Once again she glanced at the Trents, sitting so companionably in the oversized chair. What an attractive couple they made. Suzanne had been surprised to see how young they were. Memberships at the golf club didn’t come cheap, and most of the members were in their forties, fifties, and sixties. But of course, Errol Trent was some kind of a dentist—an oral surgeon, Brad had said—and could probably afford it. She put his age in the mid- to upper thirties, while Micheline appeared to be about thirty.
Thirty. Suzanne swallowed past a lump in her throat. How nice it would be if she could be that age again. She’d be forty-two this year and was acutely aware of getting older. Her son Bradley was fifteen and way taller than she was. Being around younger women like Micheline gave Suzanne the unwelcome feeling of being past her prime.
Right after the first quarter, Micheline announced she was bringing out the refreshments. Suzanne quickly offered to help, not so much to be of assistance than to maybe get a chance to chat privately with her hostess, get a better feel for her personality. She seemed like a fun type. Maybe they could even get to be friends. Suzanne didn’t play golf, but she’d go down to the club and wait for Brad to come off the links if she had a friend there she could have dinner with.
“Everything’s so lovely, Micheline. Did you do this all yourself?” she asked as she admired a tray of honey-dipped chicken drummettes Suzanne removed from the oven, where they’d been keeping warm.
“Sure. It was easy.”
“I guess it helps that the Super Bowl is on a Sunday, huh? It gives you the whole weekend to prepare.” Suzanne watched as Micheline removed a raw vegetable tray from the refrigerator, taking it from her so she could retrieve other foods. “I always liked the idea of having the big game on a Friday night, but I guess that would make preparation difficult for women who aren’t stay-at-home moms like me.” Suzanne did enjoy informing people that she was a homemaker and had been for years. Many of the wives of Brad’s colleagues had high-powered careers, but her status as housewife and stay-at-home mother had excused her from having to discuss a professional life.
“Well, I might not be a mom, but I don’t work.”
Suzanne nearly dropped the tray. A few cherry tomatoes did fall off before she placed it down on the countertop. She swiftly replaced them. “Oh. You don’t?” She didn’t understand. The Trents had no children. What was Micheline doing staying at home?
Of course. Like herself, Micheline had simply opted to stop working because she didn’t have to. It was one thing to practice medicine or law, teach school or even run your husband’s office. But if you had no training to do anything of substance, why go out and punch a clock every day for ten dollars an hour when your husband brought in big bucks?
Suzanne listened intently as Micheline explained she had been ill at the time of her marriage to Errol and that he insisted she stay home and recuperate. Micheline concluded her explanation with a shrug. “One thing just led to another. It’s been almost three years, but Errol has never pushed me to go back to work. I think he enjoys having dinner ready when he gets home, or being able to invite guests over for dinner on a weeknight. I won’t say I haven’t enjoyed taking a break from working, but after all this time I’m starting to get a little restless. I’ll probably start job hunting soon.”
“I hope you won’t have too hard a time. It’s a tough job market out there.” Suzanne forced herself to sound sympathetic, but she couldn’t understand why Micheline would want to shelve books at the library or deal with irate callers on a customer service line somewhere when she could stay at home.
Micheline removed a large glass bowl containing tossed salad from the extra wide refrigerator. “I don’t expect to have that difficult a time. There’s a lot of law firms in town.”
“Law firms?” Suzanne repeated uncertainly.
“Yes. I’m a trilingual paralegal, English, Spanish, and French.” Then Micheline asked, “What did you do before you had your kids, Suzanne?”
“Trilingual, huh? How interesting.” So Micheline wasn’t like her, a high school graduate with no professional work experience. Now that the ball was in Suzanne’s court, she scrambled to come up with an answer that wouldn’t make her sound insignificant. “Before my son was born I . . . uh, worked with patients at a diagnostic center.”
“Oh. X-ray technician?”
Suzanne wanted to say yes, but she couldn’t take the chance of exposure if Micheline asked for details of her work that she couldn’t supply, or worse, mentioned something about her former “career” to Brad. “Actually, I ran the office.” That wasn’t true, either, but she couldn’t say that she’d merely greeted patients and set up appointments for ra-diologic screenings and follow-ups, not after Micheline said she was a paralegal. Suzanne wasn’t even sure what that was, but it sounded important. Micheline must really know French inside and out if she spoke it on the job. And she knew Spanish, too? Suzanne didn’t think she’d ever met anyone who spoke three languages, not even among those in Brad’s circle.
“Did you work at Brad’s diagnostic center?” Micheline guessed.
“As a matter of fact, yes. That’s where we met. He and his first wife were divorcing at the time.” That wasn’t exactly the truth, either. Brad was very much married when Suzanne was hired for the reception desk.
Suzanne still remembered the jealousy she’d felt toward Lisa Betancourt from the moment she saw her framed photograph on Brad’s desk. Lisa was pretty, still had a trim figure after having had a child, and she worked as a pharmacist. Suzanne always had the same thought whenever Lisa stopped by the office to see Brad: Who is this woman to have so much, while I have next to nothing? Lisa would flounce in and ask for Brad in a pleasant but impersonal manner that nonetheless made Suzanne feel like, well, the help. Never mind if she was an employee. Lisa had a way about her that made Suzanne feel about three feet tall.
Sometimes Lisa would bring their cute toddler daughter, Paige, with her on visits to Brad at the office. Suzanne hated them both. Not only did Lisa have poise and intelligence, but she had style as well. She knew how to pair a tailored blouse and expensive-looking leather flats with jeans in a way that looked downright elegant, and how to add little accessory touches like tying a silk scarf around the strap of her shoulder bag. As for little Paige, she was just too adorable, even then with a strong resemblance to her mother. Suzanne learned from staff gossip that Lisa came from a family in Georgia who had been major players in the civil rights movement of the sixties. Important people had come to their home.
Suzanne, on the other hand, had grown up in Palatka, Florida, the eldest child of teenage parents who married four months before her birth. The marriage almost immediately went on the rocks, but a reconciliation years later resulted in two sons and a brief period of nuclear family life before the marriage busted up for good. Suzanne had only seen her father, Derrick Hall, Sr., a few times since. Suzanne’s mother, Arlene, later had an affair with a younger man that resulted in an unplanned pregnancy. Arlene’s lover was long gone by the time she gave birth, and she gave her new baby daughter the same last name as her other children, Hall.
Theirs had been a hardscrabble childhood, with telephone and electricity often being turned off. They never really went hungry, but they often ate unorthodox meals, like melted cheese sandwiches for breakfast or pancakes for dinner. Their house—not much more than a shack, actually—which Arlene took over after her parents passed away, was always in need of repairs. The roof leaked, the faucets had to be turned gingerly or else they would fall off, and the hot water heater worked intermittently.
While Lisa had gone to college and then pharmacy school, Suzanne had gotten a job after high school to help her mother pay the bills. It didn’t seem like a big deal. Suzanne’s intelligence wasn’t geared toward books and learning. She was more savvy than smart.
So there she was, looking on enviously as little Paige ran to her father’s arms, as Brad laughingly scooped her up and draped an arm around Lisa. Then the att
ractive family would stroll back into his office, like they didn’t have a care in the world.
Even Brad himself had little to say to her back in those early days. Suzanne doubted he even knew her name. But then something happened. Lisa’s visits became less frequent and then stopped altogether, and the office scuttlebutt was that the Betancourt marriage had crumbled.
Suzanne engaged in watchful waiting, and the moment Brad removed Lisa’s photograph from his desk she tentatively knocked on his office door and asked if he could answer a few questions about medicine for a school paper—fabricated, of course—her little sister was doing. He did, which led to him asking about her family, which led to him asking about her.... Suzanne did her best to be sparkling and enchanting. She recognized that Brad was lonely and uncertain from the breakup of his marriage, and she wanted to be the one who brought laughs and fun back into his life. It seemed only natural for Brad to ask her to join him for dinner, and from that point on neither of them ever looked back.
The only sticky point in their marriage was when, shortly before they moved into their dream house in Jacksonville, they learned that the house under construction next door was being built by none other than Lisa and her second husband, Darrell Canfield. Sometimes Suzanne still couldn’t believe that such a crazy thing had happened. Brad decided he wanted to live closer to Jacksonville rather than the remote area they resided in on the outskirts of St. Augustine, well south of the city. He purchased a newly constructed home on a riverfront cul-de-sac from a colleague whose marriage had broken up. He and Suzanne didn’t learn that the house under construction next door belonged to Lisa and Darrell until right after they closed, when the Canfield family pulled up to inspect the progress of the construction. That represented the beginning of years of tension between Suzanne and Lisa. In the five years since, they’d managed to make the best of it. Suzanne treated Lisa politely to make Brad happy, and she suspected that Lisa tolerated her at Darrell’s insistence.
“Well, that was a lucky break,” Micheline said now. “I’m sure you were only too glad to offer comfort and a shoulder to cry on to the boss during his time of trouble. And look what ended up happening,” she concluded brightly.
It was all Suzanne could do not to smash Micheline’s face into the bowl of cheese dip she’d just refilled. Micheline had her figured like a chess move. She knew how Suzanne had schemed to land Brad and was making fun of her.
Suzanne managed to control her temper and get to her point. “Well, it all happened a long time ago. We’ve been married sixteen years,” she said, her voice steady with pride.
“Sixteen! My, my. How old are your children, Suzanne?”
“Our son is fifteen and our daughter is thirteen.”
“Wow. They’re almost grown up. When you said you were a stay at home mom, I imagined your kids were much younger. It’s been what, eight or ten years since they started school?”
Once more Suzanne’s hackles were raised. Micheline was getting bolder. She’d practically come out and called her a lazybones for staying home while her children were teenagers. Suzanne straightened her spine, her shoulders back and chest out. If it’s war she wants, it’s war she’ll get. “It’s true they’re older, but there’s still plenty to do. My son plays basketball, and my daughter and I go to most of his games in the afternoons. And I like to be there to watch my daughter run track. Besides, with me being home and then knowing I’ll be home after they get out of school, there’s no hanky-panky with friends of the opposite sex. Teenagers can get into all kinds of trouble when they’re not supervised.” She smiled and smugly said, “But of course, you have to be a mother to understand that.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Micheline clapped her palms against her hips after setting down more dishes from the refrigerator. “That’s everything. Can you help me carry these to the table, Suzanne?”
“Sure. That’s why I’m here.” She sounded as cheerful as she felt.
She’d just put her hostess in her place.
Chapter 2
“Nice couple, huh?” Brad remarked as he climbed behind the wheel of the Cadillac SRX he’d downsized to after turning in his massive, gas-guzzling Escalade.
“Charming.” Suzanne had to fight to keep the sarcasm she felt out of her voice. All the bad vibes she initially detected from Micheline Trent came back after their encounter in the kitchen, and this time they were there to stay. No one in attendance was as happy as Suzanne when the game ended and they could leave. As uncomfortable as she felt around Brad’s first wife Lisa Canfield, Suzanne would have preferred to have spent the evening with her and Darrell than with that slinky bitch, Micheline. At least Lisa only spoke to Brad in English . . . and she didn’t flirt with him at all. “Uh . . . is this your first time meeting Micheline?”
“No, I’ve met her a couple of times before. She comes to the club and meets Errol for dinner. Sometimes she plays.”
Suzanne’s acknowledgment came out as a grunt. Another reason for her to dislike Micheline. She played golf, a sport Brad was crazy about that Suzanne had no interest in.
“Errol talks about her all the time,” Brad continued. “He’s crazy about her. They’ve only been married a few years. You know how it is.”
She looked at him sharply. Was he saying that love diminished after a few years? They’d been married a long time now. Yes, they’d been under some strain lately, but surely he loved her as much now as he did in those early days . . . didn’t he?
Suzanne’s annoyance toward Micheline Trent transformed into cold fear for her own future. If Brad got tired of her, what on earth would she do? She was past forty. Brad would soon be fifty, but age didn’t matter for men, unless, of course, they were fat, ugly, and poor, none of which applied to him.
Once more she remembered how Micheline bent over Brad and how his gaze lingered on her cleavage. She wasn’t sure if Micheline was up to something or not, but she decided to nip it in the bud and send a clear signal that Brad was off limits.
She was silent for a few moments as she thought of how she could accomplish that. “Brad,” she finally said, “I was thinking it might be a nice idea to celebrate your fiftieth birthday with a really nice party. What do you think?”
“Sounds good to me. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather take a vacation somewhere, maybe a cruise? Your mother can take care of the kids while we’re away.”
The thought of romance on the high seas held plenty of appeal and would probably help them strengthen their somewhat shaky bond, but she also wanted to get the point across to Micheline Trent that she and Brad had not only a happy marriage, but a strong one, and to tell her to butt out. A party, on the other hand, held at their home with Micheline present, would do the trick. Suzanne would make it the party to end all parties. “No, I think I’d rather do the party,” she said after a few moments thought. “Maybe we can go up to Vermont this summer.” What she and Brad really needed was time alone, not to be on a cruise ship with hundreds of other people, even if Brad had a tendency to spend much of his time fishing when they were up in New England.
“All right, a party it is,” Brad said. “Be sure to invite the Trents.”
“I wouldn’t dream of overlooking them,” she replied sweetly.
“It’s probably just as well we don’t ask your mother for any favors, baby sitting or otherwise.” Brad grunted.
Suzanne tensed her shoulders. He’d complained about her mother on the way over. Was he about to start in on her again? She vowed to stay cool and just let him blow off steam. She couldn’t really blame him for being frustrated about her mother always being late with her rent, but it was her mother. What was she supposed to do?
“It’s probably better if we don’t ask her for any favors if I end up not renewing her lease,” he remarked.
She gasped. Venting was one thing. Putting her mother out was something else. “Well, that’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”
“She’s been late with the rent four times in the last six month
s, Suzanne. The terms of her lease say I don’t have to offer her a renewal if she’s late more than three times.”
Suzanne looked straight ahead at the curving roadway and tried to convince herself that he was bluffing. He wouldn’t actually evict her family. This had been a source of contention between she and Brad for months now. She thought if she just rode it out it would go away, but it seemed to be getting worse. “I’d really like to stay out of this, Brad.”
“I’m sorry I even rented to her,” he muttered.
“You know, Brad, Mom’s been working all the overtime she can get.”
“Suzanne, your mother knew how much the rent was when she signed the lease. If it was too much for her, she shouldn’t have agreed to take the house. She could have stayed in that apartment she had; it was less money.”
He had a point, and she knew it, but to agree would be disloyal to her mother. “That apartment was a dump. You don’t realize how hard it is for her, Brad. I think only Matthew is giving her any money for household expenses.” Suzanne hoped she could evoke sympathy from him, but his next words told her he remained unmoved.
“That’s ridiculous. Your mother has three grown children living under her roof, and they all work. If she declines to accept any money from them, she’ll have to make up the shortfall herself and not complain that it’s too much.”
“Come on, Brad. Kenya only makes a little past minimum wage. And Derrick works for you. You know how little he earns.”
“Matthew is a medical records clerk, Suzanne. He probably makes only a little more than I pay Derrick to run my Subway franchise. The difference is that Matthew is trying to help your mother out, while Derrick only thinks of Derrick.”
Once Upon a Project Page 38