Blanche Passes Go

by Barbara Neely

  Blanche told him about her relationship with Mumsfield and his family. “And I’m getting paid, too.”

  Thelvin squinted at her in a way she didn’t like. His lips curled into something that was definitely not a smile. “Damn! You a regular Murder, She Wrote! I’m scared of you!”

  Blanche cringed. She hated that scared-of-you talk from men. She knew “I-don’t-think-I-can-control-you” when she heard it, no matter what words were used.

  Still no answer at Mumsfield’s number, so she called Archibald. She’d wanted to tell Mumsfield first, but it was more important for her to get hold of somebody with enough clout to stifle that girl right now.

  “Forgive me for not calling you,” Archibald said when she announced herself. “I had every intention of letting you know as soon as I heard, but…”

  “Excuse me, Archibald. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I called because you got to do something about that Karen Palmer. She…”

  “You mean Karen Palmer Carter don’t you? Or if you prefer, Mrs. Mumsfield Carter III.”

  “What? What? When?”

  “What’s going on?” Thelvin whispered. Blanche motioned him to be quiet.

  “…telegram, of all things, from Mumsfield. Yesterday. He said they’d decided not to wait. They’re honeymooning in Hawaii. They may go on to Tahiti. Mumsfield always wanted to travel. What was it that you wanted me to do something about?”

  Blanche felt bad for Mumsfield. She hoped his marriage worked out, but he wasn’t her major concern. If Karen married Mumsfield yesterday, she had no reason to try to have Blanche run down tonight. She’d already gotten what she wanted. But if not Karen, who? It could be David Palmer, but Blanche didn’t think so—or maybe she only thought that because he hadn’t been responsible for the phone and rock threats. But if not him…

  “It’s…it can wait till the morning. I’ll call you.” She hung up.

  She looked up at Thelvin, who was fidgeting by the bed, watching her closely.

  “Looks like you may be right.” She told him about Mumsfield and Karen eloping. “Maybe it was just your everyday American-as-apple-pie racist nut who tried to run me down.”

  “Thank God!” Thelvin sank back down on the bed. “I mean, at least it wasn’t somebody out for you personally, somebody likely to keep trying till they get it right. Those crazy crackers attack whichever black person they happen to see. That’s why you can’t be strolling around after dark like…”

  Blanche nodded and half listened and thought of telling Thelvin about David Palmer. She didn’t know what Thelvin would do with that information, but, judging from the you-need-to-stay-in-after-dark-and-let-me-protect-you bullshit he was giving her right now, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t like it.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  DO FRIENDLESS ORPHANS HAVE MORE FUN?

  Blanche was tempted to pretend to herself that she’d simply let Thelvin spend the night as opposed to having wanted him to spend the night. But she was never good at self-lies.

  She was relieved that she hadn’t had to tell him that being nearly run over did not put her in the mood for sex. It wasn’t until morning that she’d felt his hardening penis knocking against her thigh. They made slow, gentle love without getting up to brush their teeth first. Afterward, they lay with their hands and legs touching. Blanche listened to the early-morning quiet laced with birdsong and enjoyed the relaxation and sense of well-being that multiple orgasms produce. She lay that way for as long as her mind allowed, then turned on her side to face Thelvin.

  “I’m sure glad you were over here last night, but why were you?”

  Thelvin shifted his eyes toward her but didn’t move his head. She fought the urge to play with the scant and graying hair on his chest.

  “I was heading here.”

  Blanche sat up. “Why? I’d already told you I didn’t want to go out.”

  Thelvin looked away. “I know. But I thought if…”

  “If I saw you I’d fall down drooling?” Blanche reminded herself the man had probably saved her life last night, but it was too late to keep her voice free of irritation.

  Thelvin just looked at her in the way she’d seen other men do—as though they could stare her into either agreeing with them or forgetting what she was pissed off about. Blanche got out of bed, put on her robe, and went to the bathroom. She was a bit sore, but better than last night.

  Thelvin was sitting on the side of the bed when she came out. “Now you’re mad.” He sounded as though she couldn’t possibly have any reason for being so.

  “You want to use the bathroom before we have us a little talk?” she asked him.

  Wariness squinted Thelvin’s eyes. Once in the bathroom, he took the time to have a shower. Blanche concentrated on doing her exercises to keep from getting even more angry. She began talking the moment he opened the bathroom door.

  “Thelvin, when I say I don’t want to see you, I also don’t want you to show up at my house to try to change my mind. No means no. You got a problem with that?”

  “Don’t be mad, baby.” He tried to put his arms around her waist. Blanche held him away.

  “I’m not a baby or a sex nut, so a laying on of hands ain’t going to help the situation. I need for you to take this seriously. You have to understand that…” Something that looked to her like guilt flickered across Thelvin’s face, and Blanche lost her thought to another, more upsetting one. She jabbed her finger at him: “You were coming over last night to see if Leo was here, weren’t you?”

  Thelvin shifted his eyes away from her. “What makes you think that?”

  “Just tell me, Thelvin.”

  Silence.

  “Thelvin!”

  “I just wanted to know if you two were still…I thought maybe you didn’t want to tell me, so…”

  The air in the room changed. All the little wisps of leftover lust dissolved. The last tendrils of the tenderness and peace of afterglow dribbled out the window.

  “Sit down, Thelvin. Let me tell you about Irma, a woman I worked for when I lived in Harlem.” She sat on the bed next to him. “Irma was about my age, but had a different life. College, Peace Corps. She was a schoolteacher when I worked for her. She could only afford me once a month or so and needed me every day. She was married to a city bus driver, a widower with six small children. They’d been married about a year when I started cleaning for her. To make a long story short, it turns out that bus driver was a suspicious man. He listened in on her phone calls, followed her, checked up to make sure she was going where she said she was going. The last time I worked for her, she told me he’d took to coming to her class, just sitting in the back of the room watching her. Next thing I heard about her was some man on the radio talking about how her husband had blown her brains out.”

  Thelvin looked as though she’d slapped him. “I know you ain’t thinking I’d do no crazy shit like that!?”

  “Irma’s husband didn’t start out by shooting her. He started out being jealous, not trusting her, checking up on her. Then he lost it.”

  “Yeah, Blanche, but I would never…”

  “I know most jealous people don’t go crazy and kill somebody. That ain’t what I’m saying. But how’s a person supposed to know which kind of jealous person they’re dealing with? I mean, being suspicious of somebody all the time is still…”

  “Well, maybe he thought he had a reason, maybe she really was cheating on him, maybe…”

  Blanche stood up and glared down on him. “No matter what she was doing, he didn’t have a right to treat her like she was a old shirt he could rip up to keep somebody else from wearing it!”

  “No, Blanche, no. I’m not saying he was right. I’m just saying…” Thelvin frowned at her. “I useta go with a woman who was always on me about how I didn’t care what she did. Now I’m being accused of…” He shook his head again.

&
nbsp; “We ain’t all the same, Thelvin. Although I doubt there’s many women out here who want somebody checking up on them like they’re a child or a…and, anyway, it don’t matter what some other woman wants. I ain’t speaking for women, I’m talking about Blanche. My body and my time is my business. My business, not yours or anybody else’s. I got a right to do what I want with any willing adult I like, anywhere and anytime I feel like it.”

  “Blanche, don’t talk like a…I know you ain’t that kinda woman.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Thelvin. That’s exactly the kind of woman I am! And if you…”

  Thelvin held up his hands. “Wait a minute. If I hadn’t come by last night when that truck was trying to run you down…”

  Blanche walked across the room and looked out the window without seeing a thing before turning back to Thelvin. “I’m not saying I ain’t grateful for everything you did last night. But I’m prepared to take my chances in the world without being protected. And you were wrong to come over to spy on me, or whatever you was planning to do!”

  Thelvin looked at Blanche in a way that made her mouth go dry. “I don’t know, Blanche. Maybe I ain’t…I know you ain’t weak. I know you don’t want nobody trying to run your life. I respect that. I like that about you. But what about needing somebody sometime? Ain’t that important, too? I mean, if you can’t lean on me a little when somebody’s trying to kill you, then when?”

  They stared at each other, trying to maintain stoniness without cracking at the prospect of ending what they’d only just begun.

  “I gotta go,” Thelvin said when Blanche didn’t answer him. He slammed the door as he left.

  It wasn’t stubbornness or anger that had kept Blanche silent. So much had gone through her mind she couldn’t sort out what to say. Thelvin’s questions had nothing to do with her demand that he not check up on her. His questioning her might just have been his way of changing the subject. But what he’d asked had plenty to do with who she was and where they were headed. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe, despite her belief that she’d quarantined Palmer and what he’d done to her in such a way as to keep his poison from seeping into her relationships with men, there’d been some leakage. More suspicion. And caution. But that was okay. Probably normal, and hadn’t stopped her from seeing Thelvin, or other men before him. What concerned her was the recognition that if she’d never been raped Thelvin would still have had cause to ask those same questions. She flipped through the mental album of her relationship with Leo over the years, and with other men she’d known, and saw herself guarding her borders even when she wasn’t under attack. My own little third-world country, she thought. She knew she wasn’t alone in keeping a sharp lookout where men were concerned. She didn’t know a woman with sense who wasn’t riding shotgun on her own feelings, on guard against men who borrowed money and disappeared, who claimed to be madly in love with her while a woman across town was carrying his baby, who were looking for a mama, a tit, a free ride. It was a lot for one man to overcome, and a lot for a woman bent on not being anybody’s fool to overlook. But had this carefulness become something harder, sharper, and so second-nature to her that Ardell was right—she was afraid of letting a man get close to her? She thought back to her car ride with Leo and remembered asking herself if she was afraid to grow old with someone just as Leo was afraid of growing old alone. She hadn’t given herself an answer. She still didn’t have one.

  More than anything, she wished she could call Ardell, talk all of this mess out with her, but she and Ardell hadn’t talked since their argument. Blanche hadn’t even had a chance to tell her about David Palmer and Maybelle Jenkins. Blanche picked up the phone and put it down again. She wanted their next contact to be face to face—when Ardell came to pick up the couscous salad.

  What could be worse than being on the outs with her best friend and, yes, damnit, her man? That final admission sent her scurrying for Archibald’s phone number. Anything to distract her from where these thoughts might lead.

  When she got him, she told him about Karen and Seth, the leave-town phone message, and the rock through her window.

  “Good God! You should have told me immediately! This is an outrage, a…”

  First Thelvin, now Archibald. Blanche knew Archibald was just showing his concern, but she vowed to throw up on the shoes of the next man who told her she should have reported the threats to him. “Calm down, Archibald. At least she wasn’t responsible for last night.” She told him about the truck.

  “Blanche! Really! I…”

  “Wait, Archibald. Just listen. I thought Karen was behind the truck that tried to hit me, but since she’d already got Mumsfield…”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. However, the other threats are serious enough in themselves to…And she still might have wanted you dead to make sure you didn’t tell Mumsfield. The fact that they’re married doesn’t…”

  “Look, Archibald, none of this is going to make Mumsfield give her up, I’d bet on that,” Blanche told him. “And it’s just her word against mine.”

  “Yes, you’re probably right. But surely…Was there anything else?”

  “Nothing as serious as this.” She justified not telling Archibald about David and Maybelle on the basis that it had nothing to do with Karen, although she doubted Archibald would agree. Anyway, Archibald and everyone else would know all about it as soon as Bobby spoke out.

  “Tell me what else you found,” Archibald said.

  “Well, she’s got a reputation for sleeping with her girlfriends’ men.” She didn’t tell him what Karen’s friends called her, because she didn’t want to have to explain what it meant. “Seems she’s hardly ever had a man who wasn’t going with one of her girlfriends. They make jokes about it.” Blanche took a couple sips of water.

  “Regular little round-heels!”

  Blanche couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard that old easy-lay term. “She’s got some kind of copycat thing, I guess.”

  “Pitiful but not certifiable, unfortunately,” Archibald said.

  “And I know from having had the pleasure of her company at lunch that she don’t think much of black folks, although that probably makes her average around here, and most black folks probably feel the same about her. I sure do.” Blanche waited for Archibald’s chuckle to subside before she went on. “Karen’s so-called friends are probably happy she finally got a man of her own, although they say Mumsfield’s a fool with no brains and too much money. Some of the younger menfolk in your circle talk about her as very used goods.”

  “It’s not too late to get her to sign an agreement, armed with this information. I thank you, Blanche. I may not have been able to stop the marriage, but all is not lost. I’m indebted to you.”

  “No need to be. I’ll send you a bill later this week.” She’d considered charging him less since she’d used his money to dig up dirt on David Palmer, but, after having to deal with Karen, Blanche decided she deserved combat pay.

  “Fine, fine. Send it to my home.” He gave her his address.

  Blanche hung up the phone. “Well, that’s that.” She felt as though she’d finally dropped a heavy bag she’d been toting for weeks. It was all over—not just the Karen/Mumsfield business but, more important, the David Palmer piece. Bobby was soon to turn Palmer into dead meat—or at least arrested meat. She was looking forward to the day when Palmer’s name was plastered all over the newspapers. But what was taking Bobby so long? Cold feet? Or had Palmer convinced him to keep his mouth shut?

  “We gonna fight today?” Ardell asked when she walked in an hour later. She fiddled with the stem of her spectacles, the way she did when she was nervous.

  Blanche held out a hand to her friend. “Maybe not today, but soon enough.”

  Ardell took Blanche’s hand. “Yeah, ’cause we both got too much mouth,” Ardell said.

  Blanche nodded. “We worse than family.” />
  “And just as good,” Ardell said.

  Blanche got up to give her a hug.

  “Why you moving so stiff?”

  Blanche told her about the rock through her window, and finally the close call with the truck.

  “Damn, Blanche! How could you not tell me, how could you look me in the face knowing your life was in…I thought you got the shutters because of the phone call when all the time you…”

  “I didn’t really think my life was in danger, not until the truck; then…”

  “I don’t care! You should have told me about the rock when it happened. I’m your best friend! You can’t keep stuff from me like that!”

  “You’re right, Ardell, you’re right.” Blanche knew that she’d feel exactly the same if their positions were reversed, but she wasn’t a total fool and wanted Ardell to acknowledge that. “If I’d really thought I was in danger, I’d have told you about it right away.”

  “Thought! You didn’t think, that’s the problem. You just shut me out without—”

  “No! I didn’t want you to worry, Ardell. Okay? It was that simple. I know how you are, you’d want to—”

  “Bullshit! This isn’t the first time, Blanche! You remember when you thought you had a lump in your breast, the time you—”

  “I’m not a child, Ardell. I don’t have to report every—”

  “You’re getting as closemouthed as your mother!”

  Her mother! Blanche was dumbstruck. She’d thought Ardell was going too far with her holding out complaints. But if she was comparing Blanche with Miz Cora, and finding them near twins, this was serious, at least to Ardell.

  “I apologize, Ardell.” Even though she wasn’t sure Ardell was being totally fair, she recognized Ardell’s need for their friendship to be all that it had always been. It was a need Blanche shared.

  Ardell shook her head in a way that seemed to dispel some of the tension between them. “Sometimes you act like you ain’t got as much sense as a…Where’s Karen Palmer now?”