by Mary Monroe
The fact that I had given up so much for Glinda made me even more determined to keep her. I was not about to let my marriage end without a fight.
Chapter 43
Calvin
SIX MONTHS AFTER MY LAST VISIT HOME, I RECEIVED MY HONORABLE discharge papers.
By the grace of God, I made it through the war unscathed. In spite of everything I had to look forward to (or not look forward to) once I resumed my civilian status, I couldn’t wait to get off the plane and step back onto American soil again. The most important reason I was so anxious to return home permanently was so I could work on my marriage.
I had written two letters a week to Glinda in the last six months, she had written me a total of three times in the last year. I had called the house several times, but not one time had I caught her at home. I didn’t bother to call any of my friends or any of Glinda’s friends and associates. It wasn’t necessary for them to tell me what I already knew: she was running around with other men.
Not only did she not pick me up when I landed at the San Jose airport, like we had agreed she should, she was not answering my calls. I waited for an hour, hoping she’d eventually show up. She didn’t. I didn’t attempt to call a friend or a neighbor to come fetch me, because I would have been too embarrassed to let them know that my own wife had let me down. I finally crawled into a cab.
When I got to my street and saw our Prius in the driveway, my first thought was that something had happened to Glinda. All kinds of grim thoughts ran through my mind. I pictured her in the house, stretched out on the floor, unable to speak or move. Her falling and hitting her head on something would have been bad enough, but I cringed when I imagined rampaging thugs beating and raping her during a home invasion. My chest tightened; my head felt like somebody had batted it with a brick. I was afraid of what I might have to deal with.
Robert Franklin, a chubby divorced man who lived next door, was in his driveway when I got out of the cab. Before I could go inside, he trotted over, gave me a “welcome home” hug, and clapped me on the back.
“I’m glad to be home,” I told him. “Why don’t you come over in a little while and join me and my wife for a drink?”
I knew something was wrong when Robert gave me another hug. After he released me, he reared back and gave me a pitiful look. “Oh, so she’s back?”
“Who’s back?” I asked, puzzled.
“Uh, I saw your wife leaving with a dude in a blue van around this time yesterday. She had two suitcases with her. . . .”
“Oh,” I said in a very small and weak voice.
“My brother told me that when he was at a bachelor party in a strip club last week, Glinda was one of the strippers.”
“Oh,” I said again, this time much stronger. “Do you know which club?”
“I’ll have to ask my brother.” Robert looked at the ground, then back at me. He looked almost as sad as I felt. “I’m sorry, man. I’ll still come over when you get settled so we can have a few drinks.”
“Maybe not tonight. I’ll call you,” I said. I let out a sigh and dragged my feet toward my front door. I felt so weak I could barely carry the duffel bag that contained some of my military gear. I was glad I had my house keys on me. When I got inside, I went straight to the telephone. I called up everybody I knew and nobody was able to tell me where my wife was.
I let two weeks go by before I attempted to file a missing-person report. The cops laughed in my face when I told them my wife was a stripper and that she’d been seen leaving home with suitcases and a man. They practically chased me out of the police station.
Three days after I’d made a fool of myself with the cops, Glinda moseyed into the house a few minutes after eight P.M. without the suitcases Robert told me she’d left with. There was a smirk on her face and a huge chip on her shoulder. She wore a tight purple skirt and what looked like a bikini top under a white windbreaker. Her hair was askew and she had on enough makeup to paint the side of a barn, and she reeked of alcohol. She didn’t say hello or ask how I’d been doing. All she said was “I just came by to get some more of my stuff.”
“Did you come alone?” I asked, glancing toward the front window.
“I’m alone. I came in a cab and I’ll be going back in a cab,” she snapped.
“Wh-where the hell have you been? And where is it you’re going to go back to?” I demanded, following her across the floor into our master bedroom. My hands were balled into fists and a knot was in my stomach. “What’s this I hear about you stripping?” I could barely get the word out of my mouth. “Wasn’t being an escort bad enough? I thought you left that wild lifestyle behind when we got married.” I was frantic. I was also glad to see my wife. I wanted to grab her and never let her go. She looked at me like I had scabs all over my face.
“I thought you’d be gone by now,” she said casually, rolling her eyes. I couldn’t believe my ears! She stopped in front of the mirror behind the closet door and began to fuss with her hair. She didn’t comment on the new brass bed and the gold-and-red brocade drapes at the windows I’d purchased the day before.
I was so stunned I had to grope for words. “Gone where, Glinda?” I asked through clenched teeth. “This is my home and I’m here for good,” I added as I made a sweeping gesture with my hand. I couldn’t believe that this was the same woman I had married. “Glinda—” I didn’t even get to finish my next sentence. She whirled around and glared at me with her eyes narrowed into slits.
“Look, fool, I’ve got better things to do with my time than sit around here waiting on your lame ass to come home.”
Again I couldn’t believe my ears. “Glinda, talk to me. You need to tell me what’s going on. If something is wrong, we can fix it.”
“Get outta my face, fool!”
I folded my arms so I wouldn’t be tempted to grab her and shake some sense into her hard head. “Are you involved with another man?”
She moved to the bed and sat down hard, kicking off a pair of four-inch black stilettoes. “What if I am?” she asked as she began to massage her feet. “What was I supposed to do? And don’t tell me you haven’t been dipping your spoon into some . . . something.” She threw her head back and laughed. “I know those women over there in the Middle East are probably not as easy to get to as the ones in other foreign countries, but don’t think for one minute that I believe you’ve only been jacking off.”
I moved closer to the bed and stood a few feet in front of her. “I have never touched another woman since I met you,” I told her. And it was true. I had not even looked at another woman since the night I met Glinda. “Please talk to me,” I begged.
She rolled her eyes again, then jumped up and strutted over to the dresser, where she began to root through her underwear in the top drawer. She had a pair of red thong panties in her hand when she let out a loud breath and turned to me.
“What are you going to do now? Go back to that dead-end–ass job at the utility company?” she sneered.
I shook my head. “I didn’t want to go back. I received a fantastic job offer a couple of days ago. And it’s a position that suits me better.”
“Humph. I can’t imagine a job that ‘suits’ you . . . other than a clown in that circus that comes through here every year.”
“I’ll be driving an eighteen-wheeler, hauling lumber from Oregon and Washington to various cities in Southern Cal. I may be gone for days, even weeks, at a time. I hope that’s all right with you. I would have discussed it with you when they offered it, but . . . I didn’t know how to get in touch with you.”
Glinda dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “I don’t care what you do.”
“You should care, Glinda. I’m your husband!”
She looked me up and down, shaking her head and muttering under her breath. I could not understand why there was an amused look on her face. “Yeah, you’re my husband, but not for long!” she snarled.
My breath caught in my throat and I couldn’t get a word out. I stood there like
a mute, wondering what Glinda was going to say next. She could not have stunned me more if she had dropped a stove on my head.
“I want a divorce,” she said as calmly as if she’d just requested a glass of wine.
“A ‘divorce,’” I mouthed. The word tasted like bile on my tongue. My head was spinning and I couldn’t even feel my legs. You could have knocked me over with a toothpick. “You can’t be serious!”
“Well, I am! And you can’t stop me! You make me sick!” she taunted.
“Is there someone else?” I asked dumbly. My heart was pounding so hard and loud, I could hear it. I was amazed that I had not fainted or burst into tears.
“Yes, there is someone else.” Those words hit me like a speeding train. I wanted to holler, hit the wall with my fist—anything that would redirect my anger and keep me from wrapping my hands around her throat. Except for the war, I had never hurt another human being in my life. I had always avoided physical confrontations. I had never even had a single physical fight with any of my siblings, friends, or the school and neighborhood bullies. I knew that if somebody ever provoked me enough to get violent, I would make up for all the times I had managed to run away in time or had talked my way out of a fight.
As if what Glinda had said so far hadn’t been painful enough, she hit me with another blow, which almost knocked the wind out of me. In a high-pitched voice, she told me, “And he wants to marry me.” There was a crooked smile on her face, so I thought she was just joking.
“Glinda, please tell me you’re joking,” I pleaded, wringing my hands.
“Am I laughing?” she boomed, waving her hand and snapping her fingers.
I still couldn’t bring myself to believe she was serious. How I was able to remain so composed was a mystery to me. At the same time, everything inside my body was falling apart. “But you can’t just—”
“I’m pregnant,” she announced, even more calmly than she’d said she wanted a divorce. “He wants to marry me and I can’t do that until I get rid of your lame black ass.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I married you.”
“You . . . you said you loved me,” I fumbled, struggling to swallow the huge lump in my throat.
“Well, I must have been drunk.”
“Glinda, we can get past this. If you give up this other man, I will raise the child as my own. Nobody but us ever needs to know the truth. I won’t even tell my family.”
“Fuck your family! To hell with them and you! I know they hate me, and I hate them!”
“You can talk about me like a dog all you want to, but I don’t appreciate you bashing my family!” I hollered. Some of the same relatives who had shunned me because of Glinda had recently started coming back around. Their support meant a lot to me. But it was too late for me to restore my relationship with Mama and tell her how sorry I was that I had disappointed her so severely. She had passed while I was still deployed. Nobody bothered to tell me until after the funeral, because that was what she had told them to do. I couldn’t believe that I had caused her to be that angry with me. The woman responsible for the falling-out between my mother and me was not fit to live! A voice I had never heard before told me, “Kill her. . . .”
“They don’t give a shit about you, and neither do I! You’re a bigger fool than I thought you were. And for the record, that other time when I thought I was pregnant, it was by this same man, not you.”
I felt so light-headed by now, I thought I was going to float up off the floor and hit the ceiling. “Then why did you marry me?” I couldn’t believe how weak I sounded. My legs felt like jelly and everything else on my body felt even worse. Somehow I managed to remain on my feet.
“I don’t think you really want to hear the real reason,” she warned.
“Yes, I really do want to hear it.”
“Because the other man was married at the time. And everybody told me what a gullible fool you were! I figured I could quit my damn job at that fried chicken restaurant and sit back and enjoy your military benefits. I knew that you would take good care of me and I could still do whatever I wanted. But . . . but my skin crawled whenever you touched me. The last time you fucked me, I douched with vinegar after you fell asleep. Kissing you is like kissing a week-old litter box! You’re lousy in bed anyway. Do you want to hear more?”
I grabbed Glinda’s arm and she almost jumped out of her skin.
“That’s what I’m talking about! Your touch feels like ants crawling all over me!” She looked at me like I had just doused her with acid. “I don’t ever want you to touch me again. Now, if you don’t mind, I will pack up the rest of my shit and get the hell up out of here!”
I moved closer to her and folded my arms again. Then for some reason, I guess it was because I wanted to put some temporary distance between us so I could regroup my thoughts, I spun around and trotted to the kitchen. I snatched open the refrigerator and grabbed the first beverage I saw, which was a can of beer. Well, I wanted a clear head, so I put the beer back and reached for a bottle of water. I managed to gulp down half of it, but it didn’t put out the raging blaze in my belly. I set the bottle on the counter and returned to the bedroom. As Glinda folded clothes and placed them into the opened suitcase on the bed, she was humming “What’s Love Got to Do with It.”
I walked casually over to her and gently placed my hand on her shoulder. “Baby, I can’t let you leave me.” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. The words I’d just spoken sounded as if they’d come from another man. The voice I had heard a few moments ago spoke to me again, “Kill her. . . .”
War changed people. Several of the men I had served with had come home missing a limb or two. Others had come home with post-traumatic stress disorders, and their lives would never be the same again. I was probably one of the luckiest ones. I was basically the same man I’d been before my deployment. It seemed so ironic that a small woman had had more negative effect on me than the battlegrounds in the Middle East. I had lived my whole life as a decent, law-abiding citizen, but because of that small woman, that was about to change....
Glinda stopped humming and turned to face me. The look in her eyes was so empty and cold; I shivered. “You just watch me, motherfucker!” she shrieked. She pummeled my aching chest with both hands, and then she slapped my face and laughed. I was in the worst pain I’d ever experienced in my life, and she was laughing at me!
After tonight she’d never laugh again.
Chapter 44
Lola
SO FAR, SINCE I’D JOINED DISCREET ENCOUNTERS TWO WEEKS AGO, I had responded to, but also had ignored, e-mails from a dozen men. I didn’t acknowledge one man because he sounded too aggressive, and that frightened me. I’d ignored a frat boy, attending Nevada State, who told me I reminded him of his mother. There was no way I was going to hop into bed with a man who wanted to sleep with me because I reminded him of his mother! I decided not to even consider any men younger than thirty. Some of the other men I hadn’t responded to didn’t sound interesting enough or they revealed too much information about themselves that was disturbing to me. Like the man who’d told me, in great detail, how refreshing it was to have a thorough bowel movement immediately after sex and then have the woman, with whom he’d just made love, watch him!
I was finally ready to have my first “discreet encounter.” His name was Les Gould. Not only was he gorgeous, we shared a lot of the same interests. I was going to meet him in three days, this coming Friday.
Les was a thirty-eight-year-old surgeon from Boston, who attended medical conferences in California on an annual basis. Even though the site management people had done a background check on him, I called the hospital he claimed he worked for, just to make sure he was telling the truth. That checked out, but I Googled him too. Numerous magazine articles that he had written popped up, so I knew he was on the up-and-up. (I didn’t tell Joan I’d done a little background checking on this man myself because I knew she’d make a fuss.)
I had never me
t a black surgeon before, nor had I seen any man who was as handsome and exotic as Les. I drooled when I saw the picture he had posted of himself in his scrubs. He had the body of a prizefighter, enough thick black hair for two men, smooth light brown skin, and green eyes.
By the time Friday rolled around, I was so horny that I could barely walk. After Bertha had gone to bed around eight-thirty P.M., I slipped out of the house and jumped into my Jetta and took off like a bat out of hell. That was how anxious I was to meet Les. I was also nervous.
I was glad I had decided to wear the cream-colored silk dress I’d purchased on my last shopping spree. I had recently lost a few pounds and never looked or felt better in my life. I was a woman having the best time of my life—finally. And I was going to continue enjoying my life as long as I could.
I had arranged to meet Les in a restaurant located in the Hilton hotel in downtown San Jose, where he had booked a suite the day before. When I approached his table in a corner near the front entrance, he stood up and handed me a single rose. I couldn’t believe how dapper he looked in his dark blue pin-striped suit. His complexion looked even more exotic in person. He was not as light-skinned as he looked in his profile picture or in the pictures of him in the magazines he had written for. His skin was more of a medium shade of bronze. Purple skin would have looked good on this man.
“Thank you,” I said in a squeaky voice. I cleared my throat and offered my biggest smile. Then I purred, “I hope you’re Les Gould.”
“If I’m not, I’m wearing the wrong underwear,” he said with a chuckle. He pulled out the chair next to him for me to sit. “Yes, I am Les.” He had a sexy, husky voice that sounded a lot like James Earl Jones when he voiced Darth Vader in Star Wars. I was a fool when it came to men with sexy, husky voices and New England accents, so I’d even listen to Les read a dictionary to me. I couldn’t wait to hear him talk dirty. . . .