Page 54 of Quiet as Kept
While Xarielle went to see her family, I did the same. And neither one of us was looking forward to the prospect of dealing with family drama.
I pulled up to the address in Victory Hills. My father no longer owned the mega-mansion in the gated community of Briar Heights from when I was a kid. He’d given that house to Priscilla in the divorce.
My dad’s new house was different. It was a seventeen hundred square foot Craftsman style home. The outside was modest, and it had great curb appeal. The interior was where he’d spent his money. The house was luxurious, inviting, and cozy. I loved the house. I replicated it several times in my models.
I parked on the street, walked up the walkway, took the stairs to the front door, and blew out a heavy sigh.
“I’m probably gonna need to holler at my therapist after this,” I mumbled to myself before ringing the doorbell.
Gannon answered the door wearing white shorts and a white polo. “June, get in here.”
He pulled me into a hug, which I returned.
“What’s up, Dad? You played tennis this morning?”
Gannon Boudreaux was still athletic and active at the age of fifty-six.
“A few games. Just a few games. Have you eaten lunch?”
“I haven’t,” I admitted.
“Good. Good. Vivi is making us something.” He paused. “While it’s just the two of us, let’s talk on the front porch.”
Even though I fully expected the day to be about talking, revelations, and confessions, my stomach still dropped. Part of me wanted to keep my head in the sand and not have to know every detail about my parents’ lives before me. But at the same time, I knew if we were going to heal all the shit that was fractured in our relationships, we needed to do the work.
Besides, I had questions that I wanted answers to. As soon as my ass hit the wood of the chair, I started talking. “So, I grew up believing that Vivienne was your favorite groupie.”
His jaw dropped, but I didn’t let that stop me. I wasn’t known for talking much, but today was the day that I planned to be a fucking motor mouth.
“Vivienne was always this vixen in my mind, that you loved, but who loved her freedom too much to be tied down by you or by me. But then I heard her say that you kept breaking her heart, and I’m lost as hell. If she never really wanted you, how did you keep breaking her heart?”
“Who told you she was my favorite groupie?”
“Nobody told me that, Pop. Come on. I was a kid. Back then, people didn’t talk to kids or in front of them. I overheard you and Priscilla arguing one day. She said you were going to lose your family because you were pussy-whipped by your favorite groupie.”
He chuckled. “Priscilla always did have a foul mouth for the society-belle that she wanted to be so damn badly.” He sighed. “The story of me and Vivienne goes back way before I even met Priscilla and long before you were born. I met your mother when we were kids. Our high schools were rivals. She cheered for her school. I played baseball and football for mine. I spotted her at this diner that used to be over on 82ndand Colby Avenue. She was with the cheerleaders, and I was with a few of my homeboys. I could not take my eyes off your mother.
“When she was about to leave, I got up the nerve to approach her. I stopped her just as she was about to walk out of the door. We talked for a few minutes, and I swore I was in love. I never let Vivienne out of my sight after that. But the problem was that she was from Woodcourt, and I was from Victory Hills. Everybody in town looked down on Woodcourt. The only neighborhood that was worse off than Woodcourt was?—”
Together we said, “Morrisette.”
“When I brought Vivienne home, your grandfather thought she was gorgeous, but he called her poor to her face. My mother was nice-nasty to her, more nasty than nice. My father was outright rude. We left my parents’ home, and I vowed that I would walk away from them before I would walk away from Vivienne.
“I loved your mother deeply, so deeply that all I wanted was a family with her. I figured that if I got her pregnant, I could marry her, and everybody would have to accept our love. Your mother was so happy. She was dreaming and planning our lives from the minute she found out the test was positive.
“The shit you plan in your teenaged mind never works out in a grown-up world. When I told my parents that she was pregnant, they pretended to be cool about it. My mother invited her out on a lunch date under the guise that she wanted to get to know her future daughter-in-law. She took your mother to aprogram that supported poor, teenage mothers. It was basically a ‘scared straight’ mission.
“For hours, Vivienne was forced to listen to horror story after horror story of young teenaged mothers who wished they had a chance to live life over again. Young girls who weren’t even in the same position as Vivienne and I repeatedly told her that they wished they had opted to wait—or they wished they had terminated the pregnancy.
“While Vivienne was still shell-shocked from the girls’ stories, my mother drove her around Woodcourt until they happened upon Patricia coming out of one of the corner stores. My mother told Patricia that Vivienne was pregnant, and that she thought Vivienne should end the pregnancy. Of course, Patricia agreed. She belittled and brow-beat Vivienne right there. Then she and my mother took Vivienne to a clinic and had the procedure done that day. Vivienne sunk into a deep depression.”
“I never knew this.”
“Nah, you didn’t. Who would’ve told it to you? My parents are dead, Patricia has never been in your life, and your mom and I very rarely speak about that day, or that period in time, or that pregnancy. It’s like we put it in a vault that we never open. Vivienne was so depressed. I was angry as hell. My own mother killed my child. And to be honest, I blamed Vivienne too. I didn’t understand why she didn’t fight. I didn’t understand why she didn’t just get out of my mother’s car. How could somebodyforceyou to get an abortion? I didn’t understand. I convinced myself that she never really wanted the baby and that she never really loved me. I left for college and never looked back.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. A few years went by. I did my time in the minors. Finally, I got called up. I was living my best professional athletelife. I was picked up by the Richmond Crusaders, which is where I met Priscilla—a groupie.”