Once Upon a Project

by Bettye Griffin

  For a few weeks Grace had thought she might be on track to becoming the second—and last, if she had anything to say about it—Mrs. Enrique Suárez. Ricky seemed captivated by her, and he couldn’t get enough of her in bed. But then guilt had gotten the better of him, and suddenly it was over.

  Her eyes focused on Ricky’s second wife. What must Pat feel when she looked at the two of them together? Damn, why didn’t the woman have thick ankles or bad skin or something? Instead she was gorgeous, a Salma Hayek look-alike with an hourglass figure to match. And she appeared young, in her late thirties at most. And here she was, experiencing the hot flashes of perimenopause.

  It was getting hot in here now, Grace realized with dismay, as if someone had turned up the heat. Her neck felt like it was saturated inside her turtleneck sweater, and her chest was damp. Beads of sweat began to form on her upper lip and her forehead, a palpable reminder that she was about to turn fifty.

  She watched helplessly as Ricky guided his wife toward their table.

  “What do you know,” he said jovially, “the Twenty-Two Club, together again.”

  Susan and Elyse eagerly stood up, clearly happy to see him again after so many years. Pat, who of course had seen him when he came in, remained seated. Grace didn’t dare look at Pat, but as she reluctantly rose to her feet she wondered what her friend was thinking. However awkward Grace felt, Pat had to be feeling ten times worse. Besides, no one knew about her fling with Ricky, much less how badly it ended; but everybody knew how difficult it had to be for Pat to see Ricky and his wife. He’d moved on, marrying twice in the thirty years since their breakup, while Pat remained unmarried.

  Ricky introduced his wife as he hugged each of his old friends. Susan took a moment to introduce the Suárezes to her children, and then suddenly it was Grace’s turn to say hello.

  She pasted a beauty pageant–contestant smile on her face. “Hello, Ricky.”

  “Grace! You look fabulous.” He moved in for a hug that was over in three seconds.

  “Thanks.”

  “Grace, this is my wife, Miranda. Miranda, Grace Corrigan.”

  Grace dutifully held out her hand and said hello, uncomfortably aware that Miranda Suárez looked even more stunning close up, with skin absolutely flawless and not so much as an eyebrow out of place. The wide band of her paisley-print skirt showed off her tiny waist. Grace had a good figure, too, but she worked at it seven days a week. She doubted Miranda had to do that.

  “We were just about to get on the buffet line,” Ricky explained. “I wanted to say hello to all of you.”

  “And to invite you to stop by Nirvana,” Miranda said. “Ricky’s introduced some new menu items that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”

  Wasn’t that cute, Grace thought bitterly. The little woman trying to promote the business that pays their bills.

  “My husband and I will be sure to do that the next time we come to Chicago for a weekend,” Susan said.

  “Good to see all of you,” Ricky said with a little wave as he backed away, his palm resting on Miranda’s shoulder.

  The four friends suddenly became quiet, lost in their own personal memories that stemmed from seeing Ricky again.

  Quentin spoke up. “Mom, can we get some food?”

  “If you want to stand in line, go ahead,” Susan replied. “I’m going to wait for it to die down a bit. But if you go, bring your sister with you and help keep her plate steady.”

  “Okay. Come on, Alyssa.” The children’s chairs scraped noisily against the floor as they pushed back from the table.

  “And don’t pile up more food than you know you can eat!” she called after them. Then she sighed. “They’re bored to tears. I guess it was a mistake for me to bring them. And because I did, I can’t go to Junior’s with y’all.”

  “I thought about telling you and Elyse about that,” Pat said, “but I really didn’t think either of you would be interested in coming.”

  The remark raised Elyse’s curiosity. “Why, because we live in the suburbs?”

  “I suppose. And because both of you have husbands to curl up with on a cold March night, which to me is a far sight better than going to a bar to hang out with some folks you’ve known all your life.”

  “Well, I’ve got a surprise for you, Pat,” Elyse declared. “I’m going to Junior’s.”

  “You are! Well, good!”

  Elyse glanced at Susan. “I wish there was some way we could get you there, too. I guess you don’t want to drive the kids all the way home and then come back.”

  Susan shook her head. “Maybe if I lived in Evanston, but not Pleasant Prairie. It’s just too far, and I’d be exhausted.”

  Grace spoke up. “You know, Susan, Shavonne would probably agree to watch your kids for you. She and her husband don’t do a whole lot on the weekends unless they can get his parents or me to babysit. My grandson is six. He’d love having some kids to play with. How about it, Susan? All I have to do is call her.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I know they’ll be safe with Shavonne, but I don’t want to intrude on her time with her family by dumping two more kids on her. And we’re likely to get home late, which means I’d have to disturb her to pick them up.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Their youngest is just four months old. I don’t think anybody gets a whole lot of sleep in that house.”

  “That seems like all the more reason not to impose on her.”

  Elyse held up a hand, index finger pointing upward. “I know. My daughter came home this weekend. She said she’s just going to watch some TV or read a book. I’m sure she’ll watch your kids for you, Susan.” When Susan opened her mouth to say something, Elyse held out a hand, palm out, like a police officer directing traffic. “It’s perfect. You can follow me home, we can chill at my house for a few hours, then you ride back with me, and when we get back to Lake Forest you can spend the night. Franklin and I have plenty of room, and tomorrow morning you can be home in thirty minutes, forty at the most.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Pat said confidently.

  Elyse pulled her cell phone out of her purse. “I’m going to call Brontë right now, just to make sure she hasn’t made any plans for tonight. I want to see how Franklin is feeling, anyway”

  Susan watched in amazement as Elyse called Brontë and secured an agreement for her to sit with the children, giving Susan a thumbs-up. Then she heard Elyse ask to speak to Franklin. “Tell Brontë I do plan to pay her; I don’t expect her to babysit my children for nothing,” Susan managed to say as Elyse moved a few feet away from the table.

  She could hardly believe how everything had fallen into place, thanks to Elyse. Now she could go to the party. She could imagine the surprise in Bruce’s voice when she told him that she and the kids wouldn’t be coming home until the next morning. He’d demand to know where she was leaving them, but he probably wouldn’t say a word once she told him that Elyse’s college-age daughter was keeping them, with Elyse’s husband in the house as well. Their overnight absence would give Bruce an ideal opportunity to spend time with whomever he was sleeping with, but she couldn’t make herself care.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ann Valentine’s tall form waiting on the buffet line. Within seconds Ann looked her way, her smile replaced with a hostile stare.

  The antagonism in Ann’s eyes made Susan consider something else.

  Who knew, maybe she would see Charles tonight.

  Chapter 9

  “Elyse, I’m not trying to get into your business, but Franklin didn’t look too happy to see you leave,” Susan remarked from the passenger seat as Elyse merged onto the highway.

  “He wasn’t. He didn’t want me going to the South Side in the daytime by myself, so you can imagine his reaction when I told him I was driving back down tonight. I’m glad you decided to come with me, but if you had decided not to, I still would have gone, even if it meant hanging with Grace until it was time to head back to the South Side.”

  Susan smil
ed. While it had been sweet of Grace to try to get her daughter to babysit, she understood why Elyse would be reluctant to spend the rest of the afternoon with her. But Susan already knew all about Grace and her ways. Franklin Reavis was somewhat of a mystery man to Susan; she barely knew him. “Is Franklin the possessive type?”

  “No. He’s just trying to keep me in the house with him. All he wants to do is sleep on the couch all weekend, and he expects me to hang around waiting and hoping he’ll want to do something.” Elyse sighed. “I think his age is catching up with him, Susan. He never wants to do anything anymore, at least not with me. And that makes me wonder if he’s getting tired of me.”

  “I’m sure he’s not tired of you, Elyse. And I know he’s older than you, but I doubt he’s ready to sit on the front porch in a rocking chair. Didn’t you say he wasn’t feeling well?”

  “He’s sixty-two, and I think he’s blowing his occasional indigestion out of proportion. He has no trouble keeping up with his golf and his bowling, that’s for sure.”

  “Oh.” Susan didn’t realize Franklin was past sixty. He hadn’t seemed that much older than they were when he and Elyse got married. But of course they’d still been in their early twenties back then, and he in his midthirties. It seemed weird to have a husband past sixty when you were still in your forties.

  “He’s always claiming to be sick,” Elyse continued, “but he’s taking his time going to the doctor.”

  Susan tried again. “Are you sure you’re not taking this too lightly? I know I’d be concerned if Bruce told me repeatedly that he didn’t feel well.”

  “Oh, Susan. If there’s really something wrong with Franklin, I’m the pope. He’s just making excuses for not going out with me. Not only doesn’t he go to the doctor, but he hasn’t missed one day at work. The only time he says he doesn’t feel well is when it’s time to follow through on plans he and I have made.”

  Susan absorbed this. So she wasn’t the only one who felt hurt, even betrayed, by her husband’s behavior. The moment she made that statement about dining at Ricky’s place the next time she and Bruce weekended in the city, she regretted it, knowing it would never happen. They used to take weekend trips frequently, but they hadn’t gone anywhere since her cancer diagnosis.

  She noted that Elyse struck back against Franklin by refusing to stay in the house like an obedient little wife, and hoped that eventually he would come around and want to reclaim a social life. That seemed fair enough, but Elyse’s problem was different from her own. Franklin might be slowing down some, but from what Elyse said, he wasn’t cheating on her.

  She could think of only one way to strike back at a cheating husband, and that was to have an affair herself, tit for tat. But that seemed childish.

  Still, she couldn’t help wondering how she’d react if she was to come face-to-face with Charles Valentine after all these years.

  Excitement sparked the air around the nondescript corner building of dirty tan brick that was Junior’s Bar. Cars jamming the street, coupled with the man just inside the door taking money and stamping the backs of hands, told onlookers a special event was taking place.

  The crowd started arriving at nine o’clock. Ten dollars got a person in the door, a complimentary glass of beer or wine, and a dinner of fried chicken, spaghetti, and a roll. Susan and Elyse each paid the cover charge and entered, leaving their overcoats in the car because they knew there was nowhere to hang them up inside.

  Soon the seats at the elongated bar were filled, along with the booths opposite it. Tonight the usually active jukebox stood silent and dark, with oldies music provided by a CD player and two large speakers in the back room, which was not enclosed but merely divided by the center bar. The back room had tables and chairs set up alongside the walls, and a long buffet table with chafing dishes parallel to the far wall but with about two feet of space between it and the wall.

  “I’m sure Pat got here early. Do you suppose Grace is here yet?” Susan asked Elyse.

  “You know Grace—no telling when she’ll show up!”

  Pat was standing at the bar, her right hand resting on the back of a stool while she carried on an animated conversation with its occupant and the person sitting on her left.

  Pat had always been outgoing and personable, even as a child. In high school she’d been voted Most Popular. A too-strong jawline prevented her from being a classic beauty, but with her hourglass figure and attractive face she turned plenty of heads, both then and now. The shortage of eligible black men must be a lot worse than I thought, Elyse said to herself, if no one has snapped up a good catch like Pat. Elyse hoped Brontë would be able to find someone suitable when she reached marriageable age. She’d read someplace that more black women than men earned college degrees, and she knew enough about men to know that some of them didn’t take kindly to women more educated than they were.

  Elyse had spent a few minutes at the luncheon speaking with Pat’s parents, and she recognized right away the pride Moses and Cleotha Maxwell had in their only surviving child. “She’s got the best conviction record of any ADA in Chicago,” Mr. Maxwell had told Elyse.

  “If she wasn’t so good at what she does, she probably would be presiding from the bench,” Mrs. Maxwell had added.

  Looking at her friend move from patron to patron, exchanging words of welcome like they were all guests in her home, Elyse wondered whether the Maxwells ever wondered if they’d made a mistake in their opposition to Pat’s romance with Ricky Suárez. Had they ever considered that Pat could have achieved the same success and still provided them with a grandchild or two?

  Chapter 10

  Grace took advantage of the red traffic light to run a brush through her hair. She really liked the rich sable-brown color; it beat having graying near-black tresses any day. Her hairdresser had been right when she suggested that a lighter color would be softer against her face. She might be about to turn fifty, but that didn’t mean she had to look matronly. People told her she looked better than a lot of forty-year-olds out there. She worked hard at it, too, spending thirty minutes in the gym at least three times a week, watching her diet carefully, and walking several miles on the weekends.

  She sighed as she put the brush back inside her leather shoulder bag. She felt like she’d already wasted the afternoon by attending the luncheon, and the awkwardness of coming face-to-face with Ricky for the first time since their affair had ended and meeting his gorgeous wife truly made her regret going.

  Still, it wasn’t like she had anything else to do, and Pat needed people like her to make her message to the media: that children who grew up in the projects weren’t necessarily destined to live their lives in abject poverty and squalor.

  She knew Pat had a point. Half the high school–age kids living in Dreiser today probably had no idea that Theodore Dreiser had been a popular novelist and Chicago native in the early twentieth century. She knew from that Career Day seminar Pat had dragged her to years ago at their alma mater that many of them had no ambitions in life, other than to live in a nice “crib” and drive a nice “ride.” A few did tell her they wanted to run their own businesses, but not one of them had any idea what kind of business they hoped to operate. Grace knew that merely wanting to call the shots from a corner office with a view and make a lot of money was nothing more than a pipe dream, and that ten years from now those kids would have the same dream, no better defined than it was now.

  Her thoughts returned to Ricky. His forced-looking smile and stiff hug told her he felt just as uncomfortable as she did. But at least he hadn’t been surprised to see her. Surely Pat knew he was coming, since she handled the RSVP list. But she’d said nothing to Grace. Why? Grace wondered. Could it be that Pat was still hung up on Ricky after all this time? My God, everything between them had ended more than half a lifetime ago.

  Grace had always thought that if something serious developed between her and Ricky, like she so desperately wanted, Pat would first be upset but would come around eventually. Now
she wasn’t so sure.

  Of course, considering the outcome, it was a moot point. Grace had been stunned when Ricky told her why he was ending their affair—just when she thought everything was progressing beautifully. She’d never heard anything so idiotic. Did he actually feel like he was cheating on Pat after being apart more than twenty years? And what about her? Pat was her best friend, yet she was willing to put that friendship in jeopardy to pursue one of the most eligible soon-to-be bachelors in Chicago. She couldn’t help it that Pat had given Ricky up to please her parents.

  As Grace got closer to the South Side, she wondered if going to Junior’s Bar would be worthwhile. She doubted she’d see any new faces there tonight. And nobody had better mess with her Mercedes.

  Two people she knew she wouldn’t see were her ex-husbands. Danny Knight, her second husband, was happily settled in San Juan, Puerto Rico, managing the office of a worldwide accounting firm.

  Nor would she be seeing Jimmy Lucas, her first husband and father of Shavonne. He’d been revered in high school for his skill at basketball, overshadowed only by his friend Douglas Valentine, whose height of six feet six made him a natural.

  Grace and Jimmy had begun going together in tenth grade. She fended off his pleas for sex for over a year. Grace was afraid, of both sex itself and of getting pregnant. But by the time she got to high school it seemed like more and more girls from the neighborhood were having babies. Tanya McArdle got pregnant in tenth grade, and the word on the street was that she’d been messing with a thirty-five-year-old man.

  When Jimmy started cozying up to Stacey Noe, Grace knew she’d have to take action. Rumor had it that Stacey had fucked the entire football team in the bleachers. Grace resolved to keep her man. Shortly after that she and Jimmy did it in his bed after school, when his mama was still at work. Except for one brief moment of pain, Grace loved sex, and they started having it whenever they could, with Jimmy cautioning his younger brothers not to blab to their mother. Not that Mrs. Lucas would have cared too much. To Grace, Jimmy’s mother always looked bored and disinterested, puffing on an ever-present cigarette and complaining about one thing or another.