Chapter 36
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
LOVIE
Half a mil.
That’s how much money the loan officer at Heritage Bank said Aunt Faye and Uncle Kenny could get for Worthing.
“Maybe six hundred thousand. I wouldn’t put you at a mil, Mrs. Fairchild. These are just rough numbers, of course. We’d have to get an appraisal, and get you and Mr. Fairchild’s financials,” he droned.
And both of their signatures.
He said nothing can happen without Kenny Fairchild’s signature.
“Take this term sheet home and go over the numbers with him. See how he feels about us moving forward. Maybe you guys can take out another mortgage on the house to get you closer to this number you’re trying to reach.”
So we left Heritage Bank worse off than when we arrived, and that painful silence that sat between us grew louder until Mama butted in.
I heard her in the awkward lull after our meeting with the loan officer when he said, “Tell Mr. Fairchild I said hello.” Then I heard her above the music playing on the radio and in the heavy breaths we took on the way home.
Afterward, I heard her in the gusts of wind as I left out of our front door after Aunt Faye locked herself in her and Uncle Kenny’s room.
She even sat with me in the backseat of another Uber because I’m running again.
But I think Rich would say this time it’s okay because I’m running to our problem instead of away from it.
I stare up at Beatrice’s house.
Dark clouds hover over it in a gloomy haze.
I reach out and unlatch her front gate, signaling to my Uber driver that this house is the right one since I couldn’t remember her exact address. I just knew she lived at the very end of Joliet—right before the dead end.
His engine purrs as he drives off.
I push the heavy gate open and walk into the front yard. The porch is empty, the yard is cut, and there’s the faint scent of cooked onions creeping out of a crack in one of the front windows.
I gait up the walkway and onto the porch as if I’ve done this a thousand times before because that light and dark feeling in the pit of my stomach swirls in a rage. I hold my clenched fist up to knock on the front door, but it swings open before I can even touch the wood.
Beatrice’s body jerks back, and her eyebrows shoot up.
“Girl, you scared the shit out of me.” She huffs, holding a bag of garbage in front of her curvy body.
“I’m…I’m sorry. I was just—”
“Pup ain’t been here since Monday.” She avoids my gaze, stepping forward and backing me out of the doorway. “He came and finished the ramp out back, talked with his daddy for a few and then left.”
Her sharp tone is a far cry from the soft “love and light” one she used when we first met. Her brown eyes are hard. They don’t even hold that sympathy for Mama like they did before.
“I’m not here for Rich. I know how to get in touch with him if I need to,” I reply.
“Well, then, what can I do for you?”
“I came to talk to Senior.”
She drops the bag of garbage next to the front door and dusts her hands down the back of her too-tight housedress. “He just fell asleep. Maybe you can call him later to check on him? Pup can give you his number.”
“It’s important.”
“Then call Pup. He can take care of whatever it is. Senior can’t do much of anything from a wheelchair, and I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here without Pup.”
I scoff out a low laugh, and I hear Mama’s chuckle somewhere in the rumble of thunder the sky chokes out.
I can’t believe I was silly enough to think this would be easy.
This isn’t some random caregiver taking care of Senior. Rich used to put his dick in Beatrice and I’ve had that dick.
“Look, Beatrice—”
“Beatrice? You mean ‘Ms. Carrol,’ right? I’m old enough to be your mama.”
“But you’re not. You used to fuck my man and now you don’t, so I think we’re on equal footing, Beatrice.”
She jerks her head back and her upper lip curls. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not repeating myself. You heard what I said.”
“Look, we ain’t about to have no woman to woman moment on this porch over a man who ain’t even—”
“A constant in your life?”
Her eyes widen.
“Yeah…” I take a step forward, backing her into the doorway. “He told me that’s what you said you wanted.”
She scoffs. “You playing with fire, lil’ girl.”
“Just like you, huh? Fucking Rich and Wendell Barnes when you know about the situation between Rich and his brother? Conveniently breaking things off with Rich when shit got too hot just in case you were to get burned? That’s mighty classy of you.”
She lets out a laugh. “Oh, you got yourself some grown man dick and now you losing your mind?”
“The only thing I’m losing is my patience.”
She points her finger at me and steps back into the doorway. “You need to get off my porch.”
That light and dark feeling in the pit of my stomach is more dark than light now.
She grabs the handle of the screen door and pulls it, but I grip its edge before she can slam it shut. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to do that.”
“I think it’s a good ass idea. As a matter of fact, let me call Pup and tell him what you up to.”
“Look, you’re gonna play nice with me.”
“And why the fuck would I do that?”
I yank the screen door until the handle slips from her hand. “You wanna know how easy it was to get Rich to stop fucking you?”
I huff. “Because that was the plan after he ran Wendell off, right? Y’all were supposed to fall back into whatever it was y’all had before I came along because things cooled off a little.
He’s paying the price for what he did now so he can come back and fuck you and fix all your problems while you give him nothing in return—not even emotional support.
That’s what you wanted, right? Dick with no strings attached. ”
“You don’t know shit about what me and Pup have or had—”
I laugh. “Oh, I know everything. It’s not like it was much outside of sex.”
“Look here, lil’ girl. You need to go home.” She points her finger back in my face.
This time she inches it closer. The tip of her long nude-colored nail almost touches the tip of my nose.
“I told him to stop fucking you,” I blurt, ignoring her finger and staring right into her hard eyes.
“I told him to stop, just like I can tell him to stop fixing all these pain in the ass structural deficiencies that are keeping you from getting that license you want so bad. Rich has a three-bedroom house. We can easily move Senior back home. You know that, right? Rich might not have the time to take care of him, but I do.”
She tsks under her breath, dropping her hand. “You’d really do some heartless shit like that? You know how much these guys mean to Pup. They been in his life longer than you have.”
“Right…and do you know how much Rich means to me?”
“You can’t be serious right now.” She laughs.
“Do you?”
She tosses her hands up, shrugging.
“He’s always doing something for somebody—paying this, fixing that, taking care of this person, filling in the gaps for all the sorry-ass men around here, but who’s there for him?
Huh, Beatrice? Who? I know it’s not you.
You might not want some young fightin’ nigga who won’t live long enough to see love through, but I do.
So if I have to be the heartless bitch to protect him, then I’ll be that, and you won’t get another nail hammered into anything around here.
I promise you. You don’t get to borrow him when you feel like it anymore. ”
Another rumble of thunder erupts and makes our eyes shoot up toward the blackening sky. We look back at each other at the same time. Her eyes veer down to my neck where Rich’s diamond chain peeks out from the collar of the F&S cleaning shirt I still had on.
She folds her lips under her teeth, then steps to the side. “You got thirty minutes and not a minute more.”
“Here,” Beatrice grunts, pushing Senior’s door open. “He likes to nap in the afternoons now, so if you gonna make this a habit, you need to come in the morning.”
She eyes me as I slide past her into his dark room. Ironically, the only light comes from the Family Matters rerun playing on his TV. It illuminates his bushy eyebrows and tight lips. There’s already an empty chair sitting at the head of the bed right next to him, as if he were expecting somebody.
I glance over my shoulder at Beatrice. “I don’t think we need supervision. You can go now.”
She sucks her teeth, stepping back and leaving the door open. As soon as the soft patter of her house shoes disappears down the hallway, I ease into the empty chair next to his bed and drop my bag onto the floor.
He looks as intimidating as he did the first time I met him—like if I reach out and drag my finger across the jagged scar on his face, he’ll grab it.
I let out a deep sigh and bury my head in my hands as all of my adrenaline drains out of me while Steve Urkel’s obnoxious laugh rings out, taunting me and another one of my stupid ideas. As soon as I glance up at the TV, Myra Monkhouse shows up in all of her nerdy, obsessive glory.
A harsh burn crawls up my throat, and a violent sob tries to fight its way out of me.
I can’t cry here.
I slap my hand over my mouth, swallowing a muffled choke and closing my eyes while tears fall over my hand.
“If the show is that bad, you…you can change the channel. You won’t hurt me none,” Senior rasps.
My eyes pop open.
His wide, dilated pupils stare back at me.
The screeching laughter from the audience on TV plays in the background like a haunting soundtrack as we stare at each other.
I pull the collar of my shirt to my nose, wiping the wetness from it. His eyes wander across my face while my hands fly up to my wild hair.
I smooth back that one curly flyaway that’s always going rogue and sit up straight in the chair. “We met a while back when I came here with Ri—”
“I remember.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you up. I’m sorry.”
“Ain’t no reason to apologize. I spend about sixty percent of my day in this bed. I think I’m well rested.”