by Candice Dow
I warned her, “Be careful girl. Don’t get any makeup on your dress.”
Courtney batted her lashes, obviously proud that she could glue them on as well. “Trust me. I won’t.”
Simultaneously, we sang, “Damn chica, you look good.”
After hanging around someone for fourteen years, it’s second nature to speak the same words together. We laughed.
“You look real bronze,” I commented.
“It’s this Neutrogena Sunless Tanning.”
Like galloping horses, we strutted across my hardwood floors. “I guess you made Mark stay home.”
“I told him he probably wouldn’t enjoy himself.”
We laughed. “You are no damn good.”
She tossed my clutter around. “When are you ever going to clean this messy room?”
“When I marry Dr. Evans and stop practicing law.”
Courtney plopped down on my bed without a response. She kicked her heels up on the wicker trunk at the foot of my bed pretending to admire her reflection. Then, as if she could no longer restrain her thoughts, she jumped up and walked into the bathroom. She stood beside me. Ignoring her inquisitive eyes, I patted my lips together and used my pinky to fix a makeup mistake.
“Taylor, I hope you haven’t filled your mind with fantasies of hooking up with Scooter.”
Attempting to minimize my obvious anticipation, I chuckled carelessly. “No girl, I’m not stupid.”
She folded her chiseled arms, “Yeah, but I know you did your research,” she said.
She knew me all too well. From preliminary research, he was no one’s daddy or husband. He was in his third year of residency at Yale Medical Center. The big question was, is he still single? And not Courtney’s interpretation of single.
“Look, I’m taking all numbers tonight. I’m not tripping about Scooter.”
I shrugged my shoulders and flicked my fingers through my hair. Despite my show of aloofness, she continued, “You still feel like there’s unfinished business, right?”
I sighed and exited the bathroom. “Not really.”
She followed, as I headed into my walk-in closet to get my purse. “Whatever, Taylor. You need to stop faking. Remember I was the one Scooter cried to when you left him. Remember I was the one you cried to when he got over your ass. If you remember, you two never told each other how you felt.”
As to confirm the answer to what was supposed to be a question, she proclaimed, “There is unfinished business.”
She stood in the doorway with her hand on her hip. I returned the gesture. Face to face, she wanted me to confess. Instead, I brushed past her. “Girl, I’m not trippin’.”
As she compiled her case, I checked all the electrical appliances. I turned the light off in the bathroom. “So, how are we going to close this chapter of your life tonight?”
I giggled. “Girl, whatever, we’re going to have a good time.”
I headed for the stairs. She followed and made her closing argument. “All right chica, don’t say I didn’t try to help you when you get there and loose your cool.”
I giggled again. This time because I knew she was probably more afraid of me loosing my cool than me. For her sake, I reminded her that I would not forget the ground rules we set in tenth grade. Before we walked out the door, I smiled at her and said, “Rule number one: Always be cool.”
As if I’d lifted my foot from her chest, she sighed and together we said, “Rule number two: If you think you’ve lost your cool, refer back to rule number one.”
She bumped her side against mine. “All right chica, all eyes are on you.”
I kidded. “Lights, cameras, action.”
If you enjoyed A HIRE LOVE,
don’t miss Grace Octavia’s
HIS FIRST WIFE
Available in trade paperback in October, 2008
wherever books are sold!
FOOLISH
October 26, 2007
It was 5:35 in the morning. I was doing 107 miles per hour on the highway, pushing the gas pedal down so far with my foot that my already swollen toes were beginning to burn. It was dark, so dark that the only way I knew that I wasn’t in bed with my eyes closed was the baby inside of me kicking nervously at my belly button and the slither of light that the headlights managed to cast on the road in front of me.
I-85 South was eerily silent this time of night. I knew that. I’d been in my car, making this same drive, once before. I kept wiping hot tears from my eyes so I could see out of the window. I should’ve been looking for police, other cars on the road, a deer, a stray dog that had managed to find its way to the highway in the dewy hours of the morning, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t see anything but where I was going, feel anything but what I didn’t want to feel, think anything but what had gotten me out of my bed in the first place. My husband.
Jamison hadn’t come home. I sat in the formal dining room and ate dinner by myself as I tried not to look at the clock. Tried not to notice that the tall taper candles had melted to shapeless clumps in front me. Knowing the time would only make me call. And calling didn’t show trust. We’d talked about trust. Jamison said I needed to trust him more. Be patient. Understanding. All of the things we’d vowed to be on our wedding day, he reminded me. My pregnancy had made me emotional, he said. And I was adding things up and accusing him of things he hadn’t done, thoughts he hadn’t thought. But I was no fool. I knew what I knew.
Jamison’s patterns had changed consistently over the past few months. And while he kept begging for me to be more trusting and understanding, my self-control was growing thin. The shapeless clumps on the table in front of me resembled my heart—bent out of shape with hot wax in the center, ready to spill out and burn the surface. Jamison had never stayed out this late. And with a baby on the way? I was hot with anger. Resentful. I was ready to spill out, to spin out of control, but I held it in.
I helped our maid, Isabella, clear the table, told her she was excused for the night. Then I moved to the bedroom, and while I still hadn’t peeked at the clock, the credits at the end of the recorded edition of the ten o’clock news proved that any place my husband could be…should be…was closed. I wanted to believe I was being emotional, but that would’ve been easier if I didn’t know what I knew. Maybe he’d been in an accident. Maybe he was at a hospital. Yeah…but maybe he wasn’t.
I laid in bed for a couple of hours; my thoughts were swelling my mind, as round as my pregnant stomach. I knew what was going on. I knew exactly where he was. The only question was, what was I going to do?
Then I was in my car. My white flip flops and cell phone tossed in the passenger seat. My purse left somewhere in the house. My son inside of my stomach, tossing and kicking. It was like a dream, the way everything was happening. The mile markers, exit signs, trees along the sides of my car looked blurry and almost unreal through my glazed eyes. The heat was rising. My emotions were driving me down that highway, not my mind. My mind said I was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with my first child. I didn’t need the drama, the stress. I needed to be in bed.
But my emotions—my heart—were running hot, like the engine in my car. I was angry and sad at the same time. Sometimes just angry though. I’d see Jamison in my mind and fill up my insides with the kind of anger that makes you shake and feel like you’re about to vomit. And then, right when I was about to explode, I’d see him again in my mind, in another way, feel betrayed, and sadness would sneak in. Paralyzing sadness, so consuming that it felt like everything was dead and the only thing I could do was cry to mourn the loss. I wanted to fight someone. Get to where he was and kick in the door so he could see me. Finally see me and see what this was doing to us. To our marriage.
I didn’t have an address, but I knew exactly where she lived. My friend Marcy and I followed Jamison there one night when he was supposed to be going to a fraternity function at a local hotel. But we’d already suspected something was going on, called the hotel, and learned that there was nothing scheduled. Th
at night, six months ago, before he left, I gave him a chance to come clean. I asked if I could go.
“No one else will have their wives there; it’s just frat,” he said, using the same excuse he’d been using for three weeks.
He slid on his jacket, kissed me on the cheek and walked out the front door. I picked up my purse and ran out the back where Marcy was waiting in a car we’d rented just for the circumstance. When Jamison finally stopped his truck, we found ourselves sitting in front of a house I knew I’d never forget. The red bricks lining the walkway, the yellow geraniums around a bush in the middle of the lawn, the outdated lace curtains in the window. It looked so small, half the size of our Tudor in Cascade where the little house might envy a backyard cabana. It was dark and seemed empty until Jamison climbed out the bright red “near midlife crisis” truck he’d bought on his thirtieth birthday. Then, the living room light came on, my husband walked in, and through the lace I watched as he hugged her and was led farther away from me. I fell like a baby into my best friend’s arms. What was I to do?
I promised myself I would never forget that house. So there was no need to look at the address. I knew every turn that had brought me there. I just couldn’t figure out why.
Now, here I was nearly half a year later, dressed in a silk vanilla nightgown at five in the morning, making the same trip, but with a different agenda. I knew why and where, and something in me said it was time to act.
I saw that red truck parked in the driveway when I turned onto the street. It looked so bold there. Like it belonged. Like nothing was a secret. They were the perfect family. There was no wife at home, no child on the way; our love, our love affair was the second life he was living. She was his wife. I was just the woman he was sleeping with. Sad tears sat in my eyes, my anger refusing to let them roll down my cheeks. Every curse I knew was coming from my mouth as I held the steering wheel tighter and tighter, the closer I got. My best friend, the person I thought knew me better than anyone else in the world, had turned his back on me for another woman.
I pulled my car into the driveway behind Jamison’s and turned off the ignition. The sudden silence hit me like the first touch of cold beach water on virgin feet. Without the hum of the engine, I realized I was alone. I’d gotten myself all the way there, but I didn’t know what I was going to do. I knew I had to act, but what was I going to do? Burn the house down or ring the door bell and sell them cookies? And if she came to the door, what was I going to say? Ask another woman if I could see my husband? Curse her out? Scream? Cry? Should I hit her? I hadn’t hit anyone in my life. What if Jamison answered the door? What if he was mad and told me to leave? If he said it was over?
The baby kicked again, but lightly, as if he were nudging me on to go and get his father out of that house, away from that woman. Coreen Carter was her name. Marcy found it on a piece of mail she’d snatched from the mailbox when we followed Jamison. It was a stupid name, but Coreen Carter had my husband inside of her house.
The anger let go at that thought and the tears began to fall again. What was I doing? What was happening with my life? I felt like I was being torn inside out. Only my baby was the glue that was keeping me together. I felt so alone in that car.
I pulled my cell phone out of the seat beside me and called Marcy. She picked up her phone on the first ring. She was an RN and her husband was an ER doctor, so she was a light sleeper.
“I guess little Jamison is about to make his arrival?” she assumed cheerfully, but I couldn’t answer. I was sobbing now. Sadness was coming from deep inside and I was sure the only sound I could make was a scream.
“Kerry?” she called. “You OK? Where are you?”
“Here?” I managed. There was no need for me to say where exactly. She knew.
“It’s six in the…He didn’t come home?”
“No.”
“Kerry, why didn’t you call me? You don’t need to do that right now. Not in your condition.”
“I just want this to stop,” I said sorrowfully.
“I understand, but right now just isn’t the time. You have other things to take care of.” She paused. “I know I sound crazy to you, but I just don’t want anything to happen to you or the baby. You understand that, right?”
“Yes,” I said, with my voice cracking. “But I’m just tired of this crap. I mean, what the hell, Marcy? Why? Why is Jamison here with this woman?”
“I don’t know that. I can’t answer that. Only Jamison can.”
“Exactly.” I felt a twist of anger toss in my gut. Again I went from feeling sorry for myself to being angry that I was there in the first place. Jamison was my husband and he was cheating on me and I wasn’t going to just sit in a car and let it go on. I slid my flip flops on and opened the car door.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t. But, again, my emotions were driving. I was spilling out like that hot wax and before I knew it, I was charging up the walkway.
“Just don’t do anything foolish,” Marcy said before I hung up on her. Later, I’d think about how crazy that sounded. How could I possibly do anything more foolish than what was already being done to me?
The little cracked doorbell seemed to ring before I even pressed it. It chimed loud and confident like it wasn’t past six A.M. and the sun hadn’t already began to rise behind me. It was quiet. The only noise I heard was my heart pounding, shaking so wildly inside me that I couldn’t stand still. I waited for another five seconds that felt like hours. My husband on one side of the door and me on the other. Our wedding bands, and my large belly, the only signs we were connected. I looked at his truck again. It was the only piece of Jamison I could see from where I was, and my heart sank a bit further. The shine of the paint, the gloss on the wheels, it looked so happy, so free, so smug, so complete. Everything he wanted. I was tired of making this all so possible for Jamison. Making his life so comfortable, so happy. His perfect wife, carrying his perfect son. I was alone in my marriage and I was tired.
I began pounding on the door then. Ringing the bell and then pounding some more. My fist balled up and I pounded hard like a rock threatening to burst through. Someone was inside and they were coming out. If there were children inside, a mother and father, a dog, a parrot…I didn’t care. They were all getting up and out of that house.
A small, light brown hand pulled back the sheet of weathered lace covering the square at the top of the door. A woman’s face appeared. Her eyes were squinting with the kind of tired worry anyone would have for a knock at the door at six A.M. I’d seen those eyes before, and before she widened them enough to see who I was, my fist was banging at the glass in front of her face. I was trying to break it and if I could break it, I’d grab her face and pull her through the tiny square.
“Tell my husband to come outside,” I hollered, my voice sounding much bigger than I was. She looked surprised. Like she never expected to see me or hadn’t known Jamison even had a wife. I pressed my face against the window to see inside. To see if Jamison was there behind her. The flap fell back down over the little window and I heard heavy footsteps. I was beside myself. Had totally let go of whoever I was. My baby grew lighter, as if he wasn’t even there and a thunder bolt inside shocked me into action.
“Jamison!” I shouted heatedly. “Jamison, come outside.” I began banging on the door again. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I knew it was her. Coreen Carter. I only saw her once before in my life. But when she came to the door that time to let Jamison in, I learned her face the way a victim does her victimizer.
She was what most men would consider beautiful. She had short, curly red hair. From the car I thought it was dyed, but up close I could tell it was her natural color. Fire engine red, like the truck, from the root. She had freckles of the same color dotted around her eyes and her skin was the color of Caribbean sand. Really, she looked nothing like me. In fact, we were complete opposites. My hair was so black and long, most of my friends called
me “Pocahontas” growing up. My hair wouldn’t dye and most days it wouldn’t hold a curl of any kind. And if the woman in the window’s skin was the color of Caribbean sand, then mine was darker than the black sand on the beaches of Hawaii. My mother didn’t like to talk about it, but my grandfather on my father’s side was half Sudanese, and while he died long before I was born, my father always said the one thing he left behind was his liquorice color on my skin and my perfectly shaped, curious, almond eyes.
My cell phone began ringing. I opened it, sure it was Marcy making sure I hadn’t killed anyone, but it was Jamison.
“Jamison,” I said, looking again in the window to find him. What was this? What was going on? I felt far from him already. Now he couldn’t even come to the door?
“Kerry, go home.” His voice was filled with irritation.
“What?” I asked. “Are you kidding me? Jamison, come outside.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He sounded as if I was doing something wrong, like I was out of place.
“I don’t want to do this here. It’s not right,” he said.
“Not right? Not right to who, Jamison? Her? I’m your wife!”
“I know that.”
“No, you don’t because if you did, I wouldn’t be standing out here in my nightgown, eight months pregnant. Or did you forget about that?” I started banging on the door again. Thinking of my child made me furious. I wanted that door down. I’d forgotten all about where I was. People were starting to come out of their houses, but I didn’t care. I wanted it to stop, and Jamison being on the phone from inside the house wasn’t making it any better.
“Kerry, she didn’t do anything to you. Just go home and I’ll be right behind you.” He was whispering like a school boy on the phone with his girlfriend late at night.
