“You’re right.”
Bert took Sam’s coat, hung it in a nearby closet, and walked with him into the living room. “I can’t decide how best to handle this,” he continued.
“I made us some coffee, and that’s about all I can offer. I don’t drink except for wine in a restaurant or as a dinner guest at someone’s home.” He poured coffee for each of them. “What’s eating you?”
Sam sipped the coffee and nodded appreciatively. “When Kendra first told me about her mother’s antics, her selfishness and self-centered behavior at her own daughter’s expense, I figured it made no difference to my relationship with Kendra.
“But when she attempted to steal Kendra’s pocketbook, it shook me up, and I still told myself that I could deal with it.”
“And now?” Bert asked him, leaning forward with his hands gripped tightly in front of him.
“You remember that second heavy snow storm?” Bert nodded. “I went to class that day, and a professor with whom I talk from time to time asked me if we could discuss one of our students. He lives in my direction and suggested that we stop at Rooter’s Bar and Grill, after which he’d drive me on home in his jeep. I saw a woman sitting at the bar and asked the bartender her name, because she looked so much like Kendra. That nearly got me in trouble with the bartender; the woman was Ginny Hunter and the bartender was her man. She’d been ignoring him and casing me over.
“I explained to him that she looked like my girlfriend, and after I confirmed her identity, the guy asked my girlfriend’s age. I told him. He went back to Ginny, and they had a row, during which she used some street language and stalked out. When she passed me, she invited me and my colleague to come home with her.
“Bert, I can’t seem to get over that. I know it has nothing to do with Kendra, but she’s Kendra’s mother, and she invited me and my colleague to a sexual romp with her. If I tell Kendra about this, it will hurt her terribly, but if I don’t tell her and keep this disgust inside of me, I may hurt her even more. Right now, we’re in partial limbo. Kendra wouldn’t even kiss me good night. I didn’t level with her, but she questioned my behavior, and I told her I had to resolve something.
“You can understand why you are the only person with whom I could share this.”
“I know Ginny is reckless, but I didn’t realize that she had developed such loose morals. She loves money, but she does not like to work and avoids it to the extent possible. The money I gave her to pay our mortgage, she spent on designer perfumes and clothes. The bank foreclosed, and she did little more than shrug. It took me almost thirty years to get out of the rut she left me in. I opened a butcher shop because I couldn’t pay those bills working for a salary, and I’d worked in a butcher shop while in college. It was the only trade I knew.
“If you’ll trust me, I’ll try to talk with Kendra about this. She can be hardheaded, but she’ll listen to me. It will take time, because I imagine that every time you put your arm around Kendra, you see Ginny. Kendra is the image of her mother at that age.”
“I know it’s best you talk with her, but I feel as if I’m shirking my responsibility. She may think that I don’t trust her.”
Bert looked to the ceiling, shaking his head. “It’s as if fate had ordained that Ginny destroy Kendra. Thwart her at one trick and she pulls off another one. Kendra wants Ginny to love her, but the woman is incapable of love. Kendra refused to appear in court against her for attempting to steal that pocketbook, explaining that Ginny didn’t actually steal it. I’ll think about it, Sam. Maybe I should prepare her for what you have to say, and you tell her yourself. But I agree with you that if you don’t tell her, your relationship will suffer irreparable damage.”
“Bert, I’m indebted to you for your help and understanding. I don’t want to hurt Kendra. I want to protect her from hurt and pain, but this news will hurt Kendra no matter how she gets it.”
“And if she isn’t told, she will hurt far worse,” Bert said. He shook his head slowly as if perplexed, and his next words held a tinge of sadness. “I’d hate to see the two of you lose that magical spark that you had—and which I’ve never experienced—but man proposes and God disposes. It’s the way of life.”
“One problem is that a relationship between a woman and a man either goes up or down; it never stands still.”
“I know, so it’s best we get to this as soon as we can.”
They said good night, and Sam headed home, in one sense relieved, but in another, more heavily burdened. He cared deeply for Kendra, and as he talked with her father, reflecting on what her life had been like, he remembered telling her that he’d always be there for her. Perspiration beaded his forehead, dampened his shirt, and made him want to pull over and take off his jacket. He kept driving. He’d gotten out of some tough spots and done it without compromising his honor and integrity. And he’d deal honorably with this.
Sam couldn’t know of Kendra’s decision to take her cues from him. If he called, they would talk; if he didn’t, they wouldn’t. She had been rejected by her mother more times than she could count, and it had yet to kill her. “That’s not a good comparison,” she said aloud. “I don’t really know what having a mother is like.”
Figuring that she could get in two or three hours of study before bedtime, she opened her notes from a class in public speaking, but as she began to review them, the telephone rang.
The caller ID didn’t appear on the screen, so she hesitated to answer. Well, it could be Sam, she thought.
“Hello.”
“Miss Richards, I’m sorry to call you on Thanksgiving night, but Mrs. Ginny Hunter was in an accident, and she said you should be notified.”
Kendra blew out a long breath, rested her elbow on the desk, and said, “Now what?”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am.”
“Oh, sorry. Where is she and who are you?”
“I’m head nurse on this ward at Freedmen’s Hospital. She said you’d take care of the bill.”
“How is she, and what happened to her?”
“According to the report I have, she was riding with someone who was speeding up Georgia Avenue at seventy miles an hour and totaled the car, crashing it against a wall. In the crash, Mrs. Hunter got a sprained left wrist.”
“I see. Who was driving that car?”
“She says that a man named Dunner was driving it, but he can’t speak for himself. He was thrown outside of the car, and she jumped out before the police came. The police think she was driving, because they found Dunner’s watch on the floor by the front passenger’s seat.”
Kendra didn’t doubt the police evaluation of the situation. It was just like Ginny to break the law—as she’d done if she was driving—and put the blame for the accident on someone else. “What is the situation with the man named Dunner?”
“He was thoroughly banged up, and he’s just regained consciousness. We expect he’ll survive.”
“Thank God, he’s alive.” She gave the nurse her uncle’s number. “Call this man. He may be able to help. I don’t have any money.” She had barely enough to meet her expenses and buy what she needed for her trip to Europe. Further, she did not believe that her mother had no health insurance; Ginny was too afraid of death to neglect a way of circumventing it. And she wouldn’t miss an opportunity to make Kendra feel guilty and spend money on her sprained wrist. She was not being unfair, just clearheaded.
“But she gave your name,” the nurse said.
Kendra bristled at that. “So what! I can give Michael Jordan’s name, though he doesn’t know I exist. In a similar situation, would you argue that he should be responsible for me on the strength of my having given you his name?”
“Somebody has to pay this bill.”
“Sure, and I imagine it’s a sizeable one, since hospitals are known to gouge so skillfully that they’re even able to get blood out of a turnip.”
Kendra hung up, refocused, and, within an hour, wrote a paper on women in front of the TV cameras. But the nig
ht was not to be hers. When the phone rang again, she knew someone was calling her about Ginny. Maybe her papa was right when he advised her to move from Washington as soon as she graduated.
She couldn’t see the caller’s ID. “Hello.”
“Kendra, this is your uncle Ed. Did you get a call about Ginny tonight?”
“Yes, sir. A little over an hour ago. I told the nurse to call you. I don’t have money for a hospital bill, Uncle Ed.”
“I’m sure you don’t. Here’s the problem. Ginny is on probation for driving an uninsured car with a suspended license. She was clearly driving this car, because the old man’s daughter swears that he doesn’t know how to drive, has never attempted to, and has never owned a car.”
“So who’s car was that?”
“It was a rented car.”
“Both of them were thrown clear of the wreckage, because they didn’t have their seat belts fastened, so Ginny thinks she can swear she wasn’t driving and get away with it, but she can’t.”
“I know. The man’s watch fell in front of the front passenger seat.”
“Right. And she’ll discover that her fingerprints are on the steering wheel, but the man’s prints are not. She could have killed someone. That car was going seventy-some miles an hour on a city street.”
“What will we do?”
“I put up ten thousand dollars for her bail last time, and I’ll never get it back. I’m not poor, but I plan to be able to say that years from now. Ginny is like an addicted gambler, and if you support a gambler’s habit, you’ll soon be as destitute as the gambler. I’ve finished.”
“But doesn’t that mean she’ll go to jail?”
“Kendra, I have three children to feed, clothe, house and send to college. Should I mortgage my children’s future for a woman who doesn’t give a damn what happens to anybody but her? Should I?”
“But Uncle Ed—”
“If you want to let her ruin your life, I can’t stop you, but I’m not going to tear my family apart on account of Ginny, and that’s final. Half of what I have legally belongs to Dot, and she doesn’t want to hear the name ‘Ginny’ again. Further, I don’t blame her. We’ve given Ginny enough of our money.”
Uncertain as to what to do next, Kendra let her mind drift back over the fourteen years since she had reached legal age and got her first job—summer work at the Hot Shoppes. Ginny badly needed a hundred dollars of her first paycheck—one hundred and fifty dollars for two weeks—swore she would repay it in a couple of days, and still hadn’t repaid it or the thousands of dollars she had borrowed subsequently.
Kendra telephoned her father and informed him of her mother’s latest caper and subsequent predicament.
“I see,” Bert said, when she finished the story. “So Ed has finally washed his hands. I can’t tell you how to behave with regard to your mother, and I can’t protect you from her exploitation; you have to protect yourself. But if you continue to support her when she breaks the law and violates normal civility, I’ll have to distance myself from you, because it’s too painful. I won’t want to know about it.”
“I’ve been planning to try and get professional help for her, but she won’t stay out of trouble. Psychiatric social workers for the city are not going to counsel her unless she gives them her court records, and she’s not going to do that. She’s on probation right now, and if this case goes to trial and she loses, she’s had it.”
“You listen to me, Kendra. No kind of professional is going to straighten Ginny out until she sees firsthand what it means to be in jail a couple of years as punishment for her crimes. And what she did tonight was a crime. How will you feel if she kills an innocent person after you put your life in hock and bail her out of this?”
“If you put it that way, I’d feel responsible for that person’s death.”
“And you would certainly share that responsibility. Look, Kendra, I’m tired of this. If you can’t see the necessity of allowing her to pay for her crime, there’s no use talking to you. Have you told Sam about this?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you’d better, but for heaven’s sake don’t let him think you’ve been agonizing over whether to bail her out. That reminds me. Can you come to the store tomorrow around twelve-thirty? I want to talk with you, and we can have a really nice lunch in the office.”
“Yes, sir. I don’t have classes tomorrow. I’ll see you then.”
That reminds me, he’d said. She went over the conversation, but nothing rang a bell. But she’d know what it was when she left him the next day, because it had to be what he wanted to talk with her about. Eleven-thirty and too late to call Sam. She wasn’t even sure that she wanted to.
She got ready for bed, but she didn’t feel like sleeping. Standing at her bedroom window looking out at the cold Thanksgiving night and the perfectly rounded moon hanging in the clearest and coldest-looking sky she could remember, tears splashed her cheeks. She wiped them away, impatient with what they symbolized.
That probably won’t be the last tear I shed, but I’ll be damned if he’ll ever know how much I hurt.
Chapter Twelve
Kendra dashed into her father’s store seconds before a torrent of freezing rain swept the streets of Northwest Washington. She braced her strength against the gust of wind blowing in from Dupont Circle and managed to close the door. Bert was taking an order by phone and hadn’t noticed her predicament.
“Papa, you have to do something about that door. It weighs a ton. Your canopy is elegant, but what good is it in a storm like this one?”
“Not too much,” he agreed, walking to her with arms outspread. He hugged his only child with more affection than he usually displayed. “I hope you’re hungry.”
She gazed at him with a frown. “Of course, I’m hungry, Papa. It’s lunchtime. Besides, my mouth waters when I’m anticipating your fantastic sandwiches.” Something wasn’t right. First that hug and now, this.... She realized suddenly that he was being protective. Hmm. Wonder what this is about.
“I’ll be in the office having lunch with Kendra,” Bert called to Gates.
Kendra hung her coat in her father’s office, pulled out his desk chair, and sat down. She looked around at the elegant room, the last thing you’d expect to see in the back of a butcher shop—away from the meat which hung in his huge basement refrigerator and was Bert Richards’s livelihood. He had covered one wall of the room with books on meat, butchering, and the preparation and cooking of meat, and also books on string instruments and music. A handwoven Turkish carpet covered much of the floor, and his desk, desk chair, coffee table, and an occasional table were of walnut wood. A loveseat in brown leather complemented the beigeand-dark-green carpet. On another wall hung two of his prize guitars, a Gibson Masterbuilt acoustic and an Epiphone Les Paul Standard electric. They hung against a sheet of green felt. If he had to discuss anything private with a customer, he did it in his office, and she knew that was his way of letting his customers know who he was.
“What did you want to talk with me about, Papa?” She said it as airily as she could and tried to push back her sense that she was about to hear something unpleasant.
“Let’s eat. I sent out for some fresh warm focaccia, and I’ve got a just-baked ham right out of the oven. I made a salad of tomato, basil, romaine lettuce, fresh mozzarella, and hearts of palm. Coffee will be ready in a minute, and we’ll feast.” He rubbed his hands together as if in anticipation of something wonderful.
What would have happened to me if he had been a different kind of father? It was no wonder that she loved him. “You must have been Italian in your former life,” she said, as a tease.
He covered his desk with a tablecloth, set the “table,” and placed the focaccia ham sandwiches, salad, split-pea soup, and coffee on it, sat down, and said the grace. She reached out, patted her father’s hand and chided, “You didn’t tell me we were having my favorite soup.”
“You don’t have to know everything,” he said, with a gruff
ness that, to her, spelled unarticulated affection.
So he wasn’t going to discuss whatever he’d had in mind until after he finished eating his lunch. She told herself not to second-guess him, but she imagined the worst. After they finished the tasty, enjoyable meal and she sipped coffee in an absentminded way, she heard herself ask him, “Is it about Mama or Sam?”
He ran his fingers back and forth across his jaw, poured himself another cup of coffee, and said, “Both.”
She set her cup on the desk with a thud. “What do you mean, both? They’ve never met.”
He took her hand. “Don’t jump to any conclusions. Just hear me out.”
Bert looked at Kendra with eyes that reflected his sadness. “Sam called me minutes after he left you Thanksgiving night. I had noticed that the wonderful spark of new love that I saw between the two of you when we had that picnic was no longer there. Still, his call surprised me. From the outset, he’s had a bad reaction to Ginny’s treatment of you, because he’s protective of you, and it’s impossible to protect a person from a mother like Ginny. But when she tried to steal your pocketbook, he became intolerant of her.”
“Why didn’t he tell me this?”
“I asked you to hear me out, Kendra. The day it snowed, he ran into Ginny at a bar where he stopped with a man who teaches at GW. Ginny was there. She flirted with him.”
“Oh, Lord. How could she?”
“She didn’t know who he was.” He decided to let Sam tell her the rest of the story. “Sam is not responsible for Ginny’s nasty behavior. He can’t bring himself to tell you about it, but when he looks at you, he sees her, and it’s killing him. And he told me that until he can clean it out of his head with the help of your knowledge and understanding of it, he can’t go further with you.”
She was standing then, shaking with a combination of fear and fury. “I only need to know one thing. Did he sleep with her?”
Breaking the Ties That Bind Page 22