Doing BIG Things

By Gail McFarland

Book #1 of The Loi Cramer Journals.

Loi Cramer is a woman of a certain age. She is a smart woman with an interesting past, survival skills, and the grace born of using those skills.

So how the heck does she wind up penniless and darned near homeless in Atlanta, GA?

If you asked Loi, she would tell you that you had to be there, and generous woman that she is, she doesn’t hesitate to take you there.

She opens the details and dishes the dirt when it comes to the rumors surrounding her marriage to Alex Cramer. Yes, it has been suggested that she killed to secure his love, but she knows that it never happened. It has been suggested that she was nestled in bed with Alex while his lovely wife lay dying in an upstairs bedroom, and ... well ... Loi will admit to that.

As it turns out, Veronica, Alex’s now deceased wife, knew almost everything about the affair. Veronica left Loi with a warning: If he did it to me, he WILL do it to you.

And if If was a fifth, we’d all be drunk, right?

While nobody got drunk, Loi does learn the truth behind Veronica’s prophetic words when an aged and ailing Alex is found dead on the terrace of their home. When she learns that her deceased husband left EVERYTHING to the other woman, well, can we just say that Loi is ready to cut somebody?

Turned away from her home and without much more than the clothes on her back, survival takes priority because a woman has got to keep body and soul together. But Loi is a thinking woman and she knows that you should never waste time sweating the small stuff when you could be doing big things.

Besides, revenge is a bitch.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gail McFarland
• Release date: Jan 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466191679

Gail McFarland

Gail McFarland was once the girl known for never failing to get an 'A' in Honors English. Today, as proof that the smart can also be sassy, she is the published author of more than 100 short romantic confessions and short stories, numerous ebooks, and ten popular contemporary novels including: SUMMERWIND (BET/Arabesque) THE BEST FOR LAST(BET/Arabesque) WHEN LOVE CALLS (BET/Arabesque) BOUQUET with Roberta Gayle and Anna Laurence (BET/Arabesque) DREAM RUNNER (Genesis Press) DREAM KEEPER (Genesis Press) WAYWARD DREAMS Genesis Press) LADY KILLER (LULU Books) ALL FOR LOVE (CreateSpace Books) DOING BIG THINGS (CreateSpace Books). Best known for her contemporary romantic novels, Ms. McFarland is a contributing member of The GA Peach Authors. Ms. McFarland is also a dedicated wellness/fitness advocate. She is currently an active fitness instructor, health coach, wellness consultant, and community health volunteer. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Ms. McFarland now makes her home and place of literary creation in Atlanta, Georgia.

Book preview

Doing BIG Things

Gail McFarland

Copyright 2012 by Gail McFarland

Smashwords Edition

Other Titles by Gail McFarland:

Genesis Press/Indigo:

Dream Runner

Dream Keeper

Wayward Dreams

Lady Leo Press:

If Ever

Can A Sistah Get Some Love? (Anthology)

BET/Arabesque:

Summer Wind

The Best For Last

When Love Calls

Bouquet (Mother’s Day Anthology)

LULU Books:

All For Love

Lady Killer

Doing BIG Things

Smashwords Ebooks:

All For Love

Lady Killer

Once (or Twice) In A Lifetime

The Twentieth Century Fox

This Side of Forever

Heart of Justice

If Ever

Eye of The Beholder

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. For information, address: P.O. Box 56782, Atlanta, Georgia 30343.

Author websites:

www.http://fitwryter.tripod.com

www.http://fitwryter.com/books

Doing BIG Things

Gail McFarland

* * *

"I want a man who's kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?"

~Zsa Zsa Gabor

"Woman's Rule of Thumb: If it has tires or testicles, you're going to have trouble with it."

~Author Unknown

* * *

Doing BIG Things

Chapter One

I wonder if nonmedicated menopause is a justifiable defense for murder?

The thought occurred to me, not for the first time, but I kept it to myself because this was a party: a welcome back to the fold party for me, and held on what better occasion than my birthday. Raising my glass, toasting, smiling like the rest of the guests, I looked around the table. There they were, dressed in formal attire, all bright and glittering, shining like newly minted money, my fifty best friends. Or at least that was what they wanted me to call them.

Now.

And who wouldn’t want to be my friend? After all, I am Loi Cramer, the pretty damned good-looking, sixty year old widow of the late Alexander Cramer, and restored heiress to the Cramer corporate fortune. I’ve got a good heart, and I’m known for doing good where good can be done. I never attended Spelman College, but I established the Cramer Archives at the legendary school in memory of a friend, and I make sure that they are constantly staffed and that the acquisition funds are always available.

Looking around, I was pretty damned sure that every one of the people busily admiring me and lapping up three-hundred-dollars-a-bottle wine figured I was capable of murder. No, now that I think about it, every one of them just knew that I had committed one murder and was capable of a second.

Don’t you just hate that? I know I sure as hell do. I just hate it when people totally outside the event make a decision, pass it on to others as gospel, and then think they have a right to sit in judgment. And the fewer facts they have, the more they make up in their own minds, and the more righteous they become. Now, they were all sitting here watching me, and waiting to see what came next.

Sanctimony is a bitch, isn’t it? Talk about a WTF moment… I suppose that obviously unfaithful husbands who die under questionable circumstances and amazingly generous wills penned by greedy women, that surface with highly providential timing, do tend to make people see things in the worst kind of light, though...

Feeling the stirrings of heat between my breasts, I knew that there was more to come before this evening ended, so I took a deep breath and held it. When I let it out slowly, I thought of the one thing that would have made all of these people really stop and stare – the truth. A few of the wives probably would have stood and brought their manicured hand together in a solid round of applause for me – even if the one death they didn’t know all about was an accident.

I told you, obviously unfaithful husbands and greedy women, but they’d given less than half a thought to the other woman in the story. Me.

Across the table, Ava Duncan winked at me, slicing into my thoughts. Her smile was knowing, and still as pouty and sassy as it was when I first met her, more than thirty years ago. I winked back. I had to. Ava really was my friend and she’d tried to stand by me in the best and worst of times. Truth be told, while she rolled during good times, she wasn’t really a rock in the bad times, but Ava and I knew a lot about each other. And we both knew that I knew a little more about her than she did about me.

For instance, I knew that Ava always planned ahead. I knew that she got her hooks into George Duncan and his family’s money by playing a little bit pregnant. It was a standing joke between us that George, Jr. was the only thirteen month pregnancy in human history – and we never shared the joke with George, Sr. I also knew that while George, Jr. looked a lot like his mother as a child, he looked a lot more like Joe Harris, the family handyman as an adult. Nobody we knew was willing to share that with George, Sr.

I knew about the money Ava had stashed away. Most of it came from selling the jewelry George gave her over the years. She held the profits in abeyance – just in case she needed to make a quick getaway. I’ve been poor and Negro and a woman, she once told me. I didn’t like it. If I’ve got to take two out of the three, poor will never be me again.

I should have taken her point more seriously.

Standing at the head of the long table, his gloriously balding brown pate gleaming even brighter than the onyx studs of his tuxedo shirt, Linn Williams was saying something. Barking the words in his trademark squeaky voice he rattled on – something about resilience, beauty, and grace. He also used my name several times, so I knew he was still talking about me.

Sitting tall across the table, Ava held her stomach in and tossed her hair. It was probably a wig, but it was a good one, the style reminiscent of a hairdo she probably wore back in the day when she was considered one of Atlanta’s beauties.

We sort of had that in common, being called beautiful. Atlanta born and a graduate of the elite Jones Day School, Ava could pass the paper sack test with ease. She was blessed with tea parties, white glove affairs, cotillions, and all the frills that went with them. Her family was true southern black aristocracy, even if they’d lost most of their money, they still had a magic ‘name’, and Ava reaped the benefits. She was born to be treated like a princess, and determined to be a queen.

Me, I came from the south side of Chicago, something I never shared with Ava or much of anybody else. Dark skin like mine was the reason the paper sack test was invented and the word ‘enough’ was rarely heard in the house I grew up in. My blessings included a street-walking sister, a heroin addicted brother, and a part-time mother who let me know that all I could ever depend on was me. My family did their best to teach me that I was never going to be a princess, and God knows, I never dreamed that I would be a queen.

Then, I came to Atlanta and my life changed. Queendom was good.

My transformation wasn’t as easy as I’m making it sound and it was a hell of a long way from magical. I was almost eighteen and probably not going to make it out of high school, when my mother took a walk to the store one cool and windy October evening. I didn’t know which store and after three days, I figured she wasn’t going to walk back. My sister Ronnie was out somewhere; flat-backing, I guessed. My brother, Cedric, was in a corner nodding and drooling; high. I was the only one who noticed our mother’s absence. When I called the police, they didn’t seem surprised. Or interested.

But the police called me when a body was recovered from a cold brick-walled alley, and as one of her three children, the only one anyone could locate at the time, I was the one who had to go and identify her. Stretched out in the morgue, she looked older than her forty-seven years, and so very tired. I wanted to feel sorry for her, mostly because she looked exhausted by life, but I didn’t. Instead, I felt relief; relief that nothing else would ever grind her down, and relief that I wouldn’t have to be there to pick her up again.

Three days later, it turned colder and snow fell. My mother was buried in a pauper’s grave – all I could afford, but at least the welfare people put her name on her little marker. There were no real mourners, just me and an elderly couple who went to everybody’s funeral. Okay, don’t ask me why they did it, they just did, and that day I was grateful for their company.

But standing there, I had a one word epiphany. Run. I knew I couldn’t stay where I was, not if I wanted to survive, and I did want to survive. Turns out, survival is something I’m pretty good at.

The night after they put my mother in the ground, I went home and turned our crappy little shotgun apartment inside out. Pennies and lint balls fell out of Cedric’s pockets, and a tight roll of singles fell out of one of Ronnie’s run over boots. In what had been my mother’s room, I found the mother lode buried in the bottom drawer of her splintery old chest of drawers. She might have lacked parenting skills, but she believed in paying bills. Rent money was in one creased envelope, a second envelope turned out to be cash for the phone bill, with light and gas money in another. I only thought about it for a minute, then I took the utility and phone money. I left enough behind to pay the rent. At least Ronnie and Cedric wouldn’t be outside in the cold – I hoped.

In 1967, it didn’t take a whole lot of money to get on a Greyhound bus to go much of anywhere. I was willing to get on the first thing rolling and when the clerk asked for just about every dime I had in my jeans, I gave it up willingly. I didn’t even know where I was going until I saw the sign on the bus. Atlanta. That day, Atlanta, Georgia meant a way out of Chicago and a chance to survive, for me. I was in such a hurry to make my getaway that I left without a cookie, a sandwich, or a backward glance.

Hungry and tired, I climbed on that bus and curled up in a corner next to the window on the backseat, and tried to sleep my way to a better life. Twenty-two hours later, I stepped off the bus without a clue to my next step. Then I saw the big red and yellow lettered signs that would change my life; they were plastered all over the dingy blue and white tiled bus station walls. Enroll NOW! The Singer School for Certified Nursing Assistants. Financial Aid Available!

Financial Aid? Didn’t that mean money?

I didn’t have any right then, so I let the greasy brown security guard with the greedy eyes buy me a dry burger and some limp fries while I tried to figure out how to get some of that financial aid into my hands. Choking the food down, I tried to get my bearings and make a plan. I was going to that Singer School, and I was going to get some of that financial aid, even if it meant I had to learn whatever it was that they taught.

With the bare bones of a plan sketched in my head, I got directions from the chunky guard while he sat next to me with his leg pressed tight against mine, his pudgy hand creeping along my thigh. He kept trying to pretend that I wasn’t shaking his wandering hand off my leg, and acting like we were on some kind of date. Finally leaning back, trying to find the right words to ask for more, the guard stretched an arm across the back of the booth, while letting his eyes bore into mine. I knew where the conversation was headed and I didn’t want to go there. He didn’t seem to mind that I was hot, wrinkled, and downright funky from my bus ride. The view of my swelling breasts in a tight nasty Soul Train tee-shirt must have distracted him.

Watery coke soothed my throat while my brain rushed thoughts into order: I had to have money, food, and a place to sleep. But looking at the fat eager man beside me, remembering Ronnie’s tales of how to get started in the business, I refused the folded bills he tried to press on me. I refused his offer of a bed for the night, knowing what it would lead to. Clutching my virginity like a magical talisman, I refused the used business card he wrote his phone number and address on. When he offered to drive me to The Singer School, I refused that, too.

To his credit and my relief, he didn’t get all mean and hateful at my refusals – he just sort of took them in stride. Thinking he must have been used to getting turned down by women, I did let him point me toward Peachtree Street, and then ignored the heavy crawl of his hungry eyes on my butt when I walked away from him.

Putting one foot in front of the other, I followed the sidewalk down Peachtree like Dorothy followed the yellow brick road to Oz. That day, Atlanta was a city of possibilities for me; I knew I could do better.

A twenty minute walk had me climbing the worn granite stairs of a low redbrick building that looked like it had been there since Sherman’s March to the Sea. On the third floor, I found the door to the Singer School and pushed it open. Walking in, I wasn’t all that sure I wasn’t making a mistake. Standing at the long Formica-topped counter that served as a front desk, I could see three grungy rooms off to the side. Sun slanted in through the windows and in the dusty light, the rooms were filled with used wooden desks and marginally matching battered wooden chairs. Six tired looking young women wearing white skirts and blouses sat in one of the rooms with notebooks open in front of them, all writing furiously. None of them looked much older than me. Maybe I was in the right place after all.

May I help you?

The sharp voice snatched me back to the then-and-there, and I realized I had been staring.

May I help you?

I… Yes. Miss… I had to turn my stare to the white-bloused woman behind the desk. She was short, skinny and black, with lips as thin as the rest of her body. Her side-parted hair was severely permed into thin oily straightness and only moved when she turned her head. I knew this because she tipped her head and looked at me like I was something she’d found on the bottom of her shoe.

May. I. Help. You?

The nameplate on her desk read, Ruby Singer, but I couldn’t get a word past my lips. My stomach rolled and if I’d had any option, or good sense, I would have run straight back through the door of the Singer School. But, as luck would have it, I didn’t run.

I… I saw your sign, I finally managed.

And now you want to be a Certified Nursing Assistant? Ruby Singer waited for me to bob my head and looked at me like I was stuck on stupid. Do you know what a Certified Nursing Assistant does?

Had to admit that I didn’t. She sighed like I was one more weight on her back as she stood to face me.

I swear that I remember exactly what she said and did next, just like it was yesterday. She touched that thin heat-bent hair with one hand and the collar of her neat white blouse with the other, then she pursed those little bird lips and said, Certified nursing assistants are employed by hospitals, nursing homes, and private individuals to take care of patients’ everyday needs. Personal care duties such as bathing, dressing, and feeding patients, as well as brushing teeth and combing hair are included. Certified Nursing Assistants help patients in and out of bed, often by lifting or carrying them, and assist them with walking as they travel to and from surgeries and treatments. Can you do that?

I nodded. Her eyes looked like she didn’t believe me as she lifted stapled sheets of paper from a wire basket on the counter between us and shoved them into my hands. Then, little bird lips twisted, Miss Singer pulled a book toward her and asked my name – I think I gave her the right one. How will you be paying for your training?

Standing there in every stitch of clothing I owned in the world, with no money and not even a purse to call my own, I looked at her like she was speaking in tongues. She sniffed and gave her beak of a nose a quick wrinkle. I knew she was judging me, and I also knew that since I had marched myself into her domain I had no right to complain – but I could beg, and I was ready to do it.

Suddenly, her face changed and I didn’t have to. You’re not from here and you came because of the signs, didn’t you? I nodded and cringed a little when her eye raked over me. You don’t have two nickels to rub together, do you? I shook my head, and she pulled a second book from under the counter. Writing rapidly with a cheap plastic pen, she made notes on my four-line application. You’re going to have to pay this back, she said.

I opened my mouth, and Miss Singer acted like she didn’t even notice. Once you have a job, you can repay the advance; ten dollars a week. Your course begins at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, and you will have ten days of class work. You are expected to complete all ten days, and tardiness is not acceptable. Do you understand? Without waiting for me to respond, she reached under the counter again. You’re about an eight?

A what?

Pursed lips again and a shake of the head. She had nappy roots. Eight, she said. You wear a size eight. I nodded, not saying that I would wear whatever she told me to. She slapped the skirt and blouse on the counter and aimed her stare at me. Her eyes were almost black and seemed to see everything about me. This is your uniform, and we expect it to be clean everyday.

Yes’m.

Yes, Miss Singer. Or, yes, Miss Ruby, she corrected. When I opened my mouth and repeated her words, she appeared satisfied. Looking down at my application, she propped her lips in disapproval. Are you a runaway? You don’t have anywhere to live?

I… No, ma’am. No, Miss Singer. I just got off the bus from…

Her nose wrinkled and she looked like I had just answered all of her questions. She reached beneath the magic counter again and pulled out a checkbook. Wielding her cheap pen like a weapon, she scribbled a check and pushed it across the counter. The check was face up but I didn’t want to look too needy, so I used the tips of my fingers to slide it closer, and almost fainted when I saw the amount.

Two hundred dollars. Gratitude made my knees weak. People would be surprised to find out how far a couple hundred bucks could go when you’re really desperate and you have nothing. And not that