by J. J. Murray
“The Devil to Pay was better,” I offer, not seeing it anywhere. Maybe it’s sold out.
“Who was that by?”
Me. “Desiree Holland wrote that one, too.”
“You’ve read her books?”
To death. “Yeah.”
She opens Ashy to the dedication page and reads, “‘For E.’ For…Eddie, Edward, Earl. Yeah, probably some no-good sponge named Earl who’s living off all her hard work. What do you think, Peter?”
I’m not thinking right now because The Twilight Zone theme music is playing in my head. Of all the thousands of books in this store, she zeroes in on Ashy. “I think…I’ll buy it for you.” Which makes absolutely no sense. An author buying his own book? And for a woman he’s just met? I’m about to make Edie about seventy cents in royalties.
I purchase my own book, and we leave, spending half an hour in the Gap at the corner of Main and New York Avenue. She holds several denim shirts up to me, even drapes them over my shoulders, but I decline.
“But that outfit isn’t happening, Peter. I don’t know how you ever attracted Cece Wrenn.”
Cece loved me for my writing and wanted me for my sperm. “You’re not a Penn State fan?”
“I’m not a wrinkled clothes from the seventies fan. Please let me buy you a new shirt.” She puts her head on my shoulder and whispers, “Pretty please?”
I let her buy me the shirt. She tears the tags off it as soon as we hit the sidewalk and hands it to me. I put on the shirt.
“Much better,” she says with a smile. “Now I can be seen with you.”
And wherever we go, I can’t stop watching her. Light on her feet. Graceful. Almost as tall as me. Very agile, eminently confident. I am smitten, and we’ve only just met. And now that I look somewhat presentable, we are turning heads.
“What do we do now?” she says as we stand between Village Flowers and the Nova.
“Uh…you know, I still don’t know what you know about Ebony. I’ve completely forgotten to interrogate you.”
She smiles. “Good.” She looks up. “Nice moon, huh?”
I nod.
“Let’s hit the beach.”
“But, it’s getting cold and I—”
“It’s not that cold.” She takes my arm. “And at the beach, you’ll tell me your story.”
“Tell you what story?”
“The story of you and Ebony. I have to know if all this is real.”
“It is.”
“I mean, I have to make sure that you’re not some nutcase stalking her.”
“I’m not…stalking her. I just want to see her again.”
“Well, I have to be totally sure. I don’t want her on my conscience.”
I follow her burgundy Honda Accord to West Shore Beach, and if it weren’t so cold, it would be the perfect spot for romance. The waves lapping, licking, bubbling on the pebbly sand, the moon in the sky, stars gleaming. We weave around cairns of rocks and thistly growths of grass to sit on two larger boulders on a rock jetty softened by charcoal waves. Somewhere over there, Connecticut waits for the wind to show its face.
“You sure you’re not too cold, Destiny?”
“I’m fine.”
“And you really want to hear about my childhood romance?”
“Just the breakup part.”
“I told you about that.”
“Did you? People don’t just fade away without a reason.”
I’ve never told anyone this, not even Edie. “No, people don’t fade away like that.” Why am I confessing so much to this woman?
“Was it someone else?”
“In a way, but not like you’re thinking. It was mainly…distance. But I don’t want to bore you—”
“With your troubles?”
She’s knows Stevie Wonder songs, too? “Yeah. Uh, are you a Stevie Wonder fan?”
“Who isn’t?”
“I mean, to know a song that old, and you’re only, what, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”
She fixes me with a stare. “And you’re looking like you’re fifty.”
Ouch. “I didn’t mean—” She’s younger?
“C’mon, man, I’m getting cold. Get on with your story.”
“There’s not really much to tell.” I can’t believe I’m about to do this. “Uh, well, after the senior prom—”
“You went with Ebony to the senior prom? Back then?”
“Uh, not exactly. A friend of mine, Lloyd Simon, took her to the prom—”
“Was Lloyd black?”
“Yes. And I took another girl—”
“Was she white?”
So many interruptions. “Yeah. Lloyd and her had a thing going on, too. It seemed like the perfect solution, and I ended up with Ebony after the dance. My father, you know, he—”
“—had issues, I know, I know. Go on.”
There’s that icy edge to her voice again. Maybe she’s just cold and wants me to speed up my story. “Well, after the senior prom, I had to work all summer so I could pay my college tuition—and so did Ebony—and we saw each other when we could, you know, in secret. I went off to college and then…” I stop.
“And then what?”
I toss a rock into the water. “I wrote her letters daily for almost two years, but she only wrote back once.” That final poem.
Destiny leaves her boulder and sits next to me. “You wrote her letters?”
“Yeah. Drew pictures on the envelopes, too. That was a…thing we had. We were always illustrating our notes and letters, ever since we were kids.”
I hear Destiny sigh. “Did you try to call her?” she asks in a softer voice.
“Sure. I tried. But it seemed like every time I called, Ebony was at work or out on a date. I left lots of messages with her mama, and she promised to give the messages to Ebony.”
“Her mama must not have given her the messages.”
“No, I’m sure she did. Mrs. Mills and I were friends.”
Destiny blinks at me. “Really?”
“Really. I spent more time at her house than my own house.”
“Really?”
“Ebony’s house was always…warmer, you know? I felt…I felt at home.”
“How often did you call?”
“Once a week at least, mainly on weekends to save some money. But then one time I called and found that the number had been disconnected. I thought maybe she had moved, but I kept sending the letters, hoping they’d be forwarded to her. Then on Christmas break, I came back to Huntington and…and she had moved, no forwarding address or anything.” I toss another rock. “I came home after my freshman year and went by the house again, but…no one home. I kept writing to her anyway, but after two years with no reply, I kind of gave up.”
I feel a tear trying to build up in my eye. Damnit, Ebony, where’d you go? All the promises you made to me that night after our final embrace, saying you felt married to me, said you’d put your life on hold until I got back, even gave me a lock of your hair, saying, “You know how hard it is for me to grow hair, so don’t you ever lose it!” I’ve lost her hair, too. The tear escapes before I can blink it back into my eye.
“And that’s why you haven’t been back since?”
I shake my head. “No, that’s a whole other story.”
“I’m listening.”
“Well, I also had a fight with my father the summer after my freshman year, and then…then there was no reason to come back.”
“Was it over Ebony?”
“Mostly.” What wasn’t? “He told me I was wasting my life looking for her, I told him, ‘At least I have a reason to live, unlike you.’” God, what a bitter memory. I had pretty much told my own father that he’d be better off dead. “I, uh, had some problems with all his many rules, too, but Ebony was the catalyst.”
Destiny rests her head against my shoulder. “At least you tried to keep in touch.”
“Didn’t try hard enough.” I hurl another rock into the water.
“Keep that up, we
won’t have anywhere to sit.”
I drop the next rock I want to throw. “That’s how jetties get made, you know. For centuries men have been tossing rocks into the water from the shore because of some woman.”
Destiny laughs. “Is that what you think?”
“There are rock jetties all over the world, proof that this is one way men solve their woman troubles.”
“Well, you survived Ebony’s mama, right? I heard she was crazy, fight the power and all that.”
“Mrs. Mills was the most…She was the best.” I feel Destiny shiver. “You sure you’re not too cold?”
“I’m fine.”
I wipe my face. “Anything else you want to know?”
“Why’d you get divorced?”
Daa-em, as Ebony would say. She wants to know everything. “You want the long or the short version?”
Destiny shrugs. “The long version.”
“You sure? The long version is ugly.”
“I’m sure it is.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“You got asthma, Peter?”
“No. Just trying to figure out where to begin. I haven’t told this to anyone before.”
“I’m flattered.”
Here goes the nothing that was our marriage. “Edie and I never should have gotten married in the first place. I know that’s easy to say now, but we were two opposites from the very beginning. She had led a pampered life before she met me and expected to be spoiled after we got married.”
“You didn’t spoil her?”
“I couldn’t. Not on a teacher’s salary. For the first four years she was miserable, since we had to live in an efficiency apartment.”
“She didn’t work?”
I shake my head. “The daughter of William Strong Melton does not work,” I say in Edie’s squeaky voice. “I made the mistake telling her father that I wanted to be her sole support, even asked him not to give Edie her weekly allowance once we got married.”
“She got an allowance, even as an adult?”
“Yeah.”
“How much did she get?”
“Enough.” I don’t tell Destiny that Edie’s allowance per week was more than I made in a month as a teacher. “So I got Edie’s allowance cut, and her father said it would do her some good, ‘build up her character,’ he said. But it didn’t. Edie was too spoiled rotten by then. I asked her to clip coupons once. ‘You’re kidding,’ she said. I told her I wasn’t kidding, and she locked herself in the bedroom, crying.”
“Four years of that?”
“Off and on. We had a very comfortable couch.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Yeah, it was, until I got published for the first time.”
“You’re a writer too?”
I groan. “I have a pen name.”
“What is it?”
Henry has already told Cece, and since four can keep a secret as well as three, I decide to tell Destiny. “Destiny, you are talking to Desiree Holland.”
“No way!”
“Want me to sign your book?”
“You’re Desiree Holland?”
“Yep.”
Destiny pulls her legs up to her chest. “I may need therapy after this. How could you, I mean, how did you—Why did you write as a black woman?”
“I like to think it wasn’t me writing. It was Ebony’s voice in my head telling me what to type. She was telling the tales and telling them so much better than I could. I simply transcribed her voice.”
“That’s so…weird. Does Ebony know?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. If she’s read both books, there are definite clues, specific moments and conversations that only we had.”
“I wonder if she knows.”
So do I. “I’ve always hoped she knew. Anyway, I won’t be Desiree Holland for much longer. I’m writing one last novel in her name, then I’m striking out on my own with another novel…where I may strike out and have to ride the bench for a while.”
“I’d buy your book.”
“Thank you. I’ll tell the marketing department I’ve made one advance sale.”
She bites her lower lip. “So…your books brought more money into your marriage, and Edie was happier.”
“Somewhat. It wasn’t until my father died and I sold his house to get money for her house that she perked up completely.”
“My father’s dead, Edie.”
She smiled briefly. “Oh, that’s terrible, Peter. What are you going to do with his house?”
I mumbled, “We could live in it, I guess. I’m sure I could find a teaching job on Long Island, maybe at a prep school in the Hamptons.”
She turned her back on me. “I’m not going to Long Island, Peter. Why don’t you sell the house and build me one here? Daddy will help us, and you don’t want to go back to live where your daddy died, do you?”
“No, I guess I don’t…”
“We lasted six more years after that, and Edie even found herself a job on the Pittsburgh Arts Council, a paying job with benefits and everything. But it wasn’t a job where she actually had to work. All she had to do was call up rich people she knew to get donations and grants. It was the perfect job for her—and for me. Her absence gave me more time to write. But when The Devil to Pay came out and I was working on a third Desiree Holland novel, Edie suddenly became jealous of my work.” I stand and look out over the water. “I used to look forward to my summers off, you know, to write without tons of papers to grade or meetings to attend. Ten solid weeks of writing and editing.”
“But Edie wouldn’t let you.”
I smile. “No. She wouldn’t. She used to phone me hourly from where she worked, played the TV too loud when she was home, sent me on simple errands at all hours of the day and night, filled the ‘honey-do’ jar with monumental, impossible tasks, had me taking the cars for inspections and oil changes when they didn’t need to be done, had me painting the house inside and out every summer, had friends over for dinner four days a week, had me going to every ball, show, opening, and evening at the ballet…She had an agenda for me every day, and my writing suffered.”
“You could have blown her off. You didn’t have to go, and you didn’t have to answer the phone.”
I smile. “I, um, got sick the day of some of those events.”
“Good for you.”
“But not answering the phone was deadly. I’d have to explain where I was later, and I hated those interrogations.”
“Are you hating this interrogation?”
“You’re not interrogating me, are you?”
“Maybe I am.”
“I don’t mind your questions. It’s good therapy for me.”
She laughs and moves away from me.
“What?”
“All this is just so…ironic! You have a messed-up love life with a white woman, and you write romances as a black woman.”
I squeeze another rock. “It’s not that messed up.”
She returns to me. “Good thing you have a pen name.”
“Gee, thanks. Any more questions?”
“Did you,” she says, her voice softer than soft, “did you have any children?”
“No. We tried, or at least I tried. I wanted her to have someone to take her mind off me so I could write. I had to steal out of bed to get any writing done as it was.”
After a short silence, she asks, “Did you love her?”
“No” leaves my lips before I can think about it. And when I think about it, I realize the truth. “It was a marriage of convenience. My father…I wanted to please my father just once. But that’s another story. Anyway, the last straw was when she deleted what would have been my third novel. I had almost finished it and poof! Gone.”
“What do you mean, ‘poof’?”
“One day it was on my laptop, the next it wasn’t.”
“You didn’t have a backup?”
“No.”
“What about notes?”
“I have t
his stupid habit of tossing my notes as I use them so I don’t get confused while I’m writing. I checked for temp files, took the laptop in to a computer store, ran recovery programs—nothing. Edie had obviously figured out my password, which just so happened to be ‘Ebony.’”
“That’s messed up. That book meant money, right?”
“Yeah. Edie’s greatest motivation.”
“Then why’d she do it?”
“Edie called my third novel another ‘nigger’ book.”
“The bitch!”
“She wanted to bury my laptop in the yard because she said I fingered the laptop more than I did her.”
“Daa-em.”
“It was true, though. She even pleaded with me on bended knees to write novels for white people because she said, and I quote, ‘White people actually have money and can read.’”
“The racist bitch!”
“Edie had even reduced my writing to one awful statement: ‘All you’re doing is fucking your old girlfriend for all the world to read, writing out your wet dreams with a nigger.’”
“Oh, shit. You went off on her then, right?”
“Yeah. For the first and last time.”
“What did you say?”
“Well…” I look at my beautiful interrogator. “It’s not, um, not very nice to say.”
“I’m sure I’ve heard worse.”
I doubt it. “Okay…This is what I said: ‘Yeah, I called her ‘E’ in bed, and she knew what to do in bed, too, four, five times a night, not ‘are you finished yet, I want to read’ once a damn month, and she comes to me in my dreams every fucking night, too, and she knows how to please me, how to make me howl at the motherfucking moon!”
Destiny’s mouth drops open.
“I told you it wasn’t, um, very nice.”
She still doesn’t speak.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Ebony was like that?”
I shove my hands in my pockets and kick a pebble around. “We were like that.”
“Daa-em. You think you know people…and you just don’t.”
“Anyway,” I sigh, “that’s what started Edie and me down the long road to divorce. We walked on eggshells for a long time after that, but I just couldn’t stay in that house. I moved out, and five years later, she finally granted me the divorce.”