Trouble Down The Road. Bettye Griffin

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 3

      Lisa Canfield tore open the printed invitation. She knew her first husband’s birthday was coming up, and she knew he’d be fifty. It didn’t surprise her to see that he and Suzanne were giving a party to mark the milestone.

      “What’s that?” her mother-in-law, Esther, asked. “Is someone getting married?”

      “No. It looks like a wedding invitation, but it’s actually for Brad’s fiftieth birthday party.”

      “Oh, yes. Arlene mentioned it when I ran into her at Walgreens. She said it’s going to be the party to end all parties.”

      Esther, who lived with her only son and his family, and Suzanne’s mother, Arlene, who visited Suzanne so often she might as well live with the Betancourts, both had an interest in gardening. Over the years they’d become, if not exactly friends, congenial acquaintances. Lisa had to admit that Arlene Hall did have a green thumb. The Betancourts’ house had the nicest landscaping on the block, plentiful without looking like a jungle.

      Lisa rolled her eyes. “I guess that means Stevie Wonder will be providing the entertainment. Can you believe it? They actually included admission passes. Who does Suzanne think she is, Oprah?”

      “You mean we can’t get in without a pass?”

      “That’s right. They sent four of them. One for Darrell and me, one for you, and one each for Paige and Devon and their dates.” Lisa and Darrell had a remarkably easy time blending their families, as their daughters were just three months apart and loved the idea of becoming sisters. The twin boys they had together, now fourteen years old, completed the unit.

      “I’m sure it’ll be lovely. But speaking of dates, do you think Paige will invite her new young man?”

      “I can’t imagine her not inviting him, Ma Canfield.”

      “Don’t you think that’ll be a little awkward, under the circumstances?”

      “I’m sure it will be,” Lisa replied easily. “But they’re all adults now. They can handle it.”

      Esther flashed a knowing smile. “Come on, Lisa. You know this will make Suzanne furious. Aren’t you enjoying that thought just a little?”

      “I cannot tell a lie,” Lisa replied, laughing. “But I’ll tell you. I always figured it would happen eventually. I just didn’t know if it would involve Paige or Devon. And I can’t wait to see the look on Suzanne’s face when she sees who Paige shows up with.”

      Flo Hickman dropped the rest of the day’s mail when she saw the Betancourts’ return address on the square beige envelope. Not bothering to retrieve the other mail at her feet, she instead tore open the envelope in her hand, holding her breath as she read it.

      Oh, my God. An invitation to Suzanne’s house.

      This had to mean that she and Ernie had truly made a comeback. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d been invited to that gorgeous showplace of a house around the corner. She’d tried to talk herself out of wanting to be part of that crowd after Ernie was downsized three years ago. Their financial situation took a dangerous dip that would have been fatal to many, but she and Ernie rolled up their sleeves and tackled the problem. They filled an empty bedroom with a boarder to help pay the mortgage, plus they went into financial counseling to pay off mounds of credit card debt from purchases of big-ticket items they really couldn’t afford. She’d taken all the overtime she could at her job doing medical coding, and even with the replacement job Ernie landed, which paid much less than the one he’d lost, he still had to work part-time at a restaurant to meet their substantial monthly obligations.

      But Ernie insisted he had to get his bachelor’s degree if he didn’t want to moonlight in a restaurant kitchen forever. His layoff came after the company he worked for merged with another, leaving two people in each management position. Since he only had an associate’s while his counterpart had a full four-year college education, he’d been the one eliminated. Ernie cried racism publicly, but privately he told Flo that without his degree, he’d never get another human resources manager position. Flo couldn’t argue with his logic, but she didn’t like the stress that put on her. In the end she started moonlighting with a part-time job and Ernie quit his second job and spent his evenings taking night classes. With his new degree plus his experience, he landed a manager position at a newly built hospital in the next county.

      The final step back, after Ernie’s new job, was refinancing their house. They took all the cash they could out of it, which they used to pay off their creditors and get the financial counseling people off their backs. This step resulted in their having virtually no equity in a home they’d lived in for nearly ten years, but they both felt it was the right thing to do.

      They couldn’t possibly have foreseen the real estate crash that was just around the corner. It worried Flo that they owed more on their house than it was worth, but Ernie assured her the market would rebound eventually and that they could live like they used to. So she quit her second job and they told their longtime renter—a college student they’d told neighbors was the son of family friends—that he’d have to leave at the end of the semester. Flo missed the check he gave them every month, although it did feel nice to have just themselves and Gregory living in the house with no outsiders.

      Flo and Suzanne Betancourt had gotten to be pretty chummy before the bottom fell out for her and Ernie. They would go out to lunch and afterward go shopping, even if Flo ended up taking her expensive purchases back to the store for a refund when Suzanne wasn’t looking. Even then, Flo and Ernie had been on the road to financial ruin, but they’d worked hard to project wealth and status to their neighbors and to be recognized as the black couple with an enviable lifestyle. They found it upsetting when the Betancourts bought that expensive new house on the shores of the St. Johns River, just across from downtown Jacksonville. Ernie insisted that Brad and Suzanne didn’t have anything they couldn’t afford to buy themselves if they wanted, and when Flo told him that was ridiculous, reminding him that Brad was a radiologist, he stubbornly held on to his belief.

      They both agreed to befriend the Betancourts and to link alliances, feeling this was their only option, but Flo had been much more successful with Suzanne than Ernie had with Brad. Suzanne opened up to Flo, confiding how unhappy it made her to have Brad’s former wife and their daughter living right next door to them.

      Flo liked to tell herself that Suzanne dropped her socially because with Ernie’s job loss they couldn’t keep up financially, but in the back of her mind she knew Ernie probably played a role in it. Flo loved her husband unconditionally, but knew that he could sometimes be a tad overbearing. She feared he’d alienated Brad Betancourt from the start, asking inappropriate questions about financial matters and hinting for an invitation to the Betancourts’ cabin up on a Maine lake. Flo had hoped that with their son Gregory dating Suzanne’s sister, Kenya, Suzanne would at least invite her and Ernie over for dinner or something, but that hadn’t happened.

      But at least they’d been invited to the party. She’d have to get a new dress, and a manicure and pedicure as well, so she could wear open-toed shoes. Her eyebrows would have to be waxed. She studied her hairline. Thank God her weave was only six weeks old and still fresh looking.

      The Hickmans were about to reenter the Jacksonville version of high society.

      Micheline placed the invitation on the refrigerator, holding it in place with a decorative magnet. An invitation to the Betancourts’. The timing couldn’t be better.

      In СКАЧАТЬ