Chasing Sophea: A Novel Read online

  “We’re here, ma’am. Would you like help with your bags?”

  “Well, hell, you didn’t think I was going to carry them, did you?”

  Aunt Baby marveled at the enormity of her niece’s home. It was kind of pinkish in color and resembled a Spanish-style house she’d just seen in one of those fancy architectural magazines. It was spectacular, and for a moment, Aunt Baby beamed with pride until she remembered why she was there. Fortunately the gates were open, so the driver was able to drop her off at the front door. She hadn’t once worried about how she was going to get in or if anybody was going to be home. Things like this always managed to work out for her. She tipped the driver and set about finding something to calm her nerves. No one appeared to be home, and that was just as well. She needed to prepare alone.

  Phoebe walked around Dahlia’s house slowly, methodically inspecting everything that would be hers. She envied the king-sized mahogany bed and matching etched armoire, which probably came from some piss-poor country on the other side of the world. Dahlia had always been into that whole ethnic thing. Personally she preferred clean lines and tended to shy away from any object that was made in Mexico or imported from Taiwan. Some of the clothes she recognized from her closet, and that further infuriated her. The woman had nerve—she had to give her that. Phoebe remained inside wandering around until she had inhaled Dahlia’s life room by room. Once she made sure Dahlia was a memory, she would definitely have to redecorate—every piece of furniture, every painting, and everything else in between. Dahlia’s house lacked imagination. The woman lived like a Carmelite nun. Brown and tan hues dominated the main rooms, and to make matters worse, there were too many damn plants. How many plants did one woman need, anyway? What was she trying to do, simulate the Amazon? Freak. Even Isabel’s room was a pale, sallow pink unfit for an energetic six-year-old girl. Michael’s daughter deserved better.

  Phoebe was preparing to search the medicine cabinet in the master suite when she heard a noise downstairs. She smiled. He’d decided to come back to her after all. She refreshed her lipstick and began to remove her clothes. This time he couldn’t possibly deny her. This time the world belonged to her.

  Lucius paced upstairs in his bedroom, a place where he hadn’t been spending much time lately. Everything real—bodies, paperwork, caskets—masqueraded as distractions. Concentration on the tasks at hand eluded him, and no amount of Miles Davis would soothe his insides or ease the tension creeping through his veins. He longed to know what was happening two thousand miles away. He wanted to know if he was any closer to holding his daughter, any closer to meeting his grandchild. He’d picked up the phone to call eight times, and eight times he had hung up defeated and ashamed. He had always known Dahlia’s number. He’d just been too much of a coward to use it. God, what could he possibly say?

  Ever since he discovered Aunt Baby’s letter, he’d been disturbed in the worst way. One part of him was furious at her for meddling in his affairs and sneaking off like a child. And the other was grateful that she loved him enough to intervene at all. She had always been there for him, always tried to clean up his messes. So whatever irritation he was experiencing due to Aunt Baby’s unexpected departure was insignificant. He could never be angry with her. He had no right and he knew it. There were others who could benefit from his indignation if he allowed himself to feel anything. But there was only one who deserved his rage, only one who still tormented him when no one was watching.

  Lucius felt a name swirling around in his mouth that he had forbidden to pass his lips or anyone else’s in twenty-five years. “Reva, help me, goddamn you. Jesus H. Christ, it’s the least you can do.” He threw up his hands in desperation and was greeted by the woman he’d spent the last few years trying desperately to avoid, his wife.

  “Lucius, here you are. I’ve been looking for you all day. Where have you been?”

  “Here. Working. That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done.”

  “You didn’t hear me calling you? Didn’t Dante tell you that I was trying to find you?”

  “It’s a big place, Mercy,” Lucius responded, eyeing the French doors that separated him from temporary freedom. What if Dahlia never wanted to come home again? What if he died without ever seeing her face?

  “It’s not that big. But you know what, the space between us is a lot bigger than this damn house.”

  “Don’t start with the melodrama, Mercy. Today is not a good day to have this conversation.”

  “Then when, Lucius? When is it ever going to be a good day to talk to your wife? How long do I have to chase you?”

  It pained Lucius to look at her, so he didn’t. He couldn’t necessarily articulate his disdain. It’s not like the withdrawal happened overnight, but somehow, in spite of her willingness to love him, he became more and more emotionally distant until there was a chasm between them. It permeated the house, the business, and inevitably his heart. Mercy had come into his life at a time when he was unable to think or function like a normal man, a man in control. Then he would have done anything to make the pain go away, including wedding a girl young enough to be his daughter. One day little Mercy, Lucille and Leander’s baby girl, was making up the expired, and the next she was his wife. He had no concept of time then or decorum or anything else that was supposed to matter. The day he married her, he remembered feeling appreciative for the interruption in the hell that had become his life. She was young and vibrant, and all she ever wanted to do was please him. She was determined to keep his mind from ever drifting to the event that had altered the course of both their lives.

  In the beginning, she wanted what all young women wanted—shopping sprees, pedicures, an occasional trip to a vacation spot featured in Jet magazine—and he obliged her. She was coveted medicine for a soulache that never subsided. He knew, though, that she yearned for the one thing he was emotionally incapable of giving her. But how in God’s name could he love her? How could he love anyone when he could barely stand the sight of himself?

  “Lucius! Are you going to answer me, or do I have to stand here and talk to myself? I’m tired of talking to myself. I’m tired of talking to everyone in this place but you.”

  “Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t you go shopping?” Lucius reached in his pocket, and Mercy began to scream. She tore at her dress as if she were on fire. He ran to her, but nothing he said stopped her screaming. It was emanating from inside her, somewhere that he was unable to reach. “Mercy, please, you’re going to wake the dead.” And still she screamed. “Dammit, Mercy, stop it! Stop it! Do you hear me?” He shook her repeatedly and was about to slap the hysteria out of her throat when Dante burst through the door and grabbed his hand. Lucius saw the disappointment in his brother’s eyes and backed away.

  “What have you done, Lucius?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Lucius mumbled. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with her. I just told her to go shopping. What woman wouldn’t want to go shopping?”

  “What?”

  “Mercy, for God’s sake,” Lucius pleaded, annoyed that his brother, his staff, and the rest of Haven Street were now privy to another one of his failures. “I have to go. I have to get out of here. Mercy—”

  “Go, Lucius.”

  “Dante, … I—”

  “Just go. I’ll take care of her.”

  Mercy continued to cry for the lie that was trapped in her soul threatening to strangle her alive. She sobbed because her husband, the only man she had ever loved, would ultimately hate her more than he did right now, and she sank to the floor because she knew that the worst was yet to come.

  In the corner of a room that never really belonged to her, she lay whimpering in the arms of a man who dried her tears, covered her nakedness, and whispered words that soothed her pain.

  “Mercy girl,” he said, “don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  He saw her in all her misery, and for the moment, she didn’t feel so invisible.

  There was a te
mpest brewing. Percival Tweed could smell it as soon as the sun kissed his face. Much like his beloved, he could sense turbulence on the horizon—not meteorological disturbances, though, but pure emotional upheavals. For a while now, there had been a cloud hovering over the Culpepper place, and now there would be a deluge. Sweet rain had a distinctive smell, and so did tribulation. Percival Tweed didn’t make it a habit, wafting around in other folks’ business, but this was a different kind of situation. He figured he was drawn to this house and this family from the moment he was born. When he was younger, he assumed his attraction had everything to do with the strangeness of it all. Here in the place that most people prayed to stay away from, he felt right at home. Now that he was getting up in age and could go anywhere he wanted to go, he still chose to remain in the comfort of the familiar. She was here, and he would always protect her, even if it were from a distance.

  Percival stood out front and scanned the grounds. He didn’t know why, but he was supposed to linger out front this morning even though he was finished for the day. It was an easy day. He’d had only two graves to dig. There was some kind of commotion going on up at the house, and he was glad Baby Marseli wasn’t here to referee such nonsense. He was sure she already had enough to deal with where she was. Baby needed his help, and help her was what he intended to do. So when he saw the curiously brown fellow approach the road, he knew what had to be done. He watched him get out of the car and look around. He watched him tentatively make his way toward the entrance. Percival Tweed adjusted his wide-brimmed hat to block his face from the sun and started toward the stranger. There was no time to waste.

  Dante held her close until her screams abated to a soft whimper. She was drowning and he felt her clinging to him, and much to his shame, he liked it. The voice inside his head whispered for him to leave quietly and unobtrusively, break away while he was still able, but his heart wanted to love her, and his heart was what he decided to listen to. He didn’t know what happened in this room before he arrived, and maybe that was the way it should remain.

  He loved his brother, God knows he did, but he’d never approved of the way he ran the family after the accident. In all the years that they’d lived together and worked side by side, there had never been a harsh word uttered between them. When Dante began to feel overwhelmed, he disappeared, plain and simple—took one of his trips until his spirit calmed. Even though he fully accepted that he was a Culpepper, sometimes he expected Lucius to remind him that no one really knew who he was. But that day hadn’t come yet, and he didn’t know if it ever would. When old man Culpepper died, no one knew for sure what was in his will. Everyone expected—rightfully so—that Lucius and Aunt Baby would inherit the bulk of the estate. After all, Dante was considered Aunt Baby’s boy, but the old man had shocked them all. He divided his assets equally between his two boys, and that had made all the difference in the world to Dante. And here he sat on the verge of jeopardizing it all. He exhaled and tried to talk himself out of the inevitable.

  “Dante,” Mercy murmured, “don’t leave me.”

  Dante lifted her and gently placed her on the bed, the bed that she shared with his brother. He averted his eyes so as not to gaze on the cranberry red bra and panties that were cleverly exposed through the tears in her dress, but she caressed his face and found his eyes. She wanted him to see her.

  “Mercy, no,” he said, sure of his decision.

  “No?” she choked in what was left of her voice.

  “Not here,” he continued, as he lifted her again.

  It was an ancient observation. No one knows why bad things happen to good people. Normally Aunt Baby didn’t question the reasons for unfortunate events or tragic occurrences. Life happened, and every second of every day, you had to move through it—that was the secret—a body, a soul had to keep moving, lean into the curves, so to speak. When Dante appeared all those years ago, she didn’t dare question how a mother could abandon her child charred on a stranger’s doorstep. She automatically believed that she had been given an opportunity to be somebody’s mother. And wasn’t that what she wanted? Of course, she’d convinced herself that she was content with her life, but the truth be told, she’d yearned to love someone of her very own, and like magic, one day she had a son. So she accepted that the Almighty always had a plan, but God help her, even she couldn’t fathom the purpose for this.

  She sipped on a glass of red wine she’d poured from a crystal decanter, and before she knew it, she was on her second glass. Baby Marseli had never been much of a drinker—alcohol interfered with her God-given talents—but an occasional indulgence was necessary when life ebbed instead of flowed. Her tense muscles began to relax, and against her better judgment, she reflected on her sixty-odd years and began to reminisce about what could have been, what should have been, and what was about to be. She closed her eyes and it was 1949. Harry Truman was president, and the country had just jumped off the World War II war train. Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald flowed through the funeral parlor. Putting dinner on the table was a challenge for many, but the climate of the time—tense with racial strife and anticommunist propaganda—seemingly had no effect on the Culpeppers. People were dying, and their doors were constantly open. Five years before she was born, her parents had moved from New Orleans to Dallas. Her father’s brother stayed behind to run the business in Louisiana, and her father braved uncharted territory to build a new one. She and Lucius were born in the same house she would probably die in.

  Prettybaby—that’s what they called her back then—was fifteen and full of dreams. It wasn’t fashionable for a black girl in those days to dream of traveling the world and becoming someone everyone wanted to know, but she was thought to be kind of peculiar, so most folk left her to her sugar-coated fantasies. Born to a very shrewd black father, Marcel Lucius Culpepper, and a full-blooded Choctaw Indian mother, Oceola Moon, Lucius Senior and Baby Marseli were the talk of the town at their respective births. However, when Marseli was born some ten years after Lucius, her father took one look at her and immediately planned her entire life. Marcel Culpepper was notoriously protective of his family, and the arrival of Marseli hardened his resolve even more. Marseli was unlike any infant he had ever seen, and by God, she was his. From the moment she was born, her presence filled the room, so filling his heart was easy. She was so breathtakingly beautiful that although her mama named her Marseli after him, he immediately started to call her Prettybaby, and everyone else followed suit.

  Marcel Culpepper decided that Prettybaby was to remain where he could always keep a watchful eye on her. It wasn’t his Prettybaby he didn’t trust; it was the boys and men who couldn’t seem to stay away from her. Being in her presence was addictive. Everywhere they went, people stopped and commented on what a striking daughter he had. He trusted no one, barred all of his male acquaintances from the house, and attempted to hide his daughter from the outside world. Marcel wasn’t taking any chances. As God was his witness, he would die first and take half the world with him before he allowed any harm to befall his wife and children. That was his way, and his way was the only way.

  The Culpeppers had been in the funeral business for eight generations before Prettybaby was born. Bodies—or here-no-mores, as her mother called them—never frightened her. Death, she sensed even then, was part of a never-ending circle and was nothing to be afraid of. Grown folk, people in the neighborhood, gossiped behind her parents’ back that it was unnatural to keep a growing girl locked up in a funeral parlor, but Prettybaby didn’t seem to mind, which, of course, added fuel to the fire about her being somewhat touched in the head. The life she lived every day was normal to her. The life her big brother described outside sounded foreign and strange. He was allowed an existence beyond the funeral home: school, friends, Saturday afternoons at the ballpark. Her father didn’t permit her to attend school outside of the home. A female tutor taught her upstairs as soon as she was of school age while her mother looked on. Occasionally her father would ask
her if she wanted to play with other girls. She did, but other girls didn’t want to play with her, so she learned to appreciate being alone.

  When she wasn’t immersed in reading about the pyramids of Egypt and computing advanced mathematics, she studied the properties and medicinal qualities of the unusual growings in her mother’s greenhouse. She also found that she had an uncanny effect on the bereaved when they arrived to visit their loved ones. Word of mouth spread through Dallas, and the same people who had scoffed at her upbringing began to seek her assistance for a multitude of problems. By the time she was seventeen, she could cure almost anything, and by thirty, she had become a legend. Here, at sixty-four, she could not, would not be defeated. She called on her mama for guidance and centered her breathing. Nothing had ever scared her until now.

  It was two o’clock in the morning, and Trevor Kelly was still poring over his notes at home, something he hadn’t done in a long time. He’d made love to his wife for hours until she nearly collapsed from exhaustion. Now she was sleeping like a baby two rooms over, and he was berating himself for not having taken yoga earlier in his life. It affected him in ways he and Cassandra had never expected. He was performing better at sixty-one than he ever had at thirty-five. Go figure.

  He refocused his attention on Dahlia Chang’s case and poured his third cup of coffee, something his wife would not approve of. He’d been toying with a diagnosis and subsequent treatment for Dahlia, but a certain aspect of her case still perplexed him. She wasn’t a manic-depressive or an incest survivor, but something was indeed triggering her bizarre behavior. The answer was hidden in his notes, in the dialogue they’d shared, in the manner she answered gentle inquiries about her childhood and her family life.