Young Wives

by Olivia Goldsmith

Angie had told her mother nothing—well, nothing about her condition and how she was going to handle it. It was not that she was ashamed of choosing to abort, nor did she think that her mother would judge her. It just seemed the kind of thing Angie would rather confess to after it was over. Sometimes her mother’s presence was comforting, other times it was overpowering. This time it was the latter. It just gave Angie one more thing to feel guilty about.

  She finished interviewing a client about her late mother’s estate property, which appeared to have been stolen by her stepfather. Next up was another estate client. Angela had been told the woman was waiting when Michael knocked and walked into her office.

  “How goes it?” he asked. She only had the energy to shrug. He sat down in the chair across from her. “Losing a big one is hard,” he said. He was so understanding that he sometimes seemed annoying. Angie just nodded. “How’s the new apartment working out?” he asked. “Settling in?”

  God! She thought of Jada’s boxes scattered around and her complete lack of interest in painting or furnishing the place. “Pretty good,” she said. “I’m doing it in kind of early squatter’s rights.”

  She wasn’t going to tell Michael that a client was living there now. After all, she already knew how he felt about “getting too involved” with clients. He did a good job, a dedicated job, but he was essentially uninvolved. What if she told him that a client was taking her for “a procedure” tomorrow? Angie sighed and looked down at her bitten thumbnail. Men were different from women. They could separate people from jobs and not feel for them. Work was only work.

  Michael immediately disproved her theory. “I wondered if you’d like to go out for dinner with me tomorrow night?” he asked.

  Angie looked up at him and actually blinked to clear her vision, as if that would alter what she had heard. Had he asked her out for a date? For tomorrow? “I’m busy,” she said. “I won’t be in tomorrow at all.”

  “Well, how about Thursday or Friday?” he asked, and then she was sure that he was actually asking her out. He was so pleasant-looking, and his brown eyes were so warm. She really liked him and she liked working with him. She liked talking with him. But what was he doing?

  “I don’t date married men,” she coolly.

  “I’m not married,” Michael said. “If I were, I wouldn’t ask you out.”

  Angie took a deep breath. She didn’t need this right now. “Michael, you have two kids and you’re married. I know you keep your private life private, but we do know the basics. Everybody here knows that,” she said in a flat voice, the kind you would use talking to a not-very-bright eleven-year-old who was trying your patience. These men! They were crazy. Was this what had happened with Lisa and Reid?

  “Angie, I have two kids and I have been divorced for six months, separated for over a year and a half,” Michael explained, his voice as controlled as hers. “And if everyone doesn’t know it, it’s because I didn’t choose to tell them.”

  Angie stared across the desk at him. Michael had gone through a divorce and separation in the last two years in this office and nobody knew? Bill, with his love of gossip and slight crush on Michael, didn’t know it? Laura, the control freak, didn’t know it? Angie’s own mother, the Jewish yenta busybody, didn’t know? How was it possible? It just proved how big the gap between men and women was, Angie thought. No woman could go through that kind of life change without talking to her coworkers.

  Meanwhile, Michael watched her and then smiled. “To be technical,” he said, “if I’m not mistaken, you’re actually the married one.”

  Yeah, and the pregnant one, Angie thought. For a moment she almost laughed, though the laugh would have been a bitter one. This was amazing. For the first time in more than four years, since she started dating Reid, she had been asked out for a date—for the same evening she was having a D&C. What was wrong with this picture? God couldn’t be a woman. This wasn’t a woman’s kind of joke.

  It was horrible to think about, but Angie was really thirsty. She wanted to believe that she would have a more noble reaction, a more spiritual crisis, sitting between her two friends, waiting to be called in to have her uterus scraped. But Angie could only think of her thirst. Thank goodness her tooth wasn’t throbbing. She’d been told not to eat or drink anything since midnight, and had come in early this morning with Michelle and Jada. Although all she wanted was for this to be over quickly, she had already spent close to an hour filling in forms, and then more than another hour sitting here with a roomful of sad-eyed teenaged girls.

  “Are you okay?” Michelle asked for the third or fourth time, and reached over to give Angie’s hand a squeeze.

  “Not exactly,” Angie said, trying to smile. She couldn’t manage it. Michelle let go of Angie’s hand and leaned over to the table in front of them. She’d already straightened out the magazines, arranging them in neat piles. Now she began sorting them by date.

  An older woman was sitting in the corner quietly crying. Michelle, finished with the magazines, had already gone over to her, talked to her in a low and comforting voice, and returned outraged. “She wanted the baby,” Michelle told Angie and Jada. “The amnio came back and there’s something really wrong. She doesn’t even want to abort, but it won’t go to term. She’s already started to bleed. And she’s tried for years to have a child.”

  “This is horrible,” Jada said. “You would think these clinic people would have a little more savvy. Mich, would you stop straightening up?”

  “Oh. Sure. Sorry,” Michelle apologized.

  “I can’t believe they’d let her sit here with all these high school girls,” Jada said. “Don’t they have any sensitivity at all? Don’t they know some women have been trying to have the child?”

  Angie put her head down and looked at her own belly. Reid was a lying, immature fool, but this baby was hers, too, conceived in love. She wasn’t like the teenagers in the waiting room and she didn’t want to be like the older woman. She wanted a child, she wanted to be a mother. Being around Jada and Michelle and their children had brought that home to her. And if it took years to meet another man she could love—or if she never did—she knew she could want and love this child, and take care of it. She was responsible. She’d lost her marriage, and she’d lost her first big trial, but she didn’t have to lose this.

  Angie lifted her head and looked around the room. They were a bunch of frightened little girls, aside from the broken-hearted woman who was losing the baby she wanted. But Angie wasn’t a little girl. She might not be married, and she might not be settled, but she suddenly realized that she wanted this baby. It didn’t make sense, and she certainly didn’t want a connection to Reid, but she had loved him and the baby she was carrying was her baby, too. It wouldn’t be convenient, or easy, or practical, but she wanted the baby. She had a job, and family, and good friends who could help her, and if they didn’t, she could—she would—help herself.

  She stood up. “Let’s go home,” she said.

  Michelle looked up at her. “Are you all right?” Michelle asked.

  Jada didn’t say a word. She just stood up and put her arm around Angie. “I think she’s going to be just fine,” Jada said. She looked at Angie. “You mean this?” she asked. Angie nodded.

  Michelle stood up, too. “You’re going to have the baby?” she asked in a low voice. Angie nodded. “Oh my God,” Michelle said. “Oh my God,” she repeated, her voice full of joy. “Well, I can give you all the baby stuff you need. I saved everything. And I can sit for you.”

  “Maybe we can discuss these arrangements someplace else,” Jada said dryly. “Someplace more appropriate.” She looked at Angie again. “You’re sure you’re not just doing this out of guilt?” she asked. “Nothing to be guilty about, except not caring for a child you bring into the world.”

  Angie shook her head. She’d been afraid to consider her life with a child, but suddenly she couldn’t bear to not have this one. It was a good thing she could take from her marriage, instead of onl
y the heartbreak of her time with Reid. And she knew she could be a good mother. Day care, money, baby-sitters—all of the rest of it would sort itself out.

  “Let’s go,” Angie said, and she picked up her bag while her friends gathered their coats and escorted her past the receptionist to the door. Just as they got there, a woman in a white jacket appeared from the inner sanctum and called, “Romazzano?” Angie didn’t answer. She just walked out and let one of the others close the door behind her.

  40

  Containing something accidental and something on purpose

  Jada was going to be late for work. She had managed to find everything she needed to get there, despite the fact that her clothes, her underpants, her shoes, her cosmetics, and her deodorant were all in boxes stacked one upon the other. The only thing she hadn’t been able to find was her pantyhose, and that was why she was now frantic, ready to dump stuff all over the floor or steal a pair of No Nonsense from Angie.

  Jada stopped herself at that. Anyway, the color wouldn’t work. It was more than enough to take Angie’s generosity and stay in her apartment. It was too much to take her intimate apparel also. Plus, Angie was probably five inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter than she was, and Jada wasn’t going to spend the day hobbled by the waistband of a pair of pantyhose stretched between her kneecaps. Pantyhose, she decided, had definitely been invented by the devil, or by men. Actually, she thought, they added up to pretty much the same thing. Men were devils.

  She knew she could depend on women, though. Her mother, and her two friends, even though they were white. They’d stuck by her through some grim testimony. Black women who were close to one another used special words that they would almost never use with white girls. “Sisterfriend” was one of those words. It was someone not blood related but as close—or closer—than a sister. Back in high school, Jada had felt that she and Simone LaClerk were sisterfriends, but she couldn’t remember if they had used the term. She was certainly closer to Michelle than she had ever been to Simone (who had dissed her when she started dating Clinton because apparently Simone had secretly been hot for him). For a long time Jada had known Michelle was a sisterfriend, but hadn’t thought she could ever get that close with Angie. Now she felt she was.

  But that still didn’t mean she’d wear her pantyhose. Finally, after ten more minutes of looking, she grabbed the only pantyhose she could—and they were the old pair she’d worn in court and had a run right up the back, from the ankle to the knee. But she was stuck with them. She slipped into her pumps and ran out the door, the keys to the Volvo jingling in her hand.

  The car was her home now. She was going to get to see the children this afternoon after work, but the idea of sitting with them in the Volvo or driving to yet another mall or restaurant made her feel sick. How would she explain to them what had happened in court last? She didn’t want to poison them against Clinton, but if she didn’t make it clear that she wanted them and had to fight with Daddy to see them, they would be poisoned against her. Sometimes life was just too hard to bear. She felt as if the best solution—the only solution that would work for her—was to kill Clinton, or to get him killed.

  As she drove through the morning traffic, she played with the murderous thought. If she killed him, she’d go to prison and then the children would have no one to raise them. But if someone else killed him … She thought of an old Hitchcock movie where a psychotic idly proposes to a stranger that each kills the other’s wife. Neither would be suspect, because they’d have no motive, no connection to the victims. Maybe she could make a deal with Angie and go up to Boston to kill her bastard, while Angie could pull the trigger on Clinton. Of course, now that they lived together, they were too obviously connected for that to look like a coincidence …

  Jada realized how crazy her thoughts were getting, stopped them, and prayed instead. But for almost the first time in her life, the prayer felt flat. She thought of the Bible’s injunction to turn the other cheek, but she felt as if her cheeks—all four of them—had been lashed as badly as she could take. She tried to think of another comforting thought. Vengeance is mine, the Lord had said. Okay. But what was she to do? Be meek? The meek might inherit the earth, but her children were inheriting the dirt: Clinton and his lackadaisical supervision, Tonya Green and her feigned interest in them, which wouldn’t last long, not to mention their Jackson grandmother’s habitual lying and drinking. Lord, protect my children, Jada prayed. Give me the strength to help them and love them.

  When she walked into the bank, she was in no mood for any of it. How foolishly we spend our lives, she thought. Not that she had ever been particularly interested in the work—it was only the paycheck she wanted. Now it was almost beyond her abilities to even pretend an interest.

  She walked past Anne, picking up her messages as she did, and walked into her office. She returned calls to Mr. Marcus, two important clients with problems, and one of the consultants, who peppered her with a series of staffing questions that he’d already asked but apparently wanted to ask again. As she sat there, impatiently giving him the data, she tapped her foot. That caused the run in her stocking to creep up her thigh. It felt disturbingly like an insect moving cautiously under her clothes.

  This was all unbearable. Pointless. Following these rules, playing by them, was absolutely ridiculous, she thought. “Look, Ben,” she said brusquely. “I have a meeting now and I already gave you all this information once. I’m afraid you’re going to have to search your records for it.” She hung up, wondering as she did if he was asking the questions twice to see if she would change her answers. She shook her head, pulled out a sheet of blank paper, and began to write down a column of numbers. But this wasn’t for the bank. This was for her.

  If she paid the child support and alimony directed by the court, she would be left with less than three hundred dollars a week to live on. Out of that she’d also have to help Angie pay rent and gas money. And what about Clinton’s legal fees? Apparently she was going to be expected to pay those, too, and she had a feeling that George Creskin didn’t come cheap. Nor would he allow an installment plan. Jada tried to project and add in the raise that she was expecting and see where it left her, but it didn’t leave her anywhere.

  Then Anne buzzed her and told her that the afternoon meeting had been rescheduled from two o’clock to four. “Who rescheduled that?” she asked. She had the children to pick up at four-thirty. There was no way she was going to be late for them.

  “Mr. Marcus,” Anne said, and Jada wondered if there was a sneer in her voice. “He called at five to nine. I was here, but you weren’t in yet. I didn’t see anything on your calendar.”

  “Call his office,” Jada snapped. “I tried him earlier but he wasn’t in. Leave word that the meeting is at two o’clock today or four o’clock tomorrow, but it can’t be four o’clock today.”

  Jada stood up, went to the window, and looked out at the desolate back parking area, the drive-through window, and the Dumpster. Her life was sort of like that—certainly desolate, she had been a drive-through for Clinton, who was going to make withdrawals from her for the rest of his life. She would be consigned to live in a dump, with nothing but garbage.

  There had to be a better plan. When she’d spoken to her mother, Mama had first suggested prayer, and then that she get a really big knife and threaten to kill him. And Jada hadn’t even told her mother the whole truth—only that they were drinking of separating and that he had another woman. Her father had offered to come up and “straighten the boy out.”

  Then both of her parents had suggested their other panacea for all problems—that she should come for a visit. As if her life were so flexible, she could take vacations whenever she needed some mental health.

  Jada couldn’t kill Clinton. God forgive her for even thinking of murder, but she also couldn’t begin this kind of life.

  Maybe she should do as her mother had suggested in their last phone call—pack up and go “home” to Barbados for a little while.
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  Except she couldn’t go without her children. Like a trapped animal, she walked from the window back to the phone, picked it up, and punched in Michelle’s number. “How are you, babe?” she asked when Michelle answered.

  “Maybe not as bad as you,” Michelle said. “Do you think drinking might help?”

  “Oh yeah,” Jada answered, her voice edged by sarcasm. “A nice Bloody Mary at eleven A.M. and one of your pills would be the perfect pick-me-up. You’d probably be out cold when the kids come home from school.”

  “I’m not worried about the kids coming home. I’m worried about Frank coming home.”

  On her end of the phone, Jada shook her head. When was Michelle going to give up on that lying bastard? “Listen, sisterfriend,” Jada said, moving on to her own agenda. “I have a question to ask you. Honestly, how do you feel about kidnapping?”

  “Who are we kidnapping? Clinton? Tonya? Judge Sneed?”

  “No, who cares about any of them? I was thinking of my children.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Isn’t that a federal offense?” Michelle asked. “Not that I would think it was wrong … especially if you got away with it.”

  There was another silence while Jada thought. “I’m only joking,” she admitted. “How would I live? Where would I go? If I stayed here, I’d be arrested for contempt of court and kidnapping. If I joined my parents, Clinton would find me in a minute.” She sighed. “It’s just that I’ve tried to figure it out, and I can’t see any way to comply with the judge and live any kind of life. It’s not just the money. I’ll have to watch my children suffer every day and slowly turn against me.”

  “I’m waiting for my husband to do that,” Michelle admitted.

  “Turn against you? Hey, you should be turning against him.” But then Jada stopped and thought of the bruise on Michelle’s face. “Are you afraid of him, Michelle?”

  Before Michelle answered, there was a buzz from Anne. “Mr. Marcus on two,” Anne announced.