“You know I did. CNN carried it live. They even mentioned it on the local station up here. I wanted to be there with you.”
“You were. You tend to leave a mark. Jack came by headquarters last night. He was asking after you. He wanted to know if you were doing okay. I told him you were.”
“Like you said, it will be better if I just move on.”
“You know that he loves you.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t have to. It just is.”
“He never said it.”
Sloane sighed. “I know it had to be hard on you to walk away. But I know you did what you thought was right.”
“He was never good about keeping his promises.”
“You know he wanted to give you the world, but he just didn’t know how.”
“No, Sloane. He wouldn’t.”
“And you just let that be his mistake.”
“Thank you. Thank you for staying with me.”
“Let me know if you need anything?”
“I will.”
“This too will get better,” Sloane assured. “I know you don’t believe it now, but time will prove me right. Trust it. Trust yourself.”
“Thank you.”
Thandy clicked the line closed, turned off the ringer, and struggled to get some sleep. Sloane was the big brother she’d never had. She hadn’t slept more than a few minutes at a time since the night she lost the baby. In another time, another place, she would have prayed for nothing more precious. But now, long after the dam broke, she could imagine no greater blessing than losing it. “In every blessing there is a curse, a curse in every blessing,” Cump would say.
Two hours later, Montana woke her with a glass of orange juice and the morning Sun-Times. Thandy sat up and drank nearly half the glass in a single gulp.
“There’s a call for you,” she said, handing her mother the cordless phone.
“What time is it?” Thandy said as she unfolded the paper.
“Seven.”
“Who would be calling me at seven in the morning?”
“He says his name is Jack.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Yvetta and Grace had next to nothing to say to each other for the better part of two months. Yvetta was still smarting over Grace’s history lesson. She didn’t need anybody to remind her that her daughter hadn’t been home and that she’d been too stubborn to drive up to Chicago to see about her. One would nod politely to the other if they met in line at the grocery store, although generally Grace and Yvetta avoided each other. Jesse Fields told Yvetta how silly it all seemed.
“Go on about your business, Fields. This ain’t your row to hoe.”
She hid behind her newspaper, hoping he’d vanish, but Fields kept talking. He snapped the straps on his bib overalls and said, “I see Holder has been around here. You ain’t thinking about paying him no money to handle that tree, are you?”
“What business is that of yours?” she said from behind the sports section she was pretending to read.
“None, I reckon,” he said from the other side of the chain-link fence. “I just know he ain’t never been no good on nobody’s job. Always leaves things half done. I hope you didn’t give him any money up front.” Fields shrugged his shoulders and walked away.
Now that Trip Holder had two hundred of Yvetta’s dollars in his pocket, he was less than enthusiastic about cutting down that tree. He’d arrived, looked at it up and down, and left earlier that morning. He’d promised to come back around noon, but it was nearing three o’clock in the afternoon and she hadn’t heard a word edgewise from him. Fields might have gotten right to it, but Holder had her money now. She’d knock his teeth down his throat if she ever saw him again.
Grace pulled her new white Cadillac into her driveway across the street, looked up at Yvetta sitting on the porch, and went inside her house. A short time later, Grace emerged in work gloves and a head scarf. She pulled weeds from the edge of the drive. Every once in a while she would steal a glance across the road. Yvetta noticed but ignored her and continued to read the paper. The air was cool. Grace went into her house and came back with a brown, hand-knitted button-down sweater. It was Yvetta’s and she’d borrowed it two winters back. Returning it today was as good of an excuse as any to go on across the street. She got as far as the gatepost when Yvetta saw her coming and got up to go in the house.
“I just want to give you your sweater back,” Grace called from Fields’s favorite spot on the concrete walkway.
“You’ve had it this long. Another winter won’t hurt,” Yvetta threw out.
“Yvetta Malone, you come on out here and get this sweater.”
Yvetta turned around and looked curiously at Grace.
“We’ll be neighbors for the rest of our lives, Yvetta. We can’t keep this up forever.”
“Suit yourself,” she said as she descended the stairs.
She joined Grace at the gate. Both gave short apologies and Yvetta invited Grace in for coffee.
“I could use a cup. Word around here is Trip Holder ran off with your money.”
“That don’t make it so. You want some sweet rolls?”
“Cinnamon?”
“You know it.”
Yvetta cut two thick slices and put them on the good plates.
“That tree is still leaning out back. One good wind and it’ll be lying across this kitchen,” Grace said as she mashed her fork into the soft brown cake. “Jesse says you gave him money up front.”
“Jesse Fields talks too much. He don’t know nothing about me or my money.”
“I can send my nephew Ronnie Lee around there to get it back, if you want.”
“I’ll see after Holder. He ain’t crazy enough to run off with my money.”
“You just let me know and I’ll send him on around there. If he puts up a fuss, Ronnie Lee’ll tan his behind.”
“No sense in that.”
“You should ask Fields to see about it for you.”
“The tree or the money?”
“Both. I reckon he’ll do just about anything for you, if you let him.”
“You know how I feel about menfolk in my house.”
“We’re just talking about your yard, Vetta.”
“I know.”
“You’re sweet on him, aren’t you?”
Yvetta blushed.
It had been a long time since a man came calling like Fields did. Simon used to wait for her at the edge of the school yard every day until she let him walk her home.
“I ain’t sweet on nobody.”
“You can tell that lie to somebody else. This here is Grace Goins you’re talking to. I’ve known you for forty-some-odd years. You’re about as sweet as the icing on this here pan of rolls about that man.”
“You don’t know everything. I ain’t got no eyes for that old cooter.”
“I know the smell of love when I see it.”
“Hush yourself.”
“You hush yourself. Yvetta, we were lucky enough to find decent men who loved us no end. To find it twice is a blessing. You can’t keep throwing God’s blessings away.”
Yvetta grew silent. She was thinking about how nice it would be to have Fields over for dinner one evening. She’d slow cook a big pot of beef stew and bake a pan of corn bread. He’d eat every bit of it while she watched. Jesse Fields was a large brown man just like her Simon. He had strong hands and big shoulders.
After his wife, Sadie, passed on ten years back, he’d retired from the Michelin tire plant over near Charlotte and moved back to Winston-Salem. They didn’t have any children and Jesse thought it might be nice to live closer to his brother Johnny. It wasn’t long before Johnny passed on, too.
Fields had been enamored with Yvetta since he returned to Winston-Salem. Dressed in overalls, a flannel shirt, and work boots, Fields would come to Yvetta’s at first light every Saturday. Without fail, the object of his affection would be sitting on the front stoop reading the morning
paper. She wanted to think he was just being nice, but he came by even when she treated him bad and left him standing on the sidewalk talking to nobody but himself. He’d look up at the sky and turn back home.
He lived alone, just three blocks from Yvetta, in a neatly kept brick ranch with perfectly trimmed hedges and white shutters that he painted every spring. Sometimes he’d see her in town at Drake’s Hardware and ask her about the tree or anything else that might need doing. She was generally polite, but mildly disinterested. Armenious Drake watched them avoid shopping on the same aisle until they’d meet at the cash register. Yvetta was occasionally short a few dollars and Drake would wave her on. Fields always picked up the tab.
Grace and Yvetta had just finished their second cups, talked politics like experts, and quickly decided that Sloane Faulkner, the newly elected governor, was something just short of a messiah. The mailman came making rounds just as they were anointing Faulkner Savior of All Things Colored. Yvetta leaned over and watched the mailman through the screen door, then got up and went outside. It was 3:00 p.m. on the nose. At least he was on time. Yvetta met the carrier at the gate and took hold of the thin stack of letters. The big yellow envelope announced in bold black letters that she may have already won twenty-six million dollars. She smiled slightly and threw it in the garbage can at the top of the driveway. She never remembered getting anything for free any day in her life.
You don’t always get what you pay for, but you always pay for what you get, she thought.
Trip Holder pulled his heap of a truck up in the drive a short time later and got his chain saw and some rope out of the back. She escorted him to the tree and left him to his own devices. She went back to the stoop and slipped on her dime-store reading glasses. She opened a pretty beige envelope that had a Chicago postmark. The Serenity Prayer was printed on the front of the card. Inside, Thandy’s handwriting read
Dear Mother,
We are in Chicago and doing well. I have a new job and a new house. I hope you will visit soon.
Love, Thandy.
She closed the card, said “Thank you, Jesus,” forgot the rest of the mail, and went into the house.
“Did the mailman bring anything good today?” Grace snooped.
“Just a stack of bills I can’t pay. Ed McMahon’s got a big check for me. He oughta be around here with some balloons and roses after a while.”
She slipped the card into her apron and sat down at the kitchen table. Grace knew her friend had something on her mind. The sound of the buzzing chain saw cranked up until the women could barely hear each other.
“What are you thinking about?” Grace yelled with her fingers in her ears.
“I ain’t studying nothing.”
“Are you sure? I can see the smoke billowing out of your head.”
The sawing stopped.
“If you must know, I’m thinking about going to see my grandbaby.”
“It’s been a while since you got over to Charlotte.”
“I’m thinking about going to Chicago.”
Grace smiled. They heard a crash come from the backyard and Holder was yelling. The women ran out the rear door and found him pinned under the tree. The trunk had missed him, but a spread of branches had him nailed to the ground.
“Lord Jesus, Yvetta,” Grace said, almost laughing. “Get on the phone and call Jesse Fields.”
“I don’t have his phone number.”
“Look it up. It’s in the book.”
Yvetta shook her head, went back inside, got out a phone book, and called Fields. He was at her door ten minutes later.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Dr. Whitehead pushed his chair back from the desk and said, “That’s not her.”
“What do you mean, that’s not her?”
“That’s not the woman who came to my office,” Whitehead said, shaking his head. “She’s a stone-cold fox. That’s for sure. But that’s not her.”
“And you’re sure about that, Whitey?”
“I’ve never been so sure about anything in my entire life. That’s not the woman who came to my office. They’re both mighty fine.”
Jack put the photo of a bikini-clad Angel in his breast coat pocket. Whitehead stood up, took off his lab coat, and hung it on a hook on the back of his door.
“She almost got away with this,” he said, sighing deeply. He rubbed both eyes with his thumbs. “I’ve got to admit, she had a good game going.”
“What made you question it?”
“She could’ve very well been pregnant and it wouldn’t have been anybody’s fault but mine.”
“You should bottle that and sell it.” Whitehead pulled off his tie.
“Sell what?”
“That sixth sense thing.”
“Funny, I don’t feel like I got a piece of sense in my head. I do know one thing. I’m going to call the curtain on this one.”
An hour later, sitting on his living room sofa with his legs comfortably propped up on the coffee table, Jack phoned Angel. She picked up on the first ring and he invited her to dinner.
“It’s time we talked about the future.” He smiled at the handset, fighting to contain his glee. “I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.”
Angel nearly tripped over the phone cord and raced to the shower. She frantically searched her closet for a black cocktail dress and strapped high heels. It would be a cool night out, but she knew Jack adored the sight of well-manicured toes. She emptied out the previous night’s tips and went to the nail salon. She was in a hurry, she explained.
“Red! You do red,” Ming Lei, her favorite attendant, said. “Your doctor friend will love red. Red say passion.” She giggled.
Angel sat back in the spa chair and fantasized about going to a fancy restaurant as the nail techs continued to giggle and chatted in some unintelligible language. She quickly decided that her dress wasn’t good enough, so she stopped by a boutique on the way home and bought an off-the-rack, never-say-die strapless for good measure, draining three hundred dollars from her debit card. She spent the next few hours washing and flat ironing her hair until it was bone straight. At precisely 7:00 p.m., she slipped on the new dress and strapped on her shoes. She lit a few candles, turned on some soft music, and waited impatiently for Jack’s arrival. Her girlfriend Stephanie called. Angel hastily explained the situation.
“He’s taking you to a restaurant?”
“Yeah, girl, isn’t that great!”
“His divorce isn’t final yet?”
“No, but it won’t be long.”
“How did he sound when you told him you were pregnant?”
“He wasn’t happy at first.”
“At first?”
“Well, he still isn’t fond of the idea.”
“Are you sure he won’t find out it was me?”
“Whitehead wouldn’t know me from a hole in the ground. By the time Jack figures it out, I’ll be on my honeymoon,” Angel said with confidence.
“How are you going to play pregnant?”
“I’m not. Just give me a few weeks. I stopped taking those damn pills before we went to Barbados. I’ll be pregnant before you know it.”
“Girl, he can count. He’s a doctor.”
“He’s still a man,” she said, checking her reflection. “Like I said, before he figures anything out I’ll be a very pregnant Mrs. Gabrielle.”
“Where is he taking you for dinner?”
“Some place called Angelo’s.”
“That’s way up in Alpharetta! I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I’ll send you a postcard from Anguilla.”
She said good-bye and quickly hung up when the doorbell rang. Angel straightened her dress, checked her makeup in the foyer mirror, and opened the door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Hey you,” she cooed as she invited him inside.
“Hey you, yourself,” he lathered.
Jack waited on the sofa as Angel sashayed around the house blowing out the candles.
He lifted an eyebrow and settled in for the show.
The drive to the restaurant was long and mostly silent. Angel tried to stir up some small talk, but Jack mostly just nodded, smiled, and kept driving. He didn’t say much more even after they arrived. They studied the menus and said little. When dinner arrived, Angel told him how nice she thought the restaurant was. She had ordered the duck; Jack frowned slightly at her plate. Angel looked up, twisted a half grin, and dug in.
By the time dessert arrived, Jack realized the clock was running out. He wanted to avoid a scene and thought surely she would mind her manners in public. But Angel was chewing her food like a racehorse. He’d chosen an out-of-the-way place—somewhere no one would know him. He was pleased with that now. He took a long pull on a flute of Prosecco and said finally, “I guess we have something to talk about.” Before she could open her mouth, Jack went on. “I cannot father another child.”
She suddenly stopped eating and looked away.
“I’ll be fifty in a few years and I just didn’t plan to spend my retirement that way. I’m sorry.”
The waiter came by and refilled their water glasses.
“Besides, you don’t want to raise a child alone. All the child support money in the world won’t make it easy. I’ve got to be honest with you. I can’t give you the big picture. You’re a nice girl and all, but you deserve somebody who can give you what you need.”
He almost sounded like her father. Jack was nearly twenty years her senior, a fact that wasn’t lost on him. He studied her face for a moment. She was very pretty, if not naive. He regretted leading her on, but she was a big girl, he reasoned. If she was big enough to play the game, she was big enough to get played.
“Of course, it wouldn’t be easy,” she said. “You do love me, don’t you, Jack?”
“I’m sorry. I know this hurts you.”
The clock stopped moving.
“Angel, you’re a nice girl and we had a good time. The truth is I never wanted it to be more than that.”
Neither took a breath for the next ten seconds.
“Let’s get something straight,” she said, sitting up in her chair. “I am pregnant and this is your baby. I am going to have this child with you or without you. Now I understand perfectly the need to keep things quiet. But your divorce is in the works and I’ll keep my mouth shut until it’s over.”
The January Girl Page 12