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Authors: Bettye Griffin

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BOOK: Nothing But Trouble
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Chapter 47
F
rom the moment Vanessa came to the door when Gil picked her up for their regular outing, Gil had the uncomfortable feeling that something troubled his daughter. When Vanessa smiled it appeared genuine, but when she wasn't smiling a distressed expression flashed across her features. She would snap out of it only after he brought it to her attention.
“Vanessa,” he said for the fifth time that afternoon, “you know that if something is bothering you, you can always tell me about it.”
“I know, Popi.”
“You've been awfully quiet all afternoon. Didn't you like the movie?”
“It wasn't as funny as I thought it would be.”
Gil thoughtfully nodded, then pretended to concentrate on the menu. He had already decided to order a bacon cheeseburger with a ton of fries smothered in ranch dressing. Cholesterol be damned. But he wished he could get Vanessa to open up. He'd have to work quickly if he wanted to get the truth out of her. It wouldn't take long to eat and drive back into town.
He'd thought that once Vanessa made up with Brittany she would welcome the opportunity to spend at least every other Saturday night at his apartment, maybe invite Brittany to come along. That hadn't happened. Vanessa remained loyal to Irene and didn't want to leave her overnight.
He looked up sharply at the sound of a sob. “Vanessa? What is it? What's wrong, honey? You know you can tell me anything.” He felt frantic with frustration. They'd always been close. What could be so difficult for Vanessa to tell him?
A stab of fear pierced his gut. Surely she couldn't be—no, that was ridiculous. She wouldn't even be fourteen years old until March. More importantly, she barely left the house unless she went out with him for their weekends. No sleepovers with friends, and maybe just a quick afternoon outing here and there. No way could she be in trouble with some boy. But what else could it be?
“Vanessa,” he said as patiently as he could. “Will you please tell me what's wrong? I'm really beginning to worry about you.”
“Daddy, would I be a bad girl if I wanted to come live with you?”
Gil's mouth hung open. “Live with me? You want to come live with me?”
“I can't take Mama anymore.” Vanessa now sobbed openly.
“Of course you can come live with me. Come on, Vanessa, calm down.” He glanced around to see if anyone had noticed her emotional state. All he needed was for some well-meaning stranger to call the cops, thinking Vanessa was some young girl he'd abducted rather than his own daughter. “But it might take some time. You see, when your mother and I divorced, the judge gave her custody of you, and I only got visitation rights. To change that, I have to hire an attorney and get a court date. Then you'll have to tell the judge in your own words why you'd rather live with me.”
“That sounds like it's going to take a long time.”
At least she had stopped crying. “It shouldn't take that long. And you can always come to my house whenever you want. I rented a two-bedroom apartment so you would have a room of your own when you visited. But Vanessa, I have to ask. What made you change your mind? What has your mother done?”
“All she does is talk all the time about what a terrible person Miss Dana is, to destroy our family the way she did. She says that Miss Dana had her eye on you the minute her husband died, and that she schemed and schemed until she got you.”
“That's not true, Vanessa. None of it is true. Dana didn't destroy our family. Your mother and I were divorced long before Dana and I became involved with each other. And Dana never said or did anything inappropriate. I made the first move and asked her out after you and I and Brittany came back from New Orleans last year. Do you remember?”
“Yes.” She sniffled. “Mama also said that Miss Dana is a terrible mother, to make her daughter so unhappy when all she had to do was stop seeing you.”
“Let me ask you, Vanessa. If I had stopped seeing Dana after you cut off your friendship with Brittany, would you have gone right back to being her friend?”
“I don't know,” she said slowly. “I don't think so. I don't think Mama would have liked it. She probably wouldn't have let me go over there or let Brittany come to our house, either.”
“So that means things wouldn't have been all right if Miss Dana stopped seeing me, doesn't it?”
“Nnnnooooo.”
They paused a moment to give the waitress their orders. “Listen to me, Vanessa,” Gil said after the woman left their table, “I don't want to criticize your mother to you”—he paused to consider the irony, since Irene clearly had no problem doing just that when it came to
him
—“but let me say this. She has a very controlling nature. She tried to make a puppet out of me, and when I wouldn't go along she tried to make my life miserable. You remember all the arguments we used to have before I moved out?” At Vanessa's nod he continued. “I hated to leave you, Princess, but I didn't have much choice. I knew your mother would insist on full custody of you.” He didn't say that Irene's motives for this were purely to get back at him.
“But that wasn't enough,” he continued. “Your mother went after Dana once she found out I was seeing her.”
“What did Mama do to Miss Dana?”
Oops. He hadn't meant to say that. Vanessa didn't need to know Irene's involvement in the vandalism of Dana's mailbox and her car any more than Brittany needed to know about it. “What I meant was she tried to create trouble for Dana by getting you to cut off your friendship with Brittany. Vanessa, you have to promise me that you'll always have a life of your own, because I see her trying to control you as well. You'll only be a teenager once in your life. Have fun. Enjoy the friends you have now and don't be afraid to make new ones. Don't sit home and devote your whole life to your mother.”
“But she never sees anyone or goes anywhere, except to her parents'.”
“Vanessa, we all make choices in our lives. Your mother decided she didn't need anyone else but her family, you and I. No friends. No outside interests. But what she doesn't realize is that her ... her personality is so overbearing that she drives people away from her without realizing it. In her mind she's trying to hold on to you because you're all she has left.”
“Popi, I want to come live with you now. Do I really have to wait until we see the judge? That sounds like it might take weeks.”
He thought for a moment. “The only way you can come stay with me would be if your mother signed a notarized statement giving consent.”
“What's ‘notarized'?”
“That means her signature is witnessed by a notary public. A notary is someone who swears the signature came from the actual person and wasn't forged by someone else. Custody is a very serious issue, Vanessa. I just can't take you home with me. I can be arrested and jailed for doing that.”
“I wouldn't want that to happen, Popi.” Vanessa tried to sound brave.
“Me neither. Tell you what. We'll talk to your mother when I bring you home. But you do realize that staying with me means you'll have to change schools.”
“I don't care. I just can't stand Mama's harping about you and Miss Dana all the time.”
“Vanessa, don't worry. It'll be all right.”
Gil wished he felt as confident as he sounded.
Chapter 48
“
G
ood news,” Vic said as he joined Norell in the kitchen and kissed her hello.
“My favorite kind. What's up?”
“Henry told me today that the baby is going to be a girl.”
Norell drew in her breath. “A girl!” She closed her eyes for a moment and pictured a closet full of pretty feminine outfits, her arms crossed tightly in front of her body. She hugged herself and breathed deeply, then opened her eyes. “Vic, would I be a terrible person if I told you that's what I hoped for?”
“No, you wouldn't. And I knew all along that would be your preference.” He sniffed. “What smells so good?”
“Stuffed pork chops.”
He pulled her into an embrace, playfully dipping her backward. “Do you take care of me, or what?”
“We take care of each other,” she said softly. She held on to his neck as he straightened, carrying her with him. “Seriously, Vic, I can't tell you how happy I am. I can't wait for the birth.”
“I'll bet you're counting the days to the due date.”
“Fifteen days to go. Cécile brings little Regine with her to our partners' meetings, and I always hold her and think that in just a few weeks I'll be holding my own baby. Vic, you don't think I'm too old to be a mom, do you?”
“Don't be silly, Norell. You're only thirty-eight.”
“Some women are grandmothers by the time they're my age.”
Vic chuckled. “If anybody is going to be mistaken for a grandparent, it'll be me. So don't worry.”
“We'll probably have to get a larger house,” she said as she poured wine into two glasses. “Between my office and the girls' room, the baby won't have a place of her own to sleep.”
“She'll stay in the room with us the first few months anyway. Norell, I think you might have allowed yourself to forget that we're not out of the woods yet. You must remember that the mother can still change her mind.”
“It's so much nicer not to think about it.”
“You
have
to consider it, Norell.”
“Vic, why are you so suspicious? You almost talk as if you know the birth mother.”
“Of course I don't know her. But these things do happen. A woman can swear up and down that she's going to give up her baby for adoption, but all it takes is holding it for one second, and then suddenly she wants to keep it, no matter how much hardship it means.”
Dana had pretty much said the same thing, but Norell couldn't bear to think about that. She'd never been a parent, never gotten to hold a baby of her own and feel that bond form. But she'd love this baby like her own, even if they didn't share any DNA. “Isn't it a good sign that in all this time she hasn't said a word about changing her mind, and now she's even sending messages through Henry about the baby's sex? She doesn't sound like someone about to change her mind to me.”
“The baby is due in two weeks, Norell. You can't tell me she didn't know she was having a girl long before now. That makes me wonder about her motives for telling us this late in the game.”
Norell looked at him strangely. He sounded so cold, like he harbored an intense dislike for the birth mother. The only way that could be was if he had a personal acquaintance with the woman.
Their eyes met, hers full of questions, and Vic's expression immediately softened. “I mean, I wonder if she plans to try something funny, like hold out for more money or something.”
“I've seen movies where that's happened on Lifetime TV, but the scams usually involve well-off white people.”
“We're not white, Norell, but we ain't exactly poor, either, and I'm sure the mother has figured that out.” He shrugged. “Maybe it doesn't mean anything, but it's important to remember that it's not a done deal, even after we take the baby home.”
“And besides, if she's young she probably could never afford to pay you back for all you've put out,” Norell pointed out. “Even if she is a scam artist, I'm sure making restitution would severely cut into her profits. It's got to add up to a lot of money that you've spent, Vic.”
“It probably comes to less than what we would have paid for that procedure Doctor Patel wanted to do.”
She wondered why he didn't simply name a figure. Surely he knew how much he paid the mother every month. Instead he sounded like he deliberately wanted to keep her in the dark. Then there was that venom he had displayed a minute ago for the birth mother. Something didn't add up... .
She forced herself to sound cheerful. “Well, I should be getting a fairly decent amount from the CDN profits in June. I'll give it back to you.”
“Don't worry about it, Norell. Come on, let's sit down and eat.”
 
 
As Norell cleaned the kitchen after dinner she thought about Cécile and her new baby. Much better to concentrate on that than wonder about any secret meaning behind Vic's cryptic remarks. When she finished she went upstairs to the office and dialed Cécile's number. “I just found out my baby is going to be a girl,” she announced joyfully.
“I can picture you with a little girl, Norell. My goodness, she'll probably be the best-dressed female in Jacksonville. Have you and Vic chosen a name yet?”
“I'm going to start writing some down later to run by him. The only thing I've ruled out is -eeka/-eesha.”
“I don't get it.”
“I don't want any names that end with ‘eeka' or ‘eesha.' When my child finishes college and goes looking for a job, no one will know she's black until she shows up for the interview.”
Cécile laughed. “And what if she wants to go to Florida A&M or Bethune-Cookman? Would you discourage it because a degree from a black college might tip off prospective employers?”
“Of course not. I just don't want to give my child a name that pegs her as black. She can go to any college she wants. But this is what I was thinking, Cécile. My daughter”—she paused to savor how wonderful those two words felt rolling off her tongue—“will only be four months younger than Regine. They'll start school at the same time, although of course with us at the beach and you in San Jose it won't be the same school.” She took a deep breath. “Cécile, I know I've behaved horribly for a long time. I can't tell you how sorry I am about the things I did and said. But we're going to have daughters the same age. Wouldn't it be nice if they play together when they're old enough? They might become best friends. And our friendship will be stronger, as well.”
“Uh ... yeah, sure! It'll be a little while before they're ready to play with anything other than their own feet, though.”
Norell laughed. “I'm looking forward to every minute, believe me.”
Cécile hung up the phone with a shaking hand. Damn it, why couldn't Micheline have had a boy? That way they would play together as toddlers and even as grade schoolers, but no one would expect them to be best friends as they got older. Unless, God forbid, as adults they fell in love and wanted to get married, unaware they were first cousins with a shared bloodline. What a disaster
that
would be.
She sighed. Maybe it was a blessing that Micheline would have a girl after all, or else she wouldn't have a peaceful day for the next twenty years, wondering if love lurked around every corner for her and Norell's children. She would deal with it, even if the baby looked like her side of the family.
She wished she had an out, but she didn't know what to do. She hadn't even shared the news of Micheline's baby with Michael, much less its paternity. She hated keeping something so important from her husband, but it was just too disturbing. Besides, the fewer people who knew, the better. Relationships would be forever fractured if anyone should make a slip.
Cécile felt like crying until her tear ducts ran dry. Everything she hoped for in her life had come true—a happy second marriage, healthy children, a new house—but because of Micheline's indiscretion, nothing would ever be the same. She would have to learn to function with a twenty-pound weight tied to her neck.
 
 
Two days later Cécile brought Regine to visit Micheline while the kids were in school. Despite all the heartache her sister had caused her and her friends, Cécile still tried to get over to see her at least twice a week. She didn't know how Micheline could stand living such an isolated life, and she suspected that her sister looked forward to her visits. She was Micheline's only link to the world, other than impersonal contact with store and restaurant clerks.
“How's the mom-to-be?” Cécile asked, patting Micheline's rounded belly, a belly that appeared much smaller than her own had been this close to her due date.
“Oh, I'm hanging in there.” Micheline pursed her lips at Regine. “Hello, little niece of mine.”
Regine simply stared at her, then reached out, delighted to have a new face to explore. Micheline went along, closing her eyes to protect them from the baby's tiny probing fingers and covering her gold hoop earrings with her hands.
“You're certainly in a good mood today,” Cécile said as she pulled Regine away. “That's enough groping, Regine.”
“Less than two weeks to go, and then I can have my life back. Damn right I'm happy.”
They sat at the dinette—since Regine's birth, Cécile had stayed away from Micheline's fabric-covered sofa and side chairs, fearing the baby might spit up on them and leave a permanent stain. “And what kind of life will it be, Michie?” Cécile asked. “Have you learned anything from this experience?”
Micheline had deliberately kept Errol's return to her life from Cécile, certain that sooner or later Cécile would start in with a lecture that bordered on smug superiority. It might have taken almost four months, but she knew it would come. Time to come clean. “A great life. Errol wants to marry me.”
“Errol! I would have thought he'd have found someone new after all this time away from you.” Cécile saw no need for little niceties. If their situations were reversed, Micheline wouldn't bother to consider her feelings, and she wasn't going to, either.
The telephone rang before Micheline could answer. Cécile listened, playing with Regine, as her sister spoke on the kitchen extension. It surprised her that Micheline answered the phone without checking her caller ID first. It would be awfully difficult to convince someone she was out of town when she answered her home phone. “Hi, sweetheart. Everything okay? Good. Is it okay if I call you back? Cécile is here.”
Cécile frowned at the sound of her name. She didn't know any of her sister's friends, nor did she think Micheline kept in contact with anyone during her period of lying low. Who could she be speaking with, much less calling “sweetheart”?
“I see you're talking with someone who knows who I am,” she remarked when Micheline hung up.
“It's just Errol.”
“Errol! What's going on, Michie? I thought you were hiding from him.”
“He found me out. On New Year's Eve, actually.”
“New Year's! That was three and a half months ago.” Cécile's brow wrinkled. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I'm still trying to decide what to do.”
“Do about what? He obviously knows you're pregnant. I won't even ask what lie you told him, but it must have been a really good one if he still bothers with you.”
“He loves me, Cécile. And I love him. We're getting married after the baby is born. All I have to do is say the word, and it'll be the three of us instead of the two of us.”
Cécile took a moment to digest this information. “You mean ... you might keep the baby?”
“Errol promises me he'll love it as his own, and I believe him.”
“Micheline, you can't do that! Norell and Vic are expecting to get the baby. And what about all the money Vic has put out to support you all these months?”
BOOK: Nothing But Trouble
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