by Deidre Berry
I told Nelson “Thanks for breakfast,” nodded good-bye to the Murphys, and experienced a tremendous feeling of déjà vu as I gathered up my things and went home feeling like a discarded hooker.
36
Nelson, and the three culinary-school students he hired to assist him, invaded my kitchen at six o’clock this morning. I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and watched as they brought in dozens of plastic storage bins, filled with pounds and pounds of various ingredients.
Nelson immediately posted plans of action all over the place, which meticulously listed the menu, as well as the timing for preparing each dish.
“I prepared all the desserts and side dishes last night, and I’ll keep them stored over at my place until an hour before the party,” Nelson explained to me.
“That’s fine,” I replied, tight-lipped and nonchalant.
I really liked Nelson’s preparedness, professionalism, and focus, and I would have told him so if I wasn’t still mad at him.
It had been almost a week since we’d spoken, because clearly the incident with Kara’s parents was a topic we both wanted to avoid.
“Now, I still have to prep all the lobster, and slow-cook the prime rib,” Nelson said. “But everything is pretty much set except for the asparagus and salad, which we’ll prepare during cocktail hour so they’ll be crisp and fresh…”
While Nelson gave me a rundown on all he had yet to do, I tuned him out and yawned as if I couldn’t care less. After being dissed and dismissed so rudely in favor of a visit to the cemetery, I didn’t have much to say to him.
I was all business as I showed Nelson and crew where to find whatever utensils they might need.
Once I was sure they were all set, I turned on my heel and was headed back to bed when I stubbed the shit out of my baby toe on one of the metal tables I had rented for the party. The pain was so intense that it blinded me for a few seconds, and a scream got caught in my throat.
Once I got over the initial shock, I released the scream from my throat and grabbed my toe, which only made it hurt worse.
“Are you okay?” Nelson asked, laughter all in his voice.
“I’m fine!” I said through gritted teeth, and then hobbled back to my bedroom.
The party was scheduled to start at seven this evening, but relatives and friends of the family started streaming into my condo as early as five o’clock.
The plan was for Junior and I to pretend to be taking our parents out to eat at the Hereford House.
Junior called me when they got downstairs in the parking lot, and I recited the lie that I was running late, and for them all to come on up because it was going to be awhile before I was ready to go.
Daddy must have figured it all out, because he walked in and wasn’t the least bit surprised.
The rest of us were stunned, though.
There my father was, looking several years younger, and so spiffy that there were no traces of the country boy from Shreveport, Louisiana. Daddy was uncharacteristically GQ in a brand new Hugo Boss suit, and his hair all slicked back and wavy.
Seeing that he had shaved his trademark mustache brought tears to my eyes because I have not seen my father’s clean-shaven face since I was a little girl.
“What’s gotten into Daddy?” I whispered to Mama as I hugged her. The pained expression on her face indicated to me that she was not really feeling her husband’s new swagger.
The birthday boy wasn’t shy about taking control of the festivities. “I’m glad you all could make it here to celebrate my birthday with me,” Daddy announced to his guests. “This one is special to me because, as you all know, I lost my brother Woody a short time ago—”
“Big Wood!” Uncle Ray said. “Rest in peace, man.”
“That’s right!” Daddy said. “Woody’s not here, but I am, and now I’m living for the both of us, so with that said—let’s get down with the get down!”
And the party was on and popping.
Dinner was served on bone china rimmed with fourteen-karat gold, and the eating utensils were expensive sterling silver, which I saw Brent, one of the wayward cousins, sizing up and giving a nod of approval.
The culinary students had changed clothes and were now uniformed servers whose presentations were all synchronized as if they were serving royalty and heads of state, instead of us.
Cookie’s parents, Uncle Nate and Aunt Rita, showed up well into dinner, reeking of gin and planting sloppy kisses on everybody, and even though the invitations clearly said Adults Only! Cookie boldly brought along her four bad-ass kids, who did what they always do, which was run around getting in the way, and getting on everybody’s last nerve.
Everyone loved the food, even Daddy, which was a relief.
Even though we’d barely spoken all day, I had to give it to Nelson. He really came through for me. The taste and quality of his food surpassed my expectations a thousand times over.
After dinner, we all serenaded Daddy with the soulful version of “Happy Birthday,” and then watched the first of two DVDs I had a videographer put together. Set to the Whispers classic “Just Gets Better with Time,” Daddy’s all-time favorite song, the DVD was a photo history of Daddy’s life from the day he was born, up until now: snapshots from his childhood, wedding day, Army days, bad outfits from the ’60s and ’70s, and even in the hospital on the days his children were born.
When it was over, Daddy looked stunned but proud. “I haven’t seen any of those pictures in over thirty years!”
“That was so beautiful,” Mama said, and she had tears in her eyes, as did some other people.
Unimpressed, Aunt Vera sucked her teeth and cracked, “Still ugly after all these years!”
“Quick, somebody call Brother Edwards over here!” Daddy replied. “Maybe he can get this old goat to shut her big, fat mouth!”
The room lit up with laughter.
If you didn’t know better, you would think that Daddy and Aunt Vera didn’t get along, but they love joking and teasing each other. Usually, no harm is meant, and none is taken.
I put in the second DVD, which was like This Is Your Life, with Daddy’s friends, co-workers, neighbors, and loved ones talking to the camera, giving shout-outs, well wishes, and telling funny stories about things my father had said and done over the years.
When the video was finished, Daddy stood in the middle of the room and said, “Everybody, give my daughter a round of applause for all the sweet and thoughtful things she does, not only for me, but for all of us.”
As everyone clapped and cheered for me, I got choked up looking around at Mama, Junior, Aunt Vera, and all those other smiling faces. It was a special moment, because it was the first time that many of them had expressed any type of gratitude towards me.
Daddy hugged me with tears in his eyes and said, “I don’t say this enough but I’m gonna start saying it every chance I get—I love you, baby girl. You mean the world to me.”
And that right there, was worth the price of admission. I hate that it took Uncle Woody’s death for my Dad to embrace life and express appreciation for his loved ones, but late is always better than never.
When it was time to cut the cake and open the gifts, my father was nowhere to be found. I went into the kitchen and there he was, having an in-depth discussion with Nelson on how he dry rubs and smokes his meat.
“I like to let it marinate in garlic and Italian dressing for a few days,” Daddy explained. “When I’m ready to cook it, I put it in the oven for an hour just to tighten that skin and seal in the juices—then slow-cook it on the grill over wood smoke. See?”
“You’re right, Mr. Carter,” Nelson said. “That is a lot different from what my father does down at his restaurant.”
“I know it!” Daddy replied. “And that special technique right there, is what makes Carter barbeque a heap better than Tate’s barbeque.”
I was so embarrassed. Nelson had this one-sided grin on his face like he was at some off-the-hook comedy show, and I wanted to
punch him in the gut for patronizing my father.
“Daddy,” I said. “Could you please come and cut your birthday cake before Cookie’s kids do it for you?”
“Just a minute, Tori. I was just complimenting this young man on the food. Did you know that this here is Oliver Tate’s son?”
“Yes, I did,” I said, bothered that Nelson’s cologne was permeating the entire kitchen, and that he was looking sexy as hell in a uniform that consisted of a white double-breasted chef’s jacket, pressed black slacks, and a KC Royals baseball cap cocked just a little bit to the side.
“I have been getting some valuable advice from your father,” Nelson said to me, and I’m not so sure he wasn’t being facetious.
“Well, I used to be in the barbeque business myself,” Daddy bragged. “Made a killing, hand over fist.”
It is not a complete fabrication. My father has made a little extra change over the years by selling barbeque dinners to his co-workers down in the lunchroom at General Motors; but that’s where it stops.
“That’s it,” I told Daddy, while cutting my eyes at Nelson. “No more fraternizing with the hired help.”
I grabbed my father by the hand and walked him back into the living room, where he finally cut his birthday cake, and the festivities extended late into the night.
Aunt Rita and Uncle Nate were the last to leave because they both got so drunk, I had to call a cab to come pick them up. The husband and wife tag-team of alcohol consumption will probably wake up tomorrow afternoon wondering where their car is, but letting them get behind the wheel in their condition wasn’t even an option.
With everyone finally gone, I went into the kitchen where Nelson was still cleaning up.
The dishwasher was running, and the culinary students had left hours ago. There wasn’t much food left over, but what little there was, was neatly packed in plastic storage containers.
“You did an excellent job!” I said, handing Nelson a check for twenty-five hundred dollars.
“No, I can’t take this.” He handed the check back to me. “It’s for a full thousand dollars more than we agreed to.”
We went back and forth for several minutes with the whole No, I can’t take this, and Yes, you can. I insist, before Nelson finally folded the check and tucked it into his back pocket.
I was just about to see him out, when he grabbed me around the waist and said, “I need to know what that funky attitude was all about today.”
“You mean you really don’t know?” I pouted.
“Why should I have to guess, Tori? If something I did, or failed to do, is bothering you, then you should be woman enough to come to me to talk it out.”
“I didn’t feel like talking about it at the time.”
“So let’s talk about it now.”
“Well,” I began. “It’s just…Kara’s parents made me feel like dirt that day they came over, and you didn’t help the situation any by disregarding me and then running off to the cemetery with them.”
“Look, I’m sorry if the Murphys weren’t as warm and receptive towards you as they could have been, but it was Kara’s birthday.”
“And that gives them a license to be rude to someone they’ve never met?”
“Kara’s folks are good people, Tori,” he explained. “But they’re just having a really tough time adjusting to losing their only daughter. Believe me, it wasn’t anything personal against you.”
“Well what about you just letting me walk out of your place looking stupid, as if you hadn’t said, three minutes before, that we were officially dating?” I asked, and even as I was saying it, I felt silly.
I could tell that I was testing Nelson’s patience because he took a deep breath and said, “It was an awkward situation for all of us, Tori. What did you expect me to say, ‘It’s too bad about your daughter, but by the way, meet my new girlfriend’?”
“That would have been acceptable,” I said. “Anything to let them know that I am more than just your neighbor.”
As soon as I said those words, I was aware that I sounded like a spoiled, self-centered brat.
Of course, it would have been highly insensitive if Nelson had made an announcement like that, and I probably would have lost some respect for him if he had.
Nelson tilted my chin up with his fingertips and looked me in the eye. “You still mad?” he asked.
“No,” I replied, my heart fluttering as we kissed and made up.
37
The Monday following my father’s birthday party, I received an interesting phone message.
“Sophie wants you to go ahead and take another two weeks of vacation; just to make sure that you’re well enough to come back to work.” That was the voice mail Erin left on my cell phone.
“Well enough?” I didn’t like the sound of that. At all.
What am I? Unstable and deranged, now? I wanted answers, and since I repeatedly kept getting Sophie’s voice mail, I decided to stop by Erin’s apartment in North Kansas City, to get the lowdown on the happenings in the office.
Erin opened the door with flour in her hair, and explained that she was in the middle of cooking her first soul-food dinner. Roasted chicken, macaroni and cheese, and candied yams was the order Erin’s new boyfriend, Lee, had placed for dinner.
I tried not to laugh at her too much, but it was hilarious because the poor thing didn’t have a clue as to what the hell she was doing.
“So, how are things at work?” I asked Erin, adding more milk and butter to her overly sticky macaroni and cheese.
“Everything’s going pretty well,” she said, adding way too much nutmeg to the yams. “Sophie is working on the Dawn McKinney sweet sixteen, and she also put me in charge of E-Money’s album release party.”
I reeled back, feeling like I had just been sucker punched by Mike Tyson. Sophie obviously had gone out of her way to convince Vincent and E-Money to give SWE another chance. Which does not look good on my track record.
“And I hope you don’t mind,” Erin said, “but I have temporarily set up shop in your office, just until you get back to work, of course.”
My office? Oh, no she didn’t!
Why do I always see these things in hindsight? Why couldn’t I have figured out before now that Erin’s aww-shucks-I’m-just-a-naïve-small-town-hick routine was just that. A routine.
“Good luck pulling off the E-Money event with just a ten-thousand-dollar budget,” I snickered.
“Well actually, Hennessey has stepped in to sponsor the party and they’ve put up seventy-five thousand dollars towards the budget,” Erin said with a condescending smile.
I suddenly felt as though I was onboard a sinking ship.
That’s fifteen-thousand dollars in commission that slipped through my fingers, and right into the hands of a still-wet-behind-the-ears rookie who learned everything she knows about the business from me. In fact, Erin was a royal fuck-up the whole two years she interned for us. Just a nitwit to the Nth degree, and she only just recently got to the point where she didn’t have to be micromanaged all day long.
I would have expected this disloyalty from anyone else in the office, but not Erin, my little protégée. I thought we were tight. Solid. She was to me, what I thought I was to Sophie.
“So you’re heading up your first event,” I smiled, even though I was seething inside. “Congratulations, Erin.”
“Thank you!” she gushed. “I’m just so excited! And I don’t know what I’m going to do with all that money; I’ve never had that much at one time before.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” I said sweetly, while discreetly over-salting the chicken.
Choke on that, bitch.
Ironically, E-Money’s rap song was playing on KPRS when I jumped in my Navigator after leaving Erin’s apartment.
“Make ya mama and daddy proud, and POP dat boo-tee! POP dat boo-tee! POP dat boo-tee!”
“Pop Dat Boo-Tee” is the first single off E-Money’s debut album and has been getting tons
of airplay lately. The single is already platinum, and the album hasn’t even come out yet. Just more salt in the wounds. But who knew? I sure as hell didn’t. Because had I known, I would have taken that little ten-thousand dollars, bought a party-in-a-box, and called it a day.
Now Erin has a seventy-five thousand dollar budget to work with. If she does everything right, the party should be a smash and she will be on her way to blowing up, right along with E-Money.
In the immortal words of Whodini, “It was done so sweet it had to be a plan.”
See, this is exactly why I don’t like taking time off. Out of sight is out of mind, and your absence leaves the door wide open for someone else to step in and steal your shine. And apparently your fucking office too.
Tori out—Erin in. That’s not so hard to conceive, especially in light of the fact that Erin is Sophie’s niece.
Maybe I’m reading too much into the situation, but I’m going to get some answers, first thing tomorrow morning.
Since Sophie took away my electronic passkey on the day she sent me on “vacation,” I had to use trickery in order to get upstairs to SWE’s suite of offices.
“Jose!” I said, greeting the security guard stationed in the lobby. “Long time no see, buddy.”
“Good to see you again, Ms. Carter,” Jose said. “Are you enjoying your time off?”
“Oh, it was lovely,” I said. “But now it’s back to the grindstone.”
Jose looked confused. “I was told you wouldn’t be back for at least another two weeks.”
“Well, that was the plan, but I talked to Sophie last night and we agreed it was best for me to cut my vacation short and come on back to work,” I said.
Jose looked unsure. He was reaching for the phone to call upstairs for verification, when I slid a Krispy Kreme box across the reception desk.
“It’s a full dozen,” I smiled. “I know how you love the strawberry glazed.”
Jose opened the box, and in his eyes, those doughnuts gleamed like polished diamonds. He handed me a passkey. “Thank you, Ms. Carter,” he said, practically inhaling a doughnut. “Welcome back, and you have a nice day, now!”
