The Honey Well

by Gloria Mallette

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  James grumbled, “To the bathroom.”

  “You’re just going to leave me like this?” she said, glancing down at herself spread wide open.

  “You were screwing a pee-hard.” James strolled off into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

  “Damn.” While Esther eased her thighs closed, she didn’t cover her nakedness. That pee-hard was feeling mighty good to end so abruptly. Arnell was a lucky girl. James was, supposedly, in love with Arnell, so his making love to Arnell had to be hellified. This man certainly had it going on.

  James came back into the room. He had wrapped a towel around his waist, covering himself up.

  “Did everything come out all right?” Esther asked teasingly.

  James scratched his head. He sat on the edge of the bed, his back to Esther. He glanced at the clock on the night table—1:00 A.M. “Damn.” Yet, he made no move to dress and leave.

  “Why don’t you climb back in here with me.” Esther patted the bed next to her.

  James began to slowly and firmly rub his hands together.

  Esther rested her elbow on her pillow and her head in her hand. “So how are you feeling?”

  James exhaled heavily. “I guess how I feel is indescribable. How about you? How do you feel?”

  “Hungry,” Esther replied, but food wasn’t what she had in mind. However, she was beginning to wonder what James had on his mind. She noticed that he hadn’t turned to face her. “You’re a great lover, James. One of the best I’ve ever had.”

  Still rubbing his hands, James bowed his head. “We should not’ve done this.”

  “Perhaps not, but we did. If you’re worried about Arnell, she doesn’t have to know.”

  At that, James did turn to Esther. But seeing her naked, he immediately turned away. “And how do you propose we keep this from her? We’re not the only ones that know. Melvina knows and no telling who she tells.”

  “If it’s Melvina you’re worried about, don’t. Melvina will tell no one.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “I’m telling you, James, we have nothing to worry about. Arnell will never know. She rarely comes here anymore. You could come here—”

  “No!” James stood. He started to walk toward the bathroom but turned back. “You can’t mean—” He again turned away from Esther. His mouth moved but the words he spoke were without sound.

  “James, you’re not a choirboy. You—”

  “No, I am not a goddamn choirboy.” This time he faced Esther. He gripped the foot railing of the brass bed. “But I am engaged to your daughter! Look, I know what happened was just as much my fault as yours, we were both weak. But that’s no excuse. We were both irresponsible.”

  “Perhaps, but we’re both adults.” Esther wasn’t about to let James’s guilt spoil her euphoria. “And adults are prone to being weak. It’s how we handle this situation that attests to our maturity.”

  James frowned. “I don’t feel very mature right now. In fact, I feel like the kid who peed on himself in front of his classmates. I feel terribly ashamed.”

  “It’s too bad you feel that way,” Esther said, sitting up. “I don’t.” She wasn’t liking the way James was talking one bit. She pulled the sheet across her breasts and hips. “Personally, I don’t think you have anything to be ashamed of. And by the way, I hope making love to me wasn’t that disgusting.”

  “Goddamn it, Esther, you’re not getting it! I spent half the night screwing my fiancée’s mother, my future mother-in-law. Do you understand how despicably wrong that is?”

  “You tell me, James,” Esther said, feeling quite irked, “how wrong is it?”

  “I see you’re not taking this serious, but I am.” James rubbed his temple hard. “You should consider how devastated Arnell will be when she . . .”

  “If she—”

  “. . . finds out. Do you realize that what we did smacks of Oedipal betrayal?”

  Esther drew back. “I don’t know how the hell that is, I am not your mother.” James was really pissing her off. “And you certainly didn’t kill my husband to sleep with me, someone else did that.”

  “You . . . What?” James was stumped.

  “Never mind,” Esther said, flipping her hand at James. “Look, if you’re so disgusted with what we did, why don’t you just leave.”

  “No, Esther, we need to talk about this. You may not be my biological mother, but you’d be close enough, being my mother-in-law. And no, I may not have killed my father or your husband to sleep with you, but I feel like I’ve stuck a knife in Arnell’s heart.”

  All that youthful energy and intoxicating zeal that Esther had been feeling since her and James’s first kiss, which pumped up her ego and put a song in her heart, suddenly went poof! Esther felt her chest deflate.

  “Esther, this should have never happened.” James felt like he wanted to cry. “We were godawful wrong.”

  “Leave God out of this.” In that moment, Esther became aware of her nakedness under the sheet. Holding onto the sheet to keep from exposing herself, she retrieved her bathrobe from the foot of the bed and modestly pulled it on, tying it tight around her body. She felt like a fool.

  “Esther, we were never supposed to let such a thing cross our minds, much less get so weak that we couldn’t stop what we ended up doing.”

  “Yeah, well, shit happens—oh, but you know that, don’t you, James?”

  “Not like this!” James threw out his hands. “You’re Arnell’s mother, for God sake! You will be the grandmother of our children.”

  “Grandmother? I don’t think so. But I do see that you’re not mature enough to know that all kinds of shit happens in this world.” Esther was trying hard to remain calm, though James was making her angrier. She felt rotten—not for what she had done, but because of how James was feeling about her and how he was making her feel about herself—old. “James, what we did was what any two normal, sexual beings would do when they are attracted to each other. And what we did was good, damn good. I have no regrets. In fact, if you laid your hard ass down on this bed, right now, I’d make love to you all over again—with no regrets.”

  James clutched his head and walked away from the bed. He began to pace. “Oh, God. I can’t believe this. Damn it!” He punched himself in the chest. “What the hell did I do?”

  Esther felt like he had punched her, too. That good feeling she’d had all night and all morning vanished completely. “Excuse the hell out of me, but am I to understand that you’re totally disgusted with yourself for making love to me?”

  Rushing back at the bed, James gripped the brass foot railing. “Esther, wake the fuck up! We did not make love. We fucked, we humped, we screwed, we banged! I make love to Arnell. Why can’t you understand that I love Arnell?” He shook the bed. “Don’t you get it? I am going to marry Arnell, your daughter! So how the hell am I supposed to feel about what we did?”

  “James, I think you’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. We—”

  “Nothing!” James shook the bed again. “Esther, I love Arnell! If she even had a clue that we did what we did, she’d never, in a million years, marry me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Arnell will still marry you—if you keep your mouth shut.”

  “Is that right? All I have to do is keep my mouth shut?”

  “It’s as simple as that,” Esther said, totally disgusted with James. He wasn’t acting all scared and worried last night when he thrust himself inside her too many times to count, or when he looked upon her face and knew who it was that he was making love to, who it was that he was lapping and devouring with his tongue.

  James shook his head. “Well, I can’t do that. This is a heavy thing to have to live with.”

  Scratching her nose, Esther smirked. “With such high morals, it must be tough to have a penis that has a mind of its own.”

  “Damn, Esther! Doesn’t it bother you that we’ve betrayed Arne
ll whether she ever finds out about us or not? Don’t you care that I may have lost the woman I love?”

  “Poor you.” Esther was disgusted. “James, why don’t you go home? I hate having weak men who whine after the fact in my presence.”

  “If that’s how you see me, fine. I don’t have a problem with that, but I think you’d better put on a pair of bifocals and see clearly that we have a serious problem here.”

  Sitting at her makeup table, Esther began powdering her nose. It still irked her that James had called her old. “I told you, we have no problem if you keep your mouth shut.”

  “But Arnell and I have a trusting relationship. She would have never done anything like this to me. She—”

  Esther started laughing.

  “I don’t see what the hell is so funny. Maybe you’ve never had the kind of respect and trust that Arnell and I share.”

  “You’re wrong there—I’ve had that kind of respect and trust from men who are now dead. You’re the one that’s living in a fantasy world.”

  “Arnell and—”

  “Save it!” Esther spun around to face James. “Boy, I could tell you things about Arnell that would have you singing a different song about trust and losing the woman you love. In fact, I should tell you the truth about Arnell so that I can relieve you of that ‘terrible’ shame you’re feeling.”

  James was at rapt attention. “What truth? What are you talking about?”

  Buzzzz! The front doorbell rang, drawing Esther’s attention. On a Sunday night, she wasn’t expecting anyone and by now, all the girls were probably still out visiting friends and family. Sunday and Monday were their days off and Melvina might have gone to her apartment.

  “Esther, what truth about Arnell?”

  Buzzz!

  “I have to get that.” Esther hurried out of the bedroom and quickly opened the door to her suite.

  “I’ll get it!” Melvina said, hurrying past Esther to the front door.

  Esther closed her door and saw right away that James had followed her out of the bedroom. His face was strained, his eyes were angry.

  “What do you know about Arnell?”

  There was a knock at the suite door. Esther opened the door to Melvina.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Queen Esther,” Melvina said, craning her neck around Esther to get a look at James, “but there is a man here to see you.”

  “Who?”

  “He say he a old friend.”

  “I don’t have any old friends,” Esther said, pulling her robe tighter. “Tell him to write a note.” She started to close the door.

  “So you’re disowning me, are you?” The man stood in the dining room doorway.

  Esther looked around Melvina into the face of the stranger and into the face of her past. Although he was a few years younger than she, his curly hair was already heavily streaked with gray. His naturally tanned skin was tanned even deeper, and it was obvious that he worked out—his muscular arms were nicely chiseled in his short-sleeve polo shirt. He came closer. He smiled, showing all his white teeth and the one gold tooth that Esther had no trouble remembering.

  “My God,” she said, her eyes widening. Her heart thumped. The face was older, but so much else was the same. “Kesley?”

  “For a minute there, Esther, I thought you might’ve forgotten about me. How’s my sweetheart?” Kesley embraced Esther.

  Esther’s jaw dropped. She also remembered that Arnell had forced her to mention Kesley Hayden’s name just weeks ago. She had put his name out there and now the man that was so long ago her lover, the man that so long ago killed Arnell’s father, was here in the flesh.

  Thirty-Three

  “I see you still like your men young,” Kesley said, looking at James who had backed up to the bedroom door. “Nothing much has changed in thirty years, huh Esther?”

  Esther couldn’t answer Kesley’s snide question—she was too awestruck—she thought him long dead, rotting in his grave.

  James, feeling quite exposed, crossed his hands atop his groin, although the towel covered his nakedness. “I’m not her man,” he protested angrily. “I’m . . . I’m a friend of the family.”

  Esther cut her eyes at James. That was a stupid thing to say.

  “Yeah?” Kesley raised his brow. “That’s cool. I hope you don’t have to explain to anyone in the family why you’re dressed only in a towel in Esther’s room and she only in a flimsy robe.”

  “Look, man—”

  “Let it go,” Esther said, finding her voice. “You don’t owe him or anyone any explanation.”

  “I don’t like what he’s implying,” James said, filled with guilt.

  “Ignore him.” Esther glared at Kesley but she saw past him to Melvina, whose eyes twinkled with excitement.

  “Melvina, don’t you have something to do?”

  “Oh! Sure do.” Melvina scurried back to the kitchen.

  Esther suspected that Melvina would be lurking close enough to eavesdrop. “Kesley, have some class. Come inside if you must speak to me at all.”

  Once inside, Kesley took his time looking around. “Esther, you’re indeed the queen. I figured your place would look like this. Nice. Real nice.”

  “What are you doing here, Kesley?”

  Smirking, Kesley looked at James. “You’d think after thirty years, she’d ask me how I was doing? After all, I did go to prison for her.”

  “Goddamn it, Kesley, don’t be saying no shit like that! You did what you did on your own. I had nothing to do with it.”

  Kesley sat in Esther’s favorite chair and looked at James. “See, women have selective memory. Esther seems to have forgotten that she wanted to get rid of her husband—”

  “That’s a damn lie! Don’t you dare lie on me, Kesley Hayden! You beat Bryant to death. You—”

  “I don’t need to hear any of this shit!” James abruptly went back into the bedroom and slammed the door.

  Esther needed a cigarette bad. Her day was going from worse to downright disastrous.

  Looking at the hatred in Esther’s eyes, Kesley began chuckling. Esther started looking around for her cigarettes. They were on the end table. She quickly got one and lit it. She took a long deep drag, filling her lungs completely before she exhaled.

  “Those things will kill you,” Kesley said.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Esther sank down onto the love seat, where she had initiated and succeeded in her seduction of James. She could almost feel the heat of the passion they’d emitted on the cushion. She crossed her legs to still the little throb that yearned for more.

  “Is that any way to talk to an old friend?”

  “Kesley, what are you doing here? I heard that after you got out of prison, you slipped out of the country and went back to Trinidad.”

  “I did—for about two weeks. It wasn’t worth the hassle. I was trying to avoid dealing with the parole board for six more years of my life, but I realized leaving the States would land me in worse trouble if they ever caught up with me. So I snuck back into the country. America is my home anyway. I’ve been living in Jacksonville for the past ten years. I’m done with the parole board. I don’t have to deal with the system anymore.”

  That surprised Esther. If Kesley was living in the States, she would have thought he would have come looking for her a long time ago. She again dragged deep and long on her cigarette.

  Kesley smiled. “I know what you’re thinking. Why now?”

  With the hand holding her cigarette, Esther motioned for Kesley to go ahead and answer his own question.

  “The time’s right. I’m just now getting over being mad at you.”

  “Don’t do me any favors, Kesley. Stay mad at me, I like you best that way.”

  Kesley looked pointedly at Esther. “If anyone should be mad, it’s me. I was locked up for nineteen years; I’m lucky I got out when I did. Woman, I took a second-degree manslaughter conviction for you.”

  Esther angrily stubbed out her cigarette. “No! You did ninetee
n years for beating Bryant to death and . . .”

  “Over you.”

  “. . . for all that money and drugs that was found on you. You were a criminal anyway, you were a numbers banker.”

  “Which you reaped the benefits of!” Kesley blasted back.

  “No, no! You—”

  The bedroom door suddenly opened. James was fully dressed. He had heard their conversation and he chided himself for stupidly getting involved with Esther. He wondered if Arnell knew any of this stuff about her mother’s past—she had never mentioned this Kesley person before.

  Esther and Kesley both stared at James. It was as if they were both asking, So what are you standing there for?

  “We have to talk—later,” James said to Esther. He quickly left the suite.

  “Damn, Esther, I’m eight years younger than you. This boy got to be what? Thirty years younger?”

  “Twenty-seven,” she said, insulted. “But that’s none of your business. What are you doing here?”

  Kesley sat back. “Visiting. Something you didn’t do when I was locked up.”

  Esther lit another cigarette. She had visited Kesley the first three months he was up in Sing Sing, but stopped when she could no longer afford the trip up to Ossining and pay to have someone baby-sit Arnell, too. Things got real bad for her with Bryant dead and Kesley in prison. Plus, all her friends were telling her that it didn’t look good for her to be visiting the man who had beat her husband to death. For a few months more she had written Kesley but even that stopped when he kept demanding she visit him. It had finally sank in that she was consorting with the killer of Arnell’s father.