A Special Relationship Read online

  Robert tried to show his appreciation for her concern, to curl his beautiful mouth into something that could resemble a smile, but it was Marva and she knew better. He couldn’t pull it off. He looked back down at his papers instead. “I’m fine,” he said.

  “You’re not fine, Robert, even on an ordinary day. And we both know this is no ordinary day.”

  Robert almost looked up at his secretary again. He almost acknowledged what she was saying. But he didn’t remove his eyes from the page before him. He’d never forget that triumphant look on Gloria’s face when she told him she wanted a divorce. And not just to divorce him, which was bad enough, but so that she could marry Paul Hathaway of all people, one of their oldest friends. But when she told him about Ashley. When she told him that the daughter that shared his last name and, he thought, his expressive gray eyes, was not his, a part of him died right where he stood. He even insisted on another DNA test, just to see it for himself, and it was all true. Ashley Kincaid, his daughter, was no kin to him at all.

  “Why don’t you come with me tonight?” Marva said, as if she could read his thoughts. “After the board meeting.” It was ludicrous, the idea of Robert Kincaid running around town with her, and she knew it, but she couldn’t help wondering if maybe he could use some company tonight.

  And it did get his attention. He looked up at her. “Come with you?”

  “Yes.”

  Robert smiled this time, a strained, forced one, but a smile nonetheless. “What, Marva, don’t tell me you’re still out there partying.”

  “Very funny. We’re in revival at my church all this week.”

  “A revival?”

  “Yes, Robert, you remember those, don’t you?”

  “I remember.”

  “Then you’ll come?”

  “No.”

  “Some of the best preaching you’d ever wanna hear.”

  “Nope.”

  “Oh, why not, Robert? You used to love to go to revival meetings. That’s what everybody around here admired about you. Your devotion to your faith and your God. The senior vice president of Dyson was also a God-fearing, born again Christian man. It was refreshing. But now you’re—”

  “Now I’m what? No longer admired by the masses? Well I could have told them a long time ago that they were wasting their time.”

  “I still admire you, Robert Kincaid.”

  “Then you’re a fool, Marva Cox. Now go home. Get dressed, go to church, enjoy yourself. Good night.”

  “I leave when you leave.”

  Robert shook his head. “What am I going to do with you, lady?”

  “You’re gonna accept my invitation to go to church, for starters. Then you’re going to get back on the good foot with God so He can send you a woman who can prove to you, once and for all, that we aren’t all like Gloria.”

  Robert looked at his secretary. “I’m going to have to take a rain check on church if you don’t mind,” he said. “And as for this miracle woman, I’ll rain check her too.”

  “You need a woman, Robert.”

  “I have more than enough, thank-you.”

  “Those are just sex kittens.”

  Robert smiled greatly this time. Then he laughed. “What?”

  “You know what I mean. Those females don’t mean a thing to you. They’re just something to keep you warm in bed. I’m talking about a real woman. Somebody who’ll rock your world.”

  Robert shook his head with a firm shake. “No, thanks. Been there, done that, remember?” He frowned. “I will never do it again.”

  “All right now. Don’t say never. God send you somebody you ain’t gonna have no choice.”

  “Good night, Marva.”

  “It’s the truth. God don’t make no mistakes.”

  “Good night, Marva.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m going. But I’m gonna be praying for you tonight, Robert Kincaid. Praying hard because you need it bad. And before you know it you’re gonna be your old self again. Grumpy, bossy, controlling. But in love!”

  Marva Cox left. And Robert, though hardly feeling in any way jovial, still couldn’t help but smile.

  FOUR

  It wasn’t quite the land of promise she had envisioned when the cab stopped in front of a rundown walk-up that stood like a monument to poverty sandwiched between a pool hall and bar. This was Jacksonville, Florida’s northeast side of town, in what had to be one of the roughest neighborhoods in the entire town, and Carrie Banks was as much stunned by her new surroundings as she was disappointed.

  She looked up at the monstrosity of an apartment building, and at the young, shirtless men who sat out on the stoop listening to rap music and gambling with dangerously ferocious excitement, and she immediately asked the cab driver if he was certain they were indeed at 1921 Dresel Street.

  “Positive,” he said as he hurried out of the cab and grabbed her old suitcase from his trunk. It was nearing nighttime now and the last place he wanted to be after dark was on Dresel Street. Even Carrie could sense his distress, as she stepped out of the cab unable to stop staring at this big city environment she never dreamed would be so busy, from the prostitutes and drug dealers on one corner, to the hustlers peddling CDs and T-shirts on the other. It all seemed like a mass of confusion to her. That was probably why the cab driver, who had every reason in the world to hand her her luggage, accept his fare, and get out of Dodge with the quickness, stood there momentarily with pity in his eyes. She looked so young, he thought, in her jeans and Georgia Bulldogs sweat shirt. So naive. This place would eat her alive.

  “If I were you, girly,” he said, “I’d get right back on that bus and go right back where I came from. This ain’t no kind of place for somebody like you.”

  Carrie’s heart was already broken, mainly because Popena’s letters had made Jacksonville sound like paradise, but she managed to smile at the cabby just the same. “Thank-you,” she said, “but I’ll be fine.”

  The cab driver shook his head, as if he doubted it, and then he got into his cab and drove away. Carrie almost wanted to hail him back down, when she turned toward the stoop and saw some of the young men staring at her. But she didn’t even attempt to. She simply squeezed past them on the stoop, their “ooh mama you look good and other obnoxious catcalls turning her stomach, and entered into the heavy glass door that led to an inner sanctum of four apartments downstairs and four up. According to Popena’s letters, she lived in number 6, which was up, and which was where Carrie headed.

  The urine smell on the walk-up, the sound of loud music from one apartment, a heated argument from another, a baby crying mercilessly from yet another, kept Carrie’s nerves on edge, but she wasn’t about to let a mere carnal environment depress her too severely. She wasn’t going back to Georgia, that was for sure, where she’d have to deal with Dale and her mother and all the pressure they would undoubtedly keep putting on her, so she knew this was all she had. And with urine smells, noise and all, she was determined to make it work.

  “Who is it!” a voice on the other side of apartment 6 said angrily after three rounds of knocks. The door then flew open so violently that it bounced off the back wall and nearly closed back up. Popena Banks, known to everybody in Jacksonville as Mona Banks, was astounded when she saw that the unwelcome intruder was none other than her kid sister.

  Mona looked horrible to Carrie, as those good looks of hers were now faded behind rough-dried skin and long, weaved, uncombed hair, but Carrie still managed to smile. “Hey, Poppy,” she said happily.

  “Carrie?”

  “Yeah, it’s me, girl. Ain’t it something?” She dropped her luggage when she said this and immediately fell into her sister’s arms. Mona, who was four years older than Carrie and almost twice as large, still nearly fell back.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked as she pulled back from her sister’s embrace, her anger only slightly lessened by her confusion.

  “I couldn’t deal with Attapulgus anymore,” Carrie said. “Too much mess going
on.”

  “What kind of mess?”

  “Mama and Dale, child.”

  “Dale? Dale Mosley?”

  “Yep.”

  “What Dale Mosley got to do with it?”

  “I wrote and told you we were supposed to get married.”

  This astounded Mona. “Married?”

  “Yes! Didn’t you get my letters?”

  “I probably did, but so what? I don’t remember all that. But wait a minute. You’re telling me that you were supposed to marry Dale Mosley?”

  “Yes.”

  “THE Dale Mosley? The man whose family owns all that property around Attapulgus and Bainbridge too?”

  “Yes. Him.”

  Mona looked at her sister. She was always the chosen one. Always the one who, with just a wink and a smile, could get the best boys in town interested in her, and the best grades, and all of their mother’s affections. Now she had to show up unannounced on Mona’s turf and see for herself that good old Popena was still a failure, still living from hand to mouth, still unable to obtain anything remotely resembling an achievement. All of her letters, she now knew her sister knew, were pure lies.

  “I don’t know what you coming here for,” she said with more than a tinge of bitterness as she walked away from the door and further into the apartment. “I ain’t got no room for nobody else,” she added, without bothering to invite Carrie in.

  Carrie, however, invited herself in as she grabbed her suitcase and quickly followed Mona, closing the door behind her. She never thought she’d be an imposition. She never dreamed in a million years that her sister wouldn’t welcome her with open arms. “It’ll only be temporary,” she said quickly, the disappointment making her feel as if a sledgehammer was pounding her. “Just until I can get a job.”

  Carrie was looking around her new home as she spoke. And it was yet another letdown. The walls were peeling paint, the furniture was sparse and had that cheap, over-used thrift store quality about it. And the smell inside the apartment was even worse than the smells on the stairwell, as the aroma of liquor dominated the room. Carrie felt so nauseated, in fact, that she wanted to ask if they could open a window. Given the grim look on her sister’s face, however, she decided against it.

  Mona walked into the adjourning kitchen and sat down at the small metal table. On the table were a pack of cigarettes, a plate of day-old food, a near-empty bottle of beer, and a deck of cards. She grabbed the pack of cigarettes and pulled one out, staring bitterly at her sister as she did.

  Carrie sat down at the small table too, placing her luggage at her feet, and she tried with all she had to present a happy, upbeat front. It was difficult to pull off, however, given the mountain of fears that were trying to weigh her down, but she did it. Even Mona was impressed by her kid sister’s ability to handle what had to be a disappointing reality check, but she’d never let Carrie know of her admiration.

  “Did I wake you?” Carrie asked when it appeared Mona wasn’t interested in saying much herself.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact you did,” Mona said, as she lit her cigarette, blew a puff of smoke in the air, and then folded her arms defiantly. She still had her shape, Carrie thought, she still had that bordering on plump shapeliness that always kept her in good stead with men, but Carrie couldn’t get over how differently she looked. She ran away from Georgia with a married man, defying their mother and the man’s wife and children and everybody in town who took her to be the worse snake crawling to do something so immoral. But Mona just knew at the time that she was grabbing happiness where she could get it and she didn’t care what anybody else thought. She had found the man of her dreams.

  But now that dream man was gone, long since deserting her (even her letters admitted that), and Carrie could tell that the pain of that rejection, and the unspeakable things she undoubtedly had to endure just to survive in this strange land, showed like cracks in armor all over her once beautiful, but now angry, bitter, harsh-featured face.

  “I’m sorry I woke you,” Carrie said. “I didn’t think you’d be in bed this early.”

  Mona blew another puff of smoke. “I work at night,” she said. “I’ll be leaving in a few hours, matter of fact, so I try to take a nap before I go.”

  “Where do you work?”

  Mona looked at her sister. “Simms,” she said.

  “Simms? Is that some kind of restaurant or something?”

  Mona gave a harsh, one-syllable laugh. “Yeah, you can say that. Now what’s your story? Why didn’t you marry the great Dale Mosley like I’m sure Honey wanted and live out the American dream?”

  “I decided not to.”

  “I know you decided not to, don’t get cute with me. Why is the question.”

  Carrie hesitated. She hoped her sister would understand, but somehow she doubted it. “He wanted a sample and I wouldn’t give it to him.”

  Mona laughed immediately, her entire countenance suddenly lifted on those few words alone. “You’re kidding me. You have got to be kidding me.”

  “I’m a Christian, Popena.”

  “Here we go.”

  “Well I am! And I’m not compromising my faith, my belief, for Dale Mosley or nobody else.”

  Mona looked at her sister. She always admired that about Carrie, although she’d never tell her so. “I guess Honey’s upset.”

  “Very. She kicked me out the house and threw my clothes some of everywhere around that porch. I was so embarrassed.”

  “She was drunk I’m sure.”

  “Yep. Dale had promised to give her that house she’s staying in free and clear after the wedding and she just thinks I should marry him for that reason alone.”

  “Pa-lease. She’s got some nerve. You the one got to live with the joker.”

  Carrie smiled. Her sister was slowly beginning to sound like her old self again. “That’s what I say,” she said.

  Mona tapped the ash of her cigarette onto the plate of food, then she looked at Carrie. “What about Daddy? Was he around?”

  Carrie shook her head. “We haven’t seen him in months.”

  “That figures. But that’s Honey for you. Her old man can sleep around with the entire town and she does nothing about it, but as soon as I fall in love with somebody she runs me out on a rail.”

  “You was fooling with a married man, Popena.”

  “Daddy married. I don’t see her disowning him. And stop calling me that.”

  Carrie frowned. “Stop calling you what?”

  “Popena. I hate that name. Sometimes I think Mama named me that out of spite. My name is Mona, okay?”

  “Mona?”

  “Yes, Mona. Mona Banks. It’s my stage name, it’s like a play on Mona Lisa. Dooney, he’s the manager where I work, just loves it. He was the one who thought it up.”

  “You have a stage name?”

  Mona took a drag on her cigarette. She felt exposed, and hated it. “I’m a dancer,” she said, and then she looked at her sister. Carrie, however, only nodded.

  “I see,” she said.

  “I ain’t wild like some of’em,” she said defensively, “so don’t even think that. I don’t be wrapping myself around no poles or none of that crazy crap.” Then she laughed. “But I ain’t no nun like you either.” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t give the brother a sample? Not even a sample, girl? My my my. You wouldn’t survive an hour in my world!”

  Carrie smiled nervously and looked around at that sparsely furnished world. She had to survive longer than an hour. Far longer. Because no matter how she felt about it, or how this new world would feel about her, it was now all she had.

  She was given the small, second bedroom as her temporary shelter. Other than a filthy mattress lying dormant on the dust-filled floor and some old, soiled linen spewed against the wall, the room was empty. Mona didn’t make any apologies, she didn’t try to pretend that her house wasn’t normally this messed up. She simply showed her sister the room and left. Carrie was, at first, so disheartened by h
er sister’s harshness, by the new environment she found herself in, that she wanted to cry. But she didn’t. She sat her suitcase in the corner and proceeded to see if the flip side of the mattress held more promise. But as soon as she lifted the mattress to check it out, a small army of roaches came sailing out of the various holes and slits as if their territory was being invaded. Carrie dropped the bedding so quickly that she lost her balance and stumbled hard to the floor. The noise from her fall was enough to bring Mona hurrying back into the room. Coming in behind her was a man Carrie didn’t even know was in the house. He was a short, stout, light-skinned man who appeared to be in his mid-to-late twenties. He also appeared to be immediately and unabashedly smitten with Carrie.

  “What’s going on in here?” Mona asked, again agitated by her kid sister’s presence.

  Carrie tried to smile off the embarrassment as she moved to stand to her feet. The man hurried to assist her. “I’m fine,” Carrie said, standing. “I just stumbled.”

  Mona looked around the room, at the roaches that were scattering from the mattress, and she knew exactly why she stumbled. “There’s some Raid under the kitchen sink,” she said bitterly and then left to go back to bed. “Use it or not, I don’t care. Just don’t be disturbing me again!”

  After Mona left the room, the man smiled.

  “She’s PMS-ing,” he said jokingly.

  “I see,” Carrie said nervously, still smiling, but wishing the man would leave too.

  “I’m Willie Charles, by the way,” he said instead, extending his hand. Carrie shook it. “Mona just told me you was her kid sister from Georgia.”

  “Yes. I’m Carrie.”

  “Carrie. All right now. I like that name. Mona told me you was down here from Georgia but she didn’t tell me how beautiful you were.”

  Carrie didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything.

  “Think you’re gonna like it here?” he asked. “Not in this roach motel here, I ain’t talking about that. In Jacksonville I mean.”

  “I hope so,” Carrie replied. She didn’t see where she had a choice. She had to like it here.