Down On My Knees (29 page)
Authors: Victor McGlothin
“No, Wallace,” she cried sorrowfully, rushing to help him. “No, no, no! I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's all my fault.” Grace was distraught, so Wallace grabbed her by the shouldersand shook her hard.
“Don't say that, and don't touch anything,” Wallace commanded.“When the police come, don't say a word.”
Grace didn't comprehend what he said but agreed merely to appease him. “Okay, okay,” she muttered, touching his chest with her outstretched fingers. Wallace didn't appear to be physically injured, but he collapsed on the nearby love seat with his head in his hands.
Muriel locked the girls in an upstairs bedroom, then stormed into the downstairs study, where the shots had been fired. Her bloodcurdling scream shook Grace down to her core as she started toward the study to see if there was anythingshe could do to help. She anticipated the horrifying remnants of one man raging against another. Unfortunately, it was far more gruesome than she was prepared to handle.
Splatters of deep crimson spotted two of the walls inside that room. Edward's body lay still in a widening pool of blood, his life draining from it. A silver automatic pistol rested at his feet as Muriel crouched over another man, caressing his hair. At his side, a smudged 8 x10 picture frame with a photographof Edward serving cake at a child's birthday party. “Damn you, Albert! He didn't know,” Muriel blubbered uncontrollablywhile gently coddling the dead man's remains. “Eddie didn't know!” she cried.
In spite of missing half of his face, his skull blown apart, Grace recognized the man laying in Muriel's arms immediately.She stared at him endlessly, sorry for the times she'd snapped at him for making indecent proposals and lewd advancementsat the church. Albert Jenkins, the minister's son and the congregation's skirt-chasing baby-making machine, was dead.
Amid Muriel's excruciating moans and police sirens blaringin the background, Grace couldn't hear another sound. The next thing she remembered was regaining consciousnessto the smell of a pungent odor being waved in front of her face by an emergency paramedic. She'd become overwhelmedby the ghastly scene of two dead men and the bewilderedwoman who'd brought about both deaths.
Child protective services had arrived and taken the girls away after packing a suitcase full of their clothing. Crime-sceneinvestigators photographed every inch of the room and the lower portion of the house. Television news crews reportedthe double homicide from Edward's front lawn, just on the other side of yellow crime scene tape and much to their dismay. As the coroner's office tagged and bagged the bodies, police detectives paraded throughout the house, collectingevidence and gathering what information they could by interrogating Wallace, Grace, and Muriel separately.
They didn't get much from Grace, still shaken and pitiful. Through teary eyes, she scanned the den fearing the discoveryof her black leather handbag, the one with her gun inside.After fainting, she was out cold when Wallace took the time to hide it in his car before police cruisers littered the block. If they had found it on the premises, they would have deviseda way to connect Grace to the murders, and Wallace wasn't about to let that happen. He invoked his right to remainsilent when learning he had become a prime suspect in both killings. Muriel was the key, they thought, although she had no idea what happened after the three men were in that hellish room alone.
Muriel, wrapped in a blanket, was ghostly white, rattled, and sedated. After a criminal psychologist arrived to get insideher head, she tried to explain how Albert ended up in the Assistant District Attorney's home on a warm Sunday evening. She told the lead detective that while living in Atlanta,she met and married Edward. After they began having problems, she sought her first legal separation. During that time, she conceived a child with Albert Jenkins, Edward's racquetball partner and family friend, and then she later conceivedanother child with him despite reconciling with her husband. Muriel went on to say Edward had no prior knowledgethat the girls weren't fathered by him until he began receivingunsettling messages on his cell phone by a man threatening to seek joint custody of his daughters. Albert had exchanged words with Edward earlier in the day on his cell phone, Muriel chronicled. Then at about four-thirty, someone called the house several times but wouldn't say who they were or what they wanted. At five Albert showed up, drunk and hostile toward Muriel. When Edward intervened,Albert whipped out birth records and medical documentsproving that Edward's blood type showed he couldn't be the father to the daughters he was raising. Subsequently, both men argued, terrifying the children, so they took the heated discussion into the study. Edward didn't want to believeAlbert, his long-time friend. It was too far-fetched to be true, he thought, until Muriel made the mistake of admittingto an affair. Edward became furious. He'd backhanded her hard across the face and then proceeded to drag her out of the house by her hair. Muriel darted back in soon after she'd been tossed on the lawn like garbage. After overhearing Edward threaten to have Albert arrested, she stormed back outside for help. That's when Grace and Wallace showed up. The detectives realized Muriel had told them all she knew. She was taken to the hospital for observation and placed under a strict suicide watch.
When the police learned that Wallace was a lawyer with no apparent ties to either of the two dead men, as Muriel corroboratedbefore she was taken away, Edward's boss, the city's DA, signed a typed document barring Wallace or Grace from prosecution. For the record, they needed to know what went down after Muriel was assaulted by her husband.
Wallace read over the document twice, looking for loopholesthat could have come back to haunt him after giving his side of the story. A court stenographer was called in becauseWallace refused to be carted downtown in a patrol car. Even then, he was concerned about his students and having to explain why their teacher was escorted away from a widely publicized crime scene by uniformed police officers.
The stenographer typed continuously as Wallace describedthe sequence of events with Grace listening on silently. “I came here to speak with Edward regarding an old case we litigated years ago,” Wallace lied smoothly, to keep Grace and André out of the official report. “As I neared the house from the walkway, Muriel, the wife, came tearing out of it, beaten and in hysterics. She screamed that someone had to stop something from happening inside the house. Of course I didn't know what she meant until she insinuated Edward was going to kill a man. âEddie's got him', she screamed.” Wallace saw that Grace was reliving the horrible scene hours later, just as he was forced to do. “I ran into the house, heard men shouting, and I tried to get it resolved without anybody getting hurt. Obviously, it didn't turn out the way I'd planned. Edward was backed against the desk with his hands up. He was demanding that the other guy, Albert, leave or he'd make him. Albert said he wasn't leaving without his kids or a specialwrit of joint custody, signed by both biological parents of record.”
Grace suspected Albert's intrusion had more to do with extorting money from Edward to leave his family alone, seeing as how Albert was notorious for the shirking responsibilitiesfor the children he'd seen regularly. Somehow, it felt awful thinking bad of the dead, so Grace huddled up in the blanket provided to her and speculated how such a terrible thing could have happened in the first place.
When asked how the discussion escalated to bullets flying,Wallace's eyes closed momentarily. “Albert held the weapon on Edward, then he pointed it at me for butting in.” Wallace omitted having met Albert a couple of weeks before when he attended church with Grace because it would have drawn red flags from the investigators. “I tried to explain that I was Edward's lawyer in such matters and prayed he would give up his weapon. While he was going off on me, Edward grabbed something from the desk and flung it at him. A shot fired and struck Ed in the chest, but it didn't stop him from charging. He must've wrestled the gun away becausethe next two shots killed Albert, one in the side, and the other in the head, just above the right temple.” Wallace was grilled about his own miraculous escape from the perilousbarrage of bullets in the small room. He glanced up towardthe ceiling before answering. “It wasn't my time to go,” he told them, in a subdued tone. “However, the time has come for me to leave here.” Without asking for permission to go his own way, Wallace got up from the kitchen table and took Grace by the arm. “Come on, I'll see to it that you get home.” Once again, he had rescued her, although this time it was from an unthinkable fate.
Grace knew how close she came to being killed that day, so very close. Thankfully, it wasn't her time to go either, she concluded after it was over with, said and done. There was so much to be thankful for and an abundant life to live. Grace knew that as well, and she was grateful.
Once ushered past the camera crews and pushy reporters, Wallace walked Grace to his car and buckled her in safely. Neither of them had much to say until they traveled miles from the subdivision. “You need me to stop for anything on the way home?” Wallace asked softly, not taking his eyes off the white lines on the freeway.
“No, I just need to get home and see about André. No doubt he's been watching everything on TV. I thought about calling him, but I didn't have the words. Maybe if I hold tight, long enough, they'll come.”
“You're the one who's been through a lot,” Wallace said, reaching for her hand to hold his. “Don't be surprised if André is holding it together like a champ. All he's ever had was you, and you're still here for him, to love him and care for him. You're all he needs, Grace.”
“What about me?” she asked, not having thought about what she'd do with the life God spared until that precise moment.“Can we talk about what I need?” As Wallace exited the off ramp, Grace cleared her throat. Suddenly, she leaned toward the glove box and then opened it. “Imagine that,” she sighed, pleasantly surprised that the tiny blue box was in the same place she'd left it. Grace lifted the box top and unsuccessfullyfought back tears when marveling at the three-caratprincess-cut diamond resting atop a custom designed band of platinum. “This is what I need. Well, not this, exactly,although it's very beautiful. I ... I need to know that you will continue to love me in the end the way you have from the beginning. Oh, who am I fooling? I can't wait to be your wife, Wallace.” She took her eyes off the ring and cast her gaze toward him, but he didn't answer immediately. All choked up, Grace swallowed hard to clear her throat again. “That's if you still want me.”
Wallace stopped the car in Grace's driveway, then shut off the ignition. “Remember when I saw you coming in from the rain? I knew then I would always want you in my life, nothingcould or ever will change that. Yes, Grace, I would be honored to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Grace lunged over the console and hugged Wallace until she began to cry. André wandered outside and stood beside the car after he'd grown tired of watching them from the window. He was holding up as well as Wallace had predicted.When Grace climbed out to meet him, he looked past her with his curious gaze trained on Wallace.
“Is Wallace okay, Ma?” asked André, surveying the dry, dark stains on his teacher's shirt.
“Yes, he's all right. Not a scratch on him.”
“Good, 'cause I've gotten used to him just the way he is.”
“You and me both, son,” agreed Grace. “You and me both.”
Epilogue
I
t had been several weeks since the fatal shootings. The city of Dallas continued buzzing with gossipy tales of betrayal,interracial lust, and murder. André didn't shed a singletear when he attended Edward's funeral with Miss Pearl, Skyler, Grace, Wallace, and a who's-who of important city officials. By then, the word had gotten out about Edward's illegitimateteenage son, who was awarded a two-million-dollarinsurance settlement as his only surviving heir. Grace, as her son's guardian, endorsed the check and deposited it along with the other child-support assistance Edward had providedover the years. Muriel's children had no claim to the money because, after all, they were fathered by Albert, who left behind seven kids but not one life-insurance policy. Grace promised to set up college funds for May and Becca because that's what Edward would have wanted. Muriel had to make it on her own, the best way she could, Grace decided.
t had been several weeks since the fatal shootings. The city of Dallas continued buzzing with gossipy tales of betrayal,interracial lust, and murder. André didn't shed a singletear when he attended Edward's funeral with Miss Pearl, Skyler, Grace, Wallace, and a who's-who of important city officials. By then, the word had gotten out about Edward's illegitimateteenage son, who was awarded a two-million-dollarinsurance settlement as his only surviving heir. Grace, as her son's guardian, endorsed the check and deposited it along with the other child-support assistance Edward had providedover the years. Muriel's children had no claim to the money because, after all, they were fathered by Albert, who left behind seven kids but not one life-insurance policy. Grace promised to set up college funds for May and Becca because that's what Edward would have wanted. Muriel had to make it on her own, the best way she could, Grace decided.
As mourners dissipated from the burial site, André stared at them from the backseat of Wallace's car. He started to ask Grace why so many people showed up to his daddy's funeral but instead mulled it over until he came to a conclusion that made sense in his young mind. Like him, André reasoned, scores of people had come because someone else made them.
Five months after the most tumultuous storm of Grace's life had blown through, she'd found herself in the women's lounge of another church on another Saturday afternoon. The same grunt of a wedding planner that barked orders to bridesmaids at Chandelle's wedding was at it again. Grace was forced to hold back a few choice words as she tarried through her normal prewedding ritual of mixing makeup foundation with traces of an exotic eye shadow to create a perfectly blended shade. This time, though, that perfect tone was fashioned for her.
Awkward Bob threw a hissy fit until Grace agreed to let him do her face. Actually he wasn't half bad, for a man who did his own face only half the time. Linda fussed over her hair. Shelia flirted with every available man who looked at her twice, but all she needed was one who seemed interested in treating the twins to a lingerie shopping spree. Her tiny condo couldn't stand another appliance of any kind.
Chandelle popped her head in to announce that the show could now officially get under way, since she'd arrived. Immediatelyafterward, she embraced Grace and kissed her on the cheek, much to Awkward Bob's dismay because he had applied her makeup perfectly moments before. “Grace, you're beautiful,” Chandelle said, beaming from ear to ear. She rolled her eyes when Grace and Awkward Bob both said “Thank you” simultaneously. “Whut-ever, Bob,” Chandelle hissed. “Grace, I can't believe you're finally settling down and letting someone make an honest woman out of you. It seems like yesterday that I was sitting in the chair with peoplefussing over me. Huh, enjoy it, girl 'cause it don't last,” she chuckled, holding back her postwedding woes as not to diminish Grace's day in the sun.
“Thank you for everything, Chandelle. You inspired me and had me re-examining my life with a husband in the picture.That was the family portrait I always wanted to hang over my fireplace, but I didn't know how to go about getting it done. Now I'm sitting here, nervous as all get-out, and heating up too, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, do I,” Chandelle sang fondly. “If I were you, I'd skip the panties. Getting out of them wastes three to four seconds,you'd better recognize.”
Grace's mouth fell open. “Chandelle, you need to hush. You're in a church.”
“And I'm talking married folks' business to a woman who's gonna be married in about thirty minutes.”
“It's bad enough that I'm having second thoughts about wearing this white gown. My son is out there ushering. It's not like I'm going to fool anybody.”
Chandelle took a seat next to Grace and shooed Awkward Bob away so she could have a heart-to-heart. “Grace, listen to me. There's a lot of things I don't know. I've proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Now, there are two things that haven't gotten by me. One, is that nobody is fooled by a thirty-six-year-old sistah as lovely as you, and the other is that every woman deserves to wear white. A wise lady once told me that, and she couldn't have been more right. Good luck out there, and don't forget, they all came here to see you. Gotta run, Marvin isn't used to being alone in public without me, and I aim to keep it that way. There are already way too many single hoochies sitting in the back.”
“Places everyone,” chirped the tightly wound wedding planner. “I said, let's do this!” Every one of the attendants leapt up and scattered like ants at a barbecue. “That's more like it,” she boasted proudly. “What about you two?” She was speaking to Linda and Shelia, but she had no idea who she was talking to.
“Uh-uh, Miss Likes-to-Shout,” Shelia spat loudly, “you might run your mouth, but you don't run this. See, Grace is our best friend.”
“That's right,” Linda co-signed.
“Bridesmaids are the next best thing to getting married, ain't that right, Linda?”
“You know it is,” Linda agreed wholeheartedly. “The next best thing.”
“So, look here, if you plan on being able to get around without that clipboard broke off in yoâ”
“Whoa-oh!” blurted Bob. “I think she's got it.”
Shelia sucked her teeth and let it go. “I'm just sayin' we need a little time to be alone with our best friend before we have to share her with a man who might not let her come out and play when we want her to. Is that too much to ask from the next best things? I didn't think so. Poof, wedding planner be gone, and take Bewildered Bob with you.” Grace laughed at two of the sweetest friends a woman could wish for as they did the best they knew how to engineer some private time. Shelia handed Grace the snapshot taken by the waiter at the restaurant who was working for a larger tip. “Friendship personified,”she said, with a heavy sigh. “Remember this?”
“Of course I do,” Grace cooed lovingly. “I didn't know you kept it. And don't worry, both of you will always be my girls. Always.”
Linda slammed the door and locked it after Bob finally agreed to leave, following a terrible tantrum. Shelia primped Grace's hair while admiring how angelic she looked in the mirror. “You've been through a lot, Grace,” Linda said sympathetically,also peering at her reflection. “If anyone could have come out of it on top, it had to be you.”
“Yes, Lawd,” Shelia chimed in. “We bet each other a car note over that vow of celibacy you were so serious about beforemeeting Wallace.”
“And who won?” Grace asked them. “Who bet that I'd hold out all the way?”
“Uh, actually, we both bet that you wouldn't,” Linda admitted reluctantly. “Shelia gave you sixty days, tops, before you fell on your face, and on some man's, too, while you were at it.”
“Uh-uh, neither one of you heffas had faith in me,” Grace chuckled. “It was hard, real hard at times.”
“We know, we know. But you made it through unscathed,” Linda assumed incorrectly.
“Not quite, I did fall on my face, but I repented, asked forgiveness, got my head together, and got back on the right track.”
Shelia smirked at her reflection. “So, was Wallace one of the faces you fell on, Sister Grace? Huh, inquiring minds want to know.”
“Sho' do, real bad.” Linda cocked her head to the side.
“Y 'all know I usually don't do this, but I'll tell you. I showed my tail before Wallace and I became an item. A minor hiccup, but that's it. Since then, I've been exclusive and waiting until tonight. I do expect to pull a few muscles though, making up for lost time.”
Someone had to voice what Grace's closest friends were thinking. Shelia stepped up and laid it on the line. “Grace, honey? I know that Wallace is a real sweetheart and everythingbut ... What if he can't do what you need him to do, when y'all doing it? And what happens if he's not
real tall
?”
real tall
?”
“That is a valid question, Grace. It would be wonderful if Wallace could keep up in the bedroom,” Linda stated suggestively.
Grace had considered that, of course. Successful marriagesweren't all dependent on good sex, but deep inside she prayed for Wallace's health, width, and length during their journey together. “Ladies, thanks for your concern, but I am hopelessly intrigued, utterly devoted, and positively in love with this man. That's what's important. But if by chance there is a glitch in the program, I'll just have to tutor him day and night until he can catch on and keep up. I've spent a lot of time on my knees to get this far. And now that I'm here, I'm looking forward to spending a lot more time down there
,
with my husband.”
,
with my husband.”
After spending a few days locked in the wedding suite at a remote island resort, Grace was certain that her vow of celibacy, although she'd fallen short, provided an avenue for God to work out things in her life that she couldn't see comingon the horizon. Once the rhetoric had been put aside, Grace was also certain that Wallace could do more than merely keep up. The blushing bride sent out a stack of postcards,when she came up for air, on the fourth day. The messagesshe addressed to Linda and Shelia were written in code. “Dear ladies, We're having a great time. The room is very nice. Hallelujah, Wallace
is tall, reeal tall
. Grace.”
is tall, reeal tall
. Grace.”
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