Fixin’ Tyrone (8 page)

Miss Tenery walked in before Mia had a chance to sit down. Mia’s secretary was Caucasian, tall, and slightly emaciated. When they first met, Mia was sure the woman was bulimic, but after three years of working with her, she realized Miss Tenery simply preferred to look that way.

Miss Tenery had a strong jawline and pointy noise. She wore thick-rimmed glasses, no makeup, and kept her hair pulled back in a bun on most days. She reminded Mia of Miss Hathaway from the
Beverly Hillbillies
.

“Good morning, Miss Clemmons. Enjoy your weekend?”

Mia gave up asking her secretary to call her by her first name a long time ago. Prudes like Tenery even referred to children as Mr. or Miss.

“It was nice,” Mia said. “How ’bout you? It was your anniversary, right? Have fun?”

“Well, there’s not much to enjoy at my age,” the woman said. “We had a nice dinner.”

Mia thought that was a bit sad, considering her secretary was only forty.

“So, what’s going on?” Mia asked. “You’ve got that look in your eyes.”

“Oh, just the usual,” Miss Tenery said, looking down her nose at a ledger she toted. “You’ve got a nine o’clock with Mr. Burgess—that’s sure to be hell. Mr. Manitou wants to meet before noon, so I penciled him in at eleven. And we’ve got that new hire. Did you want to orient her bef—”

“After lunch,” Mia said.

“One o’clock?”

“That’s fine.”

“You’ve got the meeting with the big boys at three, and . . .”

“I need to get out of here by five today,” Mia said, thinking about Tyrone.

“The CMBS director wanted to see you.”

“Can he wait ’til tomorrow?”

“I guess he’s going to have to,” Miss Tenery said and scribbled on her pad. “Oh, and you have this message from an, Eric,
Mauldin
? I’m not sure what this one is about.” She handed Mia a slip of paper.

Mia took the note and stared at it with a confused expression. “When did he call?”

“His message was on the voice mail when I got in,” the secretary said. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” Mia said. “It’s okay.” She slid the memo under a stack of papers on her desk.

“Very good,” Miss Tenery said. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Thanks,” Mia said. “One cream and one sugar.”

“There are donuts in the break room.”

“Any éclairs?” Mia asked. Her face lit up.

“Vanilla cream?”

“Ooh, yeah, if they’ve got one. No sugar in the coffee if you bring an éclair.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the thin woman said and stepped out of the office.

When she was gone, Mia retrieved the WHILE YOU WERE OUT memo and studied it again. There was only one notation on it other than Eric’s name.

Please call me.

Mia wondered why he was being so persistent, but she didn’t have time to return his call ’til after lunch.

* * *

“Hello?”

“Eric, this is Mia. I got your message.”

He sighed. “Thanks for calling. I thought you weren’t ever going to call back.”

“How did you get my work number?”

“You—I’m sorry?”

Mia waited.

“You told me you worked at Prospect.”

“I never gave you my number here.”

“I know, I—I’m sorry. Is there a problem?”

“How’d you get the number?” Mia asked.

“I looked it up in the phone book. I mean, it took thirty minutes to get somebody on the line who could transfer me to
your
department. It was a little hard, but I found you. Thanks for calling me back.”

“Okay,” Mia said. “So what do you want to tell me?”

“Can we meet somewhere and talk?”

“I don’t want to see you, Eric. I talked to your wife.”

“
Shareefa is not my wife
,” he almost shouted. “What did she tell you? Listen, Mia, I really want to see to you in person.”

“Eric, there’s nothing you have to tell me that you can’t say right now. You’ve got five minutes.”

“That’s—fine. Okay. Let’s start from the beginning. You answered my phone Friday night, right?”

“Yes, Eric. I answered your phone. I also dropped it in the toilet. If you—”

“No, don’t worry about that. But when you answered it, it was Shareefa. I don’t know what she told you, but she showed up at my house later thinking you were still there. So whatever she told you was enough to make you want to leave.”

“She said she was your wife and you have four kids together.”

“
What?
That’s a lie, Mia. I don’t have any kids. And me and Shareefa were never married. I was engaged to her for a while, about two years ago. But we broke up. She’s
nuts
, always going through my phone, checking up on me. After she moved out of my house, she—she wouldn’t let it go. She’s harassed two of my girlfriends since then, and if you break up with me, you’ll be the third one who did because of her.”

“She said you’re a player, Eric. She said I could look through your phone and see that you didn’t have any contact names; just letters. I looked and it was true.”

“Mia, you’ve got to believe me. Shareefa was the reason I started that stupid system in the first place. She would never leave my phone alone. This was before we broke up. I got so mad one time, I just changed the names of all my contacts so she wouldn’t be able to harass my friends anymore. I did that
for her
, and now she’s saying I did it so I can be a player? This is crazy. Did you ask her if it was like that when we met? Did she tell you I had a restraining order against her?”

Mia wasn’t buying it. “If you broke up with her, why is the phone still like that?”

“Mia, don’t buy into that. She’s a liar. When I changed all my contacts, I had to memorize them, and I guess it was just easier to keep it like that once we broke up. I figured it would come in handy if I ever ran across

another jealous woman like her.”

“You’ve got four kids.”

“Mia, I don’t have
any
kids. Couldn’t if I wanted to; low sperm count. They would have to make them in a lab, and I’m not paying that much money for that. Well, I haven’t. Maybe if—”

“I saw the pictures, Eric. In your living room; those pictures
you
showed me. Shareefa says those are your and her kids.”

Eric actually started laughing. “Mia, I’m telling you, you can’t believe
anything
that woman says about me. Those are my
nephews
and my
niece
. I told you that.”

“They look
exactly
like you, Eric. You can’t tell me that oldest boy isn’t your son.”

He chuckled again. “Mia, I keep the pictures up in the living room because I love them. They’re like my
god
children, since I can’t have my own, but they are definitely not my kids. I know—given everything you’ve already heard—this is going to be hard to believe, but I’ve got a twin brother. Seriously. Those are his kids.”

“Bullshit.”

“Mia, I give you my word. I have pictures of him, videos—us, together. I have school pictures. Third grade, fourth grade, anything you want. I can show you. I’d bring
him
to show you if I could, but he’s in Iraq. She told you they were
my
kids? Man, that’s a new one. That’s
crazy
.
My
kids? I hope you don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know what to believe,” Mia said, and that was the God’s-honest truth.

“Well, if you still believe her, will you at least meet me so I can show you my brother’s pictures? She’s a liar, Mia; an evil,
evil
woman. Please believe me. I thought we had something special.”

“I gotta go, Eric. Five minutes is up.”

“Are you going to meet me? Can we have dinner tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Mia said.

“Well, tell me you believe me, at least. I’ll bring a copy of the restraining order if you want to see it.”

“I’ll call you later.”

“Tonight?”

“We’ll see,” Mia said.

“Okay. Talk to you later. And, once again, I’m sorry about all of this. Hopefully this is just a little hump we can get over.”

Mia hung up and looked around her office for the candid cameras. There were none, which meant this was all real. Unbelievably, ridiculously, and
preposterously
real.

She sighed heavily and left her office to find the new hire.

* * *

Crystal called the office to let her know Tyrone had been calling, but Mia didn’t have time to call her sister back until the drive home.

“Hello?”

“Crystal, it’s me.”

“Oh, what’s up, girl. You off already?”

“Yeah. Tyrone’s been calling?”

“He called twice already; once when we first got home and again around four-thirty.”

“What’d he say?” Mia asked.

“He said he wanted to come see TC. He got a deep voice. He sound like he look good.”

Mia shook her head. “I’m already on 35. I’ll be home by five-thirty. What are the kids doing?”

“Mica’s playing a video game. TC’s bouncing off the walls.”

“He knows Tyrone’s been calling.”

“He answered the phone the first time,” Crystal said.

Again Mia felt that sting of uncertainty. “You let them talk?”

“Not really. I think Tyrone said who he was and TC said hi. They might have talked for a minute. TC came and gave me the phone.”

“What’d he say after that?”

“He just told me he wanted to come over.”

“No, I mean TC.”

“He was happy. Girl, what’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know,” Mia said.

“You mad ’cause Tyrone talked to TC?”

Mia knew it was wrong to feel that way, but couldn’t help it. “That’s wrong, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, Mia. Just ’cause
you
don’t like him, don’t mean you should ruin it for TC. That’s his daddy, the only one he got.”

“That’s
deep
, Crystal. Your wisdom surprises me sometimes.”

Crystal chuckled. “Girl, I be watching
Montel
!”

Mia laughed too. “Hey, where did Tyrone call from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you get the number off the caller ID?”

“Yeah,” Crystal said. “It’s, um, 817, 555”

“Three-four-eight-six?”

“Yeah. How you know?”

“That’s his mother’s number,” Mia said. “It hasn’t changed in ten years.”

“I don’t even remember my
last
boyfriend’s phone number,” Crystal said. “You’ve got a
bionic
memory!”

Mia chuckled. “Tell TC I’ll be home in a minute and Tyrone can come over then.”

“All right,” Crystal said and hung up.

Mia took a few deep breaths before calling TC’s father. She dreaded this moment for the last six years but knew it had to be done. Tyrone’s mother answered on the first ring.

“Hello. Mrs. Story? This is Mia.”

“Mia?
Mia?
Good Lord, girl. I haven’t heard from you in ages.”

“Yes, ma’am. It has been a while. How’s everything been going?”

“Oh, fine, baby. I hear you did real good for yourself . . .”

“Thanks,” Mia said. “I’ve done all right.”

“You’re calling for Tyrone. He hasn’t stopped talking about you since he got home. Hold on, baby, let me get him for you.
Tyrone
!”

Mia wondered why old people didn’t take the phone away from their mouths when they yelled. She waited a few seconds, and then heard a voice that sent a little tremor down the small of her back. And Crystal was right. His voice was a lot deeper.

“Hello? Mia?”

“Hi, Tyrone. Welcome back.”

“
Man
, it feels good to be back. How you been doing, Mia?”

“Fine.”

“I called you today,” he said, “talked to TC.”

“Yeah. Crystal told me.”

“He sounds good,” Tyrone said. “Like he’s doing good. He sounds smart, too. You raised him right, I can tell.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you home yet? I want to come see y’all.”

“I’ll be home in five minutes,” Mia said. “You can come see
TC
.”

“I wanna see you too, Mia.”

“Tyrone, I told you—”

“Yeah, I got your letter. I still wanna see you, though. Is that all right?”