A Matter of Pride Read online

  Quickly, she grabbed her address book and cell phone from her purse and walked into the dining room. She stared out the window as she waited for the connection to go through to her brother’s number in Atlanta. He answered on the second ring. “Hello, Martin?” she asked. “It’s Lu.” There was silence on the other end of the line. “Your sister, Luella,” she clarified.

  “Oh,” Martin said sarcastically. “Yeah, so you callin’ me now that Daddy’s gone, huh?”

  Lu held her breath. “Yes, Miss Pearl called me, so I wanted to check with you. We’re making plans to drive down there as soon as we can.”

  “You comin’ to Atlanta?” he asked.

  “No, I’m going down to Florida, to Daddy’s,” she said. “I’m calling to see what the arrangements are. Have you made any yet?”

  She heard her brother exhale loudly. “No, I ain’t,” he said. “You going down now to bury the old man you didn’t want nothin’ to do with? Oh, no, wait a minute. I get it. You goin’ down now to see about what you might get, right?”

  “No, Martin,” she said, clenching her teeth. “I’m coming down, with my family, to pay my respects and do what families do. Is that all right with you—or would you rather I didn’t? Is that it?”

  She heard a woman’s voice in the background, and then Martin’s tone became more reasonable. He gave her the name of the funeral home in Bunnell and their telephone number, saying that she should call them. He said he already talked to Miss Pearl and arranged for the church.

  She thanked him with more warmth than she felt. She took a deep breath and dialed the funeral home.

  Zach hung up the house phone when Lu came back into the kitchen. He looked at her purposefully. “We’re clear to go. My brother’s going to handle the shop,” he said. “What’s next?”

  “Everything,” she sighed pouring herself a mug of coffee and taking a seat at the counter. She stared deep into the dark granite countertop, cupping her coffee in both hands. “I’m sorry I shut you out,” she said quietly watching the steam rise from the mug. She couldn’t look Zach in the eye just yet.

  “I know,” he said. “Me, too. What’s next?”

  “Well, we need to get Susan home, first, I suppose,” she said rubbing her temples with her fingertips. “I’m pretty sure there are regular flights from State College to BWI or Dulles. And, somehow, we have to figure out how we’re going to drive a thousand miles in a day. Why don’t you go ahead and call Susan and fill her in. I’m going to have to find the courage to call my boss at home and tell him I’ll be gone all week. I just can’t believe my father died in the middle of the busy season.”

  “I’m not sure he had a choice,” Zach muttered.

  His comment made her bristle. “I’m sure he didn’t,” she said to let him know she’d heard him. “You know, being a senior auditor isn’t just a job. I’ve worked years at my career. I have responsibilities, not just to the firm, but to my team. Taking off for an entire week right now, regardless of the reason, could cost me the partnership,” she added.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, putting an end to her fussing. “Now, what about William?”

  “There’s nothing I can do about William until Monday when the high school’s open. I’ll call his counselor and explain,” she answered. “He doesn’t have finals yet.” The silence stretched between them. She knew there was a limit to how much Zach was going to take, so she purposefully reined in her temper.

  “Since I’m the bookkeeper in the family,” she said. “I suggest we use one credit card for all this. We need to keep track of all the expenses. Bad enough my brother’s acting like we’re made of money.” She pulled her keys from her purse.

  “What’d he say?” Zach asked.

  She grimaced and raised her chin. “‘Well,’ he says, ‘just call Serenity Gardens Funeral Home.’ You know, like it was nothing.” She tasted her coffee. It had gone cold. “He’s no dummy,” she continued. “He knew good and well that when I called the funeral home they’d want my credit card number. Well, you can bet I’m going to show him just what all this cost, too.” She set her mug in the sink and turned toward Zach, who sipped his coffee in silence.

  “I’m going to the hairdresser and then to the mall.”

  “You’re going shopping?” he asked.

  “I’ve got to get my hair relaxed; just look at it. I’m hoping they can squeeze me in, and I have to buy a dark suit for the funeral.” She hurried out the back door. She was already in her Camry when she realized she left her cell on the table. She reached for the door handle and then decided that if she didn’t have it nobody could call and bug her and she could get things done a lot faster. She put the car in gear and backed down the drive.

  Chapter Three

  Sunday morning dawned bleak and cold, as it often does in northern Maryland in late March.

  “I don’t know, I feel like all of this is sort of surreal, you know?” Lu confessed as she handed Zach her suitcase. He quietly hefted it into the back of the Expedition taking his time.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Daddy and I weren’t close—it’s just that I never rehearsed this part,” she sighed. “But still, I mean, I have to go down there and take care of things.”

  “Yes, we do,” he responded. “When you talked to your brother yesterday, what did he want to do?”

  “Nothing, I think,” she answered. “He saw to it that he left me to call the funeral home. You know, he’s just like Daddy—stubborn. You don’t get too much out of him other than what he thinks you should do,” Lu said. “And then you’re just supposed to say ‘Okay, sure’, you know? Did I tell you I called him back after I talked to the funeral director and all he said was that he didn’t think Daddy owned a suit. So then I had to call the undertaker again and tell them we’d pay for that, too.” She shook her head. “Oh, and I told him we didn’t expect to be there until late tonight or maybe even tomorrow sometime, depending on the roads. He said that he and Elizabeth would be driving down from Atlanta, and they plan on staying at the house.”

  Zach fussed with the suitcases in the back of the Expedition. “Uh huh, you told me all that last night,” he muttered. “What about their kids?”

  “Yes, of course with their kids,” she added. “I don’t have any problem with them staying there. But I can tell you we’re certainly not staying in that house! I’m surprised it’s still standing.”

  “Uh huh,” he mumbled, shifting the suitcases again.

  Lu stared at the house. “Where the heck is William?” she asked, looking at her watch.

  William came hurrying out the back door with his Game Boy in his hand. “Man! We leaving already?” he complained.

  “Not until you go back up to your room and put on a decent shirt,” Lu directed.

  “Why?” he protested, looking down at his shirt. “What’s wrong with what I got on? We’re going to be in the car all day.”

  “Listen,” Lu started, “what’s wrong is that we are not traveling like a bunch of gypsies! It’s bad enough you wear those home-boy pants everywhere. You are not going to wear a T-shirt on this trip.” William shrugged his shoulders and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Hey, son,” Zach interrupted, “just do what your mother says. Go on back in the house and put on a Polo shirt. We need to get going if we’re going to meet your sister’s plane on time.”

  William turned and trudged slowly back to the house. Zach turned to Lu. “I’m not crazy about the baggy pants look either, but he’s come a long way from last summer, so cut him some slack, huh?”

  “Well,” Lu responded, climbing into the passenger seat. “You just don’t travel in T-shirts. You know how that looks? Uh uh,” she said shaking her head. “My son is not going to travel with me and look like somebody from the hood!”

  Chapter Four

  When they arrived at Dulles, Susan stood waiting on the sidewalk, a small carry-on at her feet. Her long hair was plaited in neat cornrows.


  “Susan,” Lu greeted her, raising one eyebrow and then planting a light kiss on her cheek. “What have you done with your hair?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t like it,” Susan said. “My roommate, Gwen, spent hours on it last night.”

  “Oh, no,” Lu responded. “It’s fine, it’s fine. I just wish you had talked to me about it first, that’s all.”

  “Hey, baby girl!” Zach beamed, hugging Susan tightly around her shoulders. “It looks fine!”

  “It’s just a lot easier to keep this way,” Susan said. She looked quizzically at her mother. “Mom, did you get your hair straightened? I thought you didn’t like Michelle Obama’s hair? You said you were going to let yours grow out more natural, like your mother used to wear.”

  “Well, I changed my mind,” Lu said. “Besides, I’m certainly not going down to Florida all peasy-headed.”

  “I brought a dress with me,” Susan said. “I hope you like it.”

  “You won’t need it, Susan,” Lu said dismissively as they stepped off the curb and headed for the parking lot. “I bought you a nice pink suit yesterday and shoes, too. You’ll be fine.”

  “Oh,” Susan murmured as they approached the truck.

  “Buckle up, everybody,” Zach announced, pulling out of the airport parking lot. “This is going to be a long ride.” Once they passed south of Richmond, traffic was lighter and moved along steadily. Although the sun wasn’t shining brightly, the gray clouds appeared to thin out as they headed south.

  “We can’t stay past Friday, no matter what,” Lu said, looking up from her Blackberry.

  “Are you sending e-mails on a Saturday?” Zach asked.

  “Yes. Staffing needs to know I’m gone so they can line someone up for my team. The team needs to develop a plan. I have to let them know they’re going to be without a captain for an entire week.”

  Zach nodded toward the Blackberry. “You can’t go to your father’s funeral and sit there e-mailing the whole time, you know.”

  “I have no intention of it,” she snapped as she hit the send button on an e-mail. “But, I can’t concentrate on all I’m going to have to do about my father’s business if I’m worried about my job either.”

  “Do you have any idea what we’re facing down there as far as your father’s business goes?” Zach asked.

  “Not really. But there’s still going to be a lot to do. I’ll have to talk to a realtor and find out what that farm is worth. I looked a little online last night and found out Flagler County is the fastest growing county in Florida! I think it’s worth quite a bit. God knows we could use that.”

  “Is that what you were doing up in the middle of the night?” Zach asked.

  “Well, yes,” Lu defended herself. “You have to have a handle on these things, I mean, after all, Florida property is always in demand.”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” Zach responded.

  “So,” Susan leaned forward in her seat. “Mom, what happened to Granddad?”

  Zach gave Lu a sideways glance.

  Lu turned. “I couldn’t reach anyone at the medical examiner’s office, being the weekend and all. But I’m guessing he had a heart attack. He was 74 or 75, I think, yeah, 74.”

  “Yeah,” William spoke up. “He was just old.”

  “Well, it’s really not all that old, but he lived a hard life,” Lu added, looking straight ahead. “He worked that farm from the time he was a boy. And working a farm in Florida, in his day, was not easy.”

  “I just can’t picture you growing up on a farm,” Susan said. “Didn’t we go there once? I remember an old house in the country.”

  “Yes,” Zach interjected. “We stopped there that time we took you kids to Disneyworld.”

  “You always have had a good memory, Susan,” Lu commented dryly, bitter at how disappointed she was that day. She caught a look from Zach and changed her tone. “You know, when we get back home, I’ll have to find those pictures we took on that trip. You were both so little! I remember the ride down seemed to take forever. Remember? Both of them fussing in the back seat, asking over and over: ‘When will we get there?’”

  “I wonder how come I don’t remember more of that,” Susan said.

  Lu turned toward her. “Oh, I don’t know. Mickey Mouse probably made a bigger impression on a six-year-old than a couple of hours at an old farmhouse.”

  “I suppose, but I wish I could have gone down there when I was writing my high school term paper,” she commented.

  “Why’s that?” Zach asked as he deftly steered into the passing lane.

  “Don’t you remember?” Susan asked. “I did my paper on Zora Neale Hurston.”

  “Zora who?” he asked.

  “Dad, she was only the most important female black author of the twentieth century,” she said. “During the Depression the government implemented a writers’ project to collect information about the grass roots people of our country. Zora toured all over the south interviewing and recording all kinds of information—black folklore, their heroes and their stories. Without her, all that would have been lost! Oh, and she wrote great stories herself. Oprah even made one into a movie. Anyway, I think I got an A on that paper.”

  Lu turned to look at her and out of the corner of her eye caught William rolling his eyes and mouthing ‘I think I got an A’. She smacked his knee to let him know she’d seen him.

  “I remember that term paper,” she said with a grin.

  “She was born in Eatonville, Florida. It’s supposed to be close to Orlando somewhere,” Susan said brightly. “Will we be anywhere near there? Maybe we could stop and look around. Eatonville was the first black incorporated town in America.”

  “Oh, here it comes, Miss College knows everything.” William groaned.

  “Yeah,” Susan said, leaning toward him and poking him good-naturedly with her elbow. “When and if you get into college, we’ll see how much you know!”

  “Not everybody that knows stuff goes to college,” he shot back. “Jay-Z didn’t go to college and look at him!” He balled his jacket under his head, leaned against the window and closed his eyes.

  Susan rolled her eyes. “When we get back home I’m going to see if I still have that term paper,” she mumbled.

  “Somehow, Susan, I’ll bet you do.” Lu chuckled.

  “Yeah,” William said, opening one eye. “I just wish we were going down to Florida during Bike Week at Daytona, that’s all.”

  “Son, I think that would be fun, but I can’t imagine what this road is like during Bike Week,” Zach said.

  When they passed the first billboard for South of the Border, Susan sat straight up. “Oh, hey, I remember these! They go on for miles. The little guy with the big sombrero, Pedro. Remember? I’d just learned to read and I read every single one!” she said.

  “Well, don’t read ‘em all now!” Zach chided her.

  This aroused William’s interest. “Hey, can we stop? Is that where we saw the big snake?”

  “Oh, great, you remember the snake but nothing else—typical,” Susan said sarcastically.

  “Hey,” he said. “I was like three years old back then. I just remember a big snake that came wriggling out of a bag or something.”

  “Oh, man, William, I can’t believe you remember that!” said Zach. “That wasn’t South of the Border. That was when we stopped at Santee, South Carolina, and listened to the park ranger give a nature talk. The look on your face, Lu. Now that was funny!” Zach teased.

  “Well, I didn’t think it was so funny!” Lu spoke up. “How’d you have liked it if you were the one leaning up against a counter in the ranger’s office when he, oh, so politely, excused himself, then reached around behind you and yanked a live cottonmouth out of a pillowcase!”

  “Is that what happened?” William wanted to know, a smirk flickering across his face.

  Zach broke up with laughter. “It sure is. I thought your mom‘d die right there on the spot.” Lu scowled out the window. It wasn’t funny to me, she
thought angrily.

  Zach reached out and poked Lu’s arm. “Remember, we bought that orange wine at a roadside stand for three dollars thinking we were going to get a treat?”

  “Oh, yuck, do I remember? It was awful, and we had so looked forward to a chilled glass once we got the kids to bed.”

  “What’s that?” William joked. “You guys were fooling around, drinking no less, when you had little kids? Aha!”

  “You know what,” Zach said, “let’s stop at South of the Border for old times’ sake. It’ll be fun.”

  “Okay, but we’re not buying any wine!” Lu cautioned.

  They got some cold drinks at South of the Border, and Zach cajoled everyone into posing next to the oversized figure of Pedro for a family photo. “I guess you could say this place has evolved quite a bit since we were here,” he observed.

  “Is that what you call it?” Lu smirked. “You’d think tacky would have to end somewhere.”

  “It ended here!” Susan laughed.

  They pulled William away from one of the hundred souvenir bins where he was trying out imported “Made in China” Mexican back scratchers.

  “Let’s hit the road,” Zach said.

  Chapter Five

  Monday morning after William finished his second continental breakfast at the hotel, the family piled back into the SUV.

  “So, are we gonna’ get to see any alligators?” William asked.

  “Probably not,” Lu answered.

  “How long is this gonna’ take today, then?” he groaned.

  “Not as long as yesterday,” Zach said. “Maybe only four and a half or five hours, tops. Once we get past Jacksonville it will be right down the road.” When they passed the Florida welcome station, Lu remembered the time she and some friends snuck up there for Michael Jackson’s “Destiny” tour. She turned sixteen that year and was anxious for adventure. None of them had tickets for the show, but were hopeful they’d be able to scalp some once they got to the Gator Bowl. The drive up was wickedly exciting and they giggled and joked all the way. Then they’d spent the entire evening walking up and down on the sidewalk outside the concert. The scalpers had sold out. The evening was a complete and total bust. They barely spoke all the way home. Lu was terrified her father would find out. She swore she’d never do it again. After that, she settled for listening to Michael, The Commodores, and Prince on her brother’s boom box.