by Mary Monroe
“And you boys know I have a lot of contacts at my church,” Sister Beulah piped in. “Hundreds! And a lot of them run businesses. Sonny’s Rib Joint, my niece’s nail shop . . . and my godson still has that radio show that he does three nights a week. I can get us some free air advertising time.”
I was so excited, I could hardly contain myself. However, I was still nervous about running my own business. I had always heard that the first six months were the hardest. That was not so true in my case. By the end of the first month, we had three new clients. One had agreed to work with us only on a month-to-month basis, but the other two had each signed a yearlong contract.
The money was good, but not good enough yet. In addition to handling my car payments, new credit card charges, my child support payments, my employees’ pay, and other expenses, I had to deal with the financial hole I was still in. I still owed my brother and Rachel, but they had told me to get my business situated first and then worry about paying them back. And that was just what I was going to do. I didn’t have to worry about Josh. He was blood and had always had my back—and I knew he would continue to do so. However, I wanted to make sure Rachel stayed on my team, and I could think of only one way to do that: I had to marry her.
I had hinted at matrimony a few times just to feel her out. Each time she had been receptive. I eventually made up my mind that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this wonderful woman, but I had to be sensible about it, too. I decided to wait another year before I proposed. I needed to be sure that I had all my ducks lined up, that my money was right, and that Rachel continued to please me. . . .
Chapter 40
Rachel
I HAD A VERY DEMANDING JOB. MAINTAINING THE SCHOOL’S FINANCIAL records, processing payroll checks, and looking at various other numbers all day long, five days a week, was a real challenge. But I loved my work. No matter how busy I got, I never complained. I was good at prioritizing my schedule at work and at home. So when Seth asked me to help him out as much as I could, I did.
“Sister Beulah’s not too good with numbers, and the woman we just hired to help her with payroll has her hands full right now. I know you’re busy, baby, and this will be a one-time favor. I’m sure I’ll be able to hire an accountant in a few months. So if you could do my taxes this year, it would be a great help and a load off my mind,” Seth said to me. It was the second week in January 2000.
“You know I’ll find the time,” I chided. “Just give me all your paperwork and your W-two documents, and I’ll get on it right away.” Every year, I did some of my coworkers’ and friends’ taxes to make a little extra money on the side. Some of them had been paying H&R Block and other tax preparers up to five hundred dollars to do what I did for a fraction of that amount. Seth was the only person I didn’t charge.
The second Friday of the month, I got home around six. Seth was already in the apartment. He looked frazzled, so I was not surprised to see an empty wine bottle sitting on the coffee table, next to an empty glass. He sat cross-legged on the living room floor, with a small stack of papers in front of him. I squatted down and joined him on the floor.
“Baby, let’s get this shit done as soon as we can. I want to get Uncle Sam off my back as soon as possible,” he said, wiping sweat off his forehead.
“If you have all the tax forms and everything else, I can get started right after I fix dinner.” I wiped some of the sweat off his forehead with the back of my hand. “Stop stressing so much,” I scolded, rising from the floor.
“Cool!” Seth wasted no time handing me two sheets of lined yellow paper on which he had listed all his business expenses and deductions. There was something on every single line. I was shocked to see how much he had spent on business lunches, office supplies, and other things last year.
“Do you have all the receipts for your deductions?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t worry about receipts,” he answered, giving me a dismissive wave. “It’s too much trouble to fiddle around with a nuisance like little scraps of paper for months on end, baby.”
A sharp pain shot through my chest. I was concerned about Seth’s nonchalant attitude regarding something as serious as receipts. “You might need those ‘little scraps of paper’ someday. What about the office supplies you’re claiming? You told me that Howard took office supplies from his other job.”
“Yeah, I did tell you that. So?”
“Well . . .” I paused and looked at the sheets of paper in front of me. “According to your notes, you paid several thousand dollars for office supplies. And if Howard is sneaking to use the copy machine at his other office, how can you claim several thousand dollars for photocopying, too?”
“Look, baby. This is the real world. Every business stretches the truth when they do their taxes.” Seth laughed.
Stretching the truth was one thing. Telling straight-up lies on tax forms was another. I stared at more outrageous claims on his itemized list. When I saw what Seth had claimed as his total income, I almost fainted. “You . . . you claim you made only twenty thousand dollars last year?” I looked at him with my mouth hanging open. “Honey, you made a lot more than that.”
“I thought you were going to help me,” he said with a pout.
“I’m trying to, but I am concerned about all these things you want me to put on your tax forms. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Look, if you want to help me, do that and let me worry about the tax people. My signature will be the only one on the forms.”
“All right, Seth.” I was more than a little concerned, but I refused to show it. I didn’t want him to accuse me of trying to tell him how to run his business, or his life, for that matter.
After I changed clothes and started dinner, I gathered up all of Seth’s paperwork. It took me two hours to complete his forms, and because of all his deductions, he did not owe the IRS and the state any money at all. They owed him! He had almost three thousand dollars coming back to him. The one thing I made him promise me was that if it ever came up, he would say that he had done his taxes on his own. I didn’t want my name connected to this in any way.
“I’d rather get a whupping than have the tax man come after me,” I said. I laughed, but I was dead serious.
“Baby, I wouldn’t do anything to put you in jeopardy. If there is a problem, I will take full responsibility.” He signed each form with a flourish and a toothy grin.
“Seth, you should make a copy of everything when you get to the office tomorrow. Make an extra copy for me to file with the notes.”
“Will do!” He whistled as he folded his tax forms and slid them into his briefcase.
It turned out to be a pleasant evening, in spite of my concerns. After dinner we watched a couple of TV movies, and then we went to bed.
Ten minutes after we made love, Seth was snoring like a moose. I went to sleep and forgot all about his fraudulent tax claims.
Seth rarely called me up at work. When he did, it was usually to complain about something his son’s mother had done or said. When I saw his name on the caller ID on my phone that afternoon, the day after I’d done his taxes, I braced myself.
“What’s up, baby?” I greeted.
“Rachel, can you take off early today?” Seth sounded like he was out of breath, which was not a good sign. The first thing that came to my mind was that his son’s mother had done something really stupid this time. Last month she had called Seth and demanded money to get her car fixed, and Seth had sent it to her right away. The next day he had run into one of her sisters and had been told that she didn’t even have a car. “I need to talk to you.”
“What did Caroline do this time?” I asked, rubbing my tightening chest.
“Nothing that I know of,” he replied with a chuckle.
“Then what do you need to talk to me about? The way you sound, I know something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong, honey,” he chirped. “As a matter of fact, everything is very right.”
“D
id you get that account with the pizza parlor across the street from your office?”
“Yes, we did. I sent the contract over to Josh’s office so he can make sure everything is worded right. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure I can get off early. Do you want me to meet you somewhere? Or is this something we need to discuss at home?”
“You really like that Dino’s place, huh?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Then meet me there.”
I didn’t know what to say or think next. Seth sounded cheerful, but he could have been having a nervous breakdown, for all I knew. And it would not have surprised me. He had been under so much pressure lately.
“Seth, I’m not meeting you anywhere until I know what it is you want to talk to me about,” I said firmly. I still got angry when I thought about how my relationship with Jeffrey had ended. If I was going to get dumped again, I didn’t want it to be in a public place, because I knew I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions. “If you want to end our relationship, that’s something you need to do in private. Is that it?”
He snickered. “I am not about to let a good woman like you get away from me.” He paused, and I heard him suck in some air. “Since you asked, I’ll tell you. Or ask you, I should say. What are you doing for the next forty or fifty years?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?”
“Woman, I’m trying to ask you to be my wife!”
“What?”
“I didn’t want to do it over the telephone! But since you don’t want to meet me in public, I’ll ask you again when I get home this evening.”
“Seth, are you serious?” A couple of our teachers were lurking around my desk, giving me some strange looks. “Let me go somewhere so I can call you back on my cell phone,” I said, already rising. “I’m going to hang up and go tell my supervisor I need to leave early. What time do you want me to meet you?”
“Right now, if you don’t mind, but let’s change the location. Meet me at the pad. And just to let you know, I spent two days and a fortune on your engagement ring, so . . . so I hope you won’t disappoint me.”
“Seth, the answer is yes,” I whispered. “I will marry you.”
“This is a big step, baby. Don’t you want to give me your answer to my face?”
“I will do that as soon as I see you,” I squealed. “But I’m telling you now, I will marry you.”
Chapter 41
Seth
AFTER I HAD PRESENTED RACHEL WITH A ONE-AND-A-HALF-CARAT diamond engagement ring last night, we were so anxious to make love, we didn’t even make it to the bedroom. We did it on the living room couch. When I got up to go take a shower, Rachel picked up the telephone and started calling up her friends and coworkers to share her good news.
Two hours later, she was still making telephone calls, talking to each person for ten or fifteen minutes or longer. She had called up Lucy first. After she had spoken to four or five more, she’d called Lucy again. I motioned to the bedroom door and blew her a kiss, and then I went to bed.
We were not going to have a big church affair, much to Mother’s dismay. I didn’t want to spend all that money for one thing. My business was doing really well, but I had recently racked up a lot of new expenses. The new office furniture, several new suits and shirts, and upgrading our electronic equipment had cost me a pretty penny. Wining and dining potential clients kept me in the hole, something I had been trying to get out of for years. Even though it was a fairly shallow hole now, it was still a hole, and I didn’t want to slide into it any deeper. What was even better about not spending money on a big wedding was that Rachel had made it clear to me that she wanted something small and private.
I was one happy man. With the exception of my son’s mother being such a pain in the ass, I couldn’t imagine my life getting any better, and I wanted everybody to know how I felt. A good job and a good woman were the two things that most of the men I knew bragged about. I had both, and I couldn’t stop running my mouth about how lucky I was.
Now that Rachel had accepted my marriage proposal, I had even more to brag about. “I must be the luckiest man alive,” I boasted a month after I had proposed to Rachel. I had met Billy McGinnis, one of my occasional poker buddies, for drinks at a bar near the auto body shop he managed.
“Dude, you just happened to be in the right place at the right time. You just better be glad I was not between honeys when Lucy was running around, trying to find somebody to hook Rachel up with,” Billy teased. “By the way, how is Lucy-goosey doing these days? Is she available?”
“You’d have to ask Lucy that yourself,” I said with a sigh. “But I’d be careful with her. Wear protection, even if you just kiss it. That puppy between her thighs must get more traffic than the Golden Gate Bridge during commute hour. I hear she goes around like a record.”
A thoughtful look crossed Billy’s face. “Hmmm. And on top of that, last time I saw her, she looked like she’d put on a few pounds, too.”
“She’s as big as a whale, bro. You can do so much better.”
“True that. Now, you look here. I’ve asked you this before, and I’m asking you again. Does Rachel have a sister?” Billy asked, slurring his words. He had arrived at Kelsey’s Bar an hour ahead of me and was on his third martini.
“And I’ve told you before that she has a younger sister named Janet,” I replied. “I saw a picture of her, and she’s as fine as Rachel.”
Billy was practically drooling. “Is Janet coming out here for the wedding?”
“Huh?” I hesitated for a moment, recalling the strange look on Rachel’s face last month, when I had told her how anxious I was to meet her family. Anyway, her verbal response to my mention of her family had been just as odd as the look on her face. “My family? Oh! You’ll meet my family soon enough,” she had told me. I’d socialized with her uncle Albert a lot over the years. He seemed like an okay dude. However, he was somewhat evasive when I tried to get more information about Rachel’s family from him. That bothered me. . . .
“Answer my question, Seth.”
“What did you ask me?” I was still thinking about that odd look on Rachel’s face.
Billy rolled his eyes and gave me an exasperated look. “I asked if Rachel’s fine sister would be coming out here for the wedding.”
“I’m not sure. But her uncle Albert, who lives in the Bay Area, will be attending the wedding,” I told Billy.
“If the sister, Janet, does decide to come out here, I want to be the first to know. I can’t wait to meet her.”
“I can’t wait to meet Janet myself,” I said, finishing my drink.
I planned to ask Rachel more about her family as soon as I got home. To my surprise, she brought up the subject a few minutes after I walked in the door.
“I just got off the telephone with my mama,” she chirped. She gave me a quick kiss.
“She’s doing all right, I hope.”
“Oh, she’s fine, honey.” Rachel removed my briefcase from my hand and placed it on the console by the door. Then she took my hands in hers and stood in front of me, grinning like a fool. “She’s almost as excited about me getting married as I am. You wouldn’t believe how skeptical she once was. After my daddy died, she pretty much gave up on serious romance.” Before I could respond, she added, “But now she can’t wait to meet you.”
“I’m happy to hear that. When is she coming? We’ll pay for her flight.”
“I doubt if she’ll ever come out here. Or go to any other place outside of Alabama.”
“What? Why is that?”
“My mama told me that a lady she used to work with was on that Korean airplane that the Russians shot down back in eighty-three. Because of that, she doesn’t fly anymore. And she’s not too crazy about getting on a bus, because her parents died in a bus accident when they were coming from a church event in Birmingham. She won’t even get on a train.”
“Does she drive?”
“What about your brother? Do you think he’d be willing to drive your mother and your sister out here? We can help with the gas and other travel expenses.”
Rachel sniffed and took her time responding. “Uh . . . I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think he can get the time off from work?”
“My brother, Ernest, doesn’t work. He doesn’t drive, either. Neither does my sister, Janet.”
Now I was real curious. Her brother being unemployed was not so unusual, but since she didn’t elaborate, I didn’t ask more about that. But I was curious as to why her siblings didn’t drive. I didn’t know any persons over the age of sixteen who didn’t. Driving a car was one of the most basic functions in a person’s routine.
“I can understand your mother not driving. My mother doesn’t drive, either. She hasn’t driven in years. But if you don’t mind me asking, why do your brother and sister not drive?”
“They were never interested in learning how, that’s all.”
“Don’t you think that’s strange in this day and age?”
Rachel shrugged. “Not really. Wait a minute! Didn’t you just tell me that your mother doesn’t drive?”
“No, Mother does not drive.”
“Why not?”
“She was in a real bad accident many years ago. It traumatized her so badly, she refuses to get behind the wheel again.” I paused long enough to clear my throat. “Well, I guess when we want to visit with your family, we’ll have to go to them. But if your brother and sister ever want to get on a plane and come out here, just let me know.”
“They don’t fly, either.”
“Do they ride buses or trains?”
“They’ve never been on either one, but there’s a first time for everything.” Rachel nodded toward the kitchen. “I’m thawing out some steaks for dinner.”