Heartstrings in B-Flat Minor

by Scott Johnson

  Back in the here and now, Sheryl remains curled up, in pain and all alone again, on her sofa after the pizza party with Clara. Restless, she starts coming out of a nap. Her vacuous eyes zoom in on her mom’s. Photos chronicling Ruth’s life come into focus. In a tortured whisper, Sheryl confesses, “I’m a mess, Mommy, really—I’m a mess!” Sheryl hears her own voice, out-of-body, while in and out of consciousness, fighting an awakening to her real-world dramedy.

  Slipping into a dream, she stumbles back to a day in her parents’ sunroom, only months after Hawaii. It’s so much nicer, dreamlike, in the sunroom so many years ago. It’s just the two of them again, mother and daughter only. Endless picture windows surround them, overlooking wraparound decking and Ruth’s beautiful backyard gardens. Sheryl and her mother have wandered into their first follow-up talk about Sterling.

  “There’s more to the story, Mom.”

  “More? I’m not sure I’m ready for more.”

  Upbeat, Sheryl explains, “It’s not necessarily anything bad. In fact, it could be great! It’s just a little risky in that it’s financial in nature. This is my first grown-up investment, and I just need to confide in someone, and you’re the only one I can turn to, Mom.”

  “You always can turn to me, dear,” assures Ruth, who has not been well again lately.

  Sheryl is unaware of her mother’s downturn at the moment, though, and feels compelled to spill the details about her unsecured investments with Sterling in his clothing company. She’s hoping her mom will be impressed by all the potential.

  “According to Sterling,” Sheryl explains, “I’m guaranteed pension-plan security, plus a lump-sum bonanza once his lawyers get all the annoying lawsuits resolved.”

  Ruth asks, “What makes you so convinced there are lawyers, money, or even a business?”

  “Oh, Mother, don’t you think I’ve double- and triple-checked all that stuff?”

  “I was just asking.”

  In truth, Sheryl has left way too much to Sterling’s smooth explanations and legal-looking documents, and she knows it. She’s nervous, of course, about the remote chance he’s scamming her—but no, not Sterling, he wouldn’t. So she still hopes at this time in the sunroom.

  “He’s even taken me to the courthouse a few times,” Sheryl adds, “so I know he’s telling the truth about all the legal drama.”

  “What’s gone on at these hearings?” asks Ruth.

  Caught off guard, Sheryl admits, “I’ve had to wait in the courthouse lobbies while he’s gone into the actual courtrooms. They’ve been closed sessions.”

  Ruth says, “That’s not what I’d hoped to hear. Have you ever considered he might have been there for something unrelated to his alleged clothing company? Or just going into a random room as a spectator, doors closed to your view?”

  “Letting me think it was his big continuing case?”

  “Yes, not such a far-fetched idea when you add up all the known facts.”

  Sheryl wonders why she’s never questioned this before but retorts, “No, Mom, Sterling wouldn’t do that to me.” She looks down at her hands. “He c-couldn’t,” she stammers, trying to convince herself as well.

  “No?” Ruth gently challenges.

  “No, not after all we’ve been to each other and gone through together.” Sheryl rambles on optimistically about what she’ll do with all her money once her ship comes in, and Ruth appears to be listening in shock. The mess Sheryl has made of her life begs explanation. Instead, she is giving her mother pie in the sky.

  “So anyway, Mom,” Sheryl proudly promises, “we’ll spare no expenses when I take the whole family on a cruise.”

  “Of course, dear, but meanwhile, keep me posted on the legal proceedings.”

  “For sure.”

  “Get more inquisitive. Ask for proof and details.”

  “I will, Mom. Thank you for your wise counsel.”

  “Wisdom seems to come with age,” Ruth says, smiling. “But I’m not so sure I like all the other perks that come with it. Anyway, we’ll keep this between us, my dear baby girl.”

  Ruth’s voice fades out as though through a flickering echo chamber, all these years later. Sheryl wakes up with a kink in her neck from slouching in the pity perch’s tight quarters. Still curled up on the sofa, she stares at the shrine to her mom, guilt-ridden over the extra burden she placed on her at the worst possible time.

  Sheryl, so sad now, groans and stirs on the sofa. She shudders, recalling her fears that her mom never would rebound from all the knowledge gained about her daughter. Sheryl’s head pounds with self-flagellations about her blind belief in Sterling. How feeble the bit about striking it rich with him must have sounded to Mom. “Unbelievable,” Sheryl cries softly to the room. “But she never stopped loving me.”

  “Never,” though, didn’t last too long because soon afterward, Ruth’s health went into a final downward spiral. Being bedridden in the final months of her life had not been in the plans, so new plans got made. Her memorial service was overflowing.

  Changing her train of thought on a dime, Sheryl abruptly announces, “But enough of that—it’s time to figure out what to do about those tours!” She had to decide about Hawaii and Istanbul, departure for Hawaii being just three days away. The more she thinks about it, the more she fears going, twenty-five years under the belt with Magic Pigment be damned. It may very well not turn out to be the cakewalk that she’s been figuring her experiences there guarantee. But how can she now turn around and cancel after confirming just yesterday? “That’s the big question!” Panicked, she placates herself with the reminder that at least there would be no riots, as opposed to her last trip.

  That night and the next, Sheryl can’t sleep—well, maybe three or four hours each, tops. She staggers through daytime hours pretending to pack for Hawaii, still intending to do that paperwork for the lawyer before she goes. Sure. Such is the plan, but a ticking clock in her head constantly reminds her that she’s running out of time to cancel—because she surely doesn’t want to go through with it.

  Worse, she’s freaking out over the one-week turnaround between coming home and leaving for Turkey. Of the two, it’s Turkey she sees as more important to her personally. Maybe she should concentrate all her efforts on handling just that one trip, Turkey—do a good job there. No so coincidentally, she again fantasizes about Ilkin. He could be my savior.

  Sheryl calls Thomas Kearns, who just got off the phone with the paint company’s travel agency. He says, “Everyone is looking forward to another year with you at the helm, Sheryl. How goes the packing?”

  “Ah, Tom, I just can’t do it. It’s like I’m still in some kind of shock from Cairo. I really can’t even explain it.”

  Kearns at first is speechless but then reassuringly says, “Take the time you need, Sheryl.”

  “Oh, I intend to be fully ready for Turkey, Tom.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll talk in a week to firm up Istanbul.”

  “You can count on me, Tom, for sure.”

  “I know, Sheryl. Please just rest up and don’t worry.”

  As they hang up, Sheryl recollects how years ago she passed up running Tom’s Florida office. She would’ve been pulling down big bucks since long ago and with no travel jitters either. Bad decision. Paranoid now that she blabbed redundantly at the end of her conversation with Kearns, she takes a deep breath and tells herself, “Just do like he says. Don’t worry, rest up. I’ll be ready.”

  Her coming week seems to pass in slow motion. Sheryl is as nervous about the Turkey tour as she was about Hawaii. Maybe more so, really. She has additional nontravel worries about whether she’ll be able to look Ilkin in the eye, after all the pain she’s dealt him through the years. Getting past that still would leave her the unpleasant task of leveling with him about what he surely would view as a shameful life. However, the need to hold off her family as long as
possible on bankruptcy proceedings overrides everything.

  Pressure from Sterling remains relentless, dark, and foreboding. Every appointment she breaks with the lawyer means breaking appointments with Dad, Gloria, and Jon too. As for the few family strategy meetings she hasn’t backed out of, Sheryl is touched to feel they’ve come together as a team, one for all. The message they’re all delivering is that she needs to act fast. Certain bankruptcy options soon will disappear. Yet she continually stonewalls on her homework. “Oh my gosh,” says Sheryl with a shiver, completely desperate.

  Procrastinating on pulling together what the lawyer needs, Sheryl replays cell-recorded conversations from the lawyer’s conference room centering on power of attorney, which on medical issues she has given to Jon. Unpleasant at any level, such concerns suddenly loom in previously uncharted territory. This type of talk troubles her spirit more than mere financial woes. Though drained of tears, she weeps, “I’m a burden to everyone.”

  Now that she is outed on several levels, family roundtables get into whether or not counseling should be an option. Even Sheryl knows, though she won’t admit it for the record, that she’s fragile—mentally ready to slip and fall at a moment’s notice. “I’m at the end of my rope,” she realizes now and again.

  Luckily, since the lobby face-off, she’s kept her family convinced that she has finally started cleaning up her place. “I’m making slow but steady progress,” she has told them. “It feels so good!” Since Sheryl is convincing about having seen the light, and everyone else has their own life dramas chewing up days, more time is lost, and troubles gain ground. Perhaps using persuasive powers honed from hanging around with Sterling, she tells the story that while allegedly gathering paperwork for the lawyer, she’s had to start cleaning house to find records and files. “It’s a win-win!” she exclaims in a Taylor family conference call. They’ve never known her to be a liar, so they take her at her word, and soon it’s ten days out from Istanbul, or bust.

  Sheryl sits on her sofa, stunned by the contents of a legal-sized envelope from Sterling, hand-delivered by Donald the doorman. It contains a disgusting letter from Sterling touching on many topics, including a denunciation of her allegedly injudicious family. In a fancy font, he also proclaims his long-standing true love for Sheryl, his dearest darling dove. But back to her folks, he rants, “And what was their purpose? Racism!”

  “No! You’re so wrong,” she argues back from her couch at the top of her lungs, arms flailing. “It’s you! You’re the racist. You’ve ripped me off all these years, thinking I was some dumb, naive, suburban white chick—and I was!” Oblivious to possibly being overheard but toning it down a bit, she continues, “And now that our secrets are out, your best defense is an offense.” She cries, “You’re such an asshole, Sterling!”

  If he were here, she imagines through her pain, he’d sarcastically quip, “Hey, I don’t discriminate. I’m an equal-opportunity swindler.” Thinking back to how he betrayed Snake and Miriam and conned Ronny Walker into handing him the doctor slot, she knows that’s true.

  As Sterling’s letter continues, the rants get even heavier-handed. Imperiously, he prattles on about Sheryl supposedly having single-handedly ruined both of their lives. The stylistic text makes slanderous charges against her, alleging much un-Christianly behavior. Tellingly, though, he fails to reference his having bilked her dry. “A minor detail,” she snarls in her emptiness.

  Sterling’s tirade ends, “Our child and mothers above all are in tears, thanks to you.”

  Sheryl, increasingly frail, collapses on her couch crying, as Sterling no doubt knew she would do, just as he likely knows she soon will cry herself to sleep, which she does—maybe even as programmed by the stealthy hypnotist in her life. Who knows?

  While Sheryl sleeps, a bit north in Sterling’s living room, he sits reclined in thought in front of the harbor view. Thoughts take him to other harbor views and Jamaica, where he first practiced hypnotism on Sheryl, both with and without her knowledge. She still thinks of him as a clumsy novice good enough for parlor tricks. That she has no idea of how adept he’s become at hypnotism over time suits Sterling just fine. Years of field-testing Snake’s lessons on his handful of bread-and-butter gal accounts have paid generous dividends.

  Really, though, he wonders, how have I been able to keep all this afloat? Mind-control games or not, the pressures to produce and pay bills make nothing a cakewalk. His gals’ fortunes have ebbed and flowed smoothest without family interference, which always is the beginning of the end. What Sterling knows best about him and Sheryl as a couple is that their history has included incredibly romantic highs that always trump any setbacks between them. Their annual fall bed-and-breakfast road trips circling the big lake through color-splashed forests, from home to Mackinac and back, have created traditionally tender travel times together that let him work his mysterious ways. She seems to have her guard down while traveling for pleasure.

  Some good memories, thinks the buried soft side of him. That repressed side of him wonders what might have happened if he had gone straight. Would she have been the one? The soft side, never allowed out for long, burrows back deep into his subconscious.

  Shed of such sentiment, he thanks the crime lord below that Sheryl’s professional life on the run oftentimes has allowed plenty of time for her to cool down and let the heart grow fonder while he attends to his other accounts back home. Meanwhile, the abortion episode slips further behind them in time. They don’t discuss it; somehow, though, it binds them together as Uncle Austin taught him it would. But that was then, and this is now, knows Sterling. Her shelf life’s expired. He only hopes the trigger phrase he implanted in her subconscious back in the day remains active today. Assuming so, all it should take, he figures, is a phone call to get everything rolling.

  “Time to find out tomorrow. And maybe do one last little score on her,” he chuckles. She does have, he knows, one remaining credit card with money available. “Why not exploit it?”

  When Sheryl’s cell rings at 7:00 a.m., she remains crashed on the sofa’s pity perch, where she slept off and on overnight. Groggily, she checks caller ID; it’s Sterling. “What do you want, Sterling? I’ve had it with you. I don’t even know why I answered.”

  “I was afraid of that, baby, and that’s why I called. After I sent that little package, I had second thoughts—hoping it wouldn’t upset you.”

  “Upset me? Are you kidding? You saying it’s inflammatory? Disgusting maybe? Well, I couldn’t care less anymore about anything to do with you. I’m moving ahead with the lawyer.”

  “Well, that may be—but just in case there was a tinge of pain, I’m apologizing. Let me take you out to breakfast. You have to follow your conscious on the lawyer thing.”

  She’s not dumb, she tells herself. “Forget it. I’m sleeping in.” Being hungry and broke, though, eventually she weakens when he won’t take no for an answer. They settle on dinner that evening at the American Cuisine Grill.

  “I’ll meet you at seven,” says Sheryl.

  “All right, see you there,” he agrees.

  That night, sitting at their familiar tucked-away table, Sheryl notices Sterling scrutinizing her overstuffed granny basket stashed in a corner. He asks, “Why are you dragging that thing everywhere you go?”

  “Oh, poor baby, are you embarrassed by me?”

  “Sometimes, yeah. Your behavior’s getting outrageous. You know that? Do you see yourself as others do?”

  “Unfortunately, I do, and lately it’s not a pretty picture. What of it?”

  Food arrives, and they simmer down. As they eat, Sheryl tells him of her latest foreclosure fears.

  Sterling interjects, “You seem to be forgetting, my dear, I’m up against it too. In fact, I’m one foreclosure notice ahead of you in the process.”

  Sheryl knows what’s coming next and goes on the offensive. “Don’t be coming to me for more mo
ney. The well’s run dry.”

  “Like hell it has,” he retorts strongly, catching her off guard. “I’m going to remind you of a few things that bind us together, forever, till death and beyond.”

  Sheryl slumps at the table, exasperated under a suddenly intensified atmosphere in the room. Despair rules her mind.

  “Need I remind you, dearest, of that alibi you helped provide for me—in mailing all my fingerprinted postcards from around Europe? You do remember that makes you an accessory to something you’d like to forget about, don’t you?”

  What little spine Sheryl retains disintegrates.

  Sterling spitefully adds, “And those little white lies you told on your line-of-credit loan applications, both of which now are equally maxed-out? Well, something like that also might be of interest to the feds—you know, cheater and liar that you are.”

  “I was an idiot, but you pushed me into those little white lies right after that whole postcard thing. What I understand now, though, is the truth doesn’t matter with you, and the postcard thing never will be forgotten.” Disheartened, she remembers how he forced her into those loan lies by threatening to tell Gloria about the abortion, and she knows he’s fully aware of what he did. Sheryl sadly rues the day she met him.

  Seeking strength and not wanting to totally give up the ghost, she stiffens her backbone and asks, “So what’s the latest on all these lawsuits?”

  “Look,” he says, irritated, “if I could wave a wand and just get them settled, once and for all—yeah, of course, I’d do it! But all I know is my lawyers say the end’s in sight.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of, the end.”

  “Sounds pretty pessimistic to me.”

  She doesn’t believe anything he says anymore, except where threats are involved. Generally, she sees that his word always has been worthless—no doubt much like her corporate title of secretary and even the company itself. What stands out now is how he seems more menacing than ever. She’s become numb to his demands. She can’t forget the postcards.