Broken Together

by K. L. Gilchrist

  Ten more minutes passed as Tracey waited. The parking lot in front of the church was practically empty now. The back lot had to be deserted. So where was Brian? Tracey’s arms ached from holding up the weight of her sleeping daughter. Tracey hitched her up even higher. Forget waiting. It would be better to walk the shortcut down the small pathway around the church to the overflow parking lot behind the building.

  She’d gotten the hang of keeping both her hands laced under Brianna’s bottom with the bulk of the child’s weight balanced on her shoulder. Her purse weight balanced her other shoulder. Good. She would make it to the parking without waking up Brianna.

  Tracey turned into the lot behind the brick building, and heard Brian talking.

  Wait. A female voice?

  Brian’s voice was deep and hushed and the female voice was shrill. Tracey clutched Brianna tighter and she walked forward as fast as she could. The click of her heels wasn’t enough to drown out the argument going on now barely fifty feet away from her.

  Brian and Lisette.

  Together.

  Fighting.

  “Calm down! Keep your voice down,” Brian insisted.

  “When are you going to tell her? If you don’t tell her, I will. I don’t care!”

  “We’ll talk about this later! Not now!”

  “Yes now!”

  Brian pleaded, clearly trying to keep his voice down, but Tracey heard every word. “Lisette, my family is here! You have to leave right now!”

  Lisette’s voice was filled with fire and tears. “I am not going anywhere!”

  Tracey stood ten feet away now barely breathing with Brian’s back to her.

  It had been nearly three months since she had last seen Lisette. Now here she was yelling at him in the dark.

  Brian’s former lover.

  A former lover with a small but visible baby bump showing beneath her pink blouse.

  Tracey stood stock still, both arms wrapped around Brianna to keep her from slipping. What else could she do when she’d already prayed to God to put an end to this nightmare?

  The noise of Brian pleading with Lisette, the sound of snoring Brianna, and the rush-rush sounds of cars passing by on the highway overpass near the church blended together into one big blur. Darkness settled over the area like a wool blanket.

  “Brian,” Tracey said, announcing her presence.

  Brian turned around.

  He looked lost.

  Tracey’s eyes swelled with water. No! Absolutely no crying. She tried to remember her promise to herself. She willed herself to keep the tears off her face but knew that was a lost cause once she tasted wet saltiness mixed with the creamy lipstick inside her bottom lip. When Lisette finally turned the slight swell of her pregnant belly toward Tracey, the woman moved so quickly that at once she was right beneath Tracey’s face. The air smelled sour. But the air was the least of her worries. Lisette sniffled, her small hand resting on the slight swell of her abdomen.

  “Yes, this is exactly what it looks like,” Lisette taunted.

  Tracey spoke slowly, but deliberately, keeping her eyes riveted to the face of her enemy. “Go. Right now. Go.” Tracey’s words were cold and measured.

  Lisette’s small eyes narrowed even more. Brian’s eyes scanned both of them as a look of fear crossed his face. He finally sprang into action. He pulled Lisette’s arm, marched her across the parking lot and pushed her into the passenger side of a red Mustang, closing the door firmly behind her. Whoever had driven Lisette to Rise obviously did not want to be involved; the mysterious driver remained in the car.

  After the car sped away, Brian and Tracey stared at each other. Brianna, snoring on Tracey’s shoulder, didn’t make one sound acknowledging she’d heard what had happened.

  Sick to her stomach, her head throbbing so bad she had to blink away the pain, Tracey carefully stepped to the Lexus, opened the door, laid Brianna in the back seat, and shut the door. Then she walked back and snatched her purse up off the dusty asphalt where she’d dropped it and tucked it under her arm as she stood in front of Brian.

  When she slapped his face the first time, her white-gold and diamond wedding ring scraped across the bridge of his nose, pulling off a bit of skin. With the second slap, she felt muscle strain in her right shoulder, the force of the blow making her fingers bounce up off of his sweaty face. A third slap and he grabbed her arm and forced it high over her head. Her fingers stung from the physical contact. He pushed her away. She stumbled twice before righting herself and walking back to the car again.

  No words. Tracey stumbled into the car, but before she closed the door, she looked over at him. He stood with his arms by his side and his head down.

  She called out to him, breaking the silence. “Let’s go.”

  “Tracey … I … we should …”

  She swallowed, and then repeated herself. “Let’s go.”

  She closed the door, watching from the window as Brian pulled his head up then looked over at her with empty eyes. She faced forward and pulled down the vanity mirror to look at herself. Streaked makeup. Brown smears decorated the lapels of her suit. Crinkles around her eyes and between her eyebrows—proof that stress had gotten the best of her. Wet lipstick. Melted mascara. Brown-black streaks on eyes sodden with sadness. She’d experienced too much of everything, and now her head, shoulders and fingers throbbed to the beat of her racing heart.

  Brian slid into the driver’s seat. He swiveled around and managed to look back at Brianna without looking over at Tracey at all.

  Tracey sat with her arms around herself, purse resting by her feet, looking straight ahead. Anger and confusion pulsed through her veins. Brian drove them towards home, but the truth was, Tracey didn’t know where they were going.

  21

  Tracey couldn’t remember ever needing Tyler in the house as much as when she returned home from church that Sunday night. As if not unsettled enough from the parking lot drama, as soon as she entered the back door, the house bugged her. They’d been gone all weekend and the rooms were shadowy and noiseless. No one in the house for two days meant the rooms smelled annoyingly clean, like too much Pine-Sol and Murphy’s wood oil soap.

  Upstairs, she undressed sleeping Brianna, pulled a pink cotton nightshirt on her, and slid her into the bed. Tracey pulled a comforter over her body, cushioned it carefully around her ears, then crept out of the room, shutting the door tight behind her.

  She put a hand to her chest and felt her heart pumping. Lungs still moving oxygen in and out of her body. Heartbroken but alive. She dragged herself into her bedroom, peeled off her suit, and pulled on a red t-shirt, cotton shorts and flip-flops. Then she stood still for a moment to get her bearings.

  Where was Brian?

  She found him sitting in the darkened living room. She clicked on a lamp and he still didn’t budge. He sat there stone-faced. His shoes, shirt, and tie scattered across the floor. She guessed he’d run out of energy for taking off anything else because he’d slumped over the end of the leather couch like he was trying to melt into the furniture.

  “Say something!” Tracey stalked toward the couch.

  He shook his head and waved her away. “I’m not ready to talk yet.”

  Tracey’s eyes convinced themselves they didn’t need to blink as her half-dressed husband pushed himself up off the couch and walked down to the kitchen. She followed. He grabbed a plate from the cabinet and warmed up some leftovers from the refrigerator. No talking, but dinner was okay?

  God. Help. Me. This. Is. It. Tracey’s hot lava feeling rose up and she transformed into Mount St. Helens. When the microwave dinged, she ran over to it, grabbed the plate out of it and winged it like a Frisbee at Brian, who had stepped over to the kitchen island. The plate hit him in his side, then bounced off and clattered to the floor. Pieces of sea bass and asparagus stuck to his t-shirt.

&nbs
p; “Ow! Tracey!”

  “You better talk! And I mean now!”

  He held his hands up in front of him. A peace gesture? “We need to calm down. Please. We’re too upset to talk now.”

  Totally reasonable and rational statement. Trouble was, Tracey was too hot to be reasonable and rational. She’d been rational for months. Now she stood in the middle of the kitchen floor steaming mad. Arms crossed. Eyes narrowed.

  “You. Tell. Me. The. Truth!” Tracey ordered, anger welling up in her throat.

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “Oh I could see that!” Tracey cocked her head to the side. “And it’s yours?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “I told you before, we weren’t together that many times and when we were I used condoms,” Brian insisted.

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Oh I don’t care what you believe anymore! It’s the truth!” He rubbed his side and shook food particles off his t-shirt and pants. “Since you’re so bent on hearing the truth, if you’d been loving me like you’ve been doing since May, there wouldn’t have been a Lisette in my life to begin with!”

  Tracey stared at him with her eyes so wide they bulged. Her mouth hung open.

  Brian kept going, fire in his voice. “I messed up! I get it, Tracey! I Get It! If you wanted to leave me after that you would have been gone! But where would you go, Ms. Perfect? All the money and support you have is mine. You have a better life than anyone else in your family has ever had and my big slip-up that happened all of three times didn’t take anything away from you. You didn’t lose my love, our home, or anything, so get over it already! There’s truth for you!”

  The noise she heard in her head right then sounded like the muted electronic tone she heard whenever she turned off a hot television set.

  Click. Pffttt.

  No more questions.

  Tracey kicked off her flip-flops, sprinted out of the kitchen barefoot, and scrambled over to the dining room. She snatched open the china cabinet doors and grabbed their monogrammed Waterford crystal wedding heirloom flutes from the middle shelf. Yep. The right weight and size.

  “Come back! Listen, I didn’t mean that and we need to … hey wait … no … those are our …” Brian started after her and made it as far as the dining room doorway before he opened his eyes wide and ran straight back to the kitchen.

  With her brain unplugged, Tracey transformed into an Olympic shot put athlete. She lobbed a flute right at his head as he cowered by the oven.

  Zoom! The monogrammed glass whizzed past his ducked head and smashed against the wooden cabinet door above his head, exploding before falling in glittery shards to the floor.

  He shook glass off his arms which he’d used to shield his head and stumble-stepped away from the mess.

  Zing! Tracey threw the second glass at him. He swerved again. It hit the oven behind him, shattered glass raining all over the kitchen floor.

  “Stop! You’re gonna kill me!” Brian yelled.

  Tracey stopped.

  There were more glasses, plates, goblets, and bowls in the china cabinet, but she’d made her point. Besides, if Tracey went back in the dining room she might grab the Waterford crystal serving bowl. If that shattered over his head she actually might kill him and she did not want to take a trip to jail. She stood still and met Brian’s gaze. He blinked at her. It looked like he wanted to come at her again but the broken glass on the floor trapped him.

  She sniffed. “You really need to learn how to clean up your messes. I guess you can practice with the one you’re standing in.”

  Sweat appeared on Brian’s forehead and blood came to the surface of the scratches on his hands and arms as he ran his hands over his face and brushed away particles and tears. “Why are you doing this?” Brian asked.

  “You know why!” Tracey choked out.

  He remained in place. “I’ve known about the baby for weeks now. It’s not mine.”

  “Mmmm.” The sound came out more like a moan. She shook inside so much her teeth vibrated.

  “Look, there are miracles in life, but biology doesn’t lie and I know how condoms work. I’ve repeated that to Lisette about a hundred times, but she won’t listen to me. She’s trying to run game on me!”

  “Really?” Tracey shot him a go on look.

  “Someone else is the father of her baby, probably someone she hooked up with for a minute, but she wants to name me.”

  Sweat ran down Tracey’s temples. Her neck and shoulders throbbed as Brian kept talking.

  “I told her she can’t name me as the father just because we had sex. She got mad. First she started showing up here, then she tried to threaten sexual harassment. I blocked her calls. She mailed me a letter telling me she’d keep popping up where I least expected it. Once I saw her at the gym. Another time I saw her in the balcony at church, but I hustled you all out before you could see her. And this last time was in the parking lot.”

  “Why does she want you to be her baby daddy so bad?”

  Brian grimaced. “I don’t know! My only guess is whoever the father is, he can’t provide for the child or for her as well as I could. I offered her some money to help her out. She could have started a college savings account for her child with it. I hoped she’d take it and move on, but she refused.”

  Tracey shook her head and snorted. Young women these days and their idea of family. No. More like a sinful situation Brian dug himself into and resulting in more than he bargained for. Wait a minute. Money?

  “So that’s how you found out I’d withdrawn cash from our account?” Tracey asked.

  Brian nodded and bowed his head.

  One sneaky person had managed to catch another person being sneaky. Sad. “How come you didn’t tell me all this before?” Tracey said.

  Brian shrugged and sneezed. He kept his eyes away from hers and looked at the scratches on his hands. “You’d been walking around hurt since February. You had a right to be upset, I know. But when things started getting better between us I didn’t want to see our relationship turn sour again. Can we start again. Please?”

  “What?” Tracey blinked, confused about what he was asking.

  “We can start over again,” Brian begged, stretched his hand out to her. “We’ve been working so hard to get past it all. And you know everything now. Everything. If Lisette shows up again in our lives, I’ll file a restraining order against her. If she names me on the birth certificate, I will demand a DNA test. This is all over now.”

  With a possible baby on the way by another woman? Was he serious? So what if there was very little chance the baby was his. Brian had fed her so many lies by now Tracey wouldn’t believe him if he told her water was wet. She wiped at her wet eyes and runny nose with the edge of her t-shirt. Sniffled. Put her head down and sighed. She stayed silent as she tiptoed around the edge of kitchen and out into the main hallway. Her feet dragged wetness onto the wooden hallway floor. She glanced down. Both feet were cut and bleeding.

  Lessons from God pepper all experiences, and Tracey had just learned a big one.

  You can’t throw glass without being cut by the shards.

  22

  Tracey was ten when she first heard of a child born from an affair.

  She’d been out with her mother shopping at Macy’s for new clothes. She was pulling on a pair of black jeans with silver zippers close to the ankle in the dressing room of the girl’s department when she overheard Alice talking to a woman with a gravelly voice. Eavesdropping didn’t give Tracey much information, though. She heard the words boy and two years old and left town last week and doesn’t have his last name. The remainder of the conversation was whispered and Tracey couldn’t make out the rest. She’d ended up choosing the pants and a pair of acid washed blue ones. When she walked out she took one glance at the look on her mother�
��s face and knew something was off. A tall, smooth-skinned, mocha-colored lady Tracey had never seen before flashed a tight smile at her, then nodded at her mother and strolled down to the end of the dressing area.

  “Who was that?” Tracey had asked.

  “You remember Mr. Jack?” Alice took the jeans from her daughter’s arms and headed toward the cashier desk.

  “Sure. Daddy’s friend. He fixed my bike chain the last time he came by.”

  “Yeah. That’s him. Well, that was his sister. She was telling me about his son.”

  “Ma, Mr. Jack has daughters.”

  Alice stopped and made Tracey halt beside her. She turned and leaned down so close to Tracey’s face she could smell the tuna macaroni salad Alice had eaten for lunch. “Marcella and Bridget are his girls with his wife Jackie. The boy—is a child from another lady.”

  Tracey paused. “What?” she asked, confused.

  “A child that man created with another woman who wasn’t his wife.” Then Alice straightened up and looked down at Tracey again, as if she realized she was telling a child grown folk’s business. “Never mind. Are these the pants you want, girl?”

  Tracey nodded. She didn’t think any more about it after that.

  But she sure was thinking about it now.

  A baby? What if it really was Brian’s? What if Lisette had messed with those condoms he’d supposedly used? Wait. That’s way too much to consider after showering Brian’s scalp with glass shrapnel.

  In the upstairs bathroom, Tracey’s hands trembled as she pulled down tweezers and a box of bandages from the medicine cabinet. She placed the box on the sink then moved over to sit on the edge of the tub to examine her feet. Two cuts on her left foot and one on the right. She tweezed out two small pieces of glass, then scrubbed her feet clean in the tub and dried them on a guest towel. Bleary-eyed, she turned and glanced at the bandages on the sink and couldn’t find the energy to move from the tub and grab them. She perched on the edge of the tub shaking. So busted up inside she yearned to howl long and hard, but she bit her lip and swallowed the sound. Salt water and mucus ran down her face, soaking her t-shirt. Better to let the tears flow. Each time she tried to stop crying her chest thumped like she was suffocating.