by Leigh Byrne
“Sorry, Becky; I’ll ask him to stay away.”
The same afternoon, Matt left work early and came by to see if I was still working. I met him at the door and took him aside. Becky watched my every move from behind the counter.
“Matt, my boss says you’re hanging around here too much.”
He took offense right away. “Hanging around? This is a public place and I’m a customer.”
“But you haven’t bought anything.”
“Pick something out—anything you want—and I’ll buy it,” he said, waving his hands around the store. “Then I’ll be a customer.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can. I’m looking for a gift for my dear friend.” He pulled a dress from a nearby rack. “This will work.” He pulled out another. “And this.” He moved to a table of jeans and picked out three pair in size four. “I’ll take these as well. I’ll need some blouses to go with them—and of course jewelry and purses.”
When Matt had finished shopping he had over two hundred dollars worth of clothes and accessories piled on the counter. “Thank you for your help Tuesday,” he said, as he filed through a row of one hundred dollar bills in his wallet.
I bagged up his purchase while Becky gave him change for three hundred. As I handed him the bags of clothes, like I did with every other customer, I said, “Thank you for shopping at Ashley’s.”
He handed the bags back to me. “They’re for you.” Becky’s eyes widened
“Matt, I can’t accept all this.”
“Consider it an early Christmas present,” he said, as he turned to leave the store.
I stuffed the clothes in a cubby under the counter where I kept my purse.
“You need to do something about him before he breaks up your marriage,” Becky said.
“We’re only friends,” I insisted.
“Yeah, right.”
I’d been telling myself that Matt and I weren’t doing anything wrong because we weren’t sleeping together. But on a deeper level, I knew we may as well have been having sex, because the emotional adultery we were committing was as bad, if not worse, than a physical relationship would have been. I enjoyed being with him more than I’d ever enjoyed being with Chad, and he obviously had developed feelings for me. The truth was blatant. We were cheating; we just hadn’t consummated our affair—yet.
Christmas was nearing, and I had no solid plan of how to leave Chad. I’d been saving every penny I made at Ashley’s, and I still had, in a bank account in Nashville, some college money Daddy had put away for me before he died. There wasn’t much left, but enough to put a deposit on a small apartment. Chad still thought I planned to quit my job the day after Christmas, so to buy myself more time to figure out what to do, I told Becky that Chad and I were having problems and needed to be together more so we could talk things out. In light of what she’d observed between Matt and me, she wasn’t surprised, and agreed to let me take off work until after the first of the year.
At home, Chad had no idea I was secretly plotting my escape. We had been getting along better since I’d told him I was quitting my job. When his mood was good and he hadn’t had too much to drink, I liked Chad. I got a kick out of his cocky bad boy attitude that served to thinly veil his insecurities. And I enjoyed his quick sense of humor. He had an effect on me few people had—he could make me laugh. We got so caught up in the spirit of the holidays, and buying gifts for the kids, I almost forgot how much I wanted to break away from his control.
When I told Matt he was putting my job in jeopardy by being in the store so much, he stopped coming in. But every day, at lunchtime, he waited for me in the parking lot so we could spend the hour together. We ate in restaurants in one of the neighboring towns, or picked up our food at a drive-thru, and then went to the park and ate in the car with the heater running.
I enjoyed our lunch dates for a while, but things began to get creepy when he started waiting outside the store for me every day when I got off work, just so he could see me for a few minutes before I went home. It seemed like he was always lurking somewhere around me. On my drive home, I often saw the red flash of his car in the rearview mirror, or on the side of the road.
One night, after I got off work, Matt and I were sitting in his car in the store parking lot, and he kissed my hand. “You know by now I want to be with you, Tuesday, but I can’t be with another man’s woman.”
I was attracted to Matt, or maybe awestruck by his mystique, and the attention his dark good looks drew when we walked into a restaurant together. But did I love him? I didn’t know. However I did know for sure I wasn’t leaving Chad to be with him.
“What about you?” I said. “You’re still with Fatma.”
“Not intimately. We have separate rooms.”
“How do I know that?”
“You don’t. You’ll just have to trust me.”
Trust you? The man with the zippered pants? I didn’t trust anyone, most of all him.
If leaving his wife would make him happy then I was all for it. I wanted Matt to be happy, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to be happy with me. I couldn’t see how our relationship could grow to be stable when its foundation was built on a lie.
On Christmas morning, Molly and Daryl were wild with glee as they ripped the paper from their presents. Their Christmas couldn’t have been any merrier. They got everything they’d asked for, and both Chad and me were giving them our full attention. As far as they knew, Mama and Daddy were doing okay. They had witnessed few fights between us, because I had mastered the skill of compliance to avoid confrontation.
Later that night, they both fell asleep on the sofa, exhausted. I cleared away the wrapping paper, took down the tree and packed it in the attic. Watching Molly and Daryl sleeping, I wondered how I would explain to them why I couldn’t live with their daddy anymore. Would they understand if I told them I felt like a prisoner when I was with him? No, they would not, because they couldn’t see the bars. My children had once been the center of my life, but now I felt selfish, entitled, like it was my turn. And desperate. Most of all desperate.
Molly and Daryl hadn’t asked to be brought into my messy world. Why should they suffer for my bad decisions, my selfishness, my fears, my stupid anxiety attacks? How dare I break up our family? Disrupt their comfortable lives? I didn’t have the answers to these questions. All I knew was I didn’t want to live under Chad’s control any longer. And then there was the drinking. I had the occasional glass of wine, but Chad drank half a case of beer every day. The kids had no concept of Chad’s problem with alcohol. They had grown up seeing him with a beer in his hand. His drinking had become as routine as their evening baths.
How would I tell them I was inches from filing for a divorce? The reasons weren’t good enough. I wasn’t miserable enough. And I was a coward. Leaving Chad and living on my own with the kids—independence, freedom, going back to school—was all a dream. A coward’s dream.
When it was time for me to return to my job, I waited until after Chad left for the mine, then I got dressed, as usual, and drove to Ashley’s. I continued to do this every day I was scheduled to work. I didn’t make any extra effort to hide that I was still working, because I didn’t care if Chad found out. I didn’t have the guts to leave him, but if he put me out on the streets like he’d said he would if I didn’t quit working, my problem would be solved.
“I thought I told you to quit that damn job!” he screamed when he found out.
“I won’t quit,” I said, calmly. “What difference does it make to you anyway as long as I’m home before you and the kids?”
“Fuck it! If it means that much to you to work for pennies, then go ahead, but no more nights or weekends!”
It was just my luck. Like Matt said, Chad had been bluffing all along.
LADYBUG FLY AWAY
Ashley’s was the only place for local women to buy halfway stylish clothes of decent quality, so day after day, I saw the same faces come into the store. I t
hought every woman in the area had shopped there at one time or another, until a slow Monday morning in April when somebody new wandered in, a fresh young face I’d never seen before. She paused at the threshold, holding the door open behind her. She seemed uncomfortable, out of place, as if she’d meant to go into the pharmacy next door, but had inadvertently stumbled into the wrong store by mistake. She was wearing what appeared to be a police uniform—navy blue and mannishly official. Her dark blond hair was cropped and she didn’t have on any make-up. I figured her for the type of woman who was so into her career that the way she looked was of low priority. Or she was a lesbian. Either way, I was pretty sure she was in the wrong store.
“Can I help you find something?” I asked.
When she turned her head to look at me, I was startled by her eyes. They were of a hue and depth blue almost never reaches, like the periwinkles that lined the pathway leading to my Grandma Storm’s house—the only safe haven my childhood ever knew.
“No thank you,” she said, softly. “Just going to browse, if it’s okay.”
There was something distinctly familiar about this woman, even though I was positive we had never met. It was more like she reminded me of someone I knew. For the rest of the morning, I racked my brain trying to remember who it was. She probably resembles a movie star I’ve seen on TV, I finally decided.
The next day, the woman with the periwinkle eyes came in again, browsing, but not buying, obviously needing help, but refusing it. She stayed in the store so long, searching through the clearance rack, I thought maybe I should approach her a second time.
“They tell me I’m pretty good at putting together outfits,” I said in my most cheerful voice. “I’d love to help you.”
“No thank you,” she responded, examining the price tag on a sweater. Like a dog that had just been kicked, I scampered away with my tail tucked between my legs.
I had never been one to ponder a customer’s behavior, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this woman, trying to figure out why she wouldn’t let me help her when she was evidently looking for something. She had not been nice to me at all, and she clearly wanted to be left alone, but still, I was drawn to her, which was strange for me because I hardly ever pursued friendship. Other than seeing my volleyball teammates on game nights, I was pretty much a loner.
Friday morning of the same week, she came in the store yet a third time. As always, she headed straight for the clearance rack. Becky and I were behind the counter putting price tags on a new shipment of lingerie. Becky looked up from her work. “Hey Daniela! Never seen you in here before. Whatcha looking for?”
“Something on sale,” the woman said, as she breezed by the counter.
“We just marked a bunch of stuff down,” Becky said. “Tuesday here has great taste; she’ll fix you right up.”
“You know her?” I whispered to Becky.
“Daniela? Yeah, she’s the meter maid. Nice lady.”
“Well for some reason she’s not nice to me.”
“She’s a bit timid until she gets to know you. Go and show her some of the new markdowns. She’ll soften up.”
Walking toward Daniela, I felt like a stalker. I was still wincing from her last rejection. “Hello Daniela. Becky asked me to assist you in finding our new markdowns.”
To my surprise, she was friendly and chirpy. “I have a date tonight and I don’t have a thing in my closet to wear. It’s been a while since I’ve bought any clothes for myself. I’m in the middle of a divorce.”
“I knew you were looking for something! Why didn’t you let me help you before?”
“Well, I didn’t know you for one thing. But now I’m desperate.” She laughed
“No worries! I’d be happy to help you.”
“I don’t have a lot of money to spend.”
“Who does? Trust me; we can find something sexy for you to wear on your date right here off this clearance rack.”
I’d never had so much fun helping a customer put together an outfit as I did with Dani. Before she left the store, we were both in tears from laughing so hard.
For the rest of the night, I thought about Dani, wondering how her date was going. I couldn’t get over how easy it had been to be around her, as though I’d known her all my life. With this on my mind, I floated into a dream.
I am a child—a toddler—strapped in a seat in the back of a moving car. The driver is a woman. I can see only the back of her head, but somehow I know she’s my mother. We’re going over a bridge. I know this because, through the windows, I can see trusses snap past me. All at once, I hear a deafening crunch, see gray clouds swooshing by. The car begins flipping, flipping and suddenly we hit and water is rising rapidly around us. I begin to cry. The woman—my mother—turns to me. I’ve never seen her face before, but I recognize her blue eyes—they look like Dani’s eyes. As cold water rises up around my neck, she takes my hand in hers. Her touch is warm and loving. “Everything is going to be alright,” she says, calmly. “I’ll take care of you, I promise.” I believe her, even though I know I’m going to die. The water inches up my chin, my lips, and then reaches my nose. I focus on my mother’s eyes—soothing, blue eyes, and I’m not afraid.
I woke up sucking air. What the hell? That was too weird.
Aunt Macy, a Presbyterian, strongly believed in reincarnation. In the more than six years I lived with her, we went to church every Sunday, so I was familiar with the meaning of the word, however I was on the fence about whether or not I bought into the concept. I thought coming back to life in another body seemed far-fetched.
Aunt Macy had told me when we meet someone for the first time and feel as though we’ve known them forever, we probably have known them in a previous life. Could Dani have been my mother in another life? Had I just dreamt about the way we both died? Is that why, when we first met, I felt like I already knew her?
The following Monday, Dani stopped in the store to let me know how her date went. The instant I saw her walk in, I lit up. I wanted to run up to her and tell her about my dream, but I knew if I did I would surely run her off, so I kept it to myself.
Over the next couple of weeks, Dani came by whenever she could to chat. Gradually we started opening up to each other about our personal lives. I found out she had twin boys. They were three. She told me her ex-husband had cheated on her with one of her good friends. When she talked about leaving him she sounded relieved.
“The marriage was a shambles long before his infidelity,” she said. “He tried to control the way I dressed, who I talked to—everything I did. That’s why my hair is short and I don’t wear make-up.”
There came another night when I wasn’t there when Chad got home from work, and he started in on me again about my job.
“You either quit or I’m filing for a divorce!”
Divorce! It was exactly what I wanted, but hearing the word still intimidated me, because I had no idea how I would properly take care of the kids without Chad, even with child support. I’d foolishly passed up my chance to get an education that would’ve afforded me a decent paying job. Since Christmas, when I chickened out on leaving him, I’d accepted the idea of living out the rest of my life as his wife, even though I wasn’t happy. Happy wasn’t the name of the game I was playing. The name of the game was survival.
Where will I turn for help if Chad divorces me? Most women turn to family at such a time, but that wasn’t an option for me. I didn’t have a mother. Jimmy D. had gotten married and moved somewhere in Michigan, and I had no idea where my other brothers were. And the truth was I didn’t know any of them well enough to ask for their help anyway. Aunt Macy would take in the kids and me if I asked her to, but I couldn’t bring myself to disrupt the cozy life she’d built with Edwin, especially since she’d begged me not to marry Chad in the first place. There was no way out. Chad had me where he wanted me and he knew it.
“Okay, Chad; you win. I’ll quit. But let me quit on good terms, in case I have to get another job someday. You’ve
said yourself the mine could go on a long strike when contract time rolls around.”
“Whatever; but put in your notice tomorrow.”
The next morning, I called Dani and told her about Chad’s ultimatum, and confided in her that I wanted to leave him, but felt trapped because I didn’t think I could make it on own.
“Sure you can,” she said, as if we were talking about baking a cake. “I’ll help you.”
Her fearlessness excited me. I can? “You will?”
“I didn’t think I could make it on my own either, but you do what you gotta do. “Don’t stay with someone you don’t want to be with. It’s not fair to you or him.”
She was right. Chad deserved to be with someone who loved him. The right woman for him was out there somewhere, but as long as he was with me—the wrong woman—he would never find her.
“I want to leave, but I’m afraid to even try,” I said. “You don’t know him, Dani. He will physically restrain me, pull out a gun—whatever it takes to keep me from going.”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to get you out when he’s not there then,” she said. “We can do it on your day off while he’s at work. I’ll help you get your stuff, and you and the kids can stay at my house until you find a place of your own.”
I loved her lets-just-do-it way of approaching my problem. For the first time, I believed the freedom I’d dreamt of for so long was possible. With Dani behind me, I had the courage to slay the dragon. And I was ready to try. “Really? You wouldn’t mind?” I said.
“Of course not. I know what it’s like to be a prisoner in your own home.”
The following week, the stars all lined up in my favor. Chad changed to second shift at the mine, opening up the opportunity for me to spend some time with Dani, so we could figure out how and when I was going to leave.
She came over and brought her twins, Bobby Joe, who went by B.J., and Brad. They were bright, adorable boys, and so full of energy and life. Daryl took a liking to them right off, and they looked up to him because he was older, and it didn’t take long for Molly to fall in love with Dani.
