Author’s Note
Pepper’s Penance is a slow burning romance that unfolds over the course of twenty-three chapters. This is not a wham-bam story. But, if you’re into that sort of thing, I think you’ll like this one.
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Chapter 20: How to Ruin an Afterglow
Asking your girlfriend to tell you about her dead wife will probably go down in history as one of the best ways to kill the post-orgasmic feelings of euphoria. And right next to the scholarly description of exactly what not to do after sex, there will be a little picture of me, frowning.
I wasn’t frowning because it was the dumbest idea I’d come up with since I don’t know when, but because of Pepper’s tears. Hot and salty, those tears fell from her red-rimmed eyes onto my bare chest with disturbing regularity.
“Really, if you don’t want to–“
“Ash. You brought it up.”
And I’ve been kicking myself ever since. I picked up a strand of her hair and slid it gently through my fingertips until it dropped back into place, slightly askew.
“Remember when I told you why I play every Sunday at the park?”
“Because you wanted to say something? Something through your music.”
“It’s my confession, Ash. And my penance.” Pepper shifted a little, but didn’t look up. “Every week I would pour my feelings into that piano in the pavilion. All of the rotten things I did in my life flowed through my fingers and took flight as notes in the air. And without those feelings weighing me down, I could get on with living my life. Such as it was.”
I nodded. I knew Pepper didn’t see me, but I did it anyway.
“That was my penance. But I was hers, Ash. Me. I didn’t know it at the time, but I do now. She knew she was dying. And she had her past sins to reconcile before it was time. So she chose me for her penance. I sometimes wonder which one of us was more fucked up. Not like I’m keeping score, but…”
I rested my hand on her shoulder.
“Can you pull up the covers a little more?”
“Sure.”
“You remember Seymour, right?”
“The plant? At your house?”
“Yeah. Good ole Seymour. The plant with the beautiful leaves, but gnarly looking stems that made you cringe. Those stems were always hidden behind the wrapping. Natalie kept hers hidden, too.
“She did the night school mersin escort thing. That’s where we met. It turns out that was the start of her atonement.”
I didn’t exactly follow, but I hesitated to interrupt. I just nodded.
“I’m loaded, Ash. You should see my bank account. I got that money from Natalie. She left it to me when she… when she passed. She was never comfortable with the money. Ill gotten gains is what she called it.
“Oh, she liked it enough in the beginning. But, like everything, it came with a price.
“Natalie worked for one of those banks downtown with the impressive sounding names. Worked in the loan department. Home mortgages in particular. She said she worked her way up from sales to management to an executive position pretty quickly.
“‘I could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo,’ she used to say. Usually after a couple glasses of wine to loosen her tongue. It wasn’t until later, when I had moved in to take care of her full time during her second round of chemo, that she let slip just how convincing she was.
“‘It was so easy to talk people into mortgaging more than they could afford in those days,’ she told me once. ‘Home values were going up, up, up. All I had to do was point to a couple graphs of pricing trends, put on a reassuring smile, and people were eager to leverage forty percent or more of their income.’
“You see, Ash, the bigger the mortgage, the bigger the commission, the bigger the bonuses. Everybody was happy. Natalie was raking it in. More money than she could spend. The people signing on the dotted line, they couldn’t really afford it. They were banking on the rising market to increase their equity.
“Then came the crash. Natalie said looking back, it seemed the writing was on the wall. Everyone knew that kind of growth was unsustainable. It had to end sometime. ‘We just chose to look the other way,’ she said.
“I remember that year very clearly, too. That’s about the time I found my mom crying at the kitchen table with a foreclosure letter in her hand. I don’t think it was Natalie’s bank that sold her the mortgage, but the result was the same. She couldn’t pay. The dream of ever increasing equity died that year.
“We packed what we could and left.”
Pepper curled up a little tighter. I kept a hand on her shoulder, using mersin escort bayan the back of my other hand to occasionally dab at my eyes.
“Teaching night school was her first step. The beginning of her penance. Makes sense, I suppose. I mean, she made her money off of people like my mother. Why not ease your guilt by teaching their children, helping them finish a high school diploma that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise? Giving them a chance to dig themselves out of a hole and into a better life.
“It worked for me. I took her class. I got my GED. I quit my job cleaning hotel rooms and went on to become a first class bed pan changer as a nursing assistant. If my boss didn’t think I was a thief, I probably could have moved up into a more comfortable position involving more responsibility and fewer bed pans.”
Pepper looked up at me and forced a smile. I pressed my lips in a tight line and wiped at my eyes again.
“That’s when she walked into my life again, Ash. I remember it clearly, just like it was yesterday. Chemo. Not her first round. Needing more than just a little help around the house this time.
“I’ve never had chemo, so I’m probably talking out of my ass when I say this, but I think she would have been fine with me coming in part time to check on her and do what needed to be done around the house, but the arrangement she wanted was twenty-four seven. I lived in her house. Moved all my stuff into her guestroom. Not that I had a lot.
“It was her penance. I realize that now. She was dying and she knew it. She took me under her wing. Tried to lift me up the best she knew how. Did I tell you about the cooking classes? I’m sure I did.”
I nodded.
“Natalie Martin. Martin is an Americanized version of Martine, a French surname. Did you know that? I didn’t. Her ancestors may have dropped the E at Ellis Island, but they certainly retained their high standards when it came to their cuisine.
“That’s when it started to dawn on me that six weeks of help around the house was probably a little white lie. Something easy to commit to, just to get me to say yes. I did mention she could sell ice to Eskimos, didn’t I?
“I would make her meals, trying out the new skills I learned in class. And she lavished me with praise. Probably more than I deserved in the beginning, escort mersin but it motivated me. Gave me something to strive for. A reason to really apply myself, not only in classes, but at home.
“I was still in the guestroom, but it was beginning to feel more like home every day. After dinner, I would clean up and Natalie would say, ‘If you’re not too tired, could you play something on the piano?’
“I told you about the piano lessons, right?”
I nodded and squeezed Pepper’s hand.
“‘My mother would play after dinner,’ Natalie said. ‘It’s one of my fondest memories of her.’
“‘I’m sure she was better than me,’ I would say. And Natalie would frown and say, ‘Have a little faith, Pepper, you’re improving everyday.’
“And so I did. Have faith, that is. And I practiced. I applied myself, Ash. I’d never done that before. All my life I watched things happening. I watched my mother lose her house. I watched my teachers give me bad grades. I figured… I don’t know what.
“All I know is that was all the bad stuff. When I watched the good things start, Natalie was always there, making it happen.
“It took a while until… Until I figured out that it was me making the good things happen. Natalie was there, for sure. Encouraging me, letting me know that I had a safety net if I should fail. I’ve never known that feeling. It was always me against the world, you know? Now I had someone looking out for me. Then she was gone.”
Pepper fell silent, curling tighter into the little ball that she formed, pressed up against me. I stroked the bare skin of her shoulder.
“But it wasn’t just about me. I was her project. You ever see that old movie with Audrey Hepburn? Henry Higgins is giving her speech lessons so she can pass as a proper English lady? Oh, what’s the name of it?
“Anyway, Audrey Hepburn was his project, just like I was Natalie’s. Poor girl taken in by a well to do mentor and trained, educated, whatever you want to call it, to fit into polite society. The cooking school, the piano lessons. Except it wasn’t a bet with some other rich dude, it was her wagering against death.
“She was trying to instill some culture into me. Not to be a proper English lady, but I think to assuage her own guilt for the people she left high and dry after the housing bubble burst.”
“Pepper,” I said.
“I know, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be blabbering on about all of this. You don’t really want to hear about all my–“
“Pepper,” I said. “I don’t understand. I thought you were married.”
“Oh, that.” she said.