The Perfect Mistress (15 page)

C
ome on, Mrs. Joyce. When are you going to give an old man a chance? I might not have any get up and go, but my get up can still go.”

Joyce Robinson shook her head at the decrepit old man standing in front of her. Ernest Berry had tried everything he could to get a millisecond of her time. Sometimes she humored him, most times she didn't. A man was the last thing on her mind. Especially a seventy-year-old pencil-thin skeleton like Ernest.

“I keep telling you, Ernest,” she said, “I'm not messing with you.”

“Why not?” he replied, pulling up a chair next to hers like he had a personal invitation. They were all seated in the recreation area of the Evergreen Center, the treatment facility Joyce had called home for the past six months.

Joyce hated it here. But she'd fallen victim to the disease that had claimed her mother, and Joyce's children thought the nationally known Evergreen Center would help her beat brain cancer.

Joyce wasn't optimistic. After her mother died, Joyce had learned that a genetic strain had led to her mother's brain cancer,
and she had waited for it to claim her, too. But after years with no issues, she thought she'd be fine. Until a year ago, when excruciating migraines had revealed that she, too, had the deadly disease.

Joyce had been ready to just let the cancer claim her. After all, she hadn't really lived since her husband had died; she'd become a recluse. But Lauren and Julian wouldn't have it. They insisted that she come to this facility, where they were optimistic that she could beat cancer.

“Pretty lady like you shouldn't always walk around with a snarl on your face,” Ernest said, flashing a wide, toothless grin. “Why won't you give me a chance? I bet I could keep a smile on your face.”

“I told you, I'm not fooling with you because men ain't sh—”

“Hey, hey.” The orderly sitting in the corner of the rec room where they were gathered for socialization hour quickly cut her off. “Mrs. Joyce, I told you about the foul language.”

She rolled her eyes at him, too. She was a grown woman. She couldn't stand being told what she could and couldn't say. Just another reason why she hated this place.

“You have never had a man like me,” Ernest said, ignoring the orderly.

Ernest always tried too hard. Back in his prime, she imagined Ernest might have been something to look at, but now the few teeth he had left were yellow and decayed. The chemo from his prostate cancer had left him with only splotches of coarse gray hair, reminding her of Grady from
Sanford & Son,
and he slobbered when he ate his Jell-O. There was nothing
at all attractive about that. He was in his final stages of cancer. She guessed his family had stuck him there so they wouldn't have to be bothered with him.

“You know she's waiting on Vernon's ghost,” her friend Pearl said. And Joyce used the term
friend
lightly.

Pearl was a friend by default. She was the only other person in this place with half a brain. So, she was the only one Joyce gave her time to.

“Pearl, don't start,” she said.

“You can deny it all you want.” Pearl giggled. “You won't give another man the time of day because no other man is Vernon Robinson.”

Joyce suddenly regretted the few times she'd talked about Vernon. Of course, she tried to share the negative stuff, but Pearl had seen right through that and called her on it. She'd said that it wasn't possible to hate someone in the way Joyce claimed to hate Vernon if love wasn't at the root.

She was right about that. Joyce could deny it all she wanted, but she loved Vernon to her core.

“What happened to your husband anyway?” Ernest asked, leaning back and crossing his long, bony legs like she was really about to share her business with him.

“None of your business,” Joyce replied.

“Tell us. We want to hear it. You're always so secretive,” another woman, named Wanda, said.

“That's 'cause I don't like folks all in my business.” She motioned toward the card table. “Now, are you going to play your card or what?”

They had been playing bid whist. Something old folks did, so she wasn't really enjoying it, but it beat being holed up in
her room, which is where she spent the bulk of her time when she wasn't in treatment.

“I'm just saying, you know all about me and my Walter,” Wanda said.

“Everybody knows about you and Walter because you tell everyone from the janitor to the owner of the facility,” Joyce snapped.

Pearl cackled. Wanda looked offended, but Joyce didn't really care.

“Well, I want everyone to know what kind of low-down, dirty dog he is,” Wanda said.

“Wanda will never get over that man leaving her for a younger woman,” Pearl said.

“She ain't that much younger. What he gonna do with a fifty-year-old alley cat anyway?” Wanda mumbled.

“Obviously, what he ain't doing with you,” Ernest laughed.

“Oh, shut up, you old snaggle-tooth bird,” Wanda snapped.

“Will somebody just play?” Joyce said, cutting them off.

This place made her feel so old, and at sixty-three, she didn't consider herself elderly. Half the time, if folks weren't wandering around like they were waiting on death to come take them off the rolls, they were sickly and depressing. She just wanted to get better, beat this stupid cancer, so she could go live with Julian. As soon as she was better, she fully intended to convince her son how good she would be for his family. She could be a built-in babysitter for the twins.

“On a serious note, though, Mrs. Joyce,” Wanda asked as she put her card on the table, “is your husband still living?”

That was a subject Joyce never wanted to broach and she definitely wasn't about to do it now with gossiping Wanda Ransom.

“Rumor has it he was a good-looking man,” Wanda continued.

Joyce didn't know where Wanda was getting her rumors from, but she was right on the money about that. Those good looks had become Joyce's blessing and her curse.

Vernon Robinson might have been good-looking, but he dang sure wasn't good. Two weeks after her wedding—that was how long it took her to come to that realization.

Joyce's mind traveled back to when she caught Vernon with Alicia, the intern.

“It's your play, woman!”

Joyce snapped out of her thoughts as Ernest tapped her arm. The whole table was watching her, as if they had been waiting on her to play for a while.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, laying her card on the table. Thoughts of Vernon had a way of taking her away.

The chatter resumed and her mind went back to that day in his office with Alicia. Vernon had used his kisses to weasel his way out of many situations. She didn't know if she had spent all those years after that being oblivious because she
wanted
to believe his words, or because she knew that no matter what, he loved her in spite of all the hurt he'd caused her.

Joyce had never gotten the answer to that. And at this point, it seemed like she never would.

T
he sounds of Mary Mary filled the convertible BMW. Lauren had the music on full blast as she zipped down Interstate 40 heading toward Cary.

Today was one of those beautiful North Carolina days that made her love living in Raleigh. She'd thought about moving to Atlanta or, like her brother, across the country, but her mother was born and raised in the tri-state area, and despite how Joyce treated her, Lauren hadn't been able to leave her behind. She especially couldn't leave her now that her mother was battling brain cancer.

“I luh God,”
Mary Mary sang.

Lauren didn't usually listen to gospel music, but anytime she had a visit with her mother, she needed all the help she could to summon up her strength. Her mother despised this “secular gospel,” as she called it, so even though Lauren was thirty-four years old, listening to this music was her piece of quiet rebellion.

As much as she would like to stop visiting her mother, Lauren was all her mother had.

“You'd never know it, though,” she muttered, not the way Joyce raved about her prince, Julian.

As if she'd summoned him up, Lauren's cell phone rang, and her brother's number popped up on the screen.

She reluctantly answered. “Hello?”

“Lauren? What's all that noise?” her brother yelled.

“Hold on.” She turned the music down, then pushed her Bluetooth headset closer to her ear. “Yeah, what's going on?”

“I can't hear you. Do you have the top down?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“How do you expect somebody to talk to you with all that wind?” he huffed.

“Ugh,” she said. She slowed down in order to pull over to the side of the freeway. She wasn't supposed to talk while she was driving, anyway, she thought. Just to make Julian wait a little longer, she raised the top on her convertible. It yawned over her head with satisfying slowness. “There. Is that better?” she said once the top was up.

“Much,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Where I am every Saturday?” she replied.

“Well, you're late. Mom has already called me, going off because you're not there.”

Lauren took a deep breath and turned the gospel music back up a tad. “I'm not there because I'm on my way.”

“I don't understand why you do this every week. You know how she gets about you being late. Is it so difficult for you to leave earlier?”

Lauren inhaled, summoning up her inner strength. Even though her mother was in a special-treatment facility, caring for her had been brutal. They'd discovered the tumor nine months ago after her mother passed out while at dinner with friends. She'd been rushed to the emergency room, where
doctors found a grapefruit-size tumor. They all had been devastated to find out it was cancerous. Doctors were able to remove most of the tumor, but the cancer had spread, and now her mother endured chemo twice a week in an effort to beat the disease before it beat her.

Unfortunately, with Julian living so far away, Lauren had by herself carried the burden of her mother's hospitalization, subsequent recovery, and now treatment. But that didn't stop Julian from calling every single week to give his three cents.

“Julian, do not start with me, please,” Lauren said. “At least I'm going.”

“Well, if I lived there, I would go.”

“But you don't live here.”

“What?”

“You don't live here,” she repeated. “And you refuse to bring Mama out there with you, although you know that's where she'd rather be.”

Julian was currently serving in the army, stationed in Killeen, Texas, going on his twelfth year. At this point he was in it because he wanted to be. He could easily get out, get a normal job, and let their mother come live with him and his family.

“I've told you a hundred times. Rebecca does not have the patience to deal with Mom and the twins.”

“Of course she doesn't. Your precious Rebecca can't be bothered with a decrepit old lady.” Lauren rolled her eyes. Her twin nephews were three years old. If Rebecca didn't have motherhood down by now, she wasn't going to get it.

“Don't go there. You know I'm liable to get papers to go anywhere at any time. Plus, Mom's doctors are there. Her treatment is there. What kind of doctors do you think they have here?”

“Army doctors! Aren't they supposed to be the best?”

“You're being ridiculous, Lauren.”

They were rehashing the same old recriminations. “Whatever, Julian. You just use that as an excuse to put the burden of caring for Mom on me.”

“I'm not going to have this argument with you. I'm the one paying for her care. The least you can do is visit her.”

Forget subjecting herself to her mother; Lauren didn't understand why she kept putting up with her self-righteous, do-nothing-but-send-a-check brother. Oh, and call her to make sure she showed up.

“What did you say?” Lauren asked, deciding she'd had enough. “I can't hear you.”

“What do you mean, you can't hear me? You sound fine.”

“Are you talking? Are you still there?” she said. “I'm losing you. I'm losing youuuuu . . .” Lauren picked up her phone, pressed the disconnect button, and tossed her phone back on the seat.

Her brother drove her almost as insane as her mother did. He was always trying to dictate things from eight hundred miles away. He was happily living his perfect little life, with his perfect little wife in Killeen. All she got from him these days was grief. Just like her mother.

Lauren pulled into the parking lot at the Evergreen Center. Lauren knew that her mother hated it here. But the facility where she received chemo was right next door, and Evergreen had a full-time staff to care for Joyce.

Lauren parked her car, took a deep breath, then mumbled, “Time to go face the devil,” before getting out and heading inside to continue her penance.