“And here I was thinking that I was just your black girl fantasy all these years,” she answered. Dirk laughed out loud at her assumption.
“Did it ever occur to you that, because of my mother’s past, detestable indiscretions, I chose a woman as different from her as I could find? But, sadly it seems my father and I were both cursed to love the wrong women because here I am, standing in his shoes, like he left them for me as part of my inheritance,” he said.
“Don’t you dare compare me to your mother! I’m still here and I haven’t left you!” Brenda yelled.
“No, you haven’t but you have deceived me in the worst possible way. You’ve wounded me as deeply as if you had,” he told her.
“Dirk,” she said. Brenda started to walk towards him but he put his hand up and stopped her. She might as well have been rooted in place as she dared not move a step closer.
“I don’t have to wait for the results of the paternity test I took to get the truth I’m looking for. I already have my answer,” he solemnly declared.
“Dirk, let me explain,” Brenda pleaded but again, he put his hand up and silenced her.
“Surprisingly, I’m not as angry as I should be. Of course, I’m sure that our little Douglas’s real father is nowhere close to being a man of any significant power or influence. Basically, he’s probably very normal. Otherwise, you would have probably left me for him already,” he said, putting his hand to his forehead as if he was in pain.
“Is that what you think of me?” Brenda asked.
“I must say, I’m actually intrigued and excited that Clark Kent, and NOT Superman won Lois Lane’s heart in our little slice of reality. Still, I’m a little conflicted and confused. I was sure that you were my Lois Lane. Now, I’m thinking that you might just be my Kryptonite,” Dirk said before he got up and left the room without another word.
Brenda was left standing alone in the moonlight with her secrets stripped away, feeling as naked as a newborn child.
PART 5: He Knows
Half a pack’s worth of stepped-on cigarette butts lay at Nash’s feet as he chain-smoked in front of the Morning Perk Diner’s entrance. This morning, he didn’t bother with the charade of pretending to eat breakfast inside. He was so anxious that there was no way that he would have been able to sit still. The bags under his eyes and the liquor that lingered on his breath were evidence of the drunken night he’d had. His crushed jeans and wrinkled short-sleeve shirt told the story of a man who had slept in his clothes. The night before, he’d been haunted by thoughts of Brenda and the son they secretly shared. As he stood there in the blinding sun, he was tormented by random thoughts and worries as he waited for them. He had no way to contact her discreetly without putting their secret out in the open. For now, his hands were tied. Nash coughed heavily as he lit another cigarette. Despite nearly drowning himself in alcohol, he’d decided on his next course of action with a surprisingly sober mind. He was concrete in his resolve. On that day, no matter what, his son was going to know who his real father was.
Everyone on the street noticed the black Bentley with the limousine tint as it pulled up and double-parked outside of the diner. It wasn’t common for a vehicle of that caliber or class to just cruise through a blue-collar, working class neighborhood. Out of everyone, Nash paid it the most attention as he remembered who Brenda said her husband was. His heart stopped beating and the cigarette fell out of his mouth when the passenger side window began to roll down slowly. After expecting to be showered with a hail of gunfire, he relaxed slightly when he saw that the driver was Brenda. She waved frantically and beckoned for him to come over to the car. He looked up and down the street tentatively before he dared to walk over.
“Get in,” she told him as he leaned down to look inside the car.
“Where are the kids?” Nash asked, noticing that the back seat was empty.
“We don’t have much time. Get in. We have to talk, NOW!” she ordered him, nervously checking the side-view mirror first and then the rear-view mirror after. Without questioning her, Nash got in the car. Somehow, he knew that he should do as she said. As soon as he was in the passenger seat, Brenda pulled off and sped down the street before his door was even shut properly. Nash quickly buckled his seat belt as she exceeded the speed limit recklessly and changed lanes erratically as if she was in a high-speed chase, constantly checking her mirrors. It was obvious that she was terrified or paranoid about being followed.
Aside from the insane way she was driving, Brenda seemed more like herself today. She had abandoned the grunge look and was back to displaying her high-class fashion sense. She definitely looked like she belonged behind the wheel of the four hundred thousand dollar car. The sunlight bounced brilliantly off of her diamond jewelry as it poured in through the windshield. However, hidden behind her designer sunglasses, Nash couldn’t see that her eyes were red from crying. He kept quiet at first with his stomach in knots as she took risk after risk to weave in-between cars and traffic. Only after she stopped at a red light that would have been too dangerous to run through did he dare break the awkward silence.
“Where are the boys?” he asked again.
“They’re in school,” she answered.
“Why didn’t you bring them with you today? I wanted to see them,” he inquired. Because of the story she’d told him the previous day, Nash was worried for their safety.
“I couldn’t,” she answered as the traffic light turned green and she floored the gas pedal again.
“Why not?” he asked, grabbing her by the arm.
A frightening possibility dawned on him. He wondered if Brenda was running from the police and if that was the case, he shuddered to think what heinous act she might have committed. Only a day before, she had been willing to let her children drown in the bathtub.
“Because he knows,” she answered, quickly pulling away from him.
“Who knows what?” he asked.
“Who else? My husband. He knows that Douglas is not his” she answered.
“How?” Nash asked. He was relieved that the news was not as evil as he’d expected but, he had a feeling that this new twist in the plot wasn’t going to play out much better.
“It doesn’t matter. He just does,” she told him.
“So what now?” he asked, looking away from her.
He didn’t dare look at the streets in front of them for fear of throwing up. Instead, he stared up at the few clouds that graced the clear blue sky. Even elevated up to incredible heights in the lofty breeze, they didn’t seem to move, almost as if the heavens themselves paused to witness the unfortunate events that were certain to follow.
“What now? What now is that I’m sure I won’t be able to go anywhere without being followed,” she explained.
“Followed? Followed by who?” he asked, turning to look out of the rear window of the car again.
“Followed by whoever my husband chooses to pay to follow me. After what he knows, you think he’ll ever trust me again? No, not likely. The only reason he even let me come to the diner at all this morning was for me to give you a message,” she said.
“And what message is that?” Nash asked.
“My husband wants me to tell you to go away. He said that you took something important from him and so he’s going to take something important from you. This is the last time you’re going to see me and you’ll never see Douglas again,” she told him, relaying her husband’s message.
“So, if he’s the one who sent you to see me and he already knows where you were going this morning, why are you speeding through the streets like a maniac to get away from whoever you think is following us?” he asked, checking the side-view-mirror.
“Because, fuck him! I don’t appreciate being followed by his flunkies,” she exclaimed.
“What about the rest of it?” he asked.
“What of it?” she asked in a tone that expressed how ridiculous she thought his question was.
“You really mean to never let me see my so
n again?” he asked in disbelief.
“You really think my husband was joking?” she asked.
“I don’t give a fuck what he said!” Nash yelled.
“Well you should, because if we do anything other than what he said, he’ll kill us all,” she warned. “And that includes our son.”
“He can’t do that,” he started to say.
“And why not? You act like I didn’t explain to you who my husband is. With his money, he can do whatever he wants, and get away with it. You know why? Because he can afford the people who will do the job right. He can afford to pay off whoever he needs to pay off. Make no mistake Nash. This is his city and we are trapped in the middle of it,” she told him.
“He can’t keep my son from me. I’ll kill him,” he raged. Brenda laughed so hard that he wanted to slap her face.
“You can try but you won’t be able to,” she said.
“I know people too. I can get him touched,” Nash threatened. Again, Brenda laughed out loud at how naive he sounded.
“Are you serious? Do you really think that my husband can be dealt with like any common street thug? You may not know, but I know enough for both of us. I’ve heard things. I’ve seen things. I know the types of monsters my husband has at his disposal for the unpleasant things he does from time to time,” she said.
“Are you trying to tell me that Dirk Swan is some kind of criminal kingpin?” Nash asked, clearly feeling that she was blowing things way out of proportion.
“Not at all. He’s worse. What I’ve been trying to explain to you is that my husband IS money. And that goes hand-in-hand with the fact that he IS power. All of his businesses are legitimate and legal. That doesn’t stop him from keeping ties to unsavory individuals. Of course, he doesn’t have to. I think he does it for the thrills and just because he can. Even the criminals respect and fear him. A man with money is a dangerous thing,” she said.
Nash leaned back in the passenger seat and held his head in his hands as it pounded painfully. He wasn’t sure if it his hangover was to blame or the things that Brenda had just told him. His migraine made him feel as if his brain was going to swell and crack his skull open.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” he said.
“Well, believe it,” Brenda told him as she pulled into the Lakeshore Movie Theatre parking lot. She drove into an empty parking space and turned off the car’s engine. She took off her sunglasses to see him clearly as tears streamed from beneath the hands he used to cover his face. She knew that he loved the son they shared.
For so long she had been so angry with her own circumstances that she’d never considered how difficult the situation must have been for him. Only being able to see his child from a distance, as a stranger, had taken its toll on him. Now that he faced the possibility of never seeing his son ever again, it was too much for him to bear. Every time thoughts of Nash had ever floated into her mind, Brenda had always classified him as just another mistake in her life. Now, for the first time, she viewed him as a decent man. If things had been different, she was sure that he would have been a good father.
“There has to be another way,” he said to her, finally lowering his hands.
The look on his face nearly broke her heart. She hadn’t realized how much her second son looked like his real father until that moment. His pain immediately became her pain. It almost felt as if she stared at her own child as a grown man through a looking glass that showed the future. Still, she gave Nash the only answer that made sense.
“There is no other way. This is how it is and how it has to be,” she told him. She looked away from him and there was a long silence between them.
“I wish we’d never met that day,” he said.
His words seemed harsh but they were heartfelt and true. Brenda’s silence after he spoke them suggested that she completely felt the same way. There was nothing they could do about it now and there really wasn’t anything more that she could tell him. They were cursed and damned it seemed. Brenda sighed and started the car’s engine.
“I’ll take you back to the diner now,” she offered.
“No thanks, I’m good. I’ll find my own way back,” he answered and then paused. “You know, I never met my father. I swore that I would never do that to my kids and here I am,” Nash said, opening the car door and getting out.
Brenda watched him walk away. He looked like a man who’d just had everything taken from him. The man himself was the product of an entire generation of fatherless boys and it tortured him to know that he would have to abandon his own. It saddened her but she knew that this was the best thing for everyone involved. She remembered the look in Dirk’s eyes when he had given her his deadly ultimatum. His speech had been completely cold, ruthless and most importantly, sincere.
Still, as she started to drive away, a tiny spirit of rebellion began to build in her heart. Her mind began to work on overdrive as a dangerous idea dawned on her. She pulled the Bentley up to Nash and beckoned for him to come over to her window. As he walked over, she reached into the backseat for her designer clutch. She fumbled in it until she eventually found a pen to write with. The only paper she found was a faded receipt for some expensive trinket she’d bought and long since forgotten.
“What is it? Nash asked, annoyed and disgruntled. The pain in his head had spread to his neck now. He felt like he was being compressed by the weight of the insane situation he now found himself in.
“I have an idea. There may be a way for you to still see our son. There might be one person in the world who won’t be afraid to help us,” she explained quickly. On the back of the thin paper of the receipt, she scribbled an address and a time.
“What’s this?” Nash asked as she handed it to him.
“Be at this address in two days, at that time. Don’t drive your car because they probably know it by now. Take a cab instead. I’ll figure out something by then,” she told him.
“Thank you,” Nash said. Brenda didn’t answer. She rolled her window up and sped away.
PART 6: Fork in the Road
As Brenda drove away, she thought about the morning that had changed her life forever, just a little over three years ago. She wondered how different things might have been if she had stayed home with her husband instead of storming out of their home in anger. She thought about all the grief she could have saved herself if she’d just gone for a long drive to clear her mind instead. She might have avoided so much pain if she had just ordered breakfast from a fast food drive-thru.
Brenda had gone to the Morning Perk that day because she longed for somewhere familiar. It had been the place she’d had breakfast almost every morning when she’d been in college. She was drawn there that day because it was the closest thing to a second home in the city where her husband seemed to be a god. The argument that had prompted her to storm out of her home was about much more than just her decision to take their son to see his paternal grandmother against her husband’s wishes. It had simply been the catalyst for the confrontation and although it was also the focal point of the shouting match, the real issues ran much deeper than that. For a long time, Brenda had been second-guessing the life she’d found herself swept up in. At times, she felt like a leaf in a hurricane, only kept aloft until the wind stopped blowing. Every day that passed, she felt more and more lost in the world. She blamed it all on her marriage to a man that she’d slowly begun to realize she didn’t know. Although she held her tongue, she had seen and heard things that troubled her. He always treated her with the tenderness but, some of the things he’d been rumored to do were borderline monstrous.
***
Not long after she’d graduated from college, she met Dirk Swan. He’d held the door for her as she entered an office building where she was scheduled to have her first job interview. She remembered him as dashing, polite and handsome which helped to slightly remove some of the butterflies from her tummy. She blushed when he smiled at her, thanked him and tried to remain calm as she signed in at the se
curity desk. Dirk was still smiling at her when the guard directed her to the elevators. Her day did not improve unfortunately. After much stuttering, sweating and fumbling for answers, she knew that the interview had not gone well. A horrible feeling twisted in her stomach as she got off the elevator and walked into the building’s main lobby. She was in a hurry to get back to her tiny apartment before her roommates got home so she could cry alone.
To her surprise, she found Dirk patiently waiting to hold the door for her again as she left. (Eventually, she would find out that he owned the entire building and had instructed security to let him know when she was on her way back down.) She thanked him again as she stepped outside, fighting tears while trying to hail a taxi-cab. That’s when he put his hand on her shoulder and offered her a ride instead. Although hesitant at first, she eventually agreed. She was in shock when Dirk’s driver pulled his car up front as soon as he raised his hand. As Dirk opened the door for her to get inside, she got the feeling that he had been completely certain that she would accept his offer. Brenda found that level of confidence overwhelmingly sexy. It also helped that he was movie-star handsome as well.
Within a month, Dirk and Brenda had fallen in love and found themselves married in what seemed like the blink of an eye. No other man in her life had ever made her feel more like a princess in a fairy tale. Because Dirk was white, she hadn’t told her parents about their relationship until after the wedding, a decision she would come to regret dearly. It had been her secrecy and not Dirk’s race that had wounded her family most deeply. In the end, it caused them to shun her and she hadn’t been in contact with them since.
As is the case with all fairytales, there eventually comes the time beyond the climax and the last page is read. Usually, after the “and they lived happily ever after” line, nothing else is said, leaving the details of the ever after a mystery. That was the confusing place that Brenda found herself. It was in those uncharted waters that she discovered the storm of doubt that was causing her inner turmoil. A portion of the fascination, the fiery lust and the element of pleasant surprises were gone. She was married. She had a child. It was a horrible time to discover that she really didn’t know who her husband was.
Crossroads: An Anthology Page 22
