Authors: Crystal Hubbard
“I know,” John groaned. “That’s all anyone wants to ask me about.”
“I don’t mean about marriage. Something’s wrong.”
John dropped his eyes to the beer in his hand.
“Clara mentioned it when I got here with Troy and C.J. this morning, and throughout the day I’ve noticed that Chiara seems preoccupied. Not in a good way. Is everything okay, John?”
He kept his tongue until he could work out an answer that wouldn’t betray Chiara in any way. “She’s having a rough time at work.”
“I suppose it might just be the loss of her partner, but it seems like there’s more to it.” Christopher sighed and ran his fingers through the silver-streaked red at his right temple. “She seemed tired today. And anxious. Let her know that Clara and I are here for her, will you?”
“Of course,” John nodded. “She knows that.”
“And you, too,” Christopher added. “We’re all here for you, too, John.”
* * *
Christopher was one of the reasons Almadine Mahoney despised the Winters family. As John stood alone, his cold hands gripping the frozen railing of the back patio, he heard again his mother’s angry voice in his head.
“That Abigail Winters is going to allow her daughter to marry a
white
man!” Almadine had hissed upon John’s news that he’d been invited to the wedding as Chiara’s guest. “She’s actually going to do it! That family has no shame, no pride! There are plenty of good strong black men out there that need wives. Clara Winters could have picked one of them!”
“You said Clara was a plain-faced bookworm,” ten-year-old John had reminded his mother. “You said she was going to end up a spinster married to her work if she didn’t pull her face out of a book and start looking for a husband.”
“I know what I said!” Almadine had snapped shrilly. “And if you think you’re going to that wedding, you got yourself another think coming!”
It was Christopher who had enabled John’s participation in his wedding. Christopher, who had just finished up graduate school, had dug into his own pocket to pay for John’s rented tux. Almadine had refused to attend the service or the reception, but had demanded copies of the photos that John was in. She’d also bullied him into bringing her a plate of food from the reception.
John gripped the railing a little harder, until he felt his blunt fingernails digging crescents into the weathered wood. Christopher had always been there for him, more of a big brother than a friend. John had never viewed Christopher as his mother had, as the “white husband.” Christopher was simply a member of the family John himself had always longed to belong to.
Ciel’s marriage to Lee had created even more chaos in the Mahoney household. “The Clarks have lost their minds!” Almadine had raved. “Letting that handsome boy marry Ciel Winters. What kind of name is ‘Ciel?’ Abigail Winters has all the nerve in the world putting her girl up to marry into the Clark family. They’ll find out, though. The Winters are trash and the Clarks will have the good sense to put the trash out in the morning.”
“I guess you don’t want to go to the wedding, then,” twelve-year-old John had asked his mother, fully expecting her resounding no.
“Oh, I’m going to this one,” Almadine had declared viciously. “I want to see with my own eyes if Ciel Winters has the nerve to wear white. I know she’s already spread her legs for that boy. That’s the only way she could have got him to marry her!”
John angrily tore himself from the railing. He was accustomed to his mother’s insults about the Winters daughters, but he’d never found a way to dull their sting. Cady and Kyla had invited John to their weddings, but had felt no obligation whatsoever to invite Almadine, a fact that still bit at his mother.
“That Cady was always too wild,” Almadine had stated upon learning of Cady’s impending nuptials with Keren Bailey. “Figures she’d go out and find a man nobody knows anything about. He’s probably some kind of molester or criminal.”
“He’s a doctor, Mother,” twenty-five-year-old John had told her. “He’s the head of oncology at Raines-Hartley Hospital. He’s rich, too. His parents were awarded millions in some kind of cancer lawsuit settlement before they died.”
“That’s probably why she wants to marry him,” Almadine had snorted. “Lord knows those Winters never had two nickels to rub together. Where’s the wedding and what time are we supposed to be there?”
“Cady invited
me
,” John had told his mother, secretly delighting in his news. “Just me.”
“Well, ain’t that a blip,” Almadine had gasped, thoroughly taken aback. “That little bitch calls herself snubbing me?”
And a few years later, when Kyla married Zweli, Almadine considered herself snubbed once more. “I didn’t want to go to that Hollywood heifer’s wedding anyway,” Almadine had announced. “Who does she think she is, Angela Bassett? You won’t catch Angela Bassett running around on television in nothing but a see-through bathing suit.”
John leaned back on the railing and loosely crossed his arms over his chest. Through the windows over the sink, he saw that the brightly lit kitchen was filled, this time with an army of people helping Abby put away food, scrape and pack dishes into the dishwasher, and generally restore order to the house. It was dark and most of the merriment of the holiday had been spent, yet laughter and frivolity ruled in Abby’s kitchen.
Clarence chased his little sister Ella around the prep island with his favorite new toy, a plastic automatic weapon that shot a gooey slime-like substance instead of water. Danielle, carrying a half-eaten sweet potato pie into the kitchen, chatted with Tiffani McCousy, Troy’s buxom girlfriend. Tiffani, whose request to be called Tiff had led inevitably to another one of Cady’s nicknames, seemed like a pleasant person, but John knew Troy well enough to agree with Chiara’s first impression. Tiffani had beautiful cinnamon skin and luxurious black hair, but Troy surely liked Tiff because of her outrageously oversized bosom.
John shook his head and chuckled to himself. The kids were growing up so fast, and it didn’t seem so long ago that he and Chiara had been considered “the kids.”
No one was more in tune with the fact that he and Chiara were no longer children than John. His childhood had been spent with Chiara, and he hadn’t been exaggerating when it almost slipped out that he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been in love with her.
It had never occurred to him to invite any other girl to the sixth grade Fiesta formal, or to the junior high dances. Throughout high school, no other girl had appealed to him as Chiara had, and he’d never asked another girl to a movie or to a sporting event. It was Chiara’s praise he’d sought after he’d done his best in a game or a track event, and she was the first person he’d gone to after getting his acceptance to George Washington University. Chiara had been more than a friend through the years, more than a lover. She’d been his inspiration to be the best man he possibly could, to transcend the harshness of his upbringing to be the kind of person he wanted to be, rather than the creature his mother had tried to engineer with belts and switches.
Chiara’s friendship had been the one thing he’d been able to rely on throughout his life. So many times, she had brought light into his darkness, saving him with a smile, a hug, a kiss, or the power of her silence. Zhou had placed Chiara in a situation that had stolen the light from her, and John resolved to do whatever he could to restore it. As his frozen legs carried him to the back door, John realized that he owed nothing less to the woman to whom he was matched for life.
Almadine Mahoney wore her holiday best, a holly-green tweed suit she’d ordered from a Christian shopping catalog. Her thin arms crossed tightly and her skinny legs scissoring rapidly to keep up with John’s long strides, Almadine followed her son from the front door to the family room, sniping all the way.
“This is Christmas,” she hissed. “You should have spent the day with your family! We waited all day for you.”
John glanced into the dining room. The second catered dinner in two days sat on the table, which had been draped with Almadine’s heirloom linen tablecloth. The thick white carpeting revealed the truth of his mother’s “we.” John could make out only two sets of footprints in the tattletale carpeting, a tiny set belonging to his mother and a much larger trail that had to be his father’s.
Upon entering the family room, John encountered a big leather recliner stuffed full of his father. Two plates were stacked on the blond ash end table next to the chair, each bearing the evidence of Bartholomew Mahoney’s first and second dinners.
“Merry Christmas, Dad.” John bent over to give his father a brief hug. “Did you have a good day?”
Bartholomew, who’d been drowsing off before a pre-recorded boxing match on the wide-screen television mounted on the wall before him, fully awakened with a snort. “Oh, it was all right,” he yawned. “We beat our sales goal from last year, so I can’t complain. I moved three Hummers. Merry Christmas to me,” he chuckled.
Transfixed, John watched the rolls of his father’s stomach bounce with his laughter.
“Did George make it over?” John asked, seating himself on a dark leather ottoman near his father’s chair.
“For a little while, then it was just me and
her
.” Bartholomew threw a fat thumb in the direction of the wide archway, where Almadine leaned stiffly against the wide wooden frame. “Did you make it over to your little girlfriend’s house today?”
“Chiara’s not little anymore, Dad. I can’t really call her my girlfriend, either. She’s—”
“Well, that’s the best news I’ve heard all year,” Almadine piped in. She squinted, which made the lines in her ebony skin appear even darker and more severe. “Did you go by her house today?”
“Yes.” John marveled at his mother’s resemblance to a praying mantis. “I had some gifts to deliver.”
“Boy, you need to save your money to buy a house,” Almadine interjected. “There’s a pretty little three-bedroom on the market right around the corner, over on Heger Court. There’s an open house next week. We can go and see what’s wrong with it, and make an offer, and—”
“I’m not interested in any houses on Heger Court,” John interrupted. “And my finances are in order for buying a house. Lee Clark has managed my portfolio for the past seven years, and I won’t have any trouble with a down payment.” He deliberately failed to mention that Chiara figured prominently in his plans to purchase a house.
“How’re Abby and the girls?” Bartholomew asked. “Doing good?”
Almadine’s lips tightened into a fist-like configuration as John said, “Everybody’s doing really well. Kyla’s book is selling well, and she’s finishing up her first movie. Cady’s book won another award and her publisher just signed her to a three-book deal. Clara’s just won a five-million dollar research contract, and Ciel’s been nominated for a state assistant district attorney position.”
“Well, that sounds all right,” Bartholomew said with a nod of appreciation. “Abby did a good job with her girls.”
“She would’ve done better if she could’ve kept her man around,” Almadine snapped. “Happy men don’t go running around the world writing useless stories when they have five children and a wife at home.”
John changed the subject. “Did Granddaddy come by today, Dad?”
“He was over last night, so he spent today with your Uncle Otha,” Bartholomew grunted as he reached across his body for the remote control. “Otha invited us over, too, but your mother had already planned to have the caterers come and whatnot, so we stayed here in case any of the other folks she invited came over.”
John spent a moment studying his hands. He knew that Almadine had invited a lot of church friends and distant relatives to Christmas dinner, totally ignoring the fact that most of those people would want to spend the holiday with their own families. Her own father hadn’t shown up, opting instead to spend the day with his son.
“Me, I’m glad nobody came,” Bartholomew laughed. “I didn’t have to talk to nobody and I didn’t have to give up my favorite chair to nobody.”
“How was the food?” John asked, glancing at his father’s dirty plates.
“You know I don’t much care for all that fancy stuff your mama likes.” Bartholomew belched. “But I managed to put down a good plate or two. Why don’t you get yourself something to eat?”
“I’m not hungry, Dad, but thanks,” John said.
“Oh, you ate at the Winters house,” Almadine accused. “My food isn’t good enough for you now?”
John used his thumb and middle finger to vigorously massage his temples. “I don’t have anything against your food, Mother. I was at Chiara’s house, there was food there, and I ate some of it.”
And it was a thousand times better than anything you could have ordered from a caterer,
John bit back.
“George came early this morning,” Almadine threw out. “Even though he was in the middle of studying for his finals, he took time out to come be with his mother and father.”
John so wanted to tell his mother that George was full of it, that finals took place
before
Christmas break, not during, and that George showed up on Christmas morning for one reason only—to collect presents. But instead he said, “I actually have to be at work tomorrow, Mother. I should be getting up to bed.”
“Ten minutes? That’s all we get out of you for Christmas?” Almadine asked angrily. “You ran out of here last night, and you’re running away now. Look at your father, he’s all upset now.”
Bartholomew pleasantly snored, his large head tipped forward onto his chest.
John surrendered. “Fine. I’ll stay up and visit awhile.”
“Don’t do me any favors,” Almadine said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m only your mother.”
* * *
John laid his clothes neatly over the back of his mother’s desk chair before climbing into the day bed and pulling the horrible cotton-candy sheets over his nude body. An entire day spent with Chiara’s large, energetic family hadn’t been as exhausting as two hours with his mother. As he stared at the ceiling, John’s heart felt as heavy as it ever had when he was a child.
Almadine no longer hit him physically, but her verbal blows still hurt, and because of them John hated being at home. He hated feeling out of place, unloved, empty, as if his heart were encased in the same plastic that covered Almadine’s expensive living room furniture. Home wasn’t supposed to make you feel like that. It was supposed to feel the way he felt at Chiara’s house.
Abby had used a few choice words when Cady’s twins used their new bath crayons to tag the foyer walls, but she hadn’t rushed to the site with a bucket of hot water, sponges and industrial cleaning solutions. She’d kept the drawings and hadn’t bothered to mask her pride when she showed them to her arriving guests. That was the difference between the Winters and Mahoney residences: Abby had built a home where each member of her family was valued. Almadine had nothing more than a house filled with pricey furnishings and meaningless objects, her two sons foremost among them.
John tried to work up a head of steam over how easily George extracted himself from family gatherings with lukewarm lies, but he couldn’t begrudge his little brother his freedom. George might not have been on the receiving end of Almadine’s wrath as often, but he’d suffered, too, having been forced to witness his big brother’s punishments.
Old guilt stabbed at John when he recalled all the times he would sneak away to play at Chiara’s, leaving a whining, sometimes sobbing George at home alone with Almadine. Part of the abandonment was because George was so much younger, seven years and eight months exactly. The other part, the part that disturbed him most, was the real reason he’d left George behind: because he wanted to keep the Winters family all to himself.
Chiara’s house was filled with people who cared about him, who actually wanted him around. They treated him as though he belonged. They loved him, and he didn’t want to have to share it with anyone, not even George.
He knew that Abby loved him. She’d said so. John couldn’t recall a single time Almadine had claimed to love him, other than after a whipping when she’d say, “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t love you.”
Abby’s love had been expressed with suffocating hugs, a handful of change to take to the neighborhood confectionary with Chiara, a dozen warm cookies with a tall glass of milk, and more than once, cotton balls dipped in witch hazel swiped over his injured skin.
Claire Winters, Chiara’s grandmother, hadn’t been as demonstrative, but she’d loved him, too. She’d had words with his mother at least once that he knew of regarding the way Almadine treated him. The one time he’d overheard his mother and Grandma Claire arguing had been when he was almost thirteen years old. He’d spent a Monday afternoon at Chiara’s, and Claire had noticed an open welt on the back of his neck. Chiara had made an offhand comment about Almadine’s belt getting away from her.
Claire had plainly asked if Almadine had beat him, and John’s answering silence had been answer enough. Claire had turned off the fire under the dinner she’d been preparing, and she’d walked John home. To Almadine’s face, right there on her front doorstep, Claire had promised to call the St. Louis Child Protective Services if she ever saw another mark on John. Not only that, she’d get her granddaughter Ciel, the new lawyer, to help her get custody of John and George while Almadine sat “her scrawny butt in the Missouri Correctional Institute for Women.”
Almadine had never raised a hand to him again. She’d claimed that it was because John had gotten too big to whip. But John knew that it had been Claire’s threat that had ended Almadine’s whippings. John’s only regret had been that Claire hadn’t threatened his mother with CPS sooner.
John hugged his thin pillow to his chest and squirmed, trying to get comfortable. The sharp creases in the new sheet were still evident, and they bit into his skin. He smiled, thinking of the conniption Almadine would surely have if she knew he was sleeping naked under her roof. He’d given up pajamas years ago, when he’d gotten his first apartment. In defiance of his mother, he spread out as much as he could on the small bed. He was a grown man and would sleep buck-ass naked if he wanted to.
His large frame filled the bed, but it still seemed too empty without Chiara beside him. They’d maintained separate apartments in Chicago but lived less than two blocks apart. Having grown up with so many people in her house, Chiara had become addicted to her privacy and independence. USITI discouraged office romances, so separate addresses were necessary in that regard as well. For John’s part, it would have killed his mother to know that he was “shacking up” with Chiara.
John’s favorite thing in the world was sleeping with Chiara. Not sex, although that was wonderful too, but actually sleeping. He loved the way she snuggled up to him as she slept, the way her body moved, the soft touches she gave him in slumber.
Thinking so hard about her must have conjured her, because there she was on the other side of the window, carefully pushing aside Cecile Brunner’s blunted bare vines. John had left the window unlocked from the night before, and Chiara swung it open. Wrapped in her white fox fur coat and mukluks, she entered the room on a silent blast of cold air and a rush of crystalline snowflakes that glittered in the street light.
She slipped off her boots at the foot of the bed, and John sat up. “I really wish you wouldn’t keep risking a fall by—” He smelled the cold on her coat as she untied the belt closing it. “I wish…” The coat slipped from her shoulders to reveal flawless bare skin. “I-I…” he stammered, finishing on a pained groan as Chiara let her coat pool at her feet. She untucked the covers from the foot of the bed, and like an odalisque approaching her sultan, she crawled into the bed and up the length of John’s body. Her loose, luxurious hair stroked him, her bare skin warmed as it generated delicious friction against his. She stopped halfway, her small, strong hands gripping his thighs, parting his legs. She slithered between them to nest at the juncture of his thighs. His flesh instantly responded to the caress of her warm breath, rising to fill the heat of her mouth as her cool lips gripped him.
There was nothing subservient about Chiara’s seduction—her beauty and confidence, and the power she drew from them, were the headiest aphrodisiacs John had ever experienced. She knew what he liked, and what she herself liked, and she was excellent at combining the two.
John’s fists clutched handfuls of the bed sheets. His neck arched, forcing his head into his pillow. He cringed against the sheer pleasure of Chiara’s lips and tongue working in concert with light strokes of her fingertips. When he couldn’t stand it for one more second, he gripped her shoulders and tugged her atop him. Breathing hard, she straddled him and guided him inside in one mighty, welcoming thrust of her hips. She bowed her head and John raised his, their teeth clacking as they mated their mouths, matching each deep thrust of their bodies.
Chiara shifted position, planting her right foot flat on the bed and bringing her center even more into contact with John’s. When she stretched her left leg alongside his outer thigh, John groaned out loud and fastened his hands at her hips to push himself deeper. In the farthest recesses of his mind, he realized that she was imitating a position they’d seen in a painting in Japan. The old bed responded to her new position with a loud creak that sounded like a gunshot.
Ten seconds later, the doorknob rattled. “John,” Almadine called. “Are you all right in there?”
“F-Fine,” he managed, struggling to keep his voice even with Chiara suckling his earlobe. “I’m fine.”
“Are you playing games on my computer?” Almadine asked sharply.