Authors: Niobia Bryant
Chapter Eight
A month had passed since Chloe first moved to the Carolinas. The September heat was nearly as sweltering as July’s, with the only relief to be found after the sun went down in the late afternoons. She had truly begun to think of the small town as home. It was a connection to her mother and the generations of Boltons before her. Frequently she could be seen driving by on the main road leading to Charleston in the new 2000 Lincoln Navigator SUV she bought after turning in the convertible sports car she had been renting.
Always a hopeless shopaholic, Chloe truly took shopping to new heights. It had become her new pastime. But she still secretly yearned for the newest fashions from New York and Paris. Her weaved tresses were done with an infusion technique and Chloe doubted she could find anyone skilled enough with the process in the area. Plus, she missed Anika’s wry brand of humor. Okay, so there were some things to be found in New York that she couldn’t do without.
She was cruising at seventy miles per hour down Highway 17 from Charleston when she thought of the upcoming Fashion Awards, to be held in New York. The televised event was just under two months away and she knew she
had
to attend. The only upside was that while she was in town she could get some serious shopping done, get pampered at the Estee Lauder spa, get her weave redone by Tahia at The Hair Solution, and spend some quality time with Anika.
Smiling, she picked up the cellular phone from the console, quickly dialing Liv’s private business line with her right hand as she drove the SUV with her left hand easily.
“Talk to me.”
Chloe smiled at Liv’s usual greeting, but hated the harsh coarseness of her voice. “Hey there darling. Guess who?” Chloe said in an awful imitation of an exaggerated southern drawl.
“Hello stranger. How are you?”
Chloe could imagine her with a cigarette between her index and middle fingers. “I promised I would keep in touch and I haven’t spoken to you since I returned your call about the Fashion Awards.”
Liv laughed. “Yes, and I’m glad that you called today. I wasn’t so sure you were still going to make an appearance.”
"I really would prefer not to, Liv." Chloe paused as she swerved around a dead raccoon in the road. “But I have no choice.”
Liv’s voice became animated. “Do you realize what a coup this will be? Why not win the award and announce that you’re returning to reclaim the top spot?”
Chloe shook her head, nervously biting her bottom lip before she spoke. “No, Liv. I wasn’t happy being in the business anymore,”
“You can’t hate me ... for trying.”
Chloe knew that during that pause Liv was surely lighting up another cigarette. “I could never hate you, Olivia.”
Another pause. “Regardless, you must know that this will be a big event for you. Chloe Bolton . . . one year later . . . how does she look now? . . . yadda yadda yadda. Just promise this old woman that you’ll come into town at least one week before the event.” Another pause. “The world’s gonna be looking at you. You’ll need the right outfit, hair and makeup.”
Chloe knew she was right. For too long she had lived in front of the cameras to go only halfway with her appearance now. “I will be in town one week before then, Liv, I promise.”
“Good. There’s one more thing, hon.”
A big wad of bird crap landed on her hood. “What’s that?” she asked absentmindedly, knowing her paint could be ruined if she didn’t get the mess removed.
“You’ll also need the perfect date. Let me set something up.”
“Liv, you know I never liked publicity dates.” Her voice was firm.
“Okay then, are you seeing someone. Has Calvin finally won your heart again? Maybe a big strapping southern buck with spurs?” Liv laughed.
Again she bit her lip. “No, I’m not seeing anyone.”
An image of Devon filled her mind, but Chloe shook the image away. Why had she thought of
him? Well, he certainly was a strapping southern buck, minus the spurs.
What would she do for an escort? Maybe she could just go alone. She would ask Anika, but sitting through an awards show was not her best friend’s type of thing, and besides she saw the awards show as the justification of parading men and women around as life-sized Ken and Barbie dolls. Maybe she should just let Liv set up one of her infamous celebrity publicity dates. It wasn’t like she had never done it before, she just didn’t like it. But it was just someone to pose with for pictures, and then the night was over and everyone went then- separate ways.
“All right Liv, do it. But don’t get anyone over the top. If Dennis Rodman shows up at my door—”
Liv was pleased. “I’ll get right on it and I’ll call you with details, hon.”
Chloe felt like she resigned herself to a fate worse than death. “Okay Liv. Call me at the number I gave you.”
She ended the call and replaced the phone on the console’s base. The Lincoln Navigator was headed down the main strip in Holtsville under her steering. This was the town’s downtown area and it was only the length of two metropolitan blocks. It really would take some getting used to.
The downtown area was made up of one small bank, an even smaller post office, Cyrus’s two-pump gas station with a small store, a second-hand store, a moderately sized brick church, a police station, a video rental store and a small diner. It left a lot to be desired. A whole lot.
She turned off the main road and drove the rest of the distance to the Jamisons’ in reflective silence. With every vehicle that passed her, the drivers waved or blinked their lights in greeting, and she did the same in kind. In New York, a driver was lucky to get a look of indifference as acknowledgment, if not an angry glare or an expression that said,
What are you staring at?
Chloe looked over to her left at the local day care center, where toddlers were loudly playing behind a fenced yard filled with swings, jungle gyms, merry-go-rounds and slides. She loved children, especially babies and toddlers. Their innocence captivated her and she allowed a sharp wave of regret to fill her that she had never slowed down in her career long enough to have children of her own. But then who would she have had them with?
Many times during her relationship with Calvin they had discussed marriage and a family. In fact he had even proposed putting the wagon before the horse. Calvin had a way of waiting until her defenses were down, like while making love, to beg her to have his baby, to fulfill his dream of seeing her round with his child.
First comes love, then Chloe with a baby carriage, next comes marriage?
It’s no wonder the nursery rhyme didn’t go that way.
Now, in hindsight, Chloe thought he probably didn’t want something as committing as a child, but only a chance to make love to her without a condom, something she had never allowed him to do during their entire relationship. When she thought of him in bed with another woman, she was glad she had not made that allowance for him. Maybe she’d seen the signs of his infidelity all along.
A child with Calvin would have been the last thing she needed now, especially since she couldn’t stand the sight of the man. What type of environment would that have been for a child to grow in? Then again, maybe Calvin would have pulled a dip move like her own father, who had left the heavy weight of being both parents, single provider and single disciplinarian on her loving mother.
Chloe didn’t think of her MIA father very often. How could she? She hardly knew much about him, and had never met the man. She could still remember the night, so many years ago, that she had asked her mother the question so many fatherless children do . . .
∞
"Mama, why don’t I have a daddy?”
Adell looked up from the crossword puzzle she was doing in the back of the
TV Guide,
her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She looked down to where her eight-year-old daughter sat on the floor at her feet, reading. Chloe’s eyes were so large and hesitant in their clear hazel depths, as if it was a question she wanted to ask for a long time, but had just worked up the nerve to actually ask.
Stalling for some time before she answered the question she had known would one day be asked, Adell slowly closed the
TV Guide
and removed her glasses.
Chloe waited patiently, her eyes never wavering from her mother. She truly wanted to know where the faceless man who was her father was. Why didn’t he want to be a part of their family? Why didn’t he care that he missed her first words, her first steps and her first day of school? Did he know how pretty she was? Didn’t he want to do the things daddies did with their children, like Anika's dad? Didn’t he love her? Why didn’t he want her?
Adell smiled lovingly at her child, just the faint hint of tears in her hazel eyes. “Come sit next to Mama, Chloe,” she said, her voice husky, barely above a whisper.
And as she gathered Chloe’s thin frame to her ample side, she realized her mistake. She knew then that she should have told her daughter all the details about her father. But how could she make an eight-year-old, even one as bright as Chloe, understand about falling in love with a man and being filled with such pain when he leaves her and the baby he doesn’t want that she has to push all thoughts of him away? There
was
no way to explain that to a child.
So instead of answering Chloe’s question directly, which would mean telling her the horrible truth. She tried to captivate the inquisitive child with stories of the man she yearned to know. Adell knew that her evasions could not last forever. But she wanted to spare her child the searing pain of rejection that she found difficult to deal with herself. Adell tried to never out-and-out lie to her child.
“Chloe, when I was eighteen I left from my home with my parents in Holtsville. As much as I loved it there, I knew there was no real work for me. So I accepted my Aunt Loreen’s offer to come stay with her, here in New York, until I got a job.”
Chloe glanced up at her mother. She
knew
all this. She wanted to know about her father, but she dare not be disrespectful. When she focused back on the story she noticed she had missed some of it, but nothing concerning her question.
"I was so proud of my first apartment, Chloe. Twenty-one and living alone for the first time in my life. The apartment building wasn’t much to speak of, but I put every spare cent I had into making my place look good, and it did. In fact I used to try to keep the front of the building and the hallways clean. Some of the other tenants looked at me like I was a fool.”
She laughed then remembering, and Chloe smiled too. “Then about two or three months after I moved in, on a Saturday, I went downstairs to work on that little four-by-four dirt patch in front of the building. I wanted to plant some flowers." She sighed then and closed her eyes with a faint smile. “I was knee high in dirt, face smudged with a head rag on, when I hear this deep male voice say, ‘You’re too pretty to be in dirt that way.’ I turn around and it's my next door neighbor Terrence Gilford. Lord, he was fine. Tall and kind of a smooth caramel complexion, just like yours, with a slender build and big feet.”
They both laughed at that and Chloe’s heart raced with excitement!
“And he could dress. Well, I noticed him since the first day I moved in but I never thought he noticed me . . . until that day I was planting the garden.”
Adell lowered her head until the side of her face touched the top of Chloe's plaited head. “And do you know what he did, Chloe?”
Chloe shook her head no, anxiously awaiting her mother’s next words.
“He rolled up the sleeves of the shirt he had on and got right down in the dirt with me planting those flowers. I was so impressed by him. And after we finished in the little garden, if you can call it that, we went upstairs to his apartment and drank lemonade and talked."
“Terrence was twenty-seven and a musician. He played the trumpet and knew everything about every song you could name. His apartment was filled with crates of records from the floor to the ceiling, and there were posters and pictures of him with famous singers he played with or got an autograph from. He grew up in Harlem, but both of his parents died in an accident. His birthday was August thirteenth, a Leo. He was an only child, just like you and me, Chloe.”
“We would sit on the porch just outside his first floor apartment and listen to jazz playing from his old record player through the window. Or he would play his trumpet for me. He was so romantic and loved to play tricks on me, and he was forever reading . . . just like someone else I know.”
“Me Mama?” Chloe asked, looking for some piece of him in her.
Adell nodded. ‘‘Yes, he loved to read just like you.”
"Did you love him, Mama?”
"Yes, baby, I loved him with all my heart.” Her voice was hoarse with pain.
∞
Tears blurred Chloe’s vision and with good judgment she pulled her SUV over onto the side of the road. Even today her father’s betrayal stung. Those same questions she had as a child remained unanswered. As she got older she realized that her mother had filled her with all the details on her sire, but always succeeded in avoiding directly answering those questions.
With age and wisdom she had eventually answered them herself. He wasn’t dead, he never showed his face, and never called ... he didn’t want her. And that hurt and affected her more deeply than she was willing to admit.