Apple Brown Betty

by Phillip Thomas Duck

  Cydney shrugged. “So?”

  Jackson forced a smile. “Your brother wasn’t too fond of your seeing Desmond Rucker, was he? In fact, my guess is he’s not too fond of you seeing anybody.”

  “Shammond can be overprotective,” Cydney admitted.

  Jackson nodded. He could tell it was best he leave this alone. “Do you think he’d harm Felicia Rucker to get back at Desmond?”

  Cydney looked off around her apartment. “I’m not sure what he’d do.”

  “Let me put it a different way,” Jackson said. He moved forward on the couch, his backside barely in contact with the leather, and leaned in to Cydney. He looked like a man apologizing for wronging his woman; she looked like a woman scorned and milking the apology for all she could. “Would you put it past him to harm Felicia Rucker to get back at Desmond?”

  Cydney thought about innocent Felicia Rucker and Desmond’s despondency the night of the incident. She thought about the poor acting job her brother had put forth when she questioned him about Felicia. She looked at Officer Jackson. “No, I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  Jackson settled back into the couch. “I thank you for your truthfulness.”

  “Are we done here?” Cydney asked him.

  “Yes.”

  Cydney stood. “I hate to be rude but I desperately need to take a hot bath and get myself some rest.”

  “Oh, of course,” Jackson said, rising to leave.

  Cydney followed him to the door. Jackson stopped before crossing out into the hall and turned back to Cydney. “Your brother is responsible for his own actions. Don’t believe for one minute that you could change him, or by telling me what you have that you’ve done him an injustice.”

  Cydney placed her arm on the door and inched it forward a tad. “Good day, Officer Jackson.”

  The door closed and Cydney took a deep breath. The phone started to ring but she paused by the door, in reflection.

  Breaking up was so hard to do, especially when it’s someone you truly love, someone who truly loves you.

  There was no doubt left. She’d broken up with Slay for good.

  She went to answer her phone.

  Felicia trembled as she dialed the numbers and waited for a pickup. Each ring in her ear brought with it the painful memories. Stubborn stains and odors stuck in the fabric of her mind that couldn’t be dissolved with elbow grease, Heloise’s hints or Felicia’s own sheer will.

  Slay, her supposed thug lover.

  The cab ride over with that annoying driver.

  The couple she encountered in the lobby, smiling, arms entwined in love, riding up the elevator together. The supposedly broken elevator.

  The cold stairwell.

  The climb up those three flights of stairs.

  The voices, giddy and high-strung, up above her head.

  Her initial hesitation—and then her shaking off that hesitation, strutting up those stairs as if she didn’t have a care in the world, looking for love in all the wrong places.

  Those rough fingers gripping her by the ankles and then…

  “Hello.”

  And then…

  “Hello, who is this?”

  Felicia licked her dry lips. “Hi there, Daddy.”

  “Felicia? Hey yourself. We were just talking about you and your brother. What—your nose itched?”

  Felicia laughed at the old wive’s tale.

  “The Karnegys stopped in,” Frank Rucker continued. “You remember them, don’t you? They used to get Desmond a different oil company toy tanker truck every Christmas, and you they got a different Barbie. All of those little outfits. You would spend hours mixing and matching them.” Frank Rucker laughed to himself. “Coordinating them, you said. I think the Karnegys set you up for this modeling thing.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Felicia acknowledged.

  Felicia always had a fascination with clothes, but since the stairwell she was like a cruise traveler, seasick. She was nauseated by just the sight and feel of clothes, as the seasick traveler would be by the sight and smell of food. She felt as if the way she dressed had brought about the way she was treated on that cold stairwell.

  Over the past few days, Felicia had bagged up the short skirts she’d brought down from New York and placed them on the curb outside for garbage pickup. Then she remembered that she’d been wearing a long skirt that night. She immediately bagged up all her other skirts and curbed them as well. Next, she bagged all her cleavage-revealing tops, all her other tops, and curbed them for garbage pickup as well.

  She was left with only a pair of blue jeans fading to yellow and an oversize Penn State sweatshirt that she’d taken from Desmond years back.

  “So how are things going?” her father called through the line.

  “Fine, I suppose,” Felicia lied. For now, that would be her stance. Later, she didn’t even know when, she’d confront the truth with her parents.

  “What’s going on with Desmond?”

  “Running that restaurant,” Felicia answered.

  “Yeah,” her father mused. “That’s a gift and a curse.”

  “You’ve been mighty down on the culinary business lately,” Felicia said.

  “Like I told you, your mother and I didn’t get nearly enough time with your brother and you because of those restaurants,” Frank Rucker responded. His voice was easy but there was bitterness in his words. “That’s the curse part. I’ve been thinking about that endlessly these past few months. That and the stuff you said about me being so hard on you two, putting so much pressure on you, never being satisfied.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes indeedy. The older you get the more you start to reflect on things. I hope you two learn earlier than I did. Particularly Desmond.”

  “Desmond?” Felicia chuckled. “You’re worried about Mr. Perfect?”

  “Mr. Perfect?”

  “Despite what you think,” Felicia said, “Desmond is squeaky clean. The wedding fiasco is probably his only real slipup, and you’re partly the blame for that.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “Why I was so hard on him during that time. Why I insisted he rethink the wedding.”

  “Because that’s how you are and—”

  “Caught him having sex with one of our waitresses,” Frank Rucker said. “They were out in the parking lot like some teenagers. She happened to be a married woman, two children.”

  “Oh?” was all Felicia could say.

  “Told Desmond he needed to do some reflecting,” Frank Rucker said.

  Felicia cleared her throat, chased away her surprise, moved on. “I’ve been doing some reflecting of my own.”

  Frank Rucker hesitated. “Oh?”

  “I don’t think the modeling is for me. If you guys haven’t spent that tuition money, I think I want to give college a try.” Felicia thought about the knowledge she sought about herself and the world at large. What better learning ground was there than college?

  “A try?”

  “I want a degree,” Felicia added. “Criminal psychology, something along those lines.”

  “What brought about this change?” Her father’s voice cracked with excitement. It made Felicia feel good that she was the source of his awakening joy. She needed that.

  “That’s a long story,” Felicia told her father. “One day I plan on sharing it with you and Mommy.”

  “Hold on,” Frank Rucker said. “Your mother just finished showing the Karnegys out. She’s coming now. I want you to tell her.”

  “Okay.”

  Felicia could hear her father in the background as her mother walked up. “Felicia’s on the phone. She wants to give up the modeling and go to college.”

  Felicia smiled and shook her head. Her father never was one for keeping secrets.

  Barbara Rucker’s voice came on the line. “Felicia, hey there, baby.”

  The sound of her mother’s voice was like arms wrapped around her, providing her with warm
th and security. This was going to be a long struggle, no doubt, but just as Felicia thought, she could make it through it. “Hi, Mommy,” she said.

  “You got something to tell me?”

  Felicia smiled, the stairwell forgotten for the moment. “Yes, Mommy, I do. I want to go to college.”

  The drive from the hospital to Kenya’s apartment was when it finally hit Slay that his mother, his precious mother, was gone. He kept his Nas pumping through the stereo speakers but the clacking of drums and the vibration of bass didn’t comfort him as it normally did. He turned the CD off completely when it came to Nas’s song, “Fetus,” a tribute from the rapper to his own mother.

  Slay had just gotten his windows tinted last week and outside he could see people staring as he drove down the block. Normally, he would have cranked his music loud and slowed his driving, but today wasn’t a normal day. He looked over at the passenger seat. The sweater he was too late in bringing to his mother lay in a crumpled mess. On top of the sweater was a pamphlet the reverend had given him at the hospital about grieving. Slay took the pamphlet out of courtesy, but he was sure as death and taxes that nothing written on those scant pages could come close to helping him deal with his loss.

  At Kenya’s, no longer his mom’s as far as he was concerned, he parked and slowly strode down the cracked sidewalk path to the building’s lobby. His hand was on the door handle when he felt a presence behind him. A shadow. He wheeled quickly, his hand balled in a fist, ready. Expecting to see Boom.

  “Cydney?”

  “Slay,” she said, soft, but all business.

  “Shammond.”

  “Slay,” she repeated.

  Slay nodded, not about to press the issue. “Kenya called you?”

  “You know she did.”

  “I was gonna come by your place.”

  “Don’t want you there,” Cydney said. She looked around, couldn’t fight the wrinkling of her nose. “As much as I despise this place, I’d rather come out here and see you than have you in my domain again.”

  “It’s that serious?”

  She mimicked his question with an answer. “It’s that serious.”

  Slay eyed his sister, looking so odd in an oversize blue jacket. Blue—his mother’s favorite color. A color Cydney had sworn off the minute Nancy Williams became a slave to the crack pipe. And yet, today, Cydney was covered with the tattered, oversize, blue jacket. Fitting she’d break her ban on the day her mother broke the plane between this world and the next.

  “Did you call me to tell me the truth about the girl…Felicia?” Cydney asked.

  Slay didn’t answer; instead, he continued eyeing Cydney, studying her even more intently. His appraisal seemed to unnerve her, as she hunched her shoulders together, pulled the blue jacket tight around her frame. Having trouble meeting him, eye to eye.

  “I know you were involved,” Cydney managed to say. “Might as well go ahead and—”

  “Mama’s gone,” Slay said, heading Cydney off.

  She sniffed. “Gone where? On another binge, running the streets, chasing down—”

  “Passed on today,” Slay said in a shaky whisper of a voice. “I’d had her over at Jersey Shore.”

  Cydney gasped, raised a trembling hand to her mouth; her tattered, oversize, blue jacket fell open. Slay eyed her chest briefly. She recovered, pulled the coat tight around her body again.

  “But you wanted to talk about Felicia,” Slay said. “So, shoot away, ask your questions.”

  Cydney shook her head. “Mama…”

  “Forget Mama. Felicia Rucker. GQ Smooth’s little sister. Was I involved in what happened to her?”

  “Shammond, don’t.”

  “Slay,” he barked. “Slay. Was I involved…yes.”

  Cydney’s eyes drooped, a slow but strong sadness taking hold.

  “George, too,” Slay continued.

  Cydney stood mute, shaking.

  “Sicced my dogs on the both of ’em,” Slay said. A weight came off his shoulders. His throat tightened but he continued, “Mama’s gone. You been gone. I don’t have anything to lose,” he choked out. “I’m a bad guy. Always have been.”

  “Shammond,” Cydney said, trying to move forward and touch his sleeve, his wrist, something. But Slay shrank away. Turned back and looked toward the building.

  “All I got is Kenya and them boys,” he said. “They’re mine, you know. Both of Kenya’s boys.”

  Cydney shook her head.

  “Mama knew,” Slay said, shaking his head now too. “Told me to settle that situation. Walk right. I’d be happy. I never listened. Until it was too late.”

  “It’s never too late,” Cydney said.

  A strange smile graced Slay’s face. “Ain’t it though, sister?” He gritted his teeth, then settled his jaw, proud, strong. “I ain’t any good, Cydney, you called it right. Of no worth. Kenya and the boys been managing without me for all this time. They’ll continue to.” He looked expectantly in the distance, searched the grove of bushes by the building, the parking-lot area.

  Finding nothing, he turned his gaze back on Cydney. “I’ve loved…wrong. But I’ve loved. I wish I’d done better. Tell you the honest to God truth, I don’t have the stomach for the tough-and-rough shit. George. Felicia. The both of them situations just ain’t sat right with me. I fucked up. I sicced my dogs on ’em and, damn, messed up. My dogs did what I set them out to do. They innocent in all this, under my thumb and shit. I’ll never give ’em up. But me, I gotta pay.”

  There was a quiet rustling in the distance. Four men made their way in Slay’s direction. One lone man, so different in demeanor from the other four, loped along sadly behind them.

  Slay looked up, grinned. “Here they are, Cydney. You can take off the coat.”

  A rookie officer reached Slay first, grabbed him strongly by the wrist. “You have the right to remain silent…” The words were lost on Slay’s ears. Instead, he looked at Cydney, smiled, turned and looked at Kenya’s apartment tower, allowing a stream of tears to run down his face unabated.

  Officer Jackson reached Cydney as the others shuffled Slay to a waiting, unmarked car. Jackson reached out his hand and Cydney removed the blue coat, Jackson’s wife’s, and handed it to him. She reached under her shirt and pulled out the mess of wires. Dropped them hard and unpleasantly in Jackson’s hand. “You did the right thing,” he said.

  Cydney turned without a reply. Desmond stood back a distance, leaning against the building for support. Their gazes met. Desmond nodded. Cydney moved to him, slowly. Desmond wrapped her in his arms.

  “He knew,” she whispered. “He knew I was setting him up. He turned himself in.”

  “Tired of running,” Desmond replied.

  Cydney nodded. She knew the feeling. She let the tears fall. For George and Nancy. For Slay, Shammond. For…her own self.

  DESSERT (EPILOGUE)

  “I named it after an ancient city in Africa,” Desmond said. “Cush. I liked the ring of it from the first moment.”

  Mary Roberts, a correspondent from the Today Show smiled and then placed the microphone in front of Cydney. The Today Show was filming a special segment in Asbury Park, mirroring Bruce Springsteen as he toured his adopted hometown, a hometown quickly rising from the ashes. “Your boyfriend has taken the city by storm with this restaurant,” Roberts said to Cydney. “What’s your favorite dish?”

  “Actually,” Cydney said, “I’ve been looking forward to a certain dessert that Desmond has been promising to share with me for some time.”

  “Ooh, you’ve got my attention,” Mary said. “What dessert would that be?” “Apple brown betty,” Cydney told her.

  Mary Roberts looked at Desmond. “Are you going to make sure this stunning young woman gets her apple brown betty today, Mr. Rucker?”

  Desmond nodded. “I most definitely am.”

  Bruce Springsteen’s folksy voice could be heard in the background, blending in perfectly with the house band. Cush was filled, even more than
usual, with patrons eager to get a good meal and possibly a quick run on television. “I’m going to allow you two to continue with your meal,” Mary said, “and meanwhile, for you folks out there in TV land enjoy this impromptu performance from the one and only Bruce Springsteen as we head toward the commercial break.”

  Mary politely thanked Desmond and moved with her camera crew to the back of the restaurant, where the performance pit was.

  “Are you feeling like a celebrity?” Desmond asked Cydney.

  “Going to hold on to my fifteen minutes as long as I can,” she told him.

  “My folks wanted Thanksgiving to be the first they saw of you,” Desmond said, “but I figured you’d get a kick out of being on camera with me.”

  Cydney smiled, nodded, her thoughts drifting.

  “What are you thinking about?” Desmond said.

  Cydney sighed. “Thanksgiving,” she said softly.

  “What about it?”

  “I didn’t care over the past few years that I wasn’t sharing it with my mother and my brother, but this year…”

  “It’s going to take some time,” Desmond said.

  Cydney nodded her head. “I’m trying to move forward. It’s hard, though. I feel so guilty.”

  “You have nothing to feel guilty about, Cydney.”

  “My mother needed me. I didn’t even know she was in the hospital. I should have at least been there to hold her hand as her life slipped away.” Cydney’s eyes drifted. “Shammond, in all of his craziness, he was always there for her, always there for me, too, in his own way.”

  Desmond sighed, thinking of his own sister and the rough road ahead for her. Luckily, Felicia seemed to have had the courage for the good fight. She’d been feverish in her planning for college, collecting brochures, visiting campuses. “It’s a sad situation,” Desmond said.

  “My brother made his bed,” Cydney said unconvincingly.

  “Yes, he did.”

  Cydney’s eyes squinted; she looked off behind Desmond. “There’s a woman and man over there staring us down.”

  Desmond turned. He fought like hell to keep his mouth from dropping open. “She’s…she’s coming over,” he stammered.