Mariah laughed. “This has to be a record for the longest Soleil has ever gone without saying the f-word.”
Lucy raised her glass. “Let’s give a toast to Soleil and her filthy mouth. She is the best sister anyone could have.”
Eve raised her glass. “Fuckin’ A!”
They all clinked their drinking glasses together and started laughing.
Soleil took a sip of water and shook her head. “That guy doesn’t know a thing about me. All he sees is some tits and ass. Little does he know I have enough baggage to fill the Titanic.”
“But the Titanic sank, Soleil, and so did its baggage. Maybe it is time you let some of yours go, too,” Mariah said as soft drinks were served.
Lucy looked at the ceiling and then around the table. “Let’s have a party tomorrow. A baggage-dropping party.”
“A fucking what?” Eve was used to Soleil giving Lucy strange looks. She added a new one to the repertoire.
“Let’s get some old suitcases at Goodwill or someplace. We can each put something in our suitcase and then we can throw it away. It would be symbolic of starting a new life. After we get our inheritance, we will be starting new lives. After we throw our bags away, we could have a party on the beach.” Lucy looked at each of them with a hopeful look on her face.
Soleil laughed at Lucy. “Okay. We’ll have a baggage party. If it will make you happy.”
Soon waiters came to their table loaded with plates full of food. Eve’s mouth watered as each aromatic dish was set down on the table. Conversation was suspended as they dug into their meals.
Soleil
Lucy leaned back in her chair. Even though the lunch portions were smaller than the dinner portions, she was full. But she had to get dessert. Bernice would be insulted if they didn’t get one of her famous desserts. She could already taste the sweet potato pie.
They had almost finished their plates. On cue, Bernice returned to the room. “How was everything?”
“Wonderful!” Mariah smiled at her friend.
Lucy remembered the first time she had eaten at Bernice’s restaurant. It was much smaller then and at a different location. Olivia had brought them one day. Soleil had been with them, as Mik and Faith had gone to Mexico on a drug binge. Bernice had fawned over the little girl and Soleil had taken an instant liking to the older woman.
“Now comes the best part—dessert! We have the usual pies, as well as apple and peach cobbler.” She rubbed her chin. “Now let me see if I can remember Soleil’s favorite dessert. Apple cobbler with vanilla ice cream.”
Soleil smiled. “That’s right.”
Soleil had never had any food like this before they brought her to Bernice’s restaurant. She had never met her paternal grandfather or any member of his family, so she didn’t know her black relatives. Lucy had been to Alabama to visit Mariah’s family, so she had grown to love Southern food.
Lucy looked at Bernice. “I would like to have the sweet potato pie.”
Bernice winked. “Good choice.” She then looked at Eve.
“I would like peach cobbler, please.”
“Same here, Bernice,” Mariah said.
“Let me put these orders in and I’ll come back to chat. I want to hear all about Ollie.”
Lucy saw her mother pale slightly. She knew Mariah would not tell her about Olivia getting shot, but she knew how much her mother hated to be anything less than truthful.
When Bernice left the room, Soleil took something out of her purse. She placed the ring next to Mariah. “I wanted to give this back to you.”
Lucy looked at the ring. It looked like an engagement ring.
Mariah placed it on her left ring finger and held out her hand to look at it.
Lucy felt butterflies competing with the food in her stomach. She knew who gave the ring to her mother. She took her mother’s hand and touched the ring.
“When did you get that?” she whispered.
Eve watched them intently. Soleil looked down at her napkin.
Mariah squeezed her hand. “The day before your father died.”
“What was Soleil doing with it?”
Mariah answered the first question. “Soleil stole it from my bedroom.”
Lucy was confused. Why had Mik given her mother an engagement ring? He was still married to Sally when he died. And how did Soleil know about it? Why did she steal it from her mother?
She looked at Eve, but she looked down at her water.
“What is going on here? What aren’t you telling me?” Lucy’s voice was rising against her will.
Mariah looked towards the main part of the restaurant. “We’ll talk about it tonight.” She took off the ring and put it in her purse. Her lower lip quivered.
Lucy didn’t want to even speculate what her mother had to say.
The waiters brought in their desserts, followed by Bernice. Lucy tried to regain her lighthearted mood. But her mother was keeping a secret, and she wanted to know what it was.
Eve
Eve sat next to the big vintage suitcase in the back seat of Mariah’s Jaguar. After spending several hours at a thrift store, Lucy decided to get one large suitcase for all of their emotional baggage.
Eve didn’t think Lucy was serious about her suggestion that they have a baggage party. It sounded like a silly, new age California idea. But after they finished eating, she named a store where Soleil could meet them.
At the store Lucy rushed to the area where luggage was displayed. Eve didn’t know how she could move so fast after eating such a big lunch. She could hardly walk; the heavy food sat in her stomach like a rock.
She thought she could tell a lot about Mariah and Soleil by which area of the store they gravitated towards. Soleil went to the men’s leather jackets, looking for a good used garment to add to her leather collection. Mariah went over to the knickknacks and kitchen supplies. Eve thought about Mariah’s well-stocked kitchen and her collection of African-American collectibles.
She went over to look at a round rack filled with sweaters. She flipped through the sweaters, stopping at patterns and textures that caught her eye. She had gotten so many new clothes since she arrived; she should be buying a new suitcase. She had always wanted a Louis Vuitton bag. Maybe she would go to Rodeo Drive and get several pieces before she left. Unlike a lot of people, she saw little difference between shopping in a high price store or a thrift store. It was all shopping to her.
Lucy came striding over to her lugging a large tan leather suitcase trimmed in wood. “Look what I found! Isn’t it great?”
“I thought we were each going to get a different bag. That one is big enough for all of us.”
“I know. That’s why I picked it. I know you all don’t really want to do this anyway, so I just got one bag for all of us.” She shrugged. “If you don’t want to be a part of this, that’s okay.” She set the bag on the floor to show Eve its interior.
Eve looked at the flowered paper lining. Lucy’s excitement was contagious. “No, I’ll participate. It should be interesting.”
Lucy smiled and closed the suitcase. “Good. I’m going to show this to Mariah and Soleil.” She stood up and headed toward Soleil, who stood out in that red dress.
Soleil had a black fringed jacket over her arm. She nodded affirmatively as Lucy showed her the vintage suitcase.
“Have you found anything good?” Eve jumped. She didn’t hear Mariah walk up behind her.
“No, but Lucy found a big fancy suitcase. She says that it is big enough for all of our baggage.”
Mariah chuckled. “Lucy and her crazy ideas. But maybe if we all sit down and talk, it will clear the air.”
She looked at Mariah. “Lucy didn’t know about the ring, did she?”
She looked over at Lucy and Soleil and shook her head. “I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want to get her hopes up. You and I both know how often Mik kept his promises. I didn’t want her to be disappointed in her father again.”
Lucy and Soleil started walkin
g toward them.
Mariah sighed. “We will talk more about this tonight.”
Eve looked out the window as they headed towards Malibu. She was apprehensive about tonight. She had a feeling that Mariah was going to say some things they might not want to hear.
Soleil was going to meet them at the house later, after she went home to change clothes. Tomorrow, she and Lucy were going to accompany Soleil and Mariah to the attorney’s office. She wondered if he was going to say some things that Soleil might not want to hear.
Chapter Seventeen
Soleil
Soleil slid out of the red dress and pulled on her favorite jeans. It was a struggle to get them to close, as she was still full from lunch. And yet she was glad Mariah had suggested the restaurant. It felt good to see Bernice again and be spoiled by her.
She grabbed a tee shirt from her dresser and slipped it over her head. She still wasn’t used to how easily she could put tops over her head now that she didn’t have the dreads. She scratched her head. She missed her hair. She missed the protection it provided. She felt exposed without her Medusa mane. But there was nothing she could do about it now. It would take years for her hair to grow back to that length again.
She went into the bathroom to wash her face. She blinked at her reflection in the mirror. She wanted a drink. She needed a drink. She thought she could handle everything, but the cemetery had unnerved her. She felt faint when she saw the stone slab bearing her mother’s name. Thanks to Sally Fountaine, she had no place to go to grieve for her father. She had seriously thought about just discarding the ashes, but she couldn’t do it. Just like she could not get rid of her only family portrait.
But it was all over. Faith would never bother her again. She would never reconcile with her mother. As silly as it was, she had always held on to the hope that Faith would miraculously change and become a doting, loving mother. At least her last conversation with Faith and the things she found in Faith’s apartment let her know that deep down her mother had really cared.
And the truth was she had gone over there to kill her mother. She had pointed a gun at her head. She had pulled the trigger. No matter what they had told the police, she was guilty of attempted matricide.
Soleil went into the kitchen and put the extra piece of cobbler in the fridge. Bernice had insisted she take a large piece home with her.
Instead of wishing that her mother had metamorphosed into another person, she should be grateful for the nurturing women that were a part of her life. Bernice, Lucy and Mariah had tried to provide her with the love she hadn’t had at home. Even her father had tried in a small way to give her love.
She thought about Mariah. She had betrayed her trust by going through her belongings. She had stolen her gun and looked at her personal things. She had read the letter from Mik in the drawer with the engagement ring. Of course, Mariah would forgive her; that’s what she did. But could she forgive herself?
Did she want to participate in Lucy’s crazy baggage party? But she needed to go over there to apologize to Mariah. She needed to apologize to all three of them. She needed to apologize to her father. She needed to apologize for what she had said to him on the last night of his life.
More than anything, she needed to forgive herself.
Lucy
Lucy sat in the back yard cleaning the suitcase with leather cleaner. She rubbed a cotton cloth back and forth over its surface. The inside of the bag had a musty smell. She had sprayed a scented vanilla mist inside. The bottle said the scent was good for stress relief. She needed to relieve some stress. They all did.
If they were going to be honest tonight, she would have to reveal everything. She rubbed at a spot on the suitcase as if it were the stain she had on her heart. She had made up this silly game, now she would have to play it.
Eve came out with a package of notepaper with adhesive backing. “So let me get this straight. We are supposed to write down what we feel is our emotional baggage on a piece of paper. Then we put the paper in the suitcase. Is that right?” She scrunched up her nose.
Lucy nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. And if anyone wants to talk about her item, she can do so. I don’t want to make anyone reveal something if they don’t want to. But we are a family. We should be able to tell each other everything.”
Eve looked at her intently. “So does that mean that you are going to tell Mariah everything?”
She nodded again. “I want to be honest with all of you.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Eve continued to look at her.
She stopped rubbing the suitcase. It was as clean as it was going to get. “I think we should clear the air between the four of us before you leave. Who knows when we will all be together again?”
Eve ran her fingers through her hair. “What are we going to do with the suitcase when we are through?”
“I don’t know yet. We can decide that at the end. I thought about burning it, but that might be too much for Soleil, with Faith just being cremated.”
Eve sat down next to her. “Do you think Mariah will be totally honest? She may want to protect you. After all, she is your mother. She is entitled to her own secrets.”
Lucy shrugged. “We will see what happens.”
Eve
Eve passed out the square packets of paper and pens to the three women sitting around the table. Mariah had started a fire in the brick fireplace in the backyard. She lit three small votive candles in glass holders and placed them on the table. Lucy had placed the suitcase on a chair at the end of the picnic-style table. They each had a glass of ginger ale.
The day was ending. Even though it had been hours since the big lunch, no one seemed hungry. Eve felt that apprehension was keeping her stomach full. The classical music playing on the sound system did not have a calming effect. Neither did the smell of vanilla that mixed with the musty smell of the suitcase.
After she passed out everything, she sat back down and took a sip of her drink. She wished they had alcoholic beverages, but Lucy had nixed the idea. They needed to respect Soleil and her struggle with sobriety.
Lucy held up her pen. “Now who wants to go first? Remember, you don’t have to read what you write if you don’t want to.” She looked around the table expectantly.
Eve started writing on the top page of the note packet. She tore off the page and waved it in the air. “I’ll start. And I’ll read what I wrote.” Maybe her confession would start the rest of them talking.
Soleil stared at her.
She looked at her paper. “I have a distrust of men. It started with my father. Then I picked the wrong men to date. I guess I was always looking for a father figure. Or I was just looking for a male that would show me some attention.” She looked away from the paper, but didn’t focus on anyone at the table. “That’s how I ended up with Brad.” She folded up the paper and threw it in the direction of the suitcase. It landed on the floor.
Soleil was the closest to the case. She picked up the paper and flicked it inside the suitcase. “Can we share our baggage?” she asked. “I think that we all have some abandonment issues, thanks to dear old Dad.”
“It’s not just fear of abandonment, it’s distrust in general. Men who can’t be counted on to be there when you need them. Men who are with you for what you can do for them. Men who say one thing and do another.” Eve raked her fingers through her hair.
“That still sounds like Mik to me,” Lucy mused. Even though she was talking to Eve, she was looking at her mother.
“There are a lot of men like that, not just Mik,” Mariah said.
Soleil pointed her pen at Mariah. “Yeah, but Mik was the first man who broke our hearts. If you can’t count on Daddy, who can you count on?”
Lucy was still looking at Mariah. “He broke your heart, didn’t he?”
Mariah straightened up in her seat. “Of course he broke my heart. He broke my heart a million times. Do you think Faith was the only woman he had while we were together? On tour, we traveled in s
eparate buses. He wasn’t always alone with the boys on the road. He had other women. But the only one he was serious about was Faith. Faith was so young, so beautiful and so needy. Every man that met her wanted to protect her. She was only seventeen when they met.” Mariah twirled the pen in her hand.
Eve felt embarrassed by the emotions displayed on Mariah’s face. But like a witness to a car wreck, she couldn’t turn away. “But that doesn’t excuse what he did. Just like there is no excuse for what he did to my mother, my brother and I.”
“He broke my heart when he left for good. He broke my heart when he disbanded the group. I’m not trying to find an excuse for him. He was what he was. If he hadn’t left Pittsburgh, do you think he would have stayed with your mother? Do you think he would have been happy to work in a steel mill for twenty years? Some people can’t do it, stay in one place or situation all their life,” Mariah said and put the pen down.
“But do you trust men? When was the last time that you went out with a man?” Soleil asked.
“I dated a man, a professor at CSULA, about six months ago.”
Lucy’s eyebrows shot up. “You did? What happened? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why should your mother tell you everything? She is fifty years old. She has her own life,” Eve said in Mariah’s defense.
Mariah nodded at Eve and looked at Lucy. “She’s right, you know. I don’t tell you everything. Just like you don’t tell me everything.”
Lucy’s face reddened.
Eve didn’t like where this conversation was heading. “Mariah, what happened with the professor?”
Mariah sighed. “He didn’t believe in interracial relationships. He didn’t know about my past. When he came to my house, he looked at the pictures on the piano. He saw the picture of Lucy and Mik. He asked me who they were and I said it was my daughter and her father. He said he couldn’t date a woman that had slept with white men.”
“What a bunch of bullshit!” Soleil said. “This is Los Angeles, not Soweto.”
“And then when I mentioned I used to sing with a rock group, that was it. He left and I never heard from him again. I had mentioned before that I had a daughter and that I used to be a singer, but I never mentioned race. I guess I should have before we started dating.”
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