Every Woman Needs a Wife (45 page)

Vernon turned on his heels and marched back into the conference room, leaving his father staring after him.

The meeting lasted eight full hours. The longest in the League’s history.

By the time it ended, there was a new board and new by-laws. Letters had been drafted to all members—new and old and those who were considered in bad standing. And the men had all agreed to let up on Brandi.

Not bad for a single day’s work.

B
randi walked into The Perfect Match with every intention of shutting the place down. While she appreciated the sacrifices Michael, Renee, and Ella had made, she had to face reality—she had failed. She was so close to the bottom that the house would be in foreclosure in a few months. She had turned down the many offers of financial help from Michael—she didn’t want to add that into the dynamics of things. He would have been an easy save. But at what cost? The kind of money he was offering would require more than a thank-you, no matter what he said.

Every loan request she had put in over the last two months was denied because The Perfect Match was a “new business.” No one took her time at The Perfect Fit into consideration. Every resource had dried up because each was in some way tied to members of the League—she’d never known how far their reach really was until now. As though setting the stage for a tragic play, a dark cloud had settled over her life, one that had begun to pour rain only where she walked.

Brandi put one foot off the elevator and froze. The doors almost clanged painfully against her ankle.

A bustle of activity from every corner of the floor made her gasp. “What’s going on?”

No one answered because no one could hear. The copiers, the computers, the desks—all had someone behind them doing something. But what?

“She’s here!”

A sea of faces, all mature women ranging from fifty-five to seventy, looked back at her, freezing in place as they smiled.

As if on cue, they said a warm, but staggering, “Good morning, Mrs. Spencer,” almost loud enough to make Brandi fall back.

The women were professionally dressed in black suits or dresses, black heels, and pearls.

If they had come for a funeral, The Perfect Match was the right place. Or was it? What the hell was going on here?

Tanya was teaching a class of some sort at a bank of computers near the main conference room. She stopped, looked up, and waved at Brandi.

Stunned, Brandi lifted her hand, but wasn’t sure if she actually waved back. Who were these women?

Motown music filtered through the office and a few shoulders and wide hips wiggled gleefully, paperwork in one hand and finger snapping with the other.

Bettye rushed forward, entwining her arm with Brandi’s. “Girl, close your mouth. We’ve got work to do!”

“Work?” she said, gazing out at all the women as Bettye dragged her along.

“You know, that thing that begins with a W and ends with a K.”

“These women—”

“Are your new staff!”

Brandi gasped, stopping their march forward. “Have you lost your mind? I can’t pay all these people! I came here to shut the place down today.”

“I know that, but we’re not going to let you go down without a fair fight. You don’t have to pay us right now, but some of the women would like part-time jobs when you’re on your feet.”

Brandi took a minute to absorb that piece of information. “Who are they?”

Bettye stood next to Brandi looking out at the people in front of them. “The ex-wives of some of the current League members.”

“All
of them?”

“Every last one,” she said with a bright smile. “Well, except the two little ones in the communications center over there.”

Brandi almost didn’t recognize her own daughters. They, too, were dressed like everyone else. Which meant the little heifers had known and hadn’t said a word.

“Tanya also brought in some of her family from Social Circle.” Bettye leaned into Brandi, whispering, “You never told me she was Black.”

“She isn’t—” Brandi clamped down. To tell the truth she didn’t know what the hell Tanya was—vanilla coating on the outside, chocolate on the inside—oh, the contradictions. But the fact that she had stuck with her contract and found a way to help Brandi had said plenty about the woman’s character.

Her youngest sprinted across the room. “We’re working, Mommy,” Sierra said, wrapping her arms around Brandi’s waist, eliciting the smiles of nearby women.

“Yes, baby, I can see that,” Brandi said, hugging her little girl. “And it looks like you’re doing a wonderful job.”

Sierra’s round face beamed. “I’m sending faxes.”

“And I’m filing,” Simone chimed in. Looking every bit like her handsome father, and in her suit, she looked almost grown. Time to have that birds and bees talk for the fourth time. “When do we eat around this camp?”

“Soon, baby, soon,” Brandi said, still looking at the women in the office. She saw Avie posted up on the phone scribbling on her famous pad. She didn’t even look up.

Bettye tweaked her granddaughter’s cheek, and was rewarded with a small giggle. “There’s pastries in the main conference room.”

“Tanya said we can’t eat those before lunch,” Simone said, rolling her eyes. “She said it might make us wired for sound.”

Tears of joy sprang into Brandi’s eyes. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. “How did you…?”

“I got together with a few of my friends and told them about The Perfect Match. Though they may have been housewives, they learned enough from their husbands to possibly open their own businesses.” She gestured gracefully to the women. “Now that experience will be put to work here—helping you.”

Brandi moved forward, trying to keep pace with her mother-in-law.

“Thanks to Tanya, More than Enough is allowing us to use their nightclub to sign up people every Friday and Saturday for the next month. Beau
Visage II is also giving us space the next four Saturdays. Tanya and her family helped orchestrate everything for this Friday. The way she figures it, all we need is a hundred and fifty paying members and we’re in the game.”

Brandi reached out, pulling Bettye in for a warm embrace. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Bettye said softly. “Thank Tanya. Thank your husband.”

Brandi paused, trying to understand how the man who had caused her business life to dry up faster than an Arizona desert had put these new developments into motion. “Vernon?”

“I’ll tell you about it later.” Bettye entwined her arm in Brandi’s and marched her forward. “Come on, you’ve got a business to run.”

“First I need to thank these women,” Brandi said, struggling to keep up with her mother-in-law. Lord, that woman could move!

“Thank them at lunch, don’t stop the flow right now. Some of them have never worked a day in their lives.” Then she laughed. “Well, no job outside of their ex-husbands. And that’s some serious office time.” She pointed to the place where Tanya had set up a makeshift training area. “Some have never touched a computer, but they’re willing to learn.”

“And whose idea was this?”

Bettye beamed with pleasure. “Your husband’s.”

“Vernon?” Brandi choked out.

“Did you suddenly become married to someone else?”

“No, but I just—I—I—” she stammered, unable to come up with a single word.

“He loves you, honey,” Bettye said with a soft, caressing laugh as Brandi struggled to compose herself. “And this whole thing has given him a chance to grow and learn. Anytime he listens to me because he’s concerned about you, it says he’s changing.”

Brandi thought about that for a moment. “So should I…? You know.”

“Honey,” she said, with a warm smile. “I don’t think you wanted to be away from him in the first place.”

“No, I was just so hurt by what he’d done, and felt so…not enough.”

Bettye grinned. “Honey, nothing a man does with his dick should make you feel that way.”

Brandi opened the door to her office. Bettye sat in one of the guest chairs; Brandi sat in the other, next to her. “Then why did you divorce William?”

“If I had told him the truth he would have fought me for the divorce instead of just fighting about the details. The details kept him running for cover. He was so busy protecting his assets, he didn’t realize he’d left his ass hanging out.”

Brandi took a moment to mull that over. “If you don’t mind, may I ask what the real reason was.”

Bettye’s gloss-covered lips twitched before saying, “I loved him, I just didn’t like him as a person anymore. At first I stayed because of Vernon, ’cause Lord knows, if I wasn’t around, no telling what would’ve become of that young man.”

“I’d hate to picture it.” Brandi grimaced at the thought. “But just because I value Vernon for all the things he does right, doesn’t mean I’m supposed to expect less of him in other areas.”

“No one’s saying you should.” Bettye crossed one leg over the other, looking every bit as regal as the first day Brandi met her.

“I can’t just turn the other cheek,” Brandi said after shifting through the memories of the last time they made love. Her body quivered in response. Reason swept in quickly. “I’ve only got four and he’s smacked each one of them. He has to know I won’t tolerate this lying down or standing up straight. When he comes to the house to pick up the girls and sees that blonde Amazon serving dinner to me and his children, it brings the point home a hell of a lot faster than a divorce ever could. I love him, but I love me, too.”

Bettye reached out to touch Brandi’s hand. “Then hold on to the lesson you’re trying to teach him and still love him. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I lost my mother over this.” Brandi suddenly felt the overwhelming loss of her mother’s voice and her guidance. But the woman had held true to her word. She wouldn’t take Brandi’s calls and she didn’t open the door whenever she showed up. She did let the kids in, but slammed the door in Brandi’s face right after.

“Honey, you didn’t lose her. Jean’s just a stubborn old biddy.” Then Bettye gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Actually, she’ll be here first thing in the morning to help out. You’ll have your chance to lay a bridge between you.”

“Bettye,” Brandi said, settling back in the leather chair, hoping her mother would be receptive. “All those women out there are college-educated?”

“That’s right, dear.”

“Then why did they settle for just being housewives?”

Bettye blinked and took a long breath. “In our day, we had only a few choices: teacher, nurse, stewardess, secretary, or housewife. The world was male-dominated. Women doctors and business women were practically unheard of—especially Black women doctors and Black Businesswomen. You wouldn’t find a female construction worker to save your soul. Then the Sixties happened—flower children, and the marches for civil and equal rights and all that, and doors that had once been closed to us were suddenly flung wide open. But
we
were already housewives,
we
were already raising children and had also made a commitment to support our husbands. And that’s exactly what we did,” she said, looking Brandi square in the eye.

“And if you were married back then to our type of husbands—who were all about status—they became our jobs.” Bettye sighed softly. “And with the egos and everything else it was sometimes harder than just having a nine-to-five. No one knows the sacrifices I’ve had to make. But it was my choice and I stuck with it until I figured out that I didn’t have to put my needs on hold to satisfy anyone. I was almost sixty before I understood that. You’ve picked that up a whole lot faster.”

Brandi nodded, absorbing that bit of knowledge. “How did you convince all of these women to work for free?”

“They’ve wanted to do something for a while, but they don’t need the money, their husbands are still chucking out top dollars in alimony—none of them have remarried.”

“So they stay celibate!” Brandi shrieked, picturing years of keeping the delta on hold. It wasn’t gonna happen.

“Oh, hell no, honey,” she said with a little sway of her hips. “We need to get our stroke on just like everybody else. We just do it in a way that doesn’t
compromise our…investment plan. Our time was money.” Then Bettye took Brandi’s hand. “And what better women to help counsel new couples or single women in relationships than women who’ve been part of society’s changes? We’ve been Coloreds, Negroes, Blacks, and now we’re African-American.”

“Great point. So what’s the plan?”

Brandi felt a renewed sense of purpose as her mother-in-law recounted recent developments. After Bettye left the office, Brandi had even more mixed feelings about Vernon. Why would he help her when he’d been so dead set against her working in the first place? Was he changing? And where did that leave their marriage? Still on the path of ending or on the path to true reconciliation?

Sierra poked her head into the office. “Mommy, you have anything I can fax?”

“Not right now,” Brandi replied absently.

“Okay.” She turned and went out the door.

“No, wait a minute.”

Sierra strolled in as Brandi scribbled a short note on The Perfect Match letterhead:

I can’t thank you enough. Dinner’s on me.
You name the time and place.
Your loving wife
.

She resisted the urge to write. “Bring your condom,” because they needed to have a serious talk. No judges, no lawyers, nothing between them but air and opportunity. She passed it to her youngest daughter.

“Fax this to Daddy?” Sierra asked with a wide grin.

Brandi nodded. “Right away, little Miss Spencer, Vice President of Communications.”

“I don’t want to be
vice president,”
the little girl said with a proud lift of her chin. “I want to be
president
of faxing!”

Laughing as she held her daughter close, Brandi said, “That’s my girl!”

S
teppers music blared from every corner of the second level of More than Enough. The place now had four levels, each catering to a different type of music and dances. Latin/Salsa on the first floor, Steppers music on the second, Jazz and New Age on three, and World Music/Reggae on four.