Can't Get Enough

by Connie Briscoe

  First she had to win the damn thing. She knew it was next to impossible, but what else did she have to look forward to?

  PEARL JACKSON SET three Safeway grocery bags down on the passenger seat of her Dodge Caravan, hopped in, and pulled out of the parking lot. The minivan was nearly twelve years old and had almost 100,000 miles on it. The engine sometimes rattled so badly that Pearl was afraid to turn the thing off, fearing it would never start back up.

  She had bought the minivan when her son Kenyatta was fifteen years old so she could shuffle him and his friends to school and basketball practice. Then when Kenyatta went off to college at Morehouse, as a single mother she couldn’t afford to replace the minivan and pay his tuition plus the mortgage on their town house in Silver Lake.

  But Kenyatta had graduated, and she had recently made the final payment on his tuition loan. Patrick was always reminding her that it was time for a new set of wheels. She knew he was right, but it was hard to let this one go. It held so many fond memories of the times she spent carpooling her son around Prince George’s County during those last couple of years before he went off to college. Now that he was all grown up and had recently moved out to live with a woman, the minivan was one of the few reminders Pearl had left.

  She was no longer a divorced mom raising a son alone, a label she had carried since Kenyatta was a toddler and she and her ex-husband divorced, but it was going to take some time to get used to that. Her new life living alone and dating again was tough, especially because she was in her forties and the man she was dating had two teenage daughters from previous relationships who resented her presence.

  The girls couldn’t be more unalike. Lee was a seventeen-year-old, smart-mouthed, streetwise brat. Juliette was a fifteen-year-old snob. They had different mamas and they hated each other’s guts. When both were at Patrick’s house on weekends, they were usually either arguing or not speaking to each other.

  Pearl sighed and braked at a stoplight. Patrick was such a sweet guy that he was well worth the agony, and she couldn’t really blame the girls. Lee had been through so much in her seventeen years. She had grown up with her mama in a rat-infested apartment in Seat Pleasant, Maryland, and had learned that Patrick was her daddy only about a year ago. That wasn’t Patrick’s fault, since Lee’s mama had taken off when she got pregnant and never told Patrick about the baby.

  Patrick found out about Lee when she ran away from home after shooting her mama’s boyfriend, a wily dog of a man named Clive who had sexually abused her. Lee thought she’d killed him and she went searching for the daddy she had never met. She had lived on the streets of Baltimore for weeks until she found him, and only Lee and the Lord knew how she had managed to survive out there all alone since she refused to talk about it. Thankfully, Clive had survived and Lee was exonerated.

  Juliette was just a spoiled child who still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that her daddy had left her mama almost a year ago. That had to be tough on a fifteen-year-old kid.

  Pearl turned left at the entrance to Silver Lake and nodded at the male attendant stomping his feet to stay warm in the chilly spring evening. She passed through the gates and turned the van toward Patrick’s town house. As she approached the hill at the construction project across the street from Jolene Brown’s, she slowed the minivan. The home being built on the hill was bigger than all the others in the neighborhood. In fact, Pearl thought she’d never seen anything so grand in all of P.G. County.

  She stared and shook her head as she drove by. It reminded her of the European palaces she’d seen on television and in magazines. Who on earth could be building such a house here in Silver Lake? Pearl had heard many rumors in her beauty salon but she’d been around long enough to know they were just that. Rumors. Nothing more. No one seemed to really know what was going on up there on the hillside.

  She rounded a corner and turned down a narrow street leading toward the town houses on the southern side of Silver Lake, where both she and Patrick owned homes.

  Patrick was always telling her to hang in there. Juliette and Lee were both decent girls and he hoped they would both come around to accepting her sooner or later. Pearl had done absolutely nothing to hurt either of them.

  Lee was angry at the world about what she thought was a rotten, unfair life. Pearl had no doubt that Lee’s mama was well meaning, but raising a kid on your own was tough, and Pearl knew that from experience. But Lee was a strong kid. She had managed to survive on some of the toughest streets of Baltimore all alone with her will intact. Some kids had a spirit that couldn’t be crushed no matter what happened to them. With some good old-fashioned parenting and a lot of loving, she and Lee would learn to get along.

  Juliette was going to take a little more work. She wasn’t angry at the world. She was angry at Pearl. Juliette had been given everything on a silver platter by her parents, and she could be a selfish brat, just like her mama, Jolene. Not long after Patrick left Jolene, he began dating Pearl, and to a kid who didn’t know any better it looked like Pearl had stolen her daddy from her mama. Juliette’s sheltered, little-rich-girl life had shattered, and she needed someone to blame.

  Pearl pulled up in front of Patrick’s town house and reached for the grocery bags on the passenger seat of the van. She had promised Patrick she would fix them all a special dinner that Friday evening to try and help break the ice. And if there was one thing Pearl always felt up to it was cooking. She had a feast planned—a good old pot roast, collard greens, and macaroni and cheese, with a homemade sweet potato pie for dessert. She believed that good food soothed the soul.

  And her belief showed in the ample size of her hips, unfortunately, as she was reminded when she climbed out of the car, always a bit of a struggle. She wouldn’t be able to eat much of the meal she was fixing, not if she wanted to keep losing some of this weight sitting on her rear end. Since she began dating Patrick, Pearl was determined to get down to a healthy size 12, maybe even a 10.

  It was going to be tough. She hadn’t been that tiny since her son had gone away to college. After she divorced her husband, Kenyatta had become her whole life. No boyfriends, no partying, no traveling, no nothing. It was all about Kenyatta. And when he left for Morehouse College it seemed the only friend she had left in the world was food. She worked in her beauty salon, drove home, cooked, ate in front of the TV, and went to bed. It was a wonder she wasn’t bigger than a size 14.

  She had tried every diet ever dreamed up, but nothing worked for more than a few months at most. Now she had a man in her life for the first time in more than twenty years and she was going to lose the extra pounds even if she had to starve herself doing it. Patrick was always sweet about her weight, saying he liked her just fine as she was. But look at that skinny woman he went and married. Jolene couldn’t weigh more than 130 pounds, even though she had put on some weight recently. Sheesh. Pearl knew she would never be that small; she was such a slave to good food. But she could do better than this. She would do better.

  Pearl walked up to the house, rang the bell, and put on her biggest smile.

  Juliette swung the door open, wearing her usual skintight blue jeans and holding a bottle of red nail polish. She greeted Pearl with a grimace. Still, Pearl kept on smiling.

  “How you doing, baby?” Pearl asked.

  Juliette flipped her brown hair weave and shrugged. “I was fine until the bell rang.”

  Pearl ignored the comment. The girl looked just like her mama whenever she threw that fake hair around. She had the same pretty brown complexion as her mama, and they both had weaves. From what she had learned of Juliette since dating Patrick, the child acted like her smart-ass, diva-acting mama, too.

  Pearl shoved one of the grocery bags into a startled Juliette’s arms and headed toward the kitchen just as Lee bounded down the stairs wearing a bathrobe and tennis shoes and bobbing her head to music she was listening to through the headphones of her portable MP3 player. As soon as Lee saw that it was Pearl, she rolled her eyes, turned her caramel
-colored face, and ran back up the stairs.

  So much for warm greetings, Pearl thought wryly. “Is your dad here, Juliette?” she asked over her shoulder as she entered the kitchen.

  Juliette dumped the bag on the kitchen table and grabbed an apple from a bowl on the countertop. “No, he’s not,” she said tartly. “I think he went to see my mother.”

  Pearl placed her bags on the counter, removed her black wool coat, and slung it over a chair. “Oh?” She turned to see Juliette smiling smugly.

  “He’ll probably be gone for a while,” Juliette said, one hand on her hip.

  Pearl smiled back at Juliette, determined not to let the little vixen think she was getting the better of her. Pearl had total trust in Patrick. Jolene lived less than half a mile away, and it was only natural that she and Patrick would have to see each other from time to time. They were still raising a child together, and what a handful that child was.

  “Hmm,” Pearl said as she turned to the sink to wash her hands. “I guess I’ll get started on dinner then. Would you like to help?”

  Juliette coughed. “I can’t. I have to do my nails and I’ve got homework.”

  “On a Friday night?” Pearl asked doubtfully.

  Juliette shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Well, what about Lee?” Pearl asked. “What’s she up to?”

  “She’s in the tub by now. Drowning I hope.” And with that Juliette turned up her nose and dashed off.

  Pearl shook her head as she unpacked the groceries. Welcome to The Brady Bunch, P.G. County–style.

  BARBARA BENTLEY WHEELED her new black Mercedes-Benz S500 sedan onto the grounds of the Silver Lake Country Club on Monday morning. The new Benz was supposedly an early gift from her husband, Bradford, for her upcoming fifty-first birthday in June. But Barbara knew the score: it was really a gift to pacify his wife for his latest slipup in the fidelity department. She didn’t know exactly what he’d done or who he had done it with. It could have been the wife of one of his business associates or a neighbor. But the fancy new cars and furs and expensive jewelry always meant that he had been up to something .

  The car was nice, with slick leather upholstery and a burl walnut finish on the dashboard and door panels. And it drove like a dream, but she would much rather have a faithful husband, one who would love and cherish her as she aged. Nevertheless, it seemed the older she got, the younger Bradford’s mistresses became. Some of them looked like they were barely twenty. Barbara had pretty much learned to look the other way when it came to his women. It wasn’t easy, but it was preferable to leaving him and giving up her lifestyle as Mrs. Bradford Bentley.

  She smashed her cigarette out in the ashtray. God, how she hated getting older. She was still a size 8 thanks to regular workouts at the club and gardening with the help of her longtime gardener Emilio, and people were always telling her that she looked ten years younger than her age. But she was starting to get a few gray strands in her hair and enough cellulite around the thighs to stay away from skirts that fell more than an inch or two above her knees.

  She knew the cigarettes certainly didn’t help her complexion when she was trying to compete with twenty-year-olds, but a woman who elected to stay married to a philanderer like Bradford Bentley was entitled to a vice. She hadn’t touched a bottle of vodka in a year. She was damned if she would give up nicotine, too.

  Barbara glided the Benz up to the valet stand, checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror, and grabbed her sports bag off the passenger seat. The young parking attendant opened her car door and she stepped out.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Bentley,” he said as he helped her out of car. John was her favorite of the club’s three attendants. All of them were nice young black men in their late teens and early twenties, but John was the most courteous and friendly.

  “Good morning, John,” Barbara said. “Beautiful spring day, isn’t it?”

  John nodded politely. “It is, ma’am. Supposed to get up to seventy degrees. How long will you be today?”

  “Oh, a couple of hours probably. Has Marilyn arrived?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “When she gets here, tell her I’m in the weight room, will you, please?”

  John bowed his head in response, and Barbara skipped quickly up the stairs to the club. She was wearing only her workout clothes and there was still a chill in the early morning air.

  No doubt, Marilyn had worked late yesterday evening showing a house to a client, and she’d probably overslept. Marilyn had been selling real estate for as long as Barbara could remember, and she was one of Prince George’s County’s top real estate agents. Barbara worked in real estate, too, or rather dabbled in it, as Marilyn would say, and she always looked forward to the advice she got from Marilyn during their weekly meetings at the club.

  Barbara walked across the plush carpet in the lobby and back to the women’s locker room. She dropped her bag in one of the lockers. She hated working out, but she had no choice. Gardening didn’t interest her the way it once had, and she left most of the work to Emilio these days. Now that she was working part-time as a Realtor, she needed a more strenuous form of exercise to stay in shape. Many of her coworkers were young and energetic, and she had to be able to keep up, particularly with Noah Walker, a thirty-eight-year-old schoolteacher by day who sold real estate in the evenings and on weekends. They were both part-time Realtors and often helped each other out.

  Noah had been divorced for several years and was saving to buy a house of his own. Barbara was surprised that no young woman had snatched him up yet, since he was hardworking and very attractive, with shoulder-length dreadlocks and a smooth chestnut complexion. He was also a top tennis player and in great shape.

  Just as she removed her gold bracelets and placed them in the locker, she thought she heard Jolene Brown’s voice. She quickly looked around. She certainly hoped she was mistaken. Barbara couldn’t stand the sight of that woman since learning of her affair with Bradford last summer. Out of all of Bradford’s mistresses, Jolene was the one she despised most. Bradford’s mistresses were usually silly little bimbos far removed from her life in Silver Lake and they could easily be dismissed. Jolene had been the exception. She was a successful woman who Barbara had considered a casual friend. She lived right in Silver Lake, North, only a few blocks away, and her ex-husband Patrick had once worked for Bradford. They often attended the same parties and had even visited each other’s homes for dinner.

  Barbara didn’t see Jolene and relaxed a bit. Fortunately, Jolene had a nine-to-five job in Washington, D.C., and she rarely showed up at the club on weekday mornings. In fact, Barbara reminded herself as she slammed her locker shut, she hadn’t seen Jolene at the club much at all recently. She hoped it would stay that way.

  PEARL SHUT THE door to her town house, tossed her Adidas sports bag, newly acquired online from eBay, on the passen-ger seat of her Dodge minivan, and hopped behind the steering wheel. She loved shopping online, and the sports bag was her latest purchase. Her salon was open Tuesday through Saturday, and some days she didn’t get done until nine p.m. That didn’t leave her a lot of time to run around malls searching for what she needed.

  She always looked forward to Monday mornings, when her salon was closed and she could wait until midmorning to hit the gym at the country club. Normally she had to rise at six a.m. to squeeze in an hour of exercise before coming home to shower and grab a quick breakfast of cold cereal. Then she dashed out again to open the salon by nine a.m.

  Barbara Bentley, Pearl’s long-standing and dearest customer, had been generous enough to give Pearl a membership to the club on the tenth anniversary of the salon’s opening. Barbara had also paid Pearl’s membership fee each January as a Christmas bonus. Pearl was eternally grateful for Barbara’s generosity. Lord knows she couldn’t have afforded the $30,000 initiation fee herself, let alone the $3,000 annual membership fee. The salon did well, but not that well.

  Her earnings had allowed Pearl to raise her son as a div
orced single mom, to send him to Morehouse College, and to buy a house in Silver Lake. It might be only a town house on the southern side of the community, rather than the more prestigious north side where Barbara Bentley and Jolene Brown lived and where that new humongous mansion was being built. But it was still Silver Lake, the most exclusive community in Prince George’s County, and that was what counted.

  Pearl and Jolene hardly spoke to each other since Pearl had started dating Patrick. Not that they had ever been all that friendly. Jolene was a snob as far as Pearl was concerned. She hated everyone who lived in the town houses, except maybe Patrick. After the divorce, he had wanted to stay near his daughter, and a town house was all he could afford in Silver Lake since he had to pay child support.

  The town houses were a good half mile from Jolene’s precious mini-mansion, yet Jolene still thought they degraded the upscale neighborhood and she was never shy about saying so to anyone who would listen. Before the town houses were built, Jolene had organized some of the other families to try and stop the builder from constructing them, and she and her followers had continued to protest even after construction began and Pearl and some others had made deposits.

  Fortunately, Barbara Bentley eventually stepped in and supported the town houses. Barbara had initially been against them herself, but as she later explained to Pearl, she began to see the value in supporting economic diversity in Silver Lake. There was so much racism in the world, and she hated to see black people discriminating against one another for any reason. Once Barbara came around, Jolene’s objections meant little, given all the clout that Barbara wielded as the wife of one of the most successful businessmen in the county.

  Pearl parked her minivan and walked across the parking lot to the main entrance of the club. She smiled and nodded at John as he held the door open for her. The country club had valet parking, but she used it only in bad weather. She was perfectly capable of parking her own car and walking to the door of the club, especially since it saved her a few bucks in tips.