Whatever It Takes

by Gwynne Forster

  When she didn’t move, he said, “Try any tricks with me, lady, and you’ll be just another prisoner. I’ll drag you out.”

  She stared down at him, angry and getting angrier. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Don’t give him a reason to manhandle you, babe,” Hal said. “I am definitely not tussling with no cops.”

  She crossed her left leg over her right one, letting her narrow skirt rise up as she did so, and stepped out of the van. A grin spread over the officer’s face, and she thought he might laugh.

  “Turn around, and put your hands behind you. Both of ’em.” He locked the handcuffs on her wrists and called out to Hal, “Be seeing you, man.”

  “How can you do this to me? I haven’t done anything wrong,” she said to the policeman. “Hal’s gone. Can’t you take these things off me? My father’s just being tough; he doesn’t want his daughter locked up in jail.” She walked closer to him, touching his body with her own. “Please!”

  His laugh irritated her. “Look me up you after you get out of this mess you got yourself into, but if you try any of that sex appeal on me while you’re in custody, I’ll report it, and you’ll get some time for sure.”

  She stared at him. “What’s this country coming to? Men aren’t men anymore.”

  “Ten years from now, I hope to be precinct captain; in the meantime, if my sister breaks the law, I’ll lock her up. Get my drift?”

  “Got anything interesting to read?” she asked the officer when he slammed the cell door.

  “No, and we don’t have a radio, television, or CD player for your comfort, either.” He walked off, and she sat on the bunk and looked around. She didn’t see anything that she could throw. The veins in her neck felt as if they would burst, and her belly seemed to twist itself into a reptile-like coil. Hours passed and no one offered her food or anything to drink. At a quarter of twelve, the same officer opened the door of her cell.

  “You’re free to leave, Miss Graham.”

  Her father had never seemed so big, so formidable or so angry as when she walked into the waiting room and saw him standing with legs apart and his knotted fists on his hips. His eyes narrowed to barely slits.

  “I should have let you stay here overnight, but your mother cried and begged until I agreed to come down here and get you out. You ransacked that house and left it in total disarray. Did you find the brooch?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’m ashamed of you, Kellie. I never imagined that you would stoop to breaking into my house. I want you to repair the damage to the window, sweep up that glass and debris from the kitchen floor, and put everything in that house the way you found it. I want every bit of it done by next Saturday.”

  “But I have to work during the week, Daddy.”

  “Do it at night.”

  Seeing her chance to search the house thoroughly and at her leisure, she added, “And I don’t have a key. If you give me your key, I can get started on the clean-up tomorrow after work.”

  Marshall got into the car and switched on the motor. “Kellie, I never before thought you regarded me as a fool. I will be with you every second that you’re straightening up that house. If you don’t have everything done by Saturday, I’ll give the house to Lacette. You have my word on—”

  “You can’t do that. She already got more from Gramma than I did.”

  “Mama Carrie treated you and Lacette equally, but it’s in your head that you should have that brooch just because you always wanted it. Well, you’re going to start behaving like an adult. If I ever catch you with that brooch, you’ll spend more than one night in jail, and that house will go to Lacette; not when I die, but now.”

  He parked in front of the parsonage. “I should have taken you in hand long ago, Kellie, and if it isn’t too late, I’m starting today.”

  He leaned over, kissed her cheek and, for reasons she couldn’t fathom, she rubbed the place his lips touched and looked at her hand. “What time tomorrow do I start working at Gramma’s house?”

  “I’ll pick you up at work, and from now on, try to remember that it’s not Mama Carrie’s house, but my house. See you at four-thirty tomorrow.”

  She walked into the parsonage and let the door slam shut behind her. Her mother could sleep through a hurricane; if she awakened Lacette, she didn’t care, because she needed to lash out at somebody. She got a glass of milk, a fried chicken leg and three biscuits, climbed the stairs to her room and closed the door. Her father considered himself smart, but she meant to outfox him, and he would never know she did it.

  Chapter Six

  Standing at the foot of the stairs, Lacette looked toward the top landing. The parsonage seemed less like a home since her father left and not merely because of the changed relationships between her and her mother and sister. Her daddy’s leaving had spawned a hole in her life and in that house, too, for it seemed bigger and emptier without him. With his strong, protective, and caring manner, he had given the place its only genuine warmth. With him no longer there, the defining feature of the parsonage was Kellie’s deviousness and anger.

  “She’s getting everything,” Lacette heard Kellie say to her mother Monday morning at breakfast. “Daddy is going to give her his house.” Cynthia’s gasp was of such passion that it reached from the kitchen, where she sat peeling potatoes, to Lacette at the foot of the stairs. Lacette stopped. If her father planned to give her the house, he had kept it a secret from her.

  “I can’t believe he’d do such a thing,” Cynthia said. “I won’t allow it.”

  “You won’t allow it,” Kellie said. “You won’t allow it,” she repeated in a voice that sneered. “Nothing you can say or do will make a dent the size of a pinprick insofar as Daddy is concerned.” She flounced out of the kitchen, and in her headlong dash bumped into Lacette who had remained standing at the foot of the stairs.

  “Well, ’scuse me, miss,” Kellie said and raced up the stairs.

  Lacette stepped aside and allowed Kellie to pass. Wondering how her sister had the temerity to speak with such impudence to their mother, she walked into the kitchen where she knew she would find Cynthia staring into space, as she’d taken to doing ever since Christmas.

  “Mama, what is Kellie so upset about? She almost knocked me down, and didn’t apologize.” Where Kellie was insensitive, her mother merely lacked sensitivity to the nuances in relationships among the members of her family. She couldn’t see the deterioration of ties between her daughters, or the slow but certain changes in her daughters’ relationships with her. And she seemingly was not aware that in her new persona, she—like her daughter Kellie—was concerned mainly with herself.

  Cynthia turned accusing eyes on Lacette. “Did you know that your father is planning to give you my mother’s house? Do you think that’s fair?”

  “If he’s planning to do that, he hasn’t mentioned it to me. Anyway, I don’t want it. I’m about to buy a house as soon as I get settled in my consulting business.”

  “There must have been an awful lot of money in that account Mama left you.”

  In the process of sitting down, Lacette stopped before touching the chair, stood and looked at her mother, pitying her for what her life had become. “If you indulge Kellie in her shenanigans, Mama, you’ll regret it.” She went into the hall, lifted the telephone receiver and dialed her father.

  “Daddy, this is Lacette. How are you?” She listened to his concerns about the church and offered what comfort she could. “Daddy, Kellie is in a snit. She said you’re giving me Gramma’s house. What did she mean?” Lacette listened, horrified, as her father recounted Kellie’s breaking in, entering, and ransacking his house.

  “She was looking for your brooch. It’s become a fixation with her, and I told her that if she breaks into my house again or if I ever see her with that brooch, I’ll give the house to you, and I mean it.”

  “Daddy, that brooch is not worth losing my sister over. We’ve hardly had a decent conversation since the reading of that will.
” She thought for a minute. “It’s more than that. I stopped letting her have her way, giving her whatever she wants even at my expense, and she can’t accept it. I think some distance between us—physical space, I mean—would be a good and useful thing.”

  “I won’t advise you about that, but I’ll say it can’t hurt.”

  Lacette went to her room, telephoned her aunt Nan and told her she needed to separate from Kellie. “Would you rent me your guest room until my lawyer can settle the terms for a house I want to buy and I can move in? It shouldn’t be more than three weeks.”

  “Child, you can move in here today, if you want to. I see you’re straightening out your life, and I say hallelujah and amen. I hate to see y’all split up, though. Reminds me of the daisies in my garden every spring. One petal will fall off and before you know it, all of ’em’s dropping. Never saw it to fail. What’s Cynthia saying about this?”

  “I haven’t told her. I won’t say she’s abdicated her role as parent; that probably wouldn’t be fair. But since Daddy left, she hardly concerns herself with where Kellie and I go or what we do. Granted, we’re adults, but she behaves as if she has no authority, and not much interest.”

  “Does Kellie feel this way, too?”

  “Hard to say. She encourages Mama to dress and behave as if she’s a teenager. I do not recognize my own mother. She puts on makeup before she comes down to breakfast and wears it all day. You should see her fingernails. Bloodred. I never would have guessed that this person lived inside my mama. I’d give a lot to know why Daddy walked out of here.”

  “You and me too, honey. And Marshall ain’t talking.”

  “Not a word out of him about it, and when Mama realized I was about to ask her, she got a bad headache. I’ll pack a few things that I need, and move the remainder of my stuff when my house is ready. Thanks, Aunt Nan.”

  Marshall drove up to his house, parked and looked at Kellie. “It’s a shame that I can’t trust you here alone, but I can’t, so I will be with you at all times, and I don’t intend to help you. You should have told your mother why I threatened to give the house to Lacette. Well, she knows now, because I expect Lacette told her.” He got out of the car, locked it, walked with Kellie to the back of the house and unlocked the back door.

  “You ought to be able to find a broom and a dustpan somewhere in the kitchen.” She found it, and he sat in a kitchen chair and watched her clean up the broken glass and put it in a trash basket.

  “Are you planning to dog my every step?” she asked him as he climbed the stairs behind her.

  “Have you ever known me not to keep my word?” She shook her head. “Well, there’s your answer.”

  After three hours, he said, “This is enough for today. Time for my supper. I’ll pick you up at work same time tomorrow. Meanwhile, do something about your attitude or you’ll take everything out of those closets you ransacked, and rearrange them neatly. It’s up to you.”

  “Suppose I don’t come with you tomorrow? What will you do?”

  “I’ll call Bradley and have him draw up papers that deed this house to Lacette. Don’t play with me, Kellie. Men have served twenty years in jail for what you did, and I am not going to treat it lightly. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He hoped she wouldn’t put him to the test. He loved his daughter, but he couldn’t permit her to continue treating others as if they were put on earth for her convenience.

  The following afternoon when she and her father arrived at the house, she sat glued to the Cadillac’s leather seat, almost afraid to get out of the car. Hal’s company’s truck sat at the entrance to the garage, and she didn’t know whether she would encounter Hal or the man who chewed tobacco. She did know that she’d rather not encounter either of them while in the presence of her father.

  “Come on, Kellie,” Marshall said. “We’ll only be here for two hours today. I have a meeting with the deacons.” She didn’t rush, and he stopped. “If, by Saturday night, you haven’t put this place back as you found it Sunday, the deed to this house goes to Lacette, as I promised you. It’s up to you. Did you hire a man to replace that windowpane?”

  She hadn’t and didn’t know where to find one. As she pondered the problem, Hal came out of the front door. She rushed up to him but, evidently having seen her father, he looked over her shoulder and greeted him.

  “I need to hire you replace that kitchen window,” she said without preliminaries.

  His gaze mocked her with a smirk and a knowing, intimate expression. “Sure. It’ll cost you two-fifty for parts and labor.”

  She stared at the man who had been her lover, stared with the cool impersonal expression of one who speaks to her inferior, and the impact of her error struck her at once and forcibly.

  “Miscalculation on my part. The total will be five hundred. In cash,” he added with a sneer.

  “What? You must be—”

  “Take it or leave it.” He headed for the truck, forcing her to follow him.

  “Of course,” he said under his breath, “you can always pay for it on your back. A dozen or so sessions ought to do it.”

  “Why you—!”

  He jumped into the truck, ignited the motor, backed out and left her standing there. She remembered that her father remained at the front door leaning against the doorjamb and watching her stupidity. She straightened her shoulders, turned and walked back to the house.

  “What was that all about?”

  “I was asking him to fix the window.”

  “I know that, but what went on there at the truck to make him behave so rudely?”

  “Don’t ask me,” she bluffed. “What would I know about his kind of man?”

  “Good question,” Marshall said. “I’d watch my step if I were you, Kellie. You can play with fire for a while, but eventually you’ll get burned. Come on. You’ve already used up a quarter of an hour.”

  “All right,” Kellie said to herself, “I’ll do it exactly the way he wants it so long as it means he doesn’t give Lacette this house. If he wanted to do the right thing, he ought to give it to Mama, but she screwed up, so that’s out of the question.”

  She tackled the guest room, rehanging the curtains, collecting the bedding from where she’d strewn it about the room, replacing the contents of drawers and reorganizing the closet.

  “Shouldn’t we turn the mattress over?” she asked her father, who watched her as he sat on a bench at the foot of the bed.

  “No, we won’t. I’ll turn it over.”

  “You don’t trust me,” she said. “I just thought—”

  “You mean you remembered that you hadn’t looked there. He turned over the mattress. “Satisfied? It’s not here.”

  Unaccustomed to laborious work, by the end of two hours, she thought every muscle in her body had turned on her. “Can’t we skip tomorrow, Daddy? I’m tired and sore.”

  “Of course we can, if that’s what you want, but I expect you to finish this by Saturday, and remember, you haven’t touched those closets in the bathrooms. I don’t see how you could have done such a mean thing to your own father. Have you no conscience?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about it being your house, Daddy. I was just—”

  “Self-centered as usual. It’s seven. Let’s go.”

  At home that evening, she climbed the stairs that seemed steeper with each step, took a shower and, because of her inattentiveness, nearly slipped on the bath mat. She ate dinner and crawled into bed. Spent. Almost as soon as she began to enjoy the luxury of a firm mattress beneath her tired body, the telephone rang.

  “Hello. Kellie speaking.”

  Hi, babe. This is Hal. I want a down payment before I start work on that windowpane. I have to buy the pane and the putty, and for that, I need something up front.”

  She sat up and turned on the light. The scent of her mother’s perfume aggravated her nostrils, and she covered them with a corner of the sheet until she heard her mother’s bedroom door close.
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  “What’ll it be, babe?”

  “Well, I can give you a hundred dollars. I’ll be there tomorrow at a quarter of five, but my father will be with me.”

  “I see. Your old man doesn’t trust you either. I saw his car parked outside the house this afternoon. Let’s see, now. A hundred dollars. That ain’t what I had in mind. Meet me on the corner.”

  “I’m already in bed, Hal, and I’m so tired I can hardly stand up.”

  “Good. This way, you won’t give me a lot of trouble. Meet you on the corner of All Saints and Tucker, by the Baptist church. And you be there, babe.”

  She hung up and fell back to the bed swearing to herself that she wasn’t leaving the house. But her treacherous mind recalled the power of his steel-like penis driving into her, forcing her to explode time and again like fireworks on the Fourth of July. She released an expletive, dragged herself out of bed and began to dress in a frenzy lest he become annoyed at her tardiness and ring the parsonage doorbell.

  When she reached the corner, she saw that the passenger door of his van was already open, and she ran to it and got in. “What took you so long, babe?”

  “I had to dress. Where are we going?”

  “A place I know. We’ll be okay there.”

  It wasn’t the longest night she’d ever spent, perhaps, but it seemed that way. He had rented a room in the home of a woman who lived near Braddock Heights on the outskirts of Frederick. When the woman answered the door, Kellie, who remained in the van, caught a glimpse of her. Chills plowed through her already nervous frame, her hands shook and, for a few minutes, her teeth chattered. Unless she’d lost touch with reality, she’d swear that that woman sang on the choir in her father’s church.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked when he couldn’t effect her usual response.

  She told him, and added, “I’ve never been so scared in my life. If this gets back to daddy . . .”

  He interrupted her. “Are you kidding? She didn’t see you, and if she had, she’d keep it to herself. You think she wants your daddy to know what kind of house she runs? Relax, and act up, babe. I’ve waited for this all evening.”