Page 13 of Leave It to Us
Ice cubes rattled in the glass now half-full of the watered-down drink Freda preferred. It was either fruit punch or pink grapefruit juice—half-juice and half-water—when Freda requested a cold drink. Herbal tea instead of coffee, per the doctor’s orders, with lemon or honey when she wanted something hot. Eventually, the rim of the glass made it to Freda’s thick lips, and she drank slowly.
Her mother was still a strikingly beautiful woman, with her deep-mocha hue, wide-set russet-brown eyes, and high cheekbones. At one time, her hair had been dark brown, and Freda had worn it permed and in chin-length curls that softly framed her face. She’d always been slim—just like Tami—wearing a size 10 for as long as Yvonne could remember. She had dressed stylishly, like Lana, her closet and the two armoires in the basement full of suits, slacks, blouses, and dresses with designer labels. This woman—whose brow was now almost always drawn into a scowl; whose lips never wore warm-hued lipstick anymore; whose ears, neck, and fingers remained free of the gold and silver jewelry that overflowed from the boxes on her dresser—was a shell of whom she had once been. And that broke Yvonne’s heart daily.
“It’s time for the news,” Freda said when she put the glass back on the table and let her left hand fall into her lap.
Freda liked to watch Anderson Cooper in the evenings;the cute little fellais what she called him. It was one of the few things her mother seemed to enjoy these days. This was when Yvonne would normally help her mother into the living room, where she’d sit in the weatheredrecliner until the portion of the news she wanted to see was over, and she would then need help to the breakfast room, which they’d partitioned off from the kitchen in the last few months to serve as her bedroom so that she could avoid the steps.
But before they did any of that tonight, Yvonne needed to talk to her mother.
“Okay, I’ll help you in just a second,” she said, and then took a drink from her glass of wine. She emptied the glass, needing the liquid courage to say what had to be said and to steel herself for whatever Freda’s response would be.
Setting the glass down, she reached for a napkin and wiped her hands one last time before blurting out, “I’m going away for a few weeks.” She didn’t know specifically if that was the amount of time she’d be gone, but she was reluctant to saythe entire summer. No, she was hopeful that this endeavor wouldn’t take that long. “You remember I told you Grandma Betty passed?”
Freda nodded. “She always did have bad lungs. Just like your daddy. And they both still smoked those nasty cigarettes.” The deepened frown on her mother’s face expressed just how much she hated that habit.
“Right.” It was easier to simply agree with Freda. Their father’s death from sarcoidosis, after having been diagnosed with the disease only six months before, had come as a surprise to everyone—even Freda, who by that time had been divorced from Daniel Butler for seven years.
Yvonne, who had been nineteen at the time of her father’s death, had read everything she could find about the disease and learned that there were conflicting results regarding its correlation with smoking. She’d finally decided that the studies she’d pored over—and the cigarettes her mother had found so distasteful—didn’t really matter, because her father was gone. And now, so was her grandmother, albeit from a different medical condition.
“Grandma Betty left us the summerhouse, and she wanted us to fix it up before selling it. So I’m going back to the island. Lana andTami are going too,” she blurted out, then held her breath like she was a teenager all over again, waiting for her mother’s response.
“Hmph” was the sound that came from Freda first. “Betty always did like to control every damn thing.” Freda shook her head. “I swear, that woman thought she was the boss long before Diana Ross claimed the title.”
Yvonne almost smiled at the words she hadn’t heard her mother say in a very long time. To say the relationship between Freda and her mother-in-law had always been contentious would be an understatement.
“There’s a contractor down there waiting for us to get started on the job. I’m gonna call Lana and Tami tonight so we can get the details together on when we’ll leave.” She’d figured a call would be faster since Lana sometimes took a while to respond to text messages. “Since I’m finished with school for the summer, now’s the perfect time to go and deal with this. And Ms.Rosalee said she’d be happy to come and stay with you until I get back.”
Her mother rolled her eyes. “Rosalee’s a nosy busybody,” she snapped. “Always wants to be up in my house, looking around and touching stuff so she can run back to the church and tell everybody what I’ve got.”
Rosalee Patterson had also been Freda’s closest friend for as long as Yvonne could remember. The woman had been a godsend during these past couple of years, although Yvonne had been careful not to lean on her generosity too frequently, or Freda would have a conniption. The way she seemed to be on her way to doing now.
“It won’t be for that long, Mama. And you know I can’t leave you here alone overnight.” She hadn’t done that since her mother had taken sick. “Your nurse will still come during the day, so if Ms.Rosalee has any appointments or errands of her own, she’ll be able to do them. You know she’s more than happy to help out, especially since her daughter and the girls moved back to Atlanta with her husband.”
Now her mother pursed her lips. “Stupid. Never look back,” she said. “There’s nothing in the past that’ll help you in the future.”
That was a piece of advice Freda had frequently given her children.
Finished with providing the details she had about the situation, Yvonne waited a beat for any other comments. She was just about to stand and help her mother into the living room when Freda said, “Yeah, you’d better go on down there. Otherwise, you know your sisters will make a mess of things. Lana’s always had her nose in the air, and Tami dreams too much to focus.” Her mother pushed back from the table slowly and then reached back to grab her walker. “You go take care of Betty’s business, like the boss asked. Woman’s intent on being a pain in the ass, even from the grave.”
And that was it. Grandma Betty had spoken her wishes, and Freda had given her commands. All that was left for Yvonne to do was what she always did: take care of the things everyone else wanted.
Chapter 7
LANA
“I know I don’t have a job or any money to spend on this project,” Tami said a few seconds after the three of them were connected on the call.
It was a little after nine on Friday night when Yvonne had called Lana to say she was about to connect Tami so the three of them could discuss the summerhouse situation. That’s what it had become in the days since they’d been to the lawyer’s office—a situation that needed to be handled. Lana was sick of dealing with situations.
“But I think we’re meant to do this,” Tami continued. “Together. That’s why Grandma Betty put it in her will that way. Remember, she used to always tell us we got more done together than we ever would apart?”
Lana did remember that. It had usually come up whenever their grandmother had given them a task to complete at the house and Tami would find a reason to wander off and do something else. Then Yvonne would send Lana after Tami, and when that took too long, Yvonne would come and find Lana arguing with Tami. A bigger argument would ensue, one that would make Grandma Betty stop what she was doing and come along to break up their discourse.
“I do remember her saying that a lot,” Yvonne said. “But—”
“No, just hear me out,” Tami interrupted. “Of all the family members that have ever been directly involved in our lives, Grandma Betty was the one who showed us—all of us—the most support.”
“That’s not true,” Lana said. “Daddy was always there for us, even after the divorce. And he intervened with a lot of things that Mama tried to keep us from doing because she didn’t like them. So I’d say Daddy was our biggest supporter.”
