Breaking the Ties That Bind

by Gwynne Forster

  “I’m proud of you, but I see you missed the one thing I figured you’d learn at the start.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A beautiful woman with poise and dignity only has to ask. Italian men must have changed a lot since I was in Italy.”

  “You were in Italy?”

  He nodded. “Uh huh. Don’t change the subject.”

  She had to laugh. “Trust me, those men still like to make themselves useful, but I found it easier and safer to ignore their free-flowing charm and eager helpfulness.”

  He produced a delectable lunch, and she told him about her adventures and the report she wrote for class. “I couldn’t be happier,” he said. “Now tell me how things are with you and Sam.”

  “We love each other, Papa. I wouldn’t be away from him for one second if I could avoid it.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Remember that if you want to marry him, keep something for yourself.” During the next days, she digested those words over and over.

  She returned to the university the following Monday morning, and handed her paper to Professor Hormel.

  “Congratulations in getting back here on time. Most students find a reason to stay beyond the agreed time and offer a flimsy reason for having done so. Do you like what you’ve written?”

  “I’m afraid to say yes, sir. If you find that I did a poor job, I’ll be terribly disappointed. I did my best, Professor Hormel.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. That’s all I wanted from you.”

  After worrying over the matter for more than half of the day, Sam slapped his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “That’s it,” he said, took his cell phone out of his breast pocket, and telephoned Bert Richards.

  “Richards, Inc. Bert Richards speaking. How may I help you?”

  “Bert, this is Sam. I know you meet Kendra when she gets off from work, but I’d like to meet her tonight.”

  “Why, sure, provided it’s all right with her.”

  “Thanks. I owe you one.” He knew that Bert wouldn’t warn Kendra about the change, because he didn’t doubt that the man trusted him. “See you soon.”

  Why was he so nervous?

  It surprised Kendra that Clifton Howell would come to the studio to greet her on her first evening back at work.

  “Thanks for keeping your word and coming back here. You’ve got a lot of mail. I printed it out and saved it, because your box became full. I hope it went well and that it was everything you hoped for.”

  “It was wonderful, Mr. Howell. I know a lot more about a lot of things than I did when I left here.” It took her only a minute to reacquaint herself with the routine and, with Louis Armstrong’s “A Kiss to Build a Dream On” making her want to dance, she lifted the phone receiver after the first ring.

  “KT speaking. How’s your world? Mine’s fabulous!”

  “You sound happy.”

  How she loved his voice! “That’s because I am. What do you want to hear?”

  “Actually, I called because I’m picking you up tonight. I checked with Bert, and he said he didn’t mind if you’re all right with it.”

  “Why would I mind? I love being with you. I’ll be out front between five and ten after midnight. See you then. Kisses.”

  “Is this line open?”

  “Heavens no. Didn’t I say, ‘kisses’?”

  “Yeah. You did. But you didn’t say you love me. I need to hear it, Kendra, because I’m deeply in love with you.”

  Hmm. Was he feeling down? “Oh, Sam. You’re so special to me. I love you so much that it scares me sometimes. Bye.”

  It seemed as if midnight would never come. Why did Sam want to meet her, and why had he needed reassurance? Surely, he must know that their relationship wouldn’t have advanced to such an extent if she didn’t love him. She told herself not to second-guess him, that he’d tell her what, if anything, was bothering him.

  Kendra stepped out of the Howell Building and saw Sam move away from his car and head toward her. Her steps quickened, but she restrained the impulse to run to him. Before he reached her, a homeless woman intercepted her.

  “Can you help me, please?”

  Kendra gaped at the woman. She would recognize that voice anywhere. Well, maybe not. The woman wore an old coat inside out and had draped a ragged blanket over her head and shoulders. The blanket covered most of her face.

  “Please. You have plenty, and I don’t have anything.”

  Shocked, Kendra grabbed the blanket and pulled it off the woman’s head. “Mama! How could you pull a stunt like this?”

  “Can you let me have a couple hundred for food?”

  Horrified, Kendra asked her, “What do you expect to gain by pretending to be homeless?”

  “I didn’t pretend anything. You assumed it. I need some money for food. Would you see your own mother starve?”

  “You owe me so much money already. Oh, what the hell!” She opened her pocketbook and counted out one hundred and thirty-seven dollars. She kept the seven for herself and gave Ginny the rest.

  “Is this all you’re giving me? I know you’ve got more, but you’re so damned stingy.” She put the money into her pocket, turned to leave, and bumped into Sam. By chance, Kendra looked at Ginny’s clothes and then lowered her gaze to the woman’s feet.

  “You go out begging wearing a Burberry coat turned inside out and Jimmy Choo shoes? Well, I’m the fool.”

  As if Kendra hadn’t said anything, Ginny turned to Sam. “Can you give me a little something, mister?”

  “Not even if you crawled along this pavement begging. You disgust me.”

  It was one thing to know that he felt it and quite another to hear him tell her mother to her face that she was disgusting. Kendra grasped his arm. “Can we leave now, please?”

  Something was wrong. She could almost feel the chill coming from him. “Yes. Of course,” he said.

  He opened the front passenger door for her, helped her in, and hooked her seat belt, but she felt that he was only going through the motions, that his heart wasn’t in it. When he headed up Connecticut Avenue and still hadn’t said one word, she knew that whatever he’d planned would not happen that night. And when he drove directly to the building in which she lived and stopped, she unhooked her seat belt.

  “Thanks for bringing me home.” She didn’t wait for his response nor did she ask him if he wanted to come in. It gave her a small measure of pride to close the car door softly and strut off without looking back.

  You’ve won again, Ginny, but it won’t kill me. Not now. Not ever. And as for you, Sam Hayes, I don’t need your brand of love.

  Her home phone rang, but she didn’t answer it, and after ignoring it, she turned off her cell phone. She’d had enough pain for one night. Pain from her mother’s conscienceless, deceitful, and destructive behavior. Pain from Sam’s apparent inability to distinguish her from her mother.

  “I won’t let it bring me down. I’ve worked too hard, climbed over too many hills, and bucked too many storms,” she said aloud. “She gave me life, but she has never been my mother, and I’ve got to start thinking of her as just a woman I know.”

  Kendra went to bed, but sunrise found her wide awake. When her phone rang at eight o’clock, she checked the caller ID, saw that the call was from her uncle Ed, and answered the phone.

  “I heard your show last night. When did you start back?”

  “Friday. How’s everybody?”

  “Dot’s birthday is Sunday. Bert’s coming, and I’m calling to invite you to join us. Don’t buy any presents. Just come.”

  She wouldn’t be seeing Sam, so why not? “I’d love to come, Uncle Ed. What time?”

  “Three o’clock. Bert will pick you up. Whoever had your show while you were gone didn’t know a thing about jazz. Yours is much more interesting.”

  So Ginny heard that show and came out at the end of it for the kill. “Mama must have heard it, too, because she—”

  “She what?”

  �
�She was waiting for me when I came out of the building. Imagine, Uncle Ed, she was dressed to look like a beggar or a homeless person, and she was wearing shoes that cost anywhere from five hundred to a thousand dollars.”

  “Never mind that. Did she say anything to you?”

  “She asked me for money. I had a hundred and thirty-seven dollars, and I gave her all but seven. Do you think she thanked me? No. She said I was stingy.”

  “You’re behaving like a masochist. See you Sunday.”

  “That’s it,” Ed said aloud. “She’s incorrigible.” He wrote a letter to the judge on Ginny’s case, attached the bill stating the agreed conditions of Ginny’s release on bail, and requesting that her bail be revoked. He suggested that a year in a psychiatric treatment facility might help Ginny change her sociopathic behavior.

  “But suppose he sends her to jail instead,” Dot said when she read his letter.

  He stared at his wife. “Are you suggesting that she wouldn’t deserve it? The problem is that she’d be as bad as ever when she came out. She won’t seek help voluntarily, so this is the best I can do for her.” He sliced the air over his head. “I’ve had it up to here. One day she’ll kill somebody, and if I don’t get her some help, it will be my fault.”

  Kendra knew that Sam had tried to get in touch with her on at least four occasions, but she hadn’t answered the phone when she saw his ID. At first it was the pain, but later it was more—she couldn’t bear to hear him end it. She promised herself that she wouldn’t mention Sam’s behavior to her father, because he had already told her that no man would want Ginny for a mother-in-law and certainly not for the grandmother of his children.

  However, the first thing Bert said to her when she got into his car the following Sunday afternoon was, “How are things with you and Sam? He seemed awfully anxious to meet you Monday night.”

  “We’re in limbo. I don’t know why he wanted to meet me.”

  “That’s odd. Something must have happened.”

  “Something did.” She told him about Ginny’s appearance that night and Sam’s reaction.

  “I see. Either you or Ed is going to have to put her away. She’s not rowing with both oars, and she gets worse all the time.”

  “I doubt Uncle Ed will do anything. When I told him about it Tuesday morning, he barely reacted.”

  “Then, it may be up to you.”

  Bert parked in front of Ed’s white brick, two-story house on Montague Avenue in Westmoreland Hills, Maryland, a few miles from the District line. Kendra jumped out and started for the front door, but her father stopped her.

  “Didn’t I teach you not to go anyplace with a man who wouldn’t open the door for you? Didn’t I? You can accept a man’s assistance and still be a modern, independent woman, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ed opened the door. “I thought you guys would never get here. We’re all out back. Come on in.”

  Ed had set up the grill on the enclosed porch and, after the de rigueur greetings to Dot on the fiftieth anniversary of her birth, they devoured his grilled specialties—barbecued steaks, sausages, and pork chops, roast potatoes, onions, asparagus, and zucchini.

  Dot rubbed her stomach. “I’m going to pop.”

  “I’m not,” Kendra said, “and I’m taking some of this home with me. That’s the great thing about living alone—you can take your meals when and as you please.”

  Ed laid his grilling tongs on the table beside him, wiped his hands on his apron, and walked over to where Kendra sat beside his teenage daughter. “By the way, Ginny’s trial comes up Tuesday morning, and this time she is either going to jail or to a facility for rehabilitation.” Kendra’s gasp brought only a shrug from him. “I told her that if she approached you by mail, Internet, phone, or in person before you got your degree, I’d turn her in. That was the agreement between her, the judge, and me when I paid her bail the last time. Neither you nor anyone else can help, so don’t try to intervene.”

  “I didn’t realize that when I told you what she did.”

  “I know you didn’t. You’ve been playing masochist to her sadist most of your life, but not anymore.”

  “Right,” Dot said. “A person can’t abuse you unless you let them.”

  Kendra promised her uncle that she wouldn’t interfere, but she skipped class and sat in the courtroom while the judge heard the case. At the end, he sentenced Ginny to “one year in an institution for rehabilitation where you will be an inpatient. If you leave there without official permission, you will spend the remainder of the year in jail.”

  “I can’t go now, because I have to feed my cats and close my apartment,” Ginny said.

  “She doesn’t have any cats, Your Honor, because she has been allergic to cats since birth,” Ed said.

  The judge shook his head slowly. “A policewoman will go with you to pack what you will need in the hospital. If you give her any trouble, she will handcuff you and take you to jail where you will remain for one year. That’s all.”

  Ginny looked around and with head high, she walked over to Kendra. “You came here for the kill, did you? Ed wouldn’t have known about this if you hadn’t told him. I wish I’d never seen your daddy.”

  Kendra stared at the woman who gave her life. “I pity you,” she said, and she did. With that, she left the courthouse, headed for the subway, and half an hour later walked into her philosophy class. No matter what happened, she’d hold her head up. If she was going to let Ginny Hunter bring her down, it would have happened years earlier.

  She got through the school day, ate a ham sandwich with a container of hot cocoa at a fast-food shop on Georgia Avenue, and went to work. For once, she didn’t feel like playing jazz or making small talk with callers. When she answered the phone at nine o’clock, Jethro Hayes was on the line.

  He identified himself. “I always enjoy your program, KT, and not only the music, but your warm and witty exchanges with the listeners. I notice that you’re not feeling too well tonight, and I’m calling to let you know that your listeners always understand. I’d appreciate it if you’d play ‘If.’ Remember, KT, that there isn’t a river on the planet that hasn’t been crossed. Thank you.”

  He hung up before she could thank him for calling in. He had intended to cheer her up, but he had only reminded her of what she’d lost.

  When she got into her father’s car that night, she asked him, “What would you say if I decided to visit Mama? I don’t feel guilty about her having been sent there, because I know she deserved that and more. But I want to be sure that she is being treated for whatever’s wrong with her.”

  “Do what you think best, Kendra. You have to live with yourself. But I don’t think it wise for you to allow yourself to become a part of her treatment.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Have you and Sam terminated your relationship?”

  “He has telephoned me a number of times since that night, but I don’t take the calls. I just can’t face it.”

  “You can’t face what? You don’t know what he wants to say.”

  “Papa, he told me more than once that he loved me. That night, when I was so miserably unhappy, was the time for him to demonstrate it.”

  “And since you’re perfect, you don’t plan to forgive him. Right? According to you, you gave her a hundred and thirty dollars, and her response was that she knew you had more and that you were stingy. Not a word of thanks. Then she turned to him and asked him for money. I’m sure he thought you shouldn’t have given her a dime.”

  She turned so that she could see his face. “That’s what you think, isn’t it? Would he have loved me more if I had walked past her, and got into his car? To me, that would have been heartless.”

  “I divorced Ginny for doing to me what she’s doing to you, and I don’t blame Sam for being afraid of her and of what would happen to him if he married you. You need to show him that you won’t let her use you as she did that night. Have you gotten the result of you
r story on Italy’s food and its people?”

  “Professor Hormel told me that he’ll have a full report at the end of the week. He’s read it, and he likes it.”

  “Then I don’t suppose you need to worry.” He parked in front of the building in which she lived. “Think about what I’ve told you tonight.”

  “Yes, sir.” She hugged him. “Good night, Papa.”

  Sam sat in the lobby waiting for Kendra. He had telephoned her nearly a dozen times, but she hadn’t taken his calls, and he had refused to resort to subterfuge and conceal his caller ID. He wanted her to answer his calls in full knowledge that it was he on the line. She entered the building with her head down, looking neither right nor left. He didn’t like that, because he’d never seen her walk with her head bowed. He walked with quick steps to arrive at the elevator when she did.

  “Wh . . . what are you doing here?”

  “You ask that? I’ve called you nearly a dozen times, but you won’t take my calls. I need to talk with you.”

  “Oh. Does this mean I’m finally going to know what you wanted to say to me the night you confused me with Mama and clammed up on me? Let me tell you something. You said you loved me, but when you had an opportunity to prove it, you shut down like an engine that had run out of gas.”

  With his hand at her elbow, he urged her into the elevator, though he knew that in her present frame of mind she was hardly aware of it. “Are you saying that you don’t want to hear what I have to say, that you don’t care how I felt that night?”

  “How could you have felt, compared to what was going on inside of me when you didn’t support me?”

  The elevator door opened, and he walked with her to her apartment door. “I wanted to see you that night to ask you if we could plan a life together, and if you would be willing for us to get psychiatric help for your mother. I have discussed her case with experts, who say we should never cater to her, because that only encourages her in her self-centeredness. You gave her almost all the money you had. I saw how she acted and heard what she said to you, and I knew she always acted that way, and yet you still pamper her. It was too much for me to accept. I haven’t cried since my mother died, but that night I cried for you, for me, and for her.”