Tears on a Sunday Afternoon

by Michael Presley

  She stared into my eyes. “How about both of us together?” she asked, signaling her friend, who was starting to get up.

  “Been there, done that too many times. Unless your shit has gold fillings, this conversation is over.”

  “I’ll be right back,” she said and headed over to her friend.

  I took a sip of my drink and rested a hundred-dollar bill under the glass. She returned shortly and put her hand around my back as if we were old friends. I put my drink down. “Make sure you don’t insult me.”

  “We’re willing to do $400, but you have to buy a bottle of Courvoisier as a birthday gift to my friend.” There was a stupid smile on her face. “Like the song…”

  “I hate the song but I’ll buy the bottle. Let’s go.”

  I left the bartender with a hundred-dollar bill for a $6.50 drink. It was never about the money; it was about the game.

  I drove into my driveway at Mills Lane at 10:00 p.m., parking my S500 next to the red convertible X-type Jaguar in the driveway. As I stepped onto the pavement, a large black pit bull came trotting toward me. I stooped and rubbed the dog on the top of his head. He rubbed against my pants leg, walked with me to the large French doors and stood back as I opened the door.

  “Thanks for picking up Emerald from school. You didn’t have to leave as soon as we came home.” My wife, Lauren Carter, stood in the middle of the living room. Her right eye was black and swollen.

  “Is Emerald asleep?” I asked.

  “Like you care. He’s been asleep since eight-thirty,” she answered.

  I took off my shoes and put them in the closet. “I’m taking him to the zoo tomorrow.”

  “Lauren, come here,” a husky female voice beckoned from the kitchen. I followed my wife, who bolted toward the voice.

  “I thought I told you I don’t want all that mayonnaise on my sandwich,” the woman sitting at the kitchen table in a red nightgown said as my wife picked up the sandwich. That woman was my wife’s lover. “You know I don’t like hitting you, but you don’t listen.”

  “Sorry, Annette, I’ll do it over,” my wife said.

  I went to the refrigerator and took out a Heineken. As I passed by, Annette Hutchinson stood. She was a little bit shorter than Lauren and God had created her ugly.

  She looked at me, challenging me with her eyes.

  I opened the bottle and leaned against the counter, returning her challenge.

  “What?! You want to do something about this?” She pointed to Lauren. “Go ahead and see if you won’t be arrested for spousal abuse.”

  “Just as long as you keep your hands where they won’t be cut off. If I ever come home and find my child with so much as a scratch on his arm, I’ll take that artificial dick and shove it up your nose.”

  “Stop it! Both of you!” Lauren screamed, then lowered her voice as she added, “Donald, Dad said he wants to see you tomorrow.”

  I walked out of the kitchen and went up the stairs past the master bedroom into a room littered with an assortment of toys. I knelt next to the bed where my child lay fast asleep. I held the Heineken in my right hand as I used my left to move the curly hair away from his eyes. I kissed him in the middle of his forehead. A small tear escaped from my left eye onto his bed.

  “I love you,” I said and stood.

  I left the room and headed down to the last room at the end of the hall. I put the bottle next to the cases of empty ones in the walk-in-closet. I sat by the window looking out at the darkness of the night. I knew what I had to do. Maybe the next day I could stand up to my father-in-law and tell him what I had been unable to for four years. Then maybe I could walk away from my prison of madness.

  Chapter 2

  “Emerald, come here,” I called to my son as I walked toward the entrance to my father-in-law’s study.

  “Coming, Daddy,” he answered, running to me on his active little legs.

  When he was at my side, he nudged his head against my pants leg as I reached down and played with his hair. I had recently taken him to the barber, who had cut Emerald’s shoulder-length hair so that it barely touched his ears. I knocked gradually against the dark cherry, wooden door.

  “Come in,” the baritone voice came forcibly through the door.

  I opened the door cautiously.

  “Grandpa!” Emerald shouted and ran into the arms of a man who had celebrated his seventieth birthday but remained as agile and fit as a forty-year-old man.

  “Son,” he said and turned the big, ancient-looking mahogany chair around so that Emerald could come into his arms. “How’s my favorite son doing today?”

  “Daddy and I are going to the Bronx Zoo,” Emerald replied, holding his grandfather tightly around his neck.

  My son’s IQ was way beyond his tender age of four. By the age of two, he was already speaking in complete sentences. He currently attended a special school for gifted children.

  “Did Grandma give you that gift I bought for you?” Dennis Malcolm, my father-in-law, asked. Even though Dennis was his first name, no one called him that, not even his wife. It was either Mr. Malcolm or Malcolm.

  “No, I didn’t see Grandma.”

  He ran his hands through Emerald’s hair. “Well, you know where she is.”

  “Is she in the bedroom?” Emerald asked.

  “No,” my father-in-law answered.

  “Is she in the kitchen?”

  “No, and you have one more chance. Otherwise, you don’t get the present.”

  My son looked up at his grandfather with those big, beautiful brown eyes of his and said, “She’s in the garden.”

  “You’ve got it. Now, go see Grandma while your father and I talk. Donald, thanks for coming over today. How’s work?” he asked.

  “Work is fine, Mr. Malcolm. Thank you for the opportunity.”

  “Donald, you are part of the family now and family members help each other. Did you reconsider what we spoke about last week? As you know, I’m not young anymore and my daughter is definitely not making any more kids. I’m even willing to let you divorce my daughter. You could go on your merry way, a rich man.”

  “There’s no reconsideration, Mr. Malcolm. I’m not changing my son’s last name from Edison to Malcolm. And there isn’t enough money in the world to make me leave my son.”

  Mr. Malcolm leaned forward in the chair, interlocking his hands.

  “Donald, you know my wife doesn’t like you. She has always felt that you married our daughter for the money.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “Don’t interrupt, Donald; especially when I know she’s right. I see the way women ogle you. You can get any woman you want. I don’t believe you took one look at my daughter and said to yourself, ‘This is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.’ After you two were engaged, I had a detective follow you from that very day until the day you walked down that aisle. You never went one week without being unfaithful to my daughter, but that’s not important. You’re an opportunist and I can’t fault that.”

  He cleared his throat.

  That break gave me the opportunity to wipe the sweat that had begun to form on my forehead. I hated being in that position. I felt weak and defenseless.

  “Can I have a drink?” I asked, hoping to end the conversation. I suddenly realized that I would never get what I had come there to ask for.

  Mr. Malcolm picked up the phone and spoke briefly into it.

  “I see you’re not interested in talking about your love for my daughter, so we shall move on. I offered you five hundred-thousand dollars the last time you were here, to change your son’s surname to mine and you refused. Today, I’m willing to offer you a million dollars and a condo on Miami’s South Beach. What do you say, Donald? One million dollars transferred into the bank of your choosing; no strings attached.” He smiled, his cosmetically whitened teeth glistening.

  My voice trembled with anger. “Sir, I told you before and I’ll tell you once more, my son is not for sale.”

 
“Donald, why don’t you think about it? I recognize the fact that you have nothing. The car you drive belongs to my corporation. The house you live in is owned by my daughter. Even the platinum American Express card belongs to the corporation. A man has to own something, Donald, or else he’s not a man. When I was your age…”

  Here he goes again, explaining my failures and extolling his virtues. I purposely rolled my eyes in my head. He ignored my action and continued.

  “Life was never easy for me. Granted, my father was a rich man, but he made sure that I worked hard to understand the importance of earning your keep. After graduating from Howard University where I received my MBA, he started me in management. There was no preferential treatment given to me because I was his son. Sometimes I wished that I were back in college with the Benz and access to unlimited cash. He warned me that it would stop when I graduated, and it did.”

  I looked over at the clock; it was after four. I doubted I would be able to get to the zoo with Emerald, but I planned to try.

  “From that time on, I had to work for everything I got.”

  There was a welcomed knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Malcolm said.

  A maid dressed in a black and white uniform came in with a tray with two glasses, a carton of orange juice and a bottle of cranberry juice. Malcolm pointed to the cranberry juice and the maid poured him a glass. I strained to see her face because I wasn’t sure that I had met her before.

  “Orange juice,” I said, making sure I didn’t drink the same thing he was drinking. I needed something stronger, but whenever I drove with Emerald, I tried not to drink any alcohol.

  She poured the juice, turned around and gave it to me. I recognized her. Her name was Jessica and I had fucked her in the garden two weeks before my wedding. She looked at me, her eyes unwavering, as she put the juice carton back on the tray and left it on the table.

  “Anything else, Sir?” she asked Malcolm. He shook his head and she quickly left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.

  “She gives a great blow job,” Mr. Malcolm said. “I guess you don’t know about that because all you did was fuck her in the garden.”

  I had taken a big gulp of the orange juice that had now made its way through my nose in an unflattering display of shock.

  “Donald, Donald, you fail to realize the power of money.” He handed me a tissue from the box on his desk.

  I took it and wiped my nose, rolling the tissue in a ball and reaching over and dumping it in the small, empty wastebasket.

  “You knew all this about me and you allowed me to marry your daughter?”

  “Donald, my only child is a lesbian. I have tried to deny that ever since the time my wife caught her kissing her girlfriend; she had just turned fifteen. I did everything to get her away from women with those tendencies. Throughout high school I paid so many young men to take her on dates. Do you know what it’s like to be a multimillionaire with one child and have that child be a lesbian? Now you see why you’re such a Godsend.”

  There he was, so calmly admitting that he had played me for a fool. One of the main reasons I had married Lauren was because she wasn’t too interested in sex. For me, that was perfect. That way, I would have the time of my life fucking everything I could find.

  I stared directly into Malcolm’s cold, calculating eyes. “So, you played me for a fool.”

  He returned my stare without blinking. His old, cagey eyes sent a chill through my body. “I did no such thing. You saw a golden opportunity to have your cake and eat it too, so you went for it. But the cake you went for happens not to be what you expected.”

  I took a deep breath and said, “I want out. I don’t want your money or anything. I simply want to take my son and get out.”

  Malcolm started to laugh as if I had made the finals on BET’s Comic View. After about a minute went by, he stopped as suddenly as he had begun. “You’re not serious, are you?”

  “Yes,” I said, resisting the urge to jump over the table and snap his fucking neck.

  “First, you’re not going anywhere. Second, even if you leave, you will be leaving without my grandson. He’s the only person that I’m living for right now. You and my daughter don’t mean anything to me. If you’re thinking of running away with him, forget it. There isn’t a place on this earth you can go that I wouldn’t be able to find you. So, unless you plan to take the money and exit the marriage, my advice to you is to continue to fuck those whores and go home and play pretend husband.”

  There was a loud noise outside the study, as if someone was driving a car in the house. The door slid open and my mother-in-law, Dora Malcolm, poked her head in.

  “As you can tell, he got your present,” Dora said, barely acknowledging me with a nod.

  “Daddy, look what Grandpa bought for me,” Emerald said, getting out of a miniature car. “Can I drive it in the house at home?”

  I half-heartedly looked at the toy, rage boiling under my skin. “No, Emerald, but you can drive it in the driveway and the back yard,” I said, reaching down to turn the engine off.

  “Okay.” He took the key from my hand and placed it in his jeans pocket. “This is my key,” he said proudly.

  “Dora, Malcolm, we’ll be leaving now,” I said, unable to look at Malcolm.

  “Emerald, come give Grandpa a kiss before you go,” Malcolm said and bent down as Emerald ran to him.

  “I love you, Grandpa,” he said.

  “And me?” Dora asked.

  Emerald went from his grandfather’s chest to his grandmother’s arms. “You too, Grandma,” he said with an equal amount of conviction.

  “I’ll have Ray drop the car off later,” Malcolm said.

  “Why can’t we take it, Daddy?”

  “It’s too big to fit in our car,” I answered, taking him by the hand and starting to walk down the hall.

  “Don’t worry, Emerald, the car will be home before you get there,” Dora said.

  Dora was right. I had no intentions of going straight home. I pulled my car out from between the Bentley and the white Porsche convertible in the driveway. I made a few turns before ending up on Avenue U. My son eagerly talked about his new car as I headed onto the Belt Parkway. I had buckled him up in the back seat with his Game Boy. At half past four, the Belt Parkway was beginning to get a bit crowded. The grand opening of the new mall between Kings Plaza and JFK wasn’t helping either. The Benz responded quickly as I touched my foot to the gas pedal. My days of doing a buck twenty-five on the Belt were over. These days I was carrying a precious cargo.

  “Daddy, are we going to Aunty Julie’s before we go to the zoo?” Emerald asked, staring out the window.

  “Yes, Emerald, we’re going to Aunt Julie’s.”

  “Is she going to the zoo with us?

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to ask her to come with us,” I replied as I took the exit ramp at exit 22. After multiple twists and turns, I pulled up behind a blue Toyota Camry on a block filled with single-family homes. As is true of most Queens neighborhoods, the block was very quiet with the exception of a few people walking their dogs or pre-teens riding on the sidewalk. I unbuckled my son’s seat belt and hoisted him up onto my shoulders.

  “Hello, Emerald,” Julie said, coming to greet us at the door.

  Julie had recently celebrated her thirtieth birthday. She was five feet seven inches tall with an olive complexion. The smile that she gave to my son lifted me into the clouds. Julie had always been there for me. I had met her during my sophomore year in college and she was the only woman from college that I had kept in contact with on a regular basis. She was a wizard in mathematics, tutoring me through my battle with Calculus. As junior partner of one of the largest accounting firms on Wall Street, she commanded a salary of $195,000. She had purchased her house about five years earlier, making the migration from a small $1,500 studio apartment in Clinton Hill in Brooklyn.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked me, taking Emerald into her arms and carry
ing him into the house.

  “Daddy said we’re going to the zoo,” Emerald said as I pulled the door shut.

  “Well, if your dad said we’re going to the zoo, then we’re going to the zoo,” Julie replied as she put Emerald down. “Do you want something to eat first?”

  I had already gone to the refrigerator and taken out a bottle of Poland Spring water.

  “I don’t,” Emerald said. “I ate at Grandma’s.”

  “I sure didn’t eat at Grandma’s. I’m famished.”

  “What does famished mean, Daddy?”

  “It’s another way of saying that I’m very hungry, Emerald.”

  “Where’s Linky?” Emerald asked. Linky was Julie’s cat. Emerald loved him. I wasn’t in a hurry to see him.

  “I think he went outside,” Julie said. “I’m sure he’ll be back later.”

  “Emerald, I’m going to eat in the kitchen,” I said.

  “Okay, Daddy,” Emerald replied, sitting in front of the television. “Aunty Julie, can I watch the cartoon channel?”

  I lifted the cover off a pot on the stove, steam escaped. I took two spoons of rice, then headed for the stewed chicken. The smell alone made me want to eat the entire bowl. I packed chicken legs and breasts onto my plate. There was potato salad with chopped, boiled eggs and green peppers. I used the knife to cut two cubes of the macaroni pie. Finally, I leaned back onto one of the black seats surrounding the table and started on the overfilled plate.

  “I see that you are very hungry,” Julie said, as she walked into the kitchen. “Father and son, what a pair! One is busy stuffing his face and the other is fast asleep.” She paused. “Donald, when are you going to stop this?”

  I put the fork down and looked up at Julie. There was concern etched between those beautiful high brows. I knew exactly what she was talking about. I hadn’t eaten dinner in my own house for more than two years.

  “He’s all that I live for. If it was only about walking away from the wealth, I would’ve done that a long time ago. There’s no way that I’m going to leave my son to grow up with those two bitches.”