Something in me did not feel right. I had been trying to prepare myself for this day for several weeks. But a sudden nauseating feeling appeared during the drive.
I sat in the car trying to calm myself while ignoring the nausea that was rising in my stomach. The grey building stood a hundred yards before us. Greyson held my hand, reassuring me that he was there for me during the process.
The phone rang just as we were about to exit the car. It was Deb, our office manager. Her call came at the perfect time. It was a much-needed distraction; any other time I would have surely let the call go to voicemail. Greyson could tell I was stalling. After a few moments of being patient, he gave me a look that let me know it was time to end the call and get on with it.
A green sign with white letters that read Florida Department of Correctional Institution was to the right of the walkway. The pebbles that filled the walkway crunched under my heels as we approached the building. My heart pounded.
The clock read eight fifteen when we were told we could enter. A loud startling buzzer sounded once we passed through the large metal doors. In an adjoining room, a guard sat watching monitors next to the waiting room in which Greyson and I were placed. All our personal belongings had been taken prior to us entering this room. We took a seat and I wondered if what was left of our dignity would be taken as well.
“Are you nervous?”
“A little bit,” I answered and grinned.
“Just try and remain calm; you’re tough, you can handle this.”
“This is crazy, Greyson! I have not seen or spoken to this man since I was about six years old. If you were to have asked me then, I swear my answer would have been I’m never seeing him again, yet here I am.”
“Well, you just say the word and this all ends. Do we need a code word? Washington DC, New York, IPO; I got it, Captain Crunch.”
We both laughed.
“You’re stupid! How am I supposed to work Captain Crunch into the conversation? But I appreciate you trying to cheer me up. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I think I’m going to need a drink after this!”
All our laughter ended when Phillip walked into the room. My heart pounded. I did not know if I should hug him, punch him, or shake his hand. What if he tried to kiss me? Should I stay seated or should I stand? It’s amazing how much can go through your mind in a matter of seconds, especially when you are nervous.
I am not certain what I imagined he would look like. In fact, I do not think I ever gave it any thought. But before me was this thin old man wearing a neatly pressed blue prison shirt. His thin arms hung from the sleeves making it appear much too large for him, like when you wore your father’s shirt when you were a kid. His pants were just as neat, and his work boots were military shined.
At first glance, I thought he had freckles, but after a closer look I saw that his cheeks had skin tags, and a pair of wire-framed glasses sat on what must have once been a well-formed nose. You could tell that he was once handsome, but prison had conquered his appearance.
Phillip smiled as he approached us; it was at that moment I noticed it. A gold tooth! A gold tooth! Phillip had a freaking gold tooth! Thank God it was not directly in the front. I do not have any idea why I chose to focus on it. Why should I care how he chose to decorate his mouth? But I could not shake it.
We had to wait almost an hour to be cleared to see him and another twenty minutes just to leave the building, and the time did not pass quickly. For two hours, Phillip answered questions I asked about his background, his family, and health. Some of his answers seemed genuine at times and with others I got the impression he was being reserved. But then, the real Phillip reared his ugly head, and I knew why I had stayed away from him all those years.
“I can’t believe it’s really you. It’s been too many years since I’ve seen you,” he tried to reach for my hand, but I quickly pulled it away.
“I can’t believe I’m here either. I had to see you to find my way back to peace.” I was shaking inside.
“Well, what kind of peace can I bring you, little lady. You want an apology or something like that? You want me to beg you to be a part of your life?” He leaned in closer. “I wrote those people plenty of letters letting them know I was coming for you, that you were my daughter and not theirs.”
“Don’t you call them ‘those people.’ They were my parents, and you caused my father to have a heart attack from your horrible letters. You’re disgusting!”
“I guess he was just weak-hearted if a few letters killed him,” he laughed and snorted.
It took everything in me not to jump across the table and rip his head off. Greyson held my hand underneath the table to keep me from losing control. I think Phillip would have liked that - to see me fly off the handle the way he does. It may have made him proud. Chip off the old block and all that.
“I’m not here to listen to a recount of your slimy antics. I am not here for an apology nor do I want you as a part of my life. I am here to let you know that what Mary and Earl, my parents, did for me was something you never did and could never do. You and Kim may have been the reason I exist, but Mary and Earl are the reason I am alive. They gave me love, hope, the ability to dream, and I had everything I wanted and needed growing up. You took my father’s life with your words, but you didn’t break the spirit he left in me.” I leaned in this time.
“You are an evil son of a bitch who deserves to rot in this hell hole for the rest of your life. I know you will never admit to killing Kim and the slew of other women; I know you will never care about all of the families you have destroyed. But as God is my witness, you will burn in hell for the things you’ve done.”
I pulled back my chair to stand. Greyson stood with me, and we backed away. As we turned to leave, I could hear Phillip say, “I’ve already been to hell, and I loved it, baby girl.”
He never would say if he killed my biological mother or if he had anything to do with her death. A part of me was glad he did not confess. I do not know if I could have truly handled it, especially when I think about all the lives that were destroyed because of him.
Phillip was a killer for sure, and that would never change. We knew that he killed Sheila, he tried to kill his lover in Miami, and he was a suspect in Kim’s unsolved murder. His threats were the cause of Papa Earl’s fatal heart attack. Both times I’d ever met Phillip, I’d met him in prison. But I was sure of one thing. I would not be visiting him in prison again—or anywhere—ever again. Of that I was certain.
We collected all our belongings and exited the prison much quicker than we’d entered. I was ready to get as far away from there and from Phillip as possible. I was ready to erase every single memory of that visit and him. From that day forward I promised to never talk about him again, never think about him, and never worry whether he would get out. He would no longer have that hold over me because I was committed to breaking the chain of Phillip that had kept me bound from childhood. I made peace in my soul, and I was ready to close the Phillip chapter forever.
I was emotionally exhausted, and I knew that what I was feeling was transferred to Greyson. We slid into an empty booth at a restaurant a few miles down the road. It was rather a desolate place with a view of the parking lot and not much else. The restaurant was empty except for one old man who sat at the counter drinking coffee. Who knew a prison visit could be so exhausting. It was as if I had been a prisoner myself for three and a half hours.
“Are you ready for that drink?”
“Yes.”
We laughed, hoping to release all the day’s anxieties and stress with a bottle of wine.
“A gold tooth, Kennedy?” Greyson spoke with a smirk.
“I know. A gold freakin’ tooth!”
SOMETIMES LIFE
HAS OTHER IDEAS
My mother always told me, “Kennedy, don’t give up. Kennedy don’t quit. You must hang in there.’’
I used to find it funny because most of the time
she would do for me the things I didn’t want to do, or she would pay someone to do them for me. At the time, it felt like she was bothering me; other times it felt as if she did them to keep me out of her hair, but she never would let me quit even if it meant putting an alternative in place. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I began to understand just what she meant.
“Even if you fail, Kennedy, stay in the saddle! Every success story has a few chapters of failure.” I would be like, “What’s a saddle, Mom? What are you talking about, we don’t have a horse?” I would test her on almost everything, and, like most parents, she would usually be correct.
To this day, it amazes me how people handle pressure; it is astonishing what it does to them. Some people conquer it and excel, and for others, when it arrives, they fold and give in. Some people flee to avoid it altogether. Pressure is one of the best things that can happen to you. It’s what makes diamonds from coal. It’s the sign that you’re on the right track. It may be a signal alerting you to the fact that you need to change something in your life. Regardless of how it arrives, if you are patient and just stay in the saddle, it’s reward can be truly amazing.
____
It had turned into the perfect day just as I had hoped. From the time spent at the pool and me and Greyson in the shower on our veranda earlier, to the time spent with Kylie sharing so many of the memories from my life, everything had been perfect. This day could not get any better. Yet, it was about to as we entered the hotel.
A quartet played soft music in the lobby. The three of us made small talk with the other attendees waiting to enter the ballroom. An usher patiently waited for us while we had a drink from the bar. He politely escorted us to a table in the front of the room. Taking our place at the table, we continued to chatter about my crazy past, our present life, and our future with Kylie, occasionally smiling, waving, and kissing passing guests on the cheeks.
I thanked Greyson for being an amazing husband and father. I thanked him often because he always gave so much of himself for his family. I noticed how eighteen years later he still started every day with the intention of making me happy. Greyson had made my life so much easier. I was so much happier than I probably would have been if he’d never come into my life, and for that I always thanked God and Greyson.
“Greyson, I need to ask you something. I may have asked you this before but for the sake of me, I cannot remember at this moment. When did you know that you wanted to be the type of man that you are?’’ I wanted Kylie to hear this as well, so I pulled my seat back a bit so she could lean over to listen.
“Well, in high school I was not the hot guy in school, so asking girls for a date wasn’t always easy for me. I used to hang with my boys; they were the guys the girls were falling for. They were popular, light skinned with good hair, so the girls looked at them first.
“I did not do things to draw attention, and I didn’t go out of my way to make someone notice me. I was a little darker than those guys, and during that time girls were really into light skinned guys. So, I began to sit back and observe. I would see how they would meet girls and how they treated them, but I never had the heart to do the same with the girls I went out with.
“There was this girl that lived a few streets over from my house. Her name was Karen Sudi, and she and her family moved to the neighborhood when we were in middle school. Karen had an older sister named Weida. Now, Weida was drop-dead gorgeous. No one ever asked Karen and Weida where they were from. We all just assumed that they were part Middle Eastern or Spanish.
“Because Weida was so pretty, no one ever gave Karen much attention. Plus, Karen was a big girl. She was that big kid that the other kids did not want around. None of the kids wanted her to sit with them on the bus, and they would never invite her to their parties, but I was always polite to her. Besides, my mother would kill me if she found out I was mistreating a young lady. I did not want any part of my mom’s anger. A few years passed, and Karen and I were going into the eleventh grade. However, no one had seen Karen for the whole summer. In fact, I do not think anyone even thought about Karen the whole summer.
“One morning we were waiting at the bus stop for school, we got on the bus and took our seat. From the bus, we could see this girl running toward the bus, and we were all thinking who the hell is this because this person is fine, and she was getting finer the closer she got to the bus. As she got close enough, she stopped running, and by then everyone on the bus was staring and whispering, but we still did not know who the mysterious figure was.
“This girl was filling out every inch of those Sasson jeans. She had a coke bottle figure that screamed ‘look at me’ and she was wearing red pumps with lipstick that matched her shoes. When this girl got on the bus, all the guys started moving things to make space for her.” Greyson moved his hands around as if he were re-enacting what had happened.
“The guys who were sitting together quickly moved to empty seats hoping she would sit with them. She looked around the bus and made sure everyone got a good look at her, then she walked over to the seat next to me. I stared out the window pretending not to notice her.
‘Move over Greyson. Do you mind if I sit with you?’ she said.
“I looked up and realized it was Karen. Karen was fine. Karen was fine as hell. She was drop-dead gorgeous. For a week all you heard on campus was, ‘Who was the fine new girl?’ I would say, ‘Man, that’s Karen!’
“About a month passed and Karen became my girlfriend, and it was all because I had treated her the same as when she was bigger. All those popular guys were asking how it happened. Outwardly, I had cultivated my status as ‘the guy’. I was one of them now, but inside I knew I did not want to be anything like them.
“Our relationship had given me unwanted validation from my male peers, but it also made girls take notice. My parents had bought a car for me, so we started riding to school together. One morning, we got to school and headed for the library just like every other morning. Once we got in the library, she hit me with it.”
“Um Greyson, I think we need to take a break.”
“Like a dumb ass, I said, ‘A break from what?’”
“From seeing each other.”
“She said it with such conviction that I had no time to process what was happening. This was my first real girlfriend, and it was ending, I could feel the tears filling in my eyes. The bell rang and she walked away.
“During our ride home at the end of school, she told me that her entire life she had been the big girl that no one noticed, and for the first time she was now the hot girl that everyone noticed, and she wanted to truly experience it.
“It made sense to me. As much as I did not like what she was saying, I understood. That was when I decided that every girlfriend from that point forward would receive the absolute best version of me.”
Greyson’s story touched me. I knew how he admired the way his parents loved each other and how his father thought his mother was the most beautiful woman ever. He had told me about the other women he’d dated, and I’d seen photos of the flight attendant, Mia, and Nicole from college, but I had never heard the story of Karen. I wanted to hear more but Kylie chimed in.
“Dad, that was really sweet.”
Interrupting Kylie, Greyson turned his attention toward me. He told me he had a surprise for me. Slightly confused, but not shocked at his awaited confession, Greyson stood and asked me to do the same. Holding my hands, he spoke.
“There are two things I need you to do for me right know. One, is to show me that beautiful Mona Lisa smile.”
I was already grinning from ear to ear.
“Two, I really need you to keep your composure for what’s next.”
Before I could comply, a greeter appeared from the corner entrance. From his shadow out stepped Murphy. All I could do was scream and try not to cry as she advanced toward me. Murphy and I hugged, kissed, and jumped up and down like little schoolgirls.
“Thank you, Baby!” I rushed over to Greyson g
iving him a kiss and that smile he loved.
Everything was perfect I had everyone I loved with me. We took our seats. I trembled with joy, Kylie to my left, Murphy to my right and Greyson in front of me at the table. I could barely hold in the tears. The evening was all so overwhelming that I never even noticed the empty seat at our table. Had I noticed, I surely would have asked why it was there and why it was vacant.
We three ladies made a last visit to the ladies’ room before the awards were to be handed out and I touched up my lipstick.
“How do I look, sweetie?” I looked over at Kylie then at Murphy and smacked my lips together several times to set the lipstick just right, all the while fanning myself in an attempt to settle down.
“You look beautiful as always, Mom. I have never been prouder of you than I am at this moment.” Kylie’s eyes watered. “I’m grateful to have heard your stories today. They helped me understand the woman you are.”
Once we were seated at the table again, Kylie touched my shoulder and whispered, “I’m honored to be here to see you get this award, Mom. And, one day, I plan to be up there, too, getting my Woman of the Year Award. I want to be just like you.”
I was overwhelmed with emotion. I quickly blotted the tears with Greyson’s handkerchief.
‘‘I’m so proud of you, honey. It is about time this city recognizes you for all the work you do.’’
“Thank you, Greyson.” I leaned forward trying not to disrupt my evening dress and gave my husband a quick peck on the lips.
‘‘Mom, please do not cry again when you are on stage. You just got yourself together, so keep it together, please.’’ Kylie joked as she rubbed my arm.
“Well, so that you know, having you, your father and Murphy here with me means more than any award.”
The ballroom was packed with three hundred elegantly dressed people. The gala was one of Central Florida’s largest black-tie events. It was being hosted by a large law firm that started the event to help raise money for children with cancer. They had grown the event into this massive fundraiser that was getting national recognition for its efforts, and I had partnered with them. The girl from the small city, whose father was a murderer, was being honored.
Beautiful Otherness Page 22