A Pinch of Ooh La La

by Renee Swindle

  Abbey,

  I’m very sorry. I will admit that I crossed a line. But we only kissed. You also have to understand that my actions were a result of cracking under the pressure of our divorce. Can we please talk about this?

  Samuel

  I called Bendrix and read him the note. He was at the hospital and on his way to the OR but laughed and said, “Read it again. That’s brilliant. He’s nuts.” He then said he had time to wait while I burned it. I held the phone close to the flame so that he could hear the crackling of the paper. “Good girl,” he said.

  • • •

  The wives showed up two days later. I threatened to call the cops if they didn’t get off my porch. I did not want to discuss what had happened. I did not want to talk to Carmen, let alone forgive her.

  I sat on my couch and listened.

  “Open this goddamn door right now, Abbey.” Bailey, of course. “You need to talk to your damn sister. She needs you, and you need to forgive her! Hello? Abbey Lincoln Ross! I know you’re in there! Open the goddamn door!”

  Rita next: “Sweetheart, we have flowers for you and a bottle of pinot. It’s from Doug’s collection and very rare. Open up and we’ll have a drink.”

  A few seconds later, I heard Bailey again: “I told you a bottle of wine wouldn’t work.”

  “Well, it’s certainly better than cursing and scaring the entire neighborhood.”

  Joan: “Abbey, why don’t you open up? You won’t have to say a word; just let us in. We’re all here to see that you are all right.”

  Not until I heard Aiko’s voice did my defenses begin to crack. Aiko was with them? “Abbey? I have your brothers with me. You’re going to leave us out here? They’re hungry. Bud, tell your sister how hungry you are.”

  After a moment I heard Bud say, “I’m hungry.”

  I straightened up from the couch and swung open the door. “Really, Aiko? Using two innocent children?”

  “A woman has to do what a woman has to do,” she said.

  I stared at them all, huddled on my porch. “You guys look like a witches’ coven.”

  Joan raised her fingers in the air and pulled back her lips. “‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through the fog and filthy air.’”

  Bailey gave her a look.

  “It’s Shakespeare,” she said. When Bailey continued to stare, she added, “He was once known as a great playwright?”

  Bailey rolled her eyes.

  I picked up Ornette and brought him close to my hip. “Come on in.”

  I made the boys peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and opened the bottle of wine Rita had brought. We sat in the living room.

  Bailey said, “I knew that man couldn’t be trusted. There was something in his eyes.”

  Rita huffed. “You thought he was handsome.”

  “So did you,” Bailey snapped.

  I brought my feet up on the couch and sipped my wine. “I do not want to talk about him. If you mention him again, I’m going to ask every one of you to leave.”

  Rita said, “Carmen swears nothing happened beyond some kissing, and I believe her.”

  Joan said, “She made a good point. She wanted to be found out; otherwise, she wouldn’t have told Jake where she was going.”

  Bailey looked at me and said, “Y’all two fighting right now is just not good for the family.”

  “Family,” I mocked. “Why are you getting on me about family? Look what she did.”

  “She’s young,” said Rita. “Her mother is a mess; let’s not forget that.”

  “True,” said Bailey. “That asshole is the culprit here, though. Carmen is only, what? Twenty-two? He manipulated her.”

  Joan stared at me for a long moment. “She’s your sister,” she said. “Like it or not, family is family.”

  I looked at them all: Fuck family.

  Aiko pulled Ornette into her lap. He was still eating his sandwich. “Joan’s right, Abbey. Family is family.” When she kissed the top of Ornette’s head, I felt the weight of her words. “I know that what they did was painful and wrong, but life is too short to hold a grudge. We are a family and we can’t have you two not speaking to each other. Your father would not put up with this. And we’re not going to allow it either.” She gazed around the living room at the wives. When Ornette held up his sandwich, she took a bite and smiled. “Lincoln showed me what it was like to have a real family. We’re not perfect by any means, but if anything ever happened to Carmen, and you guys still weren’t speaking? You’d hate yourself.” She gazed over at Bud. We all watched him briefly as he took a bite of his sandwich and played with a toy car. “Your father told me every single night that he loved me and I was beautiful. No matter if he was on the road or not.”

  “He did?” said Bailey. “He never told me that—not every night.”

  “Me either,” said Rita, dismissively.

  Joan stared at the ceiling. “He made us all feel special, didn’t he? It takes an extraordinary man to make a family like ours.” She let her voice drop and looked over at me again. When I met her gaze she arched her brow: Do not blow it, Abbey. Do not ruin your father’s legacy.

  Aiko said, “You never know when the last time you’ll see someone will be. You should at least talk to her.”

  I wanted to stay angry, I did, but with the boys in the room—knowing that they wouldn’t know Dad like we had, knowing that my dad would hate to know Carmen and I weren’t speaking . . . I threw up my hands. “Okay, okay, I give up! I’ll talk to her! You guys are too much, you know. You’re gonna make me start crying.”

  Bailey clapped her hands and shot up from the couch. “Great! I’ll go get her.”

  I sat up. “What?”

  Rita tossed her wine back. “She’s in the car.”

  I watched dumbfounded as Bailey went to the front door. “Car! Get your ass in here. She’s finally ready to talk.”

  Carmen walked inside and began crying right away. Seeing her cry like that brought back memories of my littler sister at five, six, seven years old, running to me in tears and seeking comfort. I instinctively opened my arms.

  Aiko was right. They were all right.

  • • •

  I forgave Carmen, but as the days progressed I fell into a funky malaise where I couldn’t seem to gain any sense of momentum or purpose. After all, I was officially a two-time loser. As Jake put it, I’d been cuckolded, and not once, but twice. What was wrong with me? And to top it off, I had no baby! My eggs were just as old and shriveled and untouched as they were the day before I met He Who Shall Not Be Mentioned. I didn’t understand what was going on with my life. And I missed Dad. I missed him so much.

  I was telling all of this—okay, I was whining—to Bendrix and Anthony over breakfast. This would be our third meal together within two weeks. Bendrix was trying to cheer me up by keeping me company. But I felt much like I had after Avery and I had split: I didn’t want to do much more than sleep and think of ways to sell the bakery so I could disappear.

  “What’s wrong with me? Why do I have such horrible luck with men?” I asked.

  Bendrix sighed loudly. He was tired of my melodrama. “I don’t know, but you certainly have a knack for self-pity.” He started clearing the breakfast plates from the table.

  Anthony stayed seated. Trained counselor extraordinaire, he was used to people’s whining. “Life is trying to tell you something, Abbey, and now is the time to listen.”

  “But what is life trying to tell me? Listen to what?”

  Bendrix walked in and picked up the pitcher of orange juice. “Listen to yourself whine and complain like you’re the only person in the world with a problem. If you want to see a problem, come to the hospital with me.”

  Anthony quipped, “Your job at the hospital has nothing to do with the hurt Abbey is experiencing.”

  “
Yeah!” I said over my shoulder.

  Bendrix rolled his eyes and left.

  “You’ve been blaming men for your problems, but you chose both Samuel and Avery. That’s the point I’m trying to get you to see.”

  His comment gave me pause. I was saved from answering when Bendrix returned with his laptop. “Look at this.” He’d pulled up an old photo of Benz and Ross standing in front of one of our graffiti pieces. “Big deal, your soon-to-be ex-husband was an ass. It happens. That girl there, however, would move on.”

  I took in the picture and our artwork. We’d been hired to paint the sidewall of a surfboard shop and had made a school of fish with a surfer holding a paintbrush and painting the wall while riding on top of a whale. We were posed in front of the camera in our “hip” clothes—a flannel shirt and acid-washed jeans for me and overalls for Bendrix. Anthony laughed. “Baby, how did you get your hair to flop over your eye like that?!”

  “We were the height of cool,” I said defensively.

  “It didn’t get any cooler than Benz and Ross,” Bendrix added.

  We bumped our fists together. “Word.”

  It was the first time I’d smiled in days.

  • • •

  With a start, I sat up in bed later that night. Someone was ringing the doorbell. I checked the time. Two a.m. I reached for my phone, ready to call the police, but then I heard someone calling my name from under my bedroom window.

  “Bendrix?”

  “Yes, open the door.”

  “It’s two in the morning.”

  “I know that. Open the door and I’ll explain.”

  He walked inside carrying two paper bags.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve come up with a plan.”

  “Fabulous.”

  I sat on my couch and rested my head against my hand.

  “Don’t you want to know more?”

  “Not really. I’d rather sleep.”

  “Well, that’s not going to happen. We have to leave soon.”

  “Great.”

  He put the two bags on the coffee table. Finally I noticed the old pair of jeans and worn T-shirt he had on. He wasn’t his usual dapper self at all; in fact, he looked ready for the streets.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  He started taking things from the bag one at a time—cans of spray paint, surgical masks, gloves—all the paraphernalia we used back in the day.

  After emptying the bag, he clapped his hands. “Let’s make some graffiti. Benz and Ross, what do you say?”

  “I say—have you lost your mind?”

  He walked over and held me by the shoulders. “Abbey, listen to me. You might never have a kid.”

  “Wow, thanks, I like where this is headed.”

  “I’m trying to say, I’m glad you tried with Samuel, and I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but there’s no sense in going backward. So what if it ended badly? Things end badly. So what if you never have a kid? That might not happen. But you can’t give up again.”

  “But my life sucks!”

  “I am so tired of listening to you whine,” he moaned. “Listen, I put all this together to help you remember who the hell you are. You’re not a woman who’s afraid of life. This is your wake-up call.” He donned a 1980s rapper’s pose. “Bee-atch.”

  “Are you high?”

  He threw up his hands. “I’m here to help, Abbey. When I tried to convince you to start dating again, I was trying to push you out of your shell. I’m not going to watch you go back because of one ass.”

  “Two. There’ve been two.”

  “Two. Three. Whatever. Like I said earlier today, that girl in the picture wouldn’t have given a shit. She was ready to live. Man or no man.”

  I sulked. “You’ve been hanging around Anthony too long.”

  “It’s the magic hour. I think it’ll be fun. Get up.”

  The magic hour: two or three a.m. Find an abandoned building, make sure no one is around, and by the next morning your artwork is there for any passerby and all other graffiti artists to see.

  “Dr. Henderson, I’m shocked.”

  “Don’t be. I’ve already found our location. I’ve taken care of everything we need. What do you say?”

  “What are we going to make? You know we can’t wing it.”

  “I’ve thought of that, too. Here.” He reached into one of the bags and took out a drawing of my dad.

  “It’s perfect.” I hugged him with everything I had. After a moment I said, “I miss him. I miss him so much.”

  “I know,” he said, holding me tighter. “I know.”

  • • •

  Bendrix and I were obsessed with three bands back in high school: the Smiths, the Cure, and De La Soul, and we listened to them whenever we made our graffiti art. Thanks to Bendrix, that night was no different. He’d put together a playlist of several of our favorite tracks, and we drove to our destination while listening to songs like “This Night Has Opened My Eyes” and “Hand in Glove” by the Smiths, and “Fascination Street” and “A Forest” by the Cure, and De La Soul’s “Me, Myself and I” and “Stakes Is High.” We sang along and tried to remember words and laughed and reminisced.

  The building he’d chosen was near Mandela Parkway, an old factory or abandoned loft, hard to say in the pitch dark. After walking through an empty parking lot, we tromped through trash and weeds to reach our destination. There was a drip tag made by an amateur who didn’t know how to properly hold the can, but other than that, the entire wall was ours. We organized the cans, then put on our masks and shared a lucky fist bump. Bendrix started to outline Dad’s face and body, while I worked on the color fill. When the basic image was completed, we began making the design come more to life by adding second and third shades of color, sharpening lines and shading in edges to give a 3-D effect. We moved like synchronized dancers, sweeping out our arms one way and then the other, standing on tiptoe then bending low to the ground. We worked fast and hard, as if no time between high school and the present moment had passed at all.

  When we were finished, we removed our masks and inhaled the fresh, cool air. We remained silent as we took in our work. Dad stood next to his piano in his shades and hat. His legs were crossed near the ankle while he held up the palm of his hand, where music notes shot up and out in every direction. I was teary-eyed when I raised my fist toward Bendrix and we bumped. “Thanks, Benny.”

  • • •

  We were picking up the last of the spray cans and tossing our surgical masks into the bag Bendrix had brought along when we heard what taggers call the woop-woop, the sound of a police car siren—two exact woops followed by flashing lights. I shouted, “Run!” but it was too late; the cop had already blared a spotlight on us, and there I stood still holding a can of spray paint. The cop used his microphone, and a voice blared as if from on high. “Okay, you two, drop down to your knees. Hands behind your heads.”

  I looked over at Bendrix as we fell to the ground. “Told you my life sucks.”

  22

  I’m Beginning to See the Light

  Bendrix and I met with Judge Lewis in her private chambers. She had a long, narrow head and small eyes that never seemed to blink. She stared at us as though we were the last straw on her road to retirement. Thanks to Bendrix and me, she had officially seen it all.

  She granted time to speak and I took the opportunity to go on about Avery and tell her all about Samuel. She listened as I told her about my father’s passing and how depressed I’d been.

  When I finished, she sighed and looked at Bendrix. “And what’s your excuse?”

  “I was trying to make her happy.”

  “By convincing her to break the law?”

  He shrugged. “We consider graffiti a form of art.” When she glowered, he added a quick “Your Honor.”

/>   She went back to staring. Even after everything we’d told her, it was easy to see that she still had no idea why we were in her chambers or why we had chosen to act like common juvenile delinquents. “In all my natural-born days . . . ,” she muttered. She then folded her hands on her desk and handed down the verdict. Dr. Henderson was given sixteen hours of community service at the clinic where he already volunteered. She turned to me next and made it clear she had absolutely no patience for an Oakland business owner who’d defile public property. She then threw the book at me: four weekends, Saturday and Sunday, eight a.m. until noon with SWAP.

  “What’s SWAP?” I asked, already terrified at the sound of it.

  “Guess you’ll have to find out, won’t you?”

  I looked over at Bendrix, who couldn’t hide his amusement.

  “Do you know what SWAP is?” I asked him.

  “I don’t, but it sounds funny, doesn’t it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I snapped.

  He lowered his gaze.

  I returned my attention to Judge Lewis. “Would you please tell me what it is?”

  “Trash picking, Ms. Ross. You will be helping to beautify the streets of Oakland.”

  Bendrix coughed.

  “What? Trash picking?” I cried. “Why do I have to pick trash when he gets to do what he’s been doing for years? Bendrix already volunteers at that clinic! How is this fair?”

  “Dr. Henderson saves lives. We need him out on the front lines. You, on the other hand, bake cookies. People are already too fat as it is.”

  “No! Please, Judge. I demand a retrial!”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Another word out of you, Ms. Ross, and I’ll make it ten weekends.”

  When I looked over at Bendrix, he snickered.

  • • •

  One week later I found myself riding in a nondescript white van along with fifteen other convicts. We the convicted were angry with the Man and we wanted justice, but that morning we weren’t getting it; we were going to clean the streets of Oakland, like it or not. The two men in charge, Dwayne Hicks and Alvin White, chatted and made jokes up front. Dwayne was a short wad of muscle topped by a mass of Jheri curls. Al, his assistant, was Dwayne’s tall, skinny opposite.