Every Woman Needs a Wife (21 page)

Brandi bristled with anger, but being outnumbered she wisely kept her mouth shut.

The tattooed man’s smile vanished almost as fast as it appeared. He joined the other fellow on the floor, leaving Brandi standing in righteous annoyance as her reflection bounced off the silver walls, trying to ignore the two men, and keep a prayer line open to God, one that she hadn’t tapped into since she’d been a little girl.

“Well, you have to believe in one or the other, man,” he said. “It’s not fair to straddle the fence.”

“I don’t and there’s nothing that has happened in my life to make me feel otherwise.”

“Only white people can afford not to believe in the Creator,” Brandi said.
“We’ve had nothing but God on our side.” This from a woman who hadn’t offered up a prayer before today—maybe a quick grace and not much more—in years.
What a hypocrite!
Brandi thought.

“For all the help it did bringing your kind over here.”

“Yeah? And I’m sure
your
kind had a lot to do with that. That wasn’t about God, that was about greed in the guise of Christianity. Nowhere did Jesus condone slavery or the mistreatment of women. Nor did he state that men were supposed to rule over them. All were equal—male and female, Jew and Gentile. Those who bathe and those who don’t know what soap and water are,” she said, leveling a stony gaze at the bald one, whose armpits, with the increased heat in the elevator, had suddenly kicked in to Level II funk. She put her collar over her nose.

Mr. Plaid Shirt folded his scrawny arms over his chest, daring either one of them to say anything more. Right now God and her child were all Brandi could think about.

Mr. Tattoo glanced up at Brandi. “Let’s see if we can persuade him to pick a side. I’m game if you are.”

Brandi hated small spaces with a passion. With each passing moment, the air seemed to become heavier and more humid. Her heart had jumped into her throat, clogging any ability to speak. She shrugged absently, not caring one way or another, continuing to pray for Sierra inwardly, and gestured for him to continue. Anything to take her mind off the increasing heat and the smell that became stronger by the minute.

“Maybe you haven’t been given a good argument,” Mr. Tattoo said. “What I—”

At that moment, the elevator lurched downward, throwing Brandi to the floor. Her heart did a solid flip and skipped a few beats. Mr. Plaid Shirt took a quick succession of fearful breaths as his eyes darted around the elevator car. The bald one reached for the metal bars, bracing for the obvious. The trio had no time to recover as the elevator picked up speed, whizzing past seventy, then sixty-five, then sixty at a pace any race-car driver would envy.

Brandi bowed her head in another prayer for her child and added only a brief one for herself.

The bald, smelly one grunted, knuckles growing white as he gripped the silver railing.

Mr. Plaid Shirt clutched a tattered briefcase to his chest, glancing warily at Baldy, then to Brandi, as both men began, “Our Father, who art in Heaven…”

V
ernon grinned as he hung up the phone. A frantic call from Tanya signaled trouble in paradise. She’d already failed at keeping the girls safe. A hushed call from his youngest daughter had set things in motion. Maybe he’d be able to go home sooner than he expected.

Vernon cased his mother’s house like a hardened criminal all afternoon. Damn, this wasn’t the time for her to take a vacation. He needed her! But he knew he would have to beg for help. He really hadn’t stayed in touch as much as he should have after the divorce. If he had, his father would have stopped the cash flow faster than a hooker cleans up for the next customer.
A shame for her to have almost five thousand square feet to herself
, he thought as he looked at the house as though he’d never really seen it.

The house had five bedrooms, six bathrooms, and a solarium with an indoor pool leading out into the garden. His father had fought like hell in court for every square inch. However, Mama fought back in a vicious move fielded by Avie Davidson that laid his father on his back.

Bettye Spencer walked away with the house, two cars, a lump sum, the house in Florida, and a monthly stipend that made his father lose two years of his life every time he signed the check. Although Avie was Brandi’s lawyer, too, Vernon would make sure that what happened to his parents never happened to him. Brandi would end this foolishness and he would tuck his tail and go home. He could wait her out. Everything would blow over. He was sure of it.

Vernon had had enough. His father, Jeremy, Craig, and a few other friends had rejected him. He’d spent the last of his cash on a seedy motel, and
the U-Haul late fees were still mounting. Never in his life had he slept with tissue in his ears and nose, and his mouth turned into the pillow. He didn’t even want to think about what could crawl into his mouth or what was growing in the mattress or that nasty carpet.

He cracked open a little used basement window, climbed into his mother’s house, unlocked the basement door, and scurried to deactivate the alarm.

Within three hours, he’d moved his stuff into the basement, hung his clothes in his old room, and lay resting on the couch, showered and totally refreshed, finally feeling a sense of peace, and ready for a serious power nap.

Home, sweet home.

♥♥♥

A shriek jerked him out of a sound sleep.

“What the hell are you doing in my house?”

“Mama, it’s me!” he said, jumping up when he realized Mama was packing a twenty-two. Where the hell had she gotten that?

She lowered the gun just a little. “How did you get in here? You don’t have a key.”

“Well, I um—I—um, broke a windowpane downstairs, then climbed through. I’ll have it fixed tomorrow.”

She dropped her hand, then retrieved her bag from the doorway. “Doesn’t explain why you did it.”

Vernon sprinted across the living room to help with a suitcase that was large enough to hold a dead body or two.

Mama’s golden brown complexion had turned a deeper shade of tan. Her eyebrows were arched in symmetric lines. Her thin lips had a bit of plum gloss—a color he had never known her to wear. Who
was
this new man? And what was Mama doing in the Bahamas with him?

He leaned over to kiss her. “You look great!” And in the next breath added, “I need a place to stay.”

“Sounds like a personal problem to me,” she snapped, waving him and his kiss away.

“But all my stuff’s already inside.”

She pursed her thin lips, cocked her neck, parted her lips, and told him, “You didn’t ask.”

Vernon stared at her.

The expression on her round face was unchanged and unreadable. She pointed, gesturing toward him, then to the door.

Out? Oh shit! Nooooo!!!!
His muscles were already aching from moving stuff in! “Mama, you can’t carry one of those,” he said, eyeing the gun in her other hand.

“Try telling that to Mrs. Steele,” she snapped.

“What happened to her?”

Bettye leaned back on the wall separating the foyer from the living room. “Burglar caught her off guard.”

Vernon spread his hands in protest. “I’m not a burglar.”

“Broke in, didn’t you?”

An hour later, he had everything in the U-Haul
again
, then knocked on the front door.

The silver-haired, graceful woman with a fresh tan that a supermodel would envy opened the door and stood menacingly in the door frame.

“Mama, can I stay with you for a while?”

“Why didn’t you go to your father?”

“I did, but—”

She cut him off with a raised hand. “He didn’t want you hanging around Julie.”

Vernon gaped. Was Dad that easy to figure out?

Mama laughed. “Wafer-thin heifer might like the younger player better than the washed-up, wrinkled version.” She folded her arms over her small chest, hair glistening from the foyer light. “One month. Tops.”

Vernon’s mouth went dry, his heart sank. “One
month!”
Hell, it might take Brandi longer than that.

“And
you’ll have a midnight curfew.”

“Mama, I’m a grown man,” he protested.

Leaning forward, she whispered, “Then your grown ass can stay somewhere else. You’ve got a lot of nerve to ask me for a damn thing after taking your father’s side in the divorce.”

“Mama, he would’ve cut me off if I stayed here.”

“Boy, he sure does know how to use that will, doesn’t he?” she said bitterly. “And heaven forbid you don’t see a dime even if the man outlives you. There comes a time when money doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Then why did you fight him so hard in the divorce?” he asked, his tone bitter and frustrated.

“Living with him, being married to him, was a full-time job and I deserved some compensation.” She winked. “The same compensation Brandi deserves. I think Avie will make sure she gets it, too.”

Vernon stood at the threshold, almost glaring at his mother, as nightfall and another night in the U-Haul or sharing a space with roaches and a few other insects loomed in his future. Or possibly a night stretched out on his office sofa. Neither was much of a welcome alternative to sleeping in a warm, soft bed in a clean house.

“Do you realize how much you hurt me when you turned your back on me? After everything I did to protect you from his overbearing ways and need to mold you into something that you clearly aren’t? But now I’m seeing differently. All the crap I put up with for your sake crushed my spirit more than anything your father did to me.”

“I know, Mama, and I’m sorry for that,” he said, hoping to avoid the guilt trip she was about to send him on. She was packing his bag and printing airline tickets to send him away for a long time. He knew he was wrong in what he’d done, but he couldn’t seem to balance both parents. And look at what it had gotten him. He had always feared being without money, especially on trips home to his mother’s native Mississippi. He couldn’t believe that she had come from such sparse beginnings. Judging by her bearing and the way she kept herself, the woman could easily have come from the richest of families. He still loved her and deep down he thought she would always be there for him. But in some ways he wasn’t as sure as he’d been before.

“I don’t think you’re sorry about anything, but I think you will be,” she said, pursing her lips like a principal looking down on a wayward student. “I think you’re just saying that ’cause you’re out on your ear right now.
And I still don’t hear you agreeing to my terms, so…” A small smirk played across her lips as she pushed the door, closing him out.

“All right!”

She stepped back, opening the door just wide enough for him to walk in. “And I want it in writing,” she said, turning her back to him as she walked into the living room.

“Jeez!”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” she snapped.

“I didn’t say—”

Protests died instantly on his lips as she whirled to face him. “No back talk, either. Your father screwed up all those years of good home training. I plan to fix that while you’re here.”

Things were not supposed to turn out like this.

“You’ll buy your own food,” Bettye said, as he trailed her through the huge house to the kitchen. “And I will charge rent.”

“Mama, what’s gotten into you?”

“Common sense,” she replied evenly. “Something you should’ve used before sleeping with that woman.”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

She pulled out a glass and sloshed sparkling grape juice into it.
“You
may not want to
talk
, but you damn well better listen.” She held up the glass, winking. “And I’ve got plenty to say.”

She sure did. Two hours’ worth—every bit of it vicious.

T
he elevator came to a jerking halt at the tenth floor. Paramedics fished them out, but Brandi declined medical treatment though her back, legs, and thighs had aches in spots she didn’t know existed. Where was her baby girl?

Thirty minutes later, Brandi rushed into the house, finishing a call to the mother of one of Sierra’s friends as she dropped her briefcase near the door and ran into the living room. None of her friends or family knew where Sierra was.

Tanya stood hovering over Simone, who had a scowl on her normally pretty face that would make a sumo wrestler think she was a member of the club. The little minx knew something. Brandi could feel it.

All it took was one stern look from Brandi and her oldest daughter spilled her guts. “She’s with Daddy.”

Brandi counted to ten, but imagined her hands slowly wrapping around Simone’s neck. “You knew that all along?”

Simone slumped further into the sofa. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I could strangle you.”

Simone averted her gaze, sulking. “Stand in line.” Tanya had said the same thing.

Brandi dialed Vernon’s cell.

His sleepy voice answered on the third ring. “What!”

She snapped, “Don’t what me, Negro! You’re sleeping?!”

“No, I’m lying here praying to the god of guaranteed hair growth! Hell
yeah, I’m sleeping,” he growled. “Especially after all the shit you’ve put me through.”

“Where’s my daughter?”

“Ask your wife,” he shot back. “Isn’t she supposed to keep up with the kids?”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Brandi retorted, lowering her tone as Tanya ushered Simone into the kitchen.

Brandi heard only his breathing.

“She’s not here. I don’t have her. Maybe your wife isn’t as good as you thought. Are you sure you can trust her in our house?”

“You trusted sinking your—”

“You know what? I’m sick of hearing that,” he growled. “How long are you gonna make me pay for that?”

“I’m not making you pay for anything. I’m serious about making this work.”

“Get that woman out of my house!”

Brandi glanced at Tanya, who leaned on the entrance, eyes filled with worry. “No, she’s part of the family now. You know, sort of like a sister or long-lost cousin.”