Holding Up the World

by Shirley Hailstock

  “Dad?” Kathryn said, surprise in her voice and a smug smile on her face. “Are you dating?” Her voice was low as if the two of them were conspirators.

  “I don’t think so.” Eric spoke before Rhys could answer. “The woman was African American.”

  Silence echoed like rocket taking off.

  “Dad?” Colby said.

  Rhys’s shoulders dropped and he leaned heavily on the door. “She’s a friend,” he said. Rhys studied his children’s faces, trying to determine what their reaction would be when he told them the full story. “Her name is Elizabeth Russell and that dinner was the first time we’d been out together.” He saw no reason to tell them about their time in the bar or their meal in this very kitchen.

  “Are you serious?” Rita asked.

  “We haven’t known each long enough to be serious.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  Rhys had understood that. He’d intentionally misunderstood her question.

  “Are you serious about dating an African American woman?”

  “Why would that make a difference?” Rhys asked her.

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Dad, you’re a judge. This could affect your work, your friends.”

  “Lisa and I have already talked about that.”

  “She’s got nothing to lose,” Kathryn joined in. “But you’re a staple in this community.”

  “Kathryn, you’re judging someone you know nothing about. Lisa was the Director of Marketing at Braddock Pharmaceuticals.”

  “Was?” Colby picked up on the word.

  Rhys didn’t like the turn of this discussion. He felt like his children were sitting on the bench and he was the defendant of a crime he hadn’t committed.

  Looking directly at his oldest son, Rhys said, “She was recently downsized.”

  “She’s unemployed,” Rita said, her voice higher than normal.

  “It’s a temporary condition. She’s intelligent and has a lot of experience. She’ll find something soon.” Rhys pushed himself away from the door. He was angry with his children. “Of course, she could be independently wealthy and not need to find another job. So far we haven’t discussed our net worth.”

  He recognized the sternness in his voice and so did they. Each of them looked at the floor the way they had done when they were young and being reprimanded for some infraction. His eyes closed a moment and opened. He hadn’t meant to take that stance, but he was a grown man, their father, and he didn’t need their permission to see anyone.

  After the outburst, Rhys’s shoulders again dropped and when he spoke, his voice was back to normal. “For what it’s worth, Lisa has the same concerns about me that you do. She didn’t want to date a white man.” They looked at him. No one showed their surprise, but it was evident in their silence. “I don’t understand you. And I’m ashamed of you.” He looked each one of them in the eye. “Your mother and I never raised you to judge people without knowing them, any people. From seeing you with your friends, I would never have thought this conversation would go this way.”

  For a moment no one said anything. Then Kathryn spoke. “But, Dad...we’re only thinking of you.”

  “I don’t need you to think for me. I can do that for myself. What I expected from you all was support.” Again he looked at each of them. “I understand this is hard. You’ve never thought of me being with anyone except your mother. You all have your lives and your loves. You’ve even tried to get me to go out with other women.”

  He took a moment to glance at Rita and Eric. Both had suggested he call Mavis Pointer.

  “Dad, I only suggested Mrs. Pointer because she seems to like you. It was the first time Eric had spoken since dropping the bomb that started this conversation.

  “I’m not attracted to Mavis Pointer,” he said.

  “But you are to...”

  “Lisa.” He supplied the name to Colby. “You all are young. You may think I’m ancient.”

  “No, we don’t,” Kathryn interjected.

  “People my age have active lives,” he went on. “I’m no different than any of you. I want love and affection. I want to be held in the night, to reach over and find more than an empty space and a pillow. I intend no disrespect to your mother, I have needs like any normal man. They are as natural now as they were when you were being conceived.”

  No one said a thing. The silence stretched to the point of breaking.

  “This may all be a little premature.” Rhys broke the stretch of distance between them. “Like I said, I’ve only had one dinner with her. What we think we see in each other may fade and discussion will all have been for naught.”

  After a long moment, Kathryn spoke, “Do you think there’s a chance of that?”

  “No,” she said, staring her directly in the face and without a moment’s hesitation.

  Rita came toward him. “You know you have our support, Dad.” She hugged him. Kathryn did the same, and Eric and Colby nodded. Rhys knew it was an empty statement. They were afraid for him. They were his family and they only wanted the best for him. He found it ironic, however, that the same arguments they used were the ones that Lisa had stated. He hoped this tiny thread of commonality between could grow and change after they met her.

  Chapter 8

  Tears tracked down Julianna’s face. Makeup got in her eyes and she closed them, blinking hard to try and get rid of the pain. She covered the phone with one hand so her sobs and sniffles could not be heard. Her mother said hello three times. She called Julianna’s name, the same as she always did. Julianna needed to hear her voice. She would have called her sisters, but she didn’t know where they were. Neither answered the phones in their rooms. She didn’t bother to leave a message.

  She knew they graduated from high school last June. They would have gone to college three months ago. She tried to remember if they had ever discussed any particular colleges. She was a year older than they were, and they weren’t even thinking of college when she left.

  She hung up and blew her nose. Pulling another tissue from her pocket, she wiped her eyes. Her life was a mess. She hated it. Hated it! Nothing ever went right. What was she going to do now? She and Maia were doing fine. They were getting along, fixing up the apartment and finally Julianna had begun to feel as if she would find a better life.

  Then wham, the axe drops.

  She wanted to blame Maia. Maybe Maia’s mother. She wanted to blame someone, but she couldn’t. Taking a long, calming breath, she tried to think rationally. They’d only been in the apartment three weeks when Maia came home one day and said she had to move out. Julianna couldn’t swing the rent alone. What was she to do? She couldn’t go back to Leona’s. She’d be on the street again. And that meant she’d lose her job.

  “Julianna, I’m so sorry,” Maia said. Julianna quickly whipped her tears away. She hadn’t meant for anyone to see her. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to.”

  “I understand,” Julianna said. “If my mother had become ill I’m sure I’d do the same thing.” Maia’s mother’s had gone to a doctor and received the results of her tests. She had breast cancer and was understandably needed someone to be with her during the next period of treatment she would have to go through. Maia hadn’t hesitated. She’d immediately risen to the challenge. Julianna would have done the same, if she’d been wanted.

  “Why don’t you?” Maia asked.

  “Why don’t I what?”

  “Go home? It’s obvious you miss your mother and sisters. Why don’t you just go home? It would make me feel so much better.”

  Julianna stared at her. “Why do you feel bad for me?”

  “I offered you a deal. You took it. And I reneged.” She spread her hands and hunched her shoulders up and down. “I’ve heard the stories around the store. I know how the guys you were with before treated you. I know about the woman who made a scene in the aisle.” Her voice was low. “And I met your mother. She seems like a ve
ry nice woman. She probably misses you terribly. Why don’t you call her and go home?”

  “If only I could. But that’s not possible. They don’t want me back there.”

  “What about your baby? Don’t you miss her?”

  Maia stared at nothing for a long moment. Julianna didn’t know if she wanted to go into everything she’d been through in the last couple of years. Maia knew most of her story. She’d confided in her, but no one else.

  “I didn’t just leave. I burned my bridges.”

  “You did what?”

  Julianna frowned. “It was something my mother said when we were arguing. I didn’t understand what she meant then.”

  “Now you do?”

  Julianna nodded.

  “So, what happened?” Maia prompted. She plopped down on the second-hand sofa and waited for Julianna to begin speaking.

  “I don’t know,” Julianna said. “I met this guy in high school. At the time he was all I wanted. My mother didn’t understand. We fought over everything. She had a rule for everything. I felt so restricted. I wanted to be on my own and she had to know what I was doing every minute of the day and night. I could stand it any longer. I wanted to be with him and away from her.”

  “Is he the baby’s father?”

  “Yeah.” Julianna’s mouth turned down at the thought of him. “Omar. He was tall and handsome and said all the pretty words. I fell for them as if they were a lifeline. Just like every other stupid high school kid, I wanted my prince to sweep me off my feet and give me the life I wanted to live. I thought I’d found him in Omar.” Julianna grunted a laugh. “We watch all the television programs that feed us information on what life is like for our generation, but it isn’t like that when it happens to you.” Julianna was really speaking to herself. “I went to a cloistered high school, where the student parking lot was filled with BMW’s and customized vans. I thought the world was like that. Boy was I wrong. And guess who was right?”

  “Your mom,” Maia stated. “Mine is the same way and my father too. I know you hate it that your mom had all the right answers, that she had a lot of rules. But that’s what mothers are for. You’re not the only person who’s ever fought with her mother.”

  “I know. I hear how some of the other people talk about their parents.”

  “What about your father?”

  “He doesn’t want me.”

  “Julianna!” Frustration was evident in Maia’s voice. “You act like no one likes you.”

  “Who does? My father moved away and never talked to us again. Every man I’ve been with is a jerk.”

  “I admit you attract the wrong kind of guy, but you can fix that.”

  “How?” Julianna was genuinely interested in finding someone who wanted her and not someone who only wanted her to clean up for him or lay on her back and let him fuck her brains out.

  “Stop going to the places you think are normal and go somewhere else. If you meet a guy with no job and no car and lives in the projects, drop him. But let’s not get sidetracked. Where did your father go?”

  “He lives in South Carolina now. About a year ago, when I was living on the street, I spent a lot of time in the library during the day, just to have somewhere to go. I looked him up on the Internet and found an address and phone number.”

  “Did you call him?”

  “I did. I told him I wanted to come and stay with him.” She stopped, swallowing the golf ball sized lumped that caught in her throat.

  “And...”

  “He said he I couldn’t come right then. He’d just gotten remarried and he and his new wife were leaving on their honeymoon.”

  “Did you tell him, you had no place to live?”

  “He told me to go back to my mom.” Julianna remember the harshness of his voice. She wasn’t sure he believed her when she said she had no place to live. But he wasn’t going to let her come to stay with him. He had a new life now and she’d surely screw up a new relationship.

  “Really?”

  “He didn’t really believe me. And I was so angry I hung up on him.”

  “Then it looks like your only alternative is to go home.” Maia rushed on in case she thought Julianna was about to say something.

  “I jammed a plastic fork in her ignition and broke it off,” Julianna said.

  “Whose ignition.”

  “My Mom’s.” Julianna said, explaining why she couldn’t go back to Woodbine Heights. “We’d had an argument. She went out of town, leaving me and my sister’s home alone. Of course, the neighbors were on alert. Her company had sent a car for her, so hers was parked in the garage. I was so angry with her that I went out and jammed the plastic as deep inside as I could.”

  “What did she say when she saw it?”

  “She accused me of doing it. I lied and said I hadn’t been near her car.”

  “Did she believe you?”

  “No, she never believed me. She put me on punishment for a month. I left for the first time that same day.”

  “The first time?”

  “Yeah. I went back. She didn’t know I was there. She was at work and my sisters were in school. I stole a couple of blank checks.”

  Maia put her hand to her mouth in surprise.

  “I got them from an extra book, pulled them from the middle so she wouldn’t notice. But she did. I didn’t have them for more than a day before she stopped payment on the checks and closed the account.”

  “Julianna, what were you thinking?”

  “I needed the money. That’s what I was thinking. I didn’t want to spend another night on the ground in some park and I hadn’t had anything to eat in a week that didn’t come out of a garbage can.”

  Maia didn’t say anything. Julianna had rendered her speechless. She had never done anything like what Julianna had done. And that wasn’t all. On another trip to her mother’s house, she’d stolen some of her mother’s jewelry and a cameo pin that belonged to one of her sisters. The cameo had been a Valentine’s Day present to her sister from her boyfriend. Julianna knew her sister cherished the pin and she took it to spite her. The twins were the good girls and she, Julianna, was the bad one. She decided to show them how bad she was. So she pilfered the pin. She kept it inside of her sweater, never letting it out of her sight or off her person. One day she might return it.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Maia said. “I guess you really did burn the bridge.”

  “Not quite,” Julianna said. She got up and walked quickly to her room. In a second she was back. She placed a small tattered bag on the secondhand table they had bought not two weeks ago.

  “What is it?” Maia asked.

  “Open it.”

  Maia opened the bag and pulled out a small wood bridge. It was a miniature of the kind you see in Chinese gardens that sit over a small stream of water.

  “What’s this?”

  “There’s something else in the bag.”

  Maia looked and found the box of matches.

  “Burn your bridges,” Maia said.

  Julianna reached for it and Maia released it. “My mother gave this to me. The matches too.”

  “But you didn’t burn it,” Maia said, her voice full of wisdom. “That has to mean something.”

  “Maybe,” was all Julianna said.

  She had the apartment for the next two weeks. After that she wouldn’t be able to pay the rent. Maybe it was time to move on. Maybe she should consider going somewhere else and starting over. Doing what Maia suggested and leaving behind all the old haunts and the old life that was getting her nowhere.

  Didn’t all the down-and-out women in made-for-TV-movies do it? They were no worse off than she was. They weren’t more destitute. More in need of focus. But they were in the movies and for them it was make believe. For her it was reality. No reality show gave her a clue on how to change her life with a bank account of zero. She knew she wouldn’t be able to do more than what she had been doing.

  Maybe she could do what Maia had done and find
someone else to move in. Someone who would pay their share. She didn’t know who, but she had two weeks. She’d see what she could do in that time.

  ***

  It was time to make a decision, Lisa told herself as she dropped the package of diapers onto the conveyor belt at the supermarket. She either had to decide whether she was going to let Rhys become part of her life or if she was going to drop any further association with him other than a passing friendship. So far they had been tentative. Or rather, she had been tentative. Rhys made no secret that he wanted a relationship with her.

  Lisa looked at Jade lying happily in the seat attached to the grocery cart. The baby smiled on cue. Lisa supposed the answer to a relationship with Rhys lay with the baby, not with her. She remembered Graham’s reaction. Rhys was like him in that he’d already raised a family. There was no telling how long Jade would be with her. Lisa’s assumption was long term.

  While Graham had run as fast as possible, Bill had embraced her like the miracle she was. Which camp did Rhys favor? Whichever it was, it was time Lisa revealed her dirty like secret.

  Jade laughed as if she understood the joke.

  Lisa wheeled the cart through the door and checked the roadway in front of the store. Skirting the Saturday morning traffic, she stopped the cart at her car and opened Jade’s door. Lifting the small bundle from the protected seat she gently shook her and kissed her on the nose. Leaning inside she strapped the baby in and backed herself out to put her purchases in the trunk.

  “Can I help?”

  Rhys approached her from no more than ten feet away. Fear fissured through her like a bubbling volcano. She’d just been thinking of making a decision, but she didn’t want it forced on her like this.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I was in the office clearing up some paper work. On my way home, I thought I’d pick up some milk.” He looked in the car. “Who is this?” He indicated the baby.

  “This is my secret.”

  “Secret?” His brow furrowed.

  Lisa reached for a bag and set it on the floor of the car. When she reached for a second on, Rhys took her arm and stopped her.