Cherished by Seven Sisters novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Curb
Roland Price hands Leo a garbage bag and divorce papers on their fifth anniversary; Leo signs and walks out, and seven black cars stop at the curb: nobody in this family sleeps on a curb.
On our fifth anniversary, my father-in-law handed me a garbage bag.
It was a black contractor bag, the heavy kind, knotted at the neck.
My clothes were inside, and I could tell nobody had folded them.
It was raining on the front steps of the Price house on Club Road.
Roland Price stood under the porch light with the roof over him, and I stood out on the wet side.
"The papers are in the folder, Leo," he said. "Sign them tonight."
Behind him the front door stood open.
My wife waited in the hall in a cream dress, with her pearls on, looking at the floor.
Beside her stood a man I had never seen before, holding her coat open for her.
He wore a camel overcoat and the smile of someone selling me a car.
"Tonight," I said. "On the anniversary."
"The timing is unfortunate," said Carolyn Price.
She had come up beside her husband in her pale blue cardigan, her white hands folded.
Carolyn had a soft voice, and in five years I had never heard it do anything kind.
"We didn't want a scene, dear. The neighbors."
I looked past her at Amanda.
"Is this true?"
"Dinner's at seven," Amanda said to the floor. "Please don't make it harder."
Her brother leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed, grinning.
"Five years of free rent, man," he said. "Dad's being generous."
"I ran every truck your father owns for five years."
"It was a job."
"It was a fifty-eight thousand dollar job," I said. "I saved him two million in fuel."
Nobody answered that.
Roland pushed the folder against my chest.
I took it, because the alternative was letting it fall in the rain.
Then I walked down the steps and across the wet gravel to the curb.
The suitor's black sedan was parked there, shining.
I set the folder on its hood and opened it.
"You can read it inside," Roland called. "Be reasonable."
"I read what I sign."
It was ten pages.
The rain soaked the corners and made the ink on the page go gray at the edges.
Page four said I got no house, no savings split, no alimony, nothing.
Page seven said I had never contributed to the household.
I read all of it, down to the notary stamp, with six people watching from a dry porch.
"Leo," Amanda said at last, quietly. "It's just paper."
"I know."
I turned to the last page and signed my name over the water running across the line.
"You'll want to ask for something," Roland said, and for the first time he sounded unsure.
"The lawyer told me you'd ask."
"I'm not asking."
"Money. The car."
"There's one thing."
He relaxed. People always relax when you finally name a price.
"My father's radio," I said. "On the left shelf in your garage."
"That junk?"
"It's mine."
I walked to the garage while they watched, and found it behind a case of tile samples.
It was a silver Cobra 29, the kind truckers used before cell phones, with the handset cord taped in three places.
My father had talked into it for twenty-two years.
I put it under my arm and walked back out into the rain.
At the porch I stopped by the glass bowl of floating hydrangeas that Carolyn kept on the table by the door.
I pulled off my wedding ring.
It made a small plink as it hit the water.
"Happy anniversary," I said.
Nobody said anything back.
I picked up the bag and walked down the drive to the street.
I didn't have a car, because the car was Roland's.
I didn't have a plan, because I had spent five years in a house where other people had the plans.
I had a bag, a radio and eleven dollars.
I sat down on the curb, because my legs wanted to, and the rain ran down inside my collar.
Behind me the front door closed.
I was still sitting there when the first set of headlights swung around the corner.
Then another, and another.
Seven black cars rolled up the hill in a line and stopped along the curb, one after the other, with their engines still running.
A driver opened the rear door of the first car.
A tall woman stepped out under a black umbrella, in a charcoal suit and silver-rimmed glasses, her hair pulled back so tight it looked like a decision.
I hadn't seen her in five years.
She was the only one of us who had refused a radio name when we were kids.
"Viv?" I said.
She held the umbrella over me and looked down at the bag, and then at the radio.
"Dad said nobody in this family sleeps on a curb," Vivian said. "Get up, Dispatch."
Six more doors opened behind her.
I stood, and my knees shook.
She looked past me, up the drive, to the porch where Carolyn Price stood very still beside the open door.
"Mrs. Price," said Vivian.
"Vivian," Carolyn said, and one white hand rose to her pearls. "You've grown."
"We were told for five years that he asked us to stop calling."
I turned around.
Carolyn's face had gone the color of her hair.
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