And to kill that noise about him posting fake pictures of what he looked like, we had begun talking live over Skype, so I was able to verify what he looked like at various times of the day. I’d seen him with his sleepy morning face on, I’d seen him at the end of his workday, and I’d seen him right before bedtime. His lips were thick and luscious, begging to cover my own when he talked. His five o’clock shadow gave his face character and sex appeal, and I always saw a smile in his eyes, even when he complained about being exhausted from work. A few times he’d hit me up with his shirt off, and the pecs on that man were nothing short of delicious looking. He looked like he could bench-press three hundred pounds without breaking a sweat. He was eye candy for sure.
He’d taken me on a virtual tour of his house, carrying around a Web camera and posting videos. It looked like a typical bachelor’s pad. From what I could see, things were simplistic, a little grimy, outdated, and in a bit of a disarray, just like you’d expect from a bachelor. The pictures he had hanging on the walls didn’t complement each other and looked randomly placed, as did his overall home decor. Everything looked mismatched and pieced together. I saw nothing that made me think that a woman lived there with him. His place could really use a woman’s touch.
Finally, I logged off, got in the shower and then in bed. I felt silly about letting my imagination run away with me, thinking, What if SeanMichael and I did end up together? Even as I slept, I thought about how it would be to be Mrs. SeanMichael Monroe.
Chapter 18
Dina
We’d not argued about my suspicions in nearly two months, but the tension in the house was apparent. Bertrand and I had been tiptoeing around each other, as if we were invisible to one another. I remembered how we used to kiss every morning and lay in bed for an extra two minutes or more, just holding each other, not wanting to pull away. Now he slept on his side of the bed, and I slept on mine, with enough room between us for Santa Claus to sleep comfortably. Our mornings started with silence, and our movements were careful and calculated so that we wouldn’t end up too close to each other at any given time. It was painfully sad, but I didn’t know what to do to make it go away.
There were some parts of my heart that wanted so badly to be loved by Bertrand again, but it all felt like a lie now. All that I’d believed him to be—honest, faithful, a man of integrity—had been washed away. Now I didn’t know who I was looking at. I just couldn’t act like those feelings and that pain didn’t exist. Bertrand did try a little to kiss me, but I found myself turning away, not able to block images of him kissing another woman on the mouth, on her breasts, and below her navel. I wanted to enjoy him sexually, but I couldn’t get past him sliding in and out of another woman’s body, then turning around and experiencing that same pleasure with me. As great a sex life as we had, with Bertrand satisfying me completely almost every time, it just wasn’t pleasurable anymore.
I remembered how he would often whisper, “I love you, Dina” while we were making love, and even afterward, when I lay in his arms, still overcome with ecstasy that had me shuddering and stuttering. “I love you,” he would say, and I believed that fool! It sounded so right, and it felt so good. Not just physically, but emotionally, it was divine. And then to think that all that he’d shared with me so passionately, he was giving away to other women too? I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hated my fiancé, but I couldn’t embrace him in the same way that I once had.
I prepared dinner with special thought tonight, because I needed to set a tone and atmosphere of calmness and peace, even if what I had to say wouldn’t be the most peaceful thing he’d heard. The meal was simple, just some grilled chicken with mixed vegetables, some freshly baked bread, and some wine. This would be nice if the conversation were to be romantic. I just didn’t want Bertrand to think I was acting out of anger.
He came in the door and looked surprised to have the aroma of a cooked meal hit his nostrils. It had been a while since I’d cared enough to cook a meal.
“Hey,” he mumbled.
“Hi.” I continued scuffling around the kitchen. “How was work?”
He shrugged. “It was okay.”
“I cooked dinner,” I announced.
“I see. What brought that on?”
“Thought we should sit down to dinner and talk.”
“Okay,” he said suspiciously.
“The food will be ready in about ten minutes or so.”
“All right. I’m going to go wash my hands and face, then.”
He disappeared down the hallway and into our bedroom. By the time he came back, the food had been on the table for fifteen minutes and had to be reheated in the microwave. The first few minutes of the meal were silent as I stared between his face and my plate.
“So what did you want to talk about?” he finally asked.
“Bertrand,” I began, then paused, as if I hadn’t rehearsed the words in my mind and even with my mouth several times over the past couple of weeks. “Babe, I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t.”
He looked at me, chewing his food methodically but not commenting, then turned his eyes back to his plate.
“I’ve tried to forget everything that’s happened and to go back to being how we were, but I can’t do it. It’s too painful, and I can barely look at you anymore.”
Bertrand nodded as he set his fork on the plate.
“I know that I really need to walk away from the situation, instead of growing more and more bitter every day, and I don’t feel like I can embrace you or love you given how I’m feeling right now.”
“I love you, Dina. We’re supposed to promise to be together for better or for worse,” he stated calmly.
“But we’re also supposed to be ready to forsake all others and give ourselves to each other only. You violated that. You broke our pending covenant when you did that, Bertrand.”
He nodded again, but I couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or simply in acknowledgment.
“And I don’t feel like I can become your wife and treat you like a wife should treat her husband with that rolling around in the back of my mind nearly every second of every day. Every time I lay beside you, every time I want to make love to you, every time I want to miss you, it’s in the way, and I can’t move beyond it.”
“You can’t, or you don’t want to?”
I paused to think about what he’d said before I got offended. “Maybe I don’t want to. It’s not fair to me to force me to share myself with you after you’ve damaged the relationship and me. It’s not fair to expect me to just accept your trash and swallow it, then say it was delicious and ask you for some more.”
Bertrand stared at me.
“You made a fool of me, Bertrand. You took advantage of my trust and made a fool of me. I can’t live another day like this.”
“I understand. I effed up. I really did.” He rose to his feet, leaving more than half his meal on his plate. “All I can say to you at this point is, I’m sorry, Dina. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for breaking your heart and for cheating on you. I’m sorry for making you feel like you can’t trust me. If I could take it all back, I would. There’s no way in the world I would be the same fool twice.” He shook his head, looking across the room and out the kitchen window. “I’m sorry, babe.”
He walked out of the kitchen and into the den, where he switched on the TV.
Now that I’d said all that, what was I going to do? Business at the shop had picked up some, but not enough for me to be able to move out and back into my own place. Nothing had really changed with my finances. Sure, Bertrand paid the bills, but they were all his bills. He’d not taken on mine, like I thought he would. I did get caught up on my bills, but it would be too easy to get behind again if I moved out. Even so, I’d already had the conversation, so now I was going to have to figure out my next step.
Chapter 19
Celeste
After clocking out, I headed to my car to get my purse out of the trunk so I could pick up a fe
w items to make dinner with. I hated that there were no lockers in the store for employees to keep their personal items. If it didn’t fit in the pockets of the smocks cashiers wore, it was at risk of being taken or riffled through. I’d learned the hard way that I couldn’t leave my purse around Equanto, especially if there was money in it. That would be like throwing money straight out the window on a windy day.
My heart dropped down in my shoes when I looked across the lot and saw that the trunk of my car was open. Fully. My breathing increased as I began to panic, already knowing what I would find—that my purse was gone. My tears were instant as I searched the contents of the trunk, wanting my purse to magically appear. I hadn’t buried it under anything, although there was a basket of laundry that had not yet made it to the Laundromat, a box of clothes and shoes that the boys had outgrown, which I’d been meaning to drop off at Goodwill, a spare tire, and other random items. Everything in the trunk looked to be untouched and in its normal disarray, except my purse was gone. Quickly I shuffled stuff around, but to no avail.
It was bad enough that there was about two hundred dollars in my purse, but it also contained my driver’s license, my and the kids’ Social Security cards, our birth certificates, their shot records, and every other document that was important to me and proved my existence here on earth. They were now gone from my possession.
“Lord Jesus!” I screamed into the air, smearing tears into my face, walking in a small circle, shooting my eyes back into the trunk every few seconds to make sure I hadn’t just overlooked my purse. Finally accepting the reality that I’d been jacked, I pulled my cell from my pocket and called the police, and while I waited for them to arrive, I called Equanto. Thankfully, I’d broken the rules by having my cell phone on my person during work hours, which was grounds for being written up.
“Somebody stole my purse,” I sobbed into the phone.
“Whatchu mean?”
“I came out the store, and somebody had picked the lock on the trunk and took my purse.”
“See? When stuff like that happens to me, you be thinking I’m making it up. Now you see what I’m talking about.” There was no compassion or sympathy in his voice, which angered me.
“I don’t want to hear that right now, E,” I yelled into the phone. “They took my whole purse. Not just my money, but all my IDs and stuff.”
“Where was you at? You probably went somewhere you ain’t had no business.”
“I’ve been at work all day,” I shrieked. “I’ll call you back. The police are here.”
I talked to the officers for about thirty minutes, completing a report and watching them circle the car and scan the lot like they were looking for clues, but they ultimately told me it wasn’t likely that anything would be recovered. Not bothering to call E back, I drove home in a cloud of depression, knowing that I was going to have to make some deals with the bill collectors and cross my fingers in hopes that the rental office lady would show me some mercy once I showed her the police report. There was no way I’d be able to pay my rent on time now. Then I still had to replace all our documents and whatnot. I prayed that by the time I got home, Equanto would have somewhere to go. I wasn’t up for dealing with his mess tonight.
As soon as I pulled into the parking lot, he came rushing out of the house, ready to jump in the car and go somewhere. I wanted him to leave, but not with the car. He walked up to the driver’s side and opened the door.
“Get out. I need to go somewhere,” he said, thrusting his hand forward for the keys.
“You can’t use the car,” I replied without hesitation, turning off the ignition.
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Because the police have to come and do the fingerprints on the back,” I said, making it up off the top of my head. They had told me in the store parking lot that it didn’t look like they could get a clean print from the car, because the lock had been picked with a tool, so it hadn’t been handled enough, but Equanto didn’t know that. His face froze like I had just tazed him, and at that point, I knew he was guilty.
“They was s’posed to do that when they first came,” he said, far less aggressively than he’d ordered me to get out of the car.
“They didn’t have the stuff with them, and I told them that I needed to get home to the kids, or else they were gonna be locked out the house, so they are supposed to meet me here in a few minutes.”
His eyes darted nervously to the entrance of the apartment complex. “A’ight. I’ll just catch the bus, then.”
I’d never seen Equanto back down and leave the house so fast, scared his ass was about to get locked up.
I sat in the car for another twenty minutes, completely immobilized, but I knew I couldn’t sit there forever, since the boys were in the house by themselves. The rest of the night was stressful, to say the least. I tried not to let my boys know when I was incredibly upset, but this time I couldn’t help it. When I came in the door, they rushed me, with their voices rattling off a series of complaints, from “Ma, we hungry” to “Can you check my homework?” to “Daddy said to tell you to wash our clothes, ’cause he didn’t have time to do it.”
“Stop!” I said before they got too far into their roll. “Stop for a minute and listen to me.” As if I had hit a button on a remote control, the boys stopped their blubbering and looked at me attentively. “I need some time to myself tonight. Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they answered in unison. They addressed me as “ma’am” only when they were in trouble or when they knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I was dead serious.
“Y’all know I love you, but right now I don’t want to answer no questions, I don’t want to check homework, and I don’t want to wash clothes, play video games, listen to you read, watch you do a dance, or hear y’all fighting.” I paused and concentrated my focus on each one of them, one at a time. “I have a really bad headache, and all I want right now is some peace and quiet, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, Linwood, you’re the oldest. What I need you to do is fix you and your brothers a ham and cheese sandwich, some chips, and a banana and pour y’all some juice. Make sure you use the paper plates, because I’m not washing dishes tonight. When y’all finish, put the plates in the trash and the cups in the sink. Then y’all can watch Nickelodeon until bedtime.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they again responded collectively.
“I’m going in my room, and I do not want to be bothered unless a stranger breaks the door down, the house is on fire, or one of you is bleeding. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And I’m leaving the door open to make sure y’all keep quiet,” I added, walking down the hall and to my bedroom. If I closed the door, they would start off being quiet but would eventually reach a noise level that sounded like a full-blown house party. I still ran that risk, but if I kept my bedroom door open, they’d be less likely to escalate.
What I wanted to do was go in the closet and start ripping Equanto’s stuff from the hangers, then have a Waiting to Exhale, burn-his-stuff-up moment. But I didn’t need to waste any energy on anything that wasn’t going to result in some level of resolution. It sure as hell would have made me feel better, though. Instead, I sat on the bed and prayed for a few minutes that God would help me get all my stuff back as quickly as possible, that He would move on the heart of the rent lady, and that He would calm my spirit down enough so that I wouldn’t kill my husband the next time I saw him.
Equanto wasn’t back by the time I left for work the next day, probably because I still needed time to cool down. The boys could tell that there was still tension in the air from the previous night, and acted accordingly, getting themselves ready for school. After seeing them off, I stopped by the rental office to do my begging, but there were too many people there for me to get a private moment. I’d have to come back later. As I drove myself to work, I prayed that God would give me the grace to make it through my day. I pushed my keys and cell in my smock
pocket and dragged myself inside the store.
“How are you doing this morning?” Some dude was sitting in the break room, dragging his finger around on an iPad, when I walked in to clock in for the day.
“Fine,” I answered without thought and not bothering to look up. I pushed my time card into the machine until I heard it stamp, stuck it back in the rack on the wall, then poured myself a cup of coffee to go with the doughnut sticks I had shoved in my smock pocket.
“How long is your shift today?”
Why was this man talking to me? “I get off at two,” I snapped unintentionally, too mentally distracted to pay him much mind.
“That’s not too bad,” he commented.
I didn’t respond, but stood silently, stirring sugar and powdered creamer into my paper cup.
“Are you all right? You seem like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
This time I did look up at him as I pushed a sigh through my nostrils. I saw sincerity in his eyes as he looked at me through a pair of black framed glasses. I had seen him around the store, mostly in the produce section, but had never been in close enough proximity to actually attempt a conversation.
“I’m sorry. I got a lot on my mind this morning that’s kinda got me in a bad mood, but that has nothing to do with you, and you don’t deserve that.”
“It’s all right. Life happens to us all, but we always live through it, right?”
“I guess we do,” I answered with a little chuckle.
“And one thing I’ve learned, no matter how bad things are, they could always be worse.”
That’s because he didn’t have to deal with a jackass of a spouse every day like I did. Well . . . I couldn’t say that, because I didn’t rightfully know if he did or not. Maybe he did, but I wouldn’t bet any money on it, since his ring finger was bare.
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