The Real Housewives of Adverse City

by Shelia E. Bell

  “I texted her last night, but she didn’t answer me either. I hope she and Ryker haven’t gotten into another one of their spats. You know how that goes,” Peyton said, talking softly so Derek and Liam wouldn’t hear her. She didn’t want to hear Derek telling her that she talked too much, which he often did.

  Eva and Peyton continued to talk until Meesha appeared and halted the conversation.

  “Good morning, Derek. Hello, Liam.” Looking past Derek and over at Liam sitting next to him, she smiled. “Young man, I think you get more handsome every time I see you,” she complimented. Liam blushed and his complexion turned blood red.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Porter,” Liam said most politely.

  “How are you, Meesha?” asked Derek.

  “I’m blessed. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.” Fashionably dressed in a Dolce & Gabbana russet brown raw silk pants suit, Meesha laid her butter soft hand on top of his hand and squeezed it affectionately but not in a disrespectful manner. She leaned in, excusing herself, and extended her diamond-encrusted hand out toward Peyton and repeated the gesture.

  Eva lifted her hand up for Meesha to shake it as well. “Good morning, my sisters in Christ,” Meesha said.

  Peyton rolled her eyes up in her head. “Good morning.” Peyton released a fake smile, slightly shaking her head. She never got over how differently Meesha talked and acted when she was at church versus when she was hanging out with them. She sounded so… well… like she was flodging. Anyway, Peyton was used to it so she went along with the program just as she did every Sunday.

  “I’m okay,” Eva responded, her voice dragging.

  Neither Meesha nor Peyton had to ask Eva what was wrong with her and why she was sounding so dry. They knew it was probably because once again, Harper was absent.

  “Where’s Avery?” Meesha asked, eyeing Peyton and Eva questioningly.

  Eva shrugged and Peyton’s eyebrows lifted.

  “Haven’t talked to her since early yesterday,” Eva replied.

  “Neither have I,” Peyton said.

  “I haven’t either,” Meesha added. The musicians started playing as the curtains rose slowly, revealing the 500-member choir. “Have to go.” Meesha hurriedly stepped back, threw her hand up at her friends. “We’ll talk this afternoon.” She turned and walked toward the front of the sanctuary to her reserved seat.

  After the choir sang a couple of songs, Carlton got up from his seat in the pulpit and approached the podium.

  “Good morning, Perfecting Your Faith. It’s good to be in the house of the Lord isn’t it?” He stood erect, shoulders back, not too tall but definitely not too short. His neatly trimmed salt and pepper, short, boxed beard, coupled with his milk chocolate skin seemed to enhance his navy designer sharkskin suit that was perfectly tailored to his physique. His mild mannered voice had a captivating presence as he addressed his congregation.

  “It’s a blessing to be here this morning. It makes me feel good when I can come here Sunday after Sunday and look out and see what God is doing.”

  The congregation could be heard saying, Amen and Praise God as Carlton continued.

  “This morning, I want to take a few minutes to talk to you about heart trouble. If you have your Bibles, and you should, turn with me to Jeremiah chapter seventeen and verse nine. Reading from the Living Bible it says, “The heart is the most deceitful thing there is and desperately wicked. No one can really know how bad it is!”

  Carlton preached with zeal for the next thirty minutes. By the time he ended his sermon, the congregation could be seen and heard shouting hallelujah, praise God. People poured down to the front of the church to be prayed for. Others came to commit their lives to Christ or become members of Perfecting Your Faith. Pastor Carlton wiped the sweat from his brow as he stood in the midst of the crowd praying and giving God his own personal thanks.

  Meesha, not shy at all, and totally in support of her husband, joined him and the ministers and elders in praying and addressing the needs of the people.

  Eva leaned over and whispered to Peyton, “I’m out. I’ll talk to you later.” She grabbed her oversized handbag and started to stand, but Peyton stopped her by grabbing hold of her arm.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I just want to beat the crowd. You know how long it takes to get off this parking lot.” Eva looked around the sanctuary and back at Peyton. “You see all the people leaving already. Church is over,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, but you know how much Carlton dislikes it when people leave before he gives his blessing. It’s not going to take long for them to finish up. You know he has to get ready for the eleven forty-five service.” This time Peyton looked away from Eva and focused her eyes on the people being ministered to. Some of them had already been prayed for and had already turned to go back to their seats. “See, they’re almost done.”

  Eva shrugged, sighed, and relaxed back against the pew. She decided that she would text Avery to see if she would get a response.

  “Why aren’t u at church? Everything ok?”

  No response.

  When church ended, it didn’t take long for Eva to get off the church parking lot considering the endless number of cars coming and going. The parking lot attendants were good at keeping down traffic congestion on the huge parking area. She turned right out of the parking lot, heading toward Lincoln Drive when her cell phone rang.

  Avery’s name appeared. Eva pushed the button on her steering wheel to answer the call.

  “It’s Ryker. Are you at church?” He sounded upset.

  “I’m just leaving. What’s going on? Where is Avery? I’ve been trying to reach her since yesterday.”

  “She’s in the hospital.”

  “Hospital? Why? What happened?” Eva asked, trying not to panic.

  “She…” he went silent.

  “She what? You’re scaring me, Ryker. What happened to Avery?” This time she didn’t try to hold back the fear in her voice. Something had to be drastically wrong for Ryker to call her. Out of the four housewives, Eva and Avery were especially close, but that didn’t make Ryker didn’t care too much for her. For some reason, unbeknownst to Eva, he was not too fond of her. Eva didn’t know if it was because of her ethnicity or if it was because he probably knew that Avery told her just about everything that went on between them. As of now, she didn’t have time to figure it out; something was wrong with Avery and she needed to know what it was.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” she almost yelled into the phone.

  “Eva tried to kill herself. She’s at Adverse General.”

  Eva’s hand flew up to her mouth while she kept the other one pinned to the steering wheel. She altered her direction and instead of going toward her home on Lincoln Drive, she took the first left turn she could make and headed in the direction of Adverse General.

  “Oh, my God,” she cried. “Kill herself? When? How? Is…is she…de─”

  “No, she’s not dead, but she’s not out of the woods either.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Sometime last night. Looks like she took an overdose of those pain pills the doctor prescribed after she was in that car wreck a few months ago. Thank God, I came home when I did. I got home earlier than I expected. That’s when I found her on the floor of our bathroom.”

  Terror resonated in his voice. Peyton could tell that he was truly distraught.

  “I’m on my way,” Eva said, ending the call. She immediately called Peyton to tell her the tragic news.

  Why would Avery do such a thing? The more Eva thought about it, the angrier she became. She already summed up that it had to have had something to do with Ryker. Had he been cheating on Avery again? Was he threatening to leave her and take the kids like he’d done before? Whatever the reason, Eva tried hard not to concentrate on it. Her main objective was to get to the hospital. She wanted to see for herself if Avery was going to be all right.

  Chapter 7

  “True friends s
tab you in the front.” Oscar Wilde

  The following evening, Pastor Porter and the housewives gathered in Avery’s hospital room. Though she was improving physically after having her stomach pumped, her mental state was still in shambles. The psychiatrist talked about moving her to the mental health floor of Adverse General.

  “I don’t know what you could have been thinking?” voiced Eva. “Nothing is worth killing yourself over.”

  Avery turned her head toward the window and away from her friends. She felt ashamed and embarrassed. The thought of leaving her daughters, leaving her family and friends, was almost too much to bear. But it wasn’t all her fault. She refused to take the full blame for her actions. It was Ryker’s fault too. He had managed to make her feel like she was worthless. The fact that she had changed her life when she fell in love with him didn’t seem to count for anything because he still felt that it was okay for her to be cheated on and walked on by him. She felt like she was unworthy, but she never would have thought that she, of all people, would try to end her own life. Yet, lying in the hospital bed with Pastor Porter, Meesha, Peyton, and Eva staring at her like she was an animal in a zoo was a harsh reminder that that’s exactly what she’d attempted to do.

  “I wish you would have come to me. I would have helped you to make it through whatever it was you felt like you couldn’t face any longer,” Meesha said, her voice sounding sad for her friend.

  “If I can survive through my messed up life and marriage, I know you should be able to,” Peyton told Avery. “Do you think it’s easy living with a man who practically despises me? He calls me names, he finds every excuse to stay away from home, and he definitely won’t make love to me.”

  Carlton flinched as he listened to Peyton, clearly feeling like he was being made privy to too much information.

  “All you had to deal with was Ryker cheating on you.” Peyton raised up one shaky finger. “One, not multiple, just one affair, and you’re ready to take yourself out.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Avery said, her voice full of anger and hurt. “You think it’s easy for me to deal with his infidelity? Well, I’m not you, Peyton. I don’t drown my worries in a bottle of Vodka.”

  “You’re right, you drown your worries in a bottle of pills,” Peyton snapped back. “And look where it’s gotten you.”

  “Stop it, ladies,” Carlton Porter insisted. “This is not what friends do to support each other. They build each other up, not tear one another down.”

  “Yeah, Carlton is right. Stop all of this bickering. It’s not going to solve anything,” said Eva.

  “Look, Avery, we’re here because we care about you,” Meesha explained. “And we’re glad you’re going to be all right. If you have to spend a few days in a mental health facility, or here at Adverse General, then so be it. As long as you’re able to get some professional help and counseling.

  Avery cried as Carlton came close to the side of her bed and took hold of her hand. He stroked her matted hair and pushed back several stray strands from off her forehead. In a compassionate and loving tone, he leaned down close to Avery. “God loves you, Avery. He cares about what you’re going through.

  “Do you care, too, Pastor? Do you love me too?” Avery cried.

  Clearing his throat, he answered, “We all love you, Avery.”

  Meesha walked up next to him as Carlton continued to gently massage Avery’s hand. “Everything is going to be just fine. You just wait and see. Until then, know that we’re here for you,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Eva and Peyton.

  “She’s right,” Eva said, standing on the other side of Meesha.

  Carlton released Avery’s hand, kissed her lightly on her forehead, and stepped away. “I’m going to let you get some rest now. I’ll be back to check on you and pray with you tomorrow,” Carlton said. “But if you need me before then, please just call me or Meesha.”

  Avery looked at Carlton with tears crested in her eyes and responded by turning her head away.

  Carlton left the hospital while Meesha remained. When he was told that Avery had tried to commit suicide, he had been conducting the ministerial staff Bible Study. He ordered one of the other ministers to take over while one of his drivers rushed him to Adverse General to see how she was. Carlton understood that Avery had gone through a lot in her marriage and was quite vulnerable. He couldn’t see himself not going to be by her side. It was his job and his pastoral duty.

  “I still want to know why you downed a bottle of pills. What was so terribly wrong?” Peyton pressured after Carlton left.

  “I didn’t tell you the whole story about me and Ryker. I didn’t tell you that I was the one who drove him into the arms of another woman.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Eva. “How are you responsible for Ryker going outside of his marriage? I won’t let you take the blame for something that’s totally his fault.”

  “Yeah, he made that choice,” said Meesha.

  “Listen to me,” Avery insisted. “When Ryker and I first met, I was a stripper, a high priced call girl, a whore.”

  Meesha, Eva, and Peyton stared. Peyton’s mouth dropped open and Eva’s eyes bucked, while Meesha shook her head, placing one hand over her mouth to shield her surprise.

  “That’s not all. I was the one that suggested that Ryker and me have a threesome. I wanted to give him something special, something unique for his birthday.”

  “Something special and unique? Couldn’t you have taken the man to the Super Bowl or something?” mocked Peyton.

  Meesha turned slightly and gave Peyton a dirty look.

  “I’m just saying,” Peyton responded. “How did she think that bringing someone else into their bed would make him love her more? Tell me, Avery, was it a man or a woman?”

  Avery looked like she was about to cry. “It was Olivia.”

  “Olivia? Your cousin Olivia?” repeated Eva. “The attorney Olivia?”

  Avery nodded as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “You were a whore and your husband’s mistress is your cousin?” said Peyton and chuckled. “Wow, what else is there that we don’t know about you. I need to be taking notes so I can put it in a novel.”

  Meesha held up her hand in a motion for Peyton to stop talking. “Look, you need to get some rest. Now is not the time to talk about all of this. Eva…Peyton, it’s time for us to leave.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Peyton said. “I’m not quite ready to leave, and apparently Avery feels like she needs to get this off her chest. Right, Avery?” Peyton looked down at Avery.

  “Meesha’s right. I’m tired. I want to be alone. Thank you for coming.”

  “You two go on,” Eva told Meesha and Peyton. “I’m going to sit here a while longer.”

  “No need, Eva. I want to rest. I hope you understand.” Avery said.

  “Of course, I understand. I’ll call and check on you later.”

  “Okay, buh-bye,” Avery said to her friends.

  “Avery, I hope you feel better. Take care of yourself so you can hurry up and get out of this God-awful place. Our ladies day out is coming up, and I refuse to be left with these two.” Peyton walked over, leaned down, and kissed Avery on her cheek. “I’ll call and check on you later,” she said, sounding sincere.

  “Okay,” Avery replied.

  “Can I pray for you before we leave?” Meesha asked.

  Avery slowly nodded.

  Meesha extended her hands on each side of her. The women held hands and Meesha began to pray for her friend.

  ●

  “Can you believe Avery was a prostitute? I’m absolutely stunned,” Peyton said as Eva drove to their neighborhood.

  Eva shook her head. “I know, right. I can’t believe it either. But still, that shouldn’t have caused her to want to kill herself. I’m just saying.”

  Peyton continued her comments. “People take themselves out for far less. And on top of that, her cousin is screwing Ryker? This is some ma
de for TV kind of drama.”

  Eva turned on the street leading to their neighborhood. “I don’t know what to say.” Eva shook her head and upturned her mouth. “You never know about people.”

  “Nope, you sure don’t. Maybe seeing a psychiatrist, someone who can help her deal with her past mistakes, will be good for her,” said Peyton, sounding compassionate for the first time.

  Eva drove along the winding, private, black-topped road leading to Peyton’s house. She pulled up in front of the front steps and stopped, but didn’t turn off the car. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Sure. Thanks. I’m going to go in here, kick off my shoes, make me a good stiff nightcap, and chill. This has been one exciting day. I deserve it.” She opened the car door, got out and before she closed the door, she looked in the driver’s window at Eva. “If this gets out in the tabloids, they’re going to have a field day.”

  “That’s why we have to keep this between the four of us. No one else can know.”

  “Yeah, I know. Anyway, see you later.” Peyton swished off without waiting on a response.

  Chapter 8

  “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” H. P. Lovecraft

  Peyton was in the sitting room of their master bedroom nursing her third shot of Vodka, and thinking about the mess Avery had made of her life. She could understand how the past could damage the future to a point where, like Avery, you might feel hopeless. It didn’t matter how much she believed in God. The fact that Avery’s past wouldn’t let go of her, was the problem, and Peyton felt her friend’s pain.

  Peyton stumbled, got up from the sofa, and made her way over to the luxury hotel-like refrigerated vanity inside the room. She opened its door and removed a chilled bottle of Vodka and with shaking hands, she tried pouring another shot into her glass. The glass slid from her hand, landing on the well-kept, high finished dark hardwoods. Rather than pick up the glass, Peyton opened the bottle of Vodka, put it up to her mouth and took a large gulp before putting the top back on it, placing it in the vanity and returning back to the sofa.