He felt Tara’s little arms hugging his leg. “Didn’t you kiss her, Uncle Russ? My dad kisses my mummy after he upsets her.”
He looked down at the precious little girl. “Didn’t I… She didn’t give me a chance.” As badly as he hurt, he couldn’t help laughing. Tara illumined his life. Immediately, his thoughts returned to Velma, and he wondered if he would ever laugh again without thinking of her, the woman who taught him the joy of laughter.
“I’m heading out of here,” he told them. “Be seeing you.” He threw his overnight bag into the trunk of his car and headed for Baltimore. She didn’t answer her cellular phone, and her house phone didn’t ring. “I’ll get through this,” he promised himself. “Six months from now, I hope I won’t give a damn.”
He threw himself into rebuilding the house that bore his father’s name. Telford and Drake stayed closer to him than usual, in their quiet way, giving him moral support as they had always done when he needed them. The full crew of twenty-three men finished the work in three weeks, and the landscapers began beautifying the lawns. He should have been happy.
Where Russ was out of sorts, Velma used her misery to push herself toward her goal. She worked out in a gym daily, took her medicine and ate properly. However, two weeks of that regimen netted her a loss of only one pound and a half.
“I’m through torturing myself,” she told her gym instructor when he begged her not to discontinue her exercise program. “I’m fine just like I am,” she informed him in an in-your-face manner that she knew was not typical of her. “I don’t have to be a string bean.” While she dressed, rebellion welled up in her. “I’m going to be the way that suits me,” she said to herself, left the gym and went to the hairdresser.
“I want a pixie cut and style, Bea. I’m tired of this long hair.”
Bea shrugged and got the scissors. “It’s past time.”
She admired the results in the mirror, left the hairdresser and stopped at the first shoe store that she saw. “I want a pair of dress shoes with one-inch heels, size seven and a half.” She wore the new shoes and dropped the three-inch-heel slippers into the first refuse bin she saw.
“Thank God my silly years are over. Now, I can walk a block without my feet killing me.”
“This silence has continued long enough,” Alexis said to her in a phone call one morning not long after Velma’s epiphany. “This isn’t like you. You promised to talk, but you chat about everything except why you don’t come here and what happened between you and Russ. And he’s become as tight-lipped as he was the day I met him.”
“All right. I wanted to wait till we were together, but too much time has already passed. I was content with myself, or thought I was, till I fell in love with Russ, saw you in your wedding dress and how Telford adores you. No one but you had ever loved me, and I couldn’t accept that a man would love me and want me for himself alone when there were so many tall, beautiful women like you that he could choose from. Russ was impatient with it.
“Two professionals told me that my problem went much deeper, and I know enough psychology to grant them their point. I went to Montreal to talk with our father.” She related her experience during that visit, adding, “I don’t know when it started after that meeting, but I’ve begun to see myself differently. I don’t want to look like anybody but me, and I’ve changed me to suit myself.”
“I had a feeling you’d done that, but I didn’t ask for fear the news would be bad. I wish you’d told me. I’d have gone with you.”
“I know, but I had to settle something with him. I have his telephone number if you want to call him.” She read it to her.
She heard her sister’s sigh of relief. “Good. I’ll use it. I wish you would make up with Russ. He’s not happy.”
“Neither am I. For me, happiness is a man named Russ. We’ll talk.”
“Call Russ. You’re the one who walked out.”
“What will be, will be, Sis.”
Several hours later, she received a call from her real-estate agent. “Nine o’clock Thursday morning, we have to appear at the housing commissioner’s office. Bring your proposal. I have pictures of the warehouse and the neighborhood.”
“I’ll be there.” But her thoughts were not of the warehouse, but of Russ, whether he would be there to witness for Sam Jenkins, and what he would say to her if she lost the bid.
That Thursday morning, she walked into the office of the commissioner looking like a new woman, in a knee-length flounce skirt, one-inch patent leather shoes and her new short pixie hairstyle. Russ sat with Sam and another man in the official’s twelve-by-twelve-foot office, the intimacy of the setting giving her no privacy from him. He nodded to her, but she couldn’t respond; they were boxers in opposing corners of a ring.
Sam spoke as a man accustomed to having his way. In answer to the official’s questions, Sam said he would hire twenty-two to thirty workers; she would hire a maximum of twelve. With each comparison, she lost to Sam.
Exasperated, she asked Sam, “Why would upper-class people want to join a health club in that neighborhood? Why do you want that warehouse?”
“Why not? I’m starting a business.”
“In addition to my business there, I’m planning to give six-month cooking classes twice yearly for up to eighteen students who live in the neighborhood. What will you give to the neighborhood?”
“Jobs.”
To each of the official’s remaining questions, Sam bested her. She saw herself losing the warehouse and turned her back so that Russ wouldn’t see her without her composure. Her real-estate agent placed his arms around her in an attempt to comfort her, and she leaned to him.
“Did you try to find another building, Sam?”
At the sound of Russ’s voice, dark and angry, her head snapped around.
“What’s with you, man?” Sam asked Russ. “As I explained to you, I don’t want to lay out a lot of money to have a real-estate agent canvass Baltimore for a site.”
“Ms. Brighton paid me to do precisely that,” her agent said.
Russ stood and looked down at his friend. “Try to find another place, man.”
“What’s with you, Russ? Whose side are you on?”
His eyes narrowed and he slammed his right fist into his left palm. “Hers, dammit. I gave you my word, Sam, but you’re demanding too much. I love this woman. She’s my soul mate, and you’re asking me to deprive her of something she needs for her livelihood. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.” He looked directly at her. “Give him the warehouse. I’ll find a spot and build whatever you want.”
She stared at him in wonder, excited and afraid that her ears had misled her. “Are you… Do you mean that?” She moved out of her agent’s arms. “Do you?”
“You bet I mean it.” He turned to Sam. “I’ll always be grateful for what you did for me when we were in college, but Sam, don’t ask this of me. I can’t hurt her like that.”
“Sorry, Russ. I didn’t realize it was so serious. I’m sure I can find a place in a more suitable neighborhood.” He threw up his hand for a high five. “Don’t let grass grow under your feet, brother. She’s choice.”
“Don’t I know it! Let me know when you find a place, and I’ll redesign it for you.”
“Will do. Be seeing you, Ms. Brighton.”
She thought she nodded; she wasn’t sure. Every nerve in her body jumped to alert as Russ walked toward her, slowly, as if measuring his steps. “I’d like you to leave with me. Will you?”
She turned to the real-estate agent and thanked him. “I’d love to,” she then said to Russ, “but who gets the warehouse?”
“It’s yours, Ms. Brighton,” the official said. “Step in the office across the hall, and you can sign the papers.”
She didn’t move. How could she? He stood within a foot of her, reaching for her hand. “Let’s go sign those papers.”
She signed the papers, accepted a copy of the deed and the key to the warehouse and walked out of the municipal buildin
g with Russ holding her hand.
“I want us to go someplace where we can talk,” he said.
“My house?”
“Fine, but let’s sit on the back porch.” She wondered at that but didn’t comment. “Have you forgiven me, Velma?”
Sitting with him on the porch in the late-winter breeze, contentment enveloped her. “How could I not forgive you after you confessed publicly that you love me?”
He shrugged as if that were of no import. “I should have done that a good while ago.” He let his gaze roam over her. “So that’s it. You did something to your hair. You cut it.”
She settled in the chair and stuck out both feet. “Yep, and I also tossed out my spike-heel shoes. I’m through with needless suffering.”
Russ leaned forward, hope springing to life within him. “Why? What prompted this? Tell me.”
She looked him in the eye, making a point, he thought. “I decided that I am who I am, and if somebody doesn’t like it, tough!”
He could hardly contain the happiness that bubbled within him. “What brought this on? It’s what I’ve longed to hear, mind you, but how did you come to this?”
He listened to her story of her visit with her father and her reason for finding him. He had thought his own mother flaky, but compared to Velma’s mother, she was not so bad.
“Do you plan to see your father again?”
“I suppose so. I couldn’t help feeling his pain. Imagine living with that guilt and grief.” She paused, suddenly far away.
“What is it? What are you feeling?” he asked her.
“He…Father said, ‘She—Mama—was so beautiful, just as you are right now.’ I had forgotten that. And he said I looked just like her.”
He understood then why Velma had not been able to believe that he found her beautiful and physically attractive. “Of course, he loved you. He loved your mother, and he said you were just like her.” He walked to the edge of the porch and peered through the screen at two squirrels frolicking in the grass, walked back and sat on the porch swing beside her. “Does this mean you’re off that diet?”
Her fingers stroked his knee in a rhythmic fashion, communicating to him contentment, even as her smile did. “I am going to take my medicine and eat sensibly, but I have spent my last minute in that torture cell that goes by the name of gym, and as far as I am concerned, chicken breasts are extinct.”
He reveled in his own joy and laughter. Twenty-four hours earlier, he’d had no hope for reconciliation. “It’s past lunchtime,” he said. “Let’s phone for something to eat.”
“I could enjoy some fried catfish and baked corn bread,” Velma said.
“Great.” He placed their orders, went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, explaining that he hadn’t had anything in his mouth all day except toothpaste.
“I was miserable, Velma. I didn’t know how I could bear it if you lost that bid. When I realized he would win it, I couldn’t stand it. Then that guy put his friggin’ arms around you, comforting you as I should have been doing. Hell, I don’t want to think about that.”
They ate in silence, she apparently as deep in thought as he. “I’d better get to work,” he said when they finished lunch. “Can we see each other this evening?”
When she cocked her head to one side and smiled at him, he rocked back on his heels and waited for a bit of sauciness. “Who said you have to go back to work?”
His pulse accelerated, and water began to accumulate in his mouth. “Nobody. Why?”
“Then, stay.”
He looked hard at her. “Are you aware that it’s been three weeks and four days since I last saw you?”
Her hands moved up and down her sides, rubbing, evidence of her agitation. “I thought it was longer than that, but if you insist on leaving, at least kiss me goodbye.”
“I don’t insist.” A grin played around her lips, and he couldn’t get at her fast enough. “Challenge me, will you?” he asked her.
Her face bloomed into a big smile. “Why not? It always works.” She reached for his shoulders, parted her lips, and his tongue found its home between them.
Several hours later, as he lay buried deep inside of her with her legs snug around his hips, she said, “This has developed into an affair, and I am not happy having an affair with you.”
“We can always get married,” he said, as if he hadn’t thought of it constantly during the past three weeks.
“I know we…what? What kind of proposal is that?”
He separated them, slid off the bed and knelt beside it. “I love you, and I want to marry you. Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”
She rolled off the bed and knelt beside him. “Oh, yes. Yes. That is, if we can have three children.”
He thought his heart would explode from the joy that filled him. “It’s what I want, honey. A family. I’ll take as many as you’ll give me. Boys or girls, I don’t care which or in what combination. I just want a family.”
“Russ, love, you can’t know how happy I am.”
“I am, too.” He attempted at first to control the mirth, for the moment was a serious one. But the laughter spilled out of him unimpeded.
“What’s funny?”
“Us. We must look a sight kneeling here like this. When can we get married?”
“Six weeks. Okay?”
He nodded. “I wouldn’t mind if it was earlier. I’d better tell you something. I sent Iris two thousand dollars through my lawyer. Telford told me he saw her sitting with her child on the street, her things stacked around her. She’s nothing to me. I did the humane thing.”
She gripped his hand. “This gentle sweetness that you try to bury deep inside is one of the many reasons why I love you.”
“I can’t count the reasons why or the ways in which I love you. Life isn’t long enough for that. I’ll be a good husband to you, sweetheart. When you need me, I will always be there.”
“I know that, darling, as well as I know my name.”
He put her in the bed, crawled in beside her and rocked them both to ecstasy.
AFTER THE LOVING
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0543-7
Copyright © 2011 by Gwynne Johnson Acsadi
First published by BET Publications, LLC in 2005
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