The Jade Emperor

by Suzanne Jenkins

  The funeral was scheduled for the following Saturday. Kelly had to go back to work the day after Eve died, so the children took turns staying with Karen. Eve’s family was coming from Ohio but just for the day of the service. And her nieces and nephews did so much; Augie made the funeral arrangements, and Ken spoke the eulogy. The rest of them did the photomontages, and acted as ushers. Karen didn’t have to do a thing but grieve.

  Karen was forever grateful to Kelly for having given her support when Eve died. Two years later, she was still grieving. “Come on, Roger, let’s go inside,” she said to her little dog.

  Karen would attempt to stifle her own opinions and support Kelly while she went through the dissolution of a long marriage. How was that even going to work?

  “Augustus Boyd is a no-personality, low-life whiner, one step up from a day laborer.”

  That was what Major Dailey had said when Kelly and Steve started to date. Kelly and Karen were only seventeen, and Karen remembered it well. They were juniors in high school, and Steve was a senior. Kelly was talking to a group of friends after school while Steve stood on the periphery, observing her. Karen remembered that he always seemed to be alone.

  “You’ve got an admirer,” a male friend announced.

  Kelly looked around.

  “Who, me?”

  “Yeah, you. Look over there,” he said, nodding toward a doorway.

  Kelly later said that she’d wondered how on earth she ever missed noticing him watching her, because he was so breathtaking. There was no getting around it; Steve was gorgeous. Tall and lanky, he had a head full of golden curls that constantly got him into trouble for being too long. When she’d looked up, he caught her eye and started walking toward her.

  “Go for it, Dailey,” her friends said, encouraging her.

  So she walked to meet him halfway. It was the first time a senior approached her, at least someone so good looking. Kelly admitted to her sister that she’d exchanged her need for intellectual stimulation for a pretty face. A simple guy, Steve was the antithesis of her father. Steve did all the manly things: went on hunting and fishing trips with his brothers and dad, worked on cars, and reading hot rod magazines occupied his free time. With parents from the Deep South with the accents to prove it, Steve knew Kelly’s parents didn’t approve; that only made him more determined. Mr. and Mrs. Dailey looked down their noses at him, although they denied it.

  Steve got away with a lot in school because of his good looks. When they started dating, she’d do homework after school and he’d watch her.

  “Don’t you have books?” she’d ask.

  “Nope, no homework tonight,” he’d answer.

  Somehow, he graduated with his class. His hanging around town without a job, waiting for Kelly to graduate, infuriated the Daileys.

  “She’s going to college, Augustus,” Major Dailey said. “You should be thinking of it, too. There’s a great little community college right over there.”

  He pointed over his shoulder in the general direction of the college. When Steve didn’t answer him, it was proof that he had no future. Kelly tried to build up the nerve to tell her father that she didn’t want to go to college, either. They wanted to get married in case Steve received his draft notice. Karen remembered the night before Kelly got married. Kelly sat on Karen’s bed and started to weep.

  “You know I love you, correct?” Kelly asked, wiping her eyes. Karen nodded her head. “You know I want to share everything with you. But I’m afraid if I do, you’ll tell Mom and Daddy and they’ll lock me up so I can’t do it.”

  Now, all these years later, Karen wished she had squealed. Maybe Kelly would have had a different life, one in which she hadn’t worked her ass off, all so Steve could leave her for his wartime sweetheart. They’d gone to the justice of the peace the week after high school graduation and got married. Kelly told her parents after the deed was done, and they insisted on a formal wedding for her in spite of her objections.

  “You’ll thank us someday,” Mrs. Dailey had said. “You and Steve will have your wedding day to remember for the rest of your life.”

  By the time school started again in September, she was two months pregnant, Major Dailey got his money back from Union College, and she and Steve were driving to Texas in his pickup truck.

  When he left for Vietnam, Kelly asked her parents if she could move home with little Augie. Karen helped care for him while Kelly went to nursing school, accepting that Steve wasn’t going to be able to support the lifestyle she intended on having, and refusing to take the help her parents were eager to give her once the baby was born.

  Their parents, so angry at first, soon softened up because of Augie. Such a sweet baby, and later a nice little boy, Augie healed the relationship between Kelly and her mom and dad.

  Then Steve came home, and Karen watched her sister struggle, never complaining, with an unhappy husband and an unhappy marriage.

  Roger needed his dinner and jumped up, interrupting the daydream while nipping at Karen’s heels as she walked into her tidy kitchen to prepare it. Eve had been gone two years that month. Slowly and unintentionally, Karen removed objects that Eve had placed around their home, not because she didn’t want to be reminded of Eve, but they no longer served their original purpose, just making her sad.

  Instead of a reminder of a wonderful trip to Ireland, a hand-knit afghan brought sadness to Karen so she was unable to use it or even enjoy the room where she kept it. Photos Karen had taken of Gaudi architecture on a trip to Barcelona that Eve had carefully framed made her physically ill to see. She asked family if anyone was interested, and so far, her nieces and nephews were the caretakers of Eve’s memorabilia Karen could no longer bear to look at.

  Eve’s desk and papers were untouched, the room becoming a catchall for Christmas wrapping paper and items from her parents’ house that no one wanted and she couldn’t bring herself to throw away. While Roger ate, Karen leaned against the galley kitchen, looking around.

  “It’s time to move, Rog. You want to go with me?” He growled a little guttural growl while he chomped on his food. “Yes, I’m ready for a fresh start.”

  She picked up the phone and keyed in Kelly’s number, but voice mail picked up. Kelly was incommunicado.

  Chapter 7

  Alice Boyd couldn’t stop shaking after the encounter with Steve, even after she hugged her mother goodbye. Getting into her car, she carefully drove the six miles home. The confrontation left her weak and nauseated. Pulling up to the front of her house, Maxine was standing in the driveway, talking to their next-door neighbor Paul. They smiled and waved, and hopped out of the way so she could pull up.

  “Hi,” she said. “The weather is changing so fast.”

  “Indian summer just showed up this weekend, and now they predict frost for tonight up north,” Paul said.

  Early frost was okay, but a freeze when there was still fruit to pick off trees and harvesting yet to be done was problematic.

  “I have tomatoes for you, still on the plant,” he said. “I’d better pick what’s left.”

  They said goodnight, and Paul walked across his yard to his house while the women strolled up the path to their door.

  “How was pierogi night?” Maxine asked.

  She opened the door for Alice to go through first, and Alice stumbled over the threshold. The stumble took down her last bit of resolve to keep it together, and Alice burst into tears.

  “Good lord. What happened?” Maxine asked. “I guess not so good, huh?”

  She tried to pull Alice over to hug, but she stiffened up like a board.

  “My dad is a jerk,” she said, crying, going to the tissue box on a table next to the couch. “He’s leaving my mom for some lady he met overseas when he was in the war. She had a kid with him and never told him, and they’ve chosen now to come out of the woodwork.”

  “Ugh,” Maxine said. “Steve finally shows his true colors.”

  In Maxine’s eyes, Steve was a racist and a homop
hobe. But leaving his wife of all these years was even a lot for old Steve.

  “He was married to my mom when the affair happened,” Alice added.

  “Ew,” Maxine said. “Is that all? Or is there more?”

  “Yes! He made fun of me, asking me how we’ll decide who walks down the aisle when we get married.”

  Maxine was confused. “I don’t get it”

  “You know, who’s the man and who’s the woman…” Alice singsonged.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Alice, he’s so friggin’ unenlightened. How can you allow a jerk like that to upset you so much?”

  Shaking her head in disgust, Maxine walked into the kitchen to make coffee.

  “Well, he is my father. It hurt, that’s all I can say.”

  “I never could stand him, to tell you the truth. And to hurt Kelly that way, well it’s over the top.”

  “I guess I can’t either, which is really a shame,” Alice said, a new torrent of tears beginning. “It’s too late for coffee.”

  “You’ll drink it and you’ll love it,” Maxine said. “We’re not letting that asshole ruin our night.”

  Banging on the door ensued.

  “Who’d come here at this hour?” Maxine said.

  Alice looked through the peephole.

  “It’s Ken!” She unlocked the door and opened it so her beloved brother Kenny could stumble in.

  “Jesus, I’m not drunk anymore, either,” he said, looking at the threshold.

  “I just fell over it, too. Sorry. We’ll get it fixed one of these days.”

  He looked around her place.

  “I smell coffee.”

  Maxine yelled from the kitchen.

  “Come back here, Mr. Boyd. I’ve got something to say to you.”

  “Oh, great,” Ken said, walking back to the kitchen.

  “So I hear your father outdid himself tonight,” Maxine said, the catalyst the siblings needed to begin venting to each other so Maxine could get a break.

  They drank coffee, sitting around the kitchen table, the dim light in the old-fashioned fixture hurting Maxine’s eyes. At eleven, she yawned.

  “I have a full day tomorrow, if you two will excuse me.”

  “I’ve got to get some sleep, too,” Alice said, pushing away from the table.

  “Before you go, can I spend the night?” Ken asked sheepishly. “I sort of got locked out of my apartment.”

  Alice looked at him and frowned.

  “It’s up to Maxine.”

  They looked at her for an answer.

  “I guess so. I never changed the sheets from the last time you were here,” Maxine answered.

  Her partner’s family was beginning to get on her nerves, but she didn’t say anything. “Goodnight.”

  After Maxine left the kitchen, Alice asked what had happened. “Everything seemed great when I saw you both last weekend.”

  Ken and his girlfriend, Terry, had been at Augie’s on Saturday with the rest of the family.

  “I drank too much and got mouthy with her mother on Sunday. Last night I was on call, and never left the hospital until five in the morning, and tonight I was at Mom’s house, so I’m in the doghouse.”

  “Do you want me to call and put a good word in for you?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Just let her know I’m here. She probably thinks I’m carousing.” Alice laughed.

  “Well, you were, sort of. I mean, that was so much fun at Mom’s.”

  He laughed and got up to stretch. “Can I throw my clothes in your washer? I can’t go into work with the same thing on for the third day.”

  Alice wrinkled her nose.

  “Yes, go for it.”

  She gave him a peck on the cheek and left to get ready for bed, hoping the washer wouldn’t disturb Maxine, who had to get up early. Alice had a nine-to-five job at an internet firm. Ken would be up before them all; he was a nurse like his mother.

  Alice went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. Looking in the mirror, she saw the toll the night of stress had taken on her young face, a breakout with a smattering of pimples coming out on her chin and dark circles under her eyes. For being only twenty-four, she looked and felt twice that age. As she was washing her face, she heard her phone vibrating on a table in the living room. It was Reggie.

  Alice and Reggie were the last two of Kelly and Steve’s children, close, but not suffocatingly like Ben and Lisa.

  “We weren’t in the womb together,” Reggie had said as they observed their twin siblings.

  “Thank God,” Alice replied. “The last thing I need is my brother setting up an exercise program for me like Ben does for Lisa.”

  Reggie looked down at his portly body and back up at Alice, who was trying not to comment.

  “You never have to worry about that, I promise you,” Reggie said.

  Reggie would never have showed up at Alice’s house, drunk either. Especially at ten at night.

  She picked up the vibrating phone and punched the talk button. “Hi,” she said, whispering.

  “What are you still doing up?” Reggie asked.

  “You called me, remember?”

  “Right, but I didn’t think you’d answer,” he said. “What’s your take on Dad and the new woman? Do you think they’re going to go polygamy on us? And a new brother, handsome and a doctor.”

  “No way! Who told you that?”

  “Ben. He’s already in touch with the guy. I just got off the phone with him. As I sink lower in the spectrum of both looks and accomplishments.”

  Poor Reggie, Alice secretly wondered if he’d been mixed up in the newborn nursery, he was so unlike his siblings. Reggie had male pattern baldness at age twenty-six. Where the other kids took after Steve in the height department, Reggie was just five six.”

  Reggie never had a real job. His permanent gig was as a barista at the local coffee shop, a position he’d held since he was sixteen because it was convenient for him. A perpetual student, Reggie was currently working on his second master’s degree. Reggie was also a genius grant writer and craftily incorporated his studies into where the latest state grant monies were.

  “I just like going to school,” he had said when his father complained that he didn’t understand why his son was still attending classes and not compelled to get an actual job.

  “So did you see the gleam in Dad’s eye when he talked about the son? We’re history,” Reggie said, jarring Alice back into the present.

  “I couldn’t care less,” Alice replied. “It would be a relief to be able to stop pretending he gives a shit about us. Poor Mom keeps working at this myth that we’re one, big happy family. Boy, did that backfire.”

  “She asked Ben to find a twelve-step program for her,” Reggie said, giggling.

  “For Mom? What about for Ken? He’s sleepin’ it off in my basement right now.”

  “You’re kidding? What time did he get there?”

  “After ten,” Alice answered.

  “Did Maxine have a fit?” Reggie asked, incredulous that his brother had so much nerve.

  Alice laughed again. “No, she had to go to bed, so it wasn’t a big deal.”

  Reggie would have never showed up at Alice’s house at ten, drunk or sober. He was afraid of Maxine, who perpetuated it by pretending to be mean and sarcastic when he was around. The last time they saw each other, she’ sneered at him like he was a bug. He’d stopped by Alice’s house to drop off mums from Kelly, praying that Alice wasn’t answering her phone because she couldn’t hear it, not because she wasn’t home. Deciding to sneak up to the house, he would put the plant on the porch and flee, and leave a message warning her that it was there. As he bent down to place it on the top step, the door flew open and the dreaded Maxine stood before him, frowning.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

  To make matters worse, she wore her police uniform, all power and authority. Scaring him, he did a little two-step jump backward.

  “Oh, hi, Maxine
,” he said. “This is from my mother.”

  He bent to pick it up, holding it up to her like an offering to the gods.

  “Just leave it there.” He put it down again and started walking backwards toward his car. “Where are you going, Reggie?”

  “I need to get to work,” he said.

  “The coffee shop can wait for a few more minutes,” she said. “Are you afraid of me?”

  Reggie stopped moving and looked at her carefully. He was myopic, but she was in a shadow anyway, and from behind the screen, her dark skin looked frosted, almost glowing. She was beautiful. Reggie thought Alice was homely, but she and Maxine made a striking pair regardless.

  “No,” he answered, but hesitantly. “I really do have to get to work.”

  “Ha! Get over here, Reggie Boyd, or I’ll tell your sister you were rude to me.”

  Thinking she’d probably tell Alice he was rude no matter what, he didn’t want Maxine to think he was avoiding her because he was a racist. In a lose-lose situation, taking a step forward, he belittled himself for allowing her to have the upper hand, and he fought the urge to turn and run.

  “Closer,” she said. He walked up to the porch and she held the door open for him. “Come in here.”

  Stepping up to the door, he squeezed through the narrow space she’d left, purposely trying to intimidate him. Just then, Alice walked out with a towel wrapped around her head.

  “Oh, did you bring me the mums?” she asked. “Maxine, stop taunting my brother.”

  Walking over to Reggie, she kissed his cheek. Maxine, laughing, lost interest in him and went back to sorting through the mail. It was a script that they kept repeating.

  Tonight, Reggie hoped he didn’t disturb Maxine by calling so late. “My call didn’t wake her, did it?”

  Alice laughed. “No, you’re okay,” she said. “But I need to get some sleep. Let’s talk tomorrow if you find out anything more.”

  “Okay, talk tomorrow.”