Sweet Paradise by Gene Desrochers (most read books in the world of all time .txt) 📕

“No, he’s a cheap-ass.” Junior waved at the estate. “Got all this and acts like we’re broke. Shoot, if you hadn’t agreed, I wouldn’t even have Boise here on my case. She’s his mother.”

Harold rubbed his neck and winced. “Look man, you gotta understand, your grandmother wasn’t always Missus Reliable. She had some wanderlust back in the day.”

“Where’d she go?” Junior questioned.

“Shoot if I know. Foreign lands? She’d go off with people then come back with ‘em and they’d stay a week. She’d call ‘em uncle-this or aunt-that, but none stuck around long. They’d go and she’d stay a while, then wander off again. We got raised by the maids and manservants back then mostly. I was the youngest, but those two,” he cocked his head at the house, “they got into some terrible mischief. Undocumented carousing. They got me started early. Heck, I’m still doing it.” At this last statement he grinned his stoned smile, eyes dull and dreamy. His teeth had a yellow tint, which reminded me that I hadn’t brushed since our last meal. “But, I’m willing to spend some bucks to be sure she’s still around. She straightened out and has been more reasonable the last twenty years. Also, she’s my mama.”

“Can I use your bathroom?” I asked.

“Inside to the right,” Harold said.

I flossed and brushed, stealing a gob from a tube in the medicine cabinet, sticking my blue fold-up toothbrush back in my pocket after shaking off the excess water. My floss was running low.

Through the French doors, I could see Harold and Junior talking. Harold mussed his nephew’s hair and said something that made both of them laugh. Thank God for uncles. I wished my Uncle Jim and my dad had been on speaking terms because I liked the guy a lot. But they weren’t, so we weren’t.

The sound of running water issued from the kitchen but otherwise, the house had fallen silent without Hillary to incite chaos. The maid was washing dishes when I entered the kitchen.

“Hi, Wilma, is it?”

She started, flinging soap suds into the air. They paused mid-air, then began their slow descent.

“Aye-yay-yay, mi son, you startle me!” Her hand covered her large bosom. It matched her wide hips. She shook her head as she leaned over the sink. A small smile broke on her lips.

“What I can do for you? You want some water?”

“No, nothing like that. I wanted to say I’m sorry about how Hillary acted to you earlier. It didn’t seem nice,” I said.

She began washing the dishes again. “They pay me, so she think she can tell me anything and I have to do it. Miss Bacon, she say otherwise. I work for she, not dez brats.”

“Do you live in this house?”

“Yeah.”

“How long since you last saw Miss Bacon?”

“She done gone for da past weeks. Maybe three or four she done gone. She sometime go away. Not my place to say where da missus go.”

My eye suddenly felt irritated. “May I?” I indicated the water. She stepped aside and let me put my face under the faucet. “You think she missin’?” I asked from inside the sink while rinsing out my eye.

She turned her ear to me and cupped her hand. “You ask if she missin’?” She leaned back against the wall and looked out into the back yard. In the distance you could see a hazy expanse of endless grayish-blue desert. The ocean. It was quite the estate. “Could be. These children.” She shook her head with resignation. “I younger, but I had to work me whole life. Me whole life. Work make you grateful, you know?”

She handed me a brown dish towel.

“Did she used to take off randomly?”

“Not no more. She change in da last ten years. Since Junior get to be seven or eight. Even before that she was more docile. She more like the family. But, I think she have somet’ing else in mind too.”

“Something else?” I was confused. Wilma seemed to be in a stream of consciousness state.

“Yeah, somet’ing she read. I see them arguing a lot recently.” She returned to the sink, washed a plate and a fork, then drained the brown, soapy water. The gurgling pipes forced me to speak up.

“With each other or with Francine?”

“Both.” Sounded like, boat.

“What do you mean something she read? What would she read that would create such animosity within the family?”

“Da sugar business. She no want da family to stay in it. Nothing good come from it. Not no more. She want to give back. She talk about something, like she find her god.”

She ran the faucet, pulled the sprayer out and killed the suds in the bottom of the sink, then headed into the back of the house, leaving me standing there like a wallflower at the prom.

A powerful shout erupted from the living room. I poked my head out. Herbie had opened the French doors. He was commanding Junior to come inside. They needed to talk about his cavalier attitude toward his studies and money. Junior slinked inside and upstairs, his father on his heels. Herbie walked with the pathetic confidence some men gained from deflating their sons.

I moved into the living room and watched them ascend. At the top of the staircase, Herbie turned and looked down at me. A nobleman gazing down at a serf.

“You are dismissed. Leave my son alone. Your ideas are infecting this family. You’re not welcome here.”

Exposing secrets. It brought out the worst in people. Harold was in the driveway cleaning the blackened old wax off a surfboard. He offered me a ride home.

“Was your mother a reader,” I asked as we jostled down the road in his brick-colored jeep.

“Pardon? A reader. Who doesn’t read if they know how? Who’s gonna willfully be a fool?”

We jounced over a pothole as we left the long, smooth driveway and hit the badly rutted “main” road outside the Bacon estate. Behind us, a wrought iron fence ambled shut. The gate man waved at Harold, who threw out