Playing Hard To Get (21 page)

“Thank you, Troy,” Kiona said.

“I’m the one thanking you!”

Leaving Kiona to look through the other purses, Troy walked to the cashier and handed the checkout woman her card before she’d mentioned the total.

“No need to box it,” Troy said casually. “I think we’re leaving the fake one here! And add a monogram wallet too…a wallet and a keychain.”

“Well—Ms…. Ms. Smith—” the woman tried.

“It’s Hall now, but that’s my old name on the card,” Troy rambled.

“Ms. Smith, your card was declined.”

“What?” Troy looked as if she had no idea what “declined” meant.

“Declined—as in, funds not available.”

It was like the woman was suddenly yelling over a loudspeaker.

“Funds what?”

“Do you have another card?”

“I have that one,” Troy said. “Can you try it again?”

“I did it twice. The card doesn’t work.” The impatience in the woman’s voice was mounting, yet she seemed to be getting some weird satisfaction from the turn in events.

“I—” Troy turned to see Kiona laughing with one of the salesgirls. Just then she remembered what she’d said to Lucy—that she’d told her not to put any more money into the account. “I—”

“Ms., other people are waiting,” the woman said.

Embarrassed, ashamed, and nervous, Troy opened her purse and pulled out the only other card she had—Kyle’s business account card from the church. He’d given it to her in case of an emergency.

“Try this one,” she said. “I know it’ll work.”



See the World: The 3T Get-Out Guide

The weekend rut is the worst rut of all—you shop, you sleep, you meet your girls for drinks and dip and maybe a movie. It happens this way every weekend and pretty soon you get bored and mix it up by…just staying home. Stop limiting yourself. Stop limiting your universe. Expand your horizons by expanding your calendar.

Instead of inviting your friends out for the same old drinks at the same old place, try something new, somewhere new. Here are ten things you and your soul sisters can try that’ll be sure to be added to your list of favorite pastimes.

1.
Get in the saddle:
Because horses are everywhere, dude ranches are hard to miss. Put on your leather stirrups and go for a ride on the wild side.

2.
Make your own clothes:
Believe it or not, crocheting is making a comeback. Find a local sewing circle and see what you can make. You may never wear that lopsided sweater, but you can brag about making it.

3.
Cook it up:
Yeah, you can cook soul food, but can you make chicken tikka masala? Stop paying for good Indian food and learn how to make your own by taking a cooking class next Friday night.

4.
Go hiking:
While communing with nature might leave you with a few mosquito bites, the benefits for your mind, body, and soul will be worth it.

5.
Pitch a tent:
The only thing funnier than a bunch of children in the woods is a bunch of sisters building a campfire. Make s’mores and tell relationship horror stories.

6.
Turn up the heat:
Yoga is wonderful, but hot yoga is magnificent. It’ll open your pores and leave your skin quite fab! Warning: Don’t cover your hair. That’ll make it worse.

7.
Go to the opera:
From Aida to Black Orpheus, opera is full of storylines you’ll enjoy and high notes you’ll have fun trying to duplicate.

8.
Save a tree, save a kid:
If you and your bestie are tired of hearing about each other’s problems, try solving the problems of the world by getting involved in your community.

9.
Make beautiful art:
Adult education programs teach everything from pottery making to sketching. Priced from $40 to $200, the weekly classes usually cost less than the bag on your arm.

10.
Support a sister:
Find an independent sistergirl painter, poet, filmmaker, singer, or dancer and support her work on a Friday night.

6

The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?”

—
Sigmund Freud

T
o the surprise of no one in the universe but the woman wearing the second $85,000 wedding ring he’d bought her, Lionel wasn’t considering moving his budding brood back to New York City and he wasn’t even willing to talk about it. Riding in the passenger’s seat on the way home from the airport after a terrible game that solidified his team’s exclusion from the NBA finals, he’d told Tasha no so many times she’d stopped counting.

“No. It doesn’t make any sense,” Lionel said after she mentioned that they could probably find something big and pretty and cheap in just a month or so. While getting good property in Manhattan was like getting a private phone call from Jesus, it was a recession and they had the kind of money that could at least get a Hispanic Realtor named “Hey-suess” on the line—Tasha had come up with this joke to break the ice. “Where are my kids?” Lionel asked. He hadn’t even chuckled about the “Hey-suess” line.

“With Milania.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you bring them to the damn airport?” Lionel looked at Tasha like she was crazy.

“Because I wanted to talk to you about this.”

“About fucking what?”

“About the move…”

“There’s nothing to fucking talk about.” Lionel held up his hands to show his puzzlement.

Tasha winced at every curse that came from his lips. Lionel wasn’t a violent man. He almost never even raised his voice. But when he was upset, he cursed like a drunken sailor on weekend leave. Dropping f-bombs was his way of dealing with aggravation. The only way Tasha could get his attention after that was to drop the subject or drop more bombs than him. And she was leaning toward the latter. It was a dramatic dance any married woman knew, and while Tasha wasn’t the best at it, she needed to at least be good. Good enough. Because what she wasn’t telling Lionel was that she’d already packed up half of their belongings, scheduled a moving van, and redirected the mail.

She needed bombs. Canons. Howitzers. Heavy artillery.

“Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it! Fuck it! Just fuck it!” She hollered, banging on the steering wheel as the car jerked from left to right in the traffic on the freeway. Lionel lowered his hands and looked at her. “You know what? I was just trying to do something for this family—for our children. Get them out of this godforsaken hick-ass state and into some motherfucking culture. But just forget it. Fucking forget it! Shit! Fuck me for even trying to be a good mother.”

If any of their grandmothers were alive, bars of Ivory soap would be poking out of both of the LaRoches’ mouths, but in this situation clean language was the mouthwash of losers.

“Pull this motherfucker over!” Lionel shouted, pulling the steering wheel so the car jerked far to the right until Tasha got control again and charged off of the exit into a McDonald’s drive-through.

“You want to tell me what’s right for my damn children?” Lionel started, snatching the keys from the ignition. “What’s more fucking right than what they already have—a million-dollar mansion in the best neighborhood in the country, preadmission to the best day school in the state, every piece of goddamn brand-name clothing you can find, safety, food, heat in the fucking winter, cool air in the summer. Shit, when we took Toni to the mountains last year, I realized she’d never even seen dirt. What’s better than that? What could be better than the life they have?”

“If we keep them here, they’re just gonna turn out like every other suburban teen—sheltered, privileged, and pretentious.”

“They are sheltered and privileged,” Lionel said. “And they should be pretentious. You know, I told you when I agreed to have Toni that I wanted the best for my children. Better than what I had, growing up in the damn projects, not knowing my damn daddy, thinking I was nothing. I’m not nothing anymore and my girls are something. I want them to know that. There ain’t nothing in that fucking city that’s gonna be good for—wait a minute.” Lionel jumped out of the car and ran around to Tasha’s side, pulling her from the car and standing before her like a solider in war. “Them…this isn’t
them
going back to the city. This is about
you.
About the fucking meeting with…what’s her name…Lynn.”

“No,” Tasha tried, but it was too late. Lionel had added up everything he thought he knew in his mind. “It’s not about—”

“I fucking know you. Everything is about Tasha. Everything. You just want to get back into the city so you can be a drunk with your friends and buy a bunch of shit to make yourself feel better about the fact that you’ll never be as successful as your mother.”

Tasha balled up her fists.

“You know, sometimes when we fight, you take shit too far and now you have, Lionel,” she said, fuming with anger. “Take that back.”

“No, Tasha. Because it’s time I said it to you. It’s time I told you that I know you only had Toni because you wanted to prove that you could be a better mother than Porsche was to you and when Toni came and your mother came here from LA and—”

“Stop!”

“—and everything was perfect for a little while as you two pretended that you didn’t still hate each other, you thought you had her. But when she left and she wasn’t there anymore to watch you be the perfect mother—”

“No!” Tasha wanted to stop Lionel. His words were pouring into her ears like lava.

“—you didn’t know what to do, so you had to one-up her again—and that’s the only reason—”

“You stop it—”

“No!” Lionel barked, inching so close into Tasha she couldn’t breathe. “That’s the only reason you had Tiara. The only reason!”

“It’s not true. None of it’s true,” Tasha cried.

“Come on. You weren’t even thinking about children until it was clear your business wasn’t working,” Lionel said. “You weren’t the hot news anymore. You were my wife and people wanted me out front.”

“Putting you out front was my job.”

“Not for long…it didn’t impress Porsche for long. I wasn’t enough.”

“You think I married you to impress her?” Tasha asked.

“I think you think you have something to prove.”

“Prove what? To whom? To Porsche? That bitch never gave two shits about me. She let the entire world raise me, her bastard daughter, as she went off and chased her dreams. What could I have to prove to her.”

“That you’re better,” Lionel said so easily and so quickly it was clear to Tasha he’d thought about this for a long time. “That you can be better than her—even without her. That you’re better than the little girl she left alone, the one she let leave.”

Tasha pushed away from Lionel’s hold against the car and tried to laugh it off as she walked in circles in the empty parking space beside the car. Suddenly she was seven and watching Porsche leave her in a hotel room again. Suddenly she was eleven and begging Porsche to read a poem she’d written for Mother’s Day. Suddenly she was seventeen and running away from home.

“You think I didn’t know how hurt you were when Porsche told you she wasn’t coming when Tiara was born and that she hasn’t ever been here to see her?”

“I don’t care about that. I don’t care about anything Porsche thinks. She chose not to see her grandchildren. She chose her career again. I didn’t!” Tasha was hollering so loud the children in the playground in front of the restaurant stopped playing and watched. She wouldn’t cry, though. Tears were welled up in the corners of her eyes, but she wouldn’t cry.

“Yes, you do. It’s obvious. It’s obvious in everything you do. No nannies. No help. You have them crammed up in that little bedroom….”

“That’s for their own good.”

“No, that’s for your own good. It’s so you can feel like you’re doing something for them, when you’re not,” Lionel said. “You’re too busy doing for yourself.”

“I love my children!”

“If you love them then why did you stop counseling? Why didn’t you keep going to the therapist?”

“I was doing better.”

Lionel looked up at the clouds like he was expecting rain, lightning, thunder, a tornado.

“You don’t get it,” he said, walking away from Tasha. “You just don’t get it.”

“Where are you going?” She went running behind him as he cornered out of the lot.

“Home.”

“You can’t walk home from here.” She grabbed his arm. “It’s too far.”

“I’m not getting in that car, Tasha. I need to be alone. I need to be away from you.” He stopped walking and looked at her, letting his own tears flow freely. “When we got married, I knew you were selfish. I knew I’d have to fight you and help you see the right way sometimes. And I’ve put up with a lot of your bullshit. A lot of it. I’ve let shit go and I’ve let you win.”

“Win? This isn’t a—”

“No! Listen to me. I’ve let you win more times than I can count. But not right now,” he said. “I never fought for myself, but you’re a fool if you think I’m not going to fight for Toni and Tiara. I won’t let your shortcomings, your anger, ruin them the way Porsche ruined you.”

Tasha pulled back her hand to slap Lionel, but he caught it.

“Fuck you,” she cried.

“Fuck me? Really?”

“Fuck you.”

“No. Fuck you.”

Tasha snatched her hand back from Lionel and charged toward the car. The distance between them grew from an invisible river to two tiles of sidewalk concrete. Tasha turned to see Lionel’s back.

“I’m moving back to the city,” she said harshly. “Just not with you.”