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Authors: Wanda B. Campbell

Silver Lining (18 page)

BOOK: Silver Lining
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Kevin was so absorbed in his thoughts that he hadn't heard the shower stop running. Marlissa stood next to the bed, wearing his robe.
“You do remember what food is, don't you?” Marlissa mused when he offered her that blank stare for an answer once again.
Suddenly, he blinked, and then smiled. “Of course I do. Can you hand me my shorts?”
“Sure.” Marlissa leaned against the doorframe and watched him secure his shorts. Kevin rubbed his fade. Something was bothering him. Before she could inquire, Kevin opened up.
“'Lissa, are you happy with our progress?”
She plopped down next to him and giggled. “Didn't you hear a few minutes ago how happy I am?”
He didn't respond in kind to her humor. Somehow, he had to make her understand how vital the answer to that question was for him. “Marlissa, I am serious. I need to know if you're really happy with
me
, not just with the sex.”
The heat from his intense gaze caused her laughter to cease. Kevin was attempting to open up, maybe share his feelings with her. Marlissa took advantage of the opportunity. “Honey, I've never been happier. The only time I feel complete is when I am with you.” Marlissa fanned his cheeks with her fingertips. “Kevin, are you happy? I too need to know if this is really working for you.”
Kevin nodded and covered her hands with his. “Yes. I love the way we are now.” Marlissa allowed herself to exhale. “You make this house feel like a home. I can't begin to tell you what you do for me.” Kevin drew her face so close to his, their noses touched. “You are so beautiful.” The deep passion he tried his best to keep reserved seeped through with every kiss he planted on her face.
“I love you, Kevin.”
He tightened his caress. “'Lissa, I—” The sudden piercing and blaring sound of the burglar alarm caused them both to fall backward onto the bed. In the seconds it took for Kevin to get his bearings, Marlissa had jumped up and run out of the room.
“Marlissa, get back here!” Kevin yelled after her. This time she didn't listen to him, or maybe she couldn't hear him over the noise. Kevin maneuvered into his prosthesis and prayed for her safety.
The lights were off and Kevin couldn't see anything or any movement in the living room or dining room. “Marlissa!” he called, but the sound from the alarm drowned his voice. He first saw the shadows in his peripheral vision. Kevin abruptly turned toward the sliding glass door and gripped with both hands the Louisville Slugger he kept underneath his bed. He didn't want to mistakenly hit Marlissa; he turned on the den light before launching his counterattack.
“Oh my God,” he gasped. Marlissa was literally beating the life out of the intruder. She swung left and right combinations like a championship prize fighter. “Marlissa!” Kevin yelled just as she went into motion for a karate kick that sent the intruder flying across the room and landing face first into the thirty-gallon fish tank.
Kevin quickly raced into the kitchen to quiet the alarm before Marlissa committed murder.
“Marlissa!” he yelled, returning to the den just as she was about to ram the intruder's head into the sliding glass door.
Marlissa must have been in her fight zone, because she didn't notice that the lights were on or that the high-pitched siren had ceased. She definitely didn't hear the squealing coming from her wet victim.
“Marlissa, let her go!” Kevin pried the badly beaten and wet Reyna away from Marlissa, and sat her on the couch.
“Reyna?” Marlissa still hadn't come out of the zone yet. The name sounded familiar to her, but it didn't fully register in her memory bank.
“Is anything broken?” Kevin quickly assessed Reyna as she sang a chorus of “ouch oh ouch.”
“I don't know.” Reyna whimpered, then cried, “Oh, my face.”
“The swelling will eventually go down and your face will be discolored for a while, but you'll live. Now would you like to tell me what you're doing here?”
“Reyna?” Marlissa's thinking faculties returned, and, upon realizing it was Reyna she had beaten, Marlissa smirked, then quickly repented for being happy about it.
With the one eye she could still see out of, Reyna scanned the room for a stall tactic to keep from explaining her unannounced presence. It was then that she noticed that Marlissa was wearing Kevin's robe and he wasn't wearing a shirt. The thunderbolts running through Reyna's head grew fiercer at the realization of what she'd interrupted.
“Reyna, you better tell me what you're doing here before the police arrive,” Kevin warned.
Reyna attempted to smack her lips, but winced from the pain. Marlissa had busted her lip.
“You better talk before I let Marlissa loose again.” To give validity to his threat, Marlissa stood next to Kevin and pounded her fist into her palm.
“Okay! I was coming over to pay you a surprise visit, but the key your mother gave me didn't fit the front door. So I went around back and climbed onto the deck in hopes of gaining access through the patio door. I took a chance that it was unlocked. I guess I tripped the alarm when I opened the door.”
“Reyna, you broke into my house? Are you crazy?” Kevin thought about the question for a quick second. “Don't answer that.”
“Kevin,” Reyna whined. “I wanted to see you. I was worried about you.”
“Then why didn't you ring the doorbell?” Marlissa jumped in.
Reyna didn't have an answer. She couldn't tell Kevin in front of Marlissa that she had planned to seduce him.
The doorbell sounded.
“Reyna, I have warned you over and over about showing up uninvited. I have asked you to leave me alone, but you don't seem to understand English. Maybe a night in jail will help.” Kevin went to let the police in.
“Kevin!” Reyna tried to yell, but her jaw hurt too badly. The sound came out more like a squeal.
“Officers, this young lady climbed onto the deck out back and broke into our home. Luckily my wife was able to apprehend her before she stole anything.”
The first officer yanked Reyna up by the arm. “Come on, young lady, let's go.”
Every attempted scream and protest increased Reyna's pain. She couldn't even jerk away from the officers without wincing. “Kevin, how can you do this to me? You can't let them take me to jail!”
The second officer nodded to Kevin on his way out. “Dr. Jennings, you can come down to the station tomorrow and make a statement.”
The second he locked the door, Kevin bent over with laughter. Marlissa leaned against the archway and joined in.
“Woman, remind me never to make you mad. Miss Tyson Ali Frazier De La Hoya.”
“Leave me alone.” She playfully hit his arm and he picked her up. “I had to learn how to fight after what happened to me.”
He nodded his understanding. “Don't get me wrong, I like a woman who knows how to handle herself, but around here it's my job to protect you, not the other way around.”
Marlissa cocked her head. “Dr. Jennings, are you reprimanding me?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered bluntly. “The next time I tell you to stay put, you stay put.”
Marlissa wanted to rebut, but decided against it. “You should punish me for being disobedient.”
“Trust me, I will.” He flicked off the lights and started down the hall.
They passed by the laundry room and Marlissa recalled another conversation with Starla. “Honey, stop. I have an idea.”
Chapter 24
A
s Kevin reclined, he studied the old brown couch and wondered when it had transformed into its present condition. He remembered the day his mother added the once regal leather piece to her office. In the early days, Pastor Jennings protected the leather almost to the point of worshipping it. When parishioners came for counseling sessions, Pastor Jennings would provide them a folding chair to sit on. “I'm just being a good steward over what God has blessed me with,” she said when responding to complaints about her lack of hospitality. That was years ago; now the leather sofa had been used and abused many times over. Permanent stains decorated the sofa and there was a rip across the left arm.
Kevin visually inspected his mother's entire office under critical scrutiny, and for the first time found the experience enlightening. Everything in there was old, worn, and outdated. The traditional depiction of the olive-complexioned, long-wavy-haired, light-eyed Jesus even looked old and tired. The wooden frames that housed Pastor Jennings's self-declarations of qualifications and self-appointed promotions appeared to be off-centered and dusty. The once vibrant rose-colored carpet was now covered with patchwork plastic runner pieces. The wooden desk could have used a good polishing. The high wingback chair was in excellent shape for its age. Rosalie had the factory cover it in plastic before the delivery at least ten years ago. Kevin sniffed. The office smelled old and stale.
He studied the desk photo of Pastor Rosalie Jennings in her white cassock with a Bible tucked underneath her arm, and realized for the first time that all the pictures he owned of his mother contained a Bible of some sort. Whatever the occasion, Pastor Jennings always posed with a Bible. In the picture taken at his graduation of the two of them, his mother held her Bible alongside Kevin's degree. If she was sitting, the Bible rested in her lap. The majority of full body shots displayed the Bible tucked underneath her right hand. For headshots, Rosalie poised a pocket Bible against her cheek.
His thoughts drifted back in time to arguments between his parents. Kevin's father had constantly complained that Rosalie was too involved with God and the church. She was seldom at home, opting to spend most of her time down at the church or with church members. “That Bible don't pay your bills, I do! You would do good to remember that and spend some time at home.” Kevin remembered his father barking those lines too many times to count. “That Bible is not the whole world.” Reminiscing helped Kevin discern for the first time that the church
was
Rosalie's world. Aside from leading the church and trying to run Kevin's life, Pastor Jennings didn't have a life of her own.
“That's why she wants total control of everything,” he mumbled. “She doesn't have any worth outside of the church.” Meditating on that reality made him feel sad for his mother. What would she do without the church? What kind of life would she live? Who would she be once she wasn't identified as Pastor Rosalie Jennings? Kevin admitted right then and there that more than likely his mother would die without having a church of some kind to control.
Over the past five years, the church membership had steadily declined, mainly because Pastor Jennings concentrated more on church traditions than on the Bible. She preached more against women wearing pants and makeup than she did about sin. The choir was only allowed to sing old, traditional songs, and she detested praise dancing with a passion. The one tradition she insisted was a misinterpretation of the Word was, of course, the belief that God didn't call women to preach or pastor.
Due to her misguided belief and teachings, 70 percent of the small congregation was over age fifty. The youth department consisted of the older members' young grandchildren, and they were limited to holiday speeches and singing songs about Father Abraham. The longer Kevin dwelled on the realizations of his mother and the environment of the church she pastored, the more he understood that his reason for remaining a member didn't go beyond the fact that Pastor Rosalie Jennings was his mother. Melancholy took over Kevin and he bowed his head in prayer. Kevin didn't finish his prayer before Pastor Jennings flung the door open and launched her tantrum.
“Kevin Hezekiah Jennings, have you lost your mind? How dare you make Reyna spend the night in jail?”
“Pastor Rosalie Jennings, have you lost your mind? How dare you give Reyna what you thought was a key to my house?” Kevin stood in front of her desk with his arms folded. “You should be ashamed of yourself, sending Reyna into the home of a married man.”
“Why did you change the locks?” Pastor Jennings totally discarded the inappropriateness of her actions. “And where is my key?” She held out her hand in expectation.
Kevin shook his head slowly from side to side, then returned to his seat and sighed. “Mother, I changed the locks because I didn't want you coming by unannounced anymore. I am not going to give you another key.”
Pastor Jennings was livid. “Kevin, I am your mother! I have a right to . . .” She abruptly stopped and glared at her son. “Does Marlissa have a key?”
Kevin answered his mother without pretense or reservation. “Yes, and keys to my vehicles, as well.”
Pastor Jennings's nostrils flared and her breathing quickened. “Kevin, why can that woman have access to everything you have and I can't? I am your mother. I gave birth to you and made you what you are today, not her!”
Kevin kept his tone stern and forceful. “Mother, you're forgetting an important fact. Marlissa is my wife and everything I have is hers. True, you gave me life, and I thank you for that, but that doesn't afford you the right to run my life. You can't force me to want Reyna. I don't want Reyna.” Kevin paused to let those words sink in. “Reyna and I will never be a couple, so stop trying to make us one.”
Pastor Jennings huffed and puffed until all the steam ran out. Deflated, she walked around to her high wing-back chair and plopped down. Her eyes roamed around her office as if seeing it for the first time. The desk, the couch, the pictures of herself all seemed foreign to her. And the man sitting in front of her had to be from a faraway country because he spoke a foreign language.
“Kevin,” she began somberly. “You don't understand what I am trying to accomplish.” She paused. “I am trying to make sure this church is around long after I am gone. Why can't you help me continue the work of the ministry?” she questioned with the sincerest expression.
“Mother, how many times do I have to tell you that I am not a preacher, or pastor, nor do I desire to become one? It's not my calling.”
Pastor Jennings interlocked her fingers, then leaned forward. “I know it's not you're calling, but I have trained Reyna well. If the two of you marry, she can run the church for you. That way the church can remain in the family.”
Kevin was still shaking his head long after he stood and walked over to the window. For a while he just gazed out the window, focusing on nothing in particular. It was bad enough his mother wanted control of the church while she was alive, but from the grave too?
“Well what do you know,” he said, finally turning around. “The truth finally comes out. You're not genuinely concerned about my happiness and you really don't care about Reyna's well-being. This is all about control, plain and simple.”
“Kevin, that's not true. You're always analyzing everything. You're an ophthalmologist for goodness' sake, not a psychologist!”
Kevin never thought he would see the day his mother would stoop to rolling her eyes and smacking her lips. “It is true. It has always been about control. I am just now identifying it, but it's definitely control. That's why you avoided spending time with Dad. He wouldn't allow you to control him, so you camped out at church where you had total control.”
“I stayed away from your father because he wasn't saved, not because I wanted control!” Pastor Jennings was yelling again, a sure indication Kevin had hit the nail on the head.
“Was Dad saved when you used his money to pull the church out of debt?” If Kevin were in arm's reach, his face would be on fire again, of that he was sure. “No, he wasn't. I know because I was there.” Kevin paused briefly before making his next statement. “Mother, there is no easy way to tell you this, but if Reyna pastors this church, it won't be because I'm her husband. I won't be here. I'm moving my membership to Restoration Ministries effective this Sunday.”
Pastor Jennings was floored. She knew Kevin had been distant, but the idea of him leaving her leadership never crossed her mind. “You're leaving the church over that woman?”
“I'm not leaving the church.” He sighed. “I am moving my membership to the church where my spirit is being fed. I truly enjoy the worship services to the point where I look forward to going. I haven't been excited about coming here in a long time. Pastor Drake's Bible Study is awesome and I'm learning a lot about what true Christianity is and what it's not. There's a sense of family there and true fellowship. I don't feel that here. They have strong ministries in place and it's active for all ages. Mother, all we have here is you.”
All the truths spoken didn't matter; Pastor Jennings focused on one thing. “You're choosing that woman over me. You're not going to divorce her, are you?”
“Mother, you should try to get to know Marlissa. She really has changed.”
“If she's changed so much, then why is she making you change churches? She's just trying to keep you away from me,” she charged.
“Marlissa is not making me do anything. I haven't shared my plans with her yet. I am making this move because this is what's best for me.”
Pastor Jennings whined, “Kevin. I am what's best for you, I am your mother.”
“You are my mother, that will never change, but you are no longer my pastor. It's better this way. I need to grow, and you need to find out who you are outside of church.”
She gasped again as the truth rang out, but she wasn't ready to accept it yet. “I know who I am. I am saved and sanctified.”
Kevin started for door. Reaching for the knob, he said, “Mother, learn to listen. The word was
who
you are, not
what
you are. You should do a self-examination. Are you really saved and sanctified or have you grown accustomed to reciting the words? Manipulating Reyna for your benefit and plotting my divorce is not something a saved and sanctified person would practice.” Kevin made it out a second before the stapler banged against the door.
 
 
Reyna lifted her swollen head from the headrest and timidly rubbed her enlarged eyes, then tried to figure out her location. She had slept the entire ride home from the police station. The big red Walgreens sign came into focus, and Reyna realized she was in the retail drugstore's parking lot. After reading the time on the console, Reyna inspected her clothing. Getting beaten senseless by Marlissa the night before left her vision too blurred to notice that her $200 dress had been ripped and ruined. Reyna patted the top of her head and cringed. Anxious to see the damage firsthand, Reyna released the visor and screamed, “Aw!” Her fresh curls had transformed into a matted mess. This went far beyond a bad hair day, thanks to the head dunk inside the fish tank.
Her hair reaction was cut short once she beheld her reflection. The image was too much. Her face was three different shades of purple. Although the right eye was nearly shut, it was twice the size of the left one, which was open. With both jaws swollen, her nose appeared off center. Her once thin lips had tripled in size, and traces of dry blood trickled down her chin. The vision coupled with the aches that racked her body broke her down. Reyna covered her ravaged face and cried deep sobs. “How in the world did this happen to me?”
Reyna had been asking that question and many others all through the night. It was as if she experienced a reality check behind those cold bars and on the linoleum floor. Why did she think it was appropriate to seduce a married man? What possessed her to scale the deck in a $200 dress? Why was she chasing Kevin anyway? What made her believe they had a future together after Kevin blatantly told her otherwise? All those questions taunted her through the night. Then this morning she asked, why had Pastor Jennings refused to come get her out of jail?
Pastor Jennings had been Reyna's one phone call, but she was more concerned with knowing if Kevin knew she had given Reyna his house key than she was about Reyna being arrested. Once Reyna admitted she had told him, Pastor Jennings went on to scold her for making a mess of everything. “Call me when you get out,” Pastor Jennings had snapped, then hung up. At first Reyna thought she was being sarcastic, but by 3:00
A.M.
Reyna was resolved to the fact that Pastor Jennings wasn't coming.
“Here.”
Reyna cried so hard she didn't see Tyson walking toward the car, nor had she heard him open the door of his BMW. Reyna grabbed tissues from Tyson without looking at him. “Thank you,” she offered once her face was clean, but she was too ashamed to hold her head up and glance in his direction.
Tyson didn't press her. “No problem. I picked up some ice packs and some medicine for the aches and pain.”
BOOK: Silver Lining
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