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Authors: Marilynn Griffith

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BOOK: Mom's the Word
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Her mother shouted for the boys to clean up and come downstairs. She held one of the shirts up in the air and waved at Rob, in the front yard, smoothing things over even further with the husband next door. The way they were laughing, maybe it was a little too smooth, but Faith didn't seem to notice.

“Eric? Oh, I don't know. I guess I still call him Pops even though you left the house long ago. He likes it.”

He didn't like it. Karol knew that from the face that he'd made when she started saying it. She was eight years old and her friend Tonya's mother was going on and on about “Daddy this” and “Daddy that.”

It turned out that she was talking about her husband. They had a son who was a junior and to keep them separate, she just called her husband Daddy. He loved it. Pops, Karol's father, did not. He stated this a few times, but as always with Faith, she didn't listen. And now, decades later, he still tightened his jaw before he answered to it.

“You like it, Mom. He doesn't. I think it's a little strange that you insist on being Faith, but he just gets to be Pops. But then, you always did get to decide which part we all got to play.” Karol regretted the words as soon as she'd said them, but it was too late to get them back.

The boys ran off to change without being bidden. Even cauliflower-eared-always-listening-to-see-what's-going-on Mia followed behind her brothers. She must have seen the look in their grandmother's eyes. If Karol had seen it sooner, she might have joined her husband on the front lawn. When she did see it, it was too late to escape.

Faith had frozen in place at the close of her daughter's words. She kept her pose and pivoted slowly, reminiscent of the best supermodels. Her words scratched from deep in her throat, somewhere raw and painful.

“Do you think you know what it takes to keep a marriage together? Do you think you know how to raise decent children, work a job and keep your man in your bed? How to stay whole even when your world is in pieces? Well, baby, you don't know. Not yet. So don't judge Faith so quickly. You don't know…Eric as well as you think you do. To be honest, you don't know that husband of yours too well, either.”

Karol took a deep breath and tried to apologize, but her mother was already up and gathering the children into the car. She planned to take them to the Mary Brogan Museum to the latest exhibit, one she'd read about in the
Tallahassee Democrat.
Convinced the children were already ruined from the dearth of artistic freedom in their lives, she still promised to do what she could.

“Look, Faith. You don't have to do this. If I'd known you were coming…It's just been a hard time. I'm sorry for what I said about Dad—Pops. I don't know everything. Not about the two of you, anyway. I do take issue with what you said about Rob, though. I know him better than I know myself.”

Karol's mother slid into her SUV and put on her sunglasses. She told the kids to buckle up while she rolled down the window, speaking barely above a whisper.

“Honey, you know nothing about that man. If you did, you'd realize that it was he who sent your little friends next door away. I'm shocked that it took him so long to do it. Your Eric would have moved you away from here years ago.”

Before Karol could reply, the window closed and the car took off, leaving her in a wake of dust and no small amount of doubt.

 

She knows.

It was all Rob had written in his late-night e-mail to his friend Singh. He couldn't say more because he didn't know more. In fact, he didn't know anything for sure but he'd been married long enough to know when “I'm okay” meant just the opposite.

For two days, Karol had been stiff and quiet, cleaning and cooking like some kind of Stepford Wife. Usually, Karol focused on the children during the day and except for the dishes, which Rob hated, they did the housework together when he got home from work. When his mother-in-law returned with the children on the day of her visit, Rob knew that something was wrong. It had started with the children greeting him at the door wearing coordinating outfits and fearful looks. Rob wasn't sure how, but Faith had incriminated him in some way. She'd seen through him despite all his efforts.

Karol turned over slowly, but he knew she wasn't sleeping. He rested an arm along hers, but she turned away, toward the wall.

This was war, and Rob knew it.

And war required time and strategy that Rob didn't have. He could have held her shoulder and whispered the truth into her ear, but an all-night argument seemed less than appealing. If only Singh had done his part and told Hope, he wouldn't have been in this predicament, but Singh had it hard on his end, too. No man wants to fall beneath his woman's expectations, to remind her that underneath it all, he is just…a fallible human. A sinner. And yet, that was the truth of it for husbands and wives, too. But it's the man who takes it hard when his wife's eyes don't look at him the same. Rob knew the feeling firsthand, he'd gone through it just today.

Lord. I don't want to fight.

They didn't fight much. They'd only had a few really bad fights, early in their marriage, but he knew that once Karol got going on this one, there wouldn't be a quick resolution.

And then there was his friend to think of. Singh obviously hadn't told Hope the real reason they had moved away. At this point, Rob would be in even more trouble if Singh had told his wife and Karol talked to Hope and found out that her best friend already knew.

Wake her up. Tell her.

But then, maybe Karol knew nothing. Maybe she was really okay after all. Maybe he should just go to sleep.

She is not okay.

Karol turned back to him and opened her eyes. “Thanks for being so kind while Faith was here. I know these visits are a lot to take. Thank you.”

With a deep sigh, Rob curled closer around his wife, smoothing his hand over the scarf tied over her hair. “I don't mind. I love your mother. She gave me you, didn't she? It's you that I worry about. The kids, too. You all seem…upset.”

He'd expected Karol to be an emotional wreck after her mother left and they had time to be alone, but she wasn't. Her tears had dried into a steely resolve. She'd apologized for not having the kids in hand since Hope's departure. Rob countered, assuring Karol that the children were his responsibility, too, but by then she was far gone into superwoman territory, a land with only a narrow window of escape. He hoped that the minutes of pretend sleeping had calmed her down.

“I'm okay. Thoughtful, but okay. This week taught me a lot. It's going to keep teaching me if I let it.” Karol didn't move away from him, but she didn't respond to him, either.

So much for her calming down. For Karol, yelling and screaming meant light at the end of the tunnel, but even icy words like this meant that plans were being made in her mind, questions were being asked…If Rob wasn't careful, he'd be accused and proven guilty without ever saying a word. This had gone on long enough.

Rob sat up in the bed and rested his back against the wall. Karol laid her head over in his lap, but she didn't say a word. She wasn't going to ask the questions this time. He was all on his own.

“I never meant to hurt you. You have to understand that.”

Karol didn't indicate one way or another whether she understood it. She didn't move.

“It's not that I didn't love Hope and Singh. I did. I still do. It's just that I love you more. I missed you…”

She sat up slowly, arms crossed across her abdomen as if in defense. “So what are you saying? You asked them to leave?”

He reached for her arm, but she jerked away. The emptiness between them seemed to grow in the darkness. “It's not that simple. There was more to it—”

“Not really. Did you or did you not ask Hope and Singh to leave? Yes or no?”

Rob cracked his neck, one of Karol's pet peeves that he only did in private. He hadn't meant to do it now, but tension that rose up his shoulders and into his throat threatened to choke him. Rob wanted to tell the whole story, to spread the blame a little thinner, to leave a way for himself to get out of this, but he didn't. He couldn't. This was his wife asking about his actions, not anyone else's. The only way out was the truth. “I asked Singh to pray about it. It just wasn't healthy the way things were—”

Karol held a finger up to her mouth. “Stop. Talking.”

“Wait. Look, I know you're mad, but that's not helping anything. We're going to have to talk this out—”

“Shh…”

When Rob quieted down, he heard what Karol had already, the beat of a drum. They almost bumped heads as they jumped up and headed downstairs. A drum set had arrived the morning before, a final gift for Mia from Faith, whose one request was that the gift not be returned or given away. Rob had shrugged it off and stored the congas in the garage. How much trouble could a four-year-old girl get into with a couple of drums anyway? he'd asked himself while hauling them to the garage.

A lot of trouble evidently.

As Rob and Karol raced down the stairs, he checked the clock on the DVD player—three o'clock. It seemed to take forever to get to the garage as they rounded the furniture in the new arrangements Faith had left behind. Just as they cleared the last chair, the drumming stopped. Karol and Rob stared at each other in the dim light, both looking afraid now instead of angry. Had one of Karol's tubs of unfinished projects fallen on their little girl's head?

A few more steps brought the answer and an unwelcome surprise: next to Mia and her new drum set was Neal, their now red-eyed neighbor.

Rob gave him a nod of thanks before grabbing Mia up and heading back upstairs, trying not to think of the bad things she could have gotten into in the garage alone. Behind him, Karol made ashamed apologies that Rob probably should have had a part in. He whispered a prayer for forgiveness, kissed his daughter, carried her upstairs and tucked her in, knowing that the best of his apologies this night were yet to come.

The Brat Project
  • Find out if there are city nuisance complaints for children—Neal says no, but go downtown anyway and get info.
  • Read dog behavior modification articles—something has to work on these kids!
  • Buy earplugs.
  • Get new and additional locks for doors.
  • Get an estimate on enclosing porch.
  • Ask fence people to move up installation date.
  • Take Karol to lunch and try to get her to understand where we're coming from. Neal's suggestion. I'm not up for it.
  • Check on Fallon's presale numbers for her latest release.
  • Update Heather on the final details of Fallon's black college tour.

—Dyanne's to-do list

Chapter Five

D
espite her husband's compassion for them, Dyanne was starting to think that maybe the kids next door were going to wreck her plans, after all. To keep that from happening, Dyanne put Project Pregnancy into overdrive. All she had to do now was get prepared for Fallon Gray's book tour and get her baby proposal tightened and printed up. Neal wouldn't be able to refuse her. He never had before. Not really, anyway. Still, she knew better than to push him too far at the wrong time. Like now.

Before Dyanne could reveal her plan, Neal beat her to it with a surprising proclamation of his own.

“I know we moved out here to relax, but it's turning out to be more work than our lives back in New York. I don't know if I can take it all. One minute it's maddeningly quiet and the next, there's some kid beating drums in the middle of the night. Maybe we should sell, once the summer is over.”

Dyanne thought about saying that maybe that was God's way of getting him ready for the late nights with their baby, but that would probably only terrify him at this point. Neal's job, his business was steady. It's what he was used to. The biggest imbalance in his life was…Dyanne.

She, on the other hand, was intimate with the dizzying fear that everything could fall apart, including her marriage. She didn't wish that on anybody, the fear she felt all the time, as though something was chasing her to the next goal, the next step of the life she'd planned out for herself. Most of all, she was afraid of letting down her guard as her mother had: settling in and getting comfortable. She could still remember the look on her mother's face when her father had come home and asked for a divorce. Her mother had laughed, thinking it was a joke. All these years later, it still wasn't funny. It never would be.

“Don't give up so easy, Neal. Sure, it's going to take a while for things to calm down, but they'll be back in school in the fall. Just give it some time. You wanted this. We both did.” She rubbed her husband's shoulders and tried to focus on him instead of wondering how far off schedule this was going to put her conception.

And of course, there was the biggest thing consuming her thoughts—Fallon's tour. She'd never get it all done if Neal wanted to do another move now. Dyanne needed to do some follow-up calls to a few bookstores on the collegiate part of Fallon's book tour. During the four days planned for Atlanta, Fallon would be speaking at a college, a megachurch and bookstore on almost every day. A noted psychologist and conference speaker, Fallon got some of her best sales after campus events. Other publicists never seemed to understand the dynamics of the process and rarely sent their authors on the university circuit.

Dyanne made it work because she analyzed the strengths and connections of each author separately and after seeing Fallon fill in at a graduation once, she'd created a university leg in every one of Fallon's tours. The key to it all was getting the kids to fall in love with you. Then, they called and e-mailed their parents, who told their friends and it all went on from there. Perhaps the same tactic would work with her neighbors' children….

Neal placed his hands over hers and turned to face her. “You're so sexy when you're distracted, you know that? If you weren't trying so hard to get a baby, I'd take you up those stairs and—”

“Don't let that stop you. A baby ain't gonna hurt nothing.”

Both of them dropped hands and turned to the door. Dyanne had been thinking pretty much the same thing, but someone else, someone who was supposed to be far, far away had said it. It took them a few seconds to take in the large, lively woman standing in their open front door. Fallon Gray, Ph.D. Live and in color. The wrong color. Her blond dread-locks were now a black Afro cut close to her scalp.

Though Dyanne tried to recover quickly, knowing how easily Fallon was offended, she didn't move quickly enough. The woman swung through the door with a leather duffel bag, wearing an eggshell man's suit and low heels. The absence of her goldilocks, as Fallon had affectionately called them, gave her a totally different look. Dyanne's eyes were drawn to fist-size earrings dangling from Fallon's ears.

She took a deep breath and smiled, grateful that at least one thing hadn't changed. Her bestselling author still smelled of patchouli and oranges and hadn't lost her old woman's crush on Neal.

Fallon motioned to Dyanne's husband with a curving nail. “C'mere, baby. Go on out to the car and get my bags. Maybe that'll wear off some of that frustration from not taking Dee Dee upstairs and all.”

Emerging from his shock, Neal started for Fallon with open arms, laughing as he went. “How in the world did you find us? And what are you doing here?”

Dyanne, who'd only managed to mumble a few half-formed words, wanted to know the same thing. Although she was a beast of a businesswoman when she had time to plan things out, impromptu and in-person encounters definitely weren't Dyanne's strong suit. And interacting with Fallon required some preparation. For all Dyanne disliked about her father's religious fervor, she had to admit being brought to her knees in prayer more than a few times by the colorful woman in front of her, who now looked nothing like the ten thousand promotional pieces that had been circulated the week before. Dyanne's anger brought her out of her shock.

“So what's with the hair? You know I sent out all those postcards with your locks, right? We talked about this. You have to stick with the image people know. Build the brand.”

Fallon flopped down on their new leather couch. She kicked off her shoes as though she'd lived there longer than they had. “One thing at a time, baby. First, I have to answer Handsome here. Let's see now—” she fumbled in her bag “—how did I end up here? The company sent me some amended schedule talking about I was supposed to be going to Miami or somewhere by myself and that you had moved to Florida and they were considering matching me up with another publicist.”

Dyanne hung her head.
They didn't,
she thought, knowing they had. She'd told everyone that they could still handle the department and contact her online if needed during her vacation, but the one thing they shouldn't try to deal with was Fallon Gray.

“Uh-huh. They did, girl. I can see what you're thinking all over your face. Anyway, this little white girl called me—Heather or something—and she was talking just as crazy as you please.

“Sweet thing, just confused. Real confused. Talking about how I wasn't doing the historically black college tour or signing at the Essence bookstores and they were cutting back and when would I be available to rethink my brand—”

The room started to spin. If Dyanne had been pregnant, she definitely would have had to lie down. This was beyond crazy. She tried to think, to remember where she'd put her phone, but Neal was on top of it, shoving her new PDA into her hands. She tapped away, thumbs flying while Fallon continued.

“So you know me, baby. I called Steve.”

The tapping stopped. Steve Chaise, publisher and CEO of Wallace Shelton Books, did not take phone calls. He took messages. Fallon Gray did not leave messages. The only way out of that call was a conflict, the thing Dyanne dreaded most of all. She was known throughout the company as being one who smoothed things out. Now she'd be swirling in this mess for months.

Still, she knew better than to try and correct Fallon on making the call or the woman would whip out her phone and call Mr. Chaise again. Nobody but Fallon's mama, now long dead, had ever succeeded in telling her what to do. The uncanny thing was that Fallon was usually right in the end. Still, this call thing couldn't have gone well. Dyanne cleared her throat.

“And what did Mr.—Steve say?”

Fallon rubbed her head, front to back, back to front, just like Neal did when he woke in the morning. Without those earrings, she looked a lot like Mr. Jennings, a math teacher Dyanne had in third grade. What a mess. Yet somehow when Fallon opened her mouth, nobody noticed what she looked like. Neal, however, kept staring at the author's head as if he was digging it or something. Men. They're intrigued by anything different, but it won't keep them. In the end, they wanted their women painfully the same.

Not that Fallon tried to keep a man. For all her flirting, Dr. Gray ran guys off after a month or two. She said after loving hard and true one good time, everything else was just something to do. Dyanne hated to admit it, but it was true.

“I don't remember everything Steve and I said. We laughed a lot and made some plans for me to fly in for lunch with him after the tour—”

“Laughed?” In all her years of working for him, Dyanne had never seen Mr. Chaise laugh. The one smile she'd thought she'd seen had turned out to be indigestion. If there was ever a driven person, it was him. Before now, she would have thought he only would have laughed if some bestselling business book suggested it—one he'd published, of course.

“Girl, yeah. Steve is something else, old dog. If he wasn't him and I wasn't me, I swear I'd have me a piece of that man. He's kind of fine in his way, don't you think?”

Yuck. “I don't think. Just cut to the chase. Am I fired?”

Fallon stretched and yawned. “Naw, Dee. Heather is. Poor thing. I tried to save her, but she got all snotty with Steve and well, you know the rest. As for us, we're good to go with an added ten grand for the tour budget. That spot we did on Gospel Broadcasting last week has broken us into the inspirational sector. Evidently, the first print run is almost gone. He thinks you're a genius and said to tell you so.”

It was Dyanne's turn to sit down. The TV spot on Gospel Broadcasting Network had been a fluke more than anything. She was trying to build up her contacts in preparation for rolling out the Christian line and a friend of a friend of a friend from college had turned out to be the network director. Dyanne had been shocked to hear the woman's voice on the line, since she'd been one of the students adamantly against “the white man's religion” in college.

“Me, a Christian. Can you believe it? I tell everybody from back in the day that God has a sense of humor. He delights in turning big mouths like I was into believers,” the woman had said before offering a slot on an upcoming show on woman's issues.

With no one else available at the time, she'd offered up Fallon Gray as a guest, thinking she'd be rejected, but her pseudo friend had been delighted. “Oooh, I love her! Though she doesn't say it, everything she writes comes straight from the Word. I'd love to have her on and let her discuss her faith more openly.”

Dyanne had tried to explain that there might not be much faith to discuss, but Fallon had done the date and proved her wrong again. Not only had Fallon kept up with the host's Bible references down to the chapter and verse, she'd ended the segment with an a cappella rendition of “His Eye is on the Sparrow” that had brought the house down, leaving even the cameraman in tears.

Though everyone who watched seemed to have been amazed, Dyanne was a little annoyed about the whole thing. While it was great for Fallon to get such attention, the media exposure meant nothing since it was outside of the brand Dyanne had worked so hard to create.

How many of the educated, professional women in Fallon's reader base were up watching some Christian show out of the Midwest? Though she'd been glad for the favor from her old friend, she didn't want to confuse or even offend the readers who kept Fallon on the bestseller lists. This kind of thing could be done, but it had to be planned strategically. Or so Dyanne had thought.

“Did you say that the first print run is almost sold out? But the book just came out what, a week ago.”

“Uh-huh. A hundred thousand copies so far, I think.” Fallon was up now and heading for the kitchen. Despite her girth, she ate only raw foods and walked several miles a day. She said it was all the nuts she ate that kept her fat and that no man she'd known had ever minded.

“Sexy is all in your mind,” Fallon always said in her books and speaking engagements. The women clapped, but like Dyanne, none of them really believed it. But looking at Fallon now, with no hair and only a little gold lipstick, Dyanne didn't know what to think except that this woman who so often drove her crazy had a beauty that didn't make sense.

Fallon pulled out a giant Vita-Mix blender from her bag and went straight for the spinach and mangoes she knew Neal kept on hand. That was how Fallon had first taken a liking to Neal. He had a mango in his cooler at a hot book signing in Dallas. Fallon had turned real slow to him and lifted her sunglasses at the sight of the fruit, saying, “Oh, I see, Dee Dee. You got you one of those sweet juicy brothers. Not every man can handle a mango, but I've never met a mango man I didn't like.” And just like that, she'd made up her mind to like Neal as much she sometimes pretended to dislike Dyanne.

Fallon turned to the door to wave to Neal as he brought in her luggage before assessing the fruit. “I see you found a decent store out here in this wilderness. I was thinking there would be some good mango down here in Florida. It looks good, but this fruit ain't tasting like much. We're going to have to stock up in Miami.”

Dyanne took a breath. Miami was not on Fallon's book tour schedule. In fact, the tour wasn't even supposed to start for another month. She still wasn't sure why Fallon was in her house, how she'd found it or how long she planned to stay—although the entire Louis Vuitton luggage collection Neal had just deposited in her living room gave her some idea. There was no point in trying to rush Fallon. If Dyanne were honest, she wasn't sure she wanted to. As much as they fought, somewhere along the way, the two of them had become friends. They just knew better than to admit it.

BOOK: Mom's the Word
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