Four Wives (16 page)

W
AITING ANXIOUSLY ON LOVE’S
front porch, Marie watched the Mercedes SUV turn the corner. Slowly, cautiously, it made its way down the street.

“Christ’will you hurry up!” she muttered out loud.

Even in a moment like this one’a moment that screamed out for urgency’Gayle was going the speed limit.

“Sorry I’m late,” Gayle said after parking the car. She had Oliver at her side, and he was unusually sullen.

“Hey, bud. How’s it going?” Marie patted the boy gently on the back.

Oliver shrugged. “OK.”

“The kids are in the living room,” Marie announced, opening the door for him.

Gayle bent down and looked at her son. “Go on in, Oliver. I bet Henry is waiting for you.”

He didn’t smile, and there was no sign of the usual excitement at seeing his friends. Gayle had been waiting for him to come out of hiding, but he was still nowhere to be found.

“How is she?” Gayle asked, trading one worry for another.

Marie gave her a shaky hand signal. “Still in pain. Everyone’s going crazy trying to figure out what it is.”

“It’s not Lyme disease, though.”

“Nope. Came back negative. They did another MRI, and took more blood. Honestly, they don’t know what to think. Bill is considering a virus now. Apparently, there are all these diseases that can get into our bodies and cause all kinds of hell.”

“So he’s worried sick?”

“Pretty much. Worried with a healthy dose of fear. But that’s Bill. I’m still hoping for the pulled muscle theory Love’s peddling to everyone.”

Gayle shook her head and let out a deep sigh. “Well’I have it. Should we go in?”

They went first to the living room to check on the Yvonne Welsh day care center. Though it seemed at first blush to be an inherent contradiction, the refined Hollywood star was seated gracefully on the floor, her face now caked with makeup at the hands of three little girls.

“Not too much, now, ladies. Remember’it should look
natural,”
Yvonne said, eliciting wide-eyed excitement from her audience. A red velvet cosmetics case lay open beside her, real life treasures overflowing onto the floor as the girls dove in with gleeful abandon. There was an air about her that even she could not stifle’even when playing the grandmother’ and the girls were awestruck. They never would have found such joy making up their mothers.

Yvonne smiled at the women. “Do you have it?”

Gayle nodded.

“Wonderful!” Yvonne had been a pot of nerves waiting for Gayle to arrive. “Go on’I’ve got the children.”

Marie and Gayle turned for the stairs. The second floor was dark. The bedroom doors were closed to keep the air conditioning from escaping, leaving nothing but the sunshine from below to illuminate the small corridor. It was just after three. The day was clear, bright. As they approached Love’s room, Marie and Gayle could sense that such a day was not welcome in this part of the house.

“Love, we’re coming in,” Marie said as she turned the handle.

Lying amidst the carefully positioned pillows, Love lay slightly propped up’an improvement from the past few days. Curled in a ball at her side, his face pressed against her bare arm, Baby Will slept with his thumb in his mouth.

“Shhhh,” Love whispered. “He’s finally settled.” Her eyes were on the sleeping baby as she spoke, and Marie could see they were filled with the tears of a mother’s guilt.

Not wanting to say the things that were begging to come out, Marie stood in the doorway.

“Hi, Lovey. How are you today?” Gayle said softly as she approached her friend.

“Better. He’s taking a bottle. But he won’t sleep unless he’s next to me.”

Gayle nodded. There was no point arguing with her. That the baby
would
sleep in his bed if left to cry for a few minutes was not what Love was willing to hear right now. It was human nature for a baby to take whatever he could from his mother, even if it left her destroyed, and it was equally innate for a mother to give until she had nothing left. Unless, of course, you were a Haywood. Then, you delegated such motherly tasks to the hired nurse, then the nanny. Watching her friend cradle Baby Will as he slept, Gayle wondered if her mother had ever held her that way. And she couldn’t help but believe’whatever the coming years brought to this house’that Will was one lucky baby.

“I brought you something,” Gayle said, a small brown bag draped over her delicate wrist.

Love gave her a curious look. It wasn’t unusual for Gayle to bring a gift. In fact, she rarely arrived anyplace without some kind of offering. But the presence of Marie, the arrangements that had apparently been made to present this gift, had her worried.

Gayle looked at Marie, who nodded. Then she pulled a large, paperback book from the bag and handed it to Love.

“What is this?” Love asked, though she knew before looking at the cover.

“I know someone who knows an exec at Barnes & Noble. It’s an advance copy.”

Love felt the pain grip her back as the tension spread through her body. Holding the book in her hands, she let her eyes fall upon the cover. She was not ready for this. How did they even know? Her friends, her mother downstairs’all of it added up to one big conspiracy.

Gayle sat on the bed next to her and placed a hand on Love’s arm. “We’ve been friends for six years, since that damned Easter Bunny thing. I knew we would be friends the moment I saw your eyes rolling’both of you,” Gayle said, glancing at Marie, who smiled back. “And yet, in all those years, you’ve never once spoken of your father, except in some sarcastic, nonchalant way. I have no idea what this means for you’this new book. But we wanted you to have it before the rest of the world.”

Love was silent as she looked at the gift in her hands. She had wondered what it might feel like, holding her father’s words again, being this close to reading them.

“I don’t want it,” Love said, tossing the book on the bed. “I’m sorry, I know you meant well.” Then the tears came.

“Oh, Lovey,” Gayle said, stroking her face.

“Let me see that damned thing.” Bounding in from the doorway, Marie grabbed the book and opened up to a random page. “Hmmmm … I didn’t know the great Alexander Rice had penile enlargement! Let me see what else is in here.”

She flipped some pages, then pretended to read again. “He likes to wear women’s underwear? Shit’no wonder you don’t want to read it,” Marie continued with a dramatic sarcasm. Then she pressed the book to her chest and looked pleadingly at Gayle. “Can I keep it? There’s some good stuff in here!”

Through the tears, Love felt a smile break free. Still, she wouldn’t take the book.

“Come on, Lovey. Just poke through it,” Gayle said, feeling a rush of anger. Love was a mess’physically, emotionally. How could a father do this to his own child? She wanted to tear the book to shreds, buy every copy they made and burn them all. More than that, she wanted Love to read it, to be OK with whatever it held. To be well again.

She felt the blood pounding against her temples, blood that had been racing through her all night and into today. She had learned to live with Troy, his fits of rage against her and the acts of contrition that followed. But last night he had crossed a line, and the invisible scars she could sense within her son evoked something more powerful than her walls of tolerance.

And for the first time in a long time, she let some of it out.

“Damn it, Love!” she said, drawing looks of shock from her friends. “What good are all my fucking connections if I can’t help you!”

Silence filled the room as the women took in the change. Over the years, they had fallen into their roles’outspoken misfit, fragile caretaker, frantic supermom. With one sentence, Gayle had reshuffled the deck.

Marie was the first to acknowledge it. “Excuse me, Miss Manners’what
would
the Haywoods say about such language?” she asked from across the small room. Then she started to laugh. Gayle followed, and finally Love, until the laughter filled the room. Baby Will opened his eyes, then nuzzled deeper into his mother. He pulled his thumb into his mouth, sucking hard and drifting off again.

“Stop’it hurts!” Love said between breaths, but the release was powerful.

Marie joined her friends at Love’s bedside. She placed the book on the nightstand, then leaned down to give Love a kiss.

Downstairs, Yvonne listened to her daughter’s laughter. It had been some time since she’d heard it, years perhaps, and it lifted her up to that place reserved for motherly joy. That she had not been the one to break through and incite it mattered not one bit.

“How’s that, Grandma?” Jessica asked, holding up a mirror for her grandmother.

Yvonne looked at her bright red cheeks, her frosted blue eyelids. Lipstick covered her lips, and a good inch around them. Her eyebrows were black and full, clashing terribly with her lighter hair. Still, she examined herself with serious scrutiny, shifting her head to catch all the angles as she might before shooting a scene. With the girls looking on with bated anticipation, her daughter’s laughter still filtering through from above, Yvonne smiled.

“It’s just perfect!”

T
HERE WAS A KNOCK
on the bedroom door. Yvonne entered before anyone answered. Janie Kirk was trailing behind her.

“What are we discussing today, ladies?” she asked, playing dumb as Janie took a seat in the corner.

“Hi, Janie,” Gayle said, greeting her friend with a cautious look.

Marie jumped in to aid in Yvonne’s cover. “Golf and cereal boxes.”

Yvonne shook her head at Marie and gave her a wink. “Not again.
Really,
Marie. You must get over it!”

Yvonne held her hand in the air, then walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

“Your mother thinks I should let Anthony remain in a state of Nean-derthalic idiocy,” Marie noted for the record.

With her baby still nuzzled into her, Love nodded. “Don’t get me started. It’s the generation.”

There was a brief moment of silence to acknowledge the truth of the statement.

“So,” Janie said, after getting settled with her folder and a pen. “Besides golf and cereal, what did I miss?”

Love looked at Marie, and Marie knew. She wasn’t ready to tell another soul about her father’s book.

“Let’s see … I’ve got this case with the dead baby, and this damned cute intern looking over my shoulder all the time …”

“Poor baby.” Love smiled, giving Marie a thankful look.

“I think it sounds sweet’a young man infatuated with his brilliant boss. We could all use some of that,” Gayle said, eliciting looks of confusion.

“What?”

“What do you mean,
what?
Marie is flirting with her employee.” Love smiled again, and Marie flipped her the finger.

“I am not flirting. End of discussion. Now, what’s happening with this fundraiser? Have we done enough to save the world yet, or are there more flowers to arrange?”

From across the room, Marie caught the look that passed between Gayle and Janie. As protective as she was of Love, she sensed something similar now between the other pair of friends.

“Something happening, ladies?” she asked, trying to keep it light.

Janie shook her off. “Nothing.” It was almost convincing.

Then Marie remembered. “The vote! Gayle’why didn’t you say anything? The meeting was last night, wasn’t it?”

Gayle didn’t answer.

“Gayle?” Love asked. “What happened?”

The silence in the room provided the answer.

Janie sighed, looked at Gayle one last time, then finally spoke. “They voted for the facility upgrade.”

“Throw pillows? You have to be joking! Who voted against you?” Marie was now irate.

Gayle shrugged, her eyes averted. “I didn’t go.”

Marie was perplexed. “Isn’t that what all of this is for? Giving up your house, your time, not to mention all the years of generous donations?”

“I’m sure something came up. She did the best she could,” Janie tried, though she was, as usual, at a loss to contain Marie.

“I’ll call them,” Marie said, reaching for her phone.

Love tried to stop her from her place on the bed. “Marie …”

“What?”

“Please, Marie. Just let it be.” Gayle sounded desperate.

Holding the phone in her hand, Marie gave it a squeeze as she looked with frustration at her friends. “Fine,” she relented. “But I don’t understand any of this. They need your money. They need your connections. You have incredible power here.
And
… you’re right about the direction for the clinic.”

Love frowned at Marie.

“What? Am I wrong?” Marie needed answers’to a lot of things at the moment. She would settle for the ones that were right in front her.

Gayle shook her head, then looked down, her thoughts quickly reducing to an image of her mother, the sound of breaking glass, and the pills in her vanity drawer. It was almost five, two more hours and she could stop feeling this way.
Yes,
she had missed the meeting.
Yes,
they had used the opportunity to vote against her wishes for the clinic. She had planned to go, to fight for the program. But after the altercation with Troy, the meeting was more confrontation than she was able to face. How could she possibly explain any of that without revealing everything?

Pulling herself together, swallowing down the anger to the deep well she had built for all things unpleasant, Gayle began to shut down.

Janie stepped in to defend her. “They’re a tough crowd. I wouldn’t want to face them either.”

“Gayle?” Love said. But the chilling vagueness she saw in Gayle’s eyes was something she knew too well, and it had her worried.

Marie carried on, reciting her knowledge about boards, and people who used them to feel important. Who cared what they thought of Gayle? The point was to help the clinic. The rest was just noise, tedious, annoying noise that had to be stopped.

Listening, nodding, Love tried to pull Gayle into the plotting to save the situation. But Gayle was nowhere to be found. She waited for a pause in Marie’s diatribe, then politely excused herself.

“I have to get home. Oliver needs dinner.”

“Gayle …” Marie tried to stop her, but Gayle walked through the door without as much as a parting glance.

“I’ll go after her,” Janie said, rushing to gather her things. “It’ll be fine.”

When she was gone, Marie stood still, her eyes now fixed on the empty hallway just outside the room.

“What the hell is going on?”

Love sighed and stole a hug from Baby Will. “There’s something wrong with her.”

“What?” Marie asked, turning to face Love.

“I don’t know. Something’s not right in that house.”

They both knew Gayle’s life was complicated’the family that was richer than God, the estate and staff that needed managing, her son who grew more reclusive each year. And, of course, the arrogant ass who tried to pass as a husband, and a man.

“She never talks about any of it,” Marie said, checking her watch. As always, she was running late for dinner, homework, and the rest of her life that was waiting.

Love looked at Marie until she finally had her full attention. “Do any of us? Talk, I mean. About what’s really going on.”

Marie could not pretend to be surprised. They were the best of friends. They knew everything about each other. Their kids’ worst moments, their husbands’ choice of underwear. How they drank their coffee. Still, Love was hiding behind the present conflict to avoid the book sitting beside her’the book containing her life. And Marie hadn’t brushed the surface of Randy Matthews.

“I know, I know,” Marie said, waving her off as she leaned across the bed. She gave Love a kiss on the cheek and squeezed her hand. “Even so’ nothing in my life is real until I tell you about it. You know that, right?”

Love smiled at her and nodded, wishing that were true.