If Only You Knew (8 page)

“Well, in that case, I'm happy I could help,” Jason responded, finally loosening up. “I was just thinking, maybe this Saturday night, if you're not busy—”

“Saturday night is great,” she enthused before he could even finish his sentence. “Why, Jason, I'd be delighted.”

“True,” he replied simply. “Well, I guess I can—”

“Just text me the details during the week.” She cut him off abruptly.

“Uh, okay, that works.”

“Wonderful. Now lemme go,” Sydney stated, bringing the conversation to an end just as the front door started to open. “I'll see you tomorrow, J!” she offered, and hung up before he even had a chance to say good-bye.

Sydney turned on her car alarm just as Aunt Lorraine swung open the creaking screen door that barely hung on to the doorframe by one and a half hinges. “Well, if it isn't my favorite richy rich niece,” Aunt Lorraine drawled. “Your stuck-up mama buy you that pretty bracelet or was it some boy?” she asked sarcastically of the bright cuff bracelet that still adorned Sydney's wrist. Wearing a dingy housecoat over a pair of washed-out pink pajamas, a head full of rollers, and a pair of flip-flops, she looked like a caricature of the stereo-typical ghetto welfare mom.

“Hey, Aunt Lorraine, I got your text,” Sydney replied, choosing to ignore her aunt's smart comments as she walked up the uneven pavement of the walkway.

“I see,” she snickered, holding the door for Sydney so she could enter the dimly lit foyer. “You best be careful driving
too fast in that shiny car of yours. I don't know about how it is ova' by where you stay but 'round here the cops arrest first and ask questions last. Ya heard?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Sydney answered respectfully, looking around the cluttered space. The tattered couch where she had spent several afternoons visiting with her father when he was out on parole was now covered with laundry. Piles of old newspapers stood in the corner. She shifted uncomfortably in her Tory Burch leopard-print ballet flats.

“You want something to drink? I got some red Kool-Aid in the fridge,” her aunt offered gruffly as she headed into the tiny kitchen. Sydney watched as she lit her cigarette on the flame from the gas stove's left burner.

“I, um, actually, kinda have to go,” Sydney started, secretly relieved that she wouldn't have to be in the claustrophobia-inducing space with her sour-faced aunt much longer. “I told my mom that I was running to the library to study…”

“Well, don't let me keep you, Cinderella,–ella,–ella,” Aunt Lorraine quipped as she pulled two letters out of the pocket of her housecoat. “I wouldn't want your car to turn into a pumpkin or nothing.” Sydney chuckled uncomfortably as she turned the letters over in her hands and looked at her father's familiar chicken scratch handwriting. The sense of déjà vu was overwhelming.

“Thanks, Aunt Lorraine, this really means a lot,” Sydney offered sincerely as she tucked the letters in her black Hermes Kelly bag.

“Mmm-hmm, don't mention it. And let's just hope that them worthless detectives hurry up and catch whoever the hell killed that ole knucklehead, Rodney Watson,” she said with a slight cough. “Or you're going to be right back picking up letters again for the next fifteen years, minimum.”

“Excuse me?” Sydney asked incredulously as the meaning of the words
minimum
and
fifteen
refused to register. “Are you saying my father is facing fifteen years?”

“Uh-huh, fifteen
minimum,
” Aunt Lorraine confirmed as she took a deep drag and exhaled through her nostrils. “Welcome to the real state of Georgia, princess.”

Altimus was going to be at the dealership all day and late into the evening, and Keisha, never one to rest easy in her solitude, claimed she needed some face-time with the girls, so she booked a suite at Le Madeleine Hotel and arranged a “Luxe Girls' Spa Day” for three, with all the trimmings. If only for a moment, Lauren thought it was odd that they'd be getting another rubdown just a week after Keisha had sprung for the massage and facial that, unbeknownst to her mother, she'd skipped out on. But, well, it wasn't Lauren's stilo to question, particularly when an herb-infused, detoxifying body wrap and spa lunch was involved. Besides, after both of her near-death experiences at the football game Monday night, she needed someone to lay hands on her aching back and sore
knee, even if she had to suffer through an afternoon with Keisha and Sydney, who, even on a good day, had become a little hard for Lauren to handle.

Before Keisha could even close the heavy front door, Lauren took off for the massive mahogany writing desk, which was decked out with a welcome arrangement of all their favorites: a heap of chocolate-covered strawberries for Lauren, sparkling cider and apple-cinnamon PowerBars for Sydney, and champagne, of course, for Keisha. Lauren grabbed a berry and twirled herself onto the sofa, grabbing the remote with one quick motion.

“God, please, can we have just one afternoon without the television blasting?” snapped Sydney. She eyed the apple-cinnamon PowerBar and let her fingers linger over the cider, then settled on a bottled water before walking over to the window. They had a perfect view of the lake, which was wrapped in a panoply of fall orange, red, and yellow trees making their slow, serene march into winter. Quietly, Sydney was looking forward to a little R & R to help calm her nerves for her big date with Jason, but nobody really needed to know all of that. “This is supposed to be a day of relaxation. Can't we just be quiet and enjoy?”

Lauren sucked her teeth. “I can't think of a better way to relax than zoning out to one of my favorite shows. If it's complete silence you're looking for, I'm sure it's nice and quiet
in the lounge area down at the spa. Help yourself to an early start,” Lauren huffed, pointing to the door and pushing the
ON
button on the remote all at once.

“Are you freakin' kidding me? I don't have to go—”

Keisha cut Sydney off. “Have mercy, this is supposed to be a friendly girls' day out,” she said, loud enough to make both the girls jump. She squared her shoulders, poured herself a glass of bubbly, and started giving orders. “Both of you go in the bedrooms and change into your robes. We have about thirty minutes before our massages and body wraps, and I want to get down to the lounge area to have a few more sips of champagne and read my
Essence
before our appointments begin. And I would prefer not to have to go down there with all this chitter-chatter ringing in my damn ears.”

“Sorry, Mom,” Sydney offered quickly. She put the top back on her bottled water and made her way over to the bedroom. Lauren didn't say a word—just kept flipping through the channel guide, looking for an old episode of
Law & Order: SVU.

Keisha eyeballed her daughter and shouted, “Lauren! I said come on!”

Lauren slowly turned off the television and headed for the basket of candy strawberries. She took a bite, then waltzed up to her mother and gave her a sloppy, chocolate-covered kiss. “Thanks for the spa date, Keish. You're the one.”

Keisha chuckled and shook her head as she watched her daughter prance into the bedroom, but her smile vanished as quickly as Lauren disappeared. She took a sip of her champagne and swallowed hard, her eyes focused on the door long after it closed.

“This treatment originated in seventeenth-century Indonesia,” the masseuse practically whispered as she poured the fragrant drink into Keisha, Sydney, and Lauren's teacups. “It was a purifying ritual performed on Javanese princesses on the night before their weddings. First, you'll sip this infusion of warm water and ancient herbs, which will help your muscles release toxins…”

Lauren took a sip of the tea and almost threw up. Honestly, she wished the woman would shut up and get to it already. Sydney, who was clinging to the masseuse's every word, was wearing the hell out of the goody-two-shoes thing, and Lauren, who was never, ever in the mood for dissertations, especially didn't want a two-hour lecture on Indonesian royalty and old herbs and what was about to happen to her; she just wanted to get up on a table in her own private massage suite and get her rub on.

“We'll follow your full body, aromatic hot-oil massage with a deep-penetrating mask, followed by an invigorating scrub and a private steam shower. You'll then be invited to soak in a sea of rose petals in our luxury bath, which—”

“Ugh. Can you take this tea? It's nasty,” Lauren demanded, cutting off the woman. She held up her cup as if it was a rogue, stinky sock. Sydney tossed Lauren a look so cold it could have solved the global-warming situation, but Lauren didn't give a damn. Of course, neither did Keisha. After all, Lauren had learned the art of demanding servitude from the best: her mother.

“Oh, sure thing,” the woman stammered, taking the cup from Lauren's hands.

“Can you show me to my room? I'm ready for my princess massage,” Lauren said, standing and letting her robe fall open enough to give her breasts a little Beyoncé jiggle.

“Well, um,” the woman stammered again, this time facing Keisha. “You don't have a separate room; we've arranged for a three-way massage, as requested by Mrs. Duke.”

Lauren, confused, pulled her robe tight around her neck and tossed a “what the hell” look at her sister, who had the identical quizzical look on her face.

“A three-way?” Sydney asked, frowning. “How's that going to work?”

Keisha sucked her teeth. “Simple. She's going to show us to the room where they've set up three tables side-by-side so that we can chat while we get our rubdowns,” she said. She turned toward the tea lady and asked in a firm voice, “Where's the room?”

“Uh, yes, yes, Mrs. Duke—it's right this way,” she
directed, her hands outspread toward a double-door suite just down the hallway. “I'll go fetch Jade, Lisa, and Beth directly so that you may begin your massages.”

“Uh-huh, thanks,” Keisha said, tossing her chin in the direction of her girls. “Let's go.”

In a jif, the three were in the room. Sydney and Lauren were still dumbstruck by Keisha's decision to include them in her own normally private spa appointment, and secretly disappointed that they wouldn't have complete and utter quiet while they enjoyed their massages. Each disrobed in silence, wondering what, exactly, was so damn important that it had to be said over the din of the classical music, which, if the masseuse was worth his or her salt, usually put Lauren to sleep. A nap is what she wanted; Keisha's voice was not.

“See, isn't this nice, girls? The three of us here, enjoying one another's company?” Keisha said. If the girls were listening closely, they would have heard the slight hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“Yeah, lovely,” Sydney said.

“Swell,” Lauren added.

“Come on, girls—it's not often you and your mother get to sit and enjoy one another. Every mother should get to enjoy her daughters, don't you think?” she asked.

“Oh, no, you're right, Mom,” Sydney said as her masseuse rubbed her hands vigorously to warm the oils. “This is nice.”

“Yeah, you know I don't mind spoiling my babies,” Keisha said. “You may be seventeen and looking grown, but you're still my babies. And I would do anything for you.”

God, shut up already,
Lauren said to herself, wishing she could say it out loud.

“But I won't tolerate any disrespect, you know what I'm saying?” Keisha asked, her voice growing dark. “I was raised to know that children have their place—you know, ‘Don't speak unless spoken to'? ‘Do what I say'? My personal favorite was ‘Stay outta grown folks' business.' Lord, my mama sure did believe in that one, hard and strong.”

Lauren's ears perked up; she knew something wasn't right.

“That's why I invited the two of you here today, to give you a review of all the lessons I've learned over the years—particularly my favorite one,” Keisha continued, her voice slightly muffled as her massage therapist dug into her shoulders, forcing her head deeper into the pillow cradling her face. “Stay outta grown folks' business. Simple concept. Easy to do. But for some strange reason, y'all act as if it just doesn't apply to you. So I'm here to set it straight. It does.”

“Mommy, what are you—” Sydney began.

“Oh, no, sweetie, it's Mommy's turn to talk, your turn to l-i-s-t-e-n. Isn't that what Beyoncé and them said? ‘Listen,'” she sang off-key. “Oh, wait, though, my jam was that Keisha Cole song, ‘Let it go, let it go, let it go,'” she continued to
sing. “Yeah, nice strong messages in them there songs. Listen, and let it go. Both of you should try it.”

The smell of ylang-ylang and vanilla wafted into Lauren's nostrils, a quick reminder that she was not dreaming. Her mother was really in the massage suite at Le Madeleine, bugging the hell out of her and laying down messages about as sinister as an Abu Ghraib CIA interrogation. If the masseuse wasn't pushing down on her back so hard, and she wasn't afraid that her mother would slap it back down, Lauren would have lifted her head to get Sydney's attention. Instead, she lay silent. Still, she could hear Sydney's breathing over the music.

“Your father—Altimus, not the scumbag I had two babies with—has done nothing but be good to you, love you. Every stitch of clothing you have on your backs, every piece of leather you have on the pretty little feet you use to push the gas pedals in the cars you drive, every expensive handbag you dangle from your dainty little arms? Altimus bought those. Not Dice. Not Lorraine. Not Jermaine. Not any of those bastards. That's all Altimus up in your closets and in your driveway and in your wallets,” she said sweetly. “You better recognize.”

“Mom, what are you talking about?” Sydney said, putting on her best syrupy voice. “Of course we appreciate everything Dad's done for us—”

“Sydney, save the bullshit for somebody else,” Keisha
snapped, knocking her masseuse back as she sat upright. “And I don't recall asking either one of y'all to say anything. For once, just listen. I hired somebody, did you know that?” she continued just as forcefully, waving off poor little Beth, who didn't know what to do or say now that she was caught up in Hurricane Keisha. Keisha didn't pay her a lick of mind. “Yeah, my friend is a sweet little guy from back in my days in the West End. Yeah, knows our old stomping grounds real good. Buckhead, too. Has the cutest little gift of knowing just how to blend in, so he can see but not be seen.”

Keisha let that hang in the air a minute. There wasn't so much as a peep out of her daughters. The masseuses working on the girls tossed ole Beth a look of sympathy and dug into the girls' backs, if only because they didn't know what else to do while their clients received their custom cuss-out.

“My friend has been checking into things for me ever since I realized somebody's been rummaging through my old boxes downstairs. Oh, he's had a great time watching my little girls run all around the West End, trying to dig up dirt on folks. He cracks me up trying to keep track of who's who. I keep telling him, the twin who dresses like she's straight out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue is Sydney; the one who dresses like I would if I was a rich seventeen-year-old from Buckhead is Lauren. After that, he was straight, but I would have been able to tell who was who just by who went where anyway,” she said.

Sydney visibly shivered. Lauren opened her eyes and stared at the floor, steeling herself for an ass-kicking. She just knew it was coming. She wondered which one of the heiffas at the last spa dropped dime on her, even after tucking her crisp fifty-dollar bills in their bras. She said a silent “fuck me” to herself and waited for the ax to fall.

“I'll bet Aunt Lorraine was only too happy to tell you a bunch of bullshit about Altimus and me, huh, Sydney? Old hag—never could mind her damn business.”

“But I didn't—” Sydney started.

“Girl, I know you not gonna lay there and tell me some stories—not here, not now. Don't you know who I am?” Keisha said through her teeth. She didn't give Sydney a chance to reply—not that Sydney didn't know better at this point to shut her trap. “Now this is going to be the last time I say it, hear? Sydney. Stay the hell away from Aunt Lorraine. For real, for real. She don't know shit about Altimus, or me, or what we all got bubbling. Keep your ass out of the West End and forget about Dice. He ain't shit, ain't never been shit, ain't evah gonna be shit, and ain't nothing you can do to change that.”

“Excuse me,” Beth interrupted. “I'll just step out for a minute and—”

“Uh-uh, where you going?” Keisha yelled. “You ain't finished here. I paid my money—strong, green money—and you gonna give me my dollar's worth. Now stand right there. I'll let you know when I'm ready.”

Beth didn't move, and the other masseuses practically stopped breathing, as did Sydney and Lauren. Keisha got up from her table and started pacing the marble floor of the room, running her fingers over the oils and hot stones on the small table that held the massage supplies.

“Stay away from Aunt Lorraine and Dice. And stay the hell out of my things,” Keisha demanded, practically snarling the words in Sydney's ear. Sydney, mortified, couldn't stop shivering. “That's my stuff down in the basement, and you don't have any right rummaging through it like a little rat.

“And, Lauren?” she continued.

Oh, shit, here it comes,
Lauren said to herself, girding her shoulders against the masseuse's hands. She considered stuttering something, but she thought better of it.