Once Upon a Project

by Bettye Griffin

  In truth, she wouldn’t have minded lingering if it would have made Bruce worry a bit, but Franklin Reavis’s demeanor, while not outright rude, wasn’t exactly welcoming, either. She had the distinct impression that he was anxious for them to leave, probably so he could question—no, make that interrogate—Elyse about every detail of last night. Franklin looked pretty good for his age, still handsome and fit, with only a smattering of gray in his hair. She wondered if the old boy was having performance anxiety and feared Elyse would step out on him if she got the chance. And Elyse had spent an awful lot of time with Kevin Nash. . . .

  Susan told herself that was silly. Elyse talked to Kevin because if she hadn’t, she would have been sitting by herself. Grace had been off with one of the Wade brothers, Pat had circulated most of the night, and of course she’d been with Charles. She entertained that awful thought about Elyse only because of her own bad behavior. All during the ride home early this morning she allowed herself to relive the feel of Charles’s warm lips against her cheek, savored what he’d said to her about his reasons for never marrying. Worst of all, she remembered how they used to burn up the sheets so many years before. She’d fallen asleep last night with the thought of his arms holding her close, of her shuddering in ecstasy and crying out in release. She scolded herself for allowing herself to dream of another man when she had a husband, but she couldn’t deny that the memories made her happy.

  As with any marriage, no one outside the household really knows what kind of problems a married couple has. Anyone who looked at her and Bruce would swear they were the ideal pair. The truth was, of course, quite different.

  She looked forward to hearing what Bruce would have to say about her little impromptu outing when she got home.

  “We’re back,” she called out as she followed the kids inside the house.

  No one answered. “Daddy’s not up yet,” Quentin reported from the upstairs landing. “Your bedroom door is still closed.”

  For a wild moment she considered the possibility that Bruce had a woman up there with him. No, she decided, he’d never do that. If he was cheating—and there seemed little question that he was—he’d do everything possible to keep her from finding out. Besides, she’d told him they’d be back first thing in the morning.

  “I’ll go in and see if he’s up,” she said. “You guys go wash up and change your clothes. We’ll go out to breakfast as soon as Daddy and I get ready.”

  She watched in amusement as her son and daughter raced each other to the bathroom they shared. She waited until they were safely out of the way before slipping into her bedroom.

  Bruce was stretched out in the center of their king-sized bed, snoring loudly.

  He looked so sweet and innocent, and Susan couldn’t help smiling at him. Memories of good times they’d spent together rushed at her like an ocean wave, wiping out the thoughts she’d had of Charles Valentine like so much sand. There were so many good things to remember about Bruce.

  They met on a short flight from Detroit to Milwaukee, eight years after she broke it off with Charles and moved in with her mother and stepfather in Kenosha, Wisconsin. At first they chatted across the aisle, and then they changed seats when it became apparent the flight would not be full. After deplaning, they found an airport lounge and stopped in for a couple of drinks and some chicken wings.

  They went on their first date that Saturday, and from then on they were inseparable. It amazed Susan how quickly their relationship progressed. Love had eluded her since her breakup with Charles so many years before, and she was now thirty-two. Her younger sister Sherry was already married with children, and Susan spent more and more time fearing that she’d walked away from her only shot at love and happiness, that giving up Charles Valentine meant she’d never get another chance; and then suddenly she and Bruce were madly in love.

  She finally walked down the aisle at the somewhat advanced age of thirty-six, flanked by both her parents, who managed to put aside their animosity for the day and unite in pride for their firstborn. Susan felt she was too old to have a traditional bridal party and opted to have Sherry as her matron of honor, with Sherry’s two daughters as her flower girls. She and Sherry, three years younger, had never gotten along particularly well—Susan disapproved of Sherry’s choice to associate exclusively with white people, plus she suspected that Sherry hid her racial background. Susan tended to be a loner and hadn’t formed any close friendships since her childhood. She still kept in contact with the three girls she’d grown up with, but after leaving Chicago she spoke to them only sporadically. If she had to choose just one of them to be in her wedding it would be Pat, but she didn’t want to hurt Elyse or Grace’s feelings, nor did she want a large number of attendants. Besides, choosing Sherry made her mother happy. She’d always wanted her two girls to be close.

  Susan prayed her father would stay off the bottle long enough to come and thus make her bridal party a true family affair, and to her relief he did.

  Frances and David Bennett had bravely defied the norm by getting married, a move white men rarely did with black women in the mid-1950s. They met on the job at the hospital where he worked as an X-ray technician and she as a nurse. David Bennett was about the only white man who lived in Dreiser, as Chicago’s public housing was strictly segregated. Dreiser had been built specifically for blacks, although a smattering of Hispanics got in as well.

  But David’s drinking began to get out of hand when his two daughters were still small, and their home life consisted of loud late-night arguments between husband and wife. Eventually Frances threw him out, and life quieted down. Frances moved out of the projects after Sherry graduated from high school, settling in Kenosha, across the Wisconsin state line. A few years later she remarried, this time to a black man, Sam McMillan. David, who’d never remarried, always stayed in their lives, and even now Susan checked on him weekly and went to see him at his apartment in Libertyville every so often. Sherry, who lived closer, saw him more frequently. He still drank occasionally, but kept reasonably busy in his retirement and even had a girlfriend, a white woman in her late sixties who didn’t seem fazed by his marriage to a black woman and his racially mixed offspring.

  For a long time Susan and Bruce had a good marriage. A strong one, too, she believed. Then came her cancer diagnosis, her lumpectomy, and radiation treatment. It had been her plan to have plastic surgery to correct the shape of her right breast, but she was tired of doctors’ offices and medications, the whole thing. She also feared that further intervention, even a fairly minor one, might spur aggressive growth of a still-hidden offshoot of her tumor. Besides, surely a little cone-shaped protrusion on the outer side of her breast couldn’t come between her and Bruce.

  When Susan realized the truth, she felt like she’d been floored by a punch to the belly. As she lay in bed night after night with a foot and a half between her and Bruce, she remembered newly married female celebrities who’d released interviews with statements like, “Nothing can ever break us apart,” and “I’ve finally found my soul mate, and we’ll be together forever.” How embarrassing it must have been for them to have to eat their words after their marriage collapsed, admitting that they were in trouble almost from the beginning, and that their husband cheated, refused to work, or spent all their money. But those marriages usually lasted only a few years. She and Bruce had just celebrated their thirteenth anniversary last September when a routine mammogram revealed an abnormality. Thirteen years. If her husband had been so superficial all along, surely she would have noticed it before then. Maybe it was something psychological?

  Susan confided in her doctor, who told her that Bruce’s reaction wasn’t all that uncommon, that many men had difficulty when their wives were diagnosed with female cancers. She suggested a counselor for them to see together, but Bruce refused to go. There was no need, he insisted.

  “Bruce, you don’t touch me anymore,” Susan objected. “Of course there’s a need. Our marriage is in trouble. We have to do someth
ing.”

  He continued to refuse, but after that he made more of an effort to resume their sex life. Every seven or ten days, and only when she was covered from the waist up.

  On the surface everything seemed normal. There was no shouting, like what had gone on between her own parents. Bruce steadfastly denied having another woman in his life. He said he was merely getting older, and it was natural for their sex life to slow down a bit. He went off to work every day, she stayed home, drove the children to school and picked them up, using the hours in between to keep the house clean and well-stocked and the bills paid. But a vital part of her life was missing, and she wasn’t happy.

  Seeing Charles Valentine again made her more aware of that than ever.

  Susan still loved Bruce, but she wasn’t blind. She didn’t believe his repeated claims that he wasn’t having an affair. Her husband enjoyed sex too much to be satisfied with three or four times a month.

  She knelt on the bed and gently shook him awake. His eyes flew open, and his handsome face looked almost comical with its wide-eyed, startled expression.

  “Relax. It’s not a stickup.” It occurred to her that he might have been dreaming of some woman with perfectly formed breasts, and she added with a touch of sarcasm, “It’s just your wife and kids.”

  He broke into a grin. “Hey! You’re back early.”

  He looked and sounded glad to see her. She forced herself to keep her optimism in check; she’d been fooled too many times before by what turned out to be false hope. “I thought I’d treat everyone to breakfast. I feel I owe the kids something special for being such good sports. I had no idea when I left here yesterday that we’d be spending the night at Elyse’s.”

  “That must have been rough for them, with no kids their age there. But I guess there’s always TV.”

  “Actually, they both said they had a good time with Elyse’s daughter, even though she’s nineteen. I told them to go get washed up, but I’m going to take a quick shower. Would you—” She broke off once she realized she’d been about to ask if he wanted to join her. His being glad to see her was one thing. Taking a shower required her to be naked, and Bruce initiated sex only if her torso was covered. His actions made it abundantly clear that he had no interest in her from the waist up.

  Acting on a sudden instinct, she swiftly reached below the covers for his groin. Her fingers closed around his erect penis. The muscle surged against her palm, like it had a life of its own. It hardly felt like the sex organ of a man over the hill. Hell. The way it twitched, it felt like it was about to start dancing. And why not? She and Bruce used to make love in the morning all the time....

  “Go on and take your shower,” he murmured, his eyes closed.

  She snatched her hand away like he’d slapped it.

  Tears ran down her face as she washed her body in the shower. Her own husband couldn’t bear for her to touch him. How pitiful was that?

  She washed her face, scrubbing away all traces of tears and patting it dry. She had to put up a brave front for the sake of Quentin and Alyssa. If this is the way Bruce wanted it, then that was the way it had to be. But she did have, if not an out, at least a diversion.

  She had Charles Valentine’s cell phone number tucked in her wallet, behind her credit cards.

  Elyse didn’t have to wait long for Franklin to begin his inquisition. She had just come back into the house after waving good-bye to Susan when he said, “So, was it really worth it to drive into Chicago twice and risk your life for those people?”

  “Stop exaggerating, Franklin. I hardly risked my life. You make it sound like the South Side is a war zone.”

  “It’s a high-crime area, Elyse.”

  “And I’m a product of that high-crime area. I don’t think it would be right for me to forget about that, just because we live in this lily-white suburb. It’s part of me. That’s why Susan brought her kids. She wanted them to see that plenty of kids out there don’t live in mansions on the banks of Lake Michigan.”

  “You and your friends all did well, but it’s been forty years since you lived there. I doubt that the people living in those projects now will do anything with their lives.”

  “That’s the image Pat is trying so hard to fight. She says that the middle class and upper-middle class, and even the wealthy, view people living in the projects as caught in a hopeless web of poverty, drug use, and crime. Years ago, the projects were just a stepping stone to better things, even if you had to live there for fifteen or twenty years. You didn’t stay there forever. We all made it out, but Pat lost both her brothers to the streets, Clarence to drugs and Melvin to gun crossfire.”

  The first funeral Elyse had ever attended had been that of Melvin Maxwell. She’d been in her first year of college at the time, and it remained the saddest function she’d ever been to. Melvin was Pat’s youngest brother, just sixteen years old, a brilliant student surely destined for great things. His death resulted from one of those in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time circumstances. While walking home from school he’d been caught in gunfire from two warring gangs, and his life and promising future came to an abrupt end from a .38-caliber slug to the head.

  “I guess Pat doesn’t have anything else to do with her time. But you can’t say that. She’s not married, but you are.”

  Elyse smiled at him sweetly. “Yes, I’m married. I know it. But you’re the one who seems to be forgetting your responsibilities.”

  Chapter 14

  Late March

  Chicago

  Pat’s fingers stroked her throat as her other hand held the phone receiver. She’d been on the phone all afternoon, taking calls from attendees of yesterday’s luncheon expressing thanks to her for organizing it. She knew everyone meant well and she was happy that they’d enjoyed themselves, but she was beginning to chafe at hearing the same words over and over from different people. Even listening to her own mother telling her what a good job she’d done didn’t relieve her weariness. She just hoped that when the newspaper article was published next week she wouldn’t get yet another rash of congratulatory phone calls.

  She forced herself to concentrate on her mother’s words. “Daddy and I are very proud of you, Pat. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Mama. Thank you.” She sensed her mother wanted to say something else, and she merely waited.

  “Pat . . . I saw Ricky and his wife at the restaurant yesterday.”

  Her shoulders slumped. Whatever her mother wanted to say about Ricky, chances were that she didn’t want to hear it. Last night, the smiles and good wishes finally over with, she’d come home and cried her heart out. “Yes?”

  “He looks like he’s done pretty well for himself. I ran into his mother in the washroom.”

  In an instant Pat’s upper body went from loose to tense. Nothing good could come of her mother’s encounter with Miriam Suárez, who had been deeply offended by the Maxwells’s opposition to a match between Pat and Ricky. An early resident of Dreiser like the Maxwells, she and Pat’s mother used to sit together on playground benches while their children napped in their strollers, and later when they were old enough to play. Many a time Pat recalled going to the Suárez apartment to borrow a cup of rice, or Mrs. Suárez coming by to borrow an egg or two.

  The comfortable situation of being friendly neighbors ended when a furious Miriam came to the Maxwell apartment after Ricky’s talk with Moses. There’d been shouting all around. Fortunately, the Suárez family moved out of the projects shortly afterward. Rumor had it that Miriam had tracked down her ex-husband for back child support, and since her boys were now grown, she put the money down on a house.

  “What did Miriam say?” Pat asked her mother now, her curiosity winning out.

  “She told me that her son owns two restaurants, including a very popular place downtown. She asked if I’d ever been there. She said he has a high-rise condo overlooking the lake plus a summer cottage in Michigan.”

  “In other words, she drove home her point that he
r son was plenty good enough for your daughter,” Pat said tightly.

  “And she said one more thing before she left. She said that he’s happily married to a Latina girl.” Cleotha paused. “Then she asked about you.”

  “I see. She reminded you that you and Daddy didn’t want me to marry a man who was both poor and Latino.”

  “It was a dig at your daddy and me, Pat. Miriam never had anything against you, even if she might have preferred for Ricky to marry someone Spanish. She wanted to drive home her point that Ricky is doing so well because of what Daddy said about him being a burrito boy.”

  “He said Ricky was just a busboy, Mama. Daddy never called him a burrito boy to his face.” Even her father shied away from making ethnic slurs, at least in the person’s presence. He’d endured enough of being called a nigger down in Arkansas. “And she knows I never got married. She just wanted you to admit that I’m an old maid.”

  “Now, Pat—”

  “It’s all right, Mama. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  The conversation with her mother left Pat feeling a little sad. She tried to summon enough energy to get up and do something constructive, like vacuum. But she couldn’t get the memory of yesterday’s luncheon out of her head.

  It seemed like she’d gone through the day in a daze. Somehow she managed to greet Ricky at the door, to be introduced to his wife, and to make her speech without looking at him. She’d even stopped at his table when she went around the room with the cordless microphone, asking attendees to tell their former neighbors a little about their current lives. Ricky and his wife shared a table with Teresa Navarro. Teresa had joined her family in Dreiser the year the Twenty-Two Club girls turned eleven. At the time she barely spoke a word of English and was placed in the fourth grade, two years behind where she should have been. Blessed with a quick mind and superior intelligence, she mastered her new language and ended up eight years later as school valedictorian. Teresa had a crush on Ricky and didn’t like it when he only had eyes for Pat. But Teresa hadn’t done badly. She held a PhD and worked as a medical physicist for one of the leading medical centers. She’d married a white guy, and it amused Pat to see how uncomfortable her husband looked at the Soul Queen. He had a Gold Coast “I’m the majority” look about him and had probably never been around so many people of color at one time in his life.