by Mary Monroe
Reed let out a long, deep sigh and shook his head before he answered. “Plenty. I heard that Lola is not the Goody Two-shoes she appears to be.”
I held my breath. “Meaning what?”
“For one thing, people say she’s got men coming out of her ear. One recent Saturday afternoon, Mother spotted her prancing out of a hotel elevator with a married man, and they were obviously more than friends, if you know what I mean.”
“How did Mother Riley know the man was married?”
“She asked one of the clerks at the front desk about him. He told her that this same man, who was from out of town, often checked into one of their suites with his wife.”
“So what? Lola’s single, so she could have men coming out of her ass if she wanted to. I know she has a lot of men friends, and a few of them could be married. But that’s her business.” I shifted in my seat and focused on the next speaker. From the corner of my eye, I could see Reed looking at the side of my head. I could only imagine what was going through his mind about my knowledge of Lola’s lifestyle and what influence it had on me.
Chapter 39
Joan
REVEREND CLYDE WAS DELIVERING THE CLOSING REMARKS, SO I thought the funeral was almost over. I was wrong. Right after he finished, Libby got up again and skittered back to the pulpit. Reverend Clyde looked at her as if she had lost her mind, but he graciously stepped to the side. “I have a few more things to say,” she said with a sniffle. She fanned her sweaty face with a hand fan and dabbed at her nose and eyes some more with her handkerchief. “I know Mama is looking down from heaven with a big smile because she’s so happy to see that so many people came out to pay their respects. But the main reason she’s happy is because she’s with the Lord.” Libby paused and looked up toward the ceiling. “Mama, you sit tight up there and keep an eye on your loved ones until we all join you.”
“I don’t believe the nerve of that hypocritical wench,” I said to Reed in a low voice. He didn’t hear me because he had fallen asleep again.
When the service finally ended, everybody headed downstairs to the dining area. There were four long tables, and on top of each one were bowls and platters of everything from fried chicken to collard greens to tacos and lox and bagels. Mama had brought six sweet potato pies, and I’d brought four dozen dinner rolls and three large bowls of black-eyed peas.
“I hope you didn’t season them peas with no pork. We have to show respect for them Jews and Muslim mourners that came,” Mama said when I approached her. She hovered over a table looking like she wanted to eat everything in sight.
“I seasoned the peas with smoked turkey necks, Mama,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Everybody except me had already descended on the food like vultures. Lola was the last person to enter the dining area. She stood in the doorway looking like a deer caught in a car’s headlights. I immediately joined her. “I am so glad you made it,” I told her, giving her a big hug. Her body was so stiff it felt as if I had wrapped my arms around a lamppost.
“I . . . I’m glad I made it too,” she sniffled. “I almost changed my mind at the last minute. Now I wish to God that I had. As soon as I sat down, Jeffrey came over and told me that Libby and Marshall didn’t want me sitting anywhere near the family and instructed him to escort me to the back of the room.”
“I saw that,” I said, so angry my cheeks throbbed. “You had a close relationship with Bertha, and you meant a lot to her. You have as much right to be here as—” Before I could finish my sentence, two stout ushers headed in our direction, marching like soldiers on their way to a battlefield.
“Sister Lola,” one of them began, looking sad and apologetic at the same time. “I know this is a unhappy occasion for all of us, but we have to ask you to leave,” he added.
Lola and I gulped at the same time. I thought I was going to lose the cookies I’d eaten earlier. “Why?” she asked.
“It’s the family’s request. Your presence is causing them even more grief,” the other usher said. “I’m so sorry, sister.” He looked just as sad and apologetic as the other one.
“I have to leave right now?” Lola asked in a high-pitched voice. From the look on her face, I could tell that she was twice as stunned as I was. Somehow she remained civil, but her voice shook when she spoke again. “Some of my former teachers and classmates are here and I’d—”
The first usher held up his hand and shook his head. “You can fix a plate to take home, but you have to get up out of this church lickety-split. Otherwise, Libby and Marshall might make this situation real ugly.”
“Humph! They’ve already made this situation real ugly!” Lola shot back. The next thing I knew, she spun around and headed toward the exit. Mourners close enough to hear everything gasped and shook their heads as she plowed through the crowd, and I was right behind her. Reed and Junior stared at me in slack-jawed amazement.
“I’ll get a ride home with Lola,” I yelled to them. I didn’t bother to wait for a response. Under the circumstances, my best friend needed me more than my husband and my son.
I climbed into the front passenger seat of Lola’s raggedy old Jetta and then she shot off down the street. We didn’t speak until she stopped at a liquor store parking lot a block and a half away. “Make sure you get something real potent,” I hollered when she opened her door and got out.
“I will. And I’ll buy the biggest bottle they have,” she added in an angry tone I rarely heard her use.
* * *
“I hope I never have to be near Libby and Marshall again as long as I live,” Lola seethed as she poured rum into one of the motel’s flimsy paper drinking cups. I had already mixed myself a rum and Coke. Lola was so anxious to get a buzz, she didn’t even dilute her drink with Coke. “I could kill them both!” she hollered. I sat down on the lumpy bed; she started pacing the floor. “Those motherfuckers!”
“I say good riddance to them both. Be glad they are finally out of your life.”
Lola stopped pacing and gave me a hopeful look. “Now I can really focus on having a life of my own without a bunch of complications. I don’t have to sneak around and make up stories about bogus friends and all that other shit I had to do when I had Bertha breathing down my neck.”
“What about the club?”
“What about it?”
“Are you going to keep dating club members?”
“I will until I meet somebody special, I guess.” A tight smile crossed her face. “Or until I know for sure where my relationship is going with Calvin. He’s anxious to see me again.”
“He called you?”
“No, I called him last night. He was on a run down to San Ysidro. He told me he’d like to see me when he gets back up here.”
“I’m glad to hear that. He’ll be a nice distraction for you until you get your bearings back.” I gave Lola the most endearing look I could manage. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I hope Calvin is the man you seem to think he is.”
“I hope he is too.” There was a gleam in her eyes that I had not seen since we were teenagers.
I knew that things were eventually going to work out for her. Now I had some new concerns about my own situation. For the past couple of weeks, Reed had been doing some pretty weird shit, even for him. He’d left his computer on one morning, something he rarely did. While he was taking a shower, I checked his monitor. The link he had opened was an article about people who believed in life after death. When I asked him about it, he shrugged and claimed he was “just curious” about the subject and told me to stop being so nosy. He usually read the newspaper at the breakfast table every morning, but last Thursday it was the Bible. When I asked him why, the only response I got was a mysterious smile.
Last Monday after we had gone to bed, around midnight he nudged me with his knee to see if I was asleep. I was awake but I played possum. A few minutes later, I heard him crying! The next morning when I asked him if everything was all right, he gave me a strange look at first and then he
said, “No, but I’m working on it.” His peculiar behavior had begun to scare the hell out of me. I hated the vague responses he gave when I tried to get him to open up to me, but I didn’t know what else to do for him. I was at my wit’s end.
Reed’s parents continued to believe that he was fine and that his suicide hints were nothing to be concerned about. They were convinced that if he really wanted to take his own life, he would have done it by now. No matter how many times I offered to make an appointment for him to talk to a professional, he refused. He told me that if anybody needed professional help, it was me.
I prayed that I wouldn’t have to attend his funeral next.
Chapter 40
Lola
AFTER WE FINISHED TWO DRINKS EACH, JOAN DECIDED TO HANG out with me at the motel for a while. She gave Reed a call to let him know. He expressed his concerns about her being in a dump like the Stanton Street Motel and offered to bring us some Chinese takeout since we had not eaten at the funeral reception, but we had already picked up some rib dinners from Beanie’s, the soul food restaurant in the next block. Reed also told Joan that he, and almost everybody else at the church, was appalled about what had happened to a sweet person like me.
I was touched when she told me some of the things he’d said. “He called me ‘a sweet person’? I never thought Reed would ever say something like that about me,” I said. We occupied the same side of the bed with the Styrofoam plates that contained our rib dinners in our laps.
“Tell me about it. I don’t know, Lola. I don’t know if I should be concerned about him or not. Sometimes his behavior scares me to death. Especially lately.”
“Do you still think he’s in that state of euphoria some suicidal people go through before they . . . you know?”
“I don’t think that’s the case now. It’s been going on too long. From what I read, suicidal people generally kill themselves either the same day of their euphoria or within a day or two.”
“The man is one for the books, but maybe he’s trying to make up for all the misery he’s caused you.”
I was about to give Reed more benefit of the doubt when he showed up at the motel anyway with a stupid look on his face. We had just finished our dinners and the rest of the rum and Coke. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d check to see if either one of you needed anything,” he said when he strolled in, frowning at the empty rum bottle on the dresser. “Or did somebody else already take care of that? I noticed a lot of cars in the parking lot. . . .” What he did next happened so fast it took us a few moments to process it. We watched in stunned disbelief as he darted to the bathroom, leaned in the doorway, and looked around inside. He did the same thing with the closet, which was so small a man would have to be a midget to fit in it. I was surprised he didn’t look under the bed to see if we were hiding a man there.
Joan looked totally disgusted. “Dr. Riley, can’t you do better than that? Do you honestly think that we’d leave the funeral of my best friend’s mother and shack up with dudes in a dump like this the same day? You saw how Lola was booted out of the church. How could you even think she, or I—”
I cut Joan off. “Let it go. It’s all right.”
“Now there you go, jumping to conclusions and putting words in my mouth like you always do,” he protested. “I was just being funny.”
“You were just being a damn fool!” Joan boomed. Reed lowered his head and started fidgeting. I could tell he was sorry he’d said and done something so ridiculous, but Joan didn’t let up. She gave him one of her meanest looks. “By the way, I might spend the night here with Lola.”
Reed remained silent for a few seconds and there was a steely look on his face. He snorted and blinked hard as he gazed from Joan to me and back. “That’s fine with me. Junior left the church with your folks, and he’ll be spending the night over there. Your sister said she’d bring him home in the morning in time to get ready for school,” he said. He cleared his throat, narrowed his eyes, and continued talking in a slow, tentative manner. “I . . . um . . . so you’re not coming home at all tonight?”
“Didn’t I just tell you that I was spending the night here with Lola?” Joan hissed. “And don’t expect to see me in the morning in time to make you breakfast. As for today, I suggest you pick up some Chinese takeout and eat that for dinner yourself.”
Reed waved his hand and snickered. “Don’t worry about me. I talked to Mitch a little while ago and he invited me over for a drink. I just might stay for dinner.”
“You’re going to Dr. Weinstein’s house to have dinner? A little while ago you said you were going to go help Dr. Mansfield prepare a speech today,” Joan said with her arms folded, and looking even more disgusted.
“Huh? Oh yeah! I am. I’m going to Mitch’s place after I do that.”
“Good! Start stepping!” Joan gave Reed a dismissive wave and pointed toward the door.
I was not the least bit surprised that she was being so abrupt. He’d been in the room less than three minutes and had already annoyed me, so I could imagine how unbearable living with him was for her. He scratched his head and glanced at his watch. “I see I’m running late, so I’d better get going,” he grunted. He backed toward the door, snatched it open, and left without saying another word.
Joan and I looked at one another and shrugged. “At least he didn’t insist on spending the night here so he could keep an eye on you.” I giggled but I was dead serious.
“Don’t be surprised if he sneaks back and hides behind a tree across the street or between parked cars so he can spy on me,” Joan said with a groan. “I swear to God, he’s beginning to act stranger by the day.”
I shrugged again. “How can you tell the difference?”
“Oh, I can tell the difference in his recent behavior.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this, especially from me, but I think you’re overreacting.”
“I don’t think so. There is something different about Reed these days and I should be concerned.”
I hunched my shoulders and gasped as if a lightbulb had suddenly been turned on inside my head. “I just thought of something. Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for Reed’s behavior.”
Joan gave me a sideways glance. “Keep talking. I’d like to hear what that explanation is,” she prodded.
“He’s in his forties, so he’s probably going through something as normal as a midlife crisis. Since we’re on the subject, do you still think he has suicide on his mind?”
“Yes, unfortunately, I do. I read an article about a man who had attempted to kill himself when he was twenty-two. He lived a normal life for the next thirty years. His family and friends thought he was happy until the day he came home from work and blew his brains out.”
“Damn. Let’s not even go into that right now. I’m depressed enough already.”
“I’ll do all I can to bring you out of your depression, and you’ll probably have to throw me a lifeline any day now. With me having to deal with whatever Reed’s going through, I’m sure I’ll be depressed again very soon.” We laughed at the same time.
After we’d chatted a few minutes more about the incident at the church, I turned on my laptop and started browsing rental sites. I was even willing to settle for a private residence where I could rent a room. My search was very disappointing. Most of the apartments and houses were in areas I wouldn’t be caught dead in, and others were way out of my price range. I scanned the listings until something caught my eye that made me do a double take.
“Joan, look at this: Laurel District house: one story, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and pets allowed . . . five hundred and fifty a month. That’s a real nice neighborhood. And rent is only five hundred and fifty bucks a month. Oh, this has to be a typo.”
“Either that or the place is haunted. Some of the studio apartments in that neighborhood rent for over fifteen hundred bucks a month.”
I read on. “Partially furnished, utilities included.” Joan and I looked at each other a
t the same time. “Something is definitely not right.”
She widened her eyes, whipped out her cell phone, and dialed the number listed with the ad. “Hello. I’m calling about the house on High Street. Is the rent really only five hundred and fifty dollars a month?” She listened to the person on the other end for about two minutes before she thanked them and hung up. There was an incredulous look on her face.
“Well?” I said, heaving a sigh.
“It’s not a typo.”
My jaw dropped. I was shocked and suspicious. “If the house is not haunted, there’s got to be something else wrong with it. Mold, termites, mice . . .”
Joan shook her head. “The landlady swears that there’s nothing wrong with the place.”
“Then why is the rent so cheap?”
Joan blew out some air and gave me a hopeless look. “You don’t want to know.”
“Tell me what she said,” I insisted.
Joan coughed to clear her throat first. After a long breath, she continued. “A couple of years ago somebody bought the building next door and turned it into a halfway house for ex-convicts. The family that had lived in the house for ten years moved two months later. The next tenants left a month after they found out they’d moved next door to a bunch of ex-cons.”
“I don’t blame those people! I wouldn’t want to live next door to a bunch of convicted felons either,” I said sharply.
“Give the dudes the benefit of the doubt. They’ve paid for their crimes.
The landlady said none of them have committed any crimes against any of the other residents in that neighborhood. She said that last year, a woman and her two teenage daughters lived there for six months. The convicts didn’t bother them at all.”
“Why did they move?”
“The woman’s fiancé lived in L.A. When they got married, she and her girls moved down there.”
“Hmmm. I can’t afford to stay in this motel too much longer and maybe it’d be okay to stay in that house until I find another place I can afford. That shouldn’t take more than a few months, and maybe not even that long. What do you think?”
