Taylor Made

by Sherryle Kiser Jackson

  More than anything he wanted to claim her as his own. He found himself telling her corny things like, “I want to be the one you call when you break down on the side of the road ’cause you know I’ll get there before any tow truck can,” and, “I figure if I continue to chase after you, that you’ll eventually let me catch you.”

  Eventually he did catch her. After fifty-six Sunday afternoon dates, he proposed with two months’ salary on her ring finger. His parents seemed indifferent to him settling down, preferring he “have fun,” as his mom put it, and “not be a fool and let a position at Pop and Son’s Enterprises pass you by while you play house,” his father added.

  He had pursued, taken possession, and made Pill promises about their life together. She spent six months planning a lavish wedding before he talked her off the financial ledge. Her mom was gone, and her sister wasn’t about to foot the bill for the wedding. They settled on a private ceremony that they could afford with close family and friends on their section of the beach in May. He had learned that no matter how expensive her taste was, she relished in being different. The novelty of a picturesque pier-side wedding gave her girlfriends from the shop something they could pine over. They had their reception on the back lawn of his Uncle Pop’s Richmond estate. Pop was out of the country, and Rico Jr. had prior commitments and didn’t show up. He sure did, Corey thought. That’s why he lost the girl.

  Corey’s thoughts were interrupted by the crackle of the microphone. He had forgotten he was sitting with his family at his mother’s birthday celebration. His father was calling both him and his sister to the podium. Dani carried a large box covered in gold foil wrapping and placed it in front of their mother. Wilma Taylor needed no further prompting to tear into her gift. A squeal of one much younger escaped her lips as she surveyed her new mink coat. Corey’s dad provided the play-by-play on the microphone as she profiled. She vowed to keep on the fur for the rest of the night as she grabbed each member of her immediate family firmly around the neck and hugged and kissed them before sitting down.

  “Don’t sit down, Wilma. Since you’re opening gifts . . .” Pop said, sideling up behind Corey’s dad to project his voice. Everyone in the crowd seemed to sit up a little straighter and lean forward in their chairs as Pop tapped a white envelope on the podium stand.

  “That fur coat was lovely but can only be enjoyed in the winter. This . . .” Pop said, holding the padded card straight up in the air, “can be enjoyed year-round.”

  Money, how original, Corey thought.

  Pop handed the envelope to his sister. She read the contents of the card to herself as Pop explained it to everyone aloud. “A plane ticket and certificate for hotel and spa services at the Maureville Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Arizona, anytime you want to go, sis. Just call the reservation line.”

  There was a stunned silence at Pop’s generosity before an outpouring of accolades and cheers. Corey could see a few family members place their modest-sized gifts on the table near the door, preferring not to follow that act. Corey caught sight of his dad standing on the right side of his mom with an expression that read, Trumped. This time, it was his dad who looked away from Corey’s glance. Pop walked into his sister’s open arms, and she held on with all her might.

  “Wait, Ma, save some of that for me. That was from both of us,” Rico said into the microphone. He came over to where they were standing for a hug and kiss of his own.

  Before Corey could censor himself, he blurted out, “I just want you to know that my wife, Pi . . . ah, Pam, added to the fur coat also.”

  “Maybe she’ll grace us with her presence,” his mother heckled from the center of the family table to a bout of laughter from those nearby.

  He laughed it off. “She’ll be here.”

  Corey found himself beside Rico. It was Rico who extended his fist first for a pound.

  “What’s good, dude?” Rico asked. “I have been meaning to get up with you.”

  “Nothing much, Cuz. I see you livin’ large, as usual,” Corey said, admiring the grade of material in his suit.

  “Look, I’m starting an arm of Pop and Son’s enterprises that will concentrate on party promotions. Since this is me and Pop’s hometown, where we get mad love, we’re going to base the East Coast operations here. I’m saying, you should jump on board with this. I got a spot for you and Dani,” Rico said, striking a pose with his right hand in his pocket.

  “Dani?” Corey questioned. “She loves her job.”

  Rico smirked at the absurdity. “Yeah, but it’s teaching. Come on.”

  “Yeah, but party planning?” Corey acted as if what he was proposing was just as absurd.

  “She pulled this party off with two celebrity guests to boot. She’s got what it takes,” Rico said, pointing at a table full of distant cousins like they were groupies.

  Guests? Corey thought. What happened to family?

  “It’s like getting paid to party and travel from Richmond to Miami, from D.C. to New York,” Rico pointed his finger back and forth, hypnotizing Corey with the diamond ice of his ring.

  “Exactly. I’m not trying to leave the home front every weekend,” Corey said, remembering what it was like to work for Pop and son in their basketball camps. He remembered the pay wasn’t comparable to the amount of work that had to be done either. Corey basically ran the start-up operations. His uncle and cousin must have figured nepotism was its own reward.

  “It’s like that, now? I know wifey doesn’t have you henpecked already. What you over there doing? Turning down beds and fetching her shoes like a butler or something?”

  He had to mention shoes, Corey thought. His hands immediately balled into fists as his cousin passed him a playful lick to the arm. Rico had a way of bringing out the worst in him. They never really sat down to discuss how Pill ended up in a relationship with Corey. Rico would never admit it, but Corey knew it bugged him.

  “I’m doing all of that and more, Cuz. I’m also the baker, looking to put a few buns in the oven too.” Corey served up his most self-satisfied smile.

  Rico put up a hand as if to halt Corey’s words. “Back to the matter at hand. Was my New Year’s event off the chain or not? Wait—you missed that. Then Labor Day—dang, I guess the last thing you went to was over a year ago at my birthday.”

  Something caught Rico’s attention, but he continued to speak. “But there were all kinds of people there. All kinds of beautiful people.”

  Corey followed his cousin’s eyeline to the entrance. Pill was at the door. She was flawless and took his breath away the same way she had a year and a half ago. She wore a short purple trapeze dress with a high neck and bow with shimmery stockings and silver accessories. As if she needed any enhancement, her face appeared to be made up at the cosmetics counter of a department store with her lashes looking as long and as luscious as her bangs that were sweeping over her right eye and flipping forward.

  Suddenly Corey felt like the richest man in the room as he left Rico in midsentence to walk over to meet her. All eyes seemed to be on them, but Pill looked no less poised and confident—only he could tell she was a bit nervous. He smiled at her as if they hadn’t just fought that morning over money, and she smiled up at him as if they hadn’t fussed about sex. She welcomed Corey’s hand. As their fingers intertwined, he led her into the assembly, leaving the thought of $600 worth of debt at the door.

  Chapter 6

  Pill was in her closet surveying her wardrobe choices. In her mind she was a model preparing to walk the grandest runway this side of Richmond—the aisle of the newly built Dominion Baptist Church.

  Church fashion was a whole ’nother dimension that Pill had been determined to conquer. It was different than the petite sophisticate meets rock star vibe she sported at the shop all week. She was the type of modern church worshipper that added her own flair to the traditional church suit by displaying tightly weaved fishnet stockings that she liked to wear with boots or platform heels in the winter instead of the typical daywear s
heers and pumps. She was from that first generation of females that made a finely tailored business suit with slacks paired with an ultra frilly blouse and classic saltwater pearls acceptable in the former dress or skirt-wearing zone.

  She chose a brocade suit and a gold camisole that brought out the tinsel in the weaving. Now all she needed was her offering to ensure maximum exposure.

  When Pastor Rawls announced, “Bring ye all the tithes to the storehouse,” no money meant no runway time. At Dominion, they had two types of giving: the all-important mandatory tithes and a sacrificial offering. Pill knew all money in a preprinted Dominion Baptist Church envelope looked the same. She didn’t go down the aisle with less than fifty dollars. She didn’t play God cheap. “God loves a cheerful giver,” and when she walked the aisle, she was the epitome of cheerfulness.

  Pill waited until after Corey was dressed and had wolfed down the breakfast she had fixed for him to breach the conversation about their sacrificial offering in the car.

  “Corey, I need money to put into church,” she said, practicing her cheerfulness.

  He did his half sigh, half chuckle thing without so much as a reply as he maneuvered the streets.

  “I need money for church,” she said again in a cool, even tone.

  “You sure do, but last week, if I recall, you neglected to pay your tithes and booth fee too. The money must have gone to something mighty important. I hope you don’t think I’m supposed to cover both of those for you. I don’t think so,” Corey said, punctuating each word of his last sentence.

  She felt like Regis when she stared at her husband’s side profile and asked, “Seriously?” as if to say, “Is that your final answer?”

  His smug expression told her he was quite serious. She gave him the evil eye. This made him sink deeper into the interior of the driver’s-side seat with his right hand resting on the gear shift. It was as if he were driving a stick rather than an automatic, a Lexus Coupe rather than a souped-up Corolla, and they were cruising around the block rather than on the way to church. He tried to be so cocky at times, which, in her opinion, was both pathetic and adorable. She didn’t have the heart to tell him his discus fell short of “bad boy” each time.

  She knew. She had dated a few bad boys before Corey. Exploited them for money, but ended up getting exploited. Corey’s cousin, Rico, was one of them.

  “Let this be a lesson to you, love. You can’t harbor it all for yourself. You give, and you get,” Corey lectured.

  In Pam’s mind, that’s exactly why he didn’t get any last night. After the party, he had peeled her out of her purple dress, letting the fingers of his huge hands precede the trail of kisses he planted along the path of her spine. He was so wanton and eager. She almost felt bad for turning him down again.

  He called it “making up” with her for going ballistic over the stupid booth fee, but offered no solution about how she would pay it. He almost had her too, carrying her from the closet and laying her down gently on the bed they shared. She wished she could have bottled up all his intensity and desire for another time when she didn’t have to think about money. Lack was draining, and Corey, being the miser that he is, when everyone knew he came from a rich family, was a definite turnoff.

  All she desired then was to be left alone. She wondered if they would even be having this conversation if he had had his way.

  Corey came to an abrupt stop, jarring Pill back to the present. He had a striking side profile. His hair grew at a rapid pace. No matter how much he shaved, his buttery yellow skin always revealed a shadow of hairy sprouts along his strong chin line. His temple pulsed to the time of his teeth that he chomped together repeatedly out of habit when he was thinking.

  “I’m not asking you to pay my tithes. I just want to give an offering.” She rested her hand on his headrest to play with the deep waves that fancied a curl at the nape of his neck.

  He was Sampson, and she was Delilah trying to find the source of his strength through the roots of his hair. She knew he was putty in her hands when she played in his hair. He usually enjoyed this type of neckline massage in the car, but he gave her hand a slight nudge with his shoulder as a countermove.

  “Of course you’re not talking about tithing, because you don’t believe in it. That’s a whole ’nother discussion. I figure if you wanted to give an offering like you wanted a pair of shoes, you’d have it. With you, it comes down to how bad you want something. I guess taking care of your obligations at church and at home are not high on your list.”

  Pill could not believe he was intertwining the two. Not having her offering had nothing to do with what they did or didn’t do at home. She decided to try another approach.

  “Don’t you want me to look nice—to have nice things?” Pill softened her voice and added a slight whine.

  “You have nice things.”

  “It takes a lot to pull together a Sunday look. Take this outfit for instance.” She leaned up against the passenger-side armrest while she pointed with the opposite hand. “This suit came with a monstrous belt. I’m much too small for a big ole belt so I needed another one. I found this gold belt and camisole, retail.”

  Pill noticed Corey alternating looks at her while appearing to humor her, so she continued. “Cosmo magazine says matchy-matchy is out, but church-style guidelines have always dictated that you have to have continuity between your bag and footwear. So, although this suit is dusty-rose with a hint of gold, I went bold with plum accessories. Had the bag, needed the shoes, hence, the suede platforms.”

  Corey glanced at her and shook his head. “All new, right?”

  “Um, relatively,” she decided to admit since he appeared to be in a good mood. “The point is I pulled the outfit together, and I must admit I pulled it off. You know I upgrade you, boy.” Pill patted her husband on the back before her hand drifted upward to its final resting place at the base of his neck.

  “Upgrade me—all the way to the poor house,” he scoffed and squirmed until her hand fell out of his nest of hair. “Would you stop that?”

  “I bet you won’t have any problem parading me around though. Don’t think I don’t know that’s what you are doing when you grab my hand possessively and lead me around the church, greeting this one and that one like you did at your mother’s party last night. Even in class, you sling your arm around me like the folks in the couples’ class don’t know I’m with you. Then, you don’t have any problem with me being me.”

  He shot her a look that shamed her silent. It was a look she didn’t expect, one of disappointment. She had gone too far.

  “You know what? You just don’t get it sometimes.” He didn’t look at her. He just waved her off as if to shoo her. She had struck a truth cord.

  There was an unbearable silence before she spoke again. “I admit I go overboard sometimes. I get a little happy with the ATM card.”

  “I have an idea. How ’bout we stop at the ATM and see just how happy? Let you see just what we got in the account for your offering.”

  Pill shook her head, thinking this is where the power play begins. She had seen the accounts both before and after Corey got paid. Not much had changed. She got frightened at first, thinking his entire check had been consumed with overdraft fees. Then she did the math. He must be carrying around his entire check with him in his wallet. Obviously, he was trying to teach her some type of lesson. She had told him countless times that she had never known her father, and she didn’t get married to find one either.

  “I don’t believe you are taking me through all this for an offering,” Pill finally said.

  “But I am, darling. You need to get your priorities straight,” Corey said. This time he stretched his long arms across the back of his seat to retrieve a folder from the backseat. He tossed it in her lap before returning his hand and attention back to the steering wheel. “But that’s okay, though. Deacon Tripp is gonna straighten us out in class. Check out the topic for today. Go ahead.”

  The folder was their course ma
terials for their Marriage Maintenance class they took after worship service in the Learning Annex of the church. He was referring to the topic for today’s class. Pill was too disgusted to look at the folder immediately. She picked up the folder with her left hand and began brushing her suit front with her right hand as if the folder were covered in dirt that had soiled her clothes. Without looking at the topic, she knew it had something to do with finances. Suddenly she wished she had spent a night of passion with her husband and left him so woozy from their lovemaking that they were unable to attend church at all.

  They stopped at the corner of Marshall and First Street, which had to be the longest light known to man. A branch of their bank, Suburban Banking and Trust, loomed to the right. Pill felt sure that was the reason the beggars and vagrants worked this corner. One man in particular that wore layers of transitory living on his face and on the soles of his shoes moved among the motorists. With little regard for his own safety, he walked the segmented lines in the middle of the street before the cars came to a complete stop.

  He was like a nemesis to her, taunting her daily on her route to work with his bucket and sign. She couldn’t explain why every day she was forced to stop at this light. She had tried to simply ignore him—cast him in the background with the fire hydrant and manhole coverings also on this street. She didn’t know why she resented his blatant need, or worse, the people who felt compelled to help him out.

  Without hesitation, she noticed Corey lift up slightly to extract his wallet from his back pocket. As if the man could sense Corey’s sudden movement, he approached. Corey used the button on the side console to lower the window and greet the man.

  “How’s it going?” Corey peeled off what equaled out to be ten dollars to give to the man.