Four of a Kind (44 page)

Yesterday, she got a voice message from Dr. Stevens. His practice was still for sale, and he was rooting for her to buy it. She would dearly love to. One problem: she was $495,000 short.

How do you turn $5,000 into $500,000?

She’d asked herself that question a hundred times, and hadn’t come up with an answer. Perhaps a magic wand? Genie in a bottle? Bet it all on black, win, and let it ride, doubling her winnings seven times in a row? Buy 5,000 Lotto tickets, and keep her fingers, toes, legs, and arms crossed?

Her cell rang. “Bess,” said Carla, answering.

“How was the meeting?” asked her friend.

“How do you turn five thousand dollars into five hundred thousand?” posed Carla, her head fixed on the enigma. “I keep asking myself. But I got nothing. Clearly, I’ve been asking the wrong person.”

Bess said, “Borden might have an idea.”

“What’s his number?”

“Seriously?”

“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” A few months ago, Carla would never have dared ask Borden Steeple—or anyone—for help. Her pride would have forbidden it. To show any sign of weakness had been anathema to Carla. But, as she’d come to realize, friends (especially a diverse group) were strength. Asking a friend for help was flexing your muscles.

Bess gave Carla Borden’s work number, and then asked, “I take it the rover job is not going to happen.”

“Over my dead body,” said Carla. “And I mean that literally. That job would kill me.”

“Carla! Sorry I kept you waiting,” said Dr. Clifton, scurrying toward her. “Meetings pile up on the other side of the complex.”

Carla said a quick good-bye to Bess, and then stood up to receive a handshake from her once and former boss. “Don’t apologize. I want to thank you for being late.”

“Thank me.”

“It gave me a little more time to think,” she said. “I respectfully decline your job offer, sir. I wish you the best of luck with the new program.”

Dr. Clifton nodded. “I can’t say I blame you, Carla.”

“That’s Dr. Morgan,” she said, and turned and walked out of there, never to return.

The stack of papers rested on the dining room table. Claude and the boys were outside with their neighbors for the annual block party.
She’d sent them out to deliver a platter of hot dogs and buns to the food table. Carla would join the party as soon as possible. Mrs. Browne’s famous crab cakes went quickly. They were huge, the size of baseballs. Eating one would be Carla’s just reward.

But first, she had some dirty work to do.

Papers arranged to her liking, she went to the front door and opened it. She immediately spotted Claude. Her eye always went right for him. He was laughing, holding a Coke, standing with another father in the middle of a game of running bases. The kids were zipping by on both sides. The two men were officiating in some way. Manny ran up to the base, and then jumped off provocatively. Claude made a move for him and then Manny dashed away with graceful agility. Claude shouted something at Manny, and the boy laughed. Claude’s pride in his son shone on his handsome face.

He was a good man. A good father.

She called and waved her arms. Claude noticed, made an apology to the neighbor, and jogged toward Carla on the porch.

“Come into the dining room for a second,” said Carla.

Claude followed her in, and saw the stack of papers on the table. “What’s all that?”

“I need you to sign some of these documents,” said Carla, pushing them forward.

Claude walked over to her, put his sweaty Coke can directly on the table. (Carla flinched, but let it go.) He didn’t touch her. He hadn’t kissed her or touched her all day. She’d come to realize he only touched her out of bed when he wanted sex that night. Carla wondered if a protocol of hugging or an RDA of casual affection could have prevented this moment. Although Carla had felt sorry for Alicia in a sexless union, at least Tim hadn’t deprived his wife of friendly contact, cheek kisses, pats on the back. In a trade—genital-only vs. nongenital-only touching—Carla couldn’t honestly say which she’d pick.

“You haven’t told me what I’m looking at,” he said.

“I’ve spent the last three days with Borden Steeple, Bess’s husband. He works at Merrill Lynch and helped me get the package together.” She patted the stack of papers.

“You were at Merrill Lynch? I thought you were doing orientation for the rover job.”

“Oh, no, I turned down that job,” she said. “I must’ve forgotten to tell you.”

Claude opened his mouth to roar, but quickly realized he was in no position to yell at her about that, having kept losing his previous job a secret for a week. He said, “We agreed that you would try out the rover job for six months.”

“No, you told me to do it and I got tired of telling you I didn’t want to,” she said. “You repeat yourself so many times, you grind me down. Or you refuse to do what I ask so many times that I stop asking. That’s how you get your way.”

“I
never
get my way,” he insisted.

“I believe that you believe that,” she said. “Acting put-upon and long-suffering is another way you manipulate me. And I let you do it. I am guilty of that.”

The can of Coke was beading, making a puddle on the table. That water mark would be bad, but Carla refused to be distracted. She clicked the ballpoint pen on top of the stack, and pushed the pile toward her husband.

“See the ‘sign here’ Post-its? There are twelve total,” she said. While he flipped through the pages, she explained what they were. “Two sets of documents. The first is an agreement to use our house for collateral against the small business loan for five hundred thousand dollars, along with the paperwork for the loan itself. The second is my contract with Dr. Stevens to purchase his practice, effective as soon as we can transfer the loan money to him. You don’t have to sign the purchase contract, but I thought you might want to see it. You do have to sign for the loan, and the collateral agreement.”

Carla had used her poker winnings to pay the bank and legal fees
to set up the loan and purchase. And that, as Borden showed her, was how to turn $5,000 into $500,000.

“You’ve lost your mind,” said Claude, laughing incredulously. “You want me to sign away my house so you can put us half a million dollars in debt? Why not ask me to burn the house down instead?”

“The practice is highly profitable,” she said. “Borden and the Merrill accountants took a close look at Dr. Stevens’s books. We’ll repay the loan in five years, and still bring in as much income as the rover job would pay.”

Claude said, “And what if it doesn’t work out? What if all those Brooklyn Heights parents don’t want to take their kids to a black doctor? Forget it, Carla. It’s too risky.”

Carla sighed. She was afraid it would come to this. And yet, now that it had, she was glad.

Taking a deep breath, Carla said, “If you don’t sign the documents, I’m leaving you.”

Going by his wide eyes and O-shaped lips, Carla felt assured that Claude had not seen that one coming.
Who you calling predictable now?
she thought smugly.

She went on. “We haven’t been equal partners in this marriage, Claude. I’ve made more money, done more of the child care and house care. I make all the appointments, schedule all the activities, pay the bills, cook the food, clean the dishes, shop for clothes. When you have nothing else to do, you do repairs around the house. You deal with the cars, but that’s it. Until now, I didn’t mind. I was raised to expect nothing from a man, and just be grateful to have one. My father was useless. Your father, too. A whole generation of fathers. I was—am—grateful that you are a responsible dad. The boys love you.”

“I do a ton of work,” he said, finding his voice again.

“I believe that you believe that,” she repeated. “Our marriage isn’t a contest of who does more. I’m just saying that I’ve worked
hard all these years doing what you wanted me to. I took the clinic job because you say a black woman couldn’t expect better. I grant you, a walk-in clinic might’ve been the best I could hope for
back then
. But I know I can expect more now. Putting in those fifteen years led me to this amazing opportunity to be a family doctor. To develop lasting relationships with patients, have an impact on people’s lives. It’s what I dreamed about in med school. I almost let the dream go because I thought it could never happen. Well, it’s happening. If you don’t sign this loan agreement and let me do this, the love I have for you will turn into hate.”

Claude said simply, “You’re bluffing.”

Carla laughed. “How the fuck would you know?”

She’d cursed in the house. He seemed to be more astonished by her language than her ultimatum.

As a matter of cold, hard fact, Carla wasn’t bluffing. She was playing a strong hand, aggressively.

If he refused to sign, she would divorce him. She would not live her life in fear of losing a man.

If he signed, Carla would make a concerted effort to put the resentments of the past behind them and strive for equality in their marriage. She’d be gracious, hardworking, and respectful, as was her natural way. She’d expect him to treat her the same. And maybe, in the not too distant future, their hard times would soften into renewed love.

Carla was absolutely certain—like her mother had faith in God—that she’d be fine. Either way, her life was going to change dramatically, for the better.

Ten minutes later, Carla stood on the sidewalk, chatting with her neighbors on a beautiful June evening in Brooklyn. On her paper plate was one of Mrs. Browne’s crab cakes and a wedge of lemon. The
kids ran up and down the street, playing running bases. Her mind was spinning with plans, dizzying unknowns, unexplored countries.

In all honesty, Carla was nervous, terrified.

But it was all good.

Claude had signed the papers.

Smoke lingered in the apartment in the humid July air. Robin could throw open every window and run fans, and it wouldn’t help. If Robin smoked with her morning coffee, the smell would linger into evening.

Stephanie was at Brownstone. For eight weeks in the summer, the school ran a fairly decent day camp, eight in the morning until three in the afternoon. For Robin, the transition into summer break had been seamless. She and Stephanie kept the same hours during the school year.

Due to the humidity, Robin had to go to the stoop for her cigarette breaks. These time-outs cut into her workday, but she got some exercise going up and down the stairs, and some sun, which gave her vampire skin a rosy glow and fortified her body with vitamin D. That said, Robin didn’t like smoking outside, exposing her habit to everyone who entered and left the building, or walked by on the street. She was careful to carry her butts back upstairs and flush them down the toilet.
The last thing she needed was to be accused by her neighbors of littering.

Today, Robin had placed one hundred and ten calls, and conducted seventy-eight interviews. The percentage of calls to interviews was strikingly high. People wanted to talk. Question of the day: “Do you feel hopeful about the future?”

Compared to similar temperature-taking polls she’d conducted in the fall, winter, and spring, the national mood had improved. Unlike the colder months, when the nation’s collective mentality was stuck in the snow and mud, the summer poll brought a warm breeze of optimism. Over the years, polls bore out the change in season with a shift in outlook. But this year, according to Robin’s sample, the shift had been paradigmatic.