Page 18 of Happy Is On Hiatus
“He said that happened one time years ago and you’ve never let him forget it. What happened to forgiveness? I know you know what that is because Granddad’s constantly yelling it from the pulpit, and you swear by everything he and the Bible say.”
Spare the rod and spoil the child.
That wasn’t the exact scripture—Rita did have Proverbs 13:24 and many other scriptures committed to memory—but that wasn’t the point. The point was, she was dangerously close to shaking some sense into her oldest child.
Forgiveness was a slippery slope. She’d forgiven Nate so many times before, and he’d taken that as permission to do it again.
Rita had brought her daughters up in the church the same way her parents had done with her and Benny. While there’d been many strict rules and teachings her parents had pushed on Rita and her brother, there’d been some that she’d decided not to inflict on her children. The part where she would’ve been smacked in the mouth for taking this sassy tone with her mother had been one of them. For a brief moment, Rita regretted that decision, because the flippant way in which Taryn was speaking about things her mother had done was starting to piss her off.
“Look,” Rita told her. “Your father shouldn’t be talking to you about our personal business. And before you say it, thisispersonal, Taryn.” She turned back to look at her daughter, who had her glossed lips turned up in consternation. Then she looked at her youngest child,who was moving slowly, taking the fries from the baskets and putting them in a towel-lined bowl. “The relationship between your father and I is personal. We’re your parents, yes, but that’s where it stops. I didn’t invite the two of you here so you could question me or my motives. I called you both here to tell you what I’d decided. Now, you need to respect my decision.”
“How can we when you’re not even trying to fix this?” Taryn asked. Rita swore this was her most tenacious child.
“I don’t want to fix it,” Rita said evenly. “I don’t want to be married to your father anymore.” And she couldn’t even say that was totally because of the affairs. Rita had been grappling with this all night.
“But why? He’s a great guy!” Taryn really sounded like she didn’t understand what was happening, and for a minute Rita understood.
“He really is, Mama. Maybe you should give him another chance,” Necole added.
Her daughters’ whole world was Nate, Rita, and the family unit they’d built. Sure, NVB and the Johnson family were extensions of that, but the girls had always turned to Rita and Nate. Mainly because Rita had made a point of telling them that what happened in their house was their business. They weren’t allowed to tell anybody about things that went on in their house, and if they had a problem, it was expected that they’d bring it to Nate or Rita.
There’d been many nights that Rita second-guessed carrying that rule over from her childhood. Those were the first nights she’d discovered her husband was a lying, cheating fraud of a man.
“He’s a great father,” Rita said. She moved to the basket and put three large crab cakes in each before lowering them into the grease.
Then, she grabbed one of the dish towels that hung on the pewter cabinet handles. Wiping her hands, she turned so she could see both of her beautiful girls. After dropping the towel to the counter, she took Necole’s hand and then walked over to the island to take a very reluctant Taryn’s.
“That’s all you and your sister need to worry about. How good a father he’s been to you,” she said softly.
“You’ve both been good parents,” Necole said softly. “I never thought you’d break up, and I don’t know how to deal with that now.”
Rita nodded. “I know, baby. I’m not so sure I know how to deal with it either. But we will.” That’s what Black women did—they adjusted to whatever hands were dealt them, and they did so with their game faces on. Rita took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Let’s sit down and have a nice dinner. You can tell me all about your trip.”
Unfortunately for Rita, that wasn’t the direction the dinner conversation took. About halfway through the meal, it’d been Taryn who’d asked, “What’re you going to do now? Without Daddy to take care of you? Cook yourself into old age?”
Again, Rita had been stunned at the edge to her daughter’s question, and after the day she’d had yesterday and the fitful night of sleep she’d endured, she really was ready to toss Taryn’s smart-mouthed ass out of her house. Instead, she’d given the question the same thought she had last night and replied, “I don’t know.”
But hours after Taryn and Necole had helped clean the kitchen and left, Rita sat in the center of the bed she’d once shared with a loving husband and thought about Taryn’s question again.
What was she going to do?
It wasn’t that Nate had taken care of her. Sure, he was the one the girls saw leaving the house every day to work, and he was the face of McCall Motors, but he wasn’t the only one who worked in their household. The car dealership had been started three years into their marriage when Nate and Rita were involved in a car accident. Their car had been totaled, and Nate had sustained mild injuries. But it was Rita who’d had a dislocated shoulder and required surgery and months of physical therapy to be whole again. When the settlements from both the personal-injury cases they’d filed came in, Rita’s was for ten times more than Nate’s. That was the money they’d used to start the dealership.
Aside from the money that fell into the what’s-mine-is-yours-and-what’s-yours-is-mine category so early on in their marriage, Rita had used everything she’d learned from her two years of evening business classes at community college and built the foundation of the dealership, while Nate took his charming persona out to the showroom to make the big deals that brought in even more money for them to eventually open more dealerships up and down the East Coast.
Jemel and Sharae were right each time they said McCall Motors was just as much hers as it was Nate’s. Arguably more hers than his, if they were being technical. Which she wasn’t. Rita had never thought that way. Everything they had always belonged to them, their family. The family that Nate had shredded with his wayward dick.
Shaking her head, Rita unfolded her legs and crawled across the bed to grab her iPad from the nightstand. Pulling up the online-banking website, she typed in her password and waited for the screen to change. She knew the balance in each of her and Nate’s bank accounts, not because she counted their money obsessively, but mainly because she was the one who paid the household bills. But Taryn had said something else tonight that had stuck with Rita.What’re you going to do now? Cook yourself into old age?
Rita had another account with the same bank, the one that she’d opened when she’d started receiving her catering payments. That was the account she was interested in tonight. It was a silly thought—one she’d brushed off yesterday after speaking with Phyllis about her larger-than-life baby shower—but one that had taken hold in the last few hours. Had she saved enough of her catering earnings to start something official? Could she really “cook herself into old age” by cooking for other people? She’d started a business before. Could she do it again? Or better yet, did shewantto at this stage in her life?
All her thoughts and considerations stalled as she stared at the screen that showed the balance of all accounts with her name on them. The two at the top of the screen, the joint checking and savings accountsshe shared with Nate, had a zero balance. Her heart thumped slowly, like it wasn’t sure it wanted to keep going, and Rita blinked repeatedly. Praying, hoping, begging that this wasn’t true. Her eyes had to be deceiving her. It was late. She’d eaten two crab cakes and a slice of carrot cake, and had drunk three glasses of wine before coming to bed. This could not be happening.
But when she opened her eyes again, those zeroes were still there, and a mixture of panic and anger shot through her chest like a flame-tipped arrow.
“Nate McCall, you lowdown sonofabit ...” The last word gave way to a scream Rita felt as if she’d been holding in for a hundred years.
Chapter 9
