Sisters and Husbands (3 page)

Maybe it was because she had finally found herself a decent man, or perhaps it was that her sons, Kenny and Russell, now ages
fourteen and nine, were growing up and didn’t need as much of her time. Whatever the reason, Charmaine had bid a permanent
farewell to Betty Crocker, her constant companion of the past several years, and all the tuna casserole mixes. Instead, she
was popping roasts and pies made from scratch in and out of the oven faster than her little family could sit at the table.
And loving every minute of it. The only bad thing about the incessant fussing around the kitchen, as far as Charmaine could
see, was that all the delicious food was starting to build up around her hips.

She had just added potatoes and carrots to the roast and popped it back into the oven when Tyrone, Kenny, and Russell came
in from shooting hoops on a nearby basketball court. They headed straight for the Gatorade she had chilling in the freezer,
then perched themselves on stools at the kitchen bar, sweaty bodies, dingy caps, and all. There was a time when she would
have made a real stink about a bunch of funky males hanging out in her kitchen and shooed them off to shower and change. But
this was the new Charmaine—sweet, patient, and tolerant with her guys.

“Smells real good, honey,” Tyrone said. “What’s cooking?”

“Your favorite, baby. Pot roast.”

Kenny lowered the bottle of Gatorade from his lips. “Can we get that sweet potato dish with apples and marshmallows that you
made last week to go with it?”

“It’s already got white potatoes in it,” Charmaine said.

Kenny pouted and Russell joined in. Even though Kenny was growing faster than she could clothe him and at six feet he was
a couple of inches taller than Tyrone, Kenny was still only fourteen, and at times like this he looked even younger despite
his height. Russell adored his older half brother and was at a stage where he always followed along with him.

“The sweet potatoes
are
good,” Tyrone said. “You should whip up a bunch.”

“They are off the chain!” Kenny said. “My new favorite dish.”

“Mine too,” Russell added.

Charmaine realized what was going on and was ashamed that Tyrone had picked up on it first. Although Tyrone and Kenny got
along, she sometimes sensed a bit of jealousy on Kenny’s part. After all, for the first several years of his life Kenny had
had his mama all to himself. Then he became a big brother to Russell, and for a while was kind of the man of the house.

Now there was a real man in the house, and on top of that, Kenny also had a new older stepsister—Tiffany, Tyrone’s fourteen-year-old
daughter, who lived in Oakland, California, and visited for two weeks over the summer and a week at Christmas. Tiffany was
only a few months older, but suddenly Kenny had all these other older people in his life and he wanted to assert some authority.
If Charmaine was making Tyrone’s favorite for dinner, Kenny would insist on his favorite too.

Shame on her for not sensing what was happening before Tyrone did, Charmaine thought. But Tyrone’s compassion was one of a
million things that had attracted her to this handsome butterscotch-complexioned babe.

She reached across the bar and squeezed Kenny’s and Russell’s cheeks playfully. “One off-the-chain sweet-potato dish coming
up, then.” She removed her red KitchenAid mixer from a base cabinet, then went to the bin in the refrigerator for the sweet
potatoes. Kenny and Russell drained their Gatorade and left to go take showers.

“How did the fitting go?” Tyrone asked. “Or whatever it was you went to.”

“The fitting and a meeting with the chef. Beverly looks real happy, but her friend Valerie had a big fight with her fiancé
last night and she was fit to be tied. She called me just before I left and bawled almost nonstop for a half hour.”

“Makes you glad we went to the justice of the peace, huh?”

Charmaine smiled and nodded. “And Evelyn was showing off a hot new Fendi bag. Those things start at, like, five hundred, I
think.”

Tyrone raised his eyebrows. “Five hundred what?”

“Dollars.”

“Damn. Well, Kevin is a lawyer, she’s a psychologist. That’s how them rich folks do.”

“Lucky for them,” Charmaine said with sarcasm.

“You jealous? You’re a secretary, I’m just an electrician.”

“What do you mean,
just
an electrician. I’m proud of you. And proud to be married to you. I don’t need no Fendi bags.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Okay, so I’m lying about that part. I mean, I really am happier since meeting you. That much is true. But I would still kill
for a fucking Fendi.”

He laughed.

“What time does Tiffany’s flight get in from Oakland tomorrow evening?” Charmaine asked.

“About four.”

“What you got planned for her stay?” Charmaine leaned over the sink and ran water into a large pot. “Anything special?” She
knew that the days would be a marathon of nonstop activity, with Tyrone trying to fit fifty-two weeks into his daughter’s
two-week visit. Last summer, their first together, was full of shopping sprees and amusement parks, the beach and bowling.
For fourteen days straight they barely stopped, and Tyrone must have spent a few thousand dollars, most of it on clothes,
shoes, and bags for Tiffany.

The problem wasn’t the nonstop pace or all the dollars he spent when Tiffany visited. Tyrone made decent enough money and
was certainly entitled to spend some of it on his daughter. And Charmaine believed firmly that girls needed their fathers
in their lives. She admired Tyrone for not shirking his responsibility the way too many fathers did.

The real problem was that Tyrone treated Tiffany as if she were visiting royalty, catering to her every wish and whim. Like
a lot of absentee fathers, he missed his child. He was also filled with guilt about not being with her year-round. Instead
of treating her like a daughter, with all the love and discipline that should mean, he treated her like a little princess.
The result was a child who thought she was entitled to special treatment. And who could blame her? Any kid would lap that
up.

Charmaine remembered how she had come home late from work one day last summer drop-dead tired as usual, and Tiffany indignantly
asked her why she hadn’t done the laundry. The girl had been visiting only a few days, but apparently she needed a special
pair of jeans that she had worn on the flight. Never mind that Tiffany brought at least six pairs of jeans with her. She needed
that particular pair, she explained, and she needed them first thing in the morning.

Charmaine had almost choked on her tongue. She gathered all of the girl’s dirty clothes from a pile on the floor in her bedroom,
dumped them in her skinny arms, and showed her to the laundry room in the basement. She calmly but firmly asked Tiffany whether
she needed help working the washer and dryer. Instead of responding, Tiffany had thrown her clothes on the floor and run crying
to her daddy.

Charmaine was sure Tyrone would straighten Tiffany out and make her do her own laundry or tell her to wait patiently until
Charmaine was ready to do it. Instead, her new husband came riding to his daughter’s rescue like some knight in shining armor
and did the laundry himself. At that very moment.

That was when Charmaine realized that the honeymoon had officially ended. Over the next few hours, you could have sliced the
chill in the air with a kitchen knife.

The one saving grace was that Charmaine didn’t have to deal with this nonsense year-round. When she did have to put up with
it, she tried to keep her nerves steady. She picked her battles carefully and let the rest slide. She knew that her life would
get back to normal after Tiffany’s visit and that Tyrone would go back to being his usual sweet self.

“I think we’ll take it a little easier this time,” Tyrone said. “And not be on the go around the clock. We can spend some
days just kicking around the house relaxing, watching videos or something.”

Charmaine smiled thinly. He’d said that before Tiffany’s last visit at Christmas, and they still ended up going and spending
nonstop for an entire week. Tiffany would bat her big hazel eyes at her daddy and get him to do and buy whatever she wanted.
And what she wanted was the latest of everything, from clothes to gadgets. Still, Tyrone was a good man, and they had a great
relationship as husband and wife for forty-nine weeks out of the year. Charmaine wasn’t going to let a few weeks ruin that.

“Sounds good,” she said as she gathered the other ingredients while the sweet potatoes boiled. “I’ll get some grocery shopping
done when you go to the airport to pick her up. I can rent a couple of videos then. Anything in particular you think she’ll
want to see?”

Taking the last swig from his Gatorade bottle, he stood up and stretched his lean and muscular self. Whenever he did that,
he looked good enough to eat. If she weren’t cooking, she would have devoured him then and there.

“Whatever you get should be fine with her,” he said, dumping the bottle in the recycling bin.

“When does she go home, exactly?” Charmaine asked.

“August seventeenth.”

Charmaine paused, spice bottle in one hand, box of brown sugar in the other. “You mean
June
seventeenth. Right?”

“No. It’s August. She’s staying all summer this time, remember? I told you that.”

Charmaine felt little beads of sweat popping out under her newly colored honey-blond hairdo. She shifted her weight from one
bare foot to the other. “No, I don’t think you did.”

“I definitely told you, baby. Just before I made the flight reservations last week.” He blinked. “At least I thought I did.”

Charmaine sighed loudly as she placed the bottle on the countertop. “No, I’m certain, you did
not,
honey.”

“Okay, so she goes back August seventeenth. Her school starts on the twentieth. Sorry if I didn’t tell you before.”

He walked up behind her and kissed her on the neck. It was a good thing he was behind her. If he had seen the expression on
her face, Charmaine suspected he would have wanted to call an ambulance.

“I’m going on up to shower,” Tyrone said.

She turned to see his heels disappear through the doorway, then slammed the sugar box on the countertop.

“Ah,
hell,
no,” she muttered between clenched teeth. That didn’t just happen, did it? He didn’t just pull a fast one on her, did he?

The potatoes boiled over at that moment and shook Charmaine out of her stupor. She ran to the stove and quickly switched the
pot to a cool burner, turned the stove off, and paused to catch her breath.

“Ma,” Kenny said, entering the kitchen and opening the refrigerator.

“What?”

“You look like you just burned your fingers or something.”

Damn if it didn’t feel like it too, she thought.

E
velyn pulled her black Mercedes sedan into the two-car garage just before dusk and leaned her head back on the soft leather
cushion. She needed a few minutes to gather her thoughts before going inside. Her family had lived in this house for twenty
happy, loving, fulfilling years. Yet whenever she came home lately, it felt like she was entering the house of a stranger.

Her husband was still around, of course, at least in body. His mind and spirit had vacated the premises months ago, soon after
their youngest child left for college. In her work as a psychologist, Evelyn had heard many gloomy tales of men changing drastically
at around age fifty. She never thought it would happen to Kevin.

She had realized that she and Kevin were growing apart, that the spark that had burned so brightly between them for so long
was slowly dying out. But she had been focused on raising the children, doing her work, and earning her Ph.D. She and Kevin
had spent nearly twenty-five years together, most of them very good years. She thought the foundation under their marriage
was solid enough to hold things together until they both had time to work on the relationship.

As Andre and then Rebecca approached their college years and she wrapped up work on her Ph.D., Evelyn began to anticipate
with eagerness the days when she and Kevin would have long stretches of time alone together. Visions of romantic dinners,
cozy walks in the park, and lazy Sunday afternoons lounging in bed began to dance in her head.

Yet when the moment finally arrived shortly after Rebecca went off to Spelman College last fall, Kevin suddenly began to change
at breakneck speed. He sold the law practice that he had spent nearly ten years building up. He took a job as a clerk at Blockbuster.
He replaced his once beloved Mercedes SUV with an ancient BMW.

She hadn’t shared any of this with a soul, not even her parents and sisters. Everyone thought they were still the perfect
happily married couple. She didn’t have the heart—or maybe the guts—to tell them the truth.

She exited the car and let herself into the L-shaped kitchen. The room was being remodeled and was in a shambles, with the
old cabinets, countertops, and appliances ripped out and new top-of-the-line appliances waiting to be installed. To Evelyn,
the whole space was a reminder of her troubled marriage. A few months ago, she had finally persuaded Kevin that it was time
to have the twenty-year-old kitchen upgraded, and contractors had begun the work last week.

Yet she and Kevin had bickered about everything, large and small, all along the way. He wanted a natural material like granite
for the countertops. She wanted Corian or something easier to maintain. He wanted bold paint colors. She wanted earth tones.

“I’m not living with a kitchen that reminds me of a fucking field full of dirt,” he had yelled as they debated in the middle
of the kitchen floor.

“Well, I don’t want a kitchen that knocks me back every time I enter it,” she had countered.

On and on it went. They were either yelling at each other or dishing out the silent treatment. As a psychologist, Evelyn knew
that the problem was far deeper than a simple disagreement over paint colors. Kevin was in the throes of a midlife crisis
or a severe case of male menopause. But as a wife, she was clueless as to how to get them through this confusing period.