Whatever It Takes

by Gwynne Forster

  “Ten minutes,” she said, kicking herself for her weakness. She put on a tight sweater with her jeans, added a jacket and a pair of tennis shoes, and made it down the stairs and around the corner without encountering her mother or anyone she knew. She slid into the van and closed the door.

  “Give me a chance to breathe,” she said when his hand went to her breast. “Where’re you taking me? I’m not going back to—”

  “I found us a nice place, and if you know anybody there, it’ll be because you’ve been there before.”

  When he stopped in front of a motel in New Market, she grabbed the steering wheel. “Are you crazy, Hal? My daddy lives here.” She slapped her hand over her mouth. “I mean—”

  He backed up and sped off to the highway. “If your mother and your old man split up, it’s just what most married people eventually do. Do you think I wouldn’t know that if she was hanging around Tad’s, your old man wasn’t in the picture? Don’t be so uptight about everything.”

  “All right. Why can’t we go to your place?”

  “Look. I live with my old man, and he’s a deacon in your daddy’s church.” He drove off the highway and into a group of trees and brush. “This’ll have to do for tonight. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m not . . .”

  But one hand pulled her sweater over her head, baring her breasts for his mouth, and the fingers of his other hand were crawling up her thigh.

  “Oh, Lord,” she moaned, a victim of her raging libido.

  The following Monday, when Kellie left work, she went directly to her father’s house where she expected that Hal would be working, but to her disappointment, she saw him speaking with a man who seemed to have authority over him. She walked on past the house, and when she returned, Hal met her at the front door.

  “Get away from here. My boss is upstairs looking over my work.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said, but he surprised me. Now, beat it, will you? I need this job. I’ll call you tonight.”

  She had to find that brooch before the days got so long that she couldn’t use the darkness for cover. As it was, she risked a lot going there today. “I hate him,” she said. “He could look for it, but I don’t trust him, so I’m not going to tell him what I’m looking for.” When she walked into the parsonage, she knew Cynthia was cooking collards, for the odor of the boiling greens attacked her nostrils with its strong earthiness.

  “What’re we having with the collards, Mama?”

  “Well, since it’s just us, I thought I’d cook something we both like. We’re having Cajun-fried catfish, cornbread, and candied sweets with the collards. How does that sound?”

  “As if both of us are going to bust out of our clothes. I’m going to eat till I get tired. Then I’ll rest and eat some more. That’s my favorite meal.”

  “Mine, too. Your daddy used to love it.”

  Kellie stared at her mother. “Don’t talk about him as if he’s dead, Mama. Wherever he is, he still loves it.”

  “He’s dead as far as I’m concerned. Him and all his preaching about forgiveness. Humph! May the bird of paradise fly up his nose.”

  Kellie’s bottom lip dropped as she gaped at her mother. “What’s come over you all of a sudden?”

  “Nothing came over me all of a sudden. It’s been creeping up slowly for years. Never put a man on a pedestal, cause he’ll definitely fall off.”

  Kellie pulled a chair from the kitchen table and sat down. “What has daddy done, Mama?”

  “Nothing, and maybe that’s the trouble with him. I’m just seeing him with clear eyes.”

  “But if he hasn’t done anything—”

  “What he’s done is cause this family to break up. I don’t suppose you’d call that ‘nothing.’”

  She crossed her knees, folded her arms and looked her mother in the eye. “Is it he who caused it . . . or you, Mama? I had the impression that he walked out because he couldn’t tolerate something you did.”

  “Did I walk out when the sisters in every church he ever pastored chased him, brought him pies, candies, and cakes right under my nose—as if I couldn’t make them—and just dropped by our home unannounced when I knew they didn’t want to see me? Did I break up the family over that?”

  “Look, Mama. We don’t want to get into that. If Daddy never took up with the women who chased him, you had no cause to blame him. Did he?”

  “No. He hated all those clawing females.”

  “Then how on earth can you say he broke up the family?”

  “He left. That’s why. Lacette’s gone, and pretty soon you’ll follow her. I’m going to start looking for a place to live. I hate this old parsonage.”

  “Did you know that Daddy’s living in a room in a motel because he doesn’t want the deacons at Mount Airy-Hill to know he’s not living here. He’s doing it so you won’t have to move.”

  “I don’t thank him for that. He said marriage was for life, for better or for worse.”

  Kellie got up, got a plate and served herself some food. “I don’t want to talk about this while I’m eating. And Mama, for this once, you can eat in the kitchen. Okay?”

  She ate quietly, her thoughts on her mother and how she could be so blind to her own failing and to its repercussions.

  She knew she had no right to judge her mother; her own hands were far from clean. But Cynthia’s behavior seemed to her increasingly mysterious, erratic even, and as the person closest to her mother—at least as far as she knew—she should know what her mother was doing. Such a three hundred and sixty-five degree change in a person could represent a psychosis, couldn’t it?

  She got up and walked over to where her mother sat with her hands folded in her lap and with a forlorn expression on her face, and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “Mama, were you at Tad’s last night?” She could almost feel the tension skittering through Cynthia’s body.

  “How do you know that?”

  “A friend told me he saw you there.”

  Cynthia’s face bore an inquiring look, but no censorship. “A friend? I didn’t see a man in that place who you should be calling friend.”

  Kellie raised an eyebrow. If it was good enough for the mother, why wasn’t it good enough for her daughter? “If it was that rough,” she replied, “why were you there?”

  The implications of that question seemed to have no impact on her mother. “I was meeting someone who forgot to show up. Does that satisfy you?”

  Kellie noticed that her mother’s jaw worked as if she were grinding her teeth, a sure sign of rising anger. “I care about you, Mama. That’s all.” She knew it was useless to say more, because her mother had shut down like an engine out of gas. But she couldn’t help wondering about the man who would ask a woman of Cynthia Graham’s social standing to meet him at Tad’s and then fail to show up. She didn’t want their brief—and rare—moment of togetherness to dissolve into bitterness, so she pasted a smile on her face and switched the conversation to Lacette, a topic on which they always agreed.

  “Mama, when is Lacette starting her business?”

  Obviously relieved, Cynthia replied, “Next Monday, I think. Maybe you could work with her as an assistant or a partner since the promotion you wanted didn’t come through.”

  “I was thinking something like that, but . . . Well, I don’t know. Anyhow, it won’t hurt to put it to her. I have great skills with people—something she could use—and I’ll get her a lot of male clients.”

  “That’s right,” Cynthia said, “and you’re her sister, so she ought to give you a job if you ask her for one.”

  Kellie went around the little table, sat down and continued her meal. When she finished, she cleaned the kitchen and went up to her room. As always, whenever she was alone, her thoughts floated to Hal or to the brooch. Maybe the reason Hal wouldn’t give her an opportunity to search the house was because he was either searching it himself or intended to. She’d have to wat
ch him carefully. Agitated, she pounded her right fist into her left palm. The problem was that she couldn’t keep her head, that Hal controlled her with her voracious appetite for him. “I’m not going out of here tonight,” she said, showered, put on her bikini pajamas, turned off the phone and got into bed.

  Suppose Lacette or your father tries to reach you or your mother, her conscience needled. “To bad,” she said aloud. “I’m not running out of here tonight to meet Hal.”

  The following Monday morning, Kellie called her father as soon as she reached her office in City Hall. “Hi, Daddy,” she said, attempting to cover her guilt for not having called him once since he left home, for telephoning him only because she wanted something from him. “What’s with you these days?” She attempted to make her tone warm and breezy, but remembered that she didn’t treat her father in that manner, and tried to correct her error.

  “How are you, Daddy?”

  “I’m just fine. To what may I attribute this call? I’m glad to have it, but I’d given up thinking that you would ever find a reason to telephone me.”

  “Oh, Daddy. I’m not that bad.” She fished around in her mind for a way to introduce the matter of Lacette’s phone number that would prevent his realizing that that was her reason for calling. “I didn’t get promoted, and Miss Hood had promised me that I was up for a raise. I don’t have a future in that job.”

  “If you want to get ahead, Kellie, you have to perform better than your competition, and you must show loyalty to your employer. I’ve seen you in the street at two-thirty in the afternoon on a workday. While you were out, your supervisor probably checked on you, or maybe your competition reported you. I’m sorry you didn’t get the raise.”

  “But I always get my work done on time.”

  “Maybe. But you don’t go the extra mile. I know you don’t, because you’re prone to doing the minimum.”

  “What’ll I do? I don’t want to stay there.” She allowed a brief minute to elapse and then she said, “Maybe I’ll go to work with Lacette. She’s starting her new business, and she’ll need a receptionist, you know . . . a business partner, sort of.”

  The air was pregnant with his silence, and she knew without his saying it that he would oppose the idea. What was worse, he would probably counsel Lacette not to give her the job. She waited, while his silence cut her as would a Wüsthof blade.

  “So that’s why you called. Testing the water, were you? You want an opportunity to ruin Lacette’s business. Yes, ruin it, because that’s precisely what you’d do. A business doesn’t need flamboyance, Kellie; it needs skill and dedication, plus a lot of luck. I do not advise it.”

  “But Daddy! I need a job.”

  “You have a job. You need to pay more attention to it. How’s your mother?” he asked, letting her know that he’d said his last word on the matter of her working for Lacette. “I’m getting a bit worried, when I hear rumors that she was seen at Tad’s. I wouldn’t put my foot into that place.”

  “Do the people in this town do anything in their spare time other than gossip?”

  “That isn’t the point, and it would behoove you to remember it.”

  “Yes, Daddy. You . . . uh . . . you don’t happen to have Lacette’s new phone number, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. She just moved in Saturday. Ask your mother for it. And I want to see you in church next Sunday morning, young lady.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She hung up. “Whew! All I did with that call was to show my hand,” she said aloud.

  “What’re you griping about?” Mabel asked, as she walked in and put a cup of coffee on Kellie’s desk.

  “I gotta get out of this place. Adrienne said I was up for promotion, but I didn’t get it, and I’m not going to sit here as a glorified typist for the rest of my life. Posting and Advertising Agent is just a title. I don’t do a damned thing here but type.”

  “Promises in this place ain’t worth a rat’s tutu,” Mabel said. “You got to work your ass off and then you have to suck up to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who’s got any authority.”

  “And every Jane,” Kellie added. “Maybe I’ll get a job with Lacette. She starting her own business.”

  “Is she gonna make enough just starting to pay you forty grand, health insurance, and pension? If she says she is, honey, she ain’t real.”

  “I’ll only go in as a partner.”

  “Hmmm. Y’all go ’head and dream. Don’t cost you a cent.”

  “May I see you all in my office at once,” Adrienne Hood’s voice commanded over the intercom. The seven secretaries and clerks filed into Hood’s office and stood around the walls waiting for an invitation to sit around her conference table.

  “This will be brief,” Hood said. “From now on, Mabel will report to me and the remainder of you will report to Mabel. That’s all.”

  “What?” Kellie gasped.

  “You knew about this,” she said to Mabel as they left Hood’s office.

  “I didn’t have a clue. I knew she been checking on you, but I didn’t know why.”

  “Liar,” Kellie spat out.

  “Watch it girl,” Mabel said. “You’re forgetting that I’m now your boss.”

  She stared at the woman who, ten minutes earlier, had commiserated with her for her failure to get promoted. “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot I have to suck up.” She went back to her desk and sat there, fuming, while Mabel cleaned out her desk and moved to an office of her own. “Lacette had better give me a job, dammit. I’m getting out of this place.”

  Kellie dialed telephone information and asked for Lacette’s home phone number. “Hi, Lace,” she said when Lacette answered, unaware that by calling her sister Lace she had tipped her to expect trickery or some beguiling entreaty.

  “Hi. Are you at work?”

  “Yeah.” She recounted to Lacette her failure to receive the promised promotion, and asked her for a job. “You could use a partner,” she added, “someone with a lot of charisma and who’s attractive to men since most of your clients will be men.”

  “I’m sorry, Kellie. I’m not planning to run a bordello. I’m opening a marketing consultancy, and I’m unaware of your professional marketing skills.”

  She could feel the anger starting to boil in the pit of her stomach. “How can you say that to me?”

  “How can you suggest that I’m unattractive to men? Let me tell you something. You don’t want to help me succeed with my business. You’ll do everything you can to ruin it and me.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes, I do, Kellie. You have always wanted everything I had and you’ve taken it. The minute you get your hands on what you’ve been craving, you attempt to destroy it, and you have succeeded in doing that so many times, while I cried. You’ve destroyed my toys, books, clothes, and you’ve even taken my friends. I will never forget your taking my date to the high school senior prom. A week later, you refused to speak to him. Oh, no. This is mine, and you are not going to destroy it. You are my sister and I love you, but I have finally accepted that you don’t know what love is or what it means. I have a lot to do, Kellie, so I have to go now.”

  Kellie looked at the receiver, unwilling to believe that little meek Lacette had hung up on her. “She will live to regret it,” Kellie fumed. “I didn’t destroy anything of hers that she didn’t give me, and as for that pimply boy who took me to the prom, she didn’t lose much. Oh, yes. She will regret this.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Hi, Daddy,” Lacette said in response to her father’s call. “You won’t believe the proposition Kellie put to me this morning. I’m still in shock. It wasn’t so much what she wanted as the way in which she justified it.”

  “As long as you said no. That’s what matters. She mentioned it to me, and I told her she was up to no good. Don’t let her into your business in any capacity. She has a job, and if she’d take that one seriously, she’d get ahead. Anybody who can’t get promoted working for a government agen
cy isn’t trying.”

  It relieved her beyond words to know she had her father’s support, for she would never hire her sister in any capacity. “When are you coming to see my house? It’s a mess right now, but the part I’ve straightened up is attractive.”

  “I’m sure it is. How about sometime this weekend? I can see your house and your office space, too.”

  “Come over Saturday morning, and I’ll fix you some breakfast.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be over about nine. I can’t wait much longer than that for my breakfast.”

  She hung up and telephoned Lourdes, the Ladino woman who worked at the Belle Époque across from her booth and with whom she had developed good relations.

  “Lourdes,” she said when the woman answered the phone. “I hope to open my business a week from Monday, and I’m looking for a combination secretary/receptionist. If you’re interested or if you know a good person who is, please let me know.”

  “I don’t have a contract or any fringe benefits, because I’m substituting for a woman who went on maternity leave and hasn’t come back to work yet. I don’t think she’s coming back, and the management is taking advantage of me. What’re you offering?”

  “Thirty-five thousand, health insurance, two weeks annual leave and three weeks of sick leave with a doctor’s certificate.”

  “When do I start?”

  “Monday after next, same day as I start. Thank you, Lourdes. It’s a load off my mind.”

  She called Lawrence Bradley, gave him the terms and asked him to draw up a contract for Lourdes. “Make it for two years,” she said, with provisions for renewable if we’re both satisfied.

  “I’d start with one year. When is Reverend Graham planning to move into his house?”

  “He hasn’t said.”

  “Oh, well. I suppose that will take care of itself. You ready for opening day?”