Should Have Known Better

by Grace Octavia

  “No . . .” She hesitated. “OK. I was. Who is he? Where’d you two go?”

  “He’s A. J. and that’s none of your business,” I said, sitting down next to her. “Why do you care anyway? I thought you would be all upset about me making new friends. I am still married. And the church looks down on that.”

  “You can’t live your life by all of those old rules those fuddy-duddies make up,” she said. “This is your life. As long as you check in with your God, I am all right with that.”

  “Mama!” I looked at her surprised. “I can’t believe I’m hearing all of this. From you? I’m so proud.”

  “There’s a lot about me you wouldn’t believe. Spare me the drama, little girl,” she said, getting up from the couch. “Now, let’s go in the kitchen. I got you some ice cream and I want to hear all about this man. And who’s the wicked witch?”

  12

  “We deserve love. We give love. We offer it freely. We open our arms and we love everyone, but we must continue to be open to getting it, to receiving it, because we deserve it,” we all read from cards in a circle at the HHNFH. We were dressed in white. Had taken off our shoes and gone into the backyard of the house. Lit torches gathered us into a circle. We had no name tags.

  “You have to believe this,” the ringleader said. “To know that you are worthy. You’ve always been worthy of an infinite love. The kind you dreamed of. The kind you deserve.”

  We read the cards again aloud. It was love day. What the ringleader said was us making a sincere decision that we wouldn’t let our fury, our anger at our current situations bar us from accepting love into our lives.

  Some women cried. Some hadn’t yet responded to the idea of opening themselves to loving again. There was still a lot of anger and resentment.

  I’d gone out with A. J. a few times and even held his hand once, but I knew I was closer in my feelings to these weeping women than I was to fully opening up myself to him. I still saw Reginald in my dreams. Still wondered what he was doing and how he was doing. And although I hadn’t said more than, “When are you coming to get the twins?” and “Don’t be late,” I still loved him. What I needed, A. J. couldn’t offer me. I had to find it myself.

  But I agreed. Or rather, I knew that love wasn’t something I’d never see again. It would all come in time. I was focusing on understanding and embracing the new love I’d discovered in my life. My relationship with my mother was blooming so independently and effortlessly I wondered where she’d been all of my life. She was amazing. An open heart that bled for me after I’d left her for so long. And I had to make up for that lost time.

  We enrolled R. J. and Cheyenne in a school a few blocks away from my parents’ house. I was surprised that there was more classroom support and assistance available for R. J. He loved his new school. There was a special bus that came and picked him up from my mother’s doorstep every morning and while I was ready for him to cry and hold my hand, he ran off proudly down the walkway every morning. He had friends. A group of boys his age, who took guard at the back of the bus and even started knocking on our door every day after school. I tried to follow behind him. Tried to take him to find a new park to play at. A new sandbox. But he laughed at me. “I’m too old for that now, Mama,” he said. And I’d forgotten that, but he was right.

  Cheyenne wasn’t so easy about the transition. She wanted her old friends. She wanted her old room and seemed nervous about every little move I made. She was still watching me and I knew she was afraid of whatever was to come. I tried every day to connect with her. But I couldn’t give her certainty about something I was so uncertain about.

  The dissolution of my marriage, of our lives was something I never saw coming. And although I saw myself as the mother who had to have all of the answers for my little girl, I couldn’t answer her, because I wasn’t able to answer why myself.

  “Big day coming up,” the ringleader said, sitting beside me in one of the rocking chairs outside of the house when the meeting was over.

  “Yeah, we have our mediation next week.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Numb is more like it,” I said. “I don’t know what to feel right now. I’m so tired of fighting. I was so blind about everything.” Reginald and I were set to meet with our attorneys to discuss the possibility of dividing our only asset. “The house was in his name; I never bothered to mention having myself added on after his parents died. I didn’t think I needed to watch my back like that.”

  “A lot of women think that way. Don’t feel guilty about that. You just have to put measures in place now to change that.”

  “I don’t want anything from him. I just want to make sure my children get what they’re owed. You know?” I said. “He’s not the kind of father who’d stop taking care of them, but if anything happened to him, I need to know they’ll be OK.”

  “Have you told them about the divorce?” she asked.

  “I can’t even say it to them. I don’t think I can say it at all. I keep calling it, ‘the situation,’ ” I admitted. “I can’t even think it. And I know it’s coming, but it just seems so ugly. Such an ugly word. I never thought I’d be the type of woman who had to say that word.”

  “Who does?”

  “I was a good wife to him and I expected him to be good to me.”

  “And you had every right to expect that. You certainly did,” she said.

  The next week, A. J. and I were in his truck on our way back from my meeting. He’d been my scheduled weekly chauffeur for the last months as I waited to get my license back from the DUI conviction and my mother was now saddled with the task of shuttling the twins everywhere.

  A. J. and I were debating about whether or not wildlife activists should let the panda population die when he pulled in front of my mother’s house and I noticed Reginald’s new blue pickup truck parked in my mother’s driveway.

  “Pandas wouldn’t even survive in the wild. They don’t mate naturally,” A. J. was saying. “All they do is eat and sleep all day. Pandas don’t even like other pandas. They avoid each other.”

  “But they’re cute, so we should save them.” I repeated the stance I’d taken since we’d started the debate.

  “But why? Everything in nature is set up for them to fail. Survival of the fittest? Come on!” A. J. laughed and I felt him looking at me. He’d stopped the truck right behind Reginald’s truck and I was looking to see if Reginald was inside. I was trying to consider any reason Reginald’s truck would be at the house. I had my cell phone on and in my hand, so I knew there wasn’t anything wrong with the children. My mother would’ve called me.

  “So we should continue to support this dying species just because they’re cute and cuddly?” A. J. asked.

  “Yes,” I said distractedly.

  A. J. must’ve noticed how I was distancing myself from the conversation. He finally looked out of the window to discover the blue truck.

  We sat there looking for a second. I’d made out Reginald’s head and shoulders in the driver’s seat.

  “That’s not your uncle, is it?” A. J. asked.

  “No.”

  “Hum. Is he supposed to be here?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe my mother called him.”

  Reginald got out of the truck and looked at me and A. J. He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the truck.

  I could feel A. J.’s alarm. I picked up my purse from the floor and looked at him.

  “Don’t feel any kind of way,” I said. “I know what you’re thinking—here you are in a car with this man’s soon-to-be ex-wife.”

  “I’m not concerned about that,” he said. “I’m wondering if I need to walk you to the door.”

  “No. That’ll just make things more awkward. I don’t want to get you involved.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Completely,” I said. “And he’s not the violent type.” I looked at Reginald. “He probably just wants to talk about the mediation tomorrow.” I opened the door.
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  “Maybe I could sit here and wait for you to go inside.”

  “A. J., you don’t need to do anything. I’m fine. I’ll call you tomorrow.” I kissed my fingertips and brushed them against his cheek.

  “You’d better. I have these tickets to the zoo this weekend,” he said. “I’m not walking around there alone, looking like the new black Tarzan.”

  “Is that what this whole panda conversation was about?” I said, laughing. “I was beginning to think you were crazy.”

  “No, crazy is spending a billion dollars every year to save a species that clearly wants to commit mass suicide—”

  “Yeah, you’re crazy.”

  I got out of the truck, keeping my eyes on Reginald.

  “Do your research,” A. J. joked. “Do you think the twins would like to go?” he asked. I still hadn’t introduced him to them formally.

  “We’ll see,” I said. “That might be a good idea.”

  I waited for A. J. to take off and get clear down the street before I walked over to Reginald. I didn’t know if something could happen out there, but I knew I didn’t want it to happen in front of A. J. He had no stake in my private life and getting him involved would only put a cloud over something that had become so bright in life.

  “Something happen?” I asked Reginald. We were far from “hello” and “good-bye.”

  “Hello,” he said cheerfully. “How are you?” He smiled and nodded to me.

  I didn’t recognize anything about him. Not his clothes or his shoes. Not the truck. Even his hair was cut differently.

  I saw a light flash from the living room as someone moved the curtains.

  “Did my mother call you?” I asked, ignoring his small talk.

  “No, I was just around here—Hey, who was that man?”

  “What?”

  “Are you dating him?”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business.” I folded my arms.

  “I wasn’t asking like that. I was just wondering, you know, if you’re seeing anyone.”

  “Why would you wonder that? You’re seeing someone. Look, just cut to it. Why are you here? You don’t get R. J. and Cheyenne until Friday. What do you want?”

  He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets and a look of seriousness came over him.

  “The mediation is tomorrow,” he said.

  “I know. What about it?”

  “I was just thinking . . .” His voice trailed off and I could tell that he wanted me to try to pick it up and ask what he was thinking about, but I stood with my arms folded and my mouth closed. “Remember when we moved to Augusta?”

  “Yes. I was twenty-one and had never been anywhere else outside of Atlanta. Did you and Sasha enjoy Cabo? That is where you two went so she could clear her head and think about what’s next for her career. How’s she handling getting fired?”

  “She’s fine. But why did you bring her up? We’re talking about us. About when we moved to Augusta.”

  “No, you’re talking about when you and I were married and you took a vow before God to remain faithful to me. And then we went to Augusta. And then you cheated with Sasha. So, I think it’s all very relevant to bring her up.” Months ago, if you told me that I’d ever know how to speak to anyone like this, I would’ve called you a fool. But every discussion I had with Reginald was making me better at the art of argument.

  “When we moved into my parents’ house, we lived in Cheyenne’s room. We had to share that one bathroom in the hallway.” He laughed. “Remember that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You used to wash your underwear in the middle of the night and hang them in our bedroom because you didn’t want my mother to know you wore colored underwear.”

  “She said they caused cancer.”

  “Right. But you loved the little pink ones,” he said. “And when we had the twins. The house is so small, but we couldn’t keep up with them. Remember when they started walking and Cheyenne discovered how to push the front door open?”

  “She almost made it to the sidewalk,” I recalled, laughing with Reginald.

  “We haven’t been able to keep her in the house since.”

  I smiled, remembering Cheyenne sitting at the screen door, just wailing when we got a latch put at the top of the door to keep her in. She looked up at the latch and hollered so loud the neighbors could hear her.

  “What do you want, Reginald?” I asked.

  “I don’t know if we should be moving so fast with this divorce,” he said straightforwardly.

  “What? But you—”

  “No. No. No. Listen to me,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about us and our family. I don’t know if I’m ready to just let it all die like that. What we had, it wasn’t perfect, but we had something. We were together.”

  “Don’t you think you should’ve thought about this before you slept with my best friend? No. No. Before you so obviously chose my best friend right in front of me?”

  “I’d prefer not to talk about that. Sasha and I aren’t exactly happy. There’s a lot going on.”

  “ ‘I’d prefer’?” I repeated, laughing at the insanity in his statement. “I don’t care—no, I don’t give a damn what you prefer. Is this because things aren’t going so well for Ms. Bellamy? Now you realize what a crazy, psycho bitch she is? Or is it because things aren’t going well for you?” I stepped closer to him. “I heard about how you’ve been losing clients. Canceling calls. All to be with your sweetheart. In her rented house. And I know you didn’t get the Landon contract.”

  He looked at me.

  “You’ve got this big fancy truck and nowhere to drive it.”

  “Dawn, I’m just—”

  “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say,” I said, turning to walk to the house. I stopped. “You know, I can’t believe you had the freaking unmitigated gall to bring your black ass over here talking about what you prefer. I’d prefer not to be living in my mother’s house and living off of her life savings. I’d prefer not to have to uproot my children from their home and their school and their friends. I’d prefer not to be humiliated by the experience of knowing that everyone I know knows that my husband was dumb enough to run away with an insane lunatic.”

  “I love you,” Reginald said.

  “Don’t you dare!” I cried, feeling my heart breaking again. I turned to the house and started walking up the path.

  “I don’t want this divorce,” he said, grabbing my arm.

  I trembled.

  “You started this,” I said. “You’ll finish.”

  “Tell me you don’t love me, too. Tell me you don’t miss our family. Miss us being together.”

  I wouldn’t turn around, so he walked in front of me.

  “Tell me you don’t love me and I’ll let it go. Just say it.”

  “I don’t have to say it; I know it,” I said. “Get out of my way.”

  The front door opened and my mother turned on the outside light.

  “Everything OK out there?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mama,” I said. “I’m coming in.” I looked back at Reginald. “I’ll see you at the mediation tomorrow.”

  “He was out there all night,” my mother said, opening the door for me. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You could’ve called me.”

  “I didn’t want to scare you.”

  “Did the kids see him?”

  “No. I’ve had them in bed since 8:30. He got here at nine,” she said. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing worth repeating.”

  After eating a plate of food my mother left on the kitchen table for me, I went upstairs to a hot shower and cold bed. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Reginald had said. He’d written our memories in my mind and every time I tried to think of something new, an image of Cheyenne gripping his fingers to stand up or R. J. figuring out how to pick up Cheerios flashed. I could feel the memory of my family like it was hours ago since I was in Augusta. I could smell Reginald’s wor
k boots in the front hallway. I could hear him singing in the shower. See him sitting on the couch with the kids watching basketball. I missed the confidence I’d had in my life when I had all of those feelings on a daily basis. A twin-sized bed in my mother’s house hardly made up for it. Now, I was in fragments.

  The call from Sasha must’ve come after 2:00 a.m. That was the last time I remembered seeing on my alarm clock before I dipped into a dream of chasing a toddling Cheyenne around the house. At first the ring was in my dream, disguised as the house phone. But then I opened my eyes and saw Sasha’s name on my cell phone.

  I let it ring three times. And then a fourth. It stopped. And then it started again.

  “What do you want?” I asked after she called back the third time.

  “Where is he?” she snapped.

  “He? Who?”

  “Don’t play fucking stupid with me. Where is he?”

  “Tell me who he is and maybe I can help you.”

  “Reginald. Where is Reginald?”

  There’s no sentence I can write to describe the irony I felt deep in my soul at hearing this question. It was pleasurable. Almost like the first night of A. J.’s show on CNN, which marked the end of Sasha’s. Almost like the afternoon R. J. told me that Sasha had to sell her fast car. I wasn’t riding high on these tidbits of information, but they gave a little pleasure. Just enough to make me giggle in knowing that true revenge comes from the universe.

  “Have you called him?” I asked, faking concern.

  “Bitch, spare me. Have you seen him?”

  “No, I haven’t,” I lied. I figured it would be more interesting to tell her the truth later—see what I mean about becoming a better arguer (hint: play offense and defense)?

  “God damnit,” Sasha cursed. “I thought he was going there.”

  “What would make you think that?”

  “He’s gotten all fucking emotional now. Was talking about his ‘family’ and said he missed you.”

  “He said he missed me?” I don’t know why, but this mattered to me.