Destiny's Daughters

by Gwynne Forster

  At the intermission, the band members gathered around her. “He’ll be back tomorrow night,” Oscar said.

  “Right.” Konny tugged at her hand. “He probably went out of town on business and couldn’t make it back. Not to worry.”

  But their words didn’t placate her. “I wish I’d sent him a note thanking him for his support.”

  “Naah,” Raymond said. “Wouldn’t a been proper. He was probably a businessman away from home, and his work here is finished. Forget about him.”

  She didn’t think she would, for a second sense told her that he was unfinished business. However, the next morning brought a situation that forced her attention on Josh Medford. She answered her telephone at eight-thirty that morning.

  “Hello, Clarissa Mae. When you coming back home?”

  She grabbed the nearest chair when she almost fell to the floor. “Josh? For the Lord’s sake, where’d you come from?”

  “I’m home here in Low Point where you ought to be.”

  Anger furled up in her, slow and suffocating, like smoke from a bed of damp leaves. “What did you do with your little whore?”

  “Watch your mouth, woman. Just because you’re in the big-time doesn’t mean I’ll take any flak off you. I’m suing you for desertion.”

  Her bottom lip dropped, and her eyes narrowed to slits. “Is that so? Aren’t you in for a surprise?”

  “You the one,” he spat out. “I’m suing you for a divorce, damages, and spousal support, and my lawyer says I can get it.”

  She ground her teeth. “Yeah. If I know you, you got some chickenshit lawyer who doesn’t know what side is up. You’re an adulterer, and you’re planning to sue me for divorce? See you in court.”

  She hung up and called Raymond. “I have to leave,” she said after apprising him of Josh’s threats.

  “Too bad. Finish the week, and the band will work out the rest of the contract. The boss’ll be happy as long as he has a good jazz program.”

  Chapter 7

  She flew to Raleigh, rented a car, and drove to her friend Jessie Mae’s house in Low Point. As she traveled along the dirt road beside Gospel Creek—so called because the local Baptist ministers baptized their converts there—she couldn’t help wondering how the people who lived there tolerated their poverty. On the other side of the creek, a lot of people had big cars, nice houses, paved sidewalks, and white faces. When she lived in Low Point, she accepted it, though she knew it wasn’t right, but now, she just wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible.

  She parked in front of Jessie Mae’s unpainted, L-shaped house, a replica of the one she’d once called home, got out, and knocked on the back door.

  “Come on in, Clarissa,” Jessie Mae said. “I’m just getting together a little dinner.” In Low Point, people referred to the midday meal as dinner.

  “If I go to that old house, Jessie Mae, he’ll swear in court that I never left him.”

  “Girl, he ain’t spent a single night there since you left. Everybody knows he’s staying over there with Vanessa Hobbs and her low-life mama.”

  “Don’t I know it! And I have to put my life on hold to deal with his stupidity.”

  Jessie Mae looked hard at Clarissa. “Girl, you changed. He gon’ be surprised at how good you look, and you don’t sound like you gon’ take no mess, neither. Things going good with you?”

  “Yes, indeed. Thank the Lord. I should have trucked out of here the minute I caught that little strumpet in my bed.”

  The next morning, after an hour with Claude Hollinger, the local white—and only—lawyer, Clarissa drove back to Jessie Mae’s house, wondering how she had ever been satisfied to exist—she wouldn’t call it living—in Low Point.

  “If I was white,” she said later to Jessie Mae, “old man Hollinger would expect me to abide by the law, but since I’m black, he didn’t hesitate to skirt the law and get me a hearing day after tomorrow instead of the prescribed six weeks.

  “You got some extenuating circumstances you can prove, ain’t you?” he said, “and wrote that on the papers without waiting for my answer.”

  Two days later, she faced Josh in court, accused him of adultery with Vanessa Hobbs when the girl was only seventeen, and presented Jessie Mae and two other witnesses to support her accusation.

  “Divorce granted to Clarissa Holmes Medford,” the judge said at the end of the hearing. “Defendant’s petition for spousal support denied.”

  “It doesn’t pay to be a smartass, Josh,” Clarissa said to her ex-husband. “You got the short end of the stick. Nothing. Nada. How’d you find me?”

  His shrug said he’d tried and lost, and the result didn’t bother him. “Easy. You’re a bigshot now. Vanessa found where you were working in half an hour, told the man she was a neighbor, that your mother was dying and she needed your phone number. Piece of cake.”

  “How could you? My mother died when I was born.”

  “It didn’t hurt nobody. Dead is dead. You sure looking good.”

  She let a grin slide over her face. “I know. And the more money I make, the better I’m gonna look. Have a good life.” She walked out of the county courthouse, barely able to suppress a laugh. She would remember him standing in the open door, his hands on his hips, a frown on his face, and his mouth a gaping hole. Oh, how sweet it was!

  Clarissa broke her flight back to Kansas City with a stop in Washington. “I’m always starting over,” she told Lydia. “It seems like every time I get a good, strong following on a job, I have to leave it.”

  “You’re going back to Kansas City, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know whether my agent can book me in my old spot, and I don’t want to tour from city to city sleeping on a bus.”

  “Tell your agent that, and take charge of your life. You put Josh right where he belongs—out of your life. There are two things a woman doesn’t need: a limp penis, and a man who’s always somewhere else when he gets hard.” She didn’t think she would ever get used to hearing Lydia say things like that. For all her seeming primness, Lydia could spit out some earthy comments.

  A reply was in order, so she said, “Well, Josh walks like a man, talks heavy like a man, and sure looks like a man, but his similarity to one ends right there. I’m hoping eventually to find one who has all the attributes of a man, if you get my meaning.”

  “I get it, all right. He found himself a seventeen-year-old who probably didn’t know he was useless in bed. Good riddance!”

  Chapter 8

  A call to her agent resulted in Clarissa’s immediate return to Kansas City. “You’re expected back at Pilot III,” he told her.

  Raymond and Konny met her at the airport. “Where’s Oscar?” She could hardly breathe as she waited for their answer. She couldn’t sing those new songs without a piano player.

  Raymond draped an arm around her shoulder and hugged her. He was the only one of the three who took such liberties with her, claiming the obvious, that he was old enough to be her father. Indeed, she looked to Raymond for advice and comfort as one would to a father.

  “We’ve been working on a new song for you with my guitar rather than the piano backing you. Oscar’s at home scoring it, ’cause he writes a hell of a lot better than I do. You’ll love it. Say, what’s with your old man?” He picked up one of her bags, and Konny took the other one.

  “Josh Medford is history. My divorce papers are in my suitcase.” She wanted to ask them if Mr. X had visited the club during her absence, but she didn’t. He was a ship that passed her in the night, that slipped through her life without making a sound.

  “I wish I could find a good woman like you, Clarissa,” Konny said. “You don’t drink, don’t do drugs, and don’t sleep around. Something tells me you actually say your prayers. You got any real nice, single girlfriends?”

  “One. But she’s in Washington, D.C. She was kind to me when I first left that hick town I’d lived in all my life. Hmm. She’s nice-looking, too.”

  Kon
ny ran his fingers over his hair. “No kidding, Clarissa. I’m tired of these women who’re out for a good time and don’t care which man they’re with. It’s getting to the place where I feel like running when one of ‘em approaches me. Invite your friend to visit you for a weekend. I promise I’ll treat her the way I would my sister.”

  Raymond fastened Clarissa’s seat belt, ignited the Crown Victoria’s engine, and headed out of the parking lot. A chuckle escaped him. “That sounds good, Konny, but I bet you don’t even have a sister.”

  “I have three sisters, all younger that I am. I’m serious. When we got together with Clarissa, I was thinking of quitting clubs, settling somewhere and teaching music, but once we four got together, I knew we had something, and I couldn’t quit.”

  She thought of Cindy Ross, a woman who had befriended her, a woman alone in a town known to contain four women for every man, including the men with HIV, AIDS, various antisocial traits, and a different sexual preference.

  “Okay. I’ll invite her, and you’d better not let me down. I’ll send you to meet her and bring her to my house.”

  Konny’s white teeth sparkled in his broad smile that she recognized as a testament to his hope. I never guessed he was so lonely, she said to herself, turned and regarded him slumped in the backseat. “She’s a fine person, Konny, I hope the two of you like each other.”

  “If she’s got both feet and all of her front teeth, he’ll love her,” Raymond said. “This is no life for a single person, Clarissa, and you’ll soon realize that. Oscar wants us to rehearse tomorrow morning at his place.” She said she’d be there at eleven, their usual rehearsal time.

  To celebrate her freedom, she bought a new evening gown, a strapless red sheath that won high praise from her band members and gave her the confidence to wear dangling earrings and her hair combed down rather than up in a knot, Billie Holiday style. An unusually clamorous ovation greeted her when she stepped out on the stage. She bowed and, with her heart in her throat, glanced toward the table where Mr. X usually sat and froze when she saw him.

  Her heart began a wild gallop, and she didn’t try to inhibit the smile that spread over her face. She waved to him and, to her surprise and delight, he smiled and waved back. Without giving thought to why she did it or to anyone’s reaction, she walked over to Oscar and said, “I want to sing ‘Solitude.’ I know it’s not on the program, but—”

  “Okay,” he said. “Key of G,” and riffed off a few bars. She walked back to the microphone, waited for her cue, and lent her voice to Duke Ellington’s famous song. Even as she sang it, trying not to look at the man to whom she sang, she knew he would recall never having heard her sing it before and that he would realize the band hadn’t rehearsed it, for only the pianist accompanied her.

  “I’m brazen,” she admitted to herself at the end of the song, when Mr. X stood and applauded, telling her without words that he knew she sang it to him.

  “What’s with this dude?” Oscar said as they sat in their favorite bistro drinking coffee after the show. “You sang a love song to that guy, and he damned well knew it because he stood and applauded. Then, he high-asses it outta there without a word. I was sure he’d go backstage to see you. Man, that’s weird.”

  “Yeah,” Konny said. “That cat’s been freaky from day one. He’s either married and doesn’t fool around, or he’s gay.”

  “In either case, he’s acting like a gentleman,” Raymond said, “though I’m beginning to suspect that ain’t what Clarissa wants out of him right now.”

  “I’m not here, so you can talk about me all you want to.” A long sigh eased out of her. “I’d love to talk with him, so I’ll know what kind of person he is. He’s revved up my curiosity.”

  “Yeah,” Oscar muttered. “That ain’t all he’s revved up.”

  “I got you a recording contract with MCA,” Morton Chase, her agent, told her by phone the next morning, “and you’re in good company. It only records the top performers. You’ve gone as far as you can go without putting out some CDs.”

  In her excitement, she shoved the enigma that was Mr. X to the back burner of her mind, called her band members, and began the job of choosing the music for her first recording. She had never aspired to national recognition, but she seemed headed that way, and as long as her flag was waving, she wasn’t going to complain about the breeze.

  “I was hoping you would join us for Christmas,” Lydia said when they spoke the next day. “You haven’t met my son yet, and he’ll be home for the Christmas holidays. Well, he no longer calls this home, but I suppose I’ll always consider my home as his.”

  “I had hoped to be there, but I have to be in New York. My agent got me a record deal, and as their most recently signed singer, they didn’t take into account my convenience when they set the recording date. I’ll see you before the year is out, though.”

  She’d promised Konny to introduce him to Cindy, and she hoped she wouldn’t regret it for either of their sakes. Deciding to be straight with her friend, she phoned Cindy before leaving home for work that evening. “He’s real nice, Cindy, but I didn’t realize he was so lonely.”

  “If a guy has a hard time getting a girl, something must be wrong with him.”

  “Cindy, musicians attract a certain kind of woman, and if they want a different, more conservative type of woman, they have to look for her. I wouldn’t mislead you. They’d be all over him, if he encouraged them. Konny is tall, nice-looking, and clean cut.”

  “Okay. All I can lose is one weekend, and I’ll at least get to see you. Tell me when and where.”

  Chapter 9

  Counsel Patterson, Jr., or Konny, as he was known in the music business, grew up as the only son of a university professor and a mother who enjoyed wide recognition as a journalist. His family gathered in the dining room for family prayer on Sunday morning, went to church, the theater, the movies, jazz concerts, opera, and football games together and hadn’t owned a television until Konny was a senior in high school. He smoked his first weed at Harvard, lost his supper, and lay stretched out on his bed, drunk, for the next twenty hours. He hadn’t touched the stuff since. He didn’t tell people in the entertainment business about his background, that he was a classical musician with an advanced degree in the organ and certain string instruments. Not even Clarissa, Raymond, and Oscar were privy to that information. He’d tried for years to be “one of the boys,” but he’d only made himself miserable. Clarissa was his type, but she was also his boss. In any case, she looked straight at him on a regular basis and didn’t see a man, but a bass player. If she had shown even the slightest interest in him as a man, he’d have heated her up plenty.

  He called a halt to his ruminations, put on his overcoat, and headed for the Kansas City International Airport. Hopefully, nobody he knew would discover the gray pinstripe suit, light gray shirt, and red tie that he had on beneath his coat. He wore his one suit only when he was going to see his mother and father. They didn’t mind his pursuing a career in jazz rather than in the classical music for which he’d been trained, but they didn’t want to see him wearing what they called “prison clothes.” Halfway to the airport, he checked the glove compartment of his Chrysler New Yorker—Raymond and Oscar made jokes about his sedate car, but it suited him—to be sure he had the sign that read “CINDY ROSS.” He called the airline for the tenth time to determine whether the plane would arrive on time and then flipped on the classical music station. Damn! If he could just steady his nerves. She was only one out of a hundred and ten million American women over eighteen and under sixty. What was he so excited about?

  Holding the sign well out in front of him, he stared at every woman who walked through the door leading from the security area, and ninety percent of the time, he released a breath of gratitude when the woman walked past him. Suddenly, his heart battered the walls of his chest as a tall, dark, and pretty woman walked toward him, her face beaming with a smile.

  “Hi, I’m Cindy Ross, and you do not look li
ke a jazz fiddler, thank God.” She held out her hand, but he ignored it and hugged her. What a relief!

  “I’ll look like one Tuesday night,” he said, unable to stop laughing, so great was his sudden sense of well-being. “I’m Counsel Patterson, Jr., but everyone calls me Konny, and you’d better do the same.”

  She looked up at him, searching his face. “You are not what I expected, and I’m glad. Clarissa said such nice things about you that I thought she had exaggerated out of necessity. I didn’t believe her.”

  He smiled, partly because it was what he felt and partly because he wanted her to be at ease with him .He didn’t want to share her with the others until he got to know her, until he knew whether he was interested or merely attracted to her. “If you aren’t tired, we could get something to eat and I could show you Kansas City. We have some interesting museums and monuments.”

  “I’m not tired, I refused the airline’s gourmet pretzels, and I’d love to see the city.”

  He picked up her bag with one hand and took hers with his other one. “Girl after my own heart. I’ll phone Clarissa and let her know you’re here.”

  “Well,” Clarissa said when Cindy and Konny arrived at her house at about eleven o’clock that night, “I thought you got lost.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Cindy,” Konny said, taking her hand and smiling as he gazed intently into her face. “Good night, Clarissa.”

  “Don’t you want to come in?” she asked him.

  “Thanks, but I’ll let you two enjoy being together.”

  “Thank you, Konny. I appreciate your meeting Cindy for me.”