When Beverly telephoned Valerie to tell her how things were going with Julian, Valerie was shocked to learn how quickly they had become a couple.
“I wouldn’t have put you two together in a million years,” Valerie said. “Just goes to show you what I know.”
Beverly could hardly believe it herself. She had spent years looking for someone who not only made her feel good between the sheets but also treated her good, only to become convinced that men like that showed up just in movies. Initially, she had a hard time believing her relationship with Julian could be the real deal.
That was why when he proposed to her within six weeks of their first date, she immediately turned him down. She was definitely falling for him. What was not to love? He was good-looking, owned his own house, had an exciting career as a computer animator, and was a tiger in bed. True, he was a bit geeky with the glasses and a penchant for pixels, but she had come to appreciate that. Her new motto was that nothing was better than a man with the three Ss—single, sweet, and successful.
But she had been burned so often, from Vernon to Vance. Sometimes it was obvious, as when she had walked in on the guy screwing another woman. Other times it was subtle, like the way he looked at other women—or men. Something always went wrong sooner or later. Julian treated her like a jewel now, but she figured that he was just more clever at hiding his vices. So she decided to enjoy the moment while she could and guard against letting herself get too attached too fast.
Then he took her to Cincinnati, Ohio, to meet his family. They stayed for a week, and by the time they left, Beverly had totally flipped her thoughts about marrying Julian. One hundred eighty degrees. This dude was the real stuff. His parents had been together for fifty years and still held hands. And not only were his folks husband and wife, they were also the best of friends. Julian had two older brothers in their forties. Both had been married longer than ten years and appeared to be very happy. The only way the signs could have gotten any better would have been if Julian had had a halo perched on top of his head.
When he proposed again a month after the visit to Cincinnati, Beverly accepted eagerly.
At the hotel restaurant in Baltimore, she placed her half-empty martini glass on the table and took Julian’s hands. “I hope Valerie finds someone like you one day,” she said. “Every woman should have a Julian.”
He lifted her hands and kissed them both. “Every man should have a Beverly.”
She sighed. He always said the right thing. She smiled and leaned forward so that he could get a good peek beneath her strapless top as she lightly licked the tips of his fingers with her tongue.
His free hand shot up and signaled the waiter for the check.
As Beverly slipped into bed wearing a short black negligee, she could feel Julian’s eyes following her every move with ardent appreciation. He had turned the covers down to the foot of the bed, as he insisted on doing whenever they made love. He wanted to be able to see everything.
He reached out across the queen-size bed and gently pulled her in closer. She ran her fingers slowly over his bulging biceps as his hand slid down her hips and beneath her gown. He quickly found her moist inner thighs, and she could hear him panting heavily as his lips traveled from her neck to the crevice of her breasts. In one smooth motion he pulled the negligee over her head and hoisted her on top of him. Julian seemed like a hero out of a romance novel at times, but there was nothing at all fanciful about his lovemaking.
He lifted Beverly by the hips, and she spread her legs eagerly. She grabbed the top of the headboard for support and moved with him, slowly at first, tossing her head back as each thrust filled her with more urgency. His eyes glued to her, he took obvious joy in her pleasure as he slipped his middle and ring fingers into her mouth. She sucked and then bit down in frenzied delirium, her teeth sinking further into his flesh than either had expected. He yelped softly, yanked his finger from between her lips, and laughed softly.
“Sorry,” she whispered hoarsely.
She leaned down to his ear and nibbled playfully. He tossed her on the bed and landed on top of her. They faced one way, then the other, legs twisting and turning, as they moved faster and faster. The headboard bumped against the wall until Beverly suddenly heard a loud snap, and a corner of the mattress thumped heavily to the floor. The fall only served to heighten their passion, and they rolled and landed on the carpet, never missing a beat.
The muscles in his face and arms tightened as he whispered dirty thoughts into her ear. Beverly could feel his desire mounting, and the tingly sensation of his hot breath excited her as much as his words. She shuddered and moaned loudly, straining to keep from screaming until she could hold it no longer.
He rolled off her onto the floor, and they lay holding hands breathlessly while their bodies slowly came down from the peaks. Beverly closed her eyes and savored the moment.
Julian leaned up on one elbow, glanced at the bed and back down at her. He smiled. “This is why I said we should never visit the same hotel twice.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. They both burst out laughing.
Chapter 6
Charmaine danced across the kitchen floor in her bare feet and peeked into the oven at her meatloaf. She walked to the stove and checked the collard greens simmering with smoked turkey, then dropped a stick of butter and a half cup of heavy cream into the pot of steaming white potatoes. She added a chopped garlic clove to the potatoes and blended it all with her handheld electric mixer.
She had been up since early that Sunday morning to knead the dough for her homemade rolls, and when the family returned home from church she changed into denim knee-length cutoffs and a hot-pink tank top and picked up where she left off. She was fixing some of Tiffany’s favorite dishes. And since Tiffany claimed that the KitchenAid mixer made potatoes too mushy and that mixing them with a spoon left them too lumpy, Charmaine was using her handheld mixer. Tiffany also didn’t like tomato sauce in or on her meatloaf. In fact, she didn’t want anything to do with tomatoes and other popular foods like baked chicken and pasta. Who the hell didn’t like pasta?
Obviously, Tiffany was a fussy eater. Maybe that was how she stayed so slim. Girl couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. Charmaine didn’t plan to even try to appease her all summer long, but this would be her first day visiting. Not only that, today was Russell’s last day before he left for his month-long summer visitation with his father in D.C. Charmaine wanted to try and get them all together and off to a good start.
She was cleaning off the beaters when the phone rang. She could see that it was Tyrone on the caller ID, so she picked up and held the receiver between her ear and shoulder as she moved about the kitchen.
“Just got her and we’re waiting for the luggage,” Tyrone said, his words barely discernible above the din at the airport. “Knowing my daughter, she packed enough stuff to dress a small village, so we might be here a while.” He chuckled.
“Glad everything went well,” Charmaine said, smiling into the phone. He sounded happy, and it was good to hear him that way. “So the flight was on time?”
“For once, yeah.”
“I should have dinner ready before you guys get here. I also rented a couple of videos for us to watch afterward. See you around five, I guess?”
“Um, dinner and the movie will have to wait a bit. She wants to stop at the mall after we leave here. There’s some wedge sandals she’s dying to get.”
Charmaine frowned into the phone, thinking she hadn’t heard right. Tyrone knew she had busted her ass going all out with this dinner to welcome Tiffany. She had even baked a chocolate cake from scratch. It was sitting right on the countertop, waiting for the cream cheese icing. “Did I hear you right? You’re going shopping straight from the airport?”
“She wants to have these shoes for the summer, so I thought we would swing by Columbia Mall.”
Charmaine cleared her throat. “Can’t the shoes wait until tomorrow? I’ve been cooking all day—since
last night, actually. I went through a lot of trouble to fix her favorite things. I’ve got meatloaf and potatoes, homemade rolls, and chocolate cake for dessert.” Just in case he had forgotten how long and hard she had been slaving in a hot kitchen.
“I know. I told her that, but she really wants these shoes and some Purla handbag.”
“Furla,” Charmaine said, correcting him with a frown. Now it was shoes and a handbag, a five-hundred-dollar handbag for a teenage girl that Charmaine couldn’t even afford for herself. “Do you have any idea how much those bags cost?” she asked.
“She said she knows where to get one on sale for half price.”
“A Furla for half price at the mall?” Charmaine said doubtfully.
“No, some boutique in Columbia that she found online.”
Charmaine found that difficult to believe. Columbia was a small city, not some large metropolis with shopping all over the place. She shut her eyes tightly, crossed herself, and said a silent prayer to muster some patience.
“We shouldn’t be more than an hour longer,” Tyrone said. “Probably be there by six.”
Charmaine’s eyes popped open. No way was he going to get in and out of a mall and then go gallivanting about Columbia in search of a nonexistent discount Furla bag with Tiffany and get here by six. It would likely be eight or nine before they got home. Still, she tried to remain calm. Tiffany had landed only moments earlier, and Charmaine did not want to lose it just yet. She would try reasoning with Tyrone.
“You know Kenny still has school for another week and he shouldn’t be up late,” she said. “And don’t forget, today is Russell’s last day before he goes to stay with Clarence. If y’all don’t come soon, we won’t get to watch the movie together before he leaves.”
Tyrone sighed and said something to Tiffany, then came back on the line. “She’s really looking forward to getting the shoes and bag tonight. I promise we won’t be long. I just told her that we had to be home by about six or six-thirty. We should be able to eat and watch the video together tonight before Kenny has to turn in.”
Charmaine glanced at her watch. “Tyrone, I have a hard time seeing that happen. You do realize—”
“Look, the luggage is coming,” he said, interrupting her. “We’ll work it out. Don’t worry.”
“But what—”
“I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Tyrone.” Charmaine quickly realized that she was talking to no one. He had hung up. She slammed the phone down with all her might. “Dammit!” The prayer for patience obviously hadn’t worked.
She looked around the kitchen despairingly. At that moment she was tempted to dump all the food into the garbage can. After all the trouble she had gone through to fix a special meal, Tyrone couldn’t even tell his daughter to come home and eat it. All he had to do was say that the shopping spree would have to wait until tomorrow. What was the harm in that? He and Tiffany could have had a nice dinner, and watched the video with Kenny and Russell, and then shopped at the mall to their hearts’ content tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. Tiffany would be visiting all summer.
But Tyrone couldn’t tell his fourteen-year-old daughter no to save his life, even when it inconvenienced others. This whole relationship that he had with Tiffany was the strangest thing Charmaine had ever seen. She had noticed it when Tiffany visited last summer and again at Christmas. But she hadn’t worried about it much then, thinking that Tiffany visited only a few weeks out of the year. Now she was staying much longer. If this was an example of what was to come over the next several weeks, it was going to be a long, hard summer.
Something was bothering Evelyn, and it wasn’t the fact that she was hunched over yanking weeds out of the vegetable garden in her backyard. Given the recent dry spell, there weren’t many weeds to pull out. She stood up straight in her Capri jeans, stretched her back, and wiped the sweat from her brow as she waited for a warm breeze to hit her face. She had held off doing the yardwork until late evening, since it was so hot in the afternoon and she had been in church that morning.
She walked back toward the house and turned on the sprinkler system set up near the garden. As to what had been nagging her, she just couldn’t figure it out. All she knew was that it had something to do with Kevin. They had barely spoken since their argument yesterday, even when they were both hanging around the house. But there was nothing unusual about that. In fact, that was pretty much how things were between them now. He hung around in the den; she gardened outdoors. He watched television in the rec room; she read in the bedroom. When they crossed paths it was as if neither saw the other, for all the words exchanged between them.
She walked to the shed and placed her gardening tools in a basket on the floor. Then she shut the door and locked it. At that moment her mind flashed back to the day before when she had first returned home from the bridal fitting and visiting Andre in Baltimore. She could remember hearing thumping and running noises coming from the bedroom as she climbed the stairs, and when she entered Kevin was closing the door to his walk-in closet. Then she saw Kevin’s shaved head and freaked out, and the strange sounds were forgotten. But now she remembered them vividly.
The only things amiss in the bedroom were Kevin’s suits on the bed, and they wouldn’t explain the weird noises she’d heard. She decided to do some sleuthing. It might have been something as innocent as Kevin straightening out his closet. She certainly hoped so. But she needed to shake this nagging thought.
She entered the house from the side door, walked through the disarranged kitchen, and headed up the stairs to the bedroom. Kevin was likely in the recreation room, watching a movie. She moved quickly to his closet and opened the door.
Her eyes scanned the large closet and finally focused on two black suitcases and a black leather duffel bag in a corner. Kevin normally stored his luggage on the shelves at the top of the closet; they looked out of place there on the floor. She stepped inside, lifted one of the bags, and was surprised to realize that it was not empty. She lifted the other two. Same thing. All three bags were packed.
She stooped down and opened the duffel bag to find Kevin’s socks, underwear, and toiletries. She placed one of the suitcases flat on the floor and flipped it open. It was packed with Kevin’s clothes—slacks, shirts, sweaters. She was about to open the third bag when she heard a sound behind her. She turned to see Kevin standing in the doorway to his closet, a scowl on his face.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked gruffly.
“You mean, what the hell are you doing?” she countered. “What is all this?” She gestured toward the bags.
“What the fuck does it look like?” he snapped.
She frowned. “Are you going on a trip?”
“You could say that. A permanent one.”
She was dumbfounded. Did he mean what she thought he meant? She was too afraid to ask, too afraid of the response she might get.
“I’m leaving and I won’t be back,” he said pointedly, as if he sensed her reluctance to go there and wanted to get it all out.
Evelyn stumbled from the closet and back into the bedroom. She didn’t need to hear this, not now. Not ever. Yes, they were going through a rough patch. But leaving? How had it come to this? She faced him as he exited the closet. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m very serious. I’ve had it with all this, Evelyn.” He jerked an arm through the air, indicating the spacious master bedroom and bath, with the matching designer bed linen and drapes, the soaking tub and the Kohler bath fixtures. “The kitchen remodeling—that’s the last straw. I can’t deal with this crap anymore. Or I won’t.”
Evelyn stared at him. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This antimaterialistic fad he was going through—quitting his job, giving away all this clothes, shaving his head—was one thing. Now he was about to walk out on her? On two and a half decades of sharing their lives, with absolutely no warning whatsoever?
“You wanted all of this as much as I did until recent
ly, Kevin,” she protested, struggling to keep her voice calm. “You seem to forget that. Now all of a sudden you decide you don’t like it anymore, and you think you can just pack and split? That’s not right.”
“What’s not right is this lifestyle.” He gritted his teeth. “Make more, want more, buy more. Trying to act white. That’s all you fucking care about now, Evelyn. You didn’t used to be like this. I didn’t used to be like this. Sadly, this is what our lives have become.”
Evelyn watched in horror as he walked back into the closet, grabbed the two suitcases, and placed them on the floor in the bedroom. He went to retrieve the duffel bag, and it was all she could do to keep from grabbing the suitcases and putting everything back in the drawers and closet where it belonged.
“You’re leaving now?” she asked when he came back out. “Right this minute?”
He sighed. “I was going to tell you this tonight and leave later in the week, but I figure I might as well go now.”
She swallowed hard. “But… where will you stay?”
“I rented an apartment in College Park, but I can’t move in until Wednesday. I’ll just stay in a hotel until then.”
He hastily changed into a fresh white T-shirt and picked up all the bags, then paused and looked into her eyes. For a split second Evelyn thought she recognized the old Kevin. The one who saw her when he looked at her. The one who listened to what she had to say when she spoke. The one who genuinely cared about her feelings.
Then in an instant he had brushed past her without another word. She followed him. “Kevin, you can’t just walk out. This is wrong.”
She paused and watched as he moved down the stairs. He obviously had no intention of listening to her. “Fine!” she yelled, leaning over the banister. She was so tired, so weary of all the antagonism between them. “Go ahead, leave. Bastard! I don’t give a damn!”
Sisters and Husbands Page 4
