Whatever It Takes

by Gwynne Forster

  Her heartbeat accelerated when she saw the florist shop open on Sunday afternoon. As she worked, she didn’t look in its direction; if he was there and he wanted to speak with her, he could see the light in her booth as well as she could the one in the florist shop.

  “Hi,” he said, obviously having come from the opposite direction. “I came in this afternoon because I had exhausted myself building shelving for my workroom at home. What brought you in here? You don‘t usually come in on Sunday.”

  She placed the stack of brochures in a neat pile at the edge of the table and smiled, detaining him while she gathered her thoughts.

  “I needed some kind of change. I could’ve been bored, but I suspect I was just restless. So many things are happening in my life just now that . . . I don’t seem able to focus on any one of them.” She told him about her new office, her marketing consultancy and her hope that her lawyer would get the house she wanted.

  “Wonderful. Congratulations. Well, I’d better get busy on these Christmas wreaths. I have to make half a dozen every couple of days. It’s surprising how many people who can afford the high rates this hotel charges will steal a wreath that’s only worth about thirty dollars. See you later.”

  She slapped her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. If the man was going to treat her as if she were his baby sister, she wished he would learn to control his eyes and the expression on his face. Always leading her to believe he was interested in more than casual conversation. She kicked the box of Christmas bells that she would hang around the upper edge of her booth and sucked her teeth.

  “He’s not the problem; I am.”

  She took half a dozen orders for bread makers and three for a blender, closed up and went home. Maybe she and Kellie could see a movie together. They hadn’t done that in a long time.

  Kellie was at that moment on her way to meet Hal Fayson, the handyman hired to work on the house her father inherited from her grandmother. She figured that, on a chilly December evening, few people were likely to see her go into the house. Her knees shook, and she moved unsteadily when she didn’t see his truck, forgetting that he shouldn’t be at work on a Sunday. But as she reached for the doorbell, the door opened and he pulled her into the dimly lit foyer.

  “I thought you’d never get here. I got it good and warm for you, cause it’s snowing and ain’t nobody walking around looking up at the snow dropping in their eyes. You didn’t see no smoke from the chimney, did ya?”

  She shook her head, sat down on a bench in the foyer and kicked off her boots. “Like you said, the weather isn’t conducive to staring up at chimneys.” She eyed his clothing. He wasn’t wearing his sweat-soaked work clothes, but what he had on wasn’t much better.

  “I got us a carton of cold beer,” he said as proudly as if he’d announced that he had a bottle of Moët and Chandon champagne waiting in a wine cooler. When she didn’t react, he sneered, “Don’t tell me Miss High and Mighty looks down her nose at beer. Look, babe, I’m a working man, and I drink beer. If you don’t want any, six bottles ain’t nothing for me to drink.”

  “I guess it’s an acquired taste,” she said and immediately wanted to kick herself, certain that she’d made him angry.

  “Yeah.” He opened a bottle of beer and took a long slug of it. “I’m an acquired taste, too, but you don’t seem to be having a problem with me. I suppose whatever it is you’re looking for is worth whatever you have to put up with in order to get it.”

  If he’d shave, spend some time in a dentist’s office, learn how to dress and how to speak properly, she wouldn’t give him any trouble; he was the only man she’d had who knew what he was doing in bed, and she’d had a few.

  “You’re being unfair,” she said. “I didn’t tell you I wouldn’t do it unless you let me in here; I said I would if you were nice about it.”

  He stared at her. “Yeah. Right. The sun didn’t set; it’s taking a nap till tomorrow morning. Don’t double talk me, babe. I can make you do anything I want you to do. Whatever it is you want in this place ain’t the only reason you’re here. Pull off your sweater.”

  “Before I do that,” she said, allowing a smile to float over her face and quickly disappear, “I want to look around.”

  “Sure. Go ahead. But if I drink all this beer before you get back, you wouldn’t be able to get a rise out of me if you used a helium tank. It’s up to you, babe.”

  She tossed her head and started up the stairs. “See if I care.”

  His hands at her waist turned her around, not roughly as she would have imagined, though with authority, as if he had the right to do it. “Oh, you’ll care, all right.” His big calloused hands slipped around her body and clamped on her breasts. “Oh, yeah, baby. You got as many weak spots as a frayed rope ladder. Turn around.”

  At that moment, she despised herself. The word no battling for release from her throat, her upbringing and her personal bigotry about men who were not educated and who labored for their livelihood should have been sufficient armor against him. But his fingers toyed with her nipples, sending tremors throughout her body, and she could barely breathe.

  “Take off your sweater,” he whispered. “Do it now.”

  He waited until her hands grasped the edge of the sweater before yanking it over her head, unhooking her bra and turning her to face him. She knew his game because she had played it many times. Force your intended lover to yield because he wants to, and don’t let him feel as if you seduced him. But having conducted a few sexual symphonies herself didn’t save her, didn’t prevent her from becoming Hal Fayson’s victim. She knew he had her in his clutches, because she didn’t want to be saved.

  “Don’t mess around pretending to fight it, babe. I’ve got the music that makes you dance, and you damned well know it.”

  She cupped her breasts and offered them to him. An hour and a half later, he slapped her on her nude buttocks and woke her up.

  “Come on, babe. I’ve got to be getting home. The snow is probably six feet deep by now.”

  She bolted upright. “You’re not leaving here before I—”

  “I’m leaving in twenty minutes, and you’re going with me. It’s not my fault that you can’t think past your vagina. Come on. Snap to it.”

  “I could hate you.”

  The sound seemed to erupt from the pit of his gut, more like an angry snarl than the laugh she knew he intended it to be. “Now, ain’t that gonna make me cry! Get up woman. I gotta get out of here.”

  She recoiled as if he’d struck her. “Listen, you! I’ll be here tomorrow after work, and if you don’t live up to your bargain, damn you, you’ll be sorry. Real sorry.”

  “What bargain? You got most of what you wanted, and I got what I wanted. You’re a sore loser.”

  “I’ll fix you, mister. What do you do around here, anyway? What’s my father paying you for? Everything I’ve seen is just as it was when my grandmother died.”

  “You listen to me,” he growled, jerking on his pants. “Nobody faults me about my work. I’ve gutted that kitchen so Reverend Graham can have a new kitchen built in. I put a new floor and new steps on the back porch and screened in the porch, and nobody helped me. So don’t go causing problems.”

  She grabbed at her advantage. “Stick to your bargain, and you won’t have to worry.”

  “You ain’t exactly clean in this yourself, babe.” He buttoned his storm jacket and donned his baseball cap. “And another thing. You can’t come here tomorrow, because a man will be here replacing the windows. I was supposed to do that, but Reverend Graham changed his mind and told me to do this other work. After all, I’m a regular construction worker.”

  She didn’t want to hear that. Neither he nor anyone else was going to prevent her from finding that brooch. If it wasn’t in that house, it would have been with the ring. “How will I know when it’s safe to come back?”

  “Give me your phone number, and I’ll call you.”

  “Why can’t I call you?”r />
  “Cause you’ll be plaguing the hell out of me. What’s your number?”

  Grudgingly, she gave it to him, grinding her teeth as she did so and imagining how he’d look dangling from that oak tree in front of the house. “Your day will come,” she spat out.

  “You don’t worry me none, babe. I know what floats your boat.”

  “Drop me off at the corner,” she said as they approached the parsonage in his pickup truck, which he had parked around the corner from her grandmother’s house.

  “You bet. God forbid you should be seen getting out of a pickup truck. See you later.” She got out, and as she trudged through the snow it occurred to her that she’d had sex with the man on two occasions but had never kissed him. She hadn’t even contemplated it. If anyone had suggested to her three months earlier that she would do some of the things she’d done recently, she’d have flown at them, irate and defensive.

  As she turned off the sidewalk onto the walkway leading to the parsonage, the front door opened and Cynthia stepped out. She grabbed her chest, reacting to the sudden acceleration of her heartbeat. If Hal had driven her all the way home, her mother would have seen her get out of his truck. She walked to the bottom of the steps, stood there and watched as her mother headed around the house to the garage without looking in her direction. With her own guilt hanging over her, she couldn’t help wondering where Cynthia Marshall—a quiet, subservient housewife only three months earlier—would be going alone at ten o’clock on a Sunday night.

  Lacette sat on the living room sofa, looking at the television, nibbling potato chips and drinking hot, spiced cider as she watched a toothless old black man picking and strumming his twelve-string guitar and singing what he called “down home, gut bucket blues.” She had always wanted to play a musical instrument, and the swift and agile movement of his long, bony fingers over the strings and between the frets fascinated her. In his voice, she heard the hurt, pain and humiliation that matched the tired longing, the resignation and despair mirrored in his face. At the end of a song, his intake of breath was deep and labored, like that of a man dropping the weight of the ages from his shoulders.

  So immersed was she in what she envisaged as the tribulations of the old man’s life that she didn’t hear Kellie enter the house. “Who’s that?” she yelled, jumping up and looking around for anything that would serve as a weapon. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me,” Kellie said. “Where was Mama going this time of night?”

  “Did she leave already? She told me maybe half an hour ago that she had to run an errand. What time is it?”

  Kellie walked in and sat down. “It’s eleven minutes after ten. What kind of errand was she on if she had to dress up in that mink coat Gramma left her? You know, from the time Daddy walked out of here, Mama’s turned into a human chameleon. It’s like I don’t know her.”

  I could say the same about you. “She didn’t tell me any more than that, so I suppose she’ll be back soon.”

  “That’s because you never ask questions. I do, so I know what’s going on around me.”

  “Did you ask Mama why she and Daddy split up?”

  “No. She didn’t spend time crying about it—at least not to my knowledge—so I figured she either wasn’t surprised or was confident that he’d come back.” She threw up her hands. “But what do I know about man-woman relations?”

  A potato chip crumb lodged in Lacette’s windpipe, throwing her into a coughing fit. Kellie brought her a glass of water and slapped her on the back. “Thanks,” Lacette said. “When you said you didn’t understand relations between men and women, I nearly choked, cause if you don’t, who does?”

  Kellie got up as if to leave the room. “Probably no woman. Every one of the bastards has a different way of mistreating women. Doesn’t matter who they are. The first jerk I ran into was a deacon of the church, and I was fourteen years old.”

  That brought Lacette to her feet. “Get outta here. Does Daddy know this?”

  “Of course not, but if he’d been paying attention he could have seen it for himself. All I had to do was put my hands on my breasts, and I could see that old guy’s mouth start to water.”

  “But you didn’t—”

  Kellie rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “What do you take me to be?”

  Lacette remained there long after Kellie went up to her room, but neither the old man nor the program that followed recaptured her attention. She was tired of pretending to be content with her life; tired of being alone; tired of living without the loving arms and strong body of a man who cared for her. Didn’t she deserve a man’s affection and warm loving? She knew she didn’t encourage the attention of men, because Kellie set out to get every man who appeared to be attracted to her. And somehow, she had inculcated the notion—stemming from Kellie’s taunts and jibes—that she was unattractive while Kellie was beautiful.

  She got up, went to the downstairs powder room and looked into the mirror. She saw the marked resemblance of herself to Kellie, but she also saw differences, and they made her no less attractive than her sister. That was another thing with which she intended to confront her parents. Why had they never disputed Kellie when she claimed to be beautiful while her sister was not?

  She went into the kitchen, opened a bottle of white wine, returned to the television and sat down to watch old Ed Sullivan show reruns. Black divas of the 1950s, some of them stunningly beautiful, wouldn’t be recognizable today, she thought. Someday, I’ll be old, my youthful looks wasted, and I won’t have done a thing with my life. She left the wine untouched on the coffee table, turned out all of the lights except two and headed up the stairs to her room. “It’s not going to happen here,” she said aloud, and a strange, giddy feeling settled over her. As in more than one of her premonitions, it was as if she had already begun a journey into a new life.

  Chapter Five

  Whoever heard of anybody dreading Christmas? Lacette sat in her booth, shaking her head in wonder, as she folded fliers edge to edge and crease to crease and stacked them in perfect order. Having finished that, she rearranged her display, didn’t like what she saw, blew up half a dozen red and green balloons and added them to the arrangement. Why was she biting her nails? She had never done that. She lifted the telephone receiver, replaced it and lifted it again. After staring at it for a few seconds, she heard the voice of the operator.

  “Operator. May I help you?”

  Nonplussed, she replaced the receiver, lifted it again and dialed the porter. “Could you send someone to spell me for about fifteen minutes, please? I don’t want to leave my booth unattended.” If she left her post for a few minutes, she risked losing a customer, but she didn’t have a choice.

  Within minutes a bell boy arrived, tall, handsome, and, she surmised, a year or so younger than she. He flashed a grin, exposing even white teeth that glistened against his smooth, hair-free brown skin. Her already somber mood darkened, and she swallowed a lump in her throat, for she knew that the good-looking brother’s smile was not for her, but for the tip she would give him. In the women’s room—that female sanctuary in beige and green marble, beige walls, green carpet and gilded chairs—to the left of the elevator, she took deep breaths and splashed cold water on her face, hoping to shock herself out of the unfamiliar lethargy and moodiness that seemed to have settled over her.

  She didn’t dare stay away from her booth longer than fifteen minutes if she wanted to remain in the porter’s good graces. Passing the florist shop, she waved at Douglas and recognized one source of her discontent, for she had come to realize that the wreckage of her family accounted for only a part of her unhappiness. By the time she reached her booth, her feet dragged beneath the weight of her loneliness. The porter grinned his thanks for the three-dollar tip and went back to his post, oblivious to the hole widening deep within her. He’s full of smiles and charm, but would he care if he knew how I ache?

  Her smiles for her customers had a wooden character, never altering the contours of
her face, and the words she spoke lacked conviction. It was the day before Christmas Eve, and what could she look forward to? A dreary Christmas dinner at which her parents would pussyfoot around each other—formal and civilized—while she and Kellie held their breaths hoping that neither parent would make a mistake and disrupt the superficial and fragile peace. Oh, she would receive the de rigueur gown, perfume, and cashmere sweater from the members of her family, but none of that would replace the sense of belonging to a love-giving, nourishing, and protective unit that she knew was forever lost.

  “Why would a beautiful woman like you be wearing such a somber expression in the most delightful time of the year?”

  Lacette looked up to see a tall, copper-colored African-American man, elegant and—to her mind—very distinguished. “Hmmm. Not bad-looking, either,” she said to herself.

  Recovering her professional demeanor, she asked him, “How may I help you?”

  “I’m stuck here until January the eighth, and you can help a lot by spending Christmas with me. I don’t mind being alone the other three hundred and sixty four days in the year, but there’s something about being by myself on Christmas Eve that demoralizes me. Please say you’ll spend tomorrow evening with me.”

  She stifled a gasp. “I uh . . . I’ll have to think about it.”

  He handed her his business card. “I know it’s presumptuous of me to think you might not have a date, but I didn’t see a ring on your finger and thought I’d take a chance and ask you. Will you?”

  Her first reaction was to say that she was busy, but she wasn’t. She was lonely and tired of her dull and uneventful life. She answered truthfully. “I’m not busy. What did you have in mind?”

  A smile enveloped his face. “Dinner at the best restaurant I can find and dancing until we get tired. Would you like that?”