A Little Bit of Karma

by ReShonda Tate Billingsley

  The driver made sure we were safely in the SUV and darted back around to the driver’s side. Once we had pulled off and were on our way, he glanced in his rearview mirror. “Mr. Lovejoy, can I just say, I’m a huge fan. I actually proposed to my lady while one of your songs played. I love your voice.”

  Jay flashed a genuine smile. “Thank you so much. And call me Jay.”

  I rolled my eyes and stared out the window. That melodic voice had been Jay’s signature on our popular Washington, D.C.–based call-in radio show. It had been his claim to fame since the nineties, when he’d burst onto the scene as a fresh-faced R&B crooner with the voice of Barry White. It didn’t hurt now that at one time Jay had been one of the hottest R&B singers on the market. He was all the DeBarge brothers, Jamie Foxx, and Ginuwine rolled up into one. And then, he had the looks to go along with every lonely woman’s fantasy. He was the caring, sympathetic one, the one women secretly dreamed they could call their own. I had often joked with Jay that he presented an image for all these lonely women of a devoted, romantic man who would cater to their every need. I was the noted psychologist, the hard-nosed dose of reality who urged the women to put on their big-girl panties and get their lives back together.

  For a while, we seemed like the perfect team. Until my husband decided that our lives weren’t good enough.

  * * *

  “Did you stop and pick up food?”

  “Dang, can you say hello?”

  I looked up from my laptop and glanced at my husband. I took a deep breath and decided to try again. All we’d been doing was fighting for the past six months and I was tired of it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Hello. How was your meeting?”

  He tossed his keys and cell phone on the bar. “It was fine. Quincy is finalizing all the details with the foundation. They’re excited about the retreat. By the way, they wired the money to our account. I’ll transfer it to our savings.” He paused and looked at me. “Unless you want your half sent to your own account.”

  My immediate reaction was to say “Of course.” But since that had become just one of the main sources of contention with us lately, I just left it alone.

  “That’s fine.”

  We stared at each other like we didn’t know what to say to one another—a far cry from the way we used to be.

  Finally, he said, “Well, I’ll call DoorDash and have something delivered. I’m going to take a shower.”

  As he turned to walk away, it suddenly dawned on me that I couldn’t remember the last time Jay had kissed me. We were still having sex, but it was like we fulfilled our carnal desires and then went our separate ways.

  I needed wine. I walked over to the bar, grabbed the bottle of pinot grigio and a glass. As I was pouring the wine, Jay’s cell phone rang. I glanced at it and saw Quincy’s Work flash across the screen. He probably had questions about the negotiations. I usually let Jay handle that part of our partnership; I took a sip of the wine and then headed upstairs with his phone in my hand.

  I was halfway up the stairs when a text message dinged from Quincy’s number. The cleavage shot caused me to stop in my tracks. I couldn’t see the whole picture, but the next message that came in caused me to lean against the side of the railing to keep from falling.

  Today was amazing. I will be dreaming about you inside me all night. I love you.

  Why would Quincy be sending that message to Jay? Maybe he was showing Jay a message from one of the many women he dated. But my gut wasn’t buying that explanation. So I did something I’d never done: I entered Jay’s passcode (he kept the same one for everything) to open his phone.

  Though the contact info said Quincy’s Work, that was obviously a cover-up. Message after message revealed the lie that was my life. My husband was having an affair and this woman was in love.

  I couldn’t contain my breath; my head seemed to be spinning. I glanced up at the top of the staircase to see my husband staring at me in shock.

  * * *

  Unlike a lot of men, Jay hadn’t tried to lie his way out of that situation. Oh, he’d been shocked silent for a moment, then extremely remorseful. But he’d come clean—somewhat, anyway, confessing to the affair, though he’d sworn that he didn’t know why she was saying “I love you,” because he wasn’t in love with her.

  I shook away thoughts of that painful past and tried to focus on the present.

  The drive to the station took about twenty minutes. Jay tried to make idle chitchat about the beautiful scenery. Had this been another time, another place, I would’ve snuggled up to him and savored every word. Instead, I ignored everything he said. I had to—it was the only way I’d be able to get through the rest of the week.

  “Look,” Jay said as we pulled up to the radio station. His voice was filled with exasperation because he’d tried to talk to me the entire ride and I’d refused to engage him. “I realize things are rough between us, but we’re both professionals. Can you put aside your anger for the time being so we can do this?”

  I was sick of people acting like I could just extract my pain and set it on a shelf or something.

  “Whatever, Jay,” I said, waving him off.

  He sighed and stepped out of his side of the vehicle. It was heartbreaking to watch our demise. Vanity Fair had dubbed us a “power couple of the new millennium.” The New York Times had written that our new book, Real Talk, was “the ultimate guide to getting your marriage back on track,” and just last month, we’d gotten an offer to take our relationship advice to reality TV.

  Yet our whole life was now a lie. That thought made me cry inside.

  three

  There’s nothing worse than a whining woman. On second thought, yes, there is: a woman whining over a worthless man. And this caller had all boxes checked. I already hadn’t wanted to do this remote show, but the foundation had billed it as one of the features for those who couldn’t attend, so it wasn’t like I had much choice.

  “I just want him to love me,” the woman on the phone cried. “Why won’t he love me?”

  I was in full feminist mode and wanted to reach through the phone and slap some sense into this woman. I’d seen my share of foolish women, but I would never understand why women would continue to shed tears over a no-good man. This was exactly why I did radio and not television, because I had the hardest time masking my disdain. It was also why I refused to give Jay another chance. A cheating leopard didn’t change his spots.

  “Come on, sweetheart. It’s not that bad.” There went my husband’s soothing voice. He was doing what he did best—using his Barry White, I-can-seduce-any-woman-I-want voice to calm some heartbroken woman. “He’s not worth your tears.”

  “But he said he loved me,” the caller whined in her thick accent. “I forgave him after the first outside child. Now this woman is having twins. What am I supposed to do?”

  I shook my head. All of these callers were from the area. I guessed cheating was universal.

  “Oh, give me a break.” I hadn’t even realized that I’d said that out loud until Jay bugged his eyes in my direction.

  “What Dr. Shannon meant to say,” Jay quickly said, “is that only you can determine your worth. If he can’t recognize the diamond that you are, that’s his loss. You know our tagline with Love with the Lovejoys?”

  “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure?” The woman sniffed.

  “Yes, and a woman must know her worth, then add tax,” Jay added.

  I fought back the urge to yell, “Enough, already! This hypocrite is the last person to be dishing out advice!”

  It wasn’t that I was a hard-core feminist, I just thought it was useless to waste time and energy on a man who treated you like crap. And half the female callers to our syndicated radio show were in one-way relationships, with them trying desperately to get the man to “do right.”

  I usually zoned out when Jay got into his “crisis comforting” mode, so I started counting down the seconds until this conference wrapped. It took me only about two minu
tes to calculate that it would be 604,220 seconds before this nightmare was over.

  I refocused on the caller when I heard Jay say, “So you call us anytime, beautiful.”

  “You can’t even see me,” the woman said, her voice soft. I could feel her smile through the phone.

  “I see your spirit and there is beauty in that. I just want you to see it too,” Jay replied.

  “Thank you so much, Jay.” The woman sniffed again. “You always know what to say to make a lady feel better. We are so glad you’re here and I can’t wait to meet you in person.”

  “Well, make sure you come up to me and personally say hello,” Jay said.

  I rolled my eyes as Jay disconnected the call and tossed to the break.

  When we’d started this show, we’d joked about how empathetic Jay was with the women. But we’d quickly discovered that that was a major selling point to the show, so I’d learned to live with it. If I had only known then what I knew now.

  Jay didn’t say anything to me—just busied himself on the phone until the “on-air” light came back on.

  “Welcome back to all our lovely Lovejoy listeners,” Jay said. “Let’s take our last call of the evening.”

  He motioned for the sound engineer to patch the call through and looked at the pop-up message on the computer screen. “I understand we have Sheryl on the line. How are you doing, Sheryl? Are you giving good love?” he said. I found myself wondering if I would ever get “good love” again.

  Sheryl giggled through the phone. “I wish. Maybe if I had a man like you, I’d get some good lovin’.”

  Jay glanced over at me and I didn’t bother to hide my agitation.

  “Well, if I were single, I just might have to give it to you,” he joked back. “But you know, I have my lovely wife here in the studio, and I don’t think she’d go for that.”

  I wanted to lean in and let Sheryl know that Jay would in fact soon be single. This was probably the bimbo he was screwing anyway. I think that was part of my torture. I didn’t know who she was, and for the past five weeks everyone—from the cleaning lady to the barista at Starbucks—had been suspect. He owed me an explanation, even if we were splitting up. You don’t throw away all these years for no reason. But I wasn’t going to beg, so we’d drifted into the world of silence where we now resided.

  “Oh, no disrespect, Dr. Shannon,” Sheryl said, interrupting my thoughts. “I was just teasing Jay.”

  Nicole peered at me through the studio window, and I knew she was sending me a mental note to just “shake it off.”

  I plastered a smile on and leaned in. “No disrespect taken, Sheryl. A lot of women would love to get good lovin’ from my husband,” I said, my sarcasm on full throttle.

  “But you’re lucky, because I can hear it in his voice: he only has eyes for you,” Sheryl replied.

  Then you can’t hear, I wanted to say. Instead, I just sneered across the table, “Yeah, that’s my husband, Jay Lovejoy. I’m just so lucky to have him.”

  Jay quickly jumped back in the conversation. “So tell us, Sheryl, how can the Lovejoys help you out this evening?”

  Sheryl sighed and the joy left her voice. “Well, my husband has fallen out of love with me, and I need some advice on how I can get him back,” she said.

  I couldn’t help but smile as I leaned back in my chair, folded my arms, and smirked. I couldn’t wait to hear Jay answer this one. Since he wouldn’t talk to me about why he’d fallen out of love (because he had to have fallen out of love in order to cheat in the first place).

  Maybe I could get some insight into his mindset from his answer to Sheryl.

  Jay glanced over at me as if he wanted me to answer. I raised an eyebrow to let him know the floor was all his.

  “Well, ahem…” Jay cleared his throat. The way he squirmed, it was obvious he was uncomfortable. “How do you know he’s fallen out of love?”

  “Let’s see, maybe it was when he became someone I didn’t know,” Sheryl continued. “Or maybe it’s because he won’t touch me. He acts like I repulse him. Or maybe it was when he moved out. Or maybe it was when he introduced my kids to his mistress.”

  Oh, this just keeps getting better, I thought, shifting in the chair to get comfortable. My expression let Jay know I had no intention of joining in this conversation.

  Jay ignored Nicole and the sound engineer, who were also staring like they were in the middle of a good soap opera.

  “My friends say I should just let him go, but I just thought, you know, you and Dr. Shannon are always talking about how couples give up too quickly. I just want to know if it’s worth fighting for.”

  Jay deliberately didn’t look my way. “Well, Sheryl, only you can answer whether your relationship is worth fighting for, but if his feelings for you have changed, there’s not much you can do about it.”

  “But I think outside forces, namely that slut he’s sleeping with, are clouding his judgment,” Sheryl protested. “I know he loves me. It’s just that we were having money problems, and the stress of everything wore us both down. If I know that, I’m supposed to just let him go? I’m supposed to let her win and give her my life?” She sounded frustrated and on the verge of hysteria. “Dr. Shannon, what do you think? Don’t you want to weigh in?” Sheryl asked.

  I leaned into the mic. “Nope, Jay’s handling this just fine.” I leaned back and continued to stare at my husband.

  He blew a frustrated breath but continued talking. “Sheryl, all I can tell you is that you can’t make a man love you. But only you can make the call about whether what he feels for this other woman is real or just something on the side. I will tell you this: for a lot of people, when the love is gone, it’s gone. And there’s nothing you can do to get it back.”

  The smirk drifted from my face. Jay’s words felt like a knife through my heart. Was it gone for him that bad? Was that why he was unfaithful? How had we gotten to this place, and how had I not seen it coming? Was I so consumed with my anger and resentment that I hadn’t noticed my husband fell out of love with me?

  “So you think I should just let him go?” Sheryl sounded like her voice was cracking.

  “Sadly, that’s my advice. Let him go,” Jay said softly. Our crew was shocked. Jay never advised callers to walk away without a fight.

  “It doesn’t mean that he didn’t love you. It just means something has changed and he is no longer in love with you. But that just means there’s something better out there for you,” Jay added.

  Sheryl inhaled. “Dr. Shannon, do you agree?” she asked, her voice quivering like that was not the advice she’d expected.

  I didn’t answer, and after a few seconds of dead air (an eternity in radio), Jay leaned into the mic. “So sorry, Sheryl. I wish we could continue, but our time is up. Thank you for calling, and we wish you all the best.” He cut his eyes at me as he disconnected her call and continued talking. “As you may know, we are broadcasting live from the Virgin Islands, where we are all week for our Lovejoy Retreat. If you’re on your way, we can’t wait to see you. To all our Lovejoy listeners, enjoy the last of our best-of shows, and we’ll be back on your radio dials soon.” He paused and our eyes met. “Until then… keep some joy in your love and a light in your life.”

  Normally, this would have been where I leaned in and, with the ease of a seasoned professional, delivered our closing line: “Thank you for getting love on the line. Until next time, make sure you live, laugh, and love.”

  But since I hadn’t laughed in months, my love was destroyed, and my life ruined, all I could do was remain silent.

  The sound engineer must’ve known I had zoned out, because he potted up the theme music and Jay and I both simultaneously removed our headphones.

  “Just once, can you try being a little sympathetic to our callers?” He tossed his headphones down on the desk in disgust.

  It was amazing how he always found something to get irritated with me about. Even before I’d asked for a divorce, he’d always been irritated�
��probably his way of trying to cover up his affair. The microphone was off, so pretending time was over.

  “That’s your job, Mr. I-Always-Know-How-to-Make-a-Woman-Feel-Better,” I said, finally finding the voice that had escaped me. I should’ve known that a fight would ensue after that last caller. For the past few months, a fight had always been ensuing whenever we were around each other.

  Jay just stared at me. “When did you turn into a bitter old woman?” he asked.

  My left eyebrow shot up. “Old?” I’d give him a pass on the “bitter,” since he knew there was a basis for my bitterness, but I was barely thirty-eight, so I wasn’t about to let the “old” comment slide.

  I stood, tossing my scripts into the trash can. “Maybe I’m just sick and tired of watching you flirt with these damn women right under my nose,” I snapped. “Maybe that caller is the whore you’re screwing.”

  Jay sighed, then shook his head as he stood as well and gathered up his papers. “I’m not doing this with you.”

  I didn’t know why he would even try to pick that fight with me. He knew I would never change my mind about sniveling, despondent women. Six months into our radio show, I’d wanted to bail for that very reason. I preferred private practice because with the caliber of clients I had, they might have had issues, but they weren’t whiny women. Maybe I’d go back into private practice now that my life had done a 180. I could still write my own books and maybe even do the speaking circuit.

  Before I could reply, the door to the studio swung open. “Sorry I missed the show close,” Nicole said as she walked into the studio. “I had to do something with the conference coordinator.” She stopped when she felt the tension in the room. She looked at Jay and then at me. Then she shook her head. “Good grief. How did you two get into a fight that fast?” she asked. “We’ve only been off the air a few minutes.”

  “It’s nothing,” Jay said.

  I sighed and flicked my hand. “Same story. Different day.”