1985: Careless Whisper (Love in the 80s #6)

by Misty Provencher

  “Of course not,” she says, but her sarcasm is pale, with none of Lisa’s usual bite.

  I repeat the words in my head—of course not, of course not, of course not—as I try to sync them to how she looks: as sick as her sarcasm. My mind keeps trying to ram her words and her expression together and make sense of the whole picture they create, but it all makes as much sense as rabbits riding scooters.

  “Whose baby was it, Lisa?” Paul asks.

  She turns to Paul, her eyes shining. “Yours,” she says, and then Lisa does something I’d never seen my best friend do.

  She breaks down and wails.

  “Mine?” Paul whispers. He looks worse than Lisa now, gray and wobbly. Eve goes to him, taking him by the arm and dragging him to a chair. He flops down like a dying fish in the seat. Lisa hiccups uncontrollably behind her hand.

  “What do you mean it’s his?” I ask her. “Don’t you hurt him like that, just to protect James. Tell the truth.”

  “I’m not protecting James!” Lisa barks. “Why do you keep saying that? I was never with James back then! What kind of friend do you think I was? I was with Paul. Once.” Her anger degrades to a sniffle, which she swabs away with the back of her hand. “People always say it can happen the first time you do it, but that only happens to cheerleaders and losers, right? Nobody has that shitty kind of luck when they only do it once! Nobody…except me.”

  James is looking between Paul and Lisa, then to me.

  “You thought it was mine?” he says. “Is that why you left? You thought it was mine?”

  I nod, numb again. I don’t know what to think anymore. Or who to believe.

  Sheri crosses the room, wrapping her arms around James’s neck like a noose, but he unweaves her hands and drops them off his shoulders. He’s just as shocked as I am. Sheri stands there, arms at her sides, the rejection sagging on her face.

  “Who told you that it was mine?” James asks me.

  “How do you know it was mine?” Paul asks Lisa at the same time. We all look to Lisa.

  Lisa looks down at Paul, her eyes welling up all over again. “I know, because I was a virgin.” A smile quivers on her lips and dies. “My mom always said I was a slut, everybody did, I think—but I only ever went to third base, until I was with you.”

  Paul sways backward as if a big gust of wind is trying to push him over and his skin goes from gray to green.

  “Why didn’t you tell me whose it was?” I ask Lisa. “I was with you through it all, and you’d never say who.”

  Lisa’s face flushes. “This is going to sound awful, and it is, and I’m sorry for it, Paul, but I didn’t tell because I was embarrassed.”

  “Thanks,” Paul jerks back in the chair as he says it. His expression is beyond destroyed. There’s no decipherable feelings left on him.

  “I wasn’t embarrassed of you,” Lisa says. She sniffles. “Ugh. That’s a lie. I was embarrassed! You were James’s little brother! We ragged on you all the time and then, I got with you like some cradle-robbing rapist! You were only sixteen! You were just a baby! Guys can date younger, but when girls do it, it’s just creepy. I didn’t want anybody knowing that you were my first. Especially you, the baby of The Band. You would’ve spread it around like a huge cock, don’t tell me you wouldn’t have. And then I got knocked up. I never thought I’d live it down.”

  “Thanks,” Paul says again.

  “You haven’t lived it down,” Eve says.

  “No,” Lisa starts crying again, “I haven’t. I’ve regretted the whole thing—not telling you, Paul, and getting rid of…the whole thing.”

  “You regretted being with me?” Paul asks.

  Lisa, tears streaming, nods. “You were just a baby,” she says. “I should’ve never done that to you.”

  “I wasn’t a baby,” he says. “And I never regretted it.”

  Sheri tries again to step forward and slide her arms down over James’s shoulders. Instead of pushing her away, he stands up and her hands fall away. James towers over me.

  “Who told you it was me?” James asks and before I can answer, Sheri throws her hands in the air with a sharp curse.

  “Her grandma!” Sheri says. “For God’s sake, her grandma told her!”

  James rounds on his girlfriend, pinning her with a paralyzing Stryker glare. Sheri freezes. His voice is as stern as his stare. “How do you know that?”

  Sheri folds her arms over her chest, nervously rubbing the backs of her biceps. She brings up her shoulder to itch the edge of her chin, avoiding any eye contact with James.

  “I found a tape,” she whispers.

  “What tape?” Lisa asks, her old, feisty fire rekindling as she turns her own glare on Sheri. Lisa takes a menacing step forward. “What tape?”

  “I found it,” Sheri squeaks, backing away. “It’s a VCR tape and it said End of the Week on it. It’s not her will.” Sheri squawks with another shrug. “It’s like a confession.”

  “When did you find that?” James asks.

  “I don’t know…yesterday or the day before,” Sheri says.

  James’s nostrils flare. “When were you going to tell me? Why didn’t you say anything?” he demands.

  Sheri shrugs.

  Lisa dips her head, focusing on Sheri like a bull.

  “Go get it,” Lisa says, and Sheri turns tail toward the den. We all jump up and follow. Lisa rips past all of us in hot pursuit.

  At the door to the den, Lisa is already ransacking the room as Sheri slowly unzips her duffle bag. Lisa grabs a purse and overturns it, dumping the contents out on the floor.

  “What are you doing? It’s not in there! You’re going to break everything!” Sheri yells, but Lisa is already moving past, to the duffle.

  Sheri scrambles to collect everything off the floor. My eyes are glued on some of the contents of Sheri’s purse as Lisa rips open the bag’s zipper.

  “Hey,” I say, “that’s Gada’s keepsake box from the living room!”

  “Isn’t that one of her Hummel’s?” Eve adds, pointing. Sure enough, one of Gada’s two cherished collectibles—the statue of the little Bavarian boy and girl dancing—lies in the pile Lisa exhumed from Sheri’s purse.

  “You stole from this house?” James roars from behind me. “I brought you here and you thought it was okay to steal from these people?”

  He pushes past Eve and I, into the room, striding over to Sheri until he’s standing toe-to-toe with her. James’s arms are trembling and for the first time ever, a wave of fear rolls through me as Sheri winds back and lets her open palm sail across James’s face. But she hits concrete. James doesn’t even rock with the impact. The beast is out and quivering, raging so hard beneath James’s skin that I’m not sure this won’t be the moment that the beast explodes and does the unthinkable.

  Paul sees it too. He shoves his way into the room, past us, wedging himself between James and Sheri.

  “Get out of here,” Paul yells at her, as he squares his shoulders in front of his brother. “Did you hear me? Get the fuck out of here!”

  “Not without my stuff!” Sheri screams.

  I’m going to beat her myself, but Lisa’s much faster. As Sheri dives for her stuff, Lisa lunges forward and grabs a good chunk of the thief’s hair in her hand. Lisa spirals the hair around her fist and uses the handful of strands like a handle. She shoves Sheri’s face down and drags the girl, bent in half, stumbling, and wind-milling helplessly, toward Eve and I.

  “Get outta the way, you guys!” Lisa hollers. “I’m taking out the trash!”

  Eve and I step aside as Lisa steers Sheri past us, to the front door. The girl is a non-stop screamer, but Lisa holds tight to her hair-handle with only that one hand, like a bucking bronco champ. Sheri flails as Lisa wrestles open the front door.

  “You hit me,” Lisa warns, “and I’ll throw you down these steps on your head, you hear me?”

  Sheri only screams in rage. Lisa kicks open the storm door and shoves Sheri out onto the porch. The girl stumble
s and runs into Gada’s goose, but once she gets her footing again, she swings around to curse at Lisa through the storm door.

  That is, until Lisa opens it.

  Sheri stumbles backward and slips down the steps awkwardly, but she manages to stay upright, still cursing.

  Lisa lets loose her own tirade. “You don’t steal from my people, you fucking thieving bitch whore!”

  “James! God dammit, James!” Sheri shrieks back, from the sidewalk.

  James answers her by sliding past me with Sheri’s duffle bag. He moves Lisa away from the door and throws the bag out onto the soggy front lawn.

  “Get out of here!” he growls. I watch the muscles of his back ripple as he holds the door open. “If you’re still here in five minutes, I’m calling the cops and reporting you for theft!”

  “I’ll report you!” Sheri screams, jabbing her finger in the air at him. “I’ll get you thrown in jail for beating me up!”

  Lisa yanks the door open wider.

  “Try it,” she says. Even from behind Lisa, I can hear the excited smile in her voice. “There are five witnesses in here that will tell the cops the truth. That you were a guest here, stealing from Gada—who most of the cops know—and that when you got caught, you threw the first punch at James.”

  “I never punched him!” Sheri shrieks, pulling up her locks in one hand. “You ripped my hair out!”

  “Go on and call them,” Lisa tells her, her voice deadly calm. “James’s shop is where all their cruisers go for repairs and maintenance. Didn’t think of that, did you? James knows all the cops around here, so when you call them, who do you think they’re going to believe? You? Or all these witnesses who will back up the honest, hard-working guy they’ve known for years?”

  Sheri stomps across the lawn and grabs her bag by the handles.

  “Yeah,” Lisa taunts her from the door, “you ain’t callin’ nobody, you little skeeze, ‘cause you’ve got a record.”

  “Fuck you.” Sheri yanks the bag strap onto her shoulder, turns, and stomps off, down the sidewalk.

  “Better run, sweetie, because Evie’s dialing the phone,” Lisa hollers, stepping out onto the porch. Eve is at the front window, watching, but the phone rests on the coffee table beside her, still on its cradle.

  But Sheri picks up her pace down the sidewalk until she breaks into a full sprint. As Sheri rounds the corner, out of sight, Lisa turns back to all of us, crowded in the door.

  “Did you know her?” I ask.

  “No,” Lisa smirks as she and James come back inside. “But I know a million like her.”

  “I should’ve known,” James says, closing the door.

  “Blinded by love,” Paul offers lightly, but James grunts a laugh.

  “Hardly,” he says. Then, to Lisa, “Thanks for catching it, Cult Jam.”

  Lisa pats him on the shoulder. “Nobody fucks with The Band.”

  For a moment, it feels like it used to. We’re all laughing and connected, the warmth in the room generated by something other than the heat vents.

  “Hope she doesn’t have a key to your house,” Paul says.

  “She doesn’t. I’ve only been dating her for about a month. I wish I’d never gone near her now.” James stands in the doorway to the den and scans the crime scene. He picks up Gada’s dancing Bavarians and hands the statue back to me. His eyes speak more of an apology than his tongue ever could. I take the Hummel with a grin of forgiveness.

  “I can’t believe she was in here loading up on Gada’s stuff,” Eve says.

  “Hey! That’s my phone cord!” Paul says, stepping forward to scoop it up, off the floor.

  “And that’s my new eye shadow,” Lisa says, leaning down to retrieve a compact. “What a bitch!”

  I spot a roller ball tube of my favorite scent.

  “My perfume.” I only whisper it, because James looks as though he’s been kicked in the balls. He runs a hand raggedly through his hair.

  “I swear, I would’ve never brought her here if I’d known,” he says. “Damn, I don’t know how it got by me, but I’m embarrassed and sorry I ever allowed her in here at all.”

  “Holy shit,” Paul laughs, dangling the cord in James’s direction. “Was that just my big brother apologizing? The great James actually said he was sorry for something?”

  James jumps forward, dragging Paul into a playful headlock.

  “Apology over,” he says. “Noogie time.” He scrubs his knuckles across Paul’s skull as his brother screams and struggles to get free.

  It is so like it used to be, and I’m almost settling into it when Eve picks up a black VHS tape.

  “This must be the tape Sheri was talking about. The one with Gada on it,” she says. “We should watch it.”

  We all go silent and when I look up, everyone’s eyes are on me. I’m relieved as Lisa’s kids come clomping up the stairs, yelling for their mom.

  “In here,” Lisa calls and they file into the den, Alabama holding baby Keanu on his hip like a pro, even though he’s using both hands and breathing a little hard. Winter trails behind him like a kite tail.

  “Who was you screaming at, Mama?” Alabama asks. His lips pull to the side, as if his nose itches or he’s trying to suppress a sneeze, but he doesn’t take his hands off the baby.

  “My ex-girlfriend had to leave,” James says as Lisa takes Keanu from her oldest son.

  “Yeah she did! Looks like she was a slob,” Alabama laughs as he looks at the mess on the den floor.

  “She was a slob, Uncle James,” Lisa says.

  Alabama screws up his lips to the side as he looks up at his mother, squinting and questioning without a word.

  James just smiles. “You’re right, buddy. She was.”

  Alabama still jerks away when James rustles the kid’s hair.

  The baby claps and holds his chubby mitts out to Paul, leaning out of Lisa’s arms. Paul’s eyes glaze up with tears, as does Lisa’s, as she offers the baby to him. Tough, Stryker boy that he is, Paul takes the baby with a sniff that clears away any more emotion.

  “Is that Aladdin, Mama?” Winter asks, jabbing timidly at the VHS tape in Eve’s hand.

  “Is that Aladdin, Aunt Evie?” Lisa corrects her daughter. She points to each of us, renaming us with Aunt or Uncle before our names.

  “Whatever,” Alabama says with an eye roll.

  “It’s not Aladdin,” Lisa says and Alabama chuffs, “It figgers.”

  “Well, are we ready now to watch it?” Eve asks, holding up the tape and jiggling it.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, alright. Let’s watch it.”

  Winter claps, even though Lisa has already said it’s not a movie for them. Lisa makes them popcorn and plugs in Aladdin for Alabama and Winter downstairs, but Paul insists on hanging onto Keanu as we all drift into the living room and surround the couch.

  We take our seats like a settling cloud, James wedged in on one side of me and Lisa on the other. Eve perches on one arm, and Paul balances on the other with the baby, after he slides the tape in the player.

  The screen starts off black, and then she’s there—Gada—with her blue-tinted glasses and blue-tinged hair, and the tears streak down my cheeks at the very first glance at her. Alive.

  “Hello,” she says and she dips her head to laugh her soft cackle, before clearing her throat and looking back into the lens, straight at us. I feel the shoulders on both sides of me lift as we all sit up straighter, like Gada would’ve insisted we do.

  “Well, kids, if you’re watching this, either I’m in a home somewhere, or I’m…uh, ha!…I’m gone.” A smile arcs across her mouth and disappears. “If I’ve passed, then I hope Mr. Sharles has done his job and told you all that I wanted you to spend the week together at mine and Gracie’s house.”

  A sad pause, Gada pushes up her glasses with a quick swipe beneath her nose.

  “Well, anyhow, when you see this, I hope I am gone.” The smile sticks this time, but quivers. Then she pushes back her own shoulders, sits ba
ck in the currently empty chair to the right of the couch, and clears her throat. “Alright, now…let’s do this properly.

  “Ok, Grace, you know about your mama, Charlene. You know that I loved her more than life itself, and you know that she got involved with a young buck in high school by name of George Williams. Unfortunately, as I’ve told you, I don’t know if George is your father. I thought so, but Charlene had a wild streak and she followed it, despite how I tried to rein her in.

  “You also know that after you were born, your mother brought you home to me. You were the prettiest thing I ever did see, and when your mother abandoned the two of us, I was grateful that, at least, she left us together.

  “I’ve already told you all of this, but I’m telling you again, so that you’ll understand what I’m going to tell you next.” She dips her head and rubs at her eyes before continuing. When she lifts her head again, she does it with a determined sniff.

  “You graduated in June of 1985. I told you then, and I’m telling you now, I’ve never been more proud. Your mother never made it that far. And then,” she sucks in an excited breath and smiles, “you were accepted to Columbia University! You just can’t imagine how happy I was for you, Gracie. It’s everything I ever dreamed for you—to grow up and have what your mother never accomplished.”

  Her smile dissolves slightly. “But there were some difficulties too. I couldn’t afford a house in an affluent neighborhood where you would have good influences. I did the best I could and sent you to the private schools instead. It wasn’t that I thought we were better than anybody else, it’s just that I wanted better for you.”

  Gada puts her elbows on the arms of the chair and laces her fingers in front of her, as if she’s bracing for this next part.

  “Despite my efforts to keep you apart, you made friends in our neighborhood. And despite my efforts not to like them, I fell in love with the kids you brought home,” Gada says with a bright smile, but I feel Lisa’s leg tense beside mine. “Lovely little Evelyn and that little pistol, Lisa. You were all adorable little girls, but as you all began to grow up, I saw the storm of adolescence coming, just like it did with my Charlene. Evelyn was on a pretty good path, but Lisa, oh, if you’re watching this, Lisa,” Gada winks at the camera with a sly grin, “you always did like the boys a little bit too much, honey. And, Gracie, you thought Lisa was the best thing since Wonder Bread, remember? And as if the girls weren’t enough, can you imagine how worried I was when the three of you befriended the Stryker boys?