C H A P T E R • 17
We shared a gypsy cab and she walked into me at the top of the stoop as I fumbled for my keys.
“I have mine,” she said.
“I changed the locks.”
When we were inside the house, she picked up a long-legged rag doll lounging in a basket by the door next to a small guitar.
“I meant to ask you about this doll,” she said. “Virginia has been pretending Lucy’s at sleep-away camp.”
Daddy was crazy about Viola’s 8-year-old niece Virginia. Since we lost Viola’s sister to the AIDS virus, Ginny inherited a community of stepmothers but her home was with her Aunt Viola.
“Can I get you something while you change out of those clothes?” she asked. “There’s vodka here. I’m sure you know that.”
“But not after that pill. Make it a light one.”
The creaks the old wood made when I walked upstairs to change clothes offered a familiar accompaniment, and the house announced me again when I came down with my bloody skirt and jacket in a shopping bag. But she wasn’t fazed, and I got all the way to the bottom of the stairs on the ground floor before she turned from where she was bending over an open drawer in Daddy’s desk.
“What were you looking for, Viola? I don’t know Daddy to keep money at the house.”
“You daddy sometimes brought his newspaper stories home to read. Is the story you’re working on here in this mess? What is all this?”
“No. I keep the newspaper business at the newspaper so it will be there when I leave. That’s important to me. Those boxes are some things I’m sending back to California.”
“Before you send anything to California, I need to see what you’re taking out of here and I’ll need a new set of keys. Some of these things are probably mine.”
“How about you don’t even think about coming here until I get back,” I said.
“I’m his wife, you know. His widow. It’s kind of my house.” I watched her walk around the kitchen, touching things. “It might be nice to move farther away from the bar. Living across the street doesn’t give me any privacy.”
I didn’t say anything while I listened to her version of the way things were and only paused to take some slow, mindful breaths—conscious of the familiar heat of anger settling in my body, but also the awareness, learned over the years, that my reaction was what she wanted. The best I could do was withhold it, which was satisfying because I knew she hated that. But, perhaps, one day my meditation practice will take me to a place where I can actually accept the feeling but know it’s not personal and watch it change. One day.
“I brought the Kit Kat Klub into our marriage and he brought this.” She waved her arm in an arc taking in my house and, apparently, everything in it. “Your daddy and I were going to make the Kat into a whole new experience. Maybe you noticed. It’s even more of a jazz club than just a bar now. And we haven’t even made the buy. The building next door is for sale. He used to say I could be Bricktop, that diva with the club in Paris.”
We sat down with our drinks in front of us.
“I think I’ll go home and relieve the babysitter and get Ginny and a little bag and then we’ll come back. But don’t wait for us. I’m used to sleeping in your daddy’s bed and she sleeps so well in her little bed in the room in the back. And she loves it when you’re home and you can tell your stories and listen to hers. Maybe she can take your mind off things.”
Something on my face prompted a second bad idea.
“Or, we can pull out Ginny’s trundle bed,” she said. “I could sleep with her. It don’t make me no never mind. But I don’t think you should be by yourself. And only for tonight. I’m going to Chicago tomorrow where I’ll be presenting at the Black Business Women’s Expo.”
“Neither one.”
She got up and threw back the last of her drink. “You know, I am kind of your stepmother. You don’t have too many other people to talk to. Am I right?”
Neither one of us expected me to answer. But, as I stood up, I felt the need to tell her, “You know, although my father cared for you, and he loved Virginia, he didn’t bring you into my life as my stepmother.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “I’ve got one for you. Did you know Obsidian has a serious girlfriend? I think he’s going to marry her. And I’m going to need a key.”
She tossed her head, and I let her walk upstairs and out the door before I followed and locked it behind her. I had forgotten what a bitch she was. But remembering to be mad at her was a welcome distraction during a restless night.