Behind Closed Doors (5 page)

“You don’t have to do that, Ma. We can take you out or something. You guys have all those new restaurants on East State Street, and I’ll bet you two haven’t been to more than one or two of them.”

“Now Gina, you know I like to fix my Sunday dinners. And your father would have a fit if he and Larry couldn’t sit around watching those Bulls bounce that silly ball around on television. I think that’s the main reason he bought that forty-inch screen.”

Regina laughed, because her mother was right. Her father wasn’t the excitable type, but he always seemed thrilled when he knew Larry was coming for a visit. Not just to watch a game, but for any reason. As far as he was concerned, Larry was the son he and her mother were never able to have. After Regina was born, they had
made one attempt after another trying to conceive a baby, but after the third miscarriage, they’d come to the realization that maybe it wasn’t in God’s plan for them to have more than one child. Regina figured that was why they’d always showered her with everything they could, from love to the most expensive clothing, to the brand-new white Escort they’d gotten her the very same day she’d turned sixteen.

Regina glanced outside the kitchen window and saw Larry pulling into the driveway. “Larry just got home, Ma, so I’ll call you in a few hours, okay?”

“Girl, you better stay off that phone so much making all those long-distance phone calls. I’ll just talk to you next Friday.”

She didn’t know why her mother was saying that. She knew Regina always called them at least four to five times a week, regardless of how much it cost. “I love you, Ma, and tell Daddy I said hi.”

“I will. I love you too, baby. Bye.”

Larry came in, slithered over to Regina like the snake that he was, put his forefinger under her chin, and kissed her. Regina shoved him away from her so hard that he stumbled against the kitchen table.

“What’s the matter with you?” Larry asked, frowning, trying to steady his balance.

“What the hell do you think is the matter with me?” She picked up the sticky note from the table and pushed it into his chest. It stuck to his shirt.

Larry pulled it off, looked at it, and cracked up laugh
ing. “What? You think this number is for me? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It was in your pocket. Who else is it for?”

“It’s not for me. I got this number from Veronica Williams for Ted. She’s a claims adjuster from work.”

“If you got it from her at work, then why was it in your racquetball shorts? Huh? Explain that.”

“I didn’t say I got it from her at work. I mean, I had meant to, but I never got the chance to do it, because she works on a different floor. So when I saw her at the Mobile gas station last week, I got it from her then. But I keep forgetting to give it to Ted. As a matter of fact, he asked me about it last night.”

“Now, Larry. Do you think I was just born yesterday?”

“No, but I’m telling you the truth. We can call Ted if you want to.”

Regina didn’t want that. Ted already thought she was paranoid and keeping track of Larry too much as it was. And, since Larry was explaining this so well and wanted to prove it, she sort of believed him.

“No. Just forget it. Ted doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Regina said.

“I think he has everything to do with this, because the phone number is for him.” Larry reached for the phone.

She took it from his hand and put it back on the hook. “Okay. Okay. I believe you, but that still doesn’t explain everything else you’ve been doing. Like all the lost time you’ve been accumulating.”

“Not this again, Regina. Why can’t we just enjoy the
day like you said you wanted to earlier? I realize I’ve been going out a little more than usual, but I promise you, I don’t want anyone except you. Sometimes it’s just good to get out with the fellas for a change. Why can’t you please try and understand that?”

“But you’ve been canceling lunch every time we plan to go, and you’ve also been working an unusual amount of overtime. What about that?”

“What do you expect me to do? Let my work go undone? We’ve had a lot of insurance claims lately, and I’m still trying to hire two additional supervisors before the end of the month. What do you want me to do? Forget my priorities?”

Regina felt a lot better now than she had, because this was like the old Larry. Answering all of her questions and making some sense. She was stupid for suspecting him of messing around, and she was going to be more understanding the next time he went out. Even if it was next Friday on their movie night.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m sorry for pushing you, and I’m sorry for accusing you of something you’re not doing,” Regina said, tears slowly flowing down her face.

Larry smiled and took her in his arms. “I’ll let you slide this time, but it better not happen again.”

His smile gave her a warm feeling inside, and she wished this moment would never end. He was holding her tighter than he had in a long time, and she was certain that they were about to make love like they never had before. The real Larry Moore was finally home again.

K
AREN STRUTTED
into her newly decorated office located on the fifth floor of the bank, removed her purple linen blazer, hung it on the brass coat rack in the corner behind the door, and sat down behind her oak executive-style desk. She placed her black Coach purse in the lower right-hand drawer and set her matching briefcase on the floor. She could already tell that this was going to be a hectic workday and the beginning of another drawn-out, tiring week.

Ever since Bank First had gone through a difficult merger and extensive layoffs two months ago, which, incidentally, was around the same time John had become obsessed with going on those racing track excursions, Karen had taken on three times her normal job responsibilities. Attending meetings back to back. Supervising twice the number of employees. Laboring through just
about every lunch hour. She couldn’t remember when she had ever felt so stressed. It was a good thing Saturday and Sunday had turned out the way they had. She’d needed it.

Of course, Friday evening had started out on a terrible note, but the remainder of the weekend had been comprised of countless, uninterrupted episodes of lovemaking. That was how it had always been with her and John, and if she had anything to do with it, that was how it was going to stay. No children. No pets. And no nearby, do-drop-in relatives.

When they were first engaged, John had discussed having at least one child, but Karen had made it perfectly clear that children were not a part of her lifetime agenda. A decision made long before she’d even graduated from high school and the reason she’d had clips surgically clamped around each of her fallopian tubes. One of the more modern methods of sterilization. Her grandmother had insisted she would change her mind once she was older, found the right man, and fell deeply in love with him, but even though she was now less than two weeks from turning thirty and married to a man she couldn’t love more, her feelings toward bringing a child into the world remained unchanged. It enraged her when different folks, mostly women who needed to mind their own business, asked her why she didn’t want children. It was almost as if they thought she was crazy. Like it made her less than a woman. Like it meant the end of time. But she ignored them, because as far as she was concerned, it was better not to have children when you knew you didn’t
want them than to get pregnant because other people expected it and then regret it, like so many others she knew. She’d seen enough of that to last her a lifetime.

Oh, sure, she and John did have a good marriage, but that didn’t seem to guarantee anything. Her own father had proven that thirteen years ago when he’d walked out on his faithful wife and two teenaged daughters, which was the main reason her younger sister, Sheila, the black sheep of the family, had turned out the way she had. He’d left without so much as saying good-bye, and until this day, he’d never contacted them. Sheila hadn’t been able to deal with his leaving and had soon started interacting with the wrong element. Dating guy after guy, not one of whom had meant her any good, and hanging out with girls who’d looked forward to nothing except getting high and pumping out babies. Just thinking about Sheila and her many dilemmas depressed Karen, and since she had a pile of work to do, she decided that this wasn’t the time to dwell on it.

She shuffled through two stacks of papers, searching for this month’s loan activity report and found it. Whew. There hadn’t been this many loan applications since the interest rates had been at an all-time low two years ago. Business was booming, and it was great for the bank. Not to mention the enormous bonus check she was sure to receive at the end of the quarter.

She flipped her calendar to the current date and released a deep sigh. Meetings were penciled in at eight, ten, one, and two-thirty. It was a good thing she’d decid
ed to come in at seven. She hated going to meetings first thing on a Monday morning, and her secretary knew it, but then maybe it couldn’t be helped. Nevertheless, Karen was going to present her secretary with another gracious reminder just in case.

She had thought her promotion from supervisor to vice president of Mortgage Loans would mean more leeway with decision making and fewer meetings to attend. But now, instead of simply attending the meetings, she’d taken on the responsibility of chairing them. It was a good thing they’d given her that ten-thousand-dollar raise, because if they hadn’t, she’d have turned in her resignation a long time ago.

The sun was a tad too bright, so she swirled around in her plush, high-back chair and closed the blind halfway. As she turned back around, the phone rang. She removed her right pearl earring. “Good morning, this is Karen speaking.”

“Hi, sweetie, how are you?”

“I’m fine, Mom. How are you?”

“I’m good. Are you busy?”

“No. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I got a little worried when I didn’t hear from you all weekend and thought I’d give you a call.”

“I know, Mom. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you. Time just sort of slipped by me the last couple of days.”

“You and John must have been honeymooning.”

Karen laughed. “As a matter of fact, we were. We really had a good time this weekend. Better than we have in a long time.”

“I’m glad, because I know how upset you’ve been since he started going to that horse track.”

“Actually, he went out there again on Friday, but I gave him one last ultimatum. Mom, he spent his whole paycheck, and it would have been more than that if he didn’t have ten percent coming out for his 401(K) plan.”

“Lord have mercy. Well, maybe this is just a phase he’s going through, because the John I know is too sensible to keep doing something like this forever.”

“Phase or not, I told him that I’m not going to put up with it anymore, and if he did it one more time, he was getting out.”

“Karen. Don’t be so hard on him. Until now, John’s been bringing home his entire paycheck and giving you every dime of it. Not a whole lot of men would do that. John is a good man, and if gambling is the only fault he has, you can work with him on that. I’m not saying his problem is something you can overlook, but nobody’s perfect. And having a man who gambles is a lot better than having one who messes around with other women or one who tries to beat you half to death.”

“I’m trying to keep an open mind, but I refuse to keep withdrawing money from our savings accounts because of this terrible habit he’s picked up. Pretty soon, there won’t be anything
to
withdraw.”

“Maybe you can get him to go to one of those sup
port group meetings. You know, one of those anonymous ones.”

“I mentioned that to him, but all he says is that he doesn’t have a problem, and he’s not going to the track anymore. But he’s said that every week since this all began. I just hope things are different this Friday.”

“They will be. You know John doesn’t want to lose you, so he’ll think twice before doing it again. You just have to trust in the Lord is all.”

“I know, and I hope that’s all it takes, because I don’t know what else to do. How is your shoulder doing?”

Slaving at an assembly plant as a drill operator for the last thirty years had finally taken its toll. Karen’s mother had been diagnosed with a tear in her left rotator cuff and had gone through surgery over two months ago, but the healing process was taking a lot longer than usual—at least longer than it had for the right shoulder when she’d had the same procedure performed on it just a year ago. “It seems to be doing a little better today. I have therapy this afternoon.”

“When do you think you’ll be going back to work?”

“I don’t know. I went to the doctor on Thursday, and he doesn’t want to see me again for three weeks. Maybe he’ll release me then. Who knows.”

Lucinda was sounding frustrated, and that troubled Karen. “Has the company found a job that won’t reinjure your shoulders when you do go back to work?”

“Not one I know of. But they’d rather see me walking around doing nothing than out on worker’s compensation, causing their loss time report to skyrocket.”

“What about your settlement? Have you heard anything from your attorney?”

“No, but we should be settling on the right shoulder sometime next month. It’ll probably be a long time before they even begin negotiations for this left one, though.”

“Well, at least you’ll be getting compensated for some of what you’ve gone through.”

“Not really. They can’t pay me enough for all the suffering I’ve had to deal with and the pain that has kept me up all hours of the night, and I’ll never have a full range of motion with either shoulder ever again.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that.”

“Well, I don’t want to stay on this phone too long, and I know you have to get to work.”

Karen had known that was coming, and she smiled.

“Yeah, I do. I’ve got meetings all day, but I’ll give you a call tonight after dinner.”

“Have a good day at work, and I’ll talk to you then.”

“Bye, Mom.”

There were no words to describe the relationship between Karen and her mother. Lucinda was fifty-one and looked not a day over forty. Whether they strolled through a shopping mall or dined at a fancy restaurant, most everyone assumed they were sisters. Her mother was a beautiful woman. Kept her weight down, hair in place, makeup intact, and dressed immaculately at all times. But the physical aspects were only part of the package. Her personality shined, and she had a heart that reached out to everyone, regardless of who it was.
She’d become the second mother to every friend Karen had, something that had hardly been the case when Karen was between the ages of twelve and seventeen.

Practically every girl on the block had, at one time or another, harassed, ridiculed, or criticized Karen for having a warden for a mother. Most of them had never even heard of the word
curfew
and hadn’t had one. Karen had always been the earliest thing leaving the neighborhood park, the local skating rink, and any Saturday night parties, which really hadn’t mattered too much, since there had only been a few, rare occasions when she had actually been allowed to darken the doorway of any of those places anyhow. Back then, the woman had pretty much made Karen sick by keeping her locked up in prison. But now Karen clearly understood why her mother had, because those same neighborhood girls who’d had the freedom to roam any-and everywhere they’d wanted, all times of the night, were now high school dropouts, unmarried with a house full of babies they couldn’t take care of, or out on the street begging some low-life drug dealer for a piece of that illegal white rock. All situations that Karen didn’t envy one bit.

She gathered together a pad of legal-sized paper, an ink pen, a neon green highlighter, then glanced at her watch. There was still twenty minutes before the start of the weekly status meeting, and since she saw her voice mail light flashing at the base of her phone, she decided to retrieve whatever messages had been left. She pressed the speaker button first but then decided against it and lifted the receiver instead. Just three months ago, she’d
played a message through her speaker phone only to hear John dictating exact details of what he was going to do to her that night when she arrived home. She’d been loving every bit of it until she’d noticed her secretary standing inside the doorway, with a cherry red face and no obvious sign of movement. The woman had been in a severe state of shock, and Karen had been speechless. What could she possibly have said? Nothing she could have thought of would have corrected it, so it had been better to leave it alone and let it blow over.

Karen keyed in her numerical password and waited for the messages. The first was from Tammy, her boss’s secretary, saying it was that time of year again and she needed to schedule Karen’s performance evaluation. The last one was from John, saying he was on his morning break and that he wanted a complete reenactment of what had gone on this past weekend. Tonight. Whipped cream, strawberries, Pink Champale, and all.

That did it. She was never using that speaker phone again. At least not with her door wide open, because John’s messages were way too X rated, and the man was too nasty for his own good. Although, she couldn’t help but admit, she loved it.

“D
ON’T FORGET
to pick up some of that tropical sparkling water we always get at the store on Roselle,” Karen yelled down the stairs to John, who was on his way out for pizza. Then she switched the
radio station from WGCI to V103. She wasn’t in the mood for any gangsta rap and wanted to listen to something a lot more mellow.

“I won’t,” John yelled back and then went out the door.

It was only after coming home, tearing their clothes off, and doing exactly what John had suggested on the voice mail message that they’d realized how starved they were. With the exception of the strawberries, neither of them had had a thing to eat since lunchtime. She’d left work at three-thirty so she could meet John at home by four, but now it was almost seven.

Karen was no remarkable cook, didn’t care to become one, and had no problem with eating carry-out every night of the week. But John, on the other hand, despised consuming anything that wasn’t home-cooked. That is, unless it came from Red Lobster, Bennigan’s or Lone Star Steakhouse. As a matter of fact, today was the first time in a long time that he seemed content with the idea of ordering a pizza, and Karen wondered why he was so willing. But it was obvious. He was still in beg mode because of all the money he’d donated to Arlington’s race track on Friday night. Right now she could probably get him to throw his dirty clothes in the hamper instead of smearing them across the bed in the guest bedroom. Shoot, she could probably even get him to wash dishes every night for the rest of the week and take the trash out without being told.

V103 wasn’t playing anything she wanted to hear ei
ther, so she flipped the radio off and clicked on the television. It would take John at least twenty to thirty minutes to get back, and she figured she’d pass the time by calling her sister, Sheila. She picked up the latest issue of
Ebony,
then dialed the number. As she hit the last digit of the phone number, she realized Sheila might not be home yet, because today was check day, and whenever that welfare money came, the girl usually flew straight to Wal-Mart and stayed until closing. It had taken Rockford forever to get a Wal-Mart store, but ever since it had, Sheila had become one of their most frequent and loyal customers. There was no more Kmart for her. Girlfriend had moved up in the world.