Page 30 of Pride and Protest
“Mom, have you told him why you were always across the hallway making sandwiches for him when his mother wasn’t there?” Liza asked.
“Mr. Gruthers was a friend. He was a shoulder to cry on when Deya’s father up and left us.” LeDeya’s father didn’t “up and leave.” He simply reunited with his wife.
“Yeah, but Mrs. Gruthers never spoke to you again,” Janae said.
“I was young. I’ve made my mistakes. But that doesn’t mean their boy doesn’t deserve love,” Bev said.
“Mom, we try,” LeDeya said. “He moans when he hugs us.”
“Remember he visited last year with cameras to get us on a show about broken homes?” Janae said.
“And so what? There was ten thousand in cash in that show. Janae, all you had to do was that bikini shot and—”
“What about when he made you a cosigner of his first car without even asking you? You found out five years later.”
“Yes, after hepaidit off. Have any of you ever paid a car off?” Bev asked. “Look, the boy’s not going to win any popularitycontest, but he’s as good as family and I expect you”—she eyed Liza—“to treat him as such.”
“Why are you looking at me?” Liza huffed.
“Cuz you got a mean streak a half a mile wide,” Maurice said.
“I’m not mean, I’m pissed. Colin’s got all of this money, and he’s still trying to squeeze what he can out of us.”
Liza didn’t say what she wanted to say because it was the nuclear option. Bev was a serial side chick. She had a string of relationships with unavailable men, but jaded was the only thing she got from it, not to mention children who never knew their fathers. It made her hyperaware and focused on the relationship status of her children, but blind to her own secondary status in the lives of men.
The Gruthers had lived next door, and while Mrs. Gruthers struggled through chemotherapy, Bev fell in love with her husband and all but established herself as a housewife in the Gruthers’ apartment. But it was all for nothing. When Mrs. Gruthers died, Mr. Gruthers did not marry Bev like she had hoped. He went to his grave soon after, claiming that Mrs. Gruthers was the only woman he’d ever loved. Colin became a permanent fixture in their home, sullen and obnoxious. But when his ticket out of Longbourne Gardens came, he didn’t do so much as write a note to say goodbye. He had nothing but disdain for the place and a strange sense of entitlement to what he called the Bennett Beauties. It was a weird mix of guilt about his mother’s death and devotion to his father—a man who never acknowledged her—that kept Bev bound to Colin’s whims. Liza would never be so bound up in someone that she would be willing to accept him in small pieces.
“You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone that close toyou. The bond between a mother and son—” Bev stopped herself.
“Mom, you can say it.”
“Janae, we weren’t trying to upset you.”
“I want everyone to stop tiptoeing around me. I know I’ve struggled... am struggling with... things, but I am starting to see myself differently, and I want you all to try as well.”
“I think we can do that,” Liza said.
“I’m going to try a grief counselor like you suggested,” Janae told them.
Liza and Bev looked at each other in a moment of shared surprise.
“David called me. I was sure I’d never hear from him again. He called to make sure I was okay. At first, I just held the phone. And then he spoke. He told me his father is ill, and he’s seeing a grief counselor. He told me it helped him feel less out of control.”
Liza held her tongue. She had been telling Janae for three years to talk to someone, but David mentioned it in passing and Janae already had an appointment. Could falling in love really be this transformative? Liza doubted it. She had never met anyone who made her rethink her whole self and probably never would. And despite living with her mother and not having a job that was her true calling, Liza was pretty sure nothing else about her life needed to change. But for Janae, maybe that was what it took.
Liza had thought that Janae and the man-boy’s little spark had faded, but instead, it was glowing. Would Janae tell him about her son? Would she open up and risk her heart to grasp at happiness? Liza hoped she would, even if it came in a chinless, goofy package.
“No one is rushing your grief, Janae,” Liza said.
“I know. The loss will never not crush my heart every single second I’m alive. I just want help with the weight of it,” Janae said. “I... I can’t do it on my own.”
“You’ll never have to,” Bev said, then grabbed her for a hug.
Liza’s eyes shot to the nearby wall at the sound of a hard thud, followed by rapid yelling in Spanish. Liza looked at Janae, who sighed.
“Go and get her, Liza, before that man knocks a hole through the wall,” Bev said.
Chicho’s family was at it again. Her mother was a nice enough woman, if a bit mousy, and her father was a brute. Liza and Janae were out the door before they uttered the next Spanish curse word. The hallway was poorly lit, and a few bags of trash sat outside dented doors. She knocked on the Ochoas’ door with authority. That always put the fear of God into Chicho’s father. The door flew open, and Javier leaned on the doorjamb.
