Un-Nappily in Love

by Trisha R. Thomas

  “I’m hoping you’ll give it some thought.” She handed me her business card. “I’m available night or day, whenever the spirit hits you. Everyone needs to talk sometime. Good for the soul.” She showed teeth not necessarily in a genuine smile; more like in anticipation of her next feeding. This woman was here to suck me dry of any joy my day had left to offer.

  This time I made sure the door was locked. I watched from the window as she took her time getting into the small tan rental car. She flipped open her cell phone and talked for a few minutes. Her eyes darted back at the window and I ducked.

  When I peeked back out she was gone.

  Lights Out

  The parking lot was full. Dance class started at six thirty. If you didn’t arrive at least half an hour early you could forget about a parking space. I held Mya’s hand and we walked a solid two blocks before the white house with giant lit ballerina slippers came into view.

  “Almost there,” I huffed, out of breath. There’d been little time for workouts. The in-house gym had the latest and greatest equipment, one of the perks Jake spent a ton of money on when we’d first bought the house. Only problem was remembering to go down the hall and turn right. The house was huge, which was my other workout—stairs, and long stretches of hallway. I got my exercise going up and down the stairs. In the floral shop carrying vases filled with water and floral arrangements, which weighed a lot, left me spent like I’d done a few reps with barbells.

  The place was jam-packed with tired mothers wearing sullen faces. So it was a relief to hear my name. “Venus, over here. I saved you a seat.” Miriam Rivera was waving. It was cold and rainy outside and she was still wearing a sundress. She claimed her Cuban roots made it impossible to cool down. She kept her shiny thick hair cut short, claiming she would sweat like a pig if she carried a pound of hair on her shoulders.

  Mya ran and joined the line of miniature ballerinas in their tutus. I slipped off my jacket and unwrapped the scarf around my neck. I sat next to Miriam, glad to get off my feet.

  First thing I saw was the face of Sirena staring back at me. There was no escaping her. She was on the cover of the People magazine sitting on Miriam’s lap. Her eyes followed mine. She tried to sweep a hand over the magazine to make it disappear. Like a horrible curse, the pages fell open to the center picture of Sirena and Jake posed from one of their many red-carpet nights.

  “Girl, I’m sure you’re sick of this one.” Miriam’s slight Spanish accent was full of concern. Most of her early English came from watching Sesame Street. When Miriam was seven, her family sailed from Cuba to the baseline of Florida on a inflatable tube boat. Neither her mother nor father could speak English. That didn’t stop her. She quickly became an A student. She swears if she could make something out of herself, anyone could and should. I ignored her proud Republican sticker on her hybrid bumper. She had a heart pure as gold.

  I reached over and grabbed the People. “She’s not that pretty in person,” I said, holding it up. “If you look close you can see little hairs coming out her nostrils.” I handed it back.

  Miriam let out a raucous laugh that made every head turn. I was smiling too. The absurdity of the entire situation was laughable. Not many women could stand up to the pressure of their husbands linked arm in arm with a beautiful, popular actress. The pressure was already too great to maintain some kind of self while comparing yourself to the airbrushed beauties of the world. To know one personally and have her infiltrate your personal space was enough to send one over the edge. I was quite proud of how I was handling things, especially in lieu of the special-edition news I’d received from Melba Dubois. First love. The words rolled painfully around in my stomach; either that, or I was starving.

  “Aren’t they cute.” Miriam nudged me to focus on the little princesses, and a few princes. “We should go get some dinner after this, just us girls.”

  “Hey, what about me? I can be one of the girls.” Robert Stanton leaned his head between us. His politician smile and movie-star good looks hardly blended in as one of the girls.

  “Senator Stanton, you are more than welcome to join us, as long as you ask your wife for permission first,” Miriam chided.

  “Sure. I’ll give her a call right now.” He pulled up his phone. I snatched it out of his hand.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “Okay, just kiddin’.” He had an infectious Southern accent. I gave the phone back to him. His wife, Holly Stanton, evoked fear out of me and anyone else who came into her airspace. She was a lean, mean former WNBA basketball player who held her head high at all times to balance her imaginary tiara. She probably hadn’t smiled since she was in grade school. She took her status as a senator’s wife seriously and would cut anyone who threatened the castle.

  “Besides, I can’t.” I looked past him to Miriam. “I’m exhausted. I just want to get home and slide my head under the shower, then climb into bed. Plus, my mother is still here.”

  “She is? I thought she was leaving.”

  “I know, but at the last minute she said she wanted to stay a few more days.” I hunched my shoulders, trying not to add anything else to the list of bewilderments of my day.

  “Then we invite her too. One big party. I’ll cook. Ben is on call so we’ll have wine and talk, talk, talk a regular ol’ henfest.”

  I caught the tail end of Mya’s turn. Jory was her partner. I had to admit they looked like the cutest couple up there.

  “Bahhk,” Robert made the noise of a bird. “Can’t be a decent henfest without a rooster. Every hen needs a strong rooster. It’s the law of the farm.”

  I clapped for Mya, ignoring him.

  “Oh, I think I’m going to cry,” a mother a few seats away announced. “Look at Isabel, she’s so beautiful. Isn’t she beautiful?”

  Miriam whispered, “Good grief, it’s a practice recital, not the child’s wedding day.”

  The hour felt like it would never end. The director was a lean older woman who still had a ballerina’s body. She finally came and stood in the center of the kids and gave them the closing pep talk.

  “You are light angels with wings. You can do all things great. There are no mistakes, only opportunities to learn, to grow, to try again.” She tapped the girls lightly on the head as a signal they were excused. Mya was the last one standing. The director kneeled on one knee and must’ve offered an extra dose of motivation. Mya nodded with enthusiasm before coming toward me.

  “Miss Perry says I’ll be great.”

  “Of course you will be.”

  “She says she’ll film it on her camera in case Daddy can’t be there.”

  Miriam gave me a perplexed grin. I hunched my shoulders, not sure how Ms. Perry and Mya’s conversation had come about. “Honey, don’t worry. Daddy will be there.”

  “She says if he isn’t, I should still do my best because he’ll see it on film. I’ll be in a movie just like him.”

  “Yes. Okay.” I knew how to end the subject quickly. “Guess what, we’re going over Lizzie’s house,” I decided right then and there.

  Miriam’s daughter, Lizzie, bounced up and down as this was news to her. The girls reached out and hugged each other. Probably best if I went to Miriam’s. If I went home in the mood I was in, I would do nothing but sit and keep thinking about what the journalist had said … first love. I didn’t believe that woman. Jake would’ve told me something like that. But once a poisonous dart was shot in your neck, even if you pulled it out, the effects were still dizzying.

  “I had to park a couple of blocks away,” I thought I was telling Miriam.

  But it was Robert Stanton’s arm around my shoulder. “I’ll give you a ride to your car.”

  I shucked him off. “You’re sick, you know that.”

  “It’s the thrill of the chase,” Miriam chimed in. “Right? You men like to chase, but once you catch, you want to throw ’em back in the sea.”

  “Not true. I only hunt what I plan to eat.” He made his eyebrows dance. Miriam fak
e-punched him in the stomach.

  “Can I go to Lizzie’s house too?” Jory asked, holding on to his dad’s hand.

  “Now that’s not proper to invite yourself, son.” Robert Stanton moved with Jory in tow directly behind us.

  “Can he come?” the girls asked in unison. “Please.”

  I looked at Miriam. She shrugged her shoulders, like it was fine with her.

  “We’ll take the boy,” I said. “But you stay. I’ll bring him home after.”

  “Now that’s just rude. We’re a dynamic duo. He’s Robin to my Batman. Tonto to my Lone Ranger.” He saw he wasn’t getting anywhere. “You know, those two little dashes creased right in the center of your forehead, they’re not healthy. Sign of worrying too much.”

  “Don’t you have laws to enact or budgets to cut?”

  Miriam nudged. “Just let him come. I certainly don’t mind.”

  “Seriously,” I whispered. “If he’s invited, I probably should go home.”

  She nodded. “Okay, okay. I get it. The man’s got a serious jones for some mocha, is all I have to say.” She then turned and mouthed, “Sorry” to Robert.

  I could’ve explained that Robert wasn’t genuinely hurt, to alleviate her guilt. Tomorrow would be like today never happened. The historical cat-and-mouse game had gone on for the past couple of years and would continue. No harm, no foul.

  I called my mother and told her I was having dinner over a friend’s house. I asked her if she wanted to join us. Pauletta had never been a social butterfly. She kept to herself, except for her sisters and my dad.

  “You go, I’ll be right here. I have some reading I need to catch up on.” That meant another Nora Roberts novel. She read them in two days or less, sometimes not realizing it was a repeat from years ago until she’d finished. “I think I read that one before,” it would dawn on her. “Oh well, still enjoyable.” I’d tried to bring her to the here and now, show her novelists of the twenty-first century who wrote about characters in our world. She absolutely wanted none of that. She had plenty of our world firsthand. She didn’t need to read about it. Stories of the old black South, or the new black Rich, and anything in between was, by her account, stereotypical nonsense. “Black folks are too entrenched in the hard-knock life. I want to be swept away in romance with a guaranteed happy ending.”

  Didn’t we all.

  Miriam’s house was completely dark when we pulled up. I’d only been over in the daytime so I wasn’t sure if this was normal. Conservatives conserving electricity—that would be a first. The perplexed look Miriam gave me said it was definitely a first.

  “My garage opener isn’t working.”

  I kept a close step behind her with the kids flanked on my hip. She unlocked her front door to freezing darkness. She flipped the light switches up and down. “What in the world? I think my power’s out.

  “I can’t believe this,” Miriam said as she banged her knee on the foyer table. “Damn it,” she hissed.

  “Get some clothes and come stay at my house. You can’t stay here. It’s too cold not to have electricity.”

  “Ooooh, oooooh,” Jory sang out like a ghost. “I’m going to get you.” He raised his hands like in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. The girls squealed.

  “Do you have a flashlight? Let’s just get a few of your things and head over to my house.” I wasn’t about to spend any more time standing in the dark than I had to. After a while the ghost teasing wasn’t so funny. Mya grabbed both my hands, letting me know she felt the same way. I’m scared, Mommy.

  The streetlamp offered enough light to see the glint of moistness in Miriam’s eyes. “I can’t believe this shit.” She stomped off toward the kitchen.

  I waited with the kids in the foyer, just in case we needed to make a fast exit. I was no amateur to dangerous situations. Car chases, kidnapping, hostage scenarios at gunpoint—all part of the résumé since being married to Jake Parson.

  Most believed once you were man and wife, the excitement sailed out of your life like air from a leaky tire. Not true. Jake and I had adventure. Some good, some bad, but we survived and it only made us stronger and more committed. I was glad to remind myself of this fact. We had and would continue to survive anything. First loves included.

  “This is like the haunted mansion at Disney World,” Mya said to Lizzie. “Have you been to Disney World?”

  “Yep, but I can’t remember ’cause I’m six and my daddy says I was too little to know what a good time I had.”

  “I remember. Do you remember, Mommy?” Mya’s upturned face deserved a kiss. I planted one right between the eyes.

  “Yes, we had a great time. Now let’s try to be quiet in case Miriam needs us.” I was uneasy and cold. Either could’ve been responsible for my teeth chattering. “Okay—,” I felt a tap on my shoulder. I screamed and nearly jumped out of my skin. “Miriam, you scared the … out of me.” I clutched my chest. “Where’d you come from?”

  “I’m sorry. The back stairs. Sorry.” Lizzie held on to her mommy. Mya and Jory clung to me. It was time to leave the haunted mansion.

  Dual-edged Hot Comb

  Miriam’s bag sat on the chair in the kitchen. I picked up the People magazine and stared at the cover with Sirena in her skimpy bikini while I waited for the water to boil for our tea. Studying her perfect photo, her bronze dewy skin shimmering with youth, made me a bit insecure. She was only twenty-nine; not even thirty. I was knocking on my fortieth birthday. Jake was six years younger than me. It never seemed a concern until now. Her long signature straight hair floated with the fake breeze made by a studio fan. Her sexy smile was accentuated by two small moles at her laugh line. I studied every lash on her eyes and even counted them.

  “You need any help?” Miriam came into the kitchen and stopped abruptly when she saw me holding the magazine. “Oh … girl, don’t do it to yourself. She’s airbrushed. You said so yourself.” She helped herself to the cabinet, finding the assortment of teas I kept in a wood tray.

  I pushed the magazine back in her bag. I couldn’t say what was really on my mind. I’d learned a long time ago to be careful about speaking things into existence.

  Miriam realized I wasn’t my usual talkative self and faced me with concern. “You have nothing to be worried about. Now me, I’ve got issues. When your man lets the lights go out in Georgia, there’s a problem.” She poured the water in both cups. She handed one to me with the bag still steeping.

  “Thanks.” I pursed my lips and blew the heat before taking a sip. “I’m okay, really. Sometimes I let my imagination run wild.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve been letting mine go crazy from the minute I walked into that dark house. Ben didn’t pay the electricity bill. In fact, we’ve been having money problems for a while now. You know the first thing come to my mind … where’s the money going? Who’s he spending it on?” She let her head fall into her hands and suddenly burst into tears.

  “Miriam? Oh my gosh … sweetie. It’s going to be okay.” I rushed from the table around to her side and hugged her. “What’s going on? You can stay here till this gets fixed. We have plenty of room.”

  Pauletta came inside the kitchen, not noticing the angst in the room. “I’m heading to bed. The kids are playing. You might want to keep an eye on ’em. This is about the age they start playing Doctor.”

  “Okay, good night, Mom.”

  “Miriam, it was nice to meet you. I was beginning to think my daughter had no friends.”

  “Good night, Mom,” I said with tight lips.

  “See you in the morning. Keep the noise down. No wild parties,” she sang out while going up the stairs.

  Miriam covered her face with both her hands and then raked them through her cropped curls. I’d never noticed her beautiful widow’s peak. “I’m so, so embarrassed. I really am,” she finally confessed. “Ben is responsible for the bills. But lately things have been going unpaid. I worked my butt off to earn my degree in biology. I was going to go to med schoo
l too, but Ben convinced me we only needed one doctor in the family.”

  I reached out and touched her hand. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Money issues. I don’t know where it all goes. I just know the notices keep coming—pink ones, yellow ones, blue ones too.” She chuckled. “I sound like a Dr. Seuss rhyme, ah.”

  She took a sip of her tea. Ironic how we’d planned the evening for my distraction. Now here I was consoling Miriam.

  “You’re going to have to take control of the situation. Make him sit down with you and go over all the accounts and bills. Figure out the problem … and if you have to sell your house and scale down, so be it.”

  The tea spurted out of her mouth when she choked on the idea. So much for my advice giving.

  “Scale down? No, he needs to stop whatever he’s doing. He’s seeing someone, I know it.”

  My eyebrows raised. “Never make that accusation unless you have proof. I know this from my own experience. You can think it all you want, but until you have concrete, real evidence, it’s the worst thing you can say.”

  “It’s obvious. Where I come from, there are only two things a man will lose his money on: a woman, or an addiction. He’s too smart to be on drugs. The smell of beer makes him sick. So guess what’s left? A female …” She paused. “Or God forbid, a male. I remember the way this waiter was making eyes at him and he was completely flattered. He should’ve been insulted, but he was flattered. Oh Lord, I hope it’s not a man.”

  “Stop it. Not another word.” The phone started ringing, interrupting our heated debate. Jake checking in, nine o’clock on the dot. “Miriam, I have to get this.” Already up on my feet, moving to the phone. “If I don’t answer, I may not get to talk to Jake until morning and then he’ll worry.” I felt small and inadequate as a member of the sisterhood, taking a call from my ruler while Miriam was having a minor breakdown.

  I faced the wall like an undercover agent, “Hi, baby,” I mumbled. “Yes, we’re in for the night, safe and sound, home,” I said awkwardly as if there was another place we would be. “We had pizza.” Jake was surprised to hear this after I’d put the bad mouth on every chain pizza place within a ten-mile radius. Not one could deliver a hot pizza. “Ahuh, I know, it was kind of last minute. Miriam from ballet class is here, and her daughter, and Jory, so we made it a party.”