Chapter 25
“Are you certain you only want juice?” Justine asked Kenny when he entered the kitchen.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m meeting Ray and Frankie for breakfast.”
She gave him a warm smile. “Oh, now I’m a ma’am.”
Kenny sat at the table and picked up the glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. His mother preferred making her own juice to buying those in cartons. “Mom or ma’am,” he teased, “whatever fits.”
His mother had returned from vacationing in Puerto Rico, her complexion several shades darker and with diamond studs in her ears.
She said they were a gift from Frank, who claimed every woman should own a pair of diamond earrings during her lifetime.
He didn’t know if Frank and his mother were sleeping together, and if they were, it didn’t bother him as long as she was happy.
And Kenny hoped it was the same with Frank, because of what he’d had to go through after being diagnosed with kidney cancer.
When he’d gone to see Frank after his undergoing chemo and radiation therapy, he’d begun crying and couldn’t stop.
Not only had Frank lost all of his hair, but he’d appeared emaciated.
That’s when Frank made him promise not to tell Justine that he had cancer.
There were so many times when he’d wanted to tell his mother, but he realized it wasn’t his secret to reveal.
The telephone rang, and Kenny met his mother’s eyes. “You answer it,” he said.
Her eyebrows lifted questioningly. “Are you sure?” she asked when it rang a second time.
“Yes, and if it’s for me, I’m not here.”
Justine picked up the wall phone. “Russell residence. I’m sorry, Larissa, but he’s not here. He has to work today. Do you want to leave a message? Okay. I’ll let him know.” She hung up the phone and glared at him.
“What’s with you and that girl?”
Kenny took a sip of juice. “I don’t want to see her.”
“Why, son?”
“Because she’s too clingy.”
Justine set the plate with two pancakes and several strips of crispy bacon on the table. “You didn’t seem to mind it when she was hanging onto your arm after your graduation. Or were you too enthralled with her to overlook her body language?”
“Maybe I was.”
“What happened, Kenneth?”
He knew his mother was serious when she hadn’t shortened his name. “She’s just too aggressive.”
Picking up a bottle of syrup, Justine poured it over her pancakes. “Explain aggressive.”
“She’s smothering, Mom. I know if I got involved with her, she’d want to control every phase of my life.”
Justine gave him a direct stare. “I’m going to ask you something, and I don’t want you to lie to me. Have you slept with her?”
Kenny stared at his mother behind the lenses of his glasses. They’d developed a relationship where she demanded complete honesty from him. She’d warned him not to lie to her, even if she didn’t like what he said or did.
“Yes.”
Justine slowly blinked. “How many times?”
“Once.”
“That was one time too many, Kenny. If you knew in advance that the girl was going to be a problem, why would you have sex with her? Sleeping with her sent a message that she was a lot more than a friend.”
“I know, Mom. I messed up.”
“No, Kenny. You fucked up when you slept with that girl!”
“Mom!”
“Don’t you dare ‘Mom’ me, Kenneth. No woman wants to be used, then discarded, when a man decides he’s through with her.
I’d like to think I raised you better than that.
What happened to dating a woman for a while before you hop into bed with her?
If you’d done that with Larissa, you wouldn’t need me to run interference for you. ”
Kenny’s hand came down hard on the table. “Like you and Frank? You make the man wait five years before you’re willing to not only go out, but go away with him. If he’d been any other man, he would’ve walked away and not looked back.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I, Mother? The man fell in love with you the first time he saw you.
But you made up all kinds of excuses why you didn’t want to marry him when you could’ve been with him when he was going through his cancer treatments.
The day I walked into his apartment and saw him looking as if death was waiting to take him, I started crying like a baby.
When he saw my reaction, he made me promise not to tell you that he was sick, because he didn’t want to upset you.
That’s how much he loved and still loves you. ”
Justine stared at her son, who’d turned into a stranger right before her eyes. She knew he and Frank were close, but she had no idea how much Kenny had wanted them to be together. “There are so many things you don’t know that I can’t tell you,” she said in a hushed voice.
“Why not?” Kenny challenged.
“Because it’s not the right time.”
“When will it be the right time?” he asked.
Justine closed her eyes and huffed a breath.
There was no way she could reveal that she was a complete fraud.
That her life was filled with lies that seemed to penetrate every phase of her existence, and she didn’t know how to stop lying.
The web of lies kept growing bigger and bigger until they’d turned her into someone she had come to loathe.
“Soon,” she whispered. She’d waited eighteen years for her son to reach adulthood, and Justine knew it wouldn’t take another eighteen before she revealed the circumstances surrounding his existence.
“I’m sorry for what I said about you and Frank.”
“You don’t have to apologize, because what you said about us is true. And Frank was right to hide his cancer from me, because I don’t think I would’ve been strong enough to help him go through his treatments. Both of us are older and hopefully wiser, where we can truly enjoy each other’s company.”
“Does this mean you’re going to marry him?”
“No, Kenny. Frank doesn’t want to get married, and neither do I. That’s something we can both agree on.”
“So, it doesn’t bother you to see him every once in a while, and then go on vacation together?”
“Of course not. We’re not like some young couple who have to call and see each other every waking minute. I’m thirty-five, and Frank is forty-two, and we plan to have fun for how much time we’ve been given.”
“I suppose I’ll see life differently when I’m your age,” Kenny said, smiling.
“I’m sure you will. Now, tell me if you want me to keep this girl off your back until she leaves for college?”
“Please, Mama.”
“Oh, now it’s Mama. And because I am your mama, I will answer the phone whenever it rings and tell her you’re either working, sleeping, or out with your friends.”
Kenny smiled. “Love you, Mom.”
Justine nodded. “I know.”
She sat at the table long after Kenny left the apartment to meet his friends.
She didn’t want to believe her son had slept with a girl he didn’t like, then decided he didn’t want to see her anymore.
But how did he expect her to react? No woman wanted to be used for sex, then discarded like a piece of trash.
Justine knew from the way Larissa had been staring up at Kenny and hanging on his arm that she wanted more than friendship.
Justine hoped that he’d used a condom when he had sex with her.
One time she had been rearranging the clothes in his dresser and she’d discovered a supply of condoms. They indicated he was having or contemplating having sex, and their presence had eased some of her anxiety that he would get someone pregnant or come down with a venereal disease.
Kenny had been so adamant that he wanted her and Frank to marry, and Justine wondered if it was because he hadn’t wanted her to grow old alone.
Every once in a while, he’d talk about her being alone, and she knew it was something that weighed heavily on him.
She didn’t have any close friends, but there were a few times when she would join some of her coworkers at a restaurant for the retirement or birthday celebration of a staff member.
It was at one of the get-togethers that a Black pharmacist had asked her out.
She’d agreed to meet him for brunch. Justine found him intelligent, charming, and articulate.
Someone she wouldn’t mind seeing again. Then everything changed when he began talking about his ex-wife.
It was apparent he hadn’t gotten over her leaving him for another man.
When she suggested he seek counseling to deal with the dissolution of his marriage, he thanked her, because it was something he needed to hear.
He then asked if she would see him again once he resolved his problem.
Justine told him she would and wished him the best. They’d parted as friends, and whenever she would see him at the hospital, he would give her a thumbs-up sign.
That was more than three months ago, before Frank had come back into her life.
Frankie and Ray were waiting for Kenny in front of the coffee shop when he arrived. The dining establishment had changed owners twice since they’d first begun eating there in the seventh grade, but the cooks had stayed on.
Ray, who’d let his curly hair grow, now sported a modified Afro.
Frankie also stopped cutting his hair like so many young college students.
Raven-black waves nearly reached his shoulders.
They were eighteen, all had registered for the draft, and were fiercely opposed to the war in Vietnam.
The three entered the coffee shop and sat in their favorite booth near the rear.
“What’s up with the beard?” Kenny asked Frankie.
Frankie ran his fingers over the stubble on his face. “I’m trying to fit in with the hippies before I begin classes.”
Ray grunted. “That’s okay with me. Just make certain you shower every day.”
Frankie laughed. “Not all hippies are dirty.”
“Frankie’s right,” Kenny said, meeting his blue eyes.