Of Blood and Sorrow (4 page)

“But I didn’t need you,” I said offhandedly with a dismissive head toss; it had the desired effect. Disappointment, then a weary sadness, shadowed his eyes. I’d never seen
that
before.

“I’ll be in town for a while. I want to see you. Will you call me? Please.”

Begging after all these years?

“Take care of yourself, Basil,” I said, and walked away with every bit of will I could muster.

FOUR

B
ASIL WAS ON MY MIND
when I got home that night, but Jamal wasn’t far behind. I was still angry at him for showing up like he had in my office. I never know what kind of nut will stroll in from nowhere, and Lilah Love was just the kind of nut I didn’t want him to meet.

I was also ticked off about him forgetting to mention Basil’s call. I certainly wouldn’t have called the man back, but it sure would have put a bounce in my step to know he phoned. So the minute I walked through the door, I yelled for Jamal to come downstairs.

“Down in a minute, Mom. Got to log off.” He was in his room on that computer—again. Truth was, I really didn’t want to know what he found so interesting. I’d put restrictions on various sites, but when it came to the Internet, Jamal could outthink me at every turn. If he wanted to access a site or chat room, there wasn’t a heck of a lot I could do. My computer skills were limited to e-mail and basic research, and he knew it. I was sure he and his friends had visited the various “restricted” sites that teenage boys visit, and hopefully they were no worse than the porn magazines of my day. There were no expenditures on my credit cards, so he hadn’t gone down
that
path. All I could do was trust the good sense of the boy I’d raised, and for the most part I did. I suspected he was better off sitting behind that desk than roaming the streets with some wannabe thug.

“Not five minutes. Now!” I sorted through the usual pile of bills, cheap catalogs, and junk mail, smiling to myself as he bounced downstairs. It seemed only yesterday that he could barely make the first step. His long legs took them two at a time these days, three if he was in a hurry.

“Slow down, Son, before you break your neck!” I clucked my usual warning as he bent down and bestowed his usual peck of a kiss on my forehead. That was another thing—how far down he had to bend.

“What’s for dinner?” He headed to the refrigerator, opened it, and gazed dreamily inside as if he were watching a movie. I playfully shoved him aside and pulled out a covered bowl of leftover beef stew I’d made in the Crock-Pot the day before.

“Yuck!” he said. “It’s too hot for stew. That’s winter food.”

“Would you rather have it cold?”

“Come on, Mom!”

“Maybe you should try cooking once in a while,” I said, remembering the old days when he was younger and would heat up a can of soup or baked beans if he knew I was running late.

“If I’d known we were having
that,
I would have,” he shot back with a good-natured grin.

“As much as you ate last night, we’re lucky we have any left,” I cracked, glad to be joking with him again. I added some water to the stew, poured it into a pot, and turned it on low.

Easy banter with Jamal was hard to come by these days. He was often sensitive to criticism and critical of me. Adolescence had brought on some of this attitude, but the death of his friend had deepened it. My friendship with Larry had also taken its toll. It was hard to gauge how Jamal actually felt about this new man in my life. Some days he seemed to cheerfully accept and enjoy his company, other times the mere mention of Larry’s name rubbed him the wrong way. I suspected Jamal still had hopes that me and Jake Richards would get together someday. He’s known Jake all his life, and I’ve known him longer than that. Through the years, I’d explained more than once that Jake and I were simply good friends and would remain that way, but I hadn’t convinced Jamal, and hope sprang eternal. (Maybe because I hadn’t entirely convinced myself.) Nevertheless, Larry was here to stay, so there was even less chance for me and Jake, despite my son’s fantasies.

For his part, Larry wasn’t particularly sensitive to Jamal’s feelings. On more than one occasion, he’d suggested that it would “do the boy some good” to spend more time with his father, which suggested that I hadn’t done the boy as much good as he needed. I knew Jamal had overheard him at least once and been hurt by his veiled criticism, but I didn’t bring it up to either of them. For so many years, it had just been me and Jamal, and it felt good to finally have a steady man in my life. I was damned tired of being alone, and I didn’t want to wreck it. Yet as Larry and I grew more comfortable with each other, I missed the easy talk that Jamal and I had always shared, and I caught myself wondering every now and then if Larry was really what I needed.

The phone rang as Jamal was setting the table. He dashed to get it, then handed it to me without comment; his attitude told me it was Larry.

“So, sweetheart, how did your day go?” The sound of his rich, sexy baritone made me grin. I shared my day in general terms, focusing on the good, skipping the bad. Larry had hinted more than once that if we were going to make our connection permanent, I should consider finding a new profession. His tone suggested that he didn’t consider “private investigator” a fitting vocation for his wife, which annoyed the hell out of me, but I kept it to myself. Oddly enough, that was one thing he and Jamal had in common—both of them felt I should make a living doing something else.

“What? No gun battles, crazy people, loser clients?” he said with a forced chuckle I wasn’t in the mood to hear.

“No. None of the above happened. It was a good day. A great day!” I told the lie with strained patience. “Larry, we’ve been through this before. This is what I do. I’m a PI; you’re a used-car salesman.”

“I prefer the term
preowned.
But you have to admit, the criminal element in your world doesn’t enter mine,” he teased.

No, they just run it,
I thought, but said with forced cheer, “Are you gonna drop by tonight?”

“No, not tonight.”

“But we’re still on for Wednesday, right?”

“That’s why I’m calling, sweetheart. Afraid not. Wednesday is election night at the club, and I’ve got to be there. I think I mentioned I’m running for vice president.”

Ah, the club!
“Yes, you did.”

When we first met, he’d resigned in protest. The “club” was a rich businessmen’s association in Newark that had no female members and had
literally
shown me the sidewalk when I’d snuck into a private lecture. At the time, Larry made a big deal out of resigning, but he’d recently rejoined, claiming it was easier to transform institutions from the inside. His decision to run for office was one way to help things along, he claimed. I only half believed him.

“I’ll make it up to you on Thursday, I promise.”

“I’m going to make you keep that promise,” I said, forcing a smile into my voice. “I got you something special. I think you’ll really like it.”

“Surprise? All I need is you, baby. All I need is you. See you Thursday night.” He hung up before I could say anything else. My disappointment must have been written on my face.

“Stood you up, huh?” Jamal said with a smirk.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have reacted to such a sassy, poorly timed remark. I might have made a joke of it, shook my head, rolled my eyes, or simply ignored him. Unfortunately, this was
not
one of those times.

“Mind your own damn business,” I said with fire in my eyes.

“You’re always minding mine,” he shot back.

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” I stood up to confront him, only to have him look down at me.

“Who else is in the room?”

“Boy, you better watch that damn mouth!”

“Well, then, please don’t curse at me, Mom. You’ve cursed at me three times, and I don’t like it!”

“When I curse at you, boy, you’ll know it,” I said. We stared at each other for a tense, hot minute.

“It’s not my fault you had a bad day.” Jamal backed down in a small voice.

“Who said I had a bad day?”

“I’m out of here,” he said with an exaggerated shrug even though he was standing right in front of me.

“You’re not out of anywhere until I’m good and ready to let you go! You stay where you are! I have something else to talk to you about,” I said, my voice raising by two octaves.

Parenting columns advise never to confront a teenager about his behavior when both of you are angry. Better to let things cool. Take a deep breath. Don’t let words roll out your mouth you can’t pull back. I forgot all those parenting columns in a heartbeat—and my heart was beating fast.

“You listen to me, boy, and you listen good,” I said, mad at everyone, and everybody’s mama, who had done me wrong that day. “I
never
want to hear your mouth about my relationship with Larry Walton or any other man I’m seeing, do you understand me? I’m a full-grown woman, and I sure don’t need to hear any mess from a half-grown man!”

“But, Mom, I’m—”

“And another thing.” I was on a roll. “You know very well you’re not supposed to come to my office without calling me first. What in the heck did you think you were doing, strolling in there this afternoon, talking to that crazy—”

“Well, she seemed nice enough. I—”

“You don’t know nice from a hole in the wall, and just when did you stop giving me messages? When somebody calls me on the phone, I don’t care who it is, you make sure you tell me they called, you got that?”

“Well, I forgot—”

“And while I’m at it, I’m sick to death of your attitude. Clean it up!” I said, finishing it off with a dramatic head roll.

It was Jamal’s turn now. “I guess I can’t do anything right, can I? Maybe your big, bad boyfriend has a point.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “What do you mean?”

“About me living with my dad, that’s what I mean. If I can’t do anything right, maybe I should get the hell out of here. Maybe I should go live with him for a while. He wants me to, I know that!”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want you, I just said—”

“My dad wouldn’t get mad if I visited him at his office. My dad—”

“So you want to live with DeWayne?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“So you want to live with DeWayne?”

Jamal looked at me and then at the floor.

“Well, if you want to live with your jackass of a father, then go right ahead and do it!” I said, turning my back on him.

“Don’t call my dad a jackass! He’s not a jackass!” He turned and bounded up the stairs as quickly as he’d bounced down.

“I’ll call him whatever I want to, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s exactly what he is!” I screamed back.

The stew on the stove chose that moment to burn.

“Damn it to hell!” I screamed, grabbing it off the burner and tossing the whole mess into the garbage, nearly burning my hand in the process. The smell of burned stew turned my stomach. Jamal was right. Beef stew was a disgusting choice for a summer meal. What kind of mother was I? Appetite gone, I uncorked a bottle of merlot, poured myself a cork-filled glass, and slumped down on the living room couch.

Why in God’s name had I yelled at the boy like that? I asked myself as I finished off one glass and quickly poured another. He was a kid, and as kids go, I had it good; I knew that. I’d always made a point of never bad-mouthing DeWayne Curtis in front of him, although he sure deserved it. DeWayne was part of my son, and to put him down was to put down part of Jamal, and I never wanted to do that. Usually, I had control of my temper. I’d go into the bathroom and call him every filthy name I could think of, but Jamal never heard me. Why had I done it tonight? What was all that about?

It was about a broken air conditioner I’d bought with good money and remembering my brother at that funeral and Lilah Love with her brazen, silly self and Treyman Barnes and his crazy-ass son. And it was about Larry and what he didn’t do for me, and Basil and what he did.

“Fuck!” I screamed aloud, swearing yet again in that curse-ridden room. I had crossed the line with Jamal, hurt the one person in my life that made everything worthwhile. I poured what was left of the wine into the sink and went to the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey, Jamal, I’m sick of stew, too. You feel like Red Lobster tonight?” I called up, summoning the one name that always got a positive response.

No answer.

“Hey, Jamal! Did you hear me?”

Truth was, I didn’t feel much like Red Lobster either.

I opened a can of tuna fish, added too much mayonnaise and relish, and spooned the mess on top of some Ritz crackers. Too lazy to change my clothes, I tucked a paper towel into my blouse for a bib but spilled soupy tuna down the front of my suit anyway. What a slob!

I watched a sitcom on TV, then settled into my favorite cop show. After the news, I checked my office phone, half hoping that Basil, inspired by the sight of me, would try again. No such luck. Instead, a weary little voice that sounded like a kid’s came across the line in one long, scared breath:

“Miss Hayle, this is Thelma Lee Sweets, Lilah Love’s baby sister, but I call myself Trinity ’cause
Thelma Lee
sounds country, and I know Lilah’s doing business with you ’cause I just know, but whoever wants this baby back can have her ’cause I’m sick and tired of all this drama around this child, and it’s getting scary with people following me around and shit, and if you come over here first thing tomorrow morning, you can have this Baby Dal back.”

She took a breath, as if those words took everything out of her, then gave me her cell phone number and the address in Jersey City I’d fished out of the trash before I came home. I called her back, leaving a message on the voice mail that answered, saying I’d see her in the morning.

I played the call back again, listening for any missed nuance. Not for the first time and probably not the last, I regretted letting go of Karen, the trusty operator from my former answering service. I could always count on her for a laugh or an off-the-wall crack on people who called me. I wondered what she’d say about Thelma Lee Sweets aka Trinity.

I called the number I had for Treyman Barnes and left a message telling him that matters had resolved themselves quicker than anticipated, and I’d located the woman who had his grandchild and she had agreed to give her up. I gave him Thelma Lee’s address and number and suggested that he and his wife meet me nearby so that I could give the child to them after I picked her up. I ended with a cheery promise that by this time tomorrow, they’d be kissing their grandchild good night.