Chapter Four

JEROME

STACY

“You followed me here?” I couldn’t believe my eyes. “I leave your house, have a fight with my best friend because of you and you follow me home? Haven’t you done enough already?”

Elena grabs my hand and holds on to it. “Stacy—”

“I’m not here for you, Stacy.” Jerome stepped forward, stopping at the foot of the stairs. “As much as I owe you an apology, I’m not here for you.”

I didn’t just want him to keep his distance, I wanted him to not be here.

It was just this morning that I returned home. It was because of his presence that I couldn’t stay at the Lewin’s house even after Lisa apologized this morning.

I would have had a less depressing Thanksgiving at their house but here I was, crossing the road every ten minutes because Mom was so terrible at being a mother. She didn’t even remeber where half of our kitchen utensils were.

“Stacy, you know Jerome?”

My brows drew together as Elena’s questions settled.

She was asking me if I knew Jerome and she was waiting for an answer, her hands still cold and frail in mine.

The only answer I had for her was another question.

“Do you know him?”

Elena nodded, her curls bouncing with her. She looked behind me, to where Jerome was. “When was the last time I saw you. Three years ago? Two?”

“Two and a half,” Jerome answered and cleared his throat. “I just got back yesterday and I decided to come say hi.”

I noticed that he wasn’t the guy I ran into at the Lewin’s kitchen.

He was polite and put together. Hell, he even had a tie on.

Was he here for a job interview? What does he even do?

I never got around to asking Lisa all the questions I had about her brother. In my defense, I didn’t want him to be the topic of our discussion after we made up.

Elena cracked a smile. I had seen her laugh before, heard her tease me and do funny things but the smile she had on seemed to be coming from a deeper place.

Her face was illuminated, each part feeling the effect of the smile.

And it wasn’t a wide smile, it was a small but very bright one.

It was a smile that her whole body let out in unison.

“Still very gentlemanly, I guess.”

Jerome chuckled at her praise. “The ladies love it.”

I glared at Jerome, eyed him and faced Elena. She was the only one I wanted to talk to so my questions were going to be directed at her.

“How do you two know each other?”

Elena didn’t owe me an apology. I was only the girl across the street.

However, I liked to believe she liked me as much as I liked her.

Elena stepped back to open her door further. “Let’s just say he’s my run away son.”

“You don’t have kids, Elena. You’ve never told me about you having kids.”

“I used to have a kid.” Her eyes dimmed with a longing sadness. “I used to have a daughter who left but before she did, she brought me a son too. That son was—is Jerome. I’m having lunch, want to join me?” Elena asked Jerome.

Jerome climbed the stairs until he was standing on the same level as Elena’s front door. “Yes.”

“Good. Wait here, I need to give Stacy something.”

As soon as Elena returned to her house, I shot my glare at Jerome again.

“You…” There was a lot I wanted to say but I couldn’t figure out how to say it.

“She’s Marilyn’s mother.”

My eyes widened at his revelation. The shock didn’t go away after Elena returned.

She was handing me the knife when she said, “I would ask you to join us but we know your Mom doesn’t like me that much to have you coming into my house.”

I reconstructed my thoughts. I went back to the Stacy who had a nice, funny neighbor and not the one who just found out that her nice, funny neighbor had a daughter who died.

“She only likes you enough to borrow stuff.” I snickered at my joke. “I’ll return this in a minute.”

“Alright, baby girl.”

As I walked away, Elena’s door closing behind me. All I wanted to do was turn and join them in her house.

It didn’t make sense. She was such a happy woman. I always thought she never had kids or at least, not one that died.

People laugh and people make other people laugh even when they’re going through shit.

The respect I had for her tripled as I stepped back into our house. Mom’s nagging voice welcomed me home.

“What took you so long? Your dad is hungry.” She snatched the knife from me, a bottle of beer in her other hand.

She drinks more when he’s around, another reason to hate him.

When I got home, they were asleep. They didn’t wake up until noon and the first place she entered was the kitchen.

Her darling runaway husband was hungry and to her, that meant making a meal in her pajamas while her morning breath followed her around.

I hated him so much and as I stared back at Elena’s door from the kitchen window, I couldn’t help but wonder what they were going to be talking about.

I also couldn’t help but wonder why the people who deserved to die weren’t the ones that died.

I may have never met Marilyn but I could tell she deserved to be alive more than my dad did.

If it were up to me, I would give his life for hers.

And I’ll do this for Elena and also for Jerome.

***

I couldn’t stop staring out the window. Honestly, I didn’t want to stop.

I wasn’t getting anything except for the occasional cars that sped past the street.

I still continued looking out, praying I would magically hear what Jerome and Elena were talking about.

“Can you go to the store today? I need to get the chicken for Thanksgiving.” Mom was stirring the peas on the pan.

I turned around, back pressed into the sink. “Why?”

“It’s Thanksgiving,” she said again. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“Chicken is also Dad’s favorite, isn’t it?”

She shook her head and gave me no answer so I tried again.

“You said you were low on cash, we don’t have to cook up a storm for tomorrow.”

“It’s Thanksgiving.” She beamed. “We are cooking up a storm and I’m going to get that chicken with or without your help.”

The pan continued to sizzle even when she went around to the fridge.

Mom worked a couple of jobs. She used to help babysit when I was younger but more folks stopped trusting her with their kids when her drinking problem started so she started working as a customer assistant in Cart Moves. It was a moving and logistics company and also the longest place she had held a job.

It’s been five years working with them. She worked Mondays to Fridays then spent her weekends as a janitor at my school and the city library.

She was a hard worker.

It was into her fourth year working with Cart Moves that she saved enough money to move us from the two room condo in the worn out apartment unit over at Preston street and now, there was a chance that she could be getting a promotion to occupy a managerial position.

I was rooting for her but dad was here and he brought out the worst in her. I couldn’t afford for her to return to drinking away her pains. My college tuition needed her to be of sound mind.

“It’s fine, I’ll get it.” I didn’t have to win every fight so I let her have this one.

We heard her room door open down the hallway. Dad stumbled into the kitchen reeking of cigarettes.

“Jerome, put it away. Stacy doesn’t like the smell. It makes her stomach turn.” Mom called out to him.

He rolled his eyes at first, walked over to the sink, and pressed the nicotine–wrapped stick into the wet surface.

He could put it off anywhere but he chose to stand beside me. He chose to get close enough so I could inhale the disgusting smell even if it was just for a second.

I didn’t look at him, I focused on Mom and how she continued cooking, humming as though we were a perfect family.

I focused on the fact that she could look out for me by telling him to put off his cigarette.

“How old are you, Stace,” he asked me.

Of course, he didn’t know my age.

I didn’t even expect him to be interested in my ag. His question was a shock.

“Eighteen.”

“Mmmh” he made a gruff sound. “Don’t you have friends that smoke?”

“Jerome?” Mom was silently pleading with him to stop.

He had a history of not listening when she pleaded.

“Now you want to know about my friends because it involves cigarettes?”

“Answer the damn question, girl.”

I laughed at how pathetic he was. He was the one that left us to raise a family in another state.

Maybe instead of feeling jealous of his other family, I should feel pity for them. He was such an embarrassing excuse of a man that he couldn’t even button his shirt right.

He stank, he needed a haircut and his lips were chapped from all the smoke he took in on a daily.

“I don’t like you and you don’t like me either so I’m going to keep pretending like you don’t exist while you do the same. Talk to your wife, the one you left years ago—”

Mom dropped her spoon. “Stacy!” Stern disappointed eyes shot at me.

“This is how you raise our daughter?” Dad mocked mom.

I didn’t want to disrespect Mom but this was between Jerome and I, not her. She didn’t need to get involved and so I faced him only.

“I am not your daughter!”

“Good for me, then,” Dad thundered.

“Stacy, apologise to your father,” Mom moved away from the stove.

She folded her hands and waited for the apology that would never come. Not even on my dying bed.

“I’m not apologizing to anybody and you can get your chicken from the mall yourself. I’m fucking done with this shit!”

They were both too stunned to speak. I stormed out of the kitchen and headed for the front door.

Just before I slammed it shut behind me, I heard dad’s voice one last time.

“She cusses but she can’t take a cigarettes? Now that’s funny.”