Unholy Matrimony

by Brenda Barrett

  Unholy Matrimony

  By

  Brenda Barrett

  Published by Jamaica Treasures at Smashwords:

  Copyright 2013 by Brenda Barrett

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  *****

  Discover other titles in the Three Rivers Series:

  Private Sins (Three Rivers)

  Loving Mr. Wright (Three Rivers)

  If It Ain't Broke (Three Rivers)

  Visit Brenda's Official Blog:

  brenda-barrett.com

  Twitter.com/AuthorWriterBB

  Facebook.com/AuthorBrendaBarrett

  Chapter One

  Phoebe sat in the front pew of the church for the wedding ceremony and tried to look pleasant. Erica had not let the dust settle under her feet after Caleb had proposed to her in front of everyone at church.

  Her friend had gone into a mad flurry of excitement and had started planning her wedding that same night. She had declared that she wanted a church wedding at twilight on a Saturday and that she wanted the whole church to attend. No invitation was necessary and none was given. Erica had posted the date on the notice board with a cheekily written invitation to a chocolate fondue reception to follow the service.

  Phoebe looked behind her, noting that the church was packed to the hilt. In a bid to make up for their insinuations about Caleb, the ladies of the church had outdone themselves with the decorations. Erica had requested a chocolate and burnt orange theme with hints of gold and they had gone all out. Some even wore the same colors to coordinate with the theme.

  Even Phoebe had made an effort to coordinate her outfit and she had haggled over the gold dress she was wearing with a store clerk who was reserving it for 'that rich lady Hyacinth Donahue.'

  Phoebe had almost had a fit to get it and was again reminded why rich people were better off than the poor masses. She had finally gotten the dress, and had counted it a bittersweet victory.

  Once again she had vowed that one day, they would all be chasing her to buy their merchandise and she would shun them. Oh, how she would shun them.

  The junior orchestra was playing as Erica glided up the aisle on her father's arm—in her mother's lace dress. She looked beautiful and so pleased, that for once, Phoebe felt a glimmer of happiness for someone who had the audacity to tie the knot before she did. Her happy feeling didn't last long though as Tanya leaned toward her and whispered.

  “Isn't she gorgeous?”

  Phoebe nodded, but her mood soon changed and she was once again gripped by a sudden onset of depression. When would she ever find a man who loved her as much as Caleb loved Erica? Or even as Pastor Theo loved Kelly?

  They were sitting to the end of the same pew as Kelly; she was beaming; her hair was tied up in an elaborate chignon and she was dressed in a chocolate brown dress with a sprig of orange flower in the bodice—Theo was holding her hand as if they were newlyweds.

  Phoebe noticed that they had not carried the baby; only the two older children were sitting beside them.

  She sighed and Tanya looked at her, her brows raised. “It's a wedding, cheer up!”

  “I know,” Phoebe whispered, “but it's just that Erica and I discovered Caleb. If I hadn't driven him away that could’ve been me up there—happy, and getting married.”

  Tanya chuckled. “He was poor at the time you discovered him, remember?”

  Phoebe snorted, “But he's not poor now, is he?”

  Tanya shrugged. “No he is not, but the best part of all of this for him is that he got a woman who loved him whether he was poor or not.”

  “What are you trying to say,” Phoebe whispered fiercely, “that I am a gold digger?”

  Tanya murmured, “Who the cap fits...now shut up. They are about to say their vows.”

  Phoebe felt like strangling Tanya, but she valiantly tried to tune her mind into the service. Erica declared her ‘I do's’ loudly and with confidence, and Caleb had a besotted smile on his face.

  Pastor Brick, the officiating pastor declared, “Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. I now declare you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride Mr. Wright.”

  The deed was done.

  Phoebe watched as Caleb and Erica engaged in a deep kiss that had the congregation oohing and aahing.

  Tanya looked at her and grinned. “Their honeymoon is going to be hot enough to burn.”

  “Shut up!” Phoebe snapped.

  “What's gotten into you?” Tanya's smile slipped. “Usually you are more fun to hang out with. You know, if you could only let go of your prejudices toward men, you would find someone.”

  “Argh,” Phoebe growled, then forced a smile on her face as the bride and groom turned to the congregation. “You don't know what you are talking about.”

  Tanya was clapping with the rest of the congregation and said to Phoebe sideways, “We'll pick this up at the reception in the church hall. Erica said she had more chocolate treats prepared than a chocolate shop.”

  Phoebe got up reluctantly when the usher indicated to her row first. She traipsed behind Tanya obediently and went to the door to congratulate Erica.

  “Pheebs,” Erica squealed when she saw her friend, “you wouldn't believe what Daddy and Mommy gave us as a wedding present?”

  “What?” Phoebe asked injecting a note of excitement in her voice.

  “We are going to Paris!” Erica squealed.

  “Just for two weeks,” Caleb said beside her.

  “That's lovely!” Phoebe exclaimed. “I wish you all the best for the future and I am so happy for you.”

  Erica giggled. “Thank you my dear, I hope you find your Mr. Right soon.”

  Phoebe moved on, as there was a crush behind her to congratulate the effervescent bride. She walked out into the night air and spotted Tanya who was waving to her.

  “As I was saying,” Tanya said when she drew near, “you need to lower your expectations a little bit.”

  “Never,” Phoebe said, a steely finality in her voice. “There must be a tall, dark, handsome, rich man in the world for me.”

  Tanya laughed. “There is. He's in your dreams, so dream on.”

  Phoebe looked over at the crowd with a sad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Maybe she really was aiming too high; maybe she was too picky and unrealistic. But oh, how sweet it would be to go for a honeymoon somewhere far away like Erica was, without pinching pennies.

  “What about that guy, Charles Black—your neighbor?” Tanya asked interestedly, intruding on her thoughts. “He is really good-looking.”

  “Poor,” Phoebe snorted. “I don't even know what he does for a living.”

  Tanya giggled, “What about Ezekiel Hoppings? The rich, ugly guy.”

  “I gave him my number when I saw him at church last week.” Phoebe responded sullenly.

  Tanya choked back a laugh and then erupted. “Are you serious? Are you really serious? The beautiful Phoebe Bridge, who will not tolerate imperfection in anyone, gave her number to that unfortunate looking man?”

  Phoebe shuddered. “I did. He asked if it was okay for him to call me sometime? I said yes. End of story. He hasn't called and I didn’t take his number. So there—that's the end of that.”

  Tanya shook her head in awe. “I am sorry I dared to lecture you, Pheebs. If you can consider Ezekiel Hoppings as a d
ate, no matter how rich he is, I will say your standards of perfection are well and truly lowered. Let's go have some of those delectable chocolate desserts, the groom made, that Erica has been harping on about all week.”

  Chapter Two

  Tanya gave Phoebe a lift to the low-income housing scheme where she lived. Phoebe waved as Tanya turned her car around, tooted her and drove off. Phoebe could smell a strong pungent pigsty scent as she entered her street, and it was especially strong where she lived because her neighbor, on the right, reared pigs. His pigpen was especially smelly at nights. To make matters worse, Phoebe's room was at the side of the house in line-of-sight to the pen.

  She looked balefully at the house where she lived with her parents. Her mother had left the verandah light on and it showed up the ugly orange color that her father had painted it. The paint had been leftovers from a job he had been doing at the time so he had daubed the verandah with a single coat of the ugly color. It was peeling at some spots and little flecks of the orange paint were constantly shedding onto the tiny verandah, which featured a rundown wicker chair with a dirty cushion in it.

  Phoebe fought a grimace when she approached the verandah and valiantly tried to shake the revulsion she always felt when she entered the yard with its dried up grass and a lone scraggly-looking orange tree.

  Even in a neighborhood of modest houses and yards, her family's house was the worst looking. She had given up trying to spruce up the place. The last time she had splurged and used her paycheck to buy new glass windows, they broke during installation. Her father had shaken his head in resignation and boarded up the front windows with ply board, making the inside of the house even darker and dingier than it was before. Phoebe entered through the front door, passed the small living room with its ugly red velvet settees and headed for the kitchen.

  She placed the bag of chocolates she was clutching on the counter space that was jammed into a small corner of the room—the Formica top was chipped and peeling in places.

  Her mother, Nishta, was washing dishes and grunted a hello when she saw Phoebe.

  Nishta Bridge was a pessimist with a defeatist attitude. She delighted in bad news and was constantly predicting dire results from all the major happenings in the world. She was also a conspiracy theorist who just loved to hear a hint of scandal to confirm her views that the world was descending into madness, just as she had predicted.

  Her idea of entertainment was reading the death section of the national newspaper and connecting face and names with the news reports.

  Phoebe could see that her mother had been a beauty in the past but her beauty was severely fading. Burdened with stress and anxiety over her living situation, Nishta appeared tired and took absolutely no pride in her appearance.

  Her long coal-black hair was generously peppered with white streaks; she wore it caught up in a ponytail everyday. Though her honey-toned skin was smooth, she had two permanent worry lines etched between her eyes.

  Nishta Bridge was just forty-nine but she looked at least ten years older. She had given up on dieting and exercising and had gotten soft around the middle. She had two rolls of fat around her mid-section and one roll around her neck. Her mouth was turned down in a permanent look of disapproval.

  Phoebe looked into the pot and saw that she had cooked rice porridge for dinner. She screwed up her face in displeasure and hurriedly closed the pot.

  “These are for you,” Phoebe said indicating to the chocolates that she had gotten as souvenirs at Erica's wedding. “It was a really nice wedding, very romantic. Erica looked pretty in her white lace dress and the groom was gorgeous—they are going to Paris for their honeymoon.”

  “That's nice,” Nishta mumbled. “Imagine that! Paris, the land of lovers,” she sighed. “If only you could find a rich man and get married, you could honeymoon in exotic locales too. You could even take us out of our misery.”

  She looked at Phoebe, her brown eyes tearing up. “You are getting old, Phoebe. When I was your age I was long married. If I had not picked such a poor man like your father, life would be so much different for me. At least I could eat well every night instead of having porridge or whatever measly food your father provides. By the way,” she flashed her soapy hands and grabbed a towel, “the money you spent on that dress you are wearing could feed us for at least five nights this week.”

  Phoebe leaned on the wall and patiently listened to her mother as she bemoaned their poverty and how she was the only hope. The talk was always the same and Phoebe feverishly wondered when she could politely retire to her room or better yet, escape this house.

  “Can you imagine what life would be like if we were rich, Phoebe girl? We could live like queens, go on one of those cruises that I see them advertising on television. Except, we would be going on our own yacht; cruising around the Caribbean; stopping at whatever port would catch our fancy.”

  “It would be nice, wouldn't it?” Phoebe asked, allowing herself to dare to dream like her mother—her mother always managed to pull her into her delusions of grandeur. There was a time when she would resist, but not tonight.

  Tonight she was especially keyed up from seeing Erica getting married and she wanted somebody to talk to, even if that person had a one-track mind about riches and marriage.

  Nishta leaned on the counter and looked at Phoebe, her eyes alight. “We could stay in any fancy hotel when we feel like it, or we could live like the Donahues in a lovely house overlooking the bay area. I was so disappointed when you didn't get that handsome Chris Donahue to like you back. Some men are so blind. You are beautiful; you have a lovely shape and a truly gorgeous face. What was the matter with that man?”

  “Don't start that again, Mama,” Phoebe said taking the pins from her hair and moving out to the sitting room.

  Her mother's favorite topic was the Donahues, and how rich they were. A few years ago she had pushed Phoebe to pursue Chris Donahue, to the extent that he had publicly announced, in church, that he wasn't interested in her and had even gone as far as to take out a restraining order against her.

  The humiliation was one she had buried under her list of things not to think about. She had appeared to the world as if she didn't care, but the experience had hurt her deeply. After the devastating put down at church she had come home the night and bawled like a baby.

  She didn't even liked Chris, but her mother had waged a marriage campaign with him as the centerpiece—it had backfired horrendously.

  “Where's Dad?” she asked her mother who was rummaging through the bag of chocolates and regarding each candy with worshipful devotion.

  “He is laid up in bed,” Nishta grunted. “His back gave way this evening, which means he'll not be able to work for the next couple of weeks; which means porridge for dinner for the rest of the week.”

  Phoebe shrugged. Her father was periodically out of a job; this was nothing new. He was a seasonal worker and usually got odd jobs around town, usually in construction, until whatever he had planted on his farm came to fruition. For most of her childhood she could recall being hungry for days when he was out of a job. Luckily, she had gotten a job at the bank and was now able to care for the three of them until he could start working again.

  Her mother was a housewife who never worked a day in her life, and didn't complete high school. Nishta’s parents had never seen the need for it. They thought that girls had one use, and that was to take care of their husband's household.

  They had arrived in Jamaica, from India, with some archaic ideas regarding their four girls. Nishta was the youngest and the most brainwashed.

  She had also been the only one who dared to court a non-Indian. They had taken her defiance very hard and after several warnings, a defiant Nishta was kicked out of her parent’s house with nothing but the clothes on her back.

  Out of necessity she ended up marrying Larry Bridge, a poor struggling farmer who was not ready for marriage. By the time Phoebe was born, after five miscarriages, her parents were locked in a partnersh
ip with poverty.

  They had lived in a one-room shack on Larry's one-acre farmland and for most of Phoebe's life, up until age twelve, they had remained there until some kind Samaritan signed up Larry for affordable housing in a low-income housing scheme. He had gotten one of the two bedroom houses on a square of land.

  Through the years, their economic standing remained unchanged, and before Phoebe could do simply additions, or memorize a Bible verse her mother had one counsel—never marry poor.

  It was a mortal sin to marry poor.

  It was a chorus Phoebe knew well, and while she sat in the small settee in the dingy living room, she found herself wondering about Ezekiel Hoppings. She had declined to mention him to her mother; she was in no mood for a one of her mother's battle plan to woo Ezekiel. Besides, the man was so far out of their class that he was in another stratosphere, and he was ugly. He had the face only a mother could love and no matter how many times Phoebe tried to tell herself that all that mattered was the lifestyle she would have after she got married, she felt a mild aversion to even think about Ezekiel that way. She could not imagine waking up in the mornings to Ezekiel's face or to sit facing him at the dining table night after night.

  She glanced around her at the dust covered center table with a five-week-old newspaper sprawled in the middle and the pale pink curtains her mother had gotten at a bargain store and shuddered.

  Did it truly matter how a person looked when they had enough money to dig her out of her mire of poverty?

  She was twenty-four, and as her mother kept reminding her, her good looking days were numbered.

  At seventeen her mother entered her in a beauty contest and she had placed third. The other two girls had rich fathers and had been placed in the top spots because of their connections. Phoebe's mother had not ventured to suggest that she enter other contests after that. To Nishta, being rich trumped being beautiful; the contest had cemented that in her mind.