(Continued from Rutherford Baby II)
“Get out of my house,” he says firmly.
Tracy starts pouting.
“Why do you hate me so much? What does that woman have that I don’t?”
“I will not say this again, Tracy. Dress up and get out of my house.”
“What if I don’t?” Tracy asks defiantly.
“I will be left with no other option but to throw you out.”
“Then throw me out.”
Rutherford looks around, but he cannot see her handbag. He walks to the bedroom and finds it on top of his bed. Her clothes are also on the bed. He grabs them, walks to the door and throws them outside. Then he takes her by the hand and drags her outside, careful not to touch any other part of her body. She starts screaming and yelling but he is unperturbed. He pushes her outside the door and locks it from the inside.
*
There are two plates on his dining table, one of which has food that is only half eaten. Rutherford assumes that that is his mother’s plate. She was probably eating when her brother called her to inform her that Rutherford was heading to his house, so she abandoned her food and rushed there. Rutherford and Salome had cooked food that was just enough for the two of them, so there is no food left. He has no energy to cook, so he empties the food on his mother’s plate into a trash bin and prepares coffee.
He sits on the couch, sipping coffee. His mind is in turmoil. This whole drama with Tracy, coupled with the fact that he has been unable to reach Salome is getting to him. He is fiddling with his phone, wondering whether he should call her again, when his phone vibrates.
I can’t believe you would do that to me.
It is Salome. His mind starts racing, trying to figure out how best to respond. It would be better if she would pick his calls. Better still if they met face to face. It is difficult to reduce his thoughts to texts. He is still thinking when his phone vibrates again.
“After all we have been through, how could you?”
“Where are you? We need to talk. Face-to-face,” he quickly types.
But his text is ignored as a barrage of texts hit his phone. Salome is a sanguine, and she is now in a ranting mood. He knows the best he can do is just let her finish what she wants to say. When there is a lull of 10 minutes without an incoming text, he decides it is time to venture a call.
“Hi.”
“Hi”
“I am sorry about the miscommunication today. You are getting it all wrong. Please come over to my house and let me explain,”
There is silence on the other side of the phone.
“Sal, are you there?”
He only calls her Sal when he desperately needs a favour, or when he is guilty about something and needs her forgiveness. He can almost see her smiling on the other side of the phone.
“Yea, I am here. It is okay, I am on my way.”
*
“Who is that woman that your mother came with?” she asks immediately she gets into his house.
“Her name is Tracy. She is the woman that my mother wants me to marry.”
“So, have you gone for dates with this Tracy?”
“I met her once for coffee.”
“When did this happen and why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was a blind date Sal. I did not know her, so whenever I told my mother that I wanted nothing to do with her, she would say ‘but you don’t know her’. So I decided to meet her once for coffee so that I could comfortably tell my mother that she is not my type, That is exactly what I did. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid of your reaction.”
“So what else happened between the two of you that you didn’t tell me because you were afraid of my reaction?”
“Really sweetheart?”
“Okay, I am sorry. It’s just that this is too much to take in at once.”
There is silence for several minutes as each of them gets lost in their thoughts.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Marry you and hope that I can protect you adequately against my mother.”
“I don’t want to come between you and your mother.”
“You are not coming between me and my mother. My mother is coming between me and my mother; no one else but herself. If she continues manipulating me it will be difficult to have a relationship with her, whether you are in my life or not. But I hope she will come around and start accepting my choices in life.”
“Even if she accepts me, I am going to disappoint her further. You know I don’t like fanfare, and my wedding will be no exception. I want a small, quiet wedding. But I am sure she wants a huge wedding for her only son. She will want to impress everyone. I don’t want that kind of attention.”
“I have an idea. Let us get married while she is still angry with me.”
“You can’t get married without your mother’s blessing Rutherford.”
“It would be ideal to get her blessing, but seeing how she is behaving, I think I am entitled to bypass her. Besides, here is the plan. We go to the Attorney General and get married. Later, if she comes around, we can do the traditional wedding. That is a better situation than come-we-stay.”
“So we get married without even my parents’ blessing?”
“No, we will explain the situation to your parents. Your father is a reasonable man, from the times I have spoken with him. I am sure he will grant us his blessings.”
“Sounds like a plan, but I think we should invite your mother too. Let her refuse to come, but at least she will have been invited.”
“What if she ruins the wedding?”
“She can’t. We get married privately at the AG’s in the morning and hold a small party in the afternoon. We will invite a few friends and family including her to the wedding in the afternoon. Only by that time we will already be married. My parents are church folks. They will want my marriage to be solemnized in church. And to be honest, that is what I want as well. Perhaps we can still get married in a private ceremony church, but leave out the sermon, the singing and all that. We just head to church, exchange our vows then head to the reception, which we can hold in a garden. The worship, the sermon and everything else will happen at the garden, and we can act as though it is a garden wedding. But by the time we make our way to the garden, we will already be married.”
“I like the plan. But the parents of the groom normally go to pick the bride from her parents’ house. My mother knows where you live. She could make her way there in the morning and still ruin the day.”
“Who says my parents and I have to spend the night at their home? I have relatives who can comfortably accommodate us for a night.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
*
Salome and Rutherford spend the next hour going over their wedding plans. Finally, Salome rises.
“I am hungry. Have you eaten?”
“No. The food we cooked was eaten by mom and Tracy.”
“Let me go to the washroom then we can cook something else.”
“Okay.”
Salome walks towards the bathroom, but then sees something outside Rutherford’s bedroom. She goes and picks it up.
“Ford, what is a woman’s underwear doing outside our bedroom?”
“What?”
“This Ford,” she says, shaking it. “This is a woman’s underwear, and it is not even clean or new. My question is, what is it doing here?”
Rutherford is dumbfounded. He has told Salome about his meeting with his mother at his uncle’s house, but he has not told her about finding Tracy naked in his house. He left out that part because he did not want to be misunderstood. But now he is in trouble because Tracy’s underwear must have fallen as he was throwing her things out.”
“Ah…when Tracy left…it must have been left behind,” he mumbles.
“What do you mean left behind? Why did she remove it in the first place?”
“It is not like that, Sal. When I came back I found Tracy here, naked…”
“And why didn’t you tell me? You have been telling what happened after I left. But you left that part out.”
“I did not want you to misunderstand the situation.”
“What is there to be misunderstood?”
“Calm down Sal, I can explain.”
“Explain what, Ford? I am tired of your explanations and excuses. What are you going to tell me? That you slept with Tracy so that you could confidently tell your mother that she is not good in bed? I am sorry Ford, but I don’t want to hear it. I cannot do this anymore. We are done.”
She takes her handbag and storms out.
(Continued Here)
Image by Gabriel Miguel Bero from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/man-teen-young-afro-black-white-2607312/
*
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See you all on Friday.
