Читать книгу Trouble Down The Road - Bettye Griffin - Страница 14

Suzanne worked in the kitchen, trimming fat from a thick ribeye steak and placing it in a long shallow dish for marinating, where other steaks already soaked in teriyaki-flavored liquid. Her mother kept her company, perched on a bar stool facing the kitchen, the usual highball glass present in front of her.

“I thought you and Brad would have gone out to dinner, it being his birthday and all,” Arlene remarked.

“It didn’t seem necessary, since we went out for brunch this morning at the golf club. It was especially nice to have Bradley and Lauren with us.” And because there was no sign of Micheline Trent, a thought Suzanne kept to herself. “We both felt a little guilty for banishing the kids to their rooms last night, but the party wasn’t for kids.” She paused. “Of course, they both pointed out that Paige would be there.”

Arlene grunted. “I’m sure Brad gave them the line about Paige being a lot older.”

“Yes.” Suzanne pressed a plastic lid on top of the dish with more force than the chore required. She hated it when her stepdaughter got to do anything her own kids couldn’t. Never mind that Bradley and Lauren were mere teenagers to Paige’s twenty-one. She still didn’t like it.

But she didn’t want to concentrate on anything negative. Today belonged to Brad. She wasn’t even going to ask him if he’d known about Paige and Gregory. That could wait. “So I didn’t feel it was necessary to go out for dinner on top of that,” she explained. “I figured some nice boneless ribeye would make Brad happy. It’s his favorite cut of steak.”

“It was nice of you to invite us…even if we didn’t get to join you for breakfast.”

Suzanne sighed. If her mother had her way, she’d never go anywhere that didn’t include her. “Of course we’d invite you to dinner at the house, Mom,” she said, choosing to ignore the mild reprimand.

“Derrick and Matthew will probably stop by a little later to pick up plates.”

“That’s fine, as long as they don’t walk off with all the meat.” After a party Suzanne and Brad gave a number of years back, her brothers had collected all the meat and seafood leftovers. Brad was the one to discover what they’d done the next day, when he went to get a snack and found that all the leftover containers held nothing but salads and cakes. He’d been furious.

Suzanne loved her family, and she tried to help them as much as she could, but sometimes they took advantage of her generosity, and that had definitely been one of those times.

This seemed to be a good time to bring up a subject that she’d been worried about. “Mom, you do know your rent is due next week. You’ll take care of it, won’t you?”

Arlene sighed. “I might be a little late.”

“Mom!” Suzanne exclaimed in a whine. “I thought you told Derrick and Kenya that they need to contribute. It’s not fair. You’re paying the utilities, buying all the food…”

“It’s hard for them, Suzanne. I manage. It’s just that I don’t get paid until the fifth.” She sighed. “That means an extra ninety dollars. Suzanne, why can’t you get Brad to stop those late fees?”

“I’ve told you, Mom. Those fees go to the property manager. It’s not like Brad is getting the money.”

Arlene took a sip of her drink. “Well, then, can you loan me a couple of hundred, just for two days?”

Now it was Suzanne’s turn to sigh. “Mom, you say that every time, but you never pay me back. You always say something came up. I’m sorry, but I can’t risk Brad finding out that I was paying your rent, which means that he’s paying it, since it’s his money.”

“All right, all right. Well, you won’t have to worry about the boys walking off with your leftover meat. Derrick will probably have eaten at work, anyway.” Brad had first offered the job of managing his Subway franchise to her youngest brother, Matthew, but he declined, citing that he needed his days free to attend classes at the local college. Instead he found a job at the hospital on the evening shift, using Brad as a reference. Suzanne knew Brad had been reluctant when Derrick volunteered to take the job, but he’d given him a try, at her urging. Suzanne hoped her brother would pursue a career in restaurant management. Derrick was nearly thirty years old and needed to think about his future. Takeout was always popular, even in lean economic times.

“Is Kenya back from the store?”

“Oh, yeah. She wasn’t gone long. I think she just ran down to Walgreens. She’s probably watching TV with Lauren.”

“Good. Lauren felt kind of left out, with Bradley at the movies with his friends.”

“She’ll be all right. What’re you making to go with the steak?”

“Just a salad, some baked potatoes, and I’ll put some mushrooms on the grill.”

“Mushrooms? Don’t you know some of those are poisonous?”

“I didn’t pick them up along the side of the road, Mom. I bought them at the supermarket.”

“That Paula is certainly giving you grand ideas about food.”

“I’m trying to make more foods that Brad likes. But Paula has been a big help, yes.” Suzanne’s friendship with Paula, her closest in many years, helped her feel more confident about herself, and she was learning new things as well.

Kenya entered the kitchen. “Hi,” she said dully.

“Hey,” Suzanne replied. “Is the movie over already?”

“No, but I missed the beginning, and it was too hard to keep up with. I promised Lauren I’d watch the next one with her. It comes on in about forty minutes.” She climbed up on a stool next to her mother.

“Dinner will probably be ready when it’s over.” Suzanne looked at her sister quizzically. Kenya seemed so down. It had to be because of Gregory. “Did you buy yourself something nice when you went out? Sometimes when I’m in the doldrums I buy myself something new, and I feel a lot better.”

Kenya responded by putting her head down on the granite counter, framed by folded arms, and sobbing.

Suzanne cast a wild look at her mother. “I don’t get it. What’d I say that would bring this on?”

Arlene returned the look of confusion before standing up so she could embrace Kenya from the side. “Kenya. Don’t cry, baby. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.” When Kenya continued to sob she tried again. “It’s Gregory, isn’t it? Don’t cry over him. There are plenty of other fish in the sea.”

She lifted her tear-stained face. “None of them will want me. I’m pregnant.”

Suzanne, about to prepare the salad, dropped the knife and jerked her hand away to avoid getting cut. “What?”

“I just took the test,” Kenya said, her face wrinkling. “It came back positive.”

Arlene returned to her chair and took a sip of amber-colored liquid. “Is it Gregory’s?”

Suzanne found her mother’s casual reaction puzzling. Here Kenya was sobbing her heart out, and she acted instead as if Kenya had just announced nothing more significant than plans to go down to South Beach for the weekend.

“Yes. He’s been the only one. I don’t know what to do, Mom, now that Gregory is with Paige.”

“That may be so,” Arlene said loftily, “but he has a responsibility to you and your baby now. Isn’t that right, Suzanne?”

“Well, yes.” Suzanne found Kenya’s comment about Gregory being her one and only hard to swallow. She suspected her sister was promiscuous, and she’d spoken to her once about not sleeping with every guy who asked her. Then she realized that Kenya probably meant that Gregory was the only one she’d slept with who could have impregnated her in the last six weeks or so.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this, Kenya? It isn’t easy being a single mother, you know. I’ve never been one, of course, but Mom was single most of our lives, and we all know what a hard time she had.”

“This baby is mine, mine and Gregory’s, Suzanne. I’m not going to kill it.”

“Besides,” Arlene added matter-of-factly, “since we all know that single motherhood is difficult, maybe Kenya should be married.”

The smile on her mother’s face sent a chill through Suzanne. Kenya’s eyes widened, as if a lightbulb had gone off inside her head.

“Mom,” Suzanne began, “you can’t mean—”

“I’m just outraged that something like this happened to my baby girl,” Arlene declared fervently. “I don’t aspire to have out-of-wedlock grandchildren.”

Suzanne tried again to make her point. “Mom, that’s a noble thought, but you already have one. Are you forgetting Derrick’s daughter?” Nor had her mother been married to Kenya’s father, but it would be just plain mean to bring that to the forefront. “Besides, your ‘baby girl’ is an adult. No one can force Gregory to marry her.”

“Besides, he wants to be with Paige,” Kenya said morosely.

“Forget about her,” Arlene said. “You’re the one having the baby. He should do the right thing by you.” She got off of her bar stool and stood behind her youngest child, hugging her from behind and then affectionately patting her flat belly.

“Hard to believe there’s a baby in there, is there?”

“Just wait a few months,” Suzanne murmured.

Kenya turned to her big sister. “Suzanne, what do you think I should do?”

“I think the first thing you need to do is have it confirmed by a doctor. Sometimes home pregnancy tests aren’t accurate. Then you need to talk to Gregory. See what he says.”

“I guess that will kill the budding romance between him and Paige,” Arlene said nastily.

Suzanne couldn’t deny that she found that idea appealing. She bit down on her bottom lip to keep from grinning.

“Of course, Kenya, I would have preferred that you’d been married first, like your sister,” Arlene continued. “There’s probably plenty of young men out there who will one day be well off after they finish college. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t snag one of them. But I think Gregory will do just fine.”

“He’s the only man I ever wanted,” Kenya said dreamily.

Suzanne abruptly turned her back under the guise of getting a package of fresh mushrooms from the vegetable bin of the refrigerator. She couldn’t understand why Kenya was so stuck on Gregory Hickman.

“And you’ve seen his parents’ house, Mom,” Kenya continued. “It’s not as nice as this house, of course, but it’s really nice. Maybe we’d get to live there if we got married, until Gregory’s been working long enough to afford his own place. There’s plenty of room for us and the baby, now that the kid boarding with his parents has moved out.”

Suzanne, her back still to her mother and sister, rolled her eyes. It was true that Ernie and Flo did have a nice home, but she’d never been impressed with the way they’d decorated it. It was too crowded, for one. All that furniture and wall units crammed with bric-a-brac. The area rugs that lay atop of the wall-to-wall carpeting only served to make the spacious rooms look tiny. And all those horrible painted ceramic dogs. If they loved dogs so much, why didn’t they just get a real one?

Still, Kenya was her sister, and she hated the idea of her possibly being disappointed. “Kenya, Mom’s just making a suggestion. I really don’t think you should start making plans to marry Gregory. You’ll feel very bad if things don’t work out.”

Arlene took another sip of her drink. “Listen, it’s as good as done. From what I know about Ernie and Flo, they’d be mortified to have an illegitimate grandbaby.”

“I agree, Mom. But it isn’t what they think, it’s what Gregory wants.”

“Gregory will do whatever they want him to do. He’s a nice young man. He’s also an only child, which means they probably have a good hold over him.”

Suzanne dumped the mushrooms into a colander and let the faucet water rinse them. “Like I said, first things first. Kenya, go down to the women’s clinic on Monday.” She broke off when Lauren wandered into the kitchen, her careless ambulation and slouched-over posture suggesting boredom.

“Auntie Kenya, you said you’d watch TV with me. I found a different movie that starts in five minutes.”

“She’ll be with you in a minute, Lauren,” Suzanne said.

“Go on to your room. We’re talking about something private.”

“But my water needs ice.”

“Go ahead, get it.”

Lauren sprinted to the refrigerator, where she removed a pink plastic water bottle. Suzanne and Brad had installed a water purification system, and while Suzanne discouraged the children from eating in their bedrooms, she did allow them to hydrate, as long as they used containers with lids to prevent spillage. Suzanne knew her children were being raised amid privilege, and she wanted to impress upon them a certain degree of thriftiness as well as neatness. She insisted that Bradley and Lauren keep their own rooms clean rather than have Teresita clean them twice a week. She also encouraged them to drink lots of water between meals rather than pop, something they had grown up with. Since the water was purified, she taught them to refresh it with ice rather than dumping the contents into the sink. Suzanne felt it wasteful to continually dump a liter of water into the sink when they had a huge water bill each month due to pool and lawn maintenance.

After Lauren left the kitchen with her refreshed water container, Suzanne said, “Before you go, Kenya, I wanted to tell you not to say anything to anybody. I’m not even going to tell Brad until it’s confirmed. If it turns out to be a false alarm, there’s no need for anyone other than the three of us to know. So not a word to your brothers or to any of your friends. Got it?”

“I won’t say anything, Suzanne.” Kenya went to join Lauren, this time moving with a definite pep in her step.

The moment she was gone, Suzanne turned to her mother. “Mom,” she said with disappointment, “I wish you hadn’t promised Kenya that she’s going to be Gregory’s wife. If he doesn’t want to marry her, he’s not going to, and I don’t think he does. Now Kenya expects to get married, and when it doesn’t happen she’ll be heartbroken. Have you forgotten already how mopey she was just a few minutes ago?”

“Oh, it’ll be fine,” Arlene said dismissively. “It’ll be just as I told you. Ernie and Flo will want him to marry Kenya, just to legitimize the baby. They’ll tell him he can divorce her after the baby’s born. They’ll tell Kenya that, too.”

“You’re forgetting one important detail, Mom. Gregory doesn’t love her. I personally believe”—Suzanne lowered her voice to just above a whisper—“that he comes to her between his other relationships, just because she’s there. If you ask me, she’s a fool to keep taking him back. So what can possibly come from Kenya and Gregory getting married other than a broken heart for Kenya?”

“A wonderful life. All Kenya has to do is make Gregory not want to divorce her.”

“Mom, I hate to be a spoilsport, but I just don’t see that happening. If Kenya could hold him with sex alone, he wouldn’t have gone after Paige.” Suzanne didn’t even want to think about the loving way Gregory had treated Paige last night, holding her hand, looking at her with love in his eyes. Was her mother blind? “And you know as well as I do that Kenya’s housekeeping skills are”—she groped for the right word—“atrocious.”

“Well, she’ll have to brush up on her housekeeping skills and learn how to cook,” Arlene said. “She needs to hold off on a divorce as long as she can. It’ll probably be five or six years at least before Gregory starts making any big money. If they have to divorce, I want to make sure Kenya gets a piece of whatever he’s got. Then she can get to work on finding a second husband who has even more money than Gregory.”

Suzanne had to admire her mother’s maneuvering. “You’ve got it all planned out, don’t you?”

“They say you should marry for love the first time, and for financial security with subsequent marriages, no matter how many there may be.”

“Tell me, Mom. Did you feel that way about me when I married Brad?”

“Of course not. I could tell you two were madly in love. Brad needed no other reason to marry you other than because he wanted to.”

Suzanne beamed, unable to deny how good her mother’s statement made her feel, but she still worried about the current situation. She might have requested Brad not be told until after Kenya had her condition confirmed, but she already saw the pickle that put her in. Brad would be upset if he learned about Kenya’s pregnancy from Paige, but Suzanne also knew that if she told him as soon as she found out, then he’d be sure to tell Paige. It simply wasn’t right for Brad’s daughter to know about Kenya’s pregnancy before Gregory, the father, knew. She had to work it out in her head.

And fast.