Chapter 6
Carrie’s line was too long for her to get to go to the bathroom and hurry back. Not only was it the first of the month and double coupon day, but it was also payday for most of the businesses in town, so she should have known that she was going to be busy. She just needed five minutes, and she’d be back.
“Carrie?” She nearly wet herself when Mr. Thomas shouted her name over the PA. “Come to the office, please?”
“I’m busy.” He usually would come and relieve her if she asked him to, but just the other day, he’d sprained his ankle playing with the grandkids. This time, he put his head out of the office and shouted for her. “Don’t you see that I’m busy? It’s double coupon day, too. What can be so important that you need me now.”
“Come on here. I got something for you.” She growled low, and that made Mr. James laugh. Before she could figure out if everyone was going to be in a shitty mood for going to see what the boss wanted, the four in her lane told her that they’d be there when she returned. Stomping her way to the office, she was ready to bite his head off when she saw a pretty lady in his office. “Get on in here and close the door. I’ll take over your line.”
As soon as the door was closed, she asked the woman if she could go to the bathroom. Slipping into the one-roomed powder room, she was out again before the woman stopped laughing. Telling her sorry, she asked what she’d done now.
“The other day, the day before yesterday, you sold a scratch-off to my husband.” She told the lady how she tries to sell one to everyone who comes in. She gets a much-needed bonus for it. “Good. We had to wait for today when you worked again to get to talk to you, so here you go.”
Taking the envelope, she only had to look into it to realize it was a shit ton of cash. Trying to hand it back was proving to be more difficult than it was to get her mother’s shoes on her when she was with her.
“I can’t take this.” She told her that she already had. “What I mean is, I won’t take this. A tip isn’t really something that Mr. Thomas minds that much, but he allows it. But I think he’d have a fit if you were to—how much money is here anyway?” She told her. “Yeah, he’d not like that at all.”
“I took care of him.” While she didn’t know what that meant, she didn’t ask because the woman sounded like she meant to take care of her as well. “You sold him the ticket, and he’d be here today, but it’s his turn on diaper duty and so I got to come here. I told him that I’d have no problem getting you to understand that he doesn’t need it.”
Her temper flared. It wasn’t usually right there where it would go off that often, but today had been an especially difficult day to get her mom to understand that she was her daughter and that she would never poison her with oats.
“So he thought that he’d give it to the lowly cashier? To help me out, he’s going to tell the newspaper people when they come by. Is that it?” She didn’t give the woman time to speak but attacked her once again. “Is this something the two of you get off on? Going around and embarrassing people? Well, I’m all out of kindness for people like you. Get your rocks off with someone else.”
“Do you feel better?” She felt her face heat up and shook her head. “I didn’t think you would. No one will know that he’s giving you the winnings. There will not be a write-up in the local paper. I detest those things as much as he does. He’s doing this because you helped him out with Darling Jane—that’s what I’m going to name my next puppy. It’s just too cute not to use it.”
“It’s not her real name. She calls herself that when she’s turning tricks. Which she doesn’t do as much anymore as she’s about seventy years old. She might look it in the dark, but once the bright lights hit her, you know you put your pony away in the wrong barn.” The sudden burst of laughter from the other woman made her smile. It was a good laugh and she found herself laughing along with her. “I tend to say shit first and not think about it later.”
“I love it. And you. But take the money. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Erickson men.” She nodded, then shook her head. “I don’t know what that means. You’ll have to explain it to me.”
“I know who they are but I don’t believe that he’s the guy that came in here the other day. He said he has three kids and one on the way.” She stood up and showed her the belly that was still long before she’d be considered large. “It’s really one of them, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. And you’ve read the papers about my family. I was Jacklynn Blackman Erickson. We’ve taken on the kids that were my brothers and are raising them as our own. We don’t tell people that much. We’d like to keep it out of the paper for the kids’ sake.” She said she understood that. “Your mother is ill, I heard. Alzheimer’s.”
“She’s in the middle of her journey and I’m doing the best I can with her. It’s difficult without much help. I have five brothers and three sisters who aren’t doing shit to help her out. But they certainly know when there is cash to be had and show up then.” She knew that she didn’t need to ask her this, but she needed to know. “Did one of them con you into coming here to trick me? They think because I’m getting government help that they should be able to take what I get as well. It’s barely enough to get her meds and food, too. I’m working three jobs as it is.”
“Let me help you.” She said she was only venting, not whining. “No, you’d not whine ever, would you? You’d go on helping your mother even though there are others that can help you out as well, but don’t. Yes, I need you to come and work for me.”
“Look, Ms. Erickson, I don’t want your pity.” She told her that was good because she wasn’t giving it to her. “Then what is it you want? Money? This five grand would get my mom’s meds all at one time instead of when I can barely afford them one at a time. Put food on the table and also pay off the money that I owe the sitter who is watching my mom in the evening. It’s when she’s the worst.”
“I need your help. I wasn’t kidding. And you’ll be able to help out your boss here, too, while you’re at it. I need someone who knows how to order groceries and then teach the process of how to order them to other women. I have fifty-one women that need a job, and the other reason I can’t get them into the workforce is because I don’t know how to teach them to order food for the homes they’ll be working for.” She asked her if she understood. “Domestic help depends a great deal on knowing how to use the computer and to order. If they can’t do that, I have nothing for them to go to daily.”
“What will I do after that job?” Before she could come back with a snarled answer to her own question, Ms. Erickson told her that there would be fifty-one more women. Then, more after that. “This is a real job?”
“It is if you take it. I do need someone who understands the computer systems that they’ll be working with and knows how to be patient with those that she’s training. I’ve seen you out there working. I couldn’t do what you do without tearing my hair out.” Carrie snorted at her. “All right, I could, but I’d not like it. I have children that I want to be home with so that I can laugh when they do. They’ve not had a great deal of laughter in their short lives.”
“What about my mom?” She said that one of the perks of working for her would be that her mother would get round-the-clock care. And a home that would be suited to their needs. “My family isn’t going to like this very much.”
“Oh fuck them.” They both laughed. “We’ll take care of them as well. Not in the same way that we are you however. But the Erickson’s are a powerfully monied family and they protect what they love. I’m betting right now that by the end of the first week, you’ll wonder why you were putting up such a fuss about this.”
“I want to believe you, but I’ve been scammed before. By my own family.” She asked her if she could come with her. “To your home? Are you nuts? I just told you that I didn’t want to be scammed.”
“Let me make a couple of phone calls, and I’ll talk to you again. When do you get off here?” She told her. “Good. It’s almost that now. I’ll pick you up with my family, and we’ll talk more. Thank you very much, Carrie.”
She still had the money in her pocket when Mr. Thomas came back to the office. He told her that things had slowed down and that if she wanted to take a break, he’d keep an eye on things. Before she could let all of the notions of working for the Ericksons go, she asked him about them.
“Are they true to their word? Yes, more than even me, and you think I’d never lie to you. I wouldn’t, but I think you understand. But I know a few of them boys. When they first started around here, two of them worked for me. Let me think…Locke and his brother Dusty. Kindest men you’ll ever meet too. And they sure did Mrs. Grable all right, too. Had her looking like a new woman in just a few weeks as well. They want you to work for them?” She nodded. “Then you’d be a fool not to, and I know for a fact that you ain’t no fool. When are you supposed to start for them? Whatcha going to be doing?”
Carrie told her boss everything that had been said to her about the job and what she’d be doing. He told her that would mean he’d have to hire someone to work for him. Then she told him that they said they’d take care of him as well.
“You do that, little bit. You go out in the world and make it modernized for us old people. And take care of your momma like you are. I’ll not tell that family of yours nothing. You can bet on that. But this will help you in ways that you won’t believe.” She asked him again if she could trust them. “More than anybody on this here earth, child. You’ll tell me if I’m right about them, too. Go on now. When you get off, you—oh crap nuggets. That sister of yours is here.”
She handed over her money and told him to keep it for her. Going out on the floor, her sister turned and sneered at her like she knew what was going on behind the office door.
“So instead of helping me out, you’ll help out old Mr. Thomas. I see how you are.” She asked her what she wanted. “You got Mom’s check? I know it comes in on the first of the month. I need it real bad. You’ll just have to figure out some other way to get food for yourself. And you’re not to go blabbing to Wayne, either. He’ll have to do without his portion this month. Hand it over.”
“I’ve been working all day, and I’ve not had time to go to the post office.” Glancing at the clock, she told her that she’d have to wait for tomorrow. It was too late to go tonight. She asked her for the hundredth time why she didn’t have her checks coming to her mom’s home. “She’s my mother too, you know, and the reason is that her checks kept coming up missing. I guess you know all about that, don’t you?”
“Get off my ass about it. I don’t know why you don’t just shove her in a nursing home and be done with her.” She told her that a nursing home would take her check each month. “Then you keep right on doing with you’re doing. You need her to ask for a bigger amount. This shit isn’t helping me out at all once I get my share.”
“What am I supposed to do for her food and medicine, Syble?” She rolled her eyes and told her to ask for more credit or something. “It’s not a credit card, you fool. And she’ll only get what’s been paid into her Social Security pension. You know, without working to put some money in yours, you might not get any either.”
“Then I’ll just take yours.” After telling her that she’d be here first thing in the morning, she left. Mrs. Erickson was in the store shopping, and as soon as Syble left, she smiled and came up to the line to check out.
“Nice sister you have there.” She told her that she had no idea as her eyes filled with tears. “Buck up, Carrie, it’s all going to be all right for you after today.”
After checking her out, Mr. Thomas told her that she might as well go. She didn’t follow the beautiful woman out but went around to the side of the building where her car was. Just as she was getting in her brother showed up asking the same thing as Syble had. Where was his money?
“I don’t have it. Syble was just here telling me I had to give it to her. And that you’d have to figure out something else for your part.” She didn’t feel the least bit bad about telling on Syble either. Wayne got into his car and took off out of the parking lot so quickly that he rained rocks and stones all over her.
A young man got out of the big limo and got into her car after she turned over the keys to him. With a wink, he was pulling out of the lot in her car and who knows where he had gone. Carrie got into the limo and wanted to burst into tears. These people were going to change their minds about her when they figured out where she lived and how.
“I’ve had an ambulance pick up your mother. I’m sorry to tell you this, but the woman who was watching her has been fired. Did you know that she ties your mother to her chair and makes her feed herself? She cleans her up and treats her differently when you come around. Ms. Davis works for your brothers and sisters.” She asked how she’d managed that. “I had a friend of mine do a welfare check, and your mother was a mess. Poor thing. Anyway, she’s been fired and your mom is going to have a health check, something that we only just made up today. She’ll be at your new home tomorrow with better care. Do you need anything from your apartment?”
“Just a few odds and—you know what? No, there is nothing there that I need. Where am I going now?” Jack, as she was asked to call her, said they were going to have dinner at her home. That everything else had been taken care of. “I’m both excited and terrified of this new adventure.”
“Good for you, honey. We’ll have a great time together, and you’ll love your new job. If you don’t, tell me, and I’ll find something else for you.” She laughed with her, and Carrie felt good. She was able to get her brother pissed off at her sister, and that made up for a lot of heartache that she’d been having.
~*~
Demitrius was excited about dinner tonight. He’d been working on the menu for the last several days and was happy his family was coming over to try out the things he’d been cooking. There was also going to be a guest with the family, Carrie Sharp, but she was going to be working for the family soon, and he couldn’t wait to meet her. He just hoped he wasn’t being set up as the next one of them to have a wife. He had enough things going on right now.
The main dining room of the building he was renting wasn’t much to look at. It needed a great deal of work and it wouldn’t hurt if it had a few cobwebs taken out of the windows. But he didn’t want to alert anyone that he was looking into buying the place, as people would hear his last name and jack up the price by a great deal. He’d been renting this place for the last five years and was finally able to talk the landlord into selling it to him for what he paid in rent all this time.
Locke and Alex were the first to arrive. Then came in August and Jack with the special guest. They realized they knew each other from college and hugged. He’d always liked Carrie when she’d come to class with him.
The two of them even dated a couple of times, but it was more like he was dating his sister than anything romantic. She felt the same way. It was a weird combination of sisterly affection and romance, too.
As the rest of his family came into the big hall that he was cooking from, he told them what they’d be trying out. It was going to be the main feature of his place. A combination of country food and elegance. Like catfish, a poor man’s food he’d been told all his life, along with fresh gnocchi with spinach salad. Tonight, they were having something along those lines, but roasted pork and fresh fruit salad.
Carrie came to the kitchen to help him when one of his newly hired staff left with a stomach bug. She said she didn’t care but would love to help him out. She and he shared lunches while in college, and she told him that he always had the best leftovers.
Like his family usually did, they talked over one another and loudly. It was never angry conversations but loud all the same. When the last of the plates were taken out, he and Carrie sat down at the table and sampled the things that he’d made. The only thing that he noticed that she didn’t take was some of the kiwi fruit that was with the pork.
“You know I don’t eat green fruit.” They all thought that was odd, and he had her explain why she didn’t. “We were in class together when someone brought up vomit. That was all it took for me to be turned off by green fruit. The guy explained in great detail what it looked like and the consistency. I still see him once in a while, and I still think he’s a gross man.”
Demitrius loved his family and the way that they were so accepting of people. He knew that she worked for Thomas Grocery and had seen her in there a few times a while back. He also knew her family and was going to warn his family about them. Carrie said that she tried to and was told it didn’t matter.
“It might. Her older brother is a piece of work. He’s always been the type that if he wants it, you might as well give it to him. Until he met me. Wayne was bullying his way through campus one day, and he found me.” Carrie said that her brother had wanted Demi, what she called him, to take a test for him. “Yeah, it wasn’t a question that would I. It was more that I was going to take it, and I’d better get him a good grade, too.”
“I remember that term. You came home telling us about this bully that was in your math class or something.” Demitrius said it was language arts. “That’s it. Martha told you that you should take his test and fail it. Even going so far as to spell his name wrong.”
“I did, too. I spelled his name wyane and got a two on the test. I think that the only reason that I got that high of a score is because they were grading on a curve. My goodness, he was pissed off.” Carrie asked if he’d ever looked at him before. “No, not the way that most people see me. I usually wore bulky clothing on campus so that no one knew that I was this nerdy guy that looked like he cou ld bench pressed cars during the school year.”
He remembered the day well, and after telling his brothers that he’d put the other man in the hospital, it was over before it seemed to have started. Telling them stories like that one, ones that they’d not thought of in years, made him feel great. It also brought up memories of Martha and the things that she did for them. After dinner was served and things cleared away, he was happy to be able to sit with them and talk about the old days.
There were plenty of stories to tell, too. How they had never told anyone how they had won the lottery. How, since it was in Ohio, they’d not ever been found out. After his brother had won the largest jackpot ever, the rest of them had benefited as well. And in turn everyone around them had also done well.
“You never told me that.” He just told her that no one still knows. “Don’t tell my family. You understand the reasons why in that more than most would.”
Knox asked what was so bad about her family. When she started talking, Demitrius realized that he didn’t know half of what had gone on at her house. He wished that he had. He might well have helped her a great deal more.
“I have a lot of family but I’d never be able to sit and talk to them the way that you guys do. Once, the only time they were around for the holidays, my mother tried to kill Wayne with a butcher knife. Only because he’d told her that the turkey was dry. Another time he and my brother Finley got into a fight that the police had to come and break up. Nearly all of them were put in a jail cell for the night, and Mother decided it was too dangerous to have them all under the same roof.” Zander asked her what had happened. “Oh, this is a good one. You’ll think this is funny, I bet. Wayne was telling everyone that he won the lottery, the one I think that you guys won and my brother called him a liar. They were all liars if you ask me, but being the baby, I had pretty much learned not to get into shit with them. So Wayne picks up a chair and hits Finley over the head with it. After that everyone was bashing something over everyone’s head. Mom and I, we headed for the basement and hid out there. By the time it was finished, Mom didn’t have a stick of furniture left, and fourteen windows were broken out, and the police had bombed the place with tear gas that to this day is something that you can smell.”
“My goodness, I think that your family rivals any of the ones we came from. Christ, how did you turn out so well?” She said that as soon as she turned sixteen, she left. “Good for you. There is no telling what would have happened to you had you stayed there with them. They sound like they’d stop at nothing—what am I saying? They don’t stop at anything to get what they want.”
They talked about everything that popped into their minds. She learned that Shipley’s first name was actually Candance and even her husband called her by her military name. She loved the woman for her lack of control in saying what she wanted, no matter anything that was going on around her.
Knox was an attorney but he was more of a researcher type of attorney and worked with Zander on cases that they wanted to take on for the underdog. They also worked for the family with contracts as well as keeping things legal that they were invested in.
Locke was waiting on the results of his state boards to become a doctor. She had a feeling that the man had aced the test, but she didn’t tell him that. He was cute when he was embarrassed. She could tell, too, that he only had eyes for his wife.
August was harder to read. He was in love with his wife and the children that they had adopted, and he nearly killed himself when his wife needed something to get it for her. That was true love. Something that was truly lacking in the world today.
She’d bet that in fifty years, they’d still be looking at one another the way that they did tonight. Like they wondered how they’d been so lucky as to have someone in their lives like each other.
“Well, I’m exhausted.” She was, too, and decided that while she didn’t know where she was going to sleep tonight, even if it was on the floor, there was a good chance that she’d be asleep and comfy until she woke up. “Why don’t you stay with me. I have a nice house, and that way, you won’t be putting anyone out. I have plenty of room.”
“Only if you allow me to cook breakfast for you.” He told her that it was a deal and that he was looking forward to it. “When we were in college together, he used to bring in the best leftovers from his dinner. I gained about twenty pounds that semester and didn’t regret a single pound of it either.”
They were headed out the door when she saw her brother, Allen. Before she could go back into the big building, all the family hid her away but stood around her. As soon as she was in the limo that she’d game here in, she had to put her head between her knees and hope that she didn’t toss up her dinner. She’d been so terrified that he’d find her. Of all her family, Allen was the most violent of them all. He would kick you while you were down like you were still up and fighting him. Most of the time, he’d kick you in your head. She knew of one person that he’d killed with his temper.
“I told you that we had you.” She nodded at Alex. When she touched her hand, Carrie held onto it like it was a lifeline. “You’re going to be just fine. Tell me about this brother. I’m assuming that he’s worse than the others.”
“He’ll kill you without a second thought.” Alex told her that she seemed more frightened of him. “I am. Once, when I was about ten years old, he beat me nearly to death. I spent nearly a month in the hospital. I can’t have children because he kicked me enough that I nearly lost my kidney as it was. He came in one night and told me if I told on him, he’d make the next time so that I never recovered.”
The others got into the limo, and they started out. She asked where she was going, and they said that they were taking her to Demi’s home. She wondered if he’d be upset with her as the rest of them were calling him by his nickname that she’d given him sometime back.
Demi, like the others, lived in big houses. She had walked by their home on the way to work and marveled at how quickly they were getting things finished up. Carrie supposed that if you have all the money in the world, you could do just about anything and get it done quickly.
“I don’t have any clothing.” She blurted that out and felt her face heat up in embarrassment. “Sorry. I usually say what my mind is before I think about what I’m saying. Sometimes, it’s inappropriate. Mostly, that’s why I keep my mouth shut at work. So I don’t insult anyone.”
“She’s not quite like that. I saw her working with an elderly man when his card wouldn’t work for his food. Turned out it was all used up by his son who had gotten him a new card. I wonder if there ever be a time that people are kind to one another.” She doubted it and said so. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”
At her instance, they went by Wally World. She was only to get what she needed, and they’d pick up the rest tomorrow. She didn’t tell them but thought that they’d guessed. She didn’t have much in the way of clothing there either.