“Who was Adin’s first?” Yancy asked suddenly with interest.
“Alex Snow,” I replied without thinking. Fuck me, Adin is going to kill me. Mentally I smacked my forehead. Why the hell had she asked me that anyway?
“Gabrielle you’ve got to be kidding. He was so sceezy.”
“Yancy, there’s no such word as sceezy.”
“Got to go Gabrielle. I need to leave Adin a message at school to call me.”
“Yancy, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said to the dead line. Yancy had already hung up on her end.
In the kitchen, Littie had two cups of coffee poured and she was sitting at the kitchen table on my high backed chairs waiting for me.
“How’s your mother?” She asked brightly.
Littie knew Yancy Dawson only through the stories that I had told her.
“She called to tell me that I was right. Adin isn’t gay.”
Littie laughed out loud nearly choking on the coffee in her mouth while I plopped down in a chair opposite her.
“That woman leaves more destruction in her path than a tornado,” I sighed before lifting the cup of coffee to my lips.
Glancing up I saw the light blinking on the answering machine, six messages were waiting. All of them were probably from my mother who had no patience when trying to reach one of her daughters.
“God help my father Jack Dawson. Why the hell he puts up with that crazy woman I will never understand.”
Love was a strange bitch.
Chapter Three
James didn’t come home for dinner that night which didn’t surprise me. If he was home three nights a week for dinner I was unlucky. Saturday and Sunday were two of the three nights that he was most definitely home. He called at five o’clock to say that he was attending a business dinner with a prospective client who came to Lexington to see James’s line of products.
Unusual for a man, James didn’t like sex that much so it never occurred to me to question his actions. He could have been having an affair and I wouldn’t have suspected him. Without James in the house, Kat and I enjoyed a quiet meal in front of the television something that we weren’t allowed to do when he was home. We were only allowed to eat in the dining room with James.
While we ate frozen pizza that I loaded with extra cheese and pepperoni Kat and I watched reruns of I Love Lucy in the family room downstairs in the finished basement, sitting on the black, overstuffed leather sectional sofa. These walls painted startlingly white like the rest of the house with Italian grey and mauve marble tiled floors. A heavy wooden black coffee table accented the sectional sofa. Large tropical plants sat in corners around the room providing some warmth to the starkness.
A sliding glass door to a walk out patio provided sunlight for the tropical plants. A large screen TV sat on one end of the room and a heavy, wooden and brass bar at the other end with simple hanging lamps with Tiffany lamp shades over the bar providing dim lighting for the bar area. Three wooden bar stools with charcoal leather seats were pushed against the bar. Few people sat at the bar or even used the bar. It was a waste of money and space I thought.
This particular episode Lucy’s shirt is stuffed with eggs that she was trying to hide from Ricky but when he hugged her, the eggs broke, the mess inside dripped down her chest. Her facial expression is indescribable. Lips curled in that Lucy way to bring the audience to tears of laughter. Kat and I laughing like idiots’ right along with them.
Then, the telephone rang. I looked at Kat prepared not to answer the blasted thing when she reminded me that it could be James. He wouldn’t leave a message and later he would complain at me for not answering or he would continue to call like a crazy-assed stalker that he could be until I finally broke down and picked up.
I retrieved the receiver from the cradle with reluctance and said a terse, “hello,” expecting James’s voice to respond to mine.
“Thank you sister dearest.”
“Hi Adin,” I replied relieved that it was not James. “You’ve talked with our mother,” I said knowingly. I had expected Adin’s call sometime in the near future just not tonight.
“You had to tell her that Alex Snow was my first,” she replied in an agitated tone of voice.
“I’m sorry it just popped out without thought. She switches topics so damned quickly…she caught me off guard.”
“Not only did I have to listen to her lecture about the town of Hell knowing that I’m screwing the gym teacher I had to listen to her lecture about my taste in men. She hopes the gym teacher has more class than Alex Snow. What seventeen-year-old boy has any class?” My sister asked me in an exasperated tone of voice.
Without stopping for a breath she continued, “That woman drives me insane, Gabby. She is bat-shit crazy.” Her four daughters knew that. “Do you know what she asked me? She wanted to know if the sceeze and I used a condom,” Adin replied before I could respond to her question.
“After all these years she’s concerned that I used adequate protection with Alex Snow. She hasn’t asked yet about my method of birth control with the gym teacher. God help me. You and Gem are the smart ones leaving Hell and Yancy.”