a dishtowel and dries the plates and bowls and places them on the counter instead of onto their shelves because she likes them air-dry not just towel-dry. “Randall served me with divorce papers, and I’ve decided to move out.” Lena says matter-of-factly, surprised at how even her voice is.
“Oh, my God, look what you’ve gone and done. I told you not to bother Randall with your problems.” The soft scent of her dusky perfume floats between mother and daughter. Lulu backs into the kitchen table and lowers herself into her chair. “You never listen, do you, Lena?”
“Oh, Lulu… I feel bad enough as it is.” Lena scans the kitchen. It is messier than normal: five soda cans and three empty gallon water containers sit, along with newspapers, beside the refrigerator. She pulls a folded grocery bag from underneath the sink, snaps it open, then drops the cans, papers, and containers into the bag.
“You better keep yourself in that house. Don’t let him take it away from you.”
What, she thinks, is the point of telling Lulu about Randall’s manipulative offer? “I’ll feel better in neutral territory.”
“I hope you put some money away.” Lulu purses her lips and sips from a cup she has had since Lena and Bobbie were little girls.
“I’ll sell my car if I have to.” Lena pulls the broom and the dustpan from the tall cabinet beside the stove and begins to sweep the floor in hurried, choppy strokes. “I’m sure he has to pay me alimony or something…”
“Even I kept a secret stash, baby girl.”
Whenever Lena joked that Lulu encouraged her to hide a little something on the side, Randall chortled and told Lena that if she was, he hoped it was a lot of something because, with her expensive tastes, there was no way a little would ever do.
“These things don’t happen in my family.” The volume rises suddenly on the TV as if Lulu senses her daughter’s breakup can be masked by the sound.
Standing on the other side of the kitchen, Lena thinks of at least two of her aunts and a cousin who should let it happen to them. Divorce or separation, that is. She sweeps the dust and dirt into the dustpan and empties it into the trash. Lulu points at a corner underneath the cabinet, and Lena sweeps there as well.
“I’m sure Randall still wants you, Lena. He’s a good man. He just works too much.” Lulu fumbles with the slumber cap and pushes the lacy edges behind her ears. “What can you do without him? How will you take care of yourself?”
“I don’t know why I’m here. I didn’t want you to have a heart attack if I told you over the phone.” Lena shoves the broom and dustpan back into the little closet and reminds herself to buy Lulu one of those handheld vacuums for spot-dusting and spills. Lulu believes in forever and so did Lena until almost twenty-four hours ago. Tina believed in herself, and Lena has to hold on, too, or she will wilt like one of Lulu’s short-blooming azaleas. She steps past Lulu to the back door and pulls it wide open, letting a chilly breeze into the overheated house.
Lulu hobbles to Lena and yanks at the elbow of her sweatshirt just like Camille and Kendrick did when they were kids and wanted her full attention. “Your Aunt Fanny left your Uncle Johnny two or three times before he finally straightened up. They made it through forty years of marriage before she died.” A rare stern look crosses Lulu’s face, the kind that would have stopped Lena in her tracks if she were thirty years younger. “Get yourself together, and don’t leave that house. Make Randall take you back before he finds another woman to take your place.”
Chapter 16
Time to do it. Time to pick up the phone and call that stupid Randall. She tried to erase him from her thoughts during the purgatory of hours since she signed her lease. When Lena picked up his shirts—wishing she had the guts to burn them—she lied to the two chatty proprietors behind the counter that she would no longer bring in Randall’s shirts because they were relocating to another state. The state of no-longer-married. Randall’s absence is an ache that deepens when she least expects: while she balances the checkbook, completes change of address forms, changes the bed linens.
Lena lights the candles on the corner of her desk. Music, music, music will help. She scrolls through 173 Tina