* * * * *
“Daddy? Will you tuck me into bed?”
Eduardo stared down at his little girl. Round green eyes, long black hair tied together in two ponytails, she was the illusion of her mother.
He lingered for a moment before responding. Amber consumed his every thought lately. He had no time for Kyra. “In a moment sweetheart, Daddy’s had a rough day.”
Leticia suddenly appeared behind the doorway. Subtle, introverted, she had a wineglass in her hand. “Kyra honey, go to your room for a moment, Mommy wants to talk to Daddy alone.”
Kyra stretched out her pajama top and flipped it up over her face playfully exposing her skinny frame, “OK Mommy.” And she ran out of the room.
Eduardo then eyed his wife. “Don’t start.”
“Start what?” Leticia asked, sipping her chardonnay.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Touchy subject, Leticia gulped. “I just wanted to know about Amber, that’s all. I spoke to your Mom earlier, but everyone’s so hush-hush about it all…how’s Victor? Have you spoken with him yet?”
Eduardo searched her eyes...Good God, she doesn’t know? All these weeks and his family hadn’t relished in the justice of telling her? It was up to him, he realized again. They wanted him to confess his infidelity—he wasn’t in the mood. He would keep her in the dark a couple more days; he didn’t feel like having a heart to heart with her, especially when his heart was somewhere else. “No.”
Leticia took down a long gulp of her wine, “I can’t believe Amber tried to commit suicide. What would make her do such a thing? I thought she and Victor made such a sweet couple; they made such a great pair. I feel so sor—”
“Enough!” Eduardo yelled at her with all the grief he was feeling at the moment.
Leticia’s mouth closed up, “What’s the matter with you?”
“Leave me the hell alone—”
He pushed passed her and stormed out of his study and found himself inside his bedroom. The moment he arrived, his clothes were ripped away from his body. He threw his coat clear across the room, his jacket was tossed across the bed, his tie yanked off and thrown at the nearby armoire. He was incensed, exhausted and utterly at Amber’s mercy. Without her...without being able to talk to her daily, see her smile...feel her touch...he was reduced to nothing. Nothing! Nothing he could think of would come close to the equivalency of Amber in his life. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so blind? He was such a smart man, intelligent, quick-witted and admired, respected among his peers…how could he have allowed the woman he loved, try and take it all away? Why couldn’t he just bow down to the companionship he had with Amber? He kicked himself for not being more experienced in holding together a relationship. Good God, he practically dictated connection with a jury, but he couldn’t comply with one simple request? Good God...what did ...he do?
Eduardo finally sat down on the edge of the bed and bent over clasping his hands behind his head before setting free his penance for being so gluttonous in need. He would push and prod until he found his answer; after all, he still possessed tenacity.
Thirty-One
The Truth Stings
After several long weeks Eduardo finally heard from Sheila. He couldn’t believe it, but even the mixed up County of Los Angeles seem to lose tract of her. One week she was at one hospital, the next week she was moved somewhere else. It made him pale the way the county mistreated patients, he was going to defend her to the death, whatever it took.
Assisted by his crutches and dressed in a camel coat over head-to-toe finest suit apparel, Eduardo looked fashionably out of place as he went down the corridor towards the information desk. Various nurses and staff members all stopped to watch him hobble by.
All around him were lunatics, drug attics, transients, and God knows what else they let roam in those halls. He felt sick to his stomach. Eduardo couldn’t believe that Amber was there. Amber was too good for this, if she was going to go to an extreme, then he was going to follow her lead. Amber was going to go to a private hospital, a place where they displaced compassion daily.
Within reaching the reception desk of the district rest home, he said, “I’m here for Amber Sanchez.”
The intimidated medical Assistant nervously looked up at him, “Who sir?”
“Amber Sanchez.”
“How do you spell that?”
Eduardo rolled his eyes, “You’re kidding right? S-A-N-C-H-E-Z,” he said sarcastically gazing down at her name tag that shouted the last name “RODRIGUEZ”.
“Um-yes, she’s...oh my...just a second, I’ll have a nurse escort you, mister...”
“Sanchez,” Eduardo stated, not looking directly at her.
The Assistant continued to gape at him. “It’ll just be a second Mr. Sanchez; a nurse will be here shortly to take you to see your wife.”
Eduardo now eyed the medical Assistant who was still staring at him. He doesn’t bother to correct her. Felt weak within for not making Amber his wife years ago.
Thirty minutes later, a nurse led Eduardo to another section of the hospice. A silent quarter. You could hear a pin drop in this wing it was so quite. The nurse opened up the door to a three-part room partitioned off by two thin curtains. She strode over to the last section and pointed to Amber’s expired body.
Eduardo choked back tears. Good God! She looked asleep, but she wasn’t. Wherever she was he wanted to be with her. “I want her out of here today, do you hear me?” Eduardo demanded, caressing Amber’s unresponsive hand.
The nurse stepped back, “Yes sir, I’ll inform the administrator.”
“Do it now,” he ordered. He couldn’t take his eyes off Amber. He waited until the nurse was out of his peripheral view when he let the tears advance. “Oh...God,” he sobbed, wrapping his arms around Amber’s body, crying on her chest. He rubbed her body down; smoothed out the hospital sheet that barely covered her waist and chest. “Amber, please don’t leave me…I love you... oh God...please come back, I’m so sorry...I get it now, I should have agreed to leave her…I’ll take care of you Amber, I promise, please...please honey wake up, please wake up.”
While Eduardo continued to shell out emotion atop Amber’s insensate person, he recalled the past several weeks. He finally told his wife. Sat her down and disclosed the whole affair. He was back to his ole self that day, the detached and heartless Eduardo Sanchez, trying to let down another clinging female with his not so subtle lack of sympathy. ..
“…How could you do this to me?”
Yes, how could he? How could he not? It wasn’t really a temptation, how could he explain it? With Amber he found his soul mate, the love of his life. With Leticia he felt like her roommate, a prisoner contracted to a piece of paper and a stupid band of metal.
“I’ve been the ideal wife for you,” Leticia related heartbroken. “You don’t touch me for several months at a time and I’m OK with it.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered why?”
Leticia stood defeated. “We look similar except for my...except for my,” she expressed looking down at her upper body, “I’ll get breast implants if that’s what you like.”
Eduardo could not believe the insensitivity in his own voice, but he honestly never loved this woman. “If you think that I’m that superficial just proves you never really knew me.”
“And I suppose she knows you more than I?” Leticia screamed back at him. “When I’m the one who’s cooked and cleaned your house, washed your clothes and taken care of your child all these years?”
“It’s over Leticia; listen to you, you sound like you could have been my maid.”
“That’s what a wife does for her husband when she loves him!”
“Face it,” he heartlessly testified, “You were just a substitute and a device to further my career. You were a buffer with my family and a reason to get closer to her.”
“...But you love me.”
“I’ve never loved you. We got pregnant. I ask
ed you to get an abortion, but you cried that I compromised you and forced me into a marriage I never wanted in the first place!”
“You never wanted to get married?”
“No. What the hell ever made you think that I was the marrying type? I loved being single! I loved playing the field and meeting new women.”
“But you gave in.”
“My heart always belonged somewhere else, Leticia. You were just a replacement.”
“But when we make love,” Leticia rationalized, “The tenderness that I feel from you, that can’t possibly be fabricated.”
Eduardo scratched his head, “Gee, another item I’m good at, simulating compassion.”
“You heartless bastard!” Leticia shrieked.
“That’s right, I am a bastard and a conceited one, and spoiled rotten. I know what I want, and what I want is not you.”
Leticia fell to the ground weeping, her last chance to win him back. “I was going to tell you next week, but you’d better know now—we’re having another baby.”
Eduardo felt a lump in his throat. “You’re not pregnant.”
“And I’ll tell your mother,” Leticia voiced, noticing her husband’s body questioning. “She’ll make sure you don’t leave while I’m expecting.”
Knowing women as well as he did, there was something about Leticia’s posture that wasn’t quite right. She was either telling the truth or she was an incredible liar. “You’re not pregnant Leticia,” Eduardo continued to deny. “How could you be? I haven’t touched you in several months, and even then, we don’t have sex unless I wear—”
“I took a sewing needle to all your condoms,” Leticia disproved. “It was only a matter of time...I am Eddie…and since I don’t sleep around, you are the father.”
Eduardo wasn’t scared of her threats. Worse than that, he definitely didn’t like being placed in a vulnerable situation especially by someone he barely tolerated. “I’m still not staying,” he explained, trying to bring himself back to monopoly. “Don’t worry; I’ll take care of the child. I always take care of what’s mine.”
Leticia was crushed. She loved her husband with all her heart! All her hopes and dreams discarded in a matter of moments. “Please Eddie, please, I love you, I’ll do anything for you, anything you want, please don’t leave me...please leave her.”
Please leave her.
Please leave her…
That same exact instrumental statement was the catalyst of Amber’s repercussion. Those words were more potent to him than a judge’s proclamation of ‘you’re in contempt’ affected him more.
“By the way it’s Eduardo and I want a divorce,” he soullessly uttered to her. “If you are pregnant, then you’ll begin to show in the next few months.” Eduardo then watched her expressionless as she crumbled back to the floor. He grabbed his suitcases already by the door and shoved them outside in the rain. “Your crying just proves my theory,” he grinned, patronizing. “I want to see my daughter every other weekend, I won’t fight you on physical custody, I know she’s better off with her mother than an unstable father like me right now. You’ll be hearing from my attorney soon.” And then he shut the door. The next thing he heard was glass shattering from a vase being thrown at the door behind him. But he loved his daughter, doted on her constantly, and treated her with respect; he just never loved the mother.
Two days later, Eduardo went to talk to Victor. But Victor would have nothing to do with him. He came out of the house swinging a baseball bat in his hands. Eduardo made every attempt at trying to calm his brother down, but the scene was so overwhelming he felt he almost needed to be thrashed.
“You stupid asshole—fucker, son-of-a-bitch, you betrayed me!” Victor shouted, swinging the bat aimlessly. “You can get every fuckin woman practically alive, but that just wasn’t enough for you was it? You had to see if you could get mine! You stupid mother-fucker!” Victor swung the bat, missing Eduardo’s face by inches.
“Victor let me explain,” Eduardo pleaded, his hands up in the air admitting defeat. What the hell could he possibly say? He knew deep down it was nonetheless, unexplainable.
“There’s no explanation for what you did Eduardo, no excuse for it,” Victor bellowed, taking a swing at Eduardo’s head. “You took my wife dammit! I thought if she weren’t a blonde, at least I’d have a chance. But noooo...you took my wife’s attention away from me, from our kids, she tried to commit suicide because of you!” He took another swing at his brother’s head.
Eduardo’s reaction was quick enough to duck, but just barely. He felt the wind of the bat graze against his back shoulder. “Victor please, stop swinging that bat before you kill me!”
“That’s my intention you fuckin’ wife stealer!” Victor swung again, only this time got Eduardo in his knee. Eduardo chopped down to the ground in ear-splitting agony.
Victor was his brother, he really truly loved his little brother. “Victor no more,” Eduardo cried in pain, flinching on the ground from the sight of Victor up above him ready to take aim at his other leg. “Victor, please—I’m in love with her!”
Victor hesitated having had the realization sink in. He lowered the bat and choked back furthering tears. “You better be,” he demanded pointing the bat to his face. “Because if I ever find out that you were just...you were just,” he expressed disheartened, fully crying now, “...using her to feed your ego—Oh God, I’m coming back and bashing your fuckin face in!”
So many fond memories dashed inside Eduardo’s mind when Victor spoke to him for the very last time. “You’re no longer my family Eduardo, mi hermano...you’re no longer my brother!”
That declaration injured Eduardo mentally, rolling over on the lawn, he wanted to die.
Eduardo was already separated from his parents for quite some time, going to college, getting his degree; he became independent from their emotions a long time ago. If it wasn’t for Amber and wanting to be near her, he would have never spent so much time with his family and at their house. His mother was the matriarch of the family, and when Rosalba called for Eduardo during the middle of business hours, did he wait until his work was done? Oh, hell no! He ran to the Sanchez house so fast his co-workers saw his exit as a blur. Rosalba wanted to hear with her own ears from her son’s mouth that he had had an affair with his sister-in-law.
The moment they see each other, he fell to her feet and cried at the base of her legs. Rosalba’s heart broke at the sight of her son in such torment, she loved her little boy and caressed his hair as he continued to shed his heart-felt tears.
“Mehiò...so it is true.”
“Sí Mama, lo siento. I’m sorry,” Eduardo confessed, looking up at her.
“Do you know what this is doing to your brother?” She asked, holding his head in the palm of her hand.
“Hago...I do know Mama.”
“And you did it anyway?” Rosalba asked; disbelieving the conversation even existed.
“I fell in love with her, yo la adoro.”
“Eduardo mehiò...you could have any woman. You had Leticia, a loving companion. El compañerismo y adora. Why her? Why your brother’s wife?” Rosalba pulled her hand away and wiped away her own tears that were falling down her face.
Eduardo stood up, took a seat next to her and grabbed her hands within his, “I didn’t know I was in love with her until she married Victor. I tried to make my feelings for her subside, but they wouldn’t go away. Era tan duro, it was torture for me every time I saw her. I tried to forget her with another woman, hide my feelings, live my life, but she still kept haunting me...ah Mamá de dios, she’s the other half of me. Tell me who can turn away from that? I thought I was a strong man Mama, I’ve always been arrogant, always knew what women wanted, but Good God Mama, I never knew she felt the same. All those years I wished she had met me first, Amber adoróme también.”
“Ah mi hijo pobre, Victor,” she cried for her other son. Rosalba wanted to sympathize with him—she really did—but she couldn’t get passed the rea
lity of Eduardo hurting Victor. It was son physically harming son, and Rosalba was in deep distress.
Would he ever be allowed to come to family events again? Only time will tell. He was given a life sentence, only allowed visitation rights on good behavior. So was it all worth it? Alienating his brother, parents and Leticia? Worth all the torment, the lies, the deceit, just so that he could continue to be with the woman he loved? He was determined to find out. He wasn’t going to go through all the heartache and not receive a reward.
Eduardo was signing paperwork in the administration office. Amber would be relocated to the Palm Desert Treatment Center as soon as possible. Eduardo was going to pay for her care. He wanted to keep her from further harm and the Palm Desert Treatment Center came highly recommended.
He was just finishing up the formalities when his cell phone rang. He grabbed his crutches and dismissed himself from the office for a moment and hopped outside to the hallway to answer it. The administrator followed him and reminded him that he needed to “shut his phone off immediately.” Eduardo shrugged the fellow off and the cell phone rang again and Eduardo had no other choice but to hobble outside the hospital to answer the call. It was Aldridge & Watson, they needed his assistance there. He needed to go back to work as soon as he was done. He had to go back to Century City or else. Or else what? As soon as they heard that Amber tried to commit suicide (and that Eduardo and Amber had an affair) Philip Aldridge put Eduardo on probation so fast his head spun. Eduardo created his own reputation and reserved his own good character as the city’s top litigator, so if they were going to threaten him with being fired, then they would have a lengthy wrongful termination lawsuit on their hands, no doubt about that.
Unsuitable Obsession - Part One Page 24
