Red Hats (2 page)

“Alma, help me!” Harold’s voice shouted, seemingly from nowhere. She turned to see him in the distance, fighting to stay above the same waves she had battled, to escape the powerful pull of the ocean’s hungry maw.

Alma pumped her arms from side to side to propel herself to Harold’s aid. But her legs didn’t move. She looked down to see she was covered to the knees in quicksand. As she attempted to break free of its wet grip, the loose sand swallowed her further downward.

“God, please help me! I can’t go through this hell again!” Alma cried. “Not another time!” The sand recognized her attempt to escape and pulled her further into its gritty embrace. God was not listening this time.

Up to her neck and sure to smother, Alma looked at the ocean for a final glimpse of Harold before he surrendered to his own demise. Alma closed her bloodshot eyes and whispered a hollow
I’m sorry
to Harold, to God, then to herself. She took one long breath and disappeared into the deep.

Waking was the
last thing Alma expected, and breathing never felt sweeter. Having the nightmare for the third time that week put her in a sour mood. She nudged Harold, who was lying next to her in the bed, to make certain he wasn’t truly dead. It was more like a little kick, but it worked. Harold rolled over.

“Harold, are you all right?” Alma asked.

“Yeah, I’m all right! What’s wrong with you, woman? I’m trying to sleep here,” he whined.

Alma lay still, pretending to be asleep. She must have overnudged him. Harold sucked his teeth greedily and went back to sleep. When he began snoring, Alma reached
for her Zoloft on the night table next to her half-glass of room-temperature water that helped the nasty-tasting pills get past her gag reflex.

Mumbling her disdain at the only thing that kept her from being labeled everything from a classic nut job to a psycho slasher, she got up to begin her day. Getting out of bed had become a chore of late, as she’d put on a few extra pounds—sixteen extra, to be exact. Alma’s physician said weight gain was a side effect of the drugs he prescribed to combat the “change.” Other side effects included dry mouth, headache, dizziness, drowsiness, nausea, vomiting, constipation, fainting, blurred vision, and the possibility of an irregular heartbeat. Alma had told pudgy Dr. Know-it-all Simms the drugs would do her in quicker than the menopause. He laughed. She didn’t.

Alma gazed into the mirror but didn’t like what she saw. Her change of life was truly life-changing.
Hah!
Steel-gray hairs were beginning to show again at the roots. It hadn’t been two weeks since her last coloring.
What’s happening to me?

Alma splashed cool water on her face and washed the crusty sleep from the corners of her eyes, her most expressive feature. It seemed only yesterday she was staring at the red circle on the calendar marking her twenty-first birthday. Now that same red mark was a cold reminder that sixty-five was charging like a freight train and would arrive in three short weeks. Alma wasn’t looking forward to being a government-certified senior citizen.

She turned on the digital radio, the one Harold recently bought her, to the oldies station, made a pot of Folgers, and toasted four pieces of white bread—two light and two dark. She’d eat the two light slices, and Harold would have the others. Alma had stopped cooking a real and healthy breakfast for him ages ago, because he’d stopped saying thank you after every meal. Even worse, he never asked why she’d stopped. In fact, Alma couldn’t remember the last time she’d done anything nice for the man. She often referred to him as her
has-been
rather than her
husband
. She thought it was funny. Harold said it was cruel but absolutely refused to admit it hurt his feelings, knowing that was exactly what she meant to do.

To make matters worse, Alma didn’t read the morning paper because she was interested in anything it offered, she did it simply to piss Harold off. He hated anybody to read the paper before he did. It was a pet peeve. Alma accidentally dropped a bit of strawberry jelly on the front page of the sports section and wiped it across the headline in an attempt to clean it off. She folded the paper neatly and positioned it facedown in front of Harold’s place setting.

The smell of Folgers never failed to wake Harold up. It made his mouth water and got him to drag his lazy butt downstairs. Once he smelled it, he had to have some.

Their eyes locked as he strolled into the kitchen, fully dressed.

“Good morning,” he offered without conviction.

“What’s so damn good about it?” Alma shot back. “I
couldn’t sleep a gnat of a second because you was snoring again like a damn polar bear. Then you went and took all the covers off me in the middle of the night.”

“Maybe I was trying to get me some of that sweet stuff you keep locked up under all them covers,” he said with a lewd wink. “You know a man’s got needs, Alma.”

“I told you I ain’t giving you nothing ’til you start acting right. You’ve gotta earn this, honey,” she teased, using her best Mae West.

“How can I do that?” Harold said as he walked to where she was sitting and made an attempt to kiss the back of her neck. Alma pushed him away.

“Don’t do that! If I want your lousy kisses, I’ll ask for them.”

Harold sucked his teeth and headed for the stove, angry at himself for allowing her to sucker him, yet another stab to his already ailing heart. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat in his seat at the head of the pale green, rickety table. At least she hadn’t taken this from him. His position at the head of the table was the last bit of power Harold had left in this house. He made a mental note never to tell her how important that station was to him, because she’d surely confiscate his God-given right to a man’s throne.

The silence spoke volumes. Years of resentment had festered to the point of this hurtful, cancerous relationship. Harold avoided conversation with Alma because he knew it always ended in an argument or a fight. He decorated his
coffee with four lumps of sugar and a tiny dollop of cream. Drank it dark and sweet, just like his woman used to be.

Harold ate a piece of toast to line his stomach before popping his heart pills. He hated the chalky taste they left in his mouth and took a generous swig of Jack Daniel’s from the flask his mother had given him for his tenth wedding anniversary.

You’re going to need this to get you through the next ten years of this marriage, son
, the card had read.
God help you.

Harold kept the card hidden in a battered shoebox in the back of the closet, knowing Alma wouldn’t get his mother’s brand of humor—too much truth to it. She’d only try to retaliate with her own brand. He should have lit the card and tossed it into the garbage years ago, because Alma knew every nook and cranny of the apartment.

“God help you, too, you old bat,” Alma had said the day she found the card.

Harold lifted the newspaper, immediately reacting to the sticky jelly on his hand.

“Did you do this to my paper, woman?”

“Do what?” Alma asked sweetly.

Harold sucked his teeth, mad at himself for asking the obvious. One point for her, he thought.

“I had another bad dream last night,” Alma blurted out.

“Oh?” Harold challenged.

“Yeah, we were on a plane and . . .”

“It crashed, right into the ocean,” Harold spewed, cutting her off. “You told me that one twice already. It’s the
medicine that’s giving you them dreams, Alma. Ask the doctor to change your dosage.” She went stiff at his dismissal.

Harold returned to the sports section. The sounds of Marvin Gaye singing “Mercy, Mercy Me” on the radio calmed his nerves. He poured a little more whiskey into his cup, then sat, sipped his brew, and avoided Alma’s gaze.

“You keep on drinking that Jack Daniel’s, and you’re going to burn the liver right out of your side,” she warned.

Harold waved her off again, this time with a heavy sigh. He couldn’t wait for the buzz to kick in and obliterate her piercing stare and harping voice. It gave him the heebie-jeebies.

“What time will you be home?” Alma asked.

“I don’t know,” Harold mumbled sheepishly.

“You can’t answer me?”

“I said I don’t know!” he shouted.

“You say it like a retarded kid on a yellow school bus. If I was that whore Rae Ann across the street, you sure could open your mouth and speak.”

“Don’t start, Alma. It’s too early for this.” Harold winced.

“So, when is a good time, because we need to talk?”

“What’s your schedule like in 2020?”

One point for me.
Harold was proud of his response. The alcohol must have kicked in, because he felt warm inside, unafraid of the woman whose squinty eyes shot daggers in his direction. Besides, he loved her too much to run
from her. Years of Alma’s verbal abuse had forced Harold to sharpen his wits.

“I hope to be at your God damned funeral way before 2020, you ugly bastard,” Alma spat back at him. Her eyes were now like slits. Once they disappeared under her lids, it meant she was mad as hell and sure to be on the attack.

That was Harold’s cue to leave. He had pushed the wrong button now, and bad things were about to happen. He wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Alma picked up her coffee and threw it in his face. He felt lucky it was cold from sitting.

He wiped his face and headed for the front door. Alma rushed to the door and caught it before it closed. Harold looked up at her from halfway down the first flight of the steep, narrow steps.

“I hate you! I hope you fall down the rest of those stairs and break your neck!” Alma screamed. As if she had all the time in the world, she turned and stepped into the darkness of the apartment.

How could she say such hurtful things? Harold carefully held the railing as he made his way cautiously down the four remaining flights of steps. He didn’t want to give Alma the satisfaction of his falling. That would make it two points for her.

The Zoloft began to take
effect while Alma watched Harold quicken his pace as he exited their building. She decided against throwing a flowerpot or a skillet—anything would do—down at him, courtesy of the drugs. Instead, she reflected on how much she had loved that man for what now seemed like eons. Alma hated where their relationship had ended up. They were once the envy of the neighbors, holding hands and practically skipping down the street.

While they didn’t have lots of money, they had made up for it with an abundance of love. His kisses were treats then and tasted like See’s candy. Those kisses kept her waiting for her Harold to return home from his job at the Check Cash. Back then, before he had to add a second job, they
would stay up all night laughing, talking, and making love.

She couldn’t understand how he simply could not talk to her, not about anything real. She had to pick fights just to get him to speak. It had been almost five years of the silent treatment. A husband should share things with his wife. She wondered if he was still mad because she hadn’t let his mother in the house. Was it her fault he wasn’t home and she didn’t trust strangers in her home? A nosy stranger was exactly what that woman was to her.

From the get-go, Alma and Beatrice had hated each other. Beatrice had raised Harold to be a momma’s boy. Whatever his momma needed his momma got. Then Alma walked into his life, and Harold turned his heart away from the only woman he had been led to believe he could ever love. Momma.

It was the dead of winter, and she’d decided simply to drop by. Didn’t she own a phone? She knew where Harold worked, but Alma felt she wanted to come in and criticize the way she kept house. Nothing Alma did had ever been good enough.

“Harold likes his clothes washed in Downy. Put a strip of Bounce in the dryer to get rid of the static cling,” Beatrice would scold. “Harold doesn’t like his chicken baked. Where are all the pictures of his family?”

In the beginning, Alma had tried to accommodate her. She hung more family photos, changed her laundry detergent, and even learned Beatrice’s famous chicken cacciatore recipe. It wasn’t enough. Nothing she ever did was
good enough for Beatrice’s little Harold, so Alma decided to push back. She’d zero in and criticize Beatrice’s weight.

“Why does it take you so long to get up these stairs, Bee? Why do you wear those run-over shoes, Bee? Why do you wear that perfume that smells like a two-dollar hooker, Bee?” She called her Bee because it was short for the
bitch
that she was.

That particular day, Bee had popped by in a snow storm, ringing the buzzer like a madwoman. Alma knew who it was, because she saw the fat blimp covered in snow from the window of her cozy apartment. She made up her mind that very day to draw a line in the snow.

Beatrice is Harold’s mother and not mine
, Alma had reminded herself as she cranked up the music to drown out the constant buzz from the intercom. Alma smiled as she watched the porker looking up at her, waving those stubby little arms to get her attention. Their eyes met before Alma closed the blinds.

Harold had later blamed her for his mother’s pneumonia and resulting death. Alma had refused to accept the blame, saying, “God doesn’t love ugly, and fat-ugly is what Beatrice was.”

Precious Momma was barely laid out before the town whore, Rae Ann Steele, had Harold running across the street at her beck and call. God, she hated that woman like the flu! Having no man of her own, Rae Ann was free to seduce every man, married or not, in the neighborhood. They paid her rent and bought her booze for the few minutes
of pleasure she could provide. Alma had caught her several times dancing naked in her window, trying to get Harold’s attention.

“Why do you want to see that
National Geographic
strip show?” Alma had asked Harold.

“At least she’s putting out,” Harold had replied. He was referring to the fact that he and Alma hadn’t had sex in about three years. She got tired of him hanging out with his friends until two in the morning, then creeping into her bed, pulling her panties to the side without even a kiss or an
I missed you, baby
before the quickest of quickies ever perpetrated. Determined not to be an enabler of bad sex, Alma had told him he was cut off. She would hit him if he tried to touch her again.