Chik~Lit for Foxy Hens

by Ervin, Sharon

  His dad is a womanizer (or was) and Rhett looked exactly like his dad. I can hardly stand to be around the old man. He is the perfect example of hypochondriacal oral boredom walking around in a shirt and a pair of trousers. He always wants to talk to me about his ills and since he’s my father-in-law I have made valiant attempts to listen to his blather.

  I liked his Mom much more than his dad. She’s an old bitch, but sort of interesting to talk to. She converted from Southern Baptist, which is kind of a traditional type religion. Baptists sing loudly at the beginning of the preaching but are quiet most of the rest of the time when they are in the sanctuary during Sunday morning and evening services.

  Mrs. Prideaux went from that to some brand of obsessive Holy Roller Christian sect early on in Rhett’s life. He was prayed over and preached to for his whole life. Maybe that’s why he decided to try out every single set of lips, whether facial or vaginal, that was ever offered to him, or at least, most of them. He is good in bed. I have to give him that. Practice does make perfect, I supposed. I’m going to miss our lovemaking.

  Oh, yes, I’d met quite a few problems with Rhett and the Company parties we’d both held and attended. Not too often. Not too many liaisons with wives of fellow Corporate American managers. That could be bad for business. There were just enough party flirtations to be irritating to a wife. To me. I thought I’d learned to live with the occasional embarrassment at parties and/or angry scenes at home.

  The Filipino girls were a different matter. Their goal in life was to go live in the U.S.A. and this old duffer was as good a ride as they were likely to get so they flung themselves at him, and he helped them all he could, generous soul that he was. Had this telephone call been another example of Rhett’s charm gone wrong while being offered on the local economy?

  A baby? What was going on here? I listened to his snore and looked around our room. The white walled bedroom was quiet, cool, and comfortable looking, soothing, with its bamboo and wicker furniture. The only sound was the gentle swish of the air conditioner and the homelike Z’s of sleep. Audie was out with high school friends. She had been given a curfew time which she usually observed without nagging reminders.

  Servants weren’t due back until tomorrow. It was just us. Should I just go back to the wide bed, fall onto its tempting white surface for my twenty minutes of sleep and forget the whole thing? No. The problem had to be dealt with now.

  “Everett,” I spoke loudly, using the name he loathed, “Everett Kefhaufer Prideaux. I think you may be having a baby, dear heart. Roust yourself, old boy!”

  He sat up saying, “Huh?” He took a minute to get the gist of the woman’s message from my lackadaisical delivery, four more minutes to dress, walk downstairs, and leave the house, where he drove away without a word of explanation to me. What could he have said? He knew he’d stepped into it up to his knees this time.

  When his car pulled away from our yard, I called to my cat, Kela, who had been my confidant and my comforter more times than I could tell you. She was a rare feline, indeed. She loved taking walks with me on the sidewalks inside our walled compound, all twelve blocks of them. Then we made the outside circuit and she ‘heeled’ like a well trained dog, no matter where I went. She liked me to talk to her when we walked.

  “Kela, you want to make a trip to Oklahoma?” I asked her. She rubbed her white fur against my leg to tell me she’d go anywhere with me. We made another complete circuit of each street up and down the compound. Action of some kind always helps me make decisions. She would hate the trip but she’d love Oklahoma when she got there. Lots of mice, as I remember, even in the yards sometimes.

  Later that night, when my erring husband returned, I got my much needed explanation. It was a simple one. Rhett had been seeing a young bar hostess who’d worked in a club not too far from our residential neighborhood. She had fallen ‘in love’ with him and he with her so he had set her up in an apartment some distance away so she could stay at home and have her baby. She would be a respected Number 2 of an American man who would pay her expenses and give her an allowance as well.

  She would no longer have to appear at the bar to help service and entertain strangers, because she had come up pregnant with Rhett’s baby.

  “No question it’s my kid, Lori,” he explained, “She was cherry when I first had her. And now they say she may lose our baby.”

  How could he have believed such nonsense? This fifty-eight-year-old man’s naïveté in thinking his bar girl had been a virgin, was enough to make me laugh or cry. I did a little of both and then we got down to serious talk. I reminded him of our conversation at the airport in San Francisco, just before we’d returned to our house in Manila the last time we were coming back from our home leave in the states… specifically Texas, for visiting with his parents and Oklahoma for seeing my mom.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked. He didn’t remember any such discussion but I surely did. I remembered my very words. Interesting that old Rhett always managed to skip through the tulips whenever we were digging into his past behavior.

  I reminded him of what I’d said as we’d walked arm in arm through the airport. We’d paced the hallways to pass the time while Audie played the electronic games until our flight was called. We were alone in the crowds so I brought up his behavior with women. That had been only a few months ago. What I’d said then was, and this is a direct quote, “Now, Rhett, if you get mixed up with another woman be sure she’s one you really like, because I’m going to leave you to her.” He’d assured me during our walk that nothing of that sort was ever going to happen again. He’d learned his lesson. His previous indiscretions had almost gotten him into a world of trouble at his office. The loud Filipina had made a scene at his work headquarters and he couldn’t have that. Bad for business. He’d dropped the troublemaker that very day.

  Well, it seemed he certainly liked this woman enough to be playing house with her and to be making a baby with her. I guessed I’d leave him to her just as I had promised him I would do. Life in harness with an uneducated, barely English speaking, bar girl might be just what the old boy deserved.

  “Be sensible.” He commanded. He’d been playing house with me for thirteen years but I’d never made a baby with him the way Nancy had, he explained. He had to do the correct thing, here, he insisted, she was only nineteen years old. And I agreed. He was right about that.

  “One of the other correct things you must do involves travel plans,” I told him. “You’d better see about what you have to do to get me back to Oklahoma,” I ordered him. “Tomorrow is Monday. You check on that procedure when you go into work and I’ll hand in my two weeks notice at my office.” I was a technical writer and trouble shooter for the Republic of the Philippines Department of Labor. I specialized in writing for and about their national apprenticeship program.

  I surely wasn’t paid what I could have been making back home but the men and women in my office really appreciated my ability to write faultless English (comparatively speaking) and to turn the work out in short order when required. They liked it that I could deal with American, Japanese or European Corporate CEOs as well as with Filipinos. It seemed that they liked the fact that this American woman wasn’t afraid to speak up and see that all the foreign owned companies and corporations treated their local hires and their on-the-floor workers and assembly line groups like human beings.

  Now, those were a bunch of folks who would really miss me!

  “How are we going to handle this, Rhett? Are you going to tell Audie about your excellent new adventure or shall I?” I asked. I felt a tiny pain in my chest at the very thought of the sorrow we were going to cause our daughter, my stepdaughter, whom I loved as if she were my own.

  “Oh, come on, Lori,” Rhett turned on all his charm, took me in his arms, kissed me, and looked down at me with love and adoration in his eyes. He wasn’t dumb, just oversexed and we’d always been good together. “I don’t want you to go home. Let’s not break up ou
r family. Why are you making this big fuss? No matter what happens with Nancy, you’ll still be my Number One.”

  “Number One isn’t good enough for me, darling.” I put my hands up to his shoulders. “I’m an American woman, remember? I know this is boringly middle class of me but I want to be not only Number One, but the only one.”

  He let his eyes fill with tears. He kissed me again. The man was hard to resist. He knew how to push my buttons.

  “Ah, Lori. What about Audie? What are we going to tell her?”

  “We’ll tell her the truth and now let’s decide who’ll do it, you or me? Who’s going to tell her? She’ll be coming home any minute now. Midnight was her curfew for this school party.” I looked up at him to be sure he was paying attention to what I was saying. This wasn’t going to be easy. Someone would have to tell her the bad news. I hoped I would not have to be the one to break our daughter’s heart.

  I shook my head and tried to hold back tears, or maybe hysteria.

  “Why are you making such a scene, Lori? How can you just walk away from me and our Audie? You’re smashing our family to pieces.” He sighed in a put-upon-way, as if the whole situation were entirely my doing.

  “I think you did that, Rhett, when you set up housekeeping with your nineteen year old.”

  “You’re not going to change your mind?”

  “No.”

  “Well, let’s tell her together, I guess, if you’re determined to do this terrible thing to her.”

  Oh my word, I’d almost forgotten! Of course. I was not Audie’s real Mother. He was warning me that I was not going to be able to take her back to the U.S.A. to live with me. No custody question here. I froze in his arms. Could I walk away and leave her here? Could I do that?

  At that moment I heard my sixteen year old stepdaughter’s key turn in the side door lock “I’m home,” she called and walked into the library where her Father and I stood entwined, his arms about my shoulders, my hands on his chest. To her it must have looked like a parental love fest. The truth is, we did love each other. It’s just that her father wanted to include other girls and women in his romantic playpen and I was now definitely through with all that.

  “Here, here, none of that smoochie stuff,” Her voice held laughter. So sweet, my pretty little girl. In looks she was just a smaller, feminine version of her father; tall, slim body, sun tanned skin, turquoise eyes, high cheek bones, slim hips, arched eyebrows, and thick pale hair. Although her father’s hair was a more tarnished gold, some might say his was ‘dishwater blonde.’ She dropped her key into her size two cut-off jeans pocket, then pushed papers and books back on the mahogany expanse so she could perch on the edge of the desk to survey us.

  Audie even looks glorious in the morning when she has just awakened: skin glowing, hair rumpled (but perfect, if you know what I mean), eyes clear. I hate women who look glorious in the mornings. But not my Audie. I couldn’t hate her. I was thrilled and proud that she could jump out of bed and look… well, glorious.

  I’d loved her from the very first day I saw her soon after I met her father. She was really a good child, intelligent and generous to a fault. Her father’s good points were also her good points. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.

  She had always loved seeing us embracing or touching. I think it made her feel secure, like family members should feel. I hated to be the one to tell her how all our lives were going to change, so I looked up at the Playboy of the Western World, smiled, lifted and straightened my arm and pinched him really hard on the back of his neck where she couldn’t see what I was doing. I was hoping the physical pain would send Rhett the message that he would have to be the one to drop the first bomb on our sweet Audie.

  Chapter 2

  “Live in this house with a stupid Filipino girl from a bar posing as my stepmother? A whore?” Audie stood rigidly beside the desk, staring at Rhett. “Not in one million years, Dad.” She turned her stare toward me in much the same way her Father had done. Anger darkened her eyes.

  “Why are you doing this, Lori? You’ve known all along that Dad is a terrible woman chaser. He’s always been that way. That’s why my mother divorced him.” Her resentment at my stubbornness was palpable. “You knew all this. I thought you were able to just do what you explained to me when I first came to the P.I. You know… what Queen Victoria told her daughter?” She closed her eyes. “You know, close your eyes and think of England?”

  I had to laugh. I was surprised she had even remembered that bit of silliness. I’d explained about Queen Victoria telling her daughter how to behave on the eve of the daughter’s marriage, that the young woman must just endure the attentions of her new husband, no matter how much she disliked what he was doing. I have acted out Queen Victoria’s words when I explained to Audie what I did when faced with something unpleasant, such as her Father’s behavior.

  “Oh, my dear,” I had placed my right hand on my heart and had given my best QV accent. “I must endure, so I just simply close my eyes and think of England… and you Audie, you must do the same.”

  “Think of England” had become a byword in our house. Of course, Rhett never used it.

  Audie wanted me to stay as Number One. Rhett wanted me to stay as Number One. They both wanted their little family nest to be undisturbed. They almost persuaded me but a glance down the tunnel of months and years ahead, to the shame and pain and utter hopelessness which I was sure awaited me, showed me I just couldn’t stay. Not to please them. What I must do was please myself, or at least do what might offer a better future for me. I knew I’d miss things such as the smell of salt and kelp and dead fish that was the everyday fragrance of Manila even in our house set back from the seawall as we were. I’d miss a number of things but I could no longer let such stuff influence me. I had to go back to Oklahoma and sanity.

  “I have to go home, Audie. I’m not divorcing him, I’m just leaving a bad situation. If your father will let you go with me we can continue as mother and daughter in our own place in Tulsa. We’ll just leave your frisky papa here with his new family.”

  I was trying to use a light touch for a very heavy happening. Maybe if I had patience, we might indeed be once again a loving family. Maybe absence would make his heart grow fonder.

  “Well, I’m not staying here in a house with any uneducated prostitute trying to run me and my business.” Audie stomped her way past us and up the stairway, trying to separate herself from the two people who were bent on torturing her. Kela always slept on the stairs so she wouldn’t miss anything that went on. She leaped to her feet and scampered up the steps behind Audie.

  “Can’t you send her home with me, Rhett?” I whispered. “You’re going to be busy with the new baby, new wife, your job, etc. She might as well go home with me.”

  His face got that mulish look which always reminded me of his father’s expression, the expression which always meant, “This will have to go my way or no way!”

  I sighed and went upstairs to try to comfort Audie.

  The days passed and we all lived together much as we had always done. Rhett went to work, I went to work and Audie went to school. Rhett and I still shared a bed.

  Funny thing, now that I had given an ultimatum and it was apparent that I was really leaving, both Rhett and Audie hung close by me whenever they were home. Whatever I did there was one or the other clinging to my heels as an observer or just wanting conversation.

  Rhett seemed to be sexually exhilarated by the idea that I was leaving him. He wanted to make love nearly every night and sometimes during the day. I thought my sex life in Oklahoma might be pretty sparse so I went along with the program and enjoyed every minute of every session with him. And he didn’t require any Viagara. Even as old as he was he’d never taken any of the stuff so far as I knew. You can’t store up sex, I know, but I threw myself into what was offered with as much enjoyment as possible. Everything had an unreal quality. I wanted the sex but I hated the inner emptiness that sometimes followed our sessions
in bed. It was as if the possibility of future deprivation seemed to turn Daddy-o right on. I remember when we were dating, right up to the day of our big church wedding, Rhett wanted sex every night, sometimes twice or more a night. That changed on the day we said our legal “I do’s.” It was as if a faucet had been turned off. It was three or four days after the ceremony before he finally approached me again, and that every night lovemaking stuff? Gone with the wind. But now the hots were back with a vengeance. Good, I thought. I needed that! The idea of forbidden fruit turned Rhett on every time. Good. I have to admit that Rhett Prideau was the best lover I had ever had…or ever hoped to have. The man knew what he was doing.

  During the month following my hated announcement, I gave my notice at the office, was given a farewell party by my coworkers and listened to I-don’t-know-how-many speeches from the men who worked with me in the Labor Department.

  Filipinos love oratory, both to give and to listen to. I often thought of the country as a whole nation of Toastmasters International gone wild.

  Our last two weeks were hideous in some ways, good in others. When I finally stayed home getting my stuff ready to ship, I begged for Audie but Rhett was adamant. She could not go to Tulsa with me.

  Finally, one night after he’d been visiting his Nancy, I suppose, he came home and announced that he was shipping Audie home to live with her mother. Audie and I talked about this later and decided that Nancy had rejected Audie as much as Audie had rejected Nancy.

  My eyes met Audie’s after his announcement, but we didn’t dare smile, or look satisfied. He wanted us to be unhappy about this move so we kept our faces in the ‘unhappy’ mode. “Van Buren, Arkansas was her point of origin so to Van Buren she must go, according to company rules,” he announced. Shades of his father. Sometimes Rhett was a pompous ass.

  Both of us were thrilled. Maybe Rhett had forgotten or hadn’t thought about geographical distances, but we both knew I could drive to Arkansas in two or three hours and pick her up if she wanted to come to Tulsa. We’d done that many times over the years. I knew my mom would let me borrow her car.