she was concerned she had a-r-r-i-v-e-d. Her run of luck continued, and in 1989 she’d landed the host position of her own midday talk show.

  �
��I’m Regina Westmoreland and…how is your day?”

  She’d rehearsed her opening line so often, the face in the mirror could recite it. Unfortunately, her big break arrived and exited like a propelled revolving door. The show was cancelled after six weeks, and with her old position as sidekick to the mistress of the local morning talk show filled, she had been relegated back to her original position, reporter. And at her age, now competing with the youngsters right out of college, she felt her shelf-life expiration date closing in.

  Hence the overly performed cosmetic surgery, which truth be told, had only made matters worse. Think Joan Rivers.

  Oh please. Will you quit feeling so sorry for yourself? It’s disgusting. Besides, I’m still recovering from your last round of Botox. What’s in that stuff anyway?

  “Oh, just shut up. Anyway, you don’t wanna know.” Regina still held discussions with Snow, who had grown into as much of a smart-ass as her mother.

  Regina had a voice that rolled out as deep and smooth as hot caramel poured over an apple. She kept her hair a medium to light blonde, slightly touching her shoulders in a straight, very straight bob. Her lips, eyebrows, and eyeliner had been permanently tinted, tattooed actually, but she preferred the term tinted if she spoke of it at all. Her rationale being if her apartment caught fire in the middle of the night, at least she’d have her most important features tended to, because naturally once the camera crew arrived, she’d be the first to be interviewed.

  She was a classic narcissist on the outside and knew it, though she preferred the term “pleased with herself” to describe her persona. Her mother’s laundry list of traits for her daughter would be something more along the lines of vain, egotistical, arrogant, cocky, conceited, stuck-up, high and mighty…well, you get the picture. Truth be told, all of the above was total bullshit. If Snow, the one who truly knew the real Regina, put together a list, it would have read more like insecure, uncertain, anxious, shaky, on thin ice, and, of course, smart ass. Sure, she gave Regina a hard time, but, well, Regina just hid her insecurities so well even Snow sometimes forgot about her being a phony.

  All her life, Regina had taken pride in looking older than her actual age, which had always been such fun. That was, until Mother Nature lowered the hammer.

  “Oh, the witch can be cruel.” Regina tightened her hands on the steering wheel and ground her teeth, thinking about Mother Nature’s sense of humor, who she had once glorified for giving her big boobs even after her dramatic weight loss…and now this.

  Paybacks are hell, aren’t they?

  “You’re being more bitchy today than usual.” Regina adjusted the rearview mirror. “You do know that, don’t you?”

  Yeah.

  “Yeah? That’s it?”

  I know, right? Kinda lost my train of thought. Got distracted by your pager.

  The pager beeped again. Rummaging through her purse, she located the device and checked the number. Good lord, the other mother. “That can wait.” She tossed the pager to the side.

  Sitting at her desk in a small cubicle at the station, she viewed the photos she’d tacked on her wall. Every shot held a picture of her and someone she deemed impressive. Her own little walk of fame. Lost in her red carpet dream, she jumped when her phone rang.

  “Why didn’t you call me? I could have been lying in some street.” Patricia’s exhale sounded like a wind tunnel.

  “I’m slammed with work, Mother. Are you lying in a street?”

  “Fine way to talk to the woman who labored fifteen hours to give you life. Fif-teen hours!”

  Regina opened her mouth to say something, then thought better. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Okay, what’s up?”

  “I’m calling about your reunion. Heard it advertised on the radio. You going?” Patricia paused as if to make some dramatic point. “You know, it’s been ages since I’ve actually seen my little girl.”

  Oh God. She not only dreaded being thirty-eight and still referred to as her mother’s little girl, but years ending in 2 or 7. The Tyler High School Class of ‘72 had an obsession with reunions every five years. And being 1992, her twentieth reunion was not only on the horizon, but kicking down the damn door.

  “I haven’t decided.” Regina wrote I HATE REUNIONS in bold block letters across the lined yellow tablet on her desk. “They’re such a farce. Everyone checking out who’s gained weight, while smiling and pretending to be nice. No one wanting to eat anything. They’ve probably been starving themselves for weeks.” She knew this because that’s exactly what she did.

  “Then don’t go. You’re such a drama queen.” Eloquent words from her aged hippy mother.

  “You know I’m expected to make an appearance. People count on seeing me. It’s just one of those things I have to do.” Regina made a mental note to have her lips inflated just a tad more. Timing was everything when it came to drastic weight-loss measures, Botox, or anything else unnatural to help the battle against “the mother” in charge of all things natural.

  “Honey, you’ve got to get over yourself. Everyone else has.”

  “Okay, nice talking to you.” Click.

  Her phone immediately rang again. “What is it, Patricia?”

  “Patricia? Not that crap again.”

  “What do you want, Mother?”

  “You are going to meet with your friends this weekend, aren’t you?” There was no mistaking the road that question headed down. “And that poor girl dying at such a young age. What was her name? You know those are the only real friends you have. Don’t screw it up with them too.”

  “Her name was Denise, Mother. And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Ah geez…I’m so bored going over this for the millionth time.”

  Regina knew her mother telepathically had sent her a look that could fry an egg.

  “Whatever.”

  “Just stop looking in the mirror so much and try being nice for a change.”

  “I’m nice!”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Maybe I had a crappy role model.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. But I do know how to be nice.”

  “Okay, smarty pants. Let me hear something. Go ahead.”

  Regina tapped her finger on the receiver and closed one eye. Quick, quick. Something nice. “I…gave some food and water to a stray cat the other day outside my apartment. It looked like it hadn’t eaten in weeks.”

  “Wow.” A throaty dry laugh cracked through the connection. “Really putting yourself out there. So now you have a cat?”

  “No, it didn’t come back.”

  “Your stray cat ran away?”

  Placing a manicured hand across her forehead, Regina attempted to calm the seething thoughts racing through her brain. “Are we finished? Because I need to go.”

  “Yeah, yeah. My daughter, a celebrity in her own mind. Go forth, my dear.”

  Regina did not know why her mother had to be so crude. Not that they’d ever been close, but for Pete’s sake, who needed that shit? Almost every conversation they had ended up with her wanting to delete her mother from her Rolodex of friends. The list wasn’t long, but still. Maybe she should call some of the BAGs and see if they’d ride down to North Padre with her. That ought to show her mother. They could have their own little party on the drive down.

  Hey bonehead. Remember why you’re getting together? Denise? That sweet woman you couldn’t take the time to keep in touch—

  “O-kay. I get it.” Regina rolled her eyes. “No party. But I can still ask a couple of them to ride down with me. That would be an acceptable gesture, wouldn’t it?”

  I guess, since this is all about you.

  “Shut up!” Regina’s eyebrows attempted to come together. “You’re as irritating as Patricia.” Making the four hour drive down to North Padre with a couple of the BAGs would help. She hadn’t seen any of them in quite a while, and they could be best-buds by the time they hit Janie’s bay house. She could walk in with her �
�friends” and hopefully avoid the uncomfortable first couple of hours she always experienced with people she hadn’t seen in a while.

  A co-worker stuck his head around the corner of the cubicle opening and disrupted her carpool scheme for the weekend. “Roger wants to see you.”

  “In a minute, Les,” Regina said. “I’ve got to make a phone call.” She mouthed the word urgent. Checking her Rolodex, she dialed Allison’s number. Putting off the head of the news desk was risky business, but then again, Regina reigned in her country of one.

  “Uh, that would be great,” her ex-roommate had said. “But Suzanne and I already planned on driving down together.”

  “Oh, c’mon. I’ve got this big new car, plenty of room, and we can catch up on the way down. It’ll be fun.” Regina sat at her desk with her legs and both sets of fingers crossed.

  “Well….”

  “Say yes…please?” She could almost hear Allison grind her teeth while she, on the other hand, held her breath. Being roommates in college had not been a match made in heaven, but in some weird way Allison seemed to “get” her.

  A lengthy sigh propelled through the phone. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

  Regina let go of the air trapped in her lungs and uncrossed her extremities. “Done. See, I’ve got friends,” she said to the cast of local celebs posted on her wall. Even if she’d had to practically beg Allison to let her drive to North Padre. Making her way to the news desk, Regina put on one of her hopefully young, cheerful, and utterly ridiculous smiles.

  “Roger, got a wild and juicy story for me?” She bobbed what she hoped to be her eyebrows at the man in charge of delegating newsworthy events. “Someone important flying in for a charity event at The Warwick?

  The infamous Warwick Hotel down near the museum district, an Old World fortune-laden hotel, held a regal appeal to anyone who was a-n-y-o-n-e needing a top notch place to hold an event. Regina had been dying for an assignment to a Warwick venue that would land her smack-dab in the middle of the glitz and glitter of Houston’s elite and finest.