After The Dance

by Lori D. Johnson

  But instead of ushering me in out of the rain, Faye reached for the sack I was holding. In handing it over, I told her there was enough inside for the both of us if she felt at all like sharing. Then I stood there for a moment, staring and looking stupid, I’m sure. Finally, I said, “I guess you’re not up to having a slice with me right now, huh?”

  When all I got from her was a shrug, I nodded and turned to leave. A flash of lightning lit up the path that led back to my car and I was about to pick up the pace when I thought I heard her call my name.

  I glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough, her mouth seemed to be moving, but I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying for all the thunder and the sudden downpour of rain. When I trotted back up to the porch, she pushed open the door and shouted down at me, “It’s starting to look pretty bad out here. Maybe you ought to come in—at least until things die down a bit.”

  Dude’s kitchen is where I found myself once I stepped inside. And let me tell you, man, I’ve never seen anything like it outside of an episode of How I’m Living. I’m talking granite countertops galore, wood floors polyurethaned so tough you could practically see your reflection in them, cherrywood cabinets, top-of-the-line appliances, recessed lighting, and more. All I could say was, “Dag, this boy really does have it going on, huh?”

  In total awe of all the space, wealth, and luxury, I was just standing there trying to take it all in—with my mouth open, no doubt, when some of the water dripping off my head made its way into my eyes. “Here, let me,” Faye said, coming to my rescue with a big, fluffy dish towel that smelled like it had never been used.

  While she dabbed my face, my neck, my head, around my ears, and across my brow, I shut my eyes and quietly reveled in the warm caress of her breath on my skin. My mind became little more than a jumble of Faye-centered thoughts. I started thinking about that evening she’d made me let her in so she could help me with my son, Benjamin; the day we’d spent at the amusement park; and the night we’d made out on my sofa after the Jarreau concert. I started thinking about the naked press of her body against mine; the pinch of her nails on my back; the run of my tongue along her thigh; and that doggone dance that had started it all.

  I’m not sure what she was thinking or feeling while I stood there fighting against the urge to pull her into my arms and tell her just how bad I’d been missing her, but when she finally lowered the towel and spoke to me, her tone was considerably softer than it had been before. “There’s coffee if you want some, or I could make tea if you like.”

  “No, coffee’s good,” I told her.

  While she busied herself with the cake and the brew, I made a beeline for the fancy sound system I spotted near the kitchen table and popped in the Love and Happiness CD I’d brought in with me. I’m saying, man, she owed me a dance and I had every intention of getting it. After lowering the volume on the music until it was just a hum, I sat down at the table and tried not to let my nerves get the best of me.

  I was sitting there, playing with the oversize number 42 candle that had been on my cake when I noticed Faye staring at me from the other side of the room. She said, “I suppose this whole new-look thing was your girlfriend’s, excuse me, I mean Victoria’s, idea?”

  I said, “No, not all of it. Really, just the earrings. The rest I came up with on my own. Why? You think it makes me look stupid or something?”

  She bit her lip and spent a few seconds mulling either the question or her answer before she said, “No, actually I think it’s kind of cute. A bald head does you justice.”

  Always a sucker for a compliment, I said, “Yeah? What about the goatee?”

  She laughed and said, “Anything beats that scraggly-ass beard you were wearing.”

  I was like, “Hey, if you didn’t like my beard, you should have said something.”

  She said, “Sure, and just like that you would have gotten rid of it?”

  Spotting my opening, I told her, “To make you happy, yeah, I would have. I thought you knew.”

  Her dimples deepened. I know they did. Yet and still, rather than go for the bait, Faye being Faye chose to skirt around it. After clearing her throat, she said, “So the girls have you taking them to see an Alvin Ailey production, do they?”

  On informing her that the dance outing was an idea I’d come up with and had been looking forward to attending, I asked her if she’d ever seen Cry. I told her it was an Ailey classic. “Matter of fact,” I said, “I’ve got a copy of it on tape with Judith Jamison performing it, no less. Couple of nights ago, I pulled it out and watched it. And I’ll be dog if it didn’t remind me of a certain somebody.”

  HER

  Sure, the brother having the wherewithal to show up on Scoobie’s doorstep in the middle of the night in a durn thunderstorm looking for me was flattering, to say the least. So, yeah, I invited him in, but even so, I hadn’t meant to let him stay any longer than it would take for him to partake of some cake and maybe a cup of coffee. Yeah, that was the plan, all right, until he up and started talking about Cry.

  In case you didn’t know, girl, Cry is a modern dance number that the late, great choreographer Alvin Ailey put together in tribute to his mother. Not only does it capture the very essence of the Black woman’s experience in America, it’s one of the most moving combinations of music, dance, and emotions that I’ve personally ever witnessed. So when Carl brought it up, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a subtle ploy on his part to get me to open up about my son, Tariq.

  “Carl, why don’t you save us both some time and just tell me why you really came all the way out here?” is what I asked him before bringing the coffee and the cake over to the table and having myself a seat.

  “Same reason you showed up at my party tonight” is what he told me. “Same reason you’re willing to sit here with me now. Face it, baby, we never got to finish what we started. And as long as ol’ boy is standing between us, I don’t guess we ever will. You really thinking about marrying this joker? Is that what you want?”

  Rather than answer, I watched as he lit the candle and jabbed it into his piece of cake. He looked up at me and said, “It seems to me that any woman in her right mind would know better than to settle for frosting when she could have cake.” Then he reached over, poked a finger into the thick chocolate icing covering my slice of cake, and after licking the cream from his finger told me, “Another layer, baby, and we’da been there. You hear what I’m saying?”

  Stifling the urge to laugh, I asked him, “Carl, what makes you think what we had would have even lasted? Tell the truth, cake or no cake, I’m not even your type. You like young, skinny girls. Young, skinny, and from the looks of this latest little honey, just a tad on the airhead side.”

  He had the nerve to get hot behind that and say, “Now, how you gonna tell me what my type is? And based on what—Clarice? A woman I hooked up with at a party one night when I was drunk? Or Victoria? A woman whose affections I respectfully declined to partake of tonight because I wanted to be with you. Seems to me it’s rather obvious you’ve got something I like or else I wouldn’t be over here trying to beg up on some more of it.”

  HIM

  I pulled out my billfold, flipped it open to the picture section, and set it down in front of her. When she looked down, the first thing out of her mouth was, “Wait! Dag, Carl, that’s you?! Get out!”

  What I’d taken the liberty of showing her was one of my old prom pictures. Yeah, man, you know how we kicked it back in the ’70s with the big fro, the baby-blue polyester, the stack heels, and all? Well, add a big ol’ lopsided grin to that bit of imagery and you’ve got me at age seventeen, tipping the scales at 250-plus pounds and, according to my cousin Squirrel, looking like a black disco version of Baby Huey.

  Faye tripped so hard at my doofus-looking butt, she almost didn’t take full notice of the heavyset girl in the picture beside me. But soon as she did, an “Oh, my goodness!” slipped out of her. She picked up the photo and held it closer to her face before
she frowned and said, “You mean to tell me … I mean, that’s …”

  I laughed and told her, “Yup, that’s my girl Bet, all right—sixteen years old and probably somewhere around a hundred pounds heavier than she is today. Now, what was that you were saying again about the kind of women I like?”

  Still staring at the photo, Faye nodded and said, “Point well taken. I suppose there is a lot about you I don’t know. And by the same token, there’s quite a bit you don’t know about me.”

  “So how about we change that, starting now?” is what I said. “Go ahead, ask me and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  I didn’t really think she’d take me up on the offer. So when she asked if I was still in love with my wife, I was thrown a bit off guard. “Yeah, I am,” I managed to stutter. “But it’s not like you think. There’s absolutely no chance of us ever getting back together.”

  On her next pitch, ol’ girl switched up on me and went from a fastball to a curve. “So why were you out in the streets humping around in the first place?”

  Even though sharing the raw, intimate details of my marriage was the last thing I wanted to do, rather than throw up my hands and say, “Okay, game over. I quit,” I sucked in a deep breath and slowly released it before I laid it out for her. “I suppose I was searching for a way to feel better about myself.”

  Apparently she thought I was out to make light of my misbehavior, because she said, “Oh, that’s one I’ve never heard before—extramarital sex as a cure for self-esteem.”

  I told her, “I’m being as straightforward with you as I can, Faye. Several years into what I thought was a near-perfect relationship, I found out I wasn’t making my wife happy in bed. She suffers from this condition, I don’t know the clinical term for it, but it pretty much renders her unable to reach the big ‘O.’ Come to find out, all those times I’d thought I had her climbing the walls, she’d actually been faking it.”

  That’s when Faye truly surprised me, man. Rather than go for the cheap shot, she slipped into what I assumed to be her friendly neighborhood pharmacist voice and said, “In case you didn’t know, there are a lot of really good medications on the market specifically designed to treat what Betty suffers from.”

  I told her, “Believe me, we tried several. And right before Bet and I split up is when her doctor finally lucked up on one that worked for her.”

  “So why the divorce?” Faye wanted to know.

  “In a word,” I told her, “Benjamin.” See, man, my sleeping around, as bad as it was, Bet was still willing to forgive and even forget to some extent. But the fact that I went out and had a child outside of our marriage, that was just too much for her.

  After I finished breaking it down for ol’ girl, I told her it was my turn and, upon flipping the script, I said, “Assuming that you’re still maintaining that you’re not in love with this guy, I really would like to know just what it is you’re getting out of this. There’s gotta be a payoff of some sort, Faye, or else you wouldn’t be here. This joker throwing down something so tough beneath the sheets that it’s got you content to sit here alone and wait for him rather than laying up butt-naked somewhere next to me?”

  I could tell she thought that was funny, but when she saw how dead serious I was, she told me, “For all it’s worth, Carl, technically speaking I haven’t been with anyone since I was with you. Scoobie’s been celibate for the past year or so and his preference is that we abstain from any sort of premarital sexual activity.”

  Now, man, you know I’m sitting there with this blank expression on my face and thinking to myself, Celibate, my ass! I’ll be damned if I ain’t messed around and lost my woman to some trash-talking, closet sissy! And if my cousin Squirrel should ever get wind of this shit, I’m liable to never live it down.

  But you’ll be happy to know I took the high road and opted not to go there. Instead, I turned around and asked her if it was about the money and the bling. I told her, “I gotta be real with you, baby—barring me hitting it big on the slots in Tunica, financially I’m probably never gonna be able to afford to have you living in this type of luxury. But what I can and would very much like to do is give you all of me … and in time, possibly a kid or two, if that’s what you want.”

  She lifted her gaze from the picture she’d been staring at and appeared to search my face for a few seconds before she said, “You know … don’t you?”

  I was like, “Know what? That like a lot of women over thirty, you hear your biological clock ticking? Isn’t that why you go up to Baptist East and rock infants every Wednesday night? That’s not a problem for me, Faye. I’m not opposed to having more kids, even if it means I’ve got to take on a third job. Matter of fact, something tells me if you and I ever did get together and did this thing right, we’d make one hell of a pretty baby.”

  She rubbed her eyes and sighed before she told me, “Carl, the truth is, I already had a baby.”

  HER

  There it was, and instead of me trying to maneuver around it or shuck it off, I decided that after all I’d taken the man through, I owed him at least some small portion of the truth. So after swallowing a couple times to keep back the bile I felt rising, I finally just told him. “Twelve years ago I got pregnant with Scoobie’s child. Instead of trying to help me figure out what to do, Scoobie left me to deal with it on my own. After contemplating my choices, I decided to go through with the pregnancy. Being that I didn’t want my folks to find out, I packed up and moved to Oklahoma. Nora’s got relatives out there. She came along and helped me get set up. She was also there when I gave birth to him. I had a boy, eight pounds, nine ounces.”

  “Okay,” he said. “So you had a child under what could best be described as less than desirable circumstances, not unlike what transpired in my situation. What I still don’t understand is why you would feel the need to keep something like that from me.”

  “Because,” I said, “the deal was we weren’t supposed to get emotionally involved, remember? There was only so much of myself I ever intended to give you.”

  He asked me, “So what happened? With the baby, I mean?”

  My mouth opened, but nothing came out. After a good thirty seconds’ worth of trying, I just dropped my head. But there were no tears, at least not on my part. No, that’s a hurt I’ve long felt honor-bound to keep bottled up inside.

  Carl, on the other hand, was so choked up, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d broken down and started blubbering enough for the both of us. “Damn. I’m so sorry, Faye. I’m so awfully sorry” is what he kept repeating.

  After extending him a sincere apology for all the times I’d been less than nice to him, I told him, “If I didn’t give you as much as I should have, Carl, it’s only because I don’t feel as if I have all that much to give—to you or anyone else.”

  He insisted I’d given him plenty. A rediscovered love of poetry. A newfound appreciation of jazz, an ear for his troubles, a soft place to lay his head. He told me, “If you think I came here tonight looking for something other than just to be with you, baby, you’re wrong.”

  In an attempt to clarify his muddled understanding of the facts concerning me, Scoobie, and our son, I said, “Carl, you don’t understand—”

  And he was like, “Oh, you think not? Well, let me just say this. Not every man is as sorry as your friend Scoobie. My guess is, as soon as you stop beating yourself up about your past, you’ll be able to see that.”

  “My past?” I said, allowing myself to get pulled all off track with him. “Carl, the grief you feel when you lose a child doesn’t have a statute of limitations. Hell, it’s been twelve years, and my arms still feel empty. I sincerely hope that’s not something you’ll ever have to experience firsthand.”

  I could tell in a glance that not only had he felt the sting of the jab, but it had cut him pretty deep. Instead of backing away from the pain, like a lot of other men might have, he stayed put and told me, “Actually, I do know some of what you’re feeling. I�
��ve been there … twice. Me and Bet had the misfortune of burying two babies before the twins came along. The first one, Bet miscarried in her last trimester. The second was born but only lived about a week. In part that’s why when I found out about Clarice being pregnant, I went and talked her out of having an abortion. Even though I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it was mine, I simply couldn’t bear the thought of losing yet another child I’d helped bring into existence.”

  HIM

  After I finished saying my piece, neither one of us uttered another word for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, I went over and turned up the volume on the CD player and let brother Green break through the wall of silence between us with a few bars of “Love and Happiness.”

  I stretched out my hand to her, but rather than oblige me she folded her arms across her chest and said, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Carl, but I’m really not up for any of that right now.”

  I flipped over the CD case and pointed to the list of songs on the back. I told her that No. 4, “What a Wonderful Thing Love Is,” was a song that reminded me of the first two years of my marriage to Bet. In hopes of defusing some of the melancholy in the room, I put the song on and told Faye I’d like to experience that feeling again with the right someone.

  Determined to hold true to form, Faye drew her arms tighter around herself and said, “And I wish you the best in that. Really, I do.”

  Rather than tuck tail and run, I held my ground and told her that one of the songs on the CD reminded me of her. I handed her the case and asked her to guess which one. It was a gamble and, as unpredictable a woman as Faye is, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all had she opted to chuck the case right back and ordered me to get the hell out.