Homecoming Weekend

by Curtis Bunn

  “Well, I don’t know what we have. I’m really upset about this homecoming thing, James,” she said. “I feel like this all could have been avoided.”

  Jimmy took a deep breath. He understood her concern about him going to Norfolk alone, but he did not like it. More than anything, he believed it spoke to her belief that he would step outside of their marriage.

  “Monica, honey, I want you to really listen to me,” he said. His voice was calm and reassuring, almost as if he were trying to seduce her. “I love you. You are my wife. Nothing can break that. No doubt about it: you get on my nerves sometimes. And I guess I get on yours, too. But we’re married. It’s me and you, no one else. You’ve got to believe that. We should not have this kind of drama. Life is too short. Let’s live it in peace. But you’ve got to trust me.”

  Although he spoke calmly, Monica also detected a desperation in Jimmy’s voice, like he was giving her one last opportunity to believe in him. And that feeling cooled her like a Gatorade bath. She did not know, though, how to acquiesce after being so harsh.

  “Okay,” she said, and Jimmy thought his cell phone was breaking up.

  “Okay” was a word Monica hardly ever uttered. In fact, Jimmy could not recall a single instance where there was a contentious situation and he made a strong point that prompted her to say, “Okay.”

  “Excuse me,” he said to his wife.

  “Okay, James,” she said. “I do love you and I want to trust you. I just have to try harder.”

  Monica surprised Jimmy. He hoped she would come around, but he thought it would take time. Her essentially giving in gave him a euphoric feeling.

  “Baby, I’m really glad to hear you say that,” he said. “That means a lot to me. I don’t want you having anxieties about me. We’re supposed to be happy. I want you to enjoy our life together as much as I am.”

  “I do enjoy our life,” she said. “I just have to find a comfortable place with trust.”

  “I will do all I can to help you,” he said. “The big thing is that you want to let go of those issues. That’s where it all starts.”

  They went on to chat lightheartedly about Jimmy’s trip, her parents, and life in general. A call expected to become ugly turned out to be something that gave Jimmy hope that he and Monica would live more in harmony. But he had to do his part, too.

  And his part at that time meant resisting the aggressive old girlfriend, Regina. She texted him as he talked to Monica: “Let’s make it ten at the bar, okay?”

  That was fine for Jimmy. It gave him more time to build up his resistance to her. He did not recall much about their college relationship except that it consisted of frequent and intense sex. He used to say of Regina: “If this girl isn’t a nymphomaniac, then they don’t exist.” To which she replied, “Then you must be one, too, because you’re right here with me.”

  Jimmy lived a disciplined life after Regina, though. Entering the Army did not curb his sexual desires, but it did place order in his life. When he met Monica, they blossomed, in part, because her passion level was equal to his. And they thrived despite her obvious trust issues because of Jimmy’s patience and commitment to her.

  This was his first time away from home without Monica, and there was Regina, ready to pounce.

  When Jimmy got to the mezzanine level, Regina was already there, long legs crossed and extended away from the bar. They were glistening under the short, short dress. Her modest cleavage was exposed and she smelled like fresh daisies. She knew Jimmy’s weaknesses and she attacked all of them.

  He approached with a smile, but tentatively. She stood up to show that her body remained fit and firm after all the years. Jimmy shook his head. They hugged, and she pressed her body against his and held it there tightly for what seemed like a minute or two.

  Jimmy inhaled her perfume and closed his eyes, and her body felt so familiar, so good. Then he literally shook himself out of the daze he could feel coming over him.

  “Damn, girl, you still look great,” he said. “You actually look better than you did back in the day.”

  “I feel better, too—figuratively and literally,” Regina said, raising her eyebrows.

  “I bet you do,” Jimmy said.

  “I bet you will find out,” she snapped back.

  “Anyway, I’ve been drinking all day,” he said, looking over the bar.

  “Well, it’s time to extend it into the night,” she said. “And you haven’t had a drink with me.”

  He did not even bother to argue with her on that point; he knew she would never give in to him not drinking with her. So, he ordered two glasses of Pinot Noir.

  “So why did you move getting together back an hour?” Jimmy asked.

  “I had to talk to my husband for a while,” she said. “Good man, but paranoid. Thinks I’m down here going wild.”

  “Aren’t you?” Jimmy asked.

  “Not yet,” she said. “But now that you are here . . . ”

  “I’m not the one,” Jimmy said. “You’re married, I’m married. We had our day and it’s not today.”

  “Stop being a wet rag,” she said. “I’m not saying something has to happen between us. But don’t squash the idea of it. Let’s just have a good time and see where it takes us.”

  “Regina, I know where you want to take it,” Jimmy said. “To bed. But I can’t sleep with you.”

  “I understand,” she said, making Jimmy feel somewhat relieved. But she followed that up with: “But who said anything about going to sleep?”

  If he had any doubts about Regina’s plan, that comment confirmed it. He did his best to guide the conversation away from her objective. They talked about her life in Delaware and marriage and old friends. They touched on travel and eating right and how awesome homecoming was.

  But at eleven-fifteen, after three glasses of wine, Regina’s plans for the night were concrete.

  “I’m in room 803,” she said. “I actually have some wine in the room. Let’s go up there.”

  “Regina, I’m done drinking,” he said. “I’m going with Carter to the all-black party. Nothing good will come out of going to your room.”

  “You must be getting old or losing your memory,” she said. “Or your manhood.”

  Challenging Jimmy’s manhood was a route she expected to push him off of his stance. Didn’t happen.

  “I fought in Iraq against insurgents and the Taliban,” he said. “I traveled that desert praying a landmine would not blow up our truck. I lived under duress for more than a year in the Middle East, not knowing if I would ever make it back home . . . helped raise my little brother when my parents passed in four months apart. I put myself through college. You can say what you want, but you can’t challenge my manhood, Regina.”

  She looked at him for several seconds and smiled. “You have done a lot in your life,” she said. “I’m proud of you. You’re most definitely all man. I was trying to rile you up to get what I wanted. I’m sorry.”

  Jimmy was almost taken aback by her sensitivity and willingness to retreat. That was not her style. Maybe she has grown since their college days, he thought.

  They spent the next half hour laughing and reminiscing about college days. When Jimmy decided it was time to leave for the all-black party in Virginia Beach, he offered her a ride to the event. He was not sure where that notion came from, but he was feeling good—or, at least better—about Regina and could not see the harm.

  He sent Carter a text message about going to the party. But Carter was engaged in a heart-to-heart with Barbara that was tough because he was not sure what his true emotions were.

  “I need you to be honest with me,” Barbara said. “For the last five years you have told me you loved me and that we belonged together. I believed you and I felt the same way. I committed adultery only because I love you and I believed in us. And now I do something for us and you act like, well, like you’re not happy about it.”

  This was Carter’s moment to accomplish so much. He could be honest,
first and foremost. He could deliver Barbara the words that would offer her so much comfort. He could free himself of the burden he carried.

  “I am not happy or happy about it, Barbara,” Carter said. “I just wish we had talked about it before you made such a big move. If you say you’re moving there for me, then I should have been in the thought process. You’re talking about not only changing your life, but changing mine, too. To move all the way across the country, to pull your kids out of school and away from their father . . . to be with me? That’s a lot. That’s all I’m saying. That’s a burden I have to carry, and I wasn’t looking to carry it. Or at least I would have liked to see if I could get prepared to carry it.”

  Barbara did not say anything, so Carter continued.

  “I want you to understand this—I love you. There is no doubt about that,” he said. “In the last five years, we have loved so hard over one weekend that it would last me an entire year. I wanted to see you more often, but I was all right because I knew my place in your life. I knew what your life consisted of and we shared enough in our time to hold me. That’s saying a whole lot. I hope you don’t take that lightly.

  “So, now you’re coming to New York to live. New job, new city. Big job in the biggest city. And you told me you’re doing it for me, so we could be together. You don’t think that’s a lot for me to handle? No notice. No heads-up. Just ‘SURPRISE!! I’m moving to New York to be with you.’ I can say that overall I’m glad I’ll be able to see you more. I’m sorry about your marriage. As much as I love you and loved being with you, I always felt bad for how we were together. I hate that I disrespected that man in that way.”

  “And that’s why I did this, Carter,” Barbara jumped in. “I told you I was so sick with myself. I have prayed and prayed for forgiveness. But it just isn’t right to keep praying every year, but then come back and do the same thing the next year. I had to make a tough decision. A gut-wrenching decision. My kids love their father. He loves them.”

  Carter could not hold back a concern about all this that ate at him.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but how could you take them all the way across the country away from their father?” he said. “As much as you love me, those kids have to come first. You can’t—well, to me, you shouldn’t—just uproot them for your benefit.

  “I read years and years ago when Oprah’s friend, Gail, got a divorce, she turned down a job making five million a year from Oprah in Chicago because she didn’t want to take her kids away from their father. I thought that was admirable. It was unselfish. She had the kids’ best interest at heart and turned down money most people never would have.”

  “So, what are you saying, Carter? That I’m selfish?” Barbara responded. She was not happy. She, indeed, was offended.

  “You might want to know the facts before you start calling me names,” she went on. “That’s how you view me: as some woman so selfish she’d move her kids away from their father and friends to be with a man? To be with you? How arrogant of you. You must really think a lot of yourself.”

  “Don’t get upset,” Carter said. “Don’t get offended. What do you expect me to think? You haven’t told me shit. All—”

  “Don’t curse at me, Carter,” she interjected. “I don’t care how mad you get, don’t get disrespectful. You know I don’t like that.”

  “I’m not trying to disrespect you,” he said. “I’m just making a point. Please don’t play the victim role, like you’re being attacked. You’ve told—”

  “So you’re not going to apologize?”

  “I’m sorry, Barbara. I wasn’t trying to disrespect you,” he said. “What I’m saying is all you have told me is that you’re moving to New York and that being with me was a part of the reason. What am I supposed to get out of that? That you did it for the kids? Please.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “So you do think I’m selfish. I detest selfishness in people and no one has ever said or even intimated that I am selfish. But—”

  “Oh, wait a minute, Barbara,” Carter said, interrupting her. “Now, listen, I don’t want to insult you. But no one could call you selfish because you probably haven’t told anyone about what you’ve been doing with me for the last five years. If a married woman coming to homecoming once a year to have sex with her old boyfriend isn’t selfish, then what is? You surely weren’t doing it for your kids? Who, exactly, were you doing it for if it wasn’t for you?”

  Barbara was seething, so much so that tears rolled down her face. She was embarrassed and insulted—plain hurt.

  “I did it for my sanity,” she said calmly, wiping her face. “I married a good man, but a man who was not for me, a man who did not give me any joy. I know that life is short and we must find the joy in it. To be in a joyless situation was empty and awful. And I needed some small amount of joy to feel better about myself, so I could be the mother to my children that I needed to be and, believe it or not, a better wife.

  “I found that joy over two days with you. It was enough to sustain me, to bring me back to a place where I could function with some clarity and feeling something good in my heart. I know that’s a conflict because I was so disappointed in myself every time; I knew I was doing wrong based on my marital commitment. There is no way around that. But I was not just out here being a whore. There were times when I really felt depressed and on the edge of insanity, and in those times, I was not what I needed to be to my kids.

  “This probably doesn’t make sense to you or wouldn’t to anyone else. You’d have to go through what I have to understand. So, I’m mad that you think I’m selfish, but I see how you could see that. I don’t see it that way. I see me as someone trying to get through life. And here’s the important part: I never slept with anyone else. Only with you, once a year during homecoming weekend. I swear.

  “And I’m not saying you should be honored or anything. I’m just saying that I chose you for two reasons: I love you and you love me. We were young when we started, but what we had was real. And I know it was real because it has stayed with me all these years. But anyway . . . ”

  Carter was not sure what to do or say. Their initial plan, before she dropped the news on him, was for them to go to the all-black party, enjoy seeing old classmates and then spend the night together, as always. But neither of them was feeling particularly romantic after such a heavy conversation.

  “So, what’s the plan for the rest of the night?” he asked.

  “I don’t think I’m up to the party,” she said. “I think I’ll call Donna and we’ll get something to eat. Or maybe I’ll order room service and watch a movie. I’m kinda drained right now.”

  “I’m sorry, Barbara,” Carter said. “I really am. I definitely don’t want to cause you any drama. But I knew you wanted me to be honest with you. And I needed to be honest with you and myself.”

  “Okay,” was all she said to that, a clear indication to Carter that she wasn’t feeling him.

  “Okay,” Carter said. “Well, I’ll let you go. Wait, weren’t we supposed to go to the parade in the morning?”

  “Well, we were supposed to go to the party tonight, too, Carter,” she said. “In my mind, we were supposed to be happy and enjoying each other and talking about how wonderful things will be in New York for both of us. But I guess I can’t get everything I want, right? I’ll just settle for a nice dinner right now. I can manage that without anyone spoiling it.”

  Carter was troubled by Barbara’s state. He had never heard her in distress about him. They always existed in harmony, even as young students on a campus of soap opera drama.

  But he did not—or was not willing—to do or say anything to help her feel better.

  “Okay, well, have a great dinner,” he said.

  Barbara did not respond. She pushed a button to end the phone call.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DO WHAT YOU KNOW IS RIGHT

  Venita, Jesse and Don

  venita tossed around the idea of seeing her ex-boyfriend,
Charles, for dinner and drinks. She wanted to see him, to see how he looked, how he was doing, how life had been for him. It could do no harm, she thought. She would not go to bed with him, even though her body might say something entirely different.

  But Venita was unlike most people. She was honest with herself. She knew that if she spent any amount of time with Charles and the chemistry they had resurfaced, she would be weak against his advances.

  She also knew Charles had been divorced a few years and was among the biggest flirts she had ever experienced. It was the reason they did not make it in college. He was sensational in bed, but he liked to be in as many beds of as many women as possible. For a while, being young and whipped was fine. As long as she did not know of Charles’ escapades, she was content. The physical feeling he gave her was so good that she abandoned all logic.

  As a mature woman of the world, she knew she needed more in a mate. And she knew herself. Given the right time and place, she was subject to have one more go-round with Charles, not out of love, but out of that need for vigorous, intense sex that her husband, a fine man, was not providing.

  When she thought of her husband back at home, though, she let go the idea of putting herself in a vulnerable position with Charles. She was not naïve; she knew her being away meant her husband had time to do his thing, if he so chose.

  But she decided she should conduct herself as she would rather her husband would when she was away. And so, although heavily tempted, she called her niece, Diamond, instead. And although only twenty, she gave her aunt some mature advice when Venita told her of what she had considered.

  “Don’t do it, auntie,” she said.

  And that was that. Diamond and Venita went to California Pizza Kitchen at MacArthur Mall downtown. They ate at the counter, catching up on family news, which always was interesting.

  After nearly an hour of talking about Uncle Derwin’s death; cousin Paul’s third wife in four years, who is a closet alcoholic; and how Aunt Macy had bought a stolen car from her brother, Venita decided to move on.