Bold and Simful

The sleek red sports car idled outside Bettencourt Hall with headlights blazing into the night.

“Did you hear that?” Maxine Bettencourt asked her husband as she got up from the couch to investigate. “It sounded like a car.”

Robert folded the paper and cocked an ear to listen, “Nope, I don’t hear anything.”

Maxine sighed with disgust and started into the front hall. Robert, still oblivious, called after her “Hey, I found a want ad for an investigator. Remember how I interrogated the maid, just like on Law and Order. What do you think?”

Maxine heard him, but decided to pretend she didn’t because all she could think of to say was “what a fantastic investigator you would make!” Instead, she grabbed her coat and followed her tip-toeing daughter out of the house.

She let Veronica almost reach the car before she reached out her arms and grabbed her daughter’s shoulder, “Where do you think you’re going?”

Caught, with no lie that would cover the situation, Veronica waved Xavier away and followed her steaming mother back inside.

“That is it young lady! All you had to do was ask permission to go out, but nooo. It’s more fun to sneak out…” Maxine was pissed. Never had she or Robert stopped their either of their children from doing what they wanted to do as long as the things they needed to do were finished. “No one told you you weren’t allowed to see Xavier, even after your dad caught him sneaking out of the house. What is your problem?”

“Mom, I…” Veronica started.

“That was rhetorical!” Maxine seethed, “Just where were you planning on going at 1 am? I can’t imagine anything is open.”

Veronica hesitated, looking down at her twisting fingers. “Well! Are you going to answer me?” Maxine fumed.

“We were just going to drive around,” Veronica replied to the earlier question. It was kind of hard to tell which ones were rhetorical and which awaited answers.

“I’m so mad, I could spit. Go upstairs, now!” Maxine never yelled at her kids, much less did she use phrases like “so mad I could spit” her own mother had said that so often that Maxine had feared the woman would dehydrate.

Turning into the darkened study, she wondered where Robert had wandered off too, then decided not to look and sat fuming in the dark, ‘I have to find a way to calm my nerves or I’m going to loose it,‘ she thought.

The contractor had finished the pool area just in time for the warmer days ahead and Maxine took the opportunity to attempt yoga. It was supposed to be relaxing, not that she could see how standing with one foot in your crotch was relaxing, but she would give anything a shot.

Ever since meeting Catherine Mendenhall she had been in a constant struggle to make her home and family match her perfect neighbors. Maybe it was a vestage of her childhood when everyone else had nicer clothes and cars, homes and well, nicer everything but Maxine hated being outdone and now that she had money, she was determined not to be.

“Like you didn’t do that when you were a teenager?” Robert pointed out, “In fact, I seem to remember “ring once, meet in 10 minutes, ring twice meet in 20..” he laughed.

“Not the point Robert.” Maxine was frustrated that her husband wasn’t seeing things her way and went on a long explanation that concluded with, “Catherine Mendenhall has been gloating about Elizabeth going to some fancy school and I find my daughter sneaking out of the house.”

“I see.” the light finally dawned for Robert. “First of all, Elizabeth is going to Hunter in the fall just like Lenna and Roni…”

“I hate when you use those nicknames, their names are Maleena and Veronica,” Maxine interjected.

“Fine, Veronica and Maleena. Anyway, all the girls are going to end up in the same place so why is it a competition how they get there? And might I point out that one of the kids sneaking around the other night was Xavier Mendenhall,” Robert’s logic was impeccable and Maxine backed off the argument until she could come up with better points to make.

“Alright, alright,” she changed the topic. “I’m taking Maleena dress shopping today so she can find something for the prom, then I’m going to stop at the landscapers to talk about spring flowers.”

“That sounds fine, hon,” Robert went back to his breakfast wondering why his wife wasn’t taking both girls but decided to let it go.

Robert ran out to catch the maid before she left, Maxine had left him with instruction for Arcadia. Apparently the maid wasn’t doing as good a job as the Mendenhall’s maid.

“Hey, Elizabeth!” Robert greeted, surprised to see the girl in Orion Bay. “I thought you were away at school?”

“I am, I’m home for break,” Elizabeth mumbled her response then hurried away.

‘What an odd kid, skittish as a deer and legs like one too,‘ Robert thought with a chuckle, not realizing the implications of Elizabeth being in town.

Home from shopping, Maleena tried on her new dress and modeled it for her sister. “What do you think? Gorgeous isn’t it?” she glowed. “I was going to go with red but lavender looks better with my skin tone.”

“Yeah, it’s nice,” Veronica relented.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, I’m not going to prom. Mom said so after she caught me the other night.” Veronica explained.

“So I’m going by myself? Elizabeth is away, if you’re not going Xavier isn’t going, this sucks! I look stunning in this dress!” Maleena pouted, snatched the flowers out of her hair, stuffed her new dress in the back of the armoire and threw on her pajamas. “You’re an idiot! Why did you have to go sneaking out anyway? It’s not like you don’t see him everyday at school.”

“We wanted to…” Veronica started, but her sister had already stalked out of the room, ‘damn, bet that was rhetorical.‘

“if no one else is going, neither am I.” Maleena explained to her father moments later.

“I hear you, but I’m telling you that you’ll regret it one day. Let me talk to your mother and see if I can persuade her to let both of you go, then Xavier will go and I don’t see why Elizabeth isn’t going, I just saw her today,” Robert tried to appeased his daughter.

“You saw her?” Maleena snatched at the topic. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, she was walking by outside. She said she was home on break, then ran away. That kid is odd, nice but odd,” Robert had no idea why this nugget of information made his daughter so excited.

Maleena realized that her father had believed that Elizabeth was on break, which wasn’t a surprise considering his trusting nature. She stuffed the rest of the burger in her mouth and hurried upstairs to tell Veronica, completely forgetting about the prom.

“Hi Catherine. I saw Elizabeth the other day, glad to see she’s home on vacation,” Robert said innocently looking up from his paper when Catherine arrived to solicit donations for one of the Mendenhall Foundation’s charity campaigns.

“You what? Oh, oh, yes, she was home for a few days,” Catherine smiled but she was clearly flustered and even if Robert didn’t pick up on it, Maxine did.

Maxine wrote the check, larger than was necessary and bid Catherine goodbye. “Did you hear that Robert? She was surprised that you had seen Elizabeth…” she said, turning to her husband who had gone back to his paper.

“Was she? I didn’t notice,” Robert replied, studying the sports page.

“For heaven’s sake, Robert! What kind of investigator are you going to make?” Maxine grabbed her coat and and headed out the door. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she called over her shoulder.

When Robert answered the doorbell, a woman he had never seen before began crying.

“Breathe deep, inhale, exhale. There you go,” he said comfortingly, “Now, what can I do for you?”

Then a rush of words came at him, “We have a new baby and things are already tight, but then she fired him for no good reason and now we can’t buy the car we were saving for so I can’t go to night school and we’re never going to make it,” the woman finally took a breath, which left Robert the opportunity to speak.

“Who fired who? and by the way, who are you?” he asked kindly. Robert was kind to everyone, even strange women who appeared in tears on his doorstep.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman half-laughed, half-hiccuped, “My name is Brenda Gibson, my husband is Jay Gibson the maid at the Mendenhalls, well until he was fired yesterday that is.”

“Oh Kay?” Robert drawled, looking for a little more information.

“I was… ummm…wondering if you needed a daily to come in and clean up for you? Jay is really good at what he does and he didn’t get fired for bad performance,” Brenda explained, completely unaware of the irony of her last few words.

Robert felt awful rejecting the woman’s offer, it was obvious that she was in a bind, but they already had Arcadia and she was doing a fine job. Instead of saying no outright, Robert offered that he may know of something for Jay and took the woman’s phone number, promising to let her know in the next few days.

Maxine approached the front door of the convent with some trepidation, she hadn’t been to church in years and the thought of entering one now wasn’t that appealing, but when Robert mentioned seeing Elizabeth, Maxine got a sneaking suspicion that the girl hadn’t gone far from home at all.

(Note: So I created the pop-up bio info for use on the Character Bio pages, but thought it might be handy in posts too. But I can’t decide…is it handy? or is it annoying? Oh, I’m so decisive today lol)

Posted on May 14th, 2008 under Bettencourt. Tags: Bettencourt, elizabeth, maleena, maxine, robert, sister mary, veronica, xavier. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.