The Real Housewives of Adverse City

by Shelia E. Bell

  Liam didn’t respond to her. Peyton walked further into the room until she was standing directly over her son. She touched the top of his head. No response. She shook him.

  Liam moaned and slowly raised his head.

  Peyton reared back as the smell of alcohol permeated her nostrils.

  “You’ve been drinking!”

  Liam looked like he was in a daze. He tried to stand up but stumbled and fell to his knees and onto the hardwood floor.

  Before she knew it, Peyton hauled off and started hitting him. Screaming over and over again, she pounded her son as he tried shielding her blows with his hands.

  Derek suddenly appeared and grabbed both of her hands, pulling her back and giving Liam a chance to gain his footing.

  “What are you doing?” he screamed. “Let him go!”

  “He’s drunk,” she roared as she tried getting out of Derek’s vice like grip.

  “Stop it, both of you. I’m almost grown. I know what I’m doing. I can handle my own, plus I’m not drunk.”

  “Oh, so you’re saying that the fact that your breath smells like you’ve had your head buried in a whiskey still doesn’t count?”

  “I said, I’ve got this,” Derek emphasized again as the phone rang in the background. “Go answer the phone or something. It’s probably one of your girls. I know you don’t want to miss any of their phone calls,” he said sarcastically with a smirk appearing on his bearded face.

  The phone stopped ringing. Liam got ready to walk off, but Derek pulled him back. “We aren’t finished talking, son.”

  The phone started ringing again.

  The incessant ringing of the phone heightened Peyton’s anxiety. She walked off, but not before giving Derek a nasty, evil look.

  “Hello,” she basically screamed into the phone as soon as she picked it up. Standing in the kitchen with one hand on her hip, she waited for the caller’s response.

  “I want to see my son.”

  “Hello?” Peyton said again.

  “I want to see my son,” the caller repeated.

  A shiver ran up and down Peyton’s spine. She pulled the receiver from her ear and looked to see the number on the Caller ID. Underneath the phone number, it identified the call as coming from Arizona.

  “You have the wrong number.”

  “Peyton. Don’t play with me.”

  “Who is this?” Peyton asked. “How do you know my name?”

  “I’m not calling to start trouble. I just want to see my boy. I want to know if he’s okay. Does he play sports? Is he tall? Short? Does he look anything like me?”

  Peyton started trembling.

  “Mom, I’m sorry,” Liam said as he entered the kitchen where Peyton stood at the island.

  “Is that my son I hear?” the stranger asked.

  Peyton immediately hung up the phone and turned toward Liam. He looked like a little lost and forlorn boy instead of the husky, handsome bushy haired teen that he was.

  “Liam…”

  The phone rang again. Peyton looked at it as she held it in her hand.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” Liam asked.

  “No, what I’m going to do is give my son a hug.” She walked up to him, stretched out her arms, and gathered them tightly around him. Her heart was racing and the terror that was building up inside her seemed to almost make her lose her balance.

  “Mom, are you okay? You’re shaking,” Liam said as he stepped out of his mother’s arms and looked at her. He was at least half a foot taller than Peyton already, and she was a leggy woman herself.

  “I’m fine. Just promise me that you won’t drink again, or do any drugs, anything like that ever again. I know I drink too much,” she spoke with sadness in her voice. “I have to get myself together, and I promise you from this day forward that I’m going to do better.”

  Peyton didn’t see Derek standing outside the kitchen. He was taking in every word his wife was saying. Who could blame him? He had voiced more than once to his close friends his discontent with Peyton and her drinking. Maybe she didn’t see herself as an alcoholic but Derek begged to differ. He turned to walk off after he heard his son reassuring Peyton that everything was going to be all right.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I promise I won’t do it again. I guess I was just curious. A lot of the kids at school drink. They say it’s cool. I was bored, so I decided to see what it was like for myself. It was nasty.” Liam made an ugly face.

  Smiling, Peyton said, “I love you.” She regarded his face, then used the back of her hand to gently stroke the side of it. “No matter what happens, I want you to always remember that.”

  “Sure, Mom. Now, if you don’t mind, I want to go to my room.”

  “Where’s your father?”

  We talked but he got a phone call, said he had to go out for a minute.”

  Peyton folded her arms, inhaled, and pursed her lips. “I see. Well, like I said, I don’t want to hear of you doing anything stupid like this again. I can’t take it. Do you understand me?”

  Liam nodded and exited the room, leaving Peyton standing alone in the middle of the kitchen. She still clutched the phone in her hand, almost jumping when it started ringing again.

  “Why are you calling me?” she asked between clenched teeth.

  “I want to see my son. I’m going to see my son.”

  Chapter 13

  “It’s the friends that you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.” Marlene Dietrich

  Meesha found it difficult to maintain her self-composure. She tried to put on her first lady face as she entertained the group of eleven pastors and their first ladies for a dinner party she and Carlton had planned months ago. The annual Pastoral and First Ladies Convention was going to start this Sunday. Since it was being held in Adverse City at the Convention Center, Carlton insisted that they invite some of his pastor friends and associates over for a catered sit down dinner.

  At a time such as this, Meesha wished the housewives were with her to give her some much needed support. Even if it meant putting up with Peyton’s foolish remarks, or listening to Avery cry about her broken marriage, or seeing the lonely look on Eva’s face after telling the housewives that Harper failed to come home again.

  Meesha didn’t know if she could go through with it. She felt like she would break down at any minute. Chatter was all around her, yet she felt like she was in a room, frozen, dead, and unable to move or speak. She wasn’t one to put on a fake smile or pretend like everything was perfect, but tonight she did everything she could to force a smile instead of a frown on her face. She swallowed deeply time and time again to keep herself from bursting into tears.

  Surrounded by a sea of so-called men of God, Meesha felt isolated, alone, and frightened. Her mind began to pound her with question after question. What was she going to do without Carlton? What would the kids do without their father? But most importantly, why did Carlton want out of their marriage? Was God okay with destroying her life?

  “Smile and act normal,” she suddenly heard Carlton whisper in her ear. He placed one hand around her tiny waist and kissed her softly on the cheek before raising the glass of sparkling grape juice up to his smiling, deceitful lips.

  Was this man bipolar or something? Here he was skinning and grinning, closer to her than a hand in a glove, while just days ago he told her that he wanted his freedom papers.

  “What are you doing?” she asked him so that no one could hear her.

  “We have a dinner party to get through, people to entertain. You know mostly everyone in this room, so act like it,” he ordered through lips that moved like he was a ventriloquist. “We don’t air our dirty laundry, so cheer up. You only have a couple of more hours, and this whole evening will be over and done.”

  Meesha stepped out from the hold of his arm around her waist, and gave Carlton a hateful stare.

  “Go to hell!” she snapped, leaving him standing by himself.

  She didn’t care what Carlton said, nor did she care
what any of their guests thought about her, because she was done. She was not going to pretend to be happy when she wasn’t. She was a lot of things, but hypocrite was not one of them.

  Meesha swiftly left the dinner party and went upstairs. Closing the door to their bedroom, she threw herself on the bed and bawled.

  Surprisingly, Carlton didn’t come upstairs to see why she had disappeared. Knowing him the way she did, Meesha suspected that he probably hadn’t missed her. He was too busy discussing the Bible with his constituents like everything was perfect.

  Meesha stopped crying, wiped her eyes with the back of her hands, got up, and walked to the bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror, she stared at her reflection, made a duck lip, then seriously said, “The devil is a lie.”

  Next, she carefully removed her elaborate one of a kind designer gown. She and the housewives had shopped high and low for weeks for the perfect gown for this evening’s special event. Out of the dozens of evening dresses she saw, she chose this black textured lace mermaid style gown. It looked ravishing on her. Only tonight instead of feeling like she could out rival any runway model, she felt like she had been made a fool of for all of these years. She needed someone to talk to. She called Eva, but she didn’t answer.

  Next, she tried calling Avery. When Avery answered the phone, Meesha immediately knew that she had wakened her. She quickly apologized and told Avery she would call her the following day. As she got ready to dial Peyton, the door flew open.

  “What do you think you’re doing?’ Carlton asked. His salmon colored skin looked like it had turned a shade darker. The rise in his voice indicated that he was angry. Carlton was pretty much a laid back kind of man, so when he did get angry or upset, it was easy to tell. But tonight, Meesha could care less whether he was mad or not. He couldn’t have it both ways. He wanted out of their marriage, let him be out of it, she reasoned.

  “If you think I’m going back down there just so you can save face, then you’re sadly mistaken. I don’t know why I agreed to still have the dinner party after what you said. I can’t do it, Carlton. I’m not going back down there and pretend like all is well in the Porter household when you and I both know that it’s far from that.”

  “Look, you are going to put that dress, that my money bought, back on. You are going to come back downstairs. You are going to do whatever you need to do to make sure that our guests feel welcome. You are going to fulfill your role of First Lady. Do you hear me, Meesha?”

  “I hear you, Carlton. I hear you loud and clear. But now you listen to me. I am not going down there. I am not going to make you look good one second longer. You’re the one who chose to throw our marriage away, so you deal with that decision.”

  Carlton bit his bottom lip, rolled his eyes up in his head, and flinched his temples. He was definitely at the boiling point. That much Meesha could tell, but she was just as heated.

  “I said I am not going back down there. You can go straight to hell, Carlton Porter.” Meesha walked off, went to the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind her.

  “Meesha, open this door,” Carlton yelled as he bammed on the door. “Open this door, get dressed, and get back downstairs. I’m warning you,” he threatened.

  Meesha ignored Carlton’s ranting. She had had enough. She had been his backbone practically since the day the two of them met. She was the one who kept him from breaking when his parents were killed in a terrible car wreck a year after she and Carlton started dating. She was the one who helped him study for his tests while he was in divinity school. She was the one who worked to provide for the two of them so he could concentrate on getting his doctorate in theology. It was her who encouraged him, motivated him, and reminded him of the goals he was trying to reach. Now, he wanted to throw her aside like she was yesterday’s garbage, take her children, and walk out? It wasn’t going to go down like that. Over her dead body….or his

  Chapter 14

  “Sometimes the girl who has been there for everyone else needs someone to be there for her.” Unknown

  “You mean you just left him downstairs with a room full of preachers and their wives? Girl, you can’t be serious,” Avery said.

  “I won’t do it. Carlton knows me. He knows I’m not one to fake anything and so do you. So there is no way I can go down there and act like my husband didn’t tell me out of the blue that he wants a divorce.” Meesha broke down crying. She couldn’t fight the hurt anymore.

  “Do you want me to come over there?”

  “No,” Meesha sobbed. ‘I’ll be fine. God is allowing this for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is, Avery, but I have to trust that He has my back.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but dang, Meesha, you’re human. No one can blame you for breaking down. I mean, you and Carlton had the perfect marriage in my eyes. I never in a million years would have ever imagined that the two of you would break up.”

  “Well, believe it. Because one thing about Carlton; he is not going to say anything that he does not mean.”

  But that’s just it. Something serious has to be going on for him to tell you that he wants out of your marriage. It just doesn’t make sense, Meesha. Can you think of anything, and I do mean anything, that can give you some indication as to why he wants to call it quits?”

  Avery’s mind was going faster than a speeding train trying to come up with one reason after another that the infamous Carlton Porter would want to end his marriage to the world’s most perfect woman.

  Meesha was a saint in the eyes of Avery and the rest of the housewives, too. Meesha was genuinely a sweet, kind, and compassionate person. She was also a woman of faith. Out of the four housewives, Meesha was the realest.

  “I have a mind to go down there and tell everyone to get out of my house.”

  “What would that solve?” Avery replied. “It’s only going to make you look like a raging lunatic. Right now, I bet those first ladies are all down there huddled in a circle whispering, trying to figure out why the first lady of the good pastor of Perfecting Your Faith Ministries suddenly disappeared almost at the beginning of the dinner party. If you feel like you’re about to lose it, you really do need to get away from there. Is there some way you can get out of there without anyone seeing you?”

  “Have you not heard a word I’ve said, Avery? I’m not hiding from anyone. I’m not the bad guy here. If I choose to leave out of my house, it will be through whichever door I choose; I don’t care who sees me. Let Carlton explain. “

  Meesha went over to her bed and lay across it.

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. “

  Avery—”

  “Don’t try to stop me. I’ve already picked up my keys and purse; I’m walking toward the door now. I’m calling Peyton and Eva when I get in the car. It’s time for an emergency ladies night out. I’ll see you in a few. Bye.” Avery ended the call.

  Meesha removed the phone from her ear, stared at it briefly, and then pressed the END button. She went to her mammoth sized walk-in closet and sifted through literally dozens upon dozens of pants, blouses, and pantsuits. She chose a pair of solid colored slacks and a shirt, pulled a pair of pumps off the shoe shelf, stepped into them then turned and walked out of the closet.

  She ventured over to the mirror overlooking the dresser and touched up her hair that was already in a coiled up do. In the bathroom, she washed her face before she touched up the mascara and eyeliner on her marble shaped eyes.

  The phone rang just as she was removing contents out of one bag and putting it all inside another.

  “I’m on my way downstairs,” she told Avery as soon as she answered.

  “There you are. We were wondering what happened to you. Are you okay?” the tall, statuesque brunette asked, eyeing Meesha up and down like she was trying to figure out how Meesha had gone from wearing a ravishing evening gown to a pair of slacks and a simple blouse.

  “I’m fine, but if you’ll excuse me, I’m on my way out. You ladies enjoy yourselv
es. Have a good time. Make yourself right at home. There is plenty of food, drinks, and entertainment. You won’t miss me.” She gave the group of women who had gathered next to the first lady, a soft smile, tossed her bag over her shoulder, did a model like turn and walked off like she was cool as a fresh cucumber.

  Carlton stood undetected several feet behind the women with his mouth wide open.

  “Everything all right?” Reverend Douglas, a minister friend of Carlton’s asked, as he walked up on him while peering in the same direction as Carlton. He put a hand on Carlton’s shoulder, patting it lightly. “God’s word is true, Carlton. What he promises, he will deliver. My brother, I don’t know what’s going on,” he spoke, paused and looked around as if trying to see if anyone was listening. When he was satisfied that no one was, he continued. “But God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” He patted Carlton’s shoulder again, but this time with more force behind it.

  Carlton nodded. “Everything’s good. I’m not worried about a thing. God’s word will go on whether we want it to or not, and that goes for His will too.”

  Carlton looked at Reverend Douglas. “I think it’s time for dinner to be served; I sure hope so. I’m famished.” He chuckled as he excused himself, departed from Reverend Douglas, and started walking in the direction of the dining area.

  Chapter 15

  “Nobody is right till somebody is wrong.” Unknown

  “What happened?” Peyton asked as soon as the door of the SUV opened and Meesha climbed inside. “I know you didn’t walk out on your own dinner party?”

  Meesha gave Peyton the hand. “Don’t start with me, Peyton. I’m not in the mood.”

  “Lord, have mercy,” Peyton mouthed. “The girl does have some backbone.” She snickered afterward.

  “Are you all right?” asked Avery, eyeing Meesha as she steered the SUV down the street and away from the house.