Chapter 34
“Holy Mary, Mother of God.”
Beverly dropped her paddle and stood still as a statue with her mouth open.
Beverly and Dottie were on the opposite side of the net from Mary Louise and Joanne. Both Mary Louise and Joanne looked behind them, Mary Louise actually expecting to see the Virgin Mary floating above the gym floor. Joanne looked at her with eyebrows raised. Mary Louise shrugged. Nothing seemed out of place. The usual pickle-ballers, a few men shooting basketballs, and a mother with a toddler kicking a soccer ball back and forth.
“Sweet baby Jesus!” cried Dottie, although she managed to keep hold of her racquet.
Why the sudden interest in Mother Mary and her baby? Mary Louise looked again, this time noticing a thin man in a polo shirt and khaki shorts talking with another man wearing a t-shirt that said “Dink Responsibly.” He wore white crew socks and tennis shoes so Mary Louise had assumed he was a pickle baller checking out the court situation.
Beverly still had not moved. Dottie went to her and put a protective arm around her waist, which might have seemed a bit ridiculous given the differences in their stature but the look on Dottie’s face was enough to scare a charging gorilla.
Mary Louise walked to the net and said, “What’s going on?”
“Lloyd,” spat out Dottie.
Beverly was still immobilized. Mary Louise scrutinized the man who had once been married to Beverly. The subject was off limits. All Mary Louise knew was that long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away Beverly had been married to a man named Lloyd. End of story. Mary Louise did not know if he’d died, been murdered, been kidnapped by aliens, ran away with the circus or simply went out for cigarettes one day and didn’t come back. Maybe she was about to find out. He was coming toward them.
“This is gonna be good,” whispered Joanne.
Lloyd had enough sense to stop at the edge of the net where he could make a quick getaway, should the situation call for it.
“Lee Lee,” he said, looking at Beverly, wide grin on his face showing a mouthful of yellowed teeth.
Lee Lee? Joanne was right.
“You’d better get out of here, Lloyd,” said Dottie.
“I’m not talking to you, Dottie. I’m talking to my wife. But I must say, the years haven’t been very kind to you, have they?” He scrunched his nose in a ‘so sad for you’ expression then turned his gaze back to Beverly.
That snapped Beverly out of her trance. A growl started low in her belly, rising with a crescendo as it made its way to her vocal cords and out of her open mouth. It took all of Dottie’s strength to hold her back.
Mary Louise put herself in between Lloyd and the situation on the other side of the net.
“We haven’t met,” said Mary Louise. “I’m Mary Louise, a friend of Beverly’s.” She smiled her best smile.
“How wonderful for you, Little Mary Sunshine, but I don’t care if you’re friends with the Pope. I’m here to see Lee Lee.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” said Beverly. “Get out of here or I’m going to call the cops.”
“And tell them what?” asked Lloyd. “That an old friend stopped by to say hello?”
“No,” said Dottie. “She’ll tell them that a convicted felon is in a public place harassing her.”
Mary Louise wasn’t sure if that was actually illegal, but it gave the man in front of her pause. He pursed his lips and glared at Beverly.
“We will talk, Beverly, and you know what about. I’m a member here now, so I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot of you. Maybe we can play a game of tennis, just like the old days.”
“Get out!” said Dottie.
Lloyd smiled, apparently satisfied that his message had been delivered and Beverly was visibly shaken. As he turned to leave he stopped mid-turn, looking at Joanne. He scrunched his eyebrows and said, “Do I know you?”
“Doubtful,” said Joanne. “I’ve never been to prison.”
Beverly was shaking. Out of anger or something else, Mary Louise wasn’t sure. Dottie hadn’t let go of her. She briskly rubbed Beverly’s bare arm, as if the shaking might be temperature related. A man on the sidelines put his hands on his hips and said, “Hey, are you using this court or not?”
Dottie glared at him and said, “Why don’t you just zip it, Jimmy? It’s not 11:00 and I have this court reserved.”
Jimmy threw his hands up and went back to waiting on the bleachers.
Mary Louise looked up at the clock. It was 10:50. Normally they all stayed and rotated into the regular play at 11:00, but Beverly didn’t look like she was in the mood for any more pickleball.
“Why don’t we go get some coffee?” suggested Mary Louise.
“That’s a good idea,” said Dottie. “We can all go over to the Java Joint. Hopefully they’ll have some chocolate croissants left.”
Beverly looked like a deflated balloon. Dottie bent over to pick up the abandoned paddle and led Beverly to her bag on the bleachers.
“Now are you done with the court?” asked Jimmy.
Dottie pursed her lips and then said, “It’s all yours, Jimmy. Have fun playing with yourself.”
They decided to go in Dottie’s car. She drove a Ford Edge that was a few years old, but still looked brand new. She and John always drove “American made” cars, even though everyone knew the majority of the parts came from overseas. There was plenty of room in the back seat for Mary Louise and Joanne. Java Joint was right up the road so they all silently agreed to save the conversation for the coffee house and give Beverly some space during the quick drive.
They ordered large coffees and croissants and found a table in the back. Beverly had calmed down considerably and took a drink from her cup. “Well, Mary Louise and Joanne, the time has come for me to tell you about Lloyd. I guess I imagined him rotting to death in jail so many times, it didn’t occur to me he was actually still alive.”
“I always imagined him getting shanked,” said Dottie.
“It’s your story to tell or not tell,” said Mary Louise.
Truth be told, Mary Louise was eaten up with curiosity. She desperately wanted information on the man who could affect Beverly the way he had.
“Lloyd and I got married when I was eighteen. He was 22. He was an older man and I thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. So mature. So sophisticated. At the time I was too stupid to wonder what he was doing with the likes of me.”
Beverly had a picture on a bookshelf of her and her father on a boat somewhere. It was black and white, but it was easy to imagine the color of the sky and sparkling blue water in the background. Her dad had his arm around her, smiling, and it looked like Beverly was caught mid-laugh. Her head was thrown back against her father’s shoulder and she was looking up at him with pure adoration.
“Beverly,” said Mary Louise, “You were a knock-out, not to mention the fact that you have a very engaging personality. I’m sure that didn’t just come along later in life.”
“What she said,” said Dottie.
Beverly looked into her cup and shook her head.
“That may or may not be true, but what is true is that the only reason Lloyd married me is because he thought my father had money and that he could get his hands on some of it.”
She took an angry bite out of her croissant and threw it back down on the plate.
“He was working for an investment banking firm that has since been gobbled up by one of the mega firms. His job was to bring in new investors. He thought if he could land one big fish, others would follow. My father was a pretty big fish, but all of his wealth was tied up in real estate and his welding company. He didn’t have many liquid assets. He was old school and certainly wasn’t going to borrow against his sure investments just to hand money over to Lloyd for risky investments.
“Daddy had used Lloyd to get rid of me. Apparently Lloyd thought there was more to the deal. Week after week he would hound Daddy with some new investment opportunity he thought he was missing out on. In the meantime, I was trying to be the perfect wife. I think I tried every single recipe out of that damn Betty Crocker Cook Book, but Lloyd always had something nasty to say about whatever I served.”
Mary Louise could certainly understand this because she’d eaten Beverly’s cooking, but it sounded like she should have at least gotten an A for effort.
“The house was never clean enough for him. His shirts weren’t ironed right. The only thing he was happy about was the fact that we weren’t able to conceive. He didn’t like kids. Son of a bitch probably had a secret vasectomy and didn’t tell me.” She paused and shook her head. “Twenty years I put up with that. Twenty goddamn years and was too stupid to get out. But then Mr. Wonderful got greedy. He’d moved his way up in the firm to a place where he must’ve thought he was untouchable. He always thought he was so much smarter than everyone else. He was wrong. The Feds found out what he was doing and he was brought up on a dozen or so embezzlement, fraud and wire fraud charges. Over one million dollars was unaccounted for. By the time all was said and done, he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, which is why I was so surprised to see him today. I thought he had at least another four years to go.”
Prison! That had never been on Mary Louise’s list of possible things to explain the disappearance of Beverly’s husband.
“Why is he here?” asked Mary Louise. “I don’t want to be mean, but it didn’t seem like he was looking to rekindle an old flame.”
“He maintained his innocence then and all these years since,” said Beverly. “He claimed he was set up and knew nothing about money.”
Dottie snorted loudly.
“About six months after he’d been sent to prison he sent me a letter. I guess he had a lot of free time to think in there. He accused me of taking the money. He had narrowed it down to two young men in the firm, and wrote out this whole tale of how I’d seduced one of them and stolen the money to get rid of him. He’s here for the money. He still thinks I had something to do with it, especially since the Feds never found it. All they could prove is that it was gone. If I had a million dollars I sure as shit wouldn’t be living where I’m living and sucking on Uncle Sam’s Social Security tit.”
“You divorced him,” said Joanne.
These are the first words Joanne had spoken since they left the Y.
“You’re damn right I did. Took forever because the son of a bitch contested it.”
“So Howard is your maiden name,” said Joanne.
“Of course. I didn’t want anything to do with him or his name after what happened. I was so stupid. I gave him the best years of my life. I learned that hard lesson. No one was ever going to treat me like that again.”
Mary Louise sipped her coffee. This explained a lot about Beverly. Twenty years of being treated like garbage can cultivate a lot of bitterness.
“What are you going to do about him?” asked Mary Louise.
“The first thing she’s going to do is get a restraining order,” said Dottie.
Mary Louise had always thought she had the worst husband in the bunch. It was clear now that Beverly won that award hands down.
When they got back to the Y, Mary Louise was making her way over to her car when Joanne came up beside her. Joanne was perpetually cheerful. Always had a ready smile. She was not smiling now, and cheerful was about as far away from her as Timbuktu.
“Joanne. What’s wrong?”
She studied her shoes for a minute and then looked up at Mary Louise.
“I know what happened to the money.”
“What money?” asked Mary Louise, thinking maybe there had been some mix-up when they were settling the bill at the coffee shop.
“The money,” said Joanne, eyes wide behind her hot pink rims. She looked quickly around to be sure no one could hear her. “The million dollars.”
“Sweet Baby Jesus,” said Mary Louise.
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