After The Dance

by Lori D. Johnson

  I hate that about Bet, man. Even after all the crap I’ve put her through, she still has the gall to want the best for me. I told her, “I hear you. And even though it might not look like it, I want you to know that I have been making more of a conscious effort to do better by you, the kids, and myself.”

  She smiled and said, “I’m glad to hear it.”

  I kissed her on the cheek and was about to turn and walk away when I heard her go and add, “‘Cause if you don’t stop messing around with these here young girls, you’re going to find yourself laying up broke, dead, or in a hospital somewhere.”

  I thought to myself, Yeah, but I’ll be laying up there with a big ol’ smile on my face.

  HER

  In a glance, all of the guilt and hurt I’d been keeping dammed up inside for so long came spilling out in one sobbing wave after another. There was no refuting the honest-to-God truth of what Scoobie had said. The little boy who smiled back at me from the eight-by-ten head shot was and is my very own daddy’s spitting image. According to Scoobie, it was a copy of our son’s first-grade photo we were looking at. The investigator he’d hired had managed to get it from our son’s adoptive grandparents, an elderly couple who made their home somewhere in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

  But that was pretty much where the good news ended. The grandparents had no clue as to the current whereabouts of the little boy they called Tariq. Not long after they’d received his school picture, their daughter—our son’s adoptive mother—had been killed in a car accident. For whatever reason, in the years after her death, the adoptive grandparents had fallen out of touch with their daughter’s husband and subsequently lost track of Tariq. Basically, the only thing they could do was confirm a few of the bits and pieces the detective had already uncovered—like the fact that their former son-in-law, now Tariq’s sole legal guardian, was a military man who moved every few years. Rumor also had it that he’d remarried and could quite possibly be living somewhere overseas.

  I’m telling you, girl, that was one mind-blowing night. And me seeing my son’s picture wasn’t even the half of it. I wept so hard and so long there came a point when it was all I could do but crawl up into Scoobie’s king-size bed and rest my head on the same pillow where I’d left the ring. And don’t think anyone was more shocked than me, when after having spent a good fifteen minutes listening to the brother pray and petition the good Lord for both of our forgiveness, I felt him crawl into the bed and lay down next to me. I stayed with him through the rest of the night and well into the following morning. Not that anything of a sexual nature happened, mind you. Scoobie held me and periodically whispered promises and reassurances into my ear while I cried myself into a fitful sleep.

  The next day I wasn’t sure what to think or feel about anything. I was so out of it, I seriously wondered if the brother might have slipped something into my drink. And Nora wasn’t the least bit of help. When I finally caught up with her again, told her how I’d spent the night, and showed her the ring Scoobie had talked me into holding onto until I’d made up my mind, she nearly pitched a hissy.

  “Ain’t this some bull … Girl, have you lost your ever-loving mind?!” she shouted, before grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me. “Margaret Faye Abrahams, tell me you are not seriously thinking about marrying this fool!”

  Rather than give her a straightforward answer, I told her about Tariq and showed her the picture I hadn’t been able to stop looking at or leave anywhere since Scoobie had given it to me. In a matter of seconds, the expression on Nora’s face skipped from one of bitter outrage to one of complete shock and horror before coming to rest on something that appeared to be a mixture of pity and sadness. On handing me back the photo, she said, “Okay, girl. Just promise me you’re not going to rush off and elope or anything—at least not before I’ve had a chance to do some investigating of my own.”

  “Of course not,” I told her, even though I wasn’t thinking a bit more about her than I was Scoobie or even Carl at that moment. No, the only somebody on my mind was the little boy whose happy face looked so much like my daddy’s it was downright spooky.

  A couple days after we came back from Atlanta, I was sitting in the kitchen gazing at the picture again, wondering where Tariq was and how life had been treating him, when Nora came in and slapped a small white envelope down on the table in front of me.

  “What’s this?” I asked her.

  “Oh, just some pictures I took by the poolside at the hotel in Atlanta while you and Scoobie were off doing whatever in the hell it is y’all do when you’re alone together,” she said. “Go on. Look at ’em and tell me who you see.”

  I thumbed through the photos for a second before I told her, “What? All I see is Tina’s hellion of a kid, Evan.”

  “Yeah,” Nora said. “But who, outside of his badass mama, does he remind you of? Uh-huh, that’s right. I told you I was going to do a little snooping around of my own.”

  I wasn’t exactly following homegirl, but before I could respond she threw another picture down in front of me. It was a school portrait, similar to one I have of Tariq, only wallet-sized, and the snaggletoothed boy in it was none other than our old childhood chum, Venard Nathaniel Payne, aka Scoobie.

  Nora slid one of the snapshots she’d taken of Evan next to the first-grade photo of Scoobie and said, “See, I told you there was something funny ’bout that kid. Tell me you don’t see the resemblance!”

  Girl, it was a body-double moment, if I’ve ever experienced one. But still, I didn’t want to believe it. I looked at Nora and said, “You really think this might be Scoobie’s kid?”

  Nora rolled her eyes and said, “Might, my behind. The real question is, does old man Dumas know? I think it might behoove you and me to sit down and see if we can’t write us an anonymous ‘Dear Mr. Dumas, you know damn well that baby ain’t none of yours’ type of letter.”

  Now, see, I didn’t want any part of that. Far as I was concerned, whatever was going on between Scoobie and the Dumas crew was best off left between the four of them. I was about to tell Nora something along those lines when the telephone rang. Thinking it might be Scoobie, and not wanting to get into it with him about Evan in front of Nora, I told her, “Wait, don’t answer that. Let’s see who it is first.”

  When the answering machine clicked on, me and Nora both scrunched up our faces as we listened and tried to place the voice of the woman who’d obviously been getting her drink on. “Hey, this is a message for Faye. Look, I don’t mind sharing him, okay? But it would be terribly unwise for you to think for even one split second that I’m going to just step aside and let you have him. You feel me? All right, then. So don’t act like you ain’t been told.”

  I sat back in my chair and was like, “Who in the world …?”

  But Nora said, “Uh-uh, don’t even play. You know exactly who that was. I told you we should have gone ahead and beat that hainty heifer down when we had the chance. Who does she think she is, calling here and threatening somebody?”

  Girl, at that point, I was too outdone to say anything. All I could do was stare at the pictures of the three little boys—Scoobie, Evan, and Tariq—and shake my head.

  HIM

  Nora called the other day and asked if she could come over and check out my new pad. “Yeah, come on” is what I told her, secretly hoping that she’d find a way to convince Ms. “You Know Who” to tag along.

  Even though I called myself trying to hide my disappointment when Nora caught me peeking behind her, she took it upon herself to scold, “If you’da wanted her to come, you should have asked her.”

  With my grin fading fast, I told her, “If she’da wanted to come, her ass woulda been here.”

  Nora let it go for all of ten minutes. Just long enough to tease and compliment me on the noticeable changes in my appearance before taking off for a quick look-see of my new place. We were on the last leg on the tour and had just opened the door to my bedroom, when she stopped in midstep and started squea
ling. “Dag, Carl! You went all out in here, didn’t you?”

  After checking everything out and letting me know how impressed she was with my impeccable style and taste (thank you very much), she took her busy butt on over and bounced it up and down on my mattress a couple of times. “Faye said you had a real nice bed” was the comment she let slide on stretching out and shifting into maximum relax.

  I laughed and told her, “Yeah, and I’m willing to bet that’s not all Faye had to say about the time she spent in my bedroom.”

  A big ol’ grin busted out across her face and she was like, “I told you, you oughta call her sometime.”

  I took a seat in the rocker next to my bed and told her, “Nothing doing, sister. I’ll have you know I fully intend to keep the few shreds of dignity I do have left.”

  Nora got quiet and I saw the playful expression on her face give way to one much more serious. “Something wrong?” I asked her.

  She sat up and shook her head. “I’m just kind of worried about her is all.” Remembering what a chump dude had been that night outside the condo, I stopped rocking and said, “She’s not letting ol’ boy smack her around or anything, is she?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Nora said. “Actually, he’s just asked her to marry him.” She went on to give me all the gut-wrenching details about their recent trip to Atlanta and the big-ass ring Chef Boy had given her. It hurt like hell to hear that shit, man, but rather than let on, I said, “Wow! She must be happy, then.”

  Nora made a face and said, “Happy, my ass. Stuck, is what she is. Stuck on stupid and ain’t even trying to find a clue. What are we gonna do, Carl? Have you given any more thought to coming up with a plan?”

  I told her I had a plan, all right. A plan to mind my own damn business, same as she needed to do.

  She said, “Chances are you’d be humming a different tune if you knew Faye like I know Faye. See, you weren’t there when she went through her little nervous breakdown episode behind some of Scoobie’s ignorant-ass mess and I thought I was gonna have to call somebody to come and put my girl in a freaking straitjacket.”

  I was like, “Hold up! Faye had a nervous breakdown?”

  Realizing she’d revealed way more than she’d intended, Nora fell back against the pile of pillows on my bed and tried to blow it off. “It was one incident that happened years ago. Matter of fact, forget I even brought it up. The last thing I want is for you to start thinking the girl is straight-up Looney Tunes.”

  Too curious to just leave it alone, I said, “If you don’t mind me asking, did this ‘little episode,’ as you described it, by any chance take place in Oklahoma?”

  Nora’s eyebrows shot straight up on her forehead like my little girls’ do when they know they’re in trouble. She jumped up off the bed with, “You know what, Carl? I shouldn’t even be talking about this. Faye would kill me if she found out.”

  “So who says she has to find out?” I said, stepping in front of her as she headed for the door. “And what difference would it make now anyway?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and for a second I thought she was gonna go ahead and give it up. But when she opened them again she said, “As much as I’d like to tell you, Carl, I can’t. I made a promise to Faye a long time ago—a promise that I’d never tell anyone. So if you really want to know, I’d suggest you call her up and ask her—the sooner, the better.”

  HER

  Yeah, girl, I’ve been getting a lot of weird calls lately. Remember Betty, Carl’s ex-wife? Well, she called me the other night. She and the twins are throwing this big surprise birthday bash for Carl and they want me and Nora to come.

  I’da probably told her thanks but no thanks and kept the invite to myself had Nora not been sitting there looking dead in my mouth when I took the call.

  Soon as I hung up the phone, she was like, “A party for Carl? And we’re both invited? Oh yeah, girl, we going! So don’t even try and trip, ’cause we are most definitely going.”

  For real, girl, the heifer is about this close to getting on my last freaking nerve. And if she says one more thing to me about what she perceives as my hesitancy to go ahead and confront Scoobie about Evan, I swear, I’m gonna straight take her out.

  Hell, it’s not like I’m afraid to nail homeboy’s behind to the wall. Nor do I doubt for a second that girlfriend hasn’t straight cold cracked the case and that the little devil-in-training’s real daddy is our very own Chef Scoobie Payne. I’ve just decided to bide my time and take a wait-and-see approach about it all. Eventually the truth is bound to show itself, not only about the nature of Scoobie’s relationship with Tina and Evan but the earnestness of his intentions toward me and our son as well.

  You’da thought that us acquiring our son’s picture would have had Scoobie all stoked about the possibility of us seeing the child in the flesh one day soon. But outside of his initial display of concern for me and my feelings, the brother has pretty much donned the role of Mr. Nonchalant. The only thing he’s said to me at all about Tariq since our return from Atlanta is, “As soon as Detective Clarke turns up something else, you, my dear, will be the first to know.”

  I told you, girl, the only thing Scoobie seems to have any real interest in discussing with me, other than himself, of course, is my body and what he obviously views as its current state of total disrepair. “So how much weight have we lost this week? Are you still sticking to that food program the nutritionist recommended? You did go to the gym last night, didn’t you? Have you used any of that stretch-mark cream I bought you? Let me know when you’ve made up your mind about Florida.”

  “Right,” I told him. “You really think I can just walk up into my job and talk those folks into granting me an extended leave of absence for some surgery that ain’t hardly necessary for my continued health and well-being?”

  He was like, “So quit. I told you, baby, I want you to be my wife. I want to take care of you and all your needs.”

  Girl, please. I am not fixing to let Scoobie worry me. True enough, the changes I’ve made thus far—like losing weight, kicking my smoking habit, moving more, and eating healthier—are ones I’ve needed to make for a long time. And certainly I’m grateful to Scoobie for helping me get back on track, even if he is the one who knocked me on my butt in the first place. But if he thinks I’m about to hand him my life on a platter to shape and mold as he sees fit, he’s got another thing coming.

  HIM

  Man, me hooking up with Ms. Vic on my birthday is something that just sorta happened. Really, it did. If anything, my plan was to be as far away from her ass as possible because I knew good and well if we went out that evening and had so much as a halfway decent time, later on that night we were destined to be laid up somewhere buck-naked, humping like a couple of mad dogs in heat.

  I promise you, man, I called up some of everybody—in-cluding the good Lord—in my desperate attempt to keep baby girl at bay, only to come up with absolute zip. My cousin Squirrel wasn’t picking up his phone or responding to any of the messages I left him. My Uncle Westbrook claimed he had himself some hot date he didn’t dare break. And everybody else either already had other plans or for some reason I wasn’t able to touch bases with them.

  I was all set to spend my birthday nursing a beer by my lonesome, either at the bar or else holed up in one of the dark booths at Big Mama Mae’s. But baby girl chucked a nice-size wrench in those plans.

  She’d been bugging me for days about my birthday plans and I’d pretty much been giving her the brush-off. So when she called me at work that afternoon, I decided to take the easy route and just not call her back. But lo and behold, as I’m clocking out for the day, who do you think I spot in the parking lot standing next to my car? I’m saying I guess she called herself straight gonna stalk a brother.

  She was like, “So what’s it gonna be, birthday boy? You gonna let me treat you to dinner tonight or are you gonna keep running?”

  I said, “Victoria, look, I don’t want you to think that I
don’t appreciate the offer, ’cause I do. But like I’ve told you before—”

  “Yeah, I know, I know,” she said. “You’re still hung up on the age thing, but that’s okay. I guess that means I’ll just have to give you your birthday gift now, as opposed to later.”

  That’s when she stepped to me, man. And before I could get a proper hold of the situation, her lips had locked against mine and the sister was straight working on trying to suck the tongue out the back of a brother’s head.

  “Happy birthday” is what she had the nerve to tell me when she finally turned me loose.

  Tell me ’bout it, man! Baby girl ain’t a day over twenty-two, but her skills and abilities are on par with those of any forty-some-year-old who has been around the block more than a time or two.

  I made the mistake of watching her walk away. And, man, what I do that for? She had on these hip-hugging, low-riding jeans, and I’ll be damned if that doggone butterfly riding her ass wasn’t winking at a brother.

  I don’t know what to say, man. I just lost it—all my cool, all my resolve, everything. “Wait up,” I said, chasing behind her like some mindless, punked-out zombie. “You, ah, you think you could be ready by say 6, 6:15 or so?” is what I asked her. “My daughters want me to drop by around 6:30 and pick up the present they got for me. I mean, I could come and get you later, if you like.”

  “No,” she said, sealing my fate with a grin and a seductive lick of the lips. “No, 6:15 is fine. I’ll see you then.”