The Denver Cereal

by Claudia Hall Christian

  Jacob tried to laugh. He managed a vague groan.

  “Where are my paparazzi?” he whispered.

  “Outside. The police escorted us, and a billion photographers, to Denver Health.”

  “Will I make the cover of People magazine?”

  Through her tears, Valerie laughed at his imitation of her early actress days.

  “Do you think this outfit makes me look fat?”

  He tried to move his right arm to pat his stomach but felt a ripping, burning pain.

  The monitors blared.

  Everything went dark.

  ~~~~~~~~

  “Jill.”

  “I’m here,” she said.

  He felt movement and then saw her face. Her eyes were red from crying and her face a little gaunt from worry. She leaned over to kiss his cheek.

  “I wanted to tell you that I’ll marry you.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, you asked on Saturday night and I never gave you an answer.”

  “I remember,” he mumbled.

  “I figure if you’re willing to take a beating, save my Katy’s life, and are amazing in bed . . .”

  “Amazing?”

  “Well . . . We don’t want to add ego adjustment to your next surgery.” Jill worked to keep a cheery voice. She was determined to be light and flippant when she spoke with him. “I’ll say . . . pretty good. Now don’t interrupt. I’ve been practicing. Where was I?”

  “Amazing in bed,” he said.

  “Yes. I figure if you’re willing to take a beating, save my Katy’s life and are . . . pretty good . . .”

  Jacob smiled.

  “ . . .in bed, then I should marry you before you ride off on some horse.”

  “Horse? I don’t have any pony bags.”

  “I’d say like a knight in shining armor, but that ego adjustment is so costly.”

  He smiled. She brushed her lips across his in a quick kiss.

  “Jill?” Jacob asked.

  “Yes, Jacob.”

  “Would you mind if we got married tomorrow? Maybe save some excitement for our third non-date?”

  “Well, I want a really big diamond. I’m willing to give you a few days, but only a few.”

  “Val has your diamonds. Just ask her . . .”

  Everything went dark.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Tuesday morning, 10 a.m.

  Mike stopped the Mustang at the edge of the grass. The perfect lawn was broken by a few monuments. Sam Lipson sat on a bench near a blooming rose hedge. He was reading the Rocky Mountain News out loud to Celia’s grave.

  “Are you sure you’re up for this?” Mike asked.

  “My brother almost died because he did the right thing,” Valerie said. “I need to do the right thing. I need to speak with my father.”

  Mike’s big hand stroked her delicate cheek. Her beautiful face was pale and drawn from her night at Jacob’s bedside. For the first time in a decade, she had allowed herself to be photographed in her distraught, rumpled condition. Today, Valerie Lipson didn’t give a crap what anyone thought or said about “Just Val.” He kissed her lips.

  “I’ll be right here,” he said.

  She held him tight and whispered in his ear, “I love you so very much, Michael Roper.”

  He smiled.

  Valerie slipped out of the car. Leaning in, she took a bouquet of a dozen white roses from Mike. With her shoulders squared, she walked forward across the lawn. Her father looked up to see her and jumped to his feet in surprise.

  “What is it? What’s happened? Is Jake . . .?”

  “Jake’s in surgery. Everything was going well when I left. Dr. Drayson said they found a metal shard, probably from the pipe wrench, next to his heart. They think that’s causing the heart attacks. The cardiac team removed the metal. The cardiac surgeon is optimistic that Jake’s heart is not damaged. We won’t know for certain until he’s active again.”

  Sam Lipson visibly sagged with relief.

  “The orthopedic surgeons have another couple hours. Jill and Delphie will call the moment they know anything.”

  “I was reading your mother the funnies.”

  “You can finish,” she said.

  “That’s all right,” Sam said. “She likes them . . .”

  “Uninterrupted, start to finish,” Valerie said in unison with him.

  “Some things never change.” He smiled.

  “I need to speak to you about . . .” Valerie’s face clouded. She wasn’t sure how to even start the conversation. Shoving a picture frame at her father, she said, “Jake keeps telling me to look at this picture. What . . . what does he want me to see?”

  “What do you see?” he asked and passed the photo back.

  “I see you,” Valerie spat the words, “and your . . . new perfect family.”

  Sam laughed.

  “Why . . . why is that funny?”

  “You can be so stubborn,” he said. “That’s why I laughed. It’s right in front of you and you don’t see it. Why is that, Valerie?”

  “What am I supposed to see?”

  “You and Jake look remarkably alike,” Sam said.

  “We look like our mother.” Valerie flipped her hair at him.

  “Celia was fair skinned. She had light brown hair until the very end of her life,” Sam said. “You don’t have fair skin or light brown hair. Do you?”

  “What are you saying? We’re African-American?” Valerie spit at him.

  “My family has been in the West since long before there was a United States. We’re mutts. Dark hair, darker skin, hazelish eyes . . . African-American, Native-American, Spanish,” Sam Lipson shrugged. “The Lipson’s pass their features to their children.”

  Valerie curled her lip at her father. She jerked the photograph to her eyes. Four tiny little blonde bitches . . . with their tiny blonde whore mother. Trevor’s wicked fiancée and her bitty sister stood next to their mother while her father’s . . . What? They looked like . . . She pulled the photo next to her eye.

  “Your mother wanted . . .”

  “How dare you blame your slutty behavior on my mother! She was devastated by you!”

  “Was she?” Sam asked. “Are you sure?”

  Valerie threw the photograph at her father’s feet. Crossing her arms over her heart, she started to walk off.

  “I promised Celia that I’d only tell you kids when you asked.”

  Valerie swung around to look at him.

  “Jake asked about six months after Celia died. But you . . . What’s it been? Nine years? You were at the lawyers today. You walked in on us the night before your mother died. And still, you don’t ask the question. Just ask me.”

  “Fine. Why did you betray my mother?”

  “I’ve never betrayed your mother. Never. Not one time in the lifetime of knowing her. She was the very best thing in my life and I miss her like a hole in the very center of me.”

  “How can you say that? She gets ill and you’re off . . . With that horrible woman . . . and . . . I thought you had a vasectomy?”

  “I did,” Sam said. He smiled at the question. Valerie was finally ready for the truth. “It’s the only time Celia was truly angry with me. She wanted babies so badly, but there are reasons she was the last of the Marlowes. She was lucky to survive carrying Jake. She was determined to have more children. I . . . I didn’t want to lose her, so I had it done.”

  Valerie looked down at the bouquet of roses in her hand. She remembered the fight. It was the only time she ever remembered her parents screaming at each other. They fought for days. She was five or maybe six years old. Jake was a little more than a year old.

  “Then how did you get your secretary pregnant?”

  “I didn’t,” Sam said.

  Valerie shook her head. She almost left again when she realized what she needed to know.

  “Dad, what happened?”

  “Finally,” Sam said. “Tha
nks for that.”

  He held out his hands and she gave him the roses. They walked together to Celia’s grave. He placed the roses in a flower holder near the bottom of her grave. Letting out a breath, he turned to her.

  “Celia was sick for a long, long time. She fought the cancer for a decade or more. She wanted so much to live.” Sam smiled remembering. “We kept it from you kids because . . . Well . . . because raising you was . . . important to us. When we knew that fighting wasn’t an option anymore, she . . .”

  He stopped talking for a moment. His expression reflected his love and frustration for his Celia.

  “Oh, your mother . . . She always thought the best of everyone. If someone was awful, she would say that they didn’t know any better.”

  They said together, “With loving support they will blossom.” They laughed.

  “Tiffanie’s boyfriend was in and out of prison. She was just pregnant with Briana when he violated parole and was sent back to Cañon City. Your mother felt that if I married her, said that the baby was mine, I would save Tiffanie . . . and her children.”

  “But why would Mom do that?”

  “Why do you think?” Sam asked.

  “Can’t you just answer the question?”

  “Who did your mother love more than anyone in this world?”

  “You.”

  “More than me and more than Jake.”

  “No one. Jake was her favorite.”

  “God damn it, Valerie. You know that’s not true.”

  At that moment, patience left Sam Lipson. The last twenty hours had left him raw, exhausted, and unwilling to play into anyone’s bullshit.

  “Me.” Valerie whispered.

  “Exactly.”

  “But this destroyed me. I . . .”

  “Your mother knew things,” Sam said.

  “Like Jake and Delphie.”

  “More like Jake. Long-term visions, big picture stuff. Life was a chess board to Celia. While all our friends went into building houses, we switched to underground utility. Celia knew the Californians would come to Colorado and build cheaper than anyone else. Everyone we knew went out of business except us. Delphie is good at the next six months and specifics in the next day or hour.”

  “Mom knew about Mike,” Valerie said.

  “And your baby,” Sam said. “She knew I wouldn’t make it . . . six months without her. With her death, my death, the baby, and Mike . . . She didn’t think you’d survive.”

  “I barely survived as it is.”

  “Exactly,” Sam said. “The only thing that would keep me going was having people depend on me. And I do love babies. I didn’t care about living without her, but . . .”

  Sam face shifted to a kind of quiet love. His eyes filled.

  “She believed your anger . . . at me . . . would pull you through all of the loss.” He put his hand on her shoulder. Valerie looked up into his face. “She was right.”

  “Oh, Dad.” Valerie reached up and her father hugged her.

  While she cried into his shoulder, he said, “It was so worth it, Val. So completely worth it.”

  “Val! Val!” Mike yelled from the car. He ran across the grass to them. “Jake’s dead.”

  ~~~~~~~~

  “So that’s it?” Jacob asked.

  Celia laughed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cards on the table

  Thursday morning, 4 a.m.

  Jill stood with her hand on the employee exit at Pete’s Kitchen. Her feet, still oozing from the lacerations of the glass, ached in her waitress shoes. She had shuffled through her regular Wednesday night shift with skinned knees and tattered feet. Pete finally sent her home with instructions not to come back until she was well. With work over, her mind turned to her lists.

  “You okay, Jill?” Pete asked.

  “Yeah, I’m just . . . overwhelmed.”

  “Of course,” he said. The elderly man patted her shoulder in a gesture of support. “You need to take care of yourself.”

  Jill nodded.

  “You’ll let us know if you need anything?” he asked.

  “Thank you,” Jill said.

  When Pete returned to tracking down more hashbrowns, Jill returned to making a list in her head. She needed clothing for Katy. Wait. Where was her journal? At the Castle. Yep, Castle. Maybe she’d do a load . . . or forty loads . . . of laundry. When was the last time she’d washed her hair? Yesterday. Clean underwear was a must. Trash collection was . . . Friday. Better get the trash out.

  Jill looked at her wristwatch. Three hours. Pressing open the door, Jill began the short walk to her apartment.

  The last forty-eight hours had been . . . hell. She might always have trouble lining up all the events. When the cardiac team came out of surgery, they told Jill that Jacob had “popped a bleeder.” Both Delphie and Jill heard them say that Jacob was dead. She called Mike to tell him and then collapsed in tears of grief and regret.

  By the time Mike, Valerie and Jacob’s father arrived, Dr. Drayson had come out to say a bone shard had been lodged in the subclavian artery, wherever that was. The shard had kept Jacob from healing. Dr. Drayson was not only able to suture the artery, but he also felt like Jacob would recover in “short order.”

  And sure enough, Jacob went from being critical to serious condition in a couple hours. He was moved into a private room this . . . yesterday morning. Jill called an hour ago and Valerie said the nurse told her they would start decreasing his medication in . . .

  Jill looked at her watch. Two hours and forty-nine minutes. She stopped walking to stare at her watch. Was it really only Thursday? She’d known Jacob less than a week. For a moment, images from Katy’s reaction to the bee sting to her ex-boss with the straight pipe wrench lofted over his head threatened to send her into blank emptiness.

  Not today.

  She blew out her breath and starting walking again. Shaking her head, she turned down Fourteenth Avenue.

  “Hi, Jill.” Trevor stepped from the shadows into the light of a street lamp.

  Startled, Jill jumped and yelped.

  “Trevor! What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to see you,” he said. He fell in step beside her. “I’ve been thinking about things.”

  Jill stopped walking.

  “What things? You know I have a restraining . . .”

  “I love you, Jill. You were right. You are my soul mate. We belong together.”

  “It’s an interesting week to decide that,” Jill said. She kept walking toward her apartment building.

  “We were a family — you and me and our Katy . . .”

  “Until you fucked it up,” Jill said.

  “I was manipulated, Jill. We both were. I . . . I was so focused on doing what was right for us, for Katy, I didn’t realize I lost the most important thing in my life — you.”

  Jill stopped walking and squinted her eyes at Trevor.

  “I want to get this straight. You thought by divorcing me, taking all of our money, my money, stealing our only vehicle, a vehicle I bought and paid for I might add, and getting some rich girl pregnant was what was best for us? For Katy?”

  “When you say it like that . . .”

  Trevor’s voice rose in irritation. Jill shook her head and returned to walking. Trevor noticeably softened.

  “Oh, Jill, you cut me to the core when you’re so cold.”

  Jill raised her eyebrows and turned into the apartment building.

  “Jill.” Trevor put his hand on her arm. “Stop. Just listen to me.”

  Jill turned to face him.

  “We were manipulated by these rich people. They used us . . .” Trevor’s hand caressed Jill’s arm. “People like that can never understand what we have.”

  Trevor leaned in. His lips brushed her lips. With her mouth an inch from his, she said, “So you’re not getting married on Sunday?”

  Trevor jerked back.

  “T
hat’s what I thought,” Jill said. “If you’ll excuse me, my dog Scooter needs to be walked.”

  “Scooter! Oh my God, Jill! Where did you find Scooter?”

  “Don’t even start with me. I saw the papers. A Mr. Trevor McGuinsey turned him in to the Dumb Friend’s League.”

  Trevor grabbed her arm before she stepped into the building.

  “Don’t let them do this to us, Jill. We belong together. I still love you with every cell in my body, every fiber in my being, every thought in my head, and every action in my life.”

  Jill visibly sagged.

  “Please,” Trevor said.

  She felt his hand move along her rear. Under his pressure, her hips shifted toward him. While her mind returned to her lists, he kissed her and then slipped his hands under her shirt. He flicked open her bra and moved to cup her breasts.

  Her weary mind whispered, “This will be over soon enough.”

  For the first time, Jill heard what her mind had repeated every time Trevor touched her. Horrified by the thought, Jill jerked to the present.

  And found that . . .

  She was standing on the sidewalk like a Colfax crack whore, while her ex-husband busied himself on her body. She took a step back. She wrenched his hands from under her shirt.

  “Get off me.”

  “You can’t just lead me on!” His voice was a terse whisper.

  Jill couldn’t help herself. She laughed.

  Trevor slapped her hard across the face.

  “Stupid worthless whore, how dare you?”

  Trevor grabbed her arms and jerked her toward him. She banged against his hip. He was rock hard and ready. He mashed his lips onto hers.

  At that moment, she knew.

  He was going to have her no matter what.

  Jill wrenched her arms from him. Using her elbow to push him off her, she bolted into the building. Racing up the stairs, she reached her door when he slammed her face forward into the wood. He caught her when she bounced off the door. With one hand over her mouth, he unbuttoned her pants. His fingernails raked their way into her soft flesh. While he jerked her pants down, and his own, Jill worked to get her key into the lock. Trevor was so lost in his lust he didn’t realize what she was doing.

  Somehow, she managed to get the door open.

  Scooter flew at Trevor. His bark brought Sarah from the living room couch. While Sarah lunged and barked, Scooter snapped at Trevor. Trevor screamed in pain and fury. He lunged at Scooter, but Sarah blocked his way.

  When Trevor turned, he saw the hallway lined with neighbors. Jill’s next-door neighbor, Mr. Wilson, rushed Trevor with his baseball bat. Terrified, Trevor ran for the stairs. Scooter and Sarah chased him from the apartment building.