“I dunno, Mrs. Kenneally,” he said. “She’s getting up there, you know. Maybe you’d be better off buying a new car.”
Rose briskly tore off the check and handed it to him. With saccharine sweetness, she said, “And then who would put your kids through college?”
That night, she called Eddie. “You’re ten days late with the child-support check,” she reminded him. “Again.”
He gave her the usual song and dance about how hard they were having it, with the baby growing so fast and Heidi out of work. Then he had the audacity to suggest that if she were a better money manager, she’d have funds left at the end of the month, and wouldn’t be dependent on his meager financial contribution. That was what Eddie had always done. Whenever he screwed up, he always found some way to turn it back around on her and make it look like her fault.
Through gritted teeth, she said, “Listen to me, bucko, and listen good. Until the day they turn eighteen, you will continue to pay child support for the kids you were more than willing to make. Or I’ll be delivering them to your door. I’m sure there’s room for a couple more in your happy little household. The iguana and the stereo speakers don’t take up much space.”
“Jesus Christ, Rose, I’ll put the goddamn check in the mail tomorrow. Bleed me dry, why don’t you?”
“Why don’t you put some of your wife’s extensive talents to work? I hear they’re hiring at McDonald’s drive-thru.”
“You know, Rose, that kind of thing reminds me why we got divorced.”
“Aw, Eddie, how sweet of you to remember. Did I ever tell you I keep your picture on the closet door in my bedroom? I use it for dart practice.”
“Go to hell, Rose.”
“Have a real nice day, Eddie. Give my best to Lolita.”
On Thursday, the dog ate the pork chops she’d left out to thaw, foil and all, and threw up the whole nine yards in the center of her living room carpet. After she cleaned the mess and scolded a contrite Chauncey, she threw together a tuna noodle casserole instead. Luke turned up his nose, pulled the last ice cream sandwich from the freezer, and holed up in his room with his guitar. Devon emerged from her lair, sniffed and rolled her eyes when she saw the gourmet fare being served, then high-tailed it out the back door. “Where are you going?” Rose hollered after her.
“Out,” drifted back the reply, and Devon was gone.
She ate alone, with just the television for company, and as she listened to the local news anchor spouting his nightly words of doom and gloom, she wondered what had ever happened to the days when a family sat around the dinner table together, talking about the day’s events. Nowadays, communication between family members had broken down, with everybody scattered in forty different directions, and the family unit had all but ceased to exist. It was so depressing.
And then, on Friday, there was Keisha.
Keisha Lincoln was little more than a child, just three years older than Devon. The soft-spoken black woman had come to them five weeks ago with a cut lip, a fractured wrist, and two small children clinging to her slender legs. In spite of Rose’s urging, Keisha had refused to press charges against her boyfriend, and her first few days at the shelter, she’d seemed frightened and lost, like a baby bird pushed too soon out of its nest.
But as time went by and she realized she was safe here, Keisha had come out of her shell, surprising them all with her bubbly personality and the wickedly funny caricatures she drew. She had already done pre-testing for her GED and had scored high on every one of the tests. She’d attended child development classes and was learning to operate a computer. Rose had considered Keisha one of her success stories.
Now, Keisha sat in Rose’s office, her hands clasped together in her lap, her head down, her gaze fixed on the toes of her faded sneakers. Aghast, Rose asked, “Why? Why would you go back to him after what he did to you?”
“He said he love me, Miz Kenneally,” Keisha whispered.
“And how many times has he told you that before?”
“You don’t understand. He come to me with tears in his eyes. He promised me he gonna change. Said he won’t hit me no more.”
Ah, those sweet promises. How well she remembered. Rosie, baby, I’m so sorry. It won’t ever happen again, I swear to God. You just gotta give me another chance, baby, I can’t live without you. Here, let me get a wet cloth for that split lip.
“Damn it, Keisha, can’t you see that he’s manipulating you? And you were doing so well. You’re just a step away from your GED. You’re taking classes. You could get a really good job.”
“I can still do that, Miz Kenneally.”
“You can,” she said with resignation. “But you won’t.”
Keisha bit her lower lip. “This is my life, Miz Kenneally. I gotta do what I gotta do. That man is the father of my babies.” She raised her chin, and her voice softened. “And Leroy and me, when we ain’t fighting, he gives me real good loving.”
And there it was, laid out on the table between them. The one thing she couldn’t fight. How many women had she lost because a single act of mind-numbing sex had wiped out weeks of education, weeks of training, weeks of nurturing? Rose sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “You take care of yourself,” she said gruffly. “And those babies, you hear?”
“Thanks, Miz Kenneally. For everything.”
When she was gone, Rose folded her arms on her desk, buried her face in them, and tried to stem the scalding tears. She’d failed Keisha, as surely as if she’d inflicted those battle wounds herself. Social Work 101, she reminded herself. Don’t get emotionally involved with the clients. But she couldn’t bear losing someone with Keisha’s potential to some hulking Neanderthal who would be using her for a punching bag before two weeks were up.
The door to her office opened and she looked up, bleary-eyed, to see Lillian Cameron, her right hand and God’s blessing to the world. Lillian locked the door behind her, pulled up the chair Keisha had recently vacated, and plunked a grease-spotted bag on Rose’s desk. From inside the bag emanated smells both incredible and enticing. “Lunch,” Lillian said. “I figured you’d be needing it about now.”
“God, tell me it’s from Sing’s.”
“Where else?” Lillian plunked her derriere in the vacant chair and opened the bag, took out combination specials for both of them, distributed plastic forks and duck sauce and cold cans of Diet Coke.
Rose wiped the tears from her face, opened up her foam carton, and inhaled the luscious aroma carried on a head of steam. “What would I do without you?”
“You’d be a basket case, that’s what. More than you already are. You want to tell me what’s had you bouncing off the walls for the past eight weeks?”
Rose nibbled at a sliver of water chestnut. “My life,” she said, “sucks on ice.”
Lillian bit into a tender chicken wing. Through a mouthful, she said, “So what else is new?”
“It cost me four hundred bucks to get the car fixed.”
Lil snorted. “If that man had invested all the money you’ve paid him, he’d be a billionaire by now. What else?”
She ate half a forkful of fried rice. “Eddie was late with the check again.”
“Eddie’s a jerk. Nothing new there.”
Rose played with her rice. “I met a guy. At my brother’s wedding.”
“Ahh…at last we’re getting somewhere.”
“And—” She looked up at Lillian, then quickly back down at her food. “We sort of did the wild thing.”
“Consorting with the enemy? Really, Rose, I’m shocked.”
“You should be!” Rose furiously whipped her plastic fork through her rice. “I went to bed with a man I’d met an hour earlier. I can’t even blame it on the booze, because I wasn’t that loaded!”
“Uh huh. Was the sex good?”
“Phenomenal. But the sex was great with Eddie, too, at the beginning.” Her mouth narrowed. “Before he decided to bounce on every bed in town.”
Lillian broke her e
gg roll in two and began scraping out the inside. “Good-looking, was he? This guy?”
“Gorgeous. Hair the color of—oh, hell, never mind. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“And what does this paragon of virtue do for a living?”
Rose gave up all pretense of eating. “He teaches high school. In this rinky-dink little town two miles past the end of the earth. There’s nothing there. Trees and cows. One stop light, for Pete’s sake. And what have I spent the last eight weeks doing?”
“Besides bumping into walls, you mean?”
“Wondering if I could survive living in a place like that. Is that the stupidest thing you ever heard? It was just sex. Nothing more. I’m not even seeing him again.” She dropped her fork and covered her eyes with her hands. “Oh, God, what have I done?”
“Don’t be so tough on yourself. Three years of celibacy is a long time.”
“Three years,” she said morosely, “one month, and twenty-seven days.”
“Cut yourself some slack, woman. You were long overdue.”
Rose snorted inelegantly. “I have two college degrees, but I’m no better off than Keisha. One good roll in the hay, and I’m walking into walls. I know better! So why am I mooning over this guy I didn’t even know a few weeks ago?”
Lillian dipped her egg roll into her duck sauce. “Look, I know Eddie was a shit. I know he soured you on marriage. I know that working here, you haven’t exactly seen the male of the species in a warm and cozy light. But I think that somewhere along the line, you lost your perspective. You declared war on everything with a Y chromosome. They’re not all like Eddie. Some of them are the good guys. You know? The ones with the white hats?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rose said resolutely. I’m not seeing him again. Case closed.”
Lillian dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “Woman,” she said, “you are a lost cause.”
***
On Saturday, she woke up sick, the kind of gut-wrenching affliction that felt like the walls of her stomach were caving in. She had a few saltines and a glass of orange juice, then promptly vomited them back up. Wondering if she’d contracted food poisoning from yesterday’s mu shu pork, she mustered the strength to call Lillian. But her assistant was as chipper as ever.
“Whatever you do,” Lil said, “for God’s sake, don’t come near me. I don’t want what you’ve got. Stay in bed until you’re over it.”
It wasn’t like she had a choice. She was too sick to do anything but lie flat on her back and wait for death to come and take her. Devon brought her a couple of paperbacks to read, and Luke checked in on her before he went to Kevin’s for band practice, but obviously they both shared Lil’s sentiments about the possibility of contagion. So much for family support.
On the other hand, it wasn’t so awful, suffering alone, drinking tepid ginger ale whose bubbles had long since dissipated. As a matter of fact, she could get used to this; it was the first time in weeks that the house had been quiet. Chauncey padded in, toenails clicking on the hardwood floor, and nudged her with a cool, damp nose. “Hey, babe,” she croaked. “I love you, too.” He lapped her hand, and with a mighty sigh, flopped down on the floor beside the bed, lay his head on his paws, and began to snore softly.
In between bouts of nausea, she spent the morning engrossed in Michael Starbird’s latest book. She’d discovered him a couple of years ago, and had rapidly devoured everything he’d written. His books defied categorization. Loosely defined as thrillers, they were a cross between steamy, edge-of-your-seat suspense and gritty horror. Terrifying, addicting, and thoroughly satisfying, they’d kept her up late many a night.
At lunchtime, she managed to keep a piece of dry toast in her stomach. Too tired to waste energy celebrating her victory, Rose plumped her pillow and drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep. When she woke, darkness had fallen. The television was playing softly in the living room, her nausea had receded, and she decided that it must have been some kind of twenty-four-hour bug.
But when Monday rolled around, the bug still hadn’t left her system. Exhausted and cranky and plagued by incessant nausea, Rose called in sick and stayed home to finish the Starbird book. She went back to work on Tuesday, still feeling like she’d been kicked in the stomach. The week progressed like a laboring snail, and she was so irritable that by week’s end, everybody was steering clear of her for fear of losing a limb if they came too close. Friday afternoon, Lillian cornered her in the supply closet, where she’d gone to fetch a light bulb. Eyeing her with concern, Lil said, “What in blue blazes is wrong with you lately? I’ve met grizzlies with better dispositions.”
Rose slowly rubbed her temple, where the tiny beginnings of a headache were taking root. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong. I’ve been sick to my stomach for a week, all I want to do is sleep, and I’m so grouchy I could bite the heads off chickens.”
“Well, don’t breathe in my direction. I don’t need to catch your personality disorder. Maybe it’s time you tracked down your sexy schoolteacher and got yourself a second helping. You sure as hell need something to sweeten you up.”
Rose scowled. “Oh, sure. That’s exactly what I need to brighten my mood. A man hanging around.”
“Hell, girl, I didn’t say you had to keep him. Just use him for a while.”
“Look, Lil, he was gorgeous, he was sexy, he was not for me.”
“Fine,” Lillian said. “Fine! I give up. I’m washing my hands of you. Just remember not to come crying to me when you wake up one fine morning and realize you’re growing old alone.”
Lillian left her standing there, mouth agape, the light bulb still in her hand. “I am not growing old alone,” Rose said aloud to no one in particular. “I do not need a man to survive.” Her encounter with Jesse Lindstrom had been a freak accident, one she had no intention of repeating. After the years of hell with Eddie, she had earned her independence. And no man, no matter how attractive, no matter how sexy, no matter how infuriatingly nice, was going to steal it away from her.
Besides, her bad temper had nothing to do with Jesse. It was a result of the flu. She probably needed more Vitamin C. Maybe some Vitamin E for energy. She was generally a ball of fire, but the last couple of weeks, she’d had trouble getting out of bed in the mornings. It had to be a vitamin deficiency. She hadn’t felt this tired since she’d been carrying Luke.
Since she’d been carrying Luke?
Her eyes shot wide in horror. The light bulb slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor. It couldn’t be possible. She was thirty-six years old, not some ignorant teenager who didn’t know about birth control. She was a grown woman with two college degrees. A former den mother, for God’s sake. A responsible adult.
Who’d had unprotected sex, not once, not twice, but three times in the course of a single afternoon. With a man she’d just met.
Her ears buzzed and her legs felt spongy. Not certain she could continue to stand on her own, she felt for a chair and eased into it. Against her will, she remembered the nickname Eddie had given her before Devon was born, the nickname he’d taunted her with because of the way she constantly blew hot and cold whenever she was pregnant: Hurricane Rose.
With Luke, virtually from the moment of conception through the end of the first trimester, she’d suffered constant morning sickness. When she wasn’t barfing, she was sleeping. And when she wasn’t doing either, she’d kept herself busy frightening children and small animals. It was amazing how little had changed in fifteen years.
Eddie was going to laugh his ass off. Devon was going to disown her. And her mother was going to die from the shock. She supposed she would have to verify it with a doctor, but she didn’t really need the verification. She’d been through it twice before, and this was all too sickeningly familiar to be anything else. Rose MacKenzie Kenneally was thirty-six years old, unmarried, and knocked up by a man she didn’t even know.
Where the hell was Dr. Kevorkian when you needed him?
chapter four
Jesse Lindstrom sat with his feet up on his desk, toying idly with a rubber band while Amanda Ashley haltingly read word-for-word her oral report on Last of the Mohicans. Judging by the glassy eyes of her fellow students, he wasn’t the only one who found her treatise as stimulating as a cubic zirconia marathon on the home shopping channel. He shifted position, cleared his throat, and glanced at the clock, wondering if seventh period would ever be over.
Outside the window lay fresh air and sunshine. Inside, the odors of fricasseed chicken and dirty gym sneakers mingled with raging teenage hormones.
Jesse loved teaching, loved working with teenagers, who alternated between sullenness and a sponge-like eagerness to learn. But these warm September afternoons seemed to exist in some alternate dimension, where time moved at the rate of snow melting uphill. And on a Friday afternoon at two-ten, not a soul in the room gave a flying fig about Last of the Mohicans.
Lulled by Amanda’s voice, he let his mind wander to a pleasanter place, the same place it had been traveling on a regular basis since Rob and Casey’s wedding: Rose Kenneally.
He’d wanted her the moment he saw her, with that mass of red curls tumbling about the shoulders of the green dress. She wasn’t pretty. Her mouth was too wide, her nose too straight, her chin too determined for prettiness. Instead, Rose was striking. Stunning. Light years beyond pretty, with its fixation on shallow attractiveness.
But it wasn’t her looks that had made him follow her out onto the dance floor. It was her laugh. Much too big a laugh for a woman that small, it had buoyed up out of her as her uncle swung her in dizzying circles. She’d kept up with the old rascal, hadn’t missed a step, had thrown back her head in delighted laughter as she did so.
And the oddest thing had happened. For a fleeting instant, some internal voice had told Jesse that this was the woman he’d waited for all his life.
Celibacy, he told himself. Too damn much celibacy. It made a man crazy after a while. In the years since his divorce, there’d been only one woman, a divorcee who had filled in for a year as the high school librarian. They had provided each other with an outlet for twice-monthly, extremely civilized sex.
Sleeping With the Enemy Page 3
