by Tiana Laveen
“Oh yeah, then you’re mine… Sounds good. I’d like that.” The unmistakable tone of seduction in his voice thrilled her. “Can I pick you up this time after you’re all changed or am I still in the ‘unknown’ man danger zone?” he teased.
She chuckled. “Yes, you can pick me up, Sloan. I’ll text you my address.”
“I was just going to suggest that. All right.” The man yawned. “Feel free to call me before then… to talk, whatever.”
“I’ll do that. Goodnight, Sloan.”
“ ’Night, Emerald. By the way, you have one of the sexiest asses I’ve ever seen. Wish I could use it as a pillow… Matter of fact, Sealy should use your behind as a prototype.” And then, he hung up, leaving her sitting there with her mouth wide open until she fell back in a fit of laughter…
CHAPTER TEN
Snakes in the Grass… Boom! A Loud Crash.
What a way to spoil a good mood.
Sloan looked at his son in complete disbelief that Sunday morning. He’d slept like a baby, for the first time in a long ass time. He’d spent the previous evening with a beautiful woman and had secured future dates with her. When his son had called as soon as he dozed off in the beginning stages of rest, he agreed without hesitation to the visit but as he sat here and looked at the young man, he regretted letting him come. He had no idea where Joel had found this damn bone to keep digging up, making life harder than it had to be. The moment they got in the same room together, the arguments would start once again…
“Joel, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He took a long draw of his cigarette. “I’m pouring these feelings into my work, staying out of everyone’s way, but then I get reminded of why I feel like I do, no matter how many times I try to get out of my own way, like having to send your mother alimony while she screws my old friend that I used to work with at the—”
“At the Wall Street Journal! Here we go again!” Joel slammed his open hand onto the kitchen wall. “You never talk about you and Mom, not really the heart of the matter, but me and Michelle have to hear about how you believe you were double crossed time and time again.”
“This is what you wanted, though. You asked me to talk about your mother again, when I already told you I didn’t want to. So now you’re complaining that I’m doing just that.”
“I did, and I also asked for a lot of explanations from you.”
“Like what?” He glared down into his coffee cup, noting it was empty, but he was far too exhausted to get up for a refill.
“I’ve asked about Grandma, about all sorts of things, but you never talked about her, either. You avoid any discussion that makes you appear human, so why start now?” His son’s eyes grew dark with shadows of hurt and anger. “Dad, what the hell does all of this have to do with you running away, moving in here, then denying that there are some things we just can’t explain?” He took a step closer, his voice calm now, almost peaceful.
“What does it really matter, Joel? In the end, it doesn’t mean jack shit, quite honestly.” He smashed his cigarette butt into the ashtray.
“To admit science can’t explain everything, that smart, prize winning, brilliant Sloan Steele with the journalism degree, the guy who interviewed terrorists, killers, and kidnapping victims, can’t explain everything is scary, huh? Mom, me, Michelle, all of this…” His son looked around the room, then back at him. “Something bigger is going on here. This isn’t just a relocation, a place to clear your head and start fresh. It’s so much more.”
Sloan rolled his eyes, then closed them tight, letting his head fall back against his chair as if all the fight had drained out of him, replaced by boredom.
“What is it then, Joel?” he questioned wearily.
“You moved away from us.” He jammed his finger into his chest. “From yourself, from everything. It’s almost karmic, but I guess you think that’s a bunch of bull, too.”
“You think I don’t believe in mysteries and things that are stranger than fiction?” He slowly opened his eyes and glared at his son. “Like hell I don’t because I sure can’t explain why the woman I gave everything to was never satisfied. It’s like one of the seven fucking wonders of the goddamn world!”
“I don’t want to talk about Mom right now. I’ve changed my mind.” Joel lifted his chin high and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Too damn bad. You wanted it, you got it. You opened this rusty can of worms; now they’re crawlin’ out and ready to have their say. Want to know what’s in my heart? What troubled me?” He stabbed at his chest with his index finger, causing himself a bit of discomfort as he crushed the muscle beneath his shirt.
“I suppose it’s still too late to say no? The worms are determined, right?” Joel snapped sarcastically.
“Let me tell you what I went through with that woman, and this is the condensed version, so you listen and you listen good.” He snatched another cigarette out of its container, flicked his sleek black lighter and pushed the tip to the dancing flame. “Let’s begin with the nonstop materialism, which was her running theme of life.” He took a long hard drawl from the thing and tapped his foot, as if a song were beginning, a rhythm to help him keep tempo. “For example, your mother wanted a bigger house… boom!” He slammed his fist against the table, ignoring how his son’s eyes rolled. “I got it for her.”
“…Yes…yes, we all know…” Joel sighed, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his broad chest and his head down as if he had not one ounce of energy to listen to such rubbish. “Dad, please don’t do this.”
Ignoring his son’s pleas, he continued. “Your mother wanted new cars, nothin’ second hand. Ohhh no!” He waved his hand dramatically about, the smoke from his cigarette gamboling away into nothingness as he moved. “She couldn’t have that, fuhget about it! Somethin’ someone else sat their keister in was a no motherfucking go. So what I’d do? Spoiled tha shit outta her. Got her a BMW fresh off the lot and then the red Audi not too long after. This all transpired while I drove my beat-up Ford Focus for years… the one with the rust stains and cracked windshield. How’d you think I felt balled up in that little ass thing?
“I’m 6’4, 239 lbs. as of yesterday morning. I’ve kept that same weight give or take a few pounds for the past few years. I’ve got a little spread goin’ on here in the gut from beer, been walking a lot lately to get rid of that too, and I’ll get my gym membership sorted as soon as I finish this latest book—but nothing major is goin’ on with me from a medical standpoint and besides my smoking, I’m in good health. That’s muscle!” He snapped his arm with a flick of a finger.
“I’ve been in this body a long ass time. I know it inside and out and I know what works for me and what doesn’t, and little cars don’t. Yet here my big ass was in a goddamn 1999 Ford Focus hatchback so she could get what she wanted! It was at the repair shop way more than I drove it… wasted countless hours on the train, Uber, cabs, or gettin’ rides from people I hated.”
“But see, things are better now?” Joel said in almost a whisper, his last ditch effort no doubt to derail the train headed towards Rage Town, located smack dab in the land of bitter memories. “You’ve got a new car.”
“I just bought that Cadillac Eldorado, Joel. It was my dream car that I’ve wanted since I was twenty years old. The first gift I’ve given myself in years. I see your face, the expressions you’re making right now… you’re a smug fucker, you know that?!” He waved his cigarette in his son’s direction, his anger gaining steam. “If I’d looked at my father how you’re lookin’ at me, he would have hauled off and knocked me clear across the goddamn room.”
Joel huffed and looked away. “I’m not trying to be disrespectful, Dad,” he mumbled. “I just don’t see how this discussion is helping.”
“Oh, it’s helpin’, all right.” Sloan smirked and took another draw on his cigarette before setting it down onto an empty ceramic bowl. “You want me to tell you that yeah, I ran away and I’ll come back to Manhattan to live in
the morning, as soon as the sun rises. But I didn’t run away, and I’m not moving back.” Their eyes locked, one pair challenging the another. “You want me to say, ‘Yeah, Mom and I are done and there’s no hard feelings.’ We’re done all right. I’ve accepted it and I’m happy it’s over now, believe me! But sorry, there are hard feelings and if the shoe was on the other goddamn foot, you and Michelle would be cowering around her and I’d be the bad guy.”
Joel’s expression tightened, revealing the truth of the words.
“You want me to push through the pain, smile, write you a check and joke around with you, don’t you? But it’s not funny, son… nothing about this shit is funny or okay to me, you understand? You want all this shit from me, right?” He snatched his cigarette up from the bowl, took a hard toke and tossed it back down as if it were suddenly covered in filth. “Not once understanding that I have nothing else to give.” He pointed at his son. “You think your father is just bellyaching now about your Mom, right? Complaining, being a big ass pussy… You think it’s just useless information. You see me as just some shell of a man, just like I claimed to be in jest and part of that is my fault. I take full responsibility for it.”
“What are you talking about?” Joel wrapped his arms around himself and gave a squeeze, as if he needed comfort.
Sloan swallowed and sighed, then looked down at the table. His hand trembled ever so slightly. He tried to steady his nerves; apologies were so hard to utter, but if one was owed, then he planned to deliver it.
“I know how I was when you were a little boy, Joel… and I’m sorry. I know that’s where some of your anger towards me is really coming from right now. Funny, I was just thinking about you yesterday, and the hard time we’ve been having. I wanted to talk to you about this, but you beat me to the punch and called last night. Anyway, the past is the past. Some of it I can’t change—it’s just who I am—but some of it I can, and I’m tryin’ Joel. I’ve been handling some of the process wrong though… You’d be surprised what I’m realizing about myself and life in general. It’s hard for me to even admit I had some shit to address, some things that needed to be changed, but I do and the first thing is that I wasn’t always as good to you as I should’ve been.”
“I’m surprised… Well, thanks Dad. I really… I really am not sure what to even say right now. You’ve thrown me off guard.” He smiled sadly.
“You don’t have to say anything unless you want to. Usually it’s you doing all the talking anyway.” Joel laughed lightly. “Anyway, what I meant about handling this all wrong is when I give you so much out of guilt.” His son’s eyes narrowed upon him, as if he were trying to read between the lines. “You know that, too. Because I promised myself I’d be a certain way when I had kids, and only some of those promises were kept.”
“You’re a good father, Dad…” he murmured.
“I know, but I still messed up a lot and you deserve an apology for some of the shitty things I said to ya when you were a kid.” Joel glared at him, appearing utterly shocked at now getting another apology in less than five minutes. “I took things out on you that weren’t your fault. I’ve never really talked about my feelings, the shit that has upset me.” He shrugged. “Just the stuff surrounding it, but that never really gets to the heart of the matter now, does it? You were right when you said that.”
“I guess it doesn’t.” He sighed.
“You’ve only known half of me. You deserve to know all of me, because you’re the best part of me…”
Joel looked up at him, and it was all he could do to keep himself together as the young man’s eyes watered.
“Look, let’s go out and get some breakfast, okay?” He raked his hand through his hair. “I’m sleepy and hungry, and I’m sure you are, too.”
“All right… but what about getting to the heart of it all, Dad?”
“I’ll do it; just give me a sec, all right?” He took a deep breath. “Work with me. Can you do that?”
Joel looked at him for a spell, stood straight and approached him with a smile. “Yeah… I can work with you, Dad. One confession at a time, right?”
“Yeah, and one day at a time, too…”
A woman with no regard. That’s what Mama was…
What must that have been like? To give birth to a little soul, be entrusted to raise them up the right way, but instead, the little light that was supposed to shine is dimmed on account of abandonment and a lost sense of self. Emerald shook her head as solder dust tickled her nose, made her want to sniffle. Eyes pressed tight and her finger beneath her nostril, she wished the sneeze away. Turning to her tools, she suddenly lost focus of what she was to do next, her thoughts all jumbled and jammed within her. She wasn’t going to feed Sugar’s frenzy, and the truth would do just that… An admission that even after death, she still hated Mama but told herself she’d made peace with it. She’d repeated all the mantras, the ones that said, ‘You hold yourself back when you don’t forgive.’ A bunch of positive reinforcements to rid herself of the hatred—but nothing fully banished it.
She had bought countless self-help books, had even seen a couple of family counselors over the years, but nothing removed the black pit that sprouted branches and grew in the core of her heart. It came right back like a reoccurring rash, itchier and angrier than the last bout.
Mama had apologized after all, just like she’d said to Sugar during the phone conversation a few weeks back. That call still bothered her, upturned all sorts of animosity she’d tried to ignore and push away. Mama had admitted while on her deathbed that she’d been an awful mother for what she’d gone and done. She was a cheater, a bigamist, and emotionally neglectful. She’d abandoned the family when Emerald was a young child, and Sugar claimed to find that fact the most reprehensible of all.
But was Mama all bad? Was there any gold in her, besides her gorgeous physique? Emerald had tried to find out as she’d looked into the dying lady’s hollowed eyes, the whites turned sour and yellow. She’d taken careful inventory of her once notorious curves, turned gaunt and sickly as her last moments on Earth slipped away… just veins, skin and bones, a body barely able to move and draw breath. She’d felt guilt the first night she’d seen her after all those years, for when she peered down at the stranger she’d once called, ‘mother’, her first thought was, ‘Makes no difference if you live or die right now. I’ve buried you years ago…’
But still, Emerald’s concerns didn’t cease. Could she have been birthed from a womb consumed by evil? As a mother herself, she couldn’t wrap her brain around how someone could pack up and leave their children, one of whom was sick, just like that, and never look back.
But she wrestled with the notion, asking herself time and again, ‘What kind of things did Mama have to live for towards the end?’ Wasn’t that a sad thing within itself? Something to make one pity Celine? More importantly, what was that lady’s passion? What did she care about? Was she truly as shallow as Sugar had often claimed? Mama was dead; she could answer no questions, and tell no lies. Had she been a soulless shell who had not one lonely goal in the entire world? No one could possibly be that two-dimensional, or could they?
Perhaps she would have doubled back and made amends sooner, if she’d known Daddy had come into a sizeable sum of money when Emerald was about ten. She remembered the fleeting sense of happiness, soon replaced with mounting anxiety when they packed up from the old place on Batton Street. The promises of having her own bedroom, a new wardrobe, and so much more faded, replaced by the crisp, freshly drawn worries that Mama wouldn’t find them if she ever returned. In her ten year old mind, Mama had gotten lost in the woods perhaps, like in some fairytale. Maybe some crazy person had kidnapped her and Aunt Sugar was wrong; she hadn’t just up and left at all despite the letter she’d left behind, which Daddy kept locked away in a drawer. Emerald tried to plead her case to her father, to no avail.
She wanted to stay in the old, rundown house, but Daddy said no, they had to go. So anger and resentment for th
e man filled her for a while; but then, Aunt Sugar came up for a spell to visit, and she’d overheard her tell Daddy that if Celine dipped one damn toe onto their plot of land, she’d shoot it clean off with her pistol…
…And she believed Aunt Sugar would do just that. She’d seen the lady’s long, well polished gun, and something told Emerald it had been used before, perhaps even more than once. So on they’d moved to Maxim from Connecticut. Funnily, Emerald recalled very little about living in Bridgeport. All she remembered was Maxim—had been there practically her entire life; and the memories, despite how life had began, were pleasant…comfortable, warm and cozy. Daddy and Mama had hailed from Texas, then moved up north for a chance to make a better living and get away from what Daddy called, ‘Nosy people in their business.’ Daddy said he had family in New York and Massachusetts, and Emerald soon got to meet them, too. She discovered a host of cousins and the like, but all she cared most about was herself and her older brother as she tried desperately to hold on to her sliver of sanity.
It was nice to not worry about Daddy working so hard for a pittance. After their move, she’d found herself not only with her own room, painted in pale pink and pastel green, but she also got a new pair of skates, beautiful clothing, and never wanted for much of anything. Though Connecticut within itself was like a faded memory, the lessons she’d learned remained, forever alive and etched in her mind. Daddy had showed her what hard work could do. He took his skill to fix things and turned it into a full time business after he won that personal injury lawsuit that had led him across a bridge over troubled waters. Indeed, the sometimes unbearable pain in his lower back had continued on and off until the day he died.
Regardless, he didn’t sit back and collect those checks—he knew they were his family’s ticket out. Daddy always fixed things, made them better… but as she got older, she’d learned a hard, awful lesson. Some things would always be broken, no matter how you turned and twisted the truth, tried to glue it back together with pretty plaster of Paris, and sprinkled it with shimmery glitter in a desperate measure to uphold a lie. Some things just couldn’t be made right because hearts weren’t like warped cabinets, twisted bike spokes, or shattered glass vases. No, the human heart recorded everything, even the shit we wish we could just forget, and often, it would get stuck on rewind…