Love in Play

by Zuri Day

  Dominique walked over and sat on the bed. She’d never thought much about having another child but now recalled one seemingly innocuous comment when Jake had mentioned the joy brought by little girls. When she’d pressed and asked if he wanted children, Jake had shaken his head. “Too risky,” he’d said cryptically. “I’d never want to take the chance of having my child grow up without me.” Dominique didn’t realize that she was crying until a tear plopped on her arm and rolled down her wrist.

  “Nikki, you in here?” Faith eased the door open and seeing her sister sitting on the bed, hurriedly closed the door and walked over. Dominique tried to quickly wipe away tears, but Faith had seen them and knew their cause. She sat down on the bed. “He still hasn’t called?”

  Dominique shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Nikki.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Do you think you should try and call him again?”

  “I think two days of unreturned phone calls is a loud enough message.”

  Faith had no answer for this comeback, and remained silent.

  Dominique lay down on Alexis’s bed.

  “I’ll go get your cell phone, bring it up in case he calls.” Faith reached for the colorful afghan at the end of the bed and pulled it up over her sister. “The kids are all crashing on air mattresses downstairs. You can sleep in here tonight.”

  An hour after Faith had brought Dominique’s phone to her, it rang. Her heart beat an erratic rhythm as she eyed the caller ID. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Dominique.” Jake’s voice was heavy.

  Dominique’s heart jumped to her throat. “How’s Harold?”

  Long pause. “He had a bad day yesterday, some kind of infection. He’s getting antibiotics intravenously. The doctors are cautiously optimistic but it’s still an uphill battle.”

  Dominique released the breath she’d been holding. “How are you, baby?”

  “To tell you the truth, I’ve been better.”

  Dominique sat up against the wall and hugged her niece’s large, stuffed animal to her, wishing she could hug Jake instead. “You want to talk?”

  Longer pause.

  For a while, Dominique wondered if he’d hung up. But she remained silent.

  “This situation ... the waiting, the hospital smell, the nurses ... it brings it all back ... when my dad died.”

  More silence.

  Is he crying? So many thoughts ran through Dominique’s mind, but she voiced none of them. What should she say? Don’t worry? Keep the faith? Everything sounded so cliché and useless.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him, Nick ...”

  “Then let’s stay positive,” Dominique blurted before she could stop herself. “Keep praying that he’ll be okay.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they told me when I was twelve years old, to keep praying. I wore my knees out praying that my father would make it. That he’d open his eyes just one more time. It’s my biggest fear, Dominique. That like my dad, I won’t see my fifty-fifth birthday. I think that underneath it all it’s why I never had kids. I never want to put a child through what I went through.”

  Again Dominique felt at a loss for words. Everything she could think of to utter could be thrown back in her face. Still, she had to try. “Jake,” she said softly, “you’ve said yourself that the heart problems in your family are due largely to diet and lack of exercise. Baby, you eat right and are in great shape. There is nothing to say that you won’t live a long, healthy life.”

  “And there is nothing saying I will.”

  “Tomorrow’s not promised to any of us.” After a lengthy silence, Dominique changed the subject. “Justin has asked about you. He wants to know when you’re coming home. So does his mom,” she finished in a whisper.

  “See, that’s just it, Nick. Already Justin has grown attached to me, and if something ever happened ...”

  “Please, baby. Please don’t think this way. Whatever is in our future, let’s face it together.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  Dominique thought her own heart had stopped. “What does that mean?”

  Again, silence.

  “Jake?” Dominique felt as if the moment were surreal, that she was observing herself in an unfolding drama. Surely what sounded like was happening couldn’t be happening.

  “I love you, Dominique. And I love Justin. I don’t want to hurt y’all.”

  “Then don’t!”

  “But can’t you see, baby? The longer we hang out, the harder it will be if something happens.”

  “That’s a chance I’m willing to take!” This is nonsense! She wanted to scream. This is crazy!

  “I’m going to stay here a while, make sure my brother pulls all the way through. In this time, I think that maybe you ought to think about a life without me in it.”

  Dominique was stunned, floored. She felt like a Mike Tyson left hook had come from nowhere and laid her smoothly out.

  “Merry Christmas, Nick. I love you.”

  Ten minutes after he’d said good-bye, Dominique was still holding the phone, staring at the wall, dumbfounded. This Christmas wasn’t merry at all.

  51

  Somehow, Dominique made it through the night without pulling out her hair. For Justin’s sake, she knew she had to keep it together. Faith was a big help. She tried to get Dominique to look at the bright side.

  “He’s going through a lot right now,” Faith suggested. “And probably saying things that he doesn’t mean.”

  “But what if he does mean them?” Dominique countered. “What if he decides that he doesn’t want a relationship after all?”

  “Then we’ll do what we have to,” she finally answered. “If I can lose a child and come back, you can survive this.”

  “Thank God we didn’t tell Justin that we were a couple. He’ll be devastated enough as it is.”

  When Dominique left the next morning, she let Justin stay with Faith. He’d noticed how quiet she was last night, when she’d finally rejoined the family downstairs. When he’d asked her what was wrong, she’d been honest. “I miss Jake, and I’m worried about his brother.” They were going to San Diego and returning on New Year’s Eve. Dominique hoped that she would have it together by then.

  Today, the day after Christmas, Dominique sat in the otherwise empty offices of Capricious magazine. She’d returned to the one thing that had been the constant in her life the last ten years besides her son—work. The issue they’d been working on had been put to bed before the holidays so Dominique plunged herself into the summer issue that would feature her story. “My story,” she grumbled, as she pored over pictures of possible locations for her photo shoot. At the moment, Dominique couldn’t imagine anybody being interested in her sad tale.

  Two hours later Dominique stopped and stretched her back, now feeling the pain of being humped over a viewing table for two hours. She’d gone to the photo gallery, pulled some of the shots rejected from past publications, and gone through them to see if there was a gem she’d missed. She also realized that for the first time since Jake had wished her Merry Christmas, she actually had an appetite. She walked to her desk, pulled out a half dozen takeout menus and, after flipping through them quickly, reached for her phone.

  “Yes, I’d like a double cheeseburger with everything on it,” she said, after the young girl answered the phone and took her phone number, which pulled up the company’s address. “An order of onion rings and an order of fries.” Dominique waited as the girl pushed buttons. “Yes, a strawberry shake. No, large.” She hung up the phone and felt a twinge of guilt at what she knew was emotional eating. The bad feeling deepened when she thought of Harold and the fact that too many meals like this were partly why he was lying in a hospital. But Dominique was hurting and, right now, a double cheese and starchy potatoes sounded like the perfect antidote. She shook off the guilt and refused to feel bad. I’ll eat a salad tomorrow.

  With food on its way, Dominique reached for another batch of pi
ctures. When her phone rang, she thought about not answering it, but it was probably her mother, sister, or son, so she reached for her phone. She looked at the caller ID and was a bit surprised to see an unknown number. She quickly silenced the ringer and put the phone down. It’s a shame they have telemarketers working through the holiday. True, she was at work also, but it was her choice. She returned to the stack of pictures, paying particular attention to a shoot that had been performed in Griffith Park. A bike trail laden with greenery and a bridge across a stream of water caught her eye. She could see herself, decked to the nines—the complexity of fashion set against the simplistic backdrop of nature. Fabulous.

  Then another thought came before she could stop it. Of the last time she’d taken in trees, wild flowers, and boulders stacked against a stark, blue sky. It was when she and Jake had taken a drive down a winding road near the ocean in Palos Verdes and later stopped at Wayfarers Chapel, a building made of mostly glass. With hands entwined, they’d taken in the beauty of the well-tended garden and stopped for a passionate kiss between the irises and azaleas. Dominique dropped the pictures and leaned back in her red leather chair. This evoked another memory: Jake and the passionate love they’d made. She leaped from the chair as if on fire, walked quickly to the minifridge and retrieved a cold bottle of sparkling water. She had been a faucet of dripping tears for most of the previous evening. I’m done crying, she told herself. I can do this.

  But the truth of the matter was she was tired of doing this: being strong, starting over, surviving heartbreaks.

  Her message indicator beeped.

  The unknown caller left a message?

  Dominique crossed the room and picked up her phone. Walking to the window, she tapped the screen to retrieve the message and after the automated voice informed her that she had one new message, she was all ears.

  “Hey, Dominique, this is Cynthia, Johnny’s wife. We, uh, we talked to Jake and heard what happened. We’re thinking about you and wondering how you’re doing. Johnny wants to talk to you. Give us a call, sis. We love you.”

  What happened? What had they heard? Dominique had barely absorbed the shock of this phone call when the downstairs buzzer sounded. Dominique’s appetite was gone. She went downstairs, paid the delivery guy, and walked enough food to feed three people back to her office. She walked over to the table, pushed aside a stack of photos, and set down the aluminum container designed to keep her delivery piping hot. She pulled out the burger and fries. The smell of ground round and sautéed onions wafted up to her nostrils. She absentmindedly reached for a fry and chewed on it as she walked back to the window.

  Cynthia called. Johnny wants to talk to me. Jake’s family is thinking about me. But what about Jake?

  Dominique tossed the half-eaten fry in the trash and walked purposefully to the phone on her desk. Before giving herself time to think, she scrolled to the 205 area code and hit redial. At the sound of Johnny’s voice, her heart clenched. He sounded so much like Jake.

  “Hi Johnny, it’s Dominique.”

  “Hey, sis.”

  “How’s Harold?

  “He’s doing a little better,” Jake said, hope evident in his voice. “If things keep going the way they are, they’ll change his status from critical to serious in the next few days.”

  “That’s great, Jake. I mean ... Johnny. Sorry.”

  “That’s all right, Dominique. Look here, Jake told me that he’d ... you know ... put the brakes on y’all and what not.”

  That’s what he’s doing? Letting me down easy ?

  “I watched y’all at Thanksgiving and know you’ve got feelings for him. How are you doing, Dominique?”

  “That’s a good question,” Dominique answered, sinking into her red leather chair. “Because evidently he’s told y’all more than he’s told me.” Dominique took a breath to quell her growing anger. “I just don’t get it, Johnny. One minute we’re having the best time ever and the next minute he’s ‘putting on the brakes’ as you say. I understand this is a stressful time but usually that’s when people want those they love close to them.”

  “Trust me, he loves you.”

  “Oh really? I can’t tell.”

  “That’s why I had Cynthia call you, Dominique.”

  “I mean, his reasoning is totally irrational! He says that because heart disease runs in your family he doesn’t want to get any closer to me and Justin. Does that make sense to you?”

  “It does ... but only because I know him, and know what he’s been through.” Johnny waited, and when Dominique remained silent, he went on. “Jake’s a big dude; he gets your attention when he walks into a room. That’s why he’s able to hide the little boy that is still there, just under the surface. Jake has had to deal with a lot in his lifetime, a lot of heartache, a lot of death. Jake took Dad’s death harder than any of us,” Johnny went on, his voice soft, reflective. “He worshipped the ground the old man walked on and when he left ... it’s like a part of Jake went with him. Like I said, he’s a big dude but underneath all that muscle and bravado is a great big, soft heart.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Dominique said, her voice almost a whisper as she remembered Jake’s sensitivity toward both her and her son. “But what does it matter if he wants to keep it hidden behind fear?” As she said this, she realized how Jake must have felt when she kept pushing him away because she was afraid. “I can’t say that I can relate to what he’s feeling because I can’t. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Give him time, sis,” Johnny answered immediately. “He’s pushing you away, but that’s not what he wants.”

  “It hurts, Johnny.” Dominique paused, swallowed, aware of the gravity of her next words. “Maybe it’s best that I ... give him some room.”

  “I understand,” Johnny responded. “But there are two things that I need to tell you, to help you understand what Jake is going through right now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We lost Daddy around this same time, just before Christmas. And when he had his heart attack ... Jake is the one who found him.”

  52

  It was the second day of January and Jake was still in Alabama. He’d spent New Year’s Eve at Harold’s bedside, happy that they’d finally upgraded his condition from critical to serious, and that they’d moved him out of the ICU. He’d been staying at Harold and Susie’s house, but on New Year’s Day he’d gone over to Miss Bernie’s for the prerequisite serving of greens and black-eyed peas—good luck for the New Year. And today, when he’d wanted to do nothing more than sit in his mother’s guest room and let the TV watch him (since he’d stared at it off and on for three days and couldn’t put two sentences together about what he’d watched), he sat in Harold and Susie’s living room with Johnny, Cynthia, Mike, and Lillian, who were busy trash-talking in a high-spirited game of bid whist. His mother had insisted that he get out of her house. Jake thought it was because she was tired of seeing him mope around. But his brothers were in on the real reason. Shortly after the card game ended, the women decided to go shopping while Johnny and Mike grabbed beers before joining Jake in the living room.

  “You want one?” Mike asked. Jake shook his head and Mike sat down.

  For a moment the brothers were silent, staring at a TV on mute.

  Johnny set down his beer and leaned forward with his hands on his knees, eyeing his brother intently. “You call her yet?”

  Jake thought about feigning ignorance but that idea was quickly doused. His twin had known everything about him since they’d been born. They could read each other’s thoughts and finish each other’s sentences. “No,” he finally replied.

  “Why not?” Mike asked, exasperation showing in his voice. Clearly, he was not as patient as his younger brother.

  “It’s better this way.” Jake responded.

  Johnny pressed. “Better for whom?”

  Belatedly Jake realized that, since it was obvious he was in for a grilling, an ice-cold beer may have been a goo
d choice after all. Then again, he reasoned, having a clear head may be the best bet. He sat back and said nothing. He figured they’d tire of talking to a wall and then leave him alone.

  “I spoke to her,” said Johnny.

  The wall talked. “You what?”

  “Cynthia suggested it, bro, and she was right. We’d both seen how she looked at you when she was here for Thanksgiving; all the love that sistah has for you, man. We were concerned about her and knowing you like I do, I couldn’t be sure that you’d been in contact.” Johnny went on despite the frown on Jake’s face. “She’s family, Jake. And we wanted her to know that we were thinking about her.”

  Even though he didn’t like his brother all up in his business, Jake’s anger dissipated behind Johnny’s words. He sat back and let what his brother said sink in. It was true. From the time Dominique first stepped foot in his mother’s house, she seemed part of the family. Everyone had told him how much they enjoyed her and shortly after returning from this vacation, his sisters-in-law had called him to say they’d received the latest issue of Capricious along with a complimentary, one-year subscription. As if to underscore her presence in their lives, he glanced down and saw Capricious magazines on the coffee table’s bottom ledge, wedged between Essence and Time.

  “How was she?” Jake finally asked.

  “Beside herself,” was Johnny’s quick reply. “Confused, angry, trying to understand why you’re shutting her out when all she wants to do is support you in your hour of need.”

  The anger came back. Yes, this feels good. This helps me feel better about the shitty way I’ve been treating the love of my life. “It wasn’t your place, dude.”

  Johnny shrugged. “I made it my place.”

  “What goes on between me and Nick is none of your business!” Jake bellowed, before standing up and dramatically walking out of the room.