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Authors: Gwynne Forster

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BOOK: Breaking the Ties That Bind
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She squeezed his fingers. “I didn’t know it existed. When I can afford it, I’m going to buy a car and see what this country is like.”
“I’ve seen a lot of it, Kendra, and sometimes ignorance is bliss.”
“I can imagine. Even then, African Americans supported their churches.”
“When you look at the past, it’s easy to understand their hope for a world beyond and their ardent faith in it.”
“I know,” Kendra said. “When I was little, I used to pray that my mother would love me. I don’t remember when I stopped. I still pray, but not for that.”
If they had been alone with privacy, he would have showed her what she meant to him. As he saw it then, his effort to temper their relationship could only have undermined her trust in him and her belief that she was important to him.
He tightened his arm around her. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“I’m beginning to feel a pinch in my tummy,” she said, put an arm around his waist, and walked with her head resting against his shoulder. She was not a clinging woman, and he wanted to ask why she held onto him. But he couldn’t, because she might have taken it as a criticism, and he wanted her close to him.
“Let’s go over near the Potomac. I know a couple of good restaurants there.”
“I’d like that,” Kendra said. “My papa once took me to a great fish restaurant right on the river. I forgot the name.” Sam drove across the town, parked in the restaurant’s parking lot, and entered the restaurant tying his tie. The maitre d’ seated them, gave them menus, and stood by wringing his hands.
Sam looked at the man. “What’s the problem?”
“We’re fresh out of salmon and tilapia, our most popular entrées.”
Sam looked at Kendra. “What are you having?”
“I’d like some bouillabaisse, if there’s any left.”
“I’ll have the same,” Sam said to the maitre d’. “So you worried needlessly.”
“You’ve chosen well, sir. You can’t find a better fish stew than ours in all of France.”
“I think I’ve had enough African American history for today,” Kendra said. “Can we see a silly movie?”
“Sure. Most movies made these days are silly. If you mean something light, how about that remake of
The Shop around the Corner?
”
After leaving the restaurant, they left Alexandria and went to see the movie in an F Street theater. He didn’t care what they saw, as long as she was close to him.
As the love story heated up and it seemed as if the lovers wouldn’t get together, she snuggled closer to him, and he leaned down and kissed her.
She amazed him when she said, “When you take me home, remember how you did that.”
He wanted to laugh aloud, to spread his arms and let all of the uncertainty, pain, and loneliness seep out of him. “You’re fresh, but you please me, and I hope you can say the same about me.”
She wrinkled her nose and caressed the side of his face. “You’ve had some shortcomings lately, but none that can’t be repaired.”
He could feel the grin forming around his mouth and spreading over his face. “And I’ll get to work on that immediately.”
She smiled up at him. “I’d almost forgotten what it meant to feel like this.” Her fingers tightened around his and she rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
“You can’t see the movie if you close your eyes,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m in my own movie.”
 
It had been years since she shared Thanksgiving with her mother, yet Kendra had a hollow, empty feeling spending Thanksgiving in a friendly and loving environment when her mother might not only be alone, but conceivably without food, if she hadn’t worked or if she hadn’t been able to swindle an unsuspecting person out of money.
However, Kendra need not have worried about Ginny; her mother had paid several visits to old man Dunner, who had rewarded her more handsomely than he realized. In addition to the few hundred dollars he gave her, she had robbed him while he slept from sexual exhaustion and from the wine she had inveigled him into drinking.
She sat on the edge of her bed counting her money—five thousand, six hundred and eighty dollars.
If it wasn’t for that miserable judge, who insists that I get a job, I could skate awhile on this since I’m not keeping Asa happy. He’s the last man who’s ever going to get a penny from me.
But what would she do evenings after she left the salon? She couldn’t go to Rooter’s, and she couldn’t call Angela. Maybe she ought to pay Angela the five hundred dollars. She recounted her money and put it away. Angela wasn’t expecting her to pay back that money. Besides, she needed it. Angela had a husband to take care of her. When she left work the next day, she bought a capon and other makings for a Thanksgiving dinner. “It beats eating by myself in a restaurant,” she rationalized.
 
Sam rang Kendra’s doorbell at two o’clock Thanksgiving Day. “A punctual woman is a treasure,” he said, when she opened the door, evidently ready to go. “You look wonderful, and I especially like you in this color,” he said of her burnt-orange wool crepe dress. “I offered to bring your dad, but he wanted the freedom of driving his own car. Can’t say I blame him.”
“I’m glad you like it,” she said. But she wore it because she already knew he liked her in that color. She’d bought a bunch of multicolored calla lilies as a house gift for Sam’s father.
“What’s that?” Sam asked her.
She told him, and added, “Since I don’t know whether your father and Edwina are still together, I couldn’t bring anything for her, so I just bought a house gift.” He locked her door, and they left the building walking hand-in-hand.
“From what I saw the night you aired the Clarissa Holmes program, I doubt they would willingly sleep anywhere but together. I just can’t see how my dad managed to be away from that woman all these years and remain sane. They’re crazy about each other,” he said, seating her in his car.
“He could do it, because he had to and, especially, because he had never even kissed her. Once he got a taste, and found her willing, he let himself love her. You can understand that.”
“Maybe. Dad lives on the edge of Alexandria. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Did you ever live there with your father?”
“From the time I was born until I got my doctorate and a job. My dreams still echo off those walls.”
“What did you dream?”
“I dreamed of reordering the world so that there would be no rich–poor, well–sick, enslaved–free, talented–untalented divisions among us, that we would all be equal. At the age of nine, I was very naive. But I still want equality and justice and, at the least, common decency among people.”
“You’re a wonderful person. Getting to know you is the most precious experience of my life.”
“I hope you mean that, and I’d appreciate if you’d save such declarations for a time when we’re someplace private and both of my hands are free.”
“I can’t promise. If I had known I was going to say that, I probably wouldn’t have.”
When they arrived at the brown-brick, two-story house, Bert Richards’s car was the first thing she saw. “Papa’s already here.”
“Good. I don’t have to worry about his having gotten lost.” Sam turned to face her. “Can I have a kiss?”
“Sure. But make it a little one. I don’t want to walk in there looking as if I’ve had too much to drink.” From the way his lips settled on hers, she figured he’d decided to explore their relationship fully.
“Are you sure?” she asked him.
He stared at her, surprised that she’d read him so well. “Yes. I’m sure.”
 
But was he? When she’d nestled close to him in the movie theater, he’d reached for that peace and contentment that he needed to feel with her, but it wasn’t there. During the early days of their relationship, he knew that sex and his overwhelming attraction to her prohibited feelings of peaceful contentment. But he’d dealt with that and maneuvered them to a different plane, one in which they could learn about each other, in which their assessment of each other wouldn’t be conditioned by the ravages of demon sex.
She was everything a man should want, but.... He put the car in park, got out, and walked around to open her door. She smiled her thanks, and in his mind’s eye, he saw Ginny Hunter smiling at him and inviting him to her home for a threesome tryst. It had nothing to do with Kendra, but he could not get it out of his head. He took her hand and walked with her to the door of the place where he was born and raised.
If his mother were alive, what would she say about it? Kendra dropped his hand, and he looked down at her, saw the frown on her face, and wondered if he had communicated his misgivings to her. He took her hand back and squeezed her fingers, but she didn’t return the gesture. She was too gracious to put a damper on the holiday feast, but she’d find a way to let him know that he had vexed her.
Chapter Eleven
Sam pasted a cheerful expression on his face, opened the door, and walked into his father’s house. He relaxed a bit when he realized that Kendra was not going to drop his hand. He walked with her into the living room where Kendra’s father sat with Edwina.
“How are you? Edwina? Bert? Good to see you both,” Sam said. “Where’s my father?”
“He went to the kitchen for some ice,” Edwina said. She seemed to him a bit sheepish, and he wanted to know why.
“Have a seat,” he said to Kendra. “I’ll be right back. Maybe I can give him a hand.”
“How’s it going, Dad?” he said as he walked into the kitchen and embraced his father. “Can I do that for you?”
“Everything’s fine, and thanks, but slicing a lemon doesn’t take much grit. I like Bert Richards, but I don’t get it. Nothing about that man says he should be a butcher.”
Sam leaned against the stainless steel refrigerator, stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets, and crossed his ankles. “He’s the victim of a rotten marriage with a self-centered woman. How are things with you and Edwina? Do I get the sense that she lives here?”
Jethro dropped the knife on the counter and looked at his son. “Do I get the sense that you think you’ve got a stupid father?”
Taken aback, Sam closed his eyes, drew a few deep breaths, and sifted the comment around in his mind. “You think that would be stupid?”
“Absolutely. For a man with integrity, the next step would be marriage, and that’s not on my mind right now.”
“But I thought—”
“At every age, marriage is a serious step. I think Edwina is a wonderful woman, but neither of us knows the other well enough for marriage. Time will tell.”
“Are you still attracted to her?”
Jethro’s grin exposed a set of perfect white teeth. “Does the sun set in the west? You say Bert Richards made a bad mistake when he married. I’ll bet he’ll tell you that he was insane crazy about the woman. I had a happy marriage, but as I look back, it was through no wisdom of mine. I was lucky and very blessed. I tell myself daily that the postman does not ring twice. So this time, I’m not depending on luck or good fortune.” He shaved off a few thin pieces of lemon peel and put them in a little dish beside the lemon slices. “It’s too bad that I didn’t meet Edwina’s mother.”
“Why?” Sam asked him.
Jethro rinsed the knife, dried it off, and returned it to the knife block. “Oscar Wilde once said that the tragedy of women was that they all become like their mothers. I’m not sure I’d dispute him; my mother was certainly like my grandmother. Here. You take the ice, and I’ll bring these glasses and the lemon.”
Sam walked back to the living room feeling as if he’d had a kick in the throat. “Where’s the turkey, Dad? I didn’t smell a thing in the kitchen.”
“The dinner is catered. I didn’t want Edwina to prepare it, and my cleaning woman says she can’t boil water. This way, we eat and repair to the living room as if we’re in a restaurant. The caterer will clean the kitchen.”
Feeling as if he’d had the air sucked out of him, Sam sat beside Kendra, put an arm around her shoulder, and left the serving of drinks to his dad. He wondered if his gesture of affection to Kendra was genuine or if it was generated by his guilt. He’d withdrawn from her in response to his father’s quote of Oscar Wilde—though God knows Wilde was anything but a paragon of virtue—and he was covering it by putting his arm around her shoulder.
Some weeks earlier, he hadn’t withdrawn, but after a logical consideration of their relationship, he had purposefully slowed it down. However, this was a gut reaction aided by the solid distaste he already had for Kendra’s mother. If Kendra noticed, she didn’t let it show.
Almost as soon as he and his father returned to the living room, the doorbell rang, and Jethro went to answer it. “How are you? Thanks for coming a little early and sparing me a fit of nerves,” Sam heard his father say, and figured that the caterer had arrived.
“You know I always keep my appointments in good time, Mr. Hayes,” a female voice replied. “Bring that on in, Allen.”
Jethro returned to his guests. “My caterer and her assistant are here, so we’ll have some hors d’oeuvres in a few minutes.”
Sam got up and walked over to the piano. He couldn’t stand hypocrisy, and he was, at the moment, living it. “Dad, when did you last have this piano tuned?”
“About a month ago. It should be in tune.”
Sam beckoned to Kendra, pulled out the bench, and sat down. “Do you sing?”
“Not unless I want to clear out this place. Do you?”
“I’ve been known to carry a tune. What’s your fancy—pop, blues, jazz, or classical?”
“Whatever you’d like to play. I love music.”
“How about some Ellington?” He didn’t especially want to play jazz, but he figured he’d better keep it light, and after letting his fingers dance over the keys in a warm-up, he played “Sophisticated Lady,” because he knew she liked it.
“Sing something,” Jethro said. “It’s been ages since I heard you sing.”
Sam didn’t want to sing, because he preferred to sing ballads, and he did not want to sing a love song. So he sang “I Still Suits Me,” a playful song that Paul Robeson made famous in the movie,
Show Boat.
He loved the song, and it suited his rich baritone.
“That’s quite some talent you’ve got,” Bert Richards said.
“I’d like to hear you play something from an older classical composer. Ellington wrote classical music, but you know what I mean.”
“Do you know ‘Rite of Spring’?” Kendra asked him. He did, and he was happy to play it for her.
“Thank you,” she said when he finished. “You’re really talented.”
He thanked her. “My dad will tell you he had to ride herd on me to make me practice, but after I saw some real progress, I enjoyed practicing.” He got up and turned to Bert.
“I bet you didn’t bring your guitar, but there are at least two guitars here.”
“Let’s wait for that till after dinner,” Jethro said. “Mrs. Watkins is about to give us some hors d’oeuvres. I’ve heard that you’re very skilled at the guitar, Bert, and I want to hear you play when I’m in a relaxed mood.” He turned the radio on, and soft, easy-listening music surrounded them.
 
At the dinner table, the conversation turned to art and travel. “The day after I graduated from college, I went to France on a tramp steamer,” Bert said. “If I’d been smart, I would have stayed there for a few years.”
“But in that case, you wouldn’t have had me,” Kendra said.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You might have had a differently shaped nose or been a half inch shorter or taller, but you would have definitely come along.”
Sam watched the interplay between father and daughter and surmised that their relationship was much like his with his father. If only he hadn’t stopped at Rooter’s with James Enders, he wouldn’t have that awful taste in his mouth of seeing Ginny Hunter in his mind’s eye, propositioning him, or making street-level remarks to the bartender. How could he have an honest relationship with Kendra and not share with her what he now knew of her mother?
“Kendra just won a nice scholarship to do research in Europe and write a journalistic account of it,” Bert said, beaming with pride.
“I’m going to Italy in January,” Kendra said, and it was the first Sam had heard of it.
“That’s wonderful,” Edwina said. “Italy’s lovely when it isn’t filled with tourists, though you may need to speak Italian.”
“I’m going to take a crash course.”
Sam looked straight at Kendra, his expression cool and unfriendly. Why hadn’t she told him? They rode together from upper Northwest Washington to Alexandria, Virginia, and telling him about an event so important to both of them didn’t occur to her?
“She won the trip by coming out on top in some stiff competition at Howard’s School of Communications where she’s a student,” Sam said, his tone as impersonal as if he were lecturing in Psychology 101. He was proud of her, but he’d be damned if he’d show it right then. He wanted to ask how long she would be gone, but if he did that, he’d tell everyone present that they were not as close as he had thought they were.
His father asked the question for him. “Will you be away for the entire semester?”
“Only for a month. The scholarship is for six weeks, but my boss at the radio station called Professor Hormel and prevailed upon him to allow me to go for a shorter period. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask that, but I’m happy for the change, because I still have to pass all of my classes that semester. And I prefer it also for personal reasons.” With a shy smile, she glanced at Sam, and then lowered her gaze.
At times, she was so soft that he wanted to protect her from everyone and everything. He told himself not to give in to it, that caring for Kendra meant dealing with Ginny Hunter, and he didn’t want that woman cluttering up his life.
“No thanks,” he said to his father’s offer of a martini cocktail. “I’ll stick with gin and tonic. A martini is suicide for anybody who plans to drive a car within the next five hours.”
Bert declined a drink. “I’ll have something during the meal, and that will be aplenty for me.”
Sam nodded appreciatively. The more he saw of Bert Richards, the more he liked him. Here was proof that a sensible man did not always make sensible choices in women.
Dinner was served, and as they headed for the dining room, he said to his father in hushed tones, “I’m surprised you didn’t invite one of the unattached women in your office as a date for Bert.”
“It never occurred to me. I believe in letting a man choose his own poison. It keeps things a lot less complicated.”
Jethro said grace, and Sam noticed that Bert mouthed the words along with him. He asked him, “Do you attend church regularly, Bert?”
“If you mean every Sunday, yes, I manage that, but I don’t participate in the many weekly activities and services. Occasionally, Kendra attends with me, and that’s always a pleasure.”
“You’re fortunate,” Jethro said to Bert. “My only son has to sleep late at least once a week. You’d think a big-shot medical specialist prescribed that his great sleep-in should take place on Sunday mornings.”
“Dinner is ready, Mr. Hayes.”
The caterer served smoked salmon pate; corn and oyster chowder, followed by raspberry sorbet for a palate cleanser; roast turkey with dressing and gravy, wild rice pilaf, asparagus tips, and cranberry relish; Port du Salut and St. Andre cheese; and for dessert, she presented the brandied baked Alaska to a rousing applause.
Jethro uncorked two bottles of Moët & Chandon champagne, explaining that the champagne was a gift from Bert. He raised a glass to the caterer.
“Thank y’all,” she said. “Catering for Mr. Hayes is always a pleasure. I’m happy that you enjoyed it. I’ll serve the espresso in the living room. Would anyone prefer regular coffee?” No one did. Along with the espresso, Mrs. Watkins and her helper served toasted pecans, mints, and grapes.
“This is the way to go,” Bert said. “To enjoy a meal like this in your own home with not even the slightest scent to tip off the menu.” He raised his glass, “Jethro, you’re a man of class and imagination. I’ve enjoyed this tremendously.”
“So have I,” Kendra said, “and to spend such a wonderful Thanksgiving with both my papa and Sam makes this very special for me.”
Sam looked at his father—who sat comfortably among his guests, with his arms around a woman who he’d wanted for years before he finally got her—and told himself that his own life was going to be smoother, that he was not going to spend years missing and wanting
any
woman. He glanced down at Kendra, pulled her closer to him, and a grin spread over his face.
His dad at least knew what he wanted.
 
Except for occasional banalities, Kendra was silent during the ride home with Sam. She couldn’t say that she hadn’t enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at Jethro Hayes’s home, because she had. Seeing her papa in the company of men with whom he belonged and watching him hold his own with them was an experience she didn’t have often, and one that she would not soon forget. Sometime between leaving her apartment and arriving at Jethro’s home, Sam had changed. Further, she figured that while in the kitchen helping his father, he must have had an epiphany. Oh, he tried to act as if nothing had changed, but throughout her life, she’d lived with on-again off-again affection from her mother, and she had become a master both at detecting it and at living with it.
When they arrived at her apartment, it did not surprise her when he indicated that he didn’t want to come in. “I want you to come in, Sam. I want to talk with you.”
His quick shrug told her that he was ready and able to take whatever came.
She led him to her living room, took off her coat, and waited for him to let her know whether he planned to remove his. He took it off, and she draped it across a chair along with hers. She sat down in a side chair.
“Sam, what happened from the time we were at the movies until now? You told me you were sure, but you weren’t. I don’t like being on a seesaw. It’s very painful. I thought we had everything going for us, and you’ve led me to believe that you care for me, but something has derailed this relationship. What have I done? I’m not asking how I can repair it. I just want to know.”
BOOK: Breaking the Ties That Bind
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