Mama Dearest (9 page)

“Touchy, touchy, aren’t we?” she said, light as pie. “But don’t forget I birthed you, so I know how old you are, Yancey. I must say, you look good for someone in her forties.”

“I’m not in my forties!” Ava and I hadn’t been in the room together for more than fifteen minutes, and she was already coming for me. I wondered how long she planned to stay, and if I was going to have to move S. Marcus’s trip back for a couple of days.

“Chile, please, I know better. But that’s cool because it would be hard to explain how a mother and daughter can both be in their forties. Now, where are those menus? And is there a liquor store around here that delivers? I need a stiff drink. The champagne and wine has been cute, but your mother needs a good swig of something golden brown.”

I could feel a familiar tension in the base of my neck. “Let’s order our food first. I might have something in the bar.”

“You don’t. I’ve already checked.”

I wasn’t putting up with her demands anymore. I picked up my suitcase and said, “Let me take these in the bedroom and then we can catch up.”

As I started down the hallway to my bedroom, Ava called my name. All the sting had left her voice. I turned around to see a sad smile on her face, which touched me and made me blink back tears. As crazy as she was and as much as she deserved everything she got, I’d missed her more than I was willing to admit to her or myself. Here I was almost forty, still longing for a mother who would never show up.

“I’ve missed you, boo,” she said tenderly.

“I know you’re glad to be free once again.”

“I sure am, baby. Jail ain’t for no punk bitches or deluxe divas.”

A
WEEK PASSED AND
Ava showed no signs of leaving or heading back to California. As a matter of fact, she seemed quite comfortable in my guest suite on the first floor. I don’t know what I should do, since it is only a couple of days before S. Marcus is coming to New York. When I entertain, I certainly don’t need my mother close by. Plus, I am trying to figure out what Ava is really up to. She’d been pretty mad when they took her out of court after the jury convicted her. Ava shot me a look that I would never forget. Our relationship had never been a typical mother and daughter one, and we’d enjoyed only fleeting moments of true affection.

I hate to admit it but whenever I think about seeing Marcus again I’m as excited as a high school girl on her first date. I find myself smiling at the mere thought of him. S. Marcus sends flowers almost every day and I’m always getting texts from him telling me how much he misses me and how he can’t wait to see me again. I would text back
k
or
me 2
because I didn’t want to seem too desperate or let him know how much he’d rocked my world during the time we’d spent together.

I have to dazzle Marcus when he comes to New York, so I’m doing Pilates in the morning and going to the gym every afternoon. I’d packed my gym bag with a change of clothes and was on my way out the door when the phone rang. I look at the call identification and see the name of my real estate agency and pray it’s good news. My funds are almost depleted and having to feed and take care of Ava is putting a further strain on my resources.

“Hello.”

“Ms. Braxton, please,” a perky female voice said.

“This is Yancey Braxton.”

“Great. Ms. Braxton, this is Linda Huber, Ms. Weeks’s second assistant. She wanted me to see if you were at home this afternoon.”

“I’m on my way out. Why, does she want to show my place?”

“No, I was going to drop off your keys.”

I removed the phone from my ear and looked at it in puzzlement. Am I hearing this dizzy bitch correctly?

“Why are you going to do that?”

“Ms. Weeks told me you’d taken your town house off the market.”

I placed the bag on the floor in disbelief. “Where did she get an idea like that? I still want to sell my house.”

“Hold on one second.”

A few moments later Amy came on the line. “Yancey, how are you doing today?”

“I’m fine, Amy. What is your assistant talking about?”

“I was told you were taking your property off the market.”

“Let me ask this question again. Where did you hear that?”

“About a week ago I had a buyer for your town house. A Russian couple, and I had my other assistant call to arrange a visit. He was already sold, having seen the property online. When my assistant called, she said you told her you weren’t interested in selling. He was willing to pay the 2.3 that we were asking for. Instead, I sold him something similar to your home but cheaper in Harlem.”

“What!” I screamed into the phone. “Are you fucking kidding me? Does your assistant smoke crack?”

“Yancey, no, she doesn’t,” she said in an attempt to calm me, “but that’s what she was told. Is that not true? You didn’t talk to my assistant about a week ago?”

“No, I was still on the road.” Just then I saw the front door open and Ava walked in, wearing big dark glasses and a too-tight purple velour sweatsuit. “Amy, let me call you back. I need to check something out.”

“Okay, then I’ll hold up on sending your key back, but please let me know what you want to do. I feel like the market is going to heat up very soon.”

“I will. Thanks, Amy.”

Ava was sweating like a pig, obviously back from a run. “Girl, I’m tired. I forgot how hard it is working out. I might need to see if I can get me some diet pills or something to get rid of this weight. I need to get me a trainer too. What do you have to eat?”

I got right to the point. “Did you tell my real estate agent that I wasn’t selling my house?”

“Did I what?” Ava asked, looking away. I knew this meant she was getting ready to tell me a big fat lie.

I walked over and directly confronted her. “You heard me. Did you tell someone that I didn’t want to sell my house?”

“Who told you that?”

“Ava!” I screamed, stomping my feet. “Just answer my question.”

“You don’t need to sell this house. This is a nice place, and since I gave you the down payment, I felt like I had a say. It’s as much mine as yours.”

“I paid you back. How dare you do that without my permission?”

She mumbled, not meeting my eyes, “They wanted to bring someone over to see the place and I needed a bubble bath. Besides, where are we going to stay?”

“We?
Ava, we don’t do well together for long periods of time. I figured you were going back to California. I’m going to find me something smaller, maybe in Harlem.”

Ava wiped sweat from her face with the towel she held. “You know full well I can’t move back to California.”

Was I losing my mind? “Why can’t you go back to California?”

“Because they would only release me if I had a place to go,” she confessed. “The prison officials think you called them and said I could live with you.”

At last we were getting to the truth. “Now, how did that happen? I never agreed to that.”

She looked at me like I was dumb. “I got one of my friends to call and act like you. I guess she did a good job.” Ava laughed.

I groaned. Why didn’t I guess she’d pull some stunt like this. “I wish you would stop using my name in vain.”

“Besides, how are you going to buy another house? I bet your credit is worse than mine.”

“Let me worry about that,” I said sharply. “And in the future if you’re going to answer my phone, don’t pretend you’re me. Just take a message and write it down. Do I make myself clear?”

“Honey, you must have me confused. I would never pretend to be somebody else, especially you,” Ava said.

“Whatever. Need I remind you some years ago you went to an audition with Robert DeNiro pretending to be me?”

“And your point is?”

She was deliberately playing stupid. “I will make this simple: just don’t answer my phone. Also, I’m having company in a couple of days, and if you’re not going back to California, then we’re going to have to find you a hotel.”

“I’m sure the Four Seasons has plenty of rooms.”

“Who’s got Four Seasons money? You told me you lost all your money to your lawyer filing appeals.”

“Maybe your visiting friend has money. Is this the guy who’s been sending you all these flowers and texting you every five minutes? You need to tell that nigga to send us some food and drink.”

When in doubt, Ava copped an attitude. “That is none of your business. Look, get on the computer right now and check hotels.com. Nothing over two hundred dollars a night,” I said.

“Where in the hell am I going to find anything decent in New York for fewer than two hundred dollars? I know it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a hotel but they were way more than that before I went to the joint. Otherwise, I’ll just be quiet as a church mouse when your company comes.”

“Oh no, you won’t. I want my house empty.”

“Then get me some suitable accommodations.”

I’d had enough. I know how she played, and I wasn’t going to be drawn into her game. “I’m going to the gym.”

“Bring me back a chicken sandwich with some curly fries,” Ava said.

“Is that on your diet plan?”

“It sure is, darling. Why don’t you bring me a milk shake, made with skim milk, of course,” Ava said.

Exasperated, I shook my head and went out the door. My mother was back and already wearing my nerves thin.

Ava is not feeling this at all. She is hanging on to an overhead rail as the subway train bumps quickly across the tracks, tossing her this way and that, practically sending her falling to the floor. She had not traveled by public transit in decades, when she, too, was a struggling actress looking for jobs. She heard how terrible it had become, how dirty and unkempt the trains are now, but she had no idea it was this bad.

The plastic seats are filthy. The windows are coated with such a thick film of dirt and dust, she can hardly see through them, and the floors … she doesn’t even want to think of all the germs crawling around down there. Isn’t there a cleaning service that could be called? Where are city tax dollars being spent?

Ava averts her eyes from the many stares she is getting. Stares from men and women in cheap work outfits, carrying poorly made briefcases and purses. They had to know that she doesn’t belong here among them. She is special, above having to wait at subway stops, above having to tolerate the kids at the back of that subway
car, wearing baggy jeans and hoodies, cracking vulgar jokes and acting ghetto. People can look at her and tell by the expensive jewelry she wears, the sparkling gold bracelet that hangs from her wrist, the watch her last husband had surprised her with that cost more than ten thousand dollars, the huge diamond ring she bought on Rodeo Drive, that she isn’t one of them.

These people don’t know that I was once damn near royalty, Ava thought to herself. Then why haven’t any of the men jumped up, quickly offering their seat when they saw a woman of her stature step through those sliding subway doors? Maybe it’s the fifteen pounds she put on while she was incarcerated. No, she isn’t a perfect size four anymore, but she still has the body of a woman half her age, or she will very soon.

If this was Rome or Paris, even Beverly Hills, she tells herself, the men would’ve behaved as gentlemen, begging her to take their seats. But these workday commoners act like they haven’t seen her in the social pages in newspapers across the world. By the vacant looks on their faces, and the time of day, Ava knows they are heading to jobs they hate. Poor trash, she thought. Ava is so thankful she has never had to live that life.

Yes, over the last seven years she had lost touch with many of her social connections, hasn’t been to a dinner party or high tea, but she is free now. It is only a matter of time before her wealthy friends learn of her release and begin calling her for brunch and vacations. Maybe she can even revive her show business career.

She’ll do one spectacular performance, then another, and another, and her phone will never stop ringing. She’ll be back on top, and this momentary misstep will be a thing of the past.

The conductor’s voice came over the train’s speakers: “Harlem, 125th Street.”

The train lurched to a stop, and Ava thankfully prepared to de-board behind a wall of other riders.

On the subway platform, she pulls out the slip of paper she had written her parole officer’s address on. She looks left, then looks right at the signs pointing up toward two separate sets of stairs. This is the stop where she is supposed to get off, but she has no clue as to which direction to continue in. People busily crossed back and forth in front of her, still paying her no mind.

“Excuse me,” Ava finally said to a man wearing a T-shirt so long it looked like a nightgown. “Can you tell me where to find the Adam Clayton Powell Building?”

The man looks at Ava like she is crazy, hunches his shoulders and says, “Lady, quit playing. Everybody knows where that building is.” He turns and keeps walking.

Fine, she thought. Ava decided she’d find it on her own. How could she expect to get any useful information from anyone making minimum wage?

Half an hour later, Ava steps off an elevator into a long, sour-smelling hallway of the Powell Building. She passes several open-door offices until she finally reaches her destination. She enters an office with drab walls, a split-pea soup color, a ratty sofa in one corner and in front of that, a chipped and marred coffee table covered with outdated magazines fanned across its top. Ava can’t believe this is the building that houses the offices of former president Bill Clinton.