by Mary Monroe
“Same old shit.” I sniffed and blinked forcefully a couple of times. “I’m trying so hard, Lola.”
“I know you are. You don’t have to convince me of anything. I just hope things work out for you. And I hope Reed comes to his senses and forgets about committing suicide.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think he’s ever going to forget about that. Not as long as he thinks it’ll keep me with him.” I blinked some more and gave Lola a hopeless look. “A couple of days ago he left his computer on. Would you believe he’s been Googling insurance companies that don’t have a suicide clause?”
“Huh?”
“Some companies won’t pay out if the policyholder commits suicide.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“But there are some who will pay out a year or two after the suicide. Those were the ones he’d highlighted.”
“At least you know he’s thinking about you and Junior.”
“That man would never leave me and his son high and dry. Even without a huge insurance payout, Junior and I will still be in good shape if something happens to Reed. He told me how hard his parents tried to get him to make me sign a prenuptial agreement, but he didn’t. The condo, an apartment building he owns in Berkeley, all the money he’s got in four bank accounts, and everything else he has will be mine. But I have to be honest—I don’t think I’d enjoy any of that if he does, you know . . .”
“Kill himself? I know I wouldn’t enjoy any money I got because somebody died by suicide. Joan, I feel so sorry for you.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” I snarled, and gave Lola a dismissive wave. I was even able to follow that statement with a dry laugh.
“Do you still try to talk to his parents about his threats?”
“Pffft! Not anymore. They are in such denial, they refuse to believe he’s serious. And when I told Reed I wanted to contact intervention professionals so they could get involved, he wasn’t too happy about that. He assured me that if I did involve strangers, that would really send him off the deep end, Lola.” I sucked in some air and looked her in the eyes. “Enough of that dreary talk. Let’s talk about Calvin some more! You’ve been lusting after him long enough, so I’m glad it looks like you might get him into bed after all.”
“I’m not ‘lusting’!” Lola boomed. “I just want to find out if he’s as good as he looks.”
“That’s the same thing, you nasty HO!”
We both laughed long and loud.
Chapter 26
Lola
THE STORY ABOUT THE THREE MISSING WOMEN SEEMED LIKE IT WAS never going to go away. Yesterday’s newspaper printed a letter to the editor from one of the women’s relatives. She expressed how sad, angry, and frustrated the family had become. A few minutes later, when I’d put on my makeup at the mirror on my dresser, my reflection made me cringe. I was looking at the face of the three missing women: Each one looked like me. Even though I was as superstitious as ever, I told myself that I wasted too much time worrying about ominous things. My fear that I would die if I ever wore yellow clothing was bad enough. I’d put the three women out of my mind and finished applying my makeup. I decided it was more important for me to focus on positive things.
I was ecstatic because things seemed to be moving in the right direction with Calvin. But I didn’t want to get too excited too soon, and I had a good reason: my past. Mine was too complicated to ignore. Whenever something positive happened in my life, something negative usually followed. I had so many examples, I had lost count.
While Joan continued to rattle on about Reed, Calvin, and a few other subjects, my mind wandered. I recalled incidents from my distant past, as well as more recent ones. Once when I scored an A plus on a math test in my senior year of high school, the classmate who had shared his cheat sheet with me blabbed to the wrong person, and that person ratted us both out. We had to take a different test, which we didn’t get time to study for, and we both failed it.
When Mama died and Daddy married Bertha, I thought I was going to be happy living in her big house with two orange trees in the backyard and a bedroom almost twice the size of my old one. But Libby and Marshall came around often enough to make my life a living hell.
I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind and focused more on recent events.
The first Saturday in January, while Bertha and I had been shopping at one of our favorite malls, we ran into one of my former classmates, Elbert Porter. Although a lot of people called him a nerd, he didn’t look or act like one to me. He was not goofy and didn’t wear Coke bottle glasses, but he was super intelligent, meek, and overly polite. He was six feet tall, he had a well-developed body, a nice smile and jet black hair that he wore in shoulder-length, well-maintained dreadlocks. Elbert had joined the army a week after we graduated. After his honorable discharge, he married the only girl he’d ever dated, moved her in with him and his mother, and less than a year later the marriage was over. Nowadays he directed the choir at the church that Bertha attended two or three Sundays a month, and I attended sporadically.
Elbert was the youngest of five children and everybody knew how devoted he was to his widowed mother, Alma. Especially Bertha. Alma had accompanied him to the mall that Saturday. As a matter of fact, you rarely saw one without the other. His siblings had been trying to force Alma to move into a nursing home for months, but he had made it clear that that would never happen as long as he was alive. When one of Bertha’s friends came to the house and told us what Elbert had said, Bertha’s response was, “That boy is going to make some woman a good husband.”
“If you two ladies aren’t in a hurry, please join Mama and me for lunch at the Hometown Buffet,” Elbert had said, shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other. We were in front of the Dollar Tree store Bertha and I had just left. I had been trying to lose a few pounds for weeks, so I’d been avoiding buffets. I couldn’t control myself when it came to restaurants that offered an “all you can eat for one price” deal. Before I could open my mouth, Bertha had not only accepted the invitation but invited Elbert and his mother to join us for dinner the next day after church.
The day after that dinner, which had been as boring as the lunch, Bertha had told me, “It’s a shame you can’t get a man like Elbert. Alma is blessed to have such a devoted child. I hope his next wife appreciates him and Alma more than his first wife did. . . .” A few days later, Elbert and his mother started coming to the house unannounced. What had started out as an innocent encounter quickly morphed into another burden for me to bear. Before I realized what I’d gotten myself into, I was “dating” Elbert. From that day on, whenever Bertha was in his presence she beamed like a lighthouse. Running into him and Alma at the mall that Saturday afternoon had made her day. It was a positive thing for her, another negative thing for me.
I only spent time with Elbert when I had nothing better to do. The places we usually went to included movies, restaurants, church events, and the bingo hall. One Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, when I returned home from a date with a club member, Elbert and Alma were sitting in the living room with Bertha. All three were sipping tea and watching Joel Osteen. Bertha looked like she was in ecstasy. I was too, for that matter. The man I’d just been with had covered my most intimate body parts with whipped cream and licked it all off. I was also amused. After all the men I’d socialized with over the years, Bertha had finally “accepted” one. The fact that Elbert was a devout Christian, didn’t believe in sex before marriage, and managed a meat market (and gave Bertha free meat) had a lot to do with that. But his devotion to his mother was the main reason. Bertha didn’t follow me when I went out with Elbert the way she had when I was dating boys in high school. For one thing, she was older and her health had declined considerably. She was no longer spry and energetic, and almost every night she was in bed by eight. I think that was the only reason she didn’t follow me and Elbert when we went out.
I’d poured myself a cup of tea and joined the “party” in
the living room. I sat down on the couch next to Elbert. I was surprised when he shyly put his arm around my shoulder and whispered in my ear how “relaxed” I looked to him. When Joel Osteen’s show ended, he took us all to the bingo hall.
I liked Elbert; he was convenient and a great buffer between Bertha and me. At least with him in the picture, she was in a good mood more often. She even became quite close to his mother. One evening the three of them went out to dinner and the bingo hall without me. But I knew that things had not really changed that much. I was still trapped in an impossible situation: Bertha still wanted to control my future. She still wanted to be my future. Even though I continued to go out with Elbert sporadically, my relationship with him had gone as far as I was going to allow it. But it didn’t matter to Bertha if I spent time with him several times a week or less frequently. She was happy just knowing I was seeing him at all. In the meantime, I was going to continue looking for my real soul mate. Had it not been for Joan and all the fun I was having as a member of Discreet Encounters, I would have lost my mind by now.
“Lola, I wish you’d get that blank expression off your face and pay more attention to me,” Joan said, snapping her fingers. It took me a moment to realize I was still sitting in a booth drinking with her in the Black Hawk bar.
“Huh?”
“Huh, my ass. For the last couple of minutes, you looked like somebody under a hypnotic spell. Talk to me, girl.”
“Oh! I’m listening to you,” I fumbled. I would never tell Joan I’d been thinking about Elbert. She was shocked and amused last month when I told her I was going out with him. Even though he was good looking, the way she’d carried on about his dull personality and lame social life, you would have thought he was Forrest Gump.
Joan and I stayed in the bar for two hours. When I returned home, Bertha was hanging up the telephone as I entered the kitchen. She glanced at me and shook her head. I was familiar with her somber look. It always meant bad news.
“Did somebody die?” I asked as I approached her. Most of Bertha’s friends had already passed, and at least half a dozen were close to it. The way she complained about her health, she was convinced that her days were numbered. She had been “dying” for decades.
“Nobody died, sugar,” she croaked. “Praise the Lord for that.”
“Who were you just talking to on the phone? You look upset, so they must have given you some real bad news.” I put my arm around Bertha’s shoulder. She drove me nuts, but I still cared about her. Since I had lost touch with the few blood relatives I had left, she was the closest thing I had to family. That was one of the reasons I was so anxious to get married and start my family—so that I’d have somebody when she passed away.
“That was my son-in-law,” she muttered.
Libby’s husband, Jeffrey, was one of the nicest people I knew and everybody liked him, especially the women. With his sexy bald head, almond-shaped eyes, and well-built body, it was no wonder. He was hopelessly in love with Libby, so he went out of his way to please her. He was very nice to me. Had it not been for him, I would have stopped talking to Libby a long time ago.
“What did Jeffrey say?” I asked.
“He and Libby are having some renovations done on their house. Why, I don’t know. Their house is not even that old, so I can’t imagine why they want to make drastic changes already.”
I wasn’t sure where this conversation was going, but I had a good idea. Something told me that Libby had put Jeffrey up to asking Bertha for the money to pay for their renovations.
“They want you to help them pay for it, right?” I said as I rubbed her shoulder.
Bertha slowly turned her head to the side and rasped, “That’s part of it.”
I couldn’t imagine what the other “part” was. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
Bertha’s explanation made my blood run cold. “They can’t stay in the house while the work is being done, so they’ll be moving in with us for a while.”
My chest suddenly felt as if it were about to explode.
Chapter 27
Lola
WHAT BERTHA J UST TOLD ME WAS SO HELLISH, IT MADE MY HEAD swim. For a few moments, I thought I was going to pass out. “A while?” I croaked.
“Well, a few weeks at least. Maybe even a few months. I don’t know how long the remodeling is going to take.”
It didn’t matter if Libby and her family stayed with us for a few weeks or a few months. Had it been only one day, it would have still seemed like an eternity to me. If somebody had told me that the world was going to end tomorrow, I would not have been more frightened. Of all the people on the planet, Libby was the last one I wanted to live under the same roof with. Her brother, Marshall, was close behind her in that position. When his wife kicked him out last year, he moved in with us. He stayed only a few days, but during that brief period I thought I would go crazy.
“I . . . I don’t know what to say,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“There is nothing for you to say. This is my house and whatever I say goes. You have no authority here. You’re just a stepchild.”
I remained silent because I still didn’t know what to say next. Especially after Bertha’s last comment. She had told me several times that I was more like a daughter to her than Libby, and I’d felt like I was. But because of what she’d just said, I felt more like a stepchild and an outsider than ever before.
“Libby and her family need a place to stay, and as long as I have a place to stay, they will too. Case closed,” Bertha said, giving me a guarded look.
“I’m sure we’ll all get along just fine,” I muttered.
“I sure hope so. I know you and Libby have a few issues, but for my sake and yours, please help me make this situation as painless as possible.”
“I will, Bertha.”
I had no idea how I was going to survive this unexpected development. I planned to enjoy whatever time I had left before Libby and her crew moved in. From my past experiences with her, I predicted that she and I would be locking horns almost every day until they left. But it got worse. What Bertha said next made me want to holler.
“They’ll be coming in a day or so,” she told me with her voice trembling. Despite how she was trying to make light of it, I knew she was not too happy about this turn of events either. “We’ll have to straighten up the house before they get here. You know how fussy Libby is when it comes to housekeeping. She keeps her house so clean, you could eat off the floors.”
For the first time in my life, I prayed for an earthquake. I wanted the ground to open up and suck me in. And just when I thought things were really looking up for me. In spite of my distress, I was still able to think about Calvin. Now more than ever, I needed somebody to rescue me. . . .
“They’re moving here in a day or so?” Not only did I let out a loud gasp, but I stretched my eyes open as wide as I could without my eyeballs rolling out of their sockets. I was glad I was not in front of a mirror, because I did not want to see what kind of expression was on my face. Bertha had to notice how upset the news was making me, but she didn’t acknowledge it. She continued talking and behaving as if we were discussing what to cook for dinner.
“Maybe with Libby back home again, she and I can work on our relationship.” She had a hopeful look.
I didn’t want to comment on her last statement. My mother and I had been very close and I had treated her with respect until the day she died. I hoped that the relationship between Bertha and her daughter would get better someday. Realistically, I knew it would not.
My relationship with Libby had always been bad, but it had gotten even worse a few months after she’d given birth to Kevin. Because of some flimsy gossip, she’d accused me of sleeping with Jeffrey. She’d physically attacked me, and I’d punched the daylights out of her. Jeffrey had shown up just in time to keep us from doing some serious damage to each other.
After he convinced Libby that we were not having an affair, she “apologized” an
d we’d “made up.” Now, we just tolerated one another.
However, every now and then she was nice to me. Two years ago when she found out I liked to read Ebony magazine, she gave me a two-year subscription for Christmas. The year before that, she and Marshall sent Bertha and me to Vegas to celebrate Thanksgiving. I found out later that they had financed the trip with money they’d borrowed from Bertha, though. The bottom line was, things were never going to be peachy keen between her children and me. I was going to do my best to make things run as smoothly as possible until Libby and her family moved back into their own house. And it was going to be my biggest challenge so far.
Had I not been so looking forward to getting together with Calvin, I probably would have experienced a major meltdown right in front of Bertha.
Chapter 28
Joan
WHENEVER REED WAS ON THE PREMISES, I USUALLY WENT INTO one of our bathrooms or to the ground floor pool area to make a call on my cell phone.
It was a typical Sunday afternoon, the last week in February. It was a few minutes past two in the afternoon and I needed to take a breather. I headed toward the front door with my purse in my hand. Reed entered the living room in time to see me with my hand on the doorknob.
“Going somewhere, Joan?” he asked gruffly.
“Oh, my period is about to come on, so I’m feeling kind of edgy. I thought I’d go down to the pool for a little while.”
Reed scratched his neck and shot me a curious look. “Hmmm. I was just thinking about doing that same thing myself. Let me put on my trunks and grab a towel and I’ll join you. I’ll swim a few laps with you.”
“I’m not going to get in the water. I just want to lounge and relax for a little while.”
“Well, that sounds good too! Do you want me to grab a couple bottles of water?”
“No, that’s okay,” I muttered.
I spent the next hour stretched out on a deck chair in a baggy denim jumpsuit looking at the side of Reed’s head and forcing myself to converse with him about one mundane subject after another. He had not put on his trunks, so he had no intentions of getting in the water either. He was boring the hell out of me until he shared some funny stories about a few of his regular patients, something he rarely did. It was good to see him in a pleasant mood. “It was bad enough that Mr. Richmond fell asleep in the middle of his root canal, but my nurse was not happy about him passing gas a few times before he woke up.” Reed laughed, and I laughed along with him. I even gave him an affectionate pat on his thigh. This was the side of him that I actually liked but rarely saw. I knew that if he humored me more, things would be a lot better between us. “If you think that’s funny, listen to this. Last week a new patient, who also happens to be a midget, asked my six-foot-tall receptionist for a date. And the week before that, a woman who had had her teeth cleaned a few days earlier stormed my office and demanded another cleaning because the exotic sake she’d had with her lunch had turned her teeth purple, so she couldn’t go to the job interview she had scheduled for that afternoon. My schedule was full, so I skipped my lunch to accommodate her. To show her appreciation, she stopped by my office after her job interview and gave me a bottle of the same shit that had stained her teeth!” This time we howled like hyenas. I laughed so hard, tears pooled in my eyes.