Oh. My. God. Princess was frozen in place, thoughts spinning around her head like a Tilt-A-Whirl. What in the hell was I thinking? How could I ever have given up a man like Rafael for one like Kelvin? How could I have given up the steady and predictable for the wild and spontaneous? How could I ever have thought that this could be my life? The woman leaned in for a kiss and Princess saw red. She pushed aside the waiter who’d come up with a tray of drinks and stormed toward Kelvin. And then, with his next action, she stopped yet again. The smile fled from his face as he gently yet firmly grabbed the woman’s arm and set her away from him. He lifted his left hand, pointed to his wedding ring, and delivered what looked like a short, stern message. Princess watched in awe as Kelvin nodded at the throng of ladies and began walking away. Obviously on a mission. Obviously looking for somebody … his wife.
“Kelvin!” So furiously was he walking that she had to hurry to catch up. “I’m right here.”
He reached for her hand. “We’re out of here.”
She’d felt exactly the same way! Princess’s heart soared. “I saw what happened.” Kelvin didn’t respond, simply walked them over to the valet, gave up his coupon, and stood with his arms crossed and a face that could have been made of stone. “Are you all right?”
“Not really,” he said.
Princess placed a hand on his arm. It was tight with muscle, sinew, and tension. “I saw what happened,” she repeated, her voice as soft as the thumb that stroked his forearm. “I saw that woman come on to you, and I saw you stand behind your ring … and your wedding vows. I’m so proud you, Kelvin. I love you.” She raised up on her tiptoes to kiss his still clenched cheek.
“I love you, too, baby.” He said it, but he was still distracted.
“I love you more,” she whispered, leaning over to kiss him again. “And when we get back to the room, I’m going to show you just how much more.”
His jaw unclenched, and a slight smile accompanied his glance in her direction.
And in this moment, all of Princess’s earlier questions were answered. Seeing Rafael’s unquestionable dedication to Kiki had made her question her decision, made her doubt Kelvin being capable of the same type of loyalty. And now, less than ten minutes later, she had her answer. There was a reason she’d followed her heart. And she was standing right next to it.
Later, after hours of both strenuous and languid lovemaking, Kelvin and Princess spooned against each other. Princess’s eyelids were heavy and after the workout she’d just had, compliments of her husband, she welcomed the sleep. Kelvin continued to run a strong, forefinger up her thigh, before caressing her hip and stomach. Periodically, he’d lean over and kiss her temple, or shoulder, or neck.
After kissing her shoulder yet again, Kelvin spoke. “I think we should do that show.”
“Hmm?”
“I think we should do that reality show that Lavon spoke about.”
“I don’t know, baby,” Princess murmured, nestling her head into a more comfortable position for the sleep that now felt only seconds away. “People will be all up in our business.”
“They’re already in it, baby. So why not take control of the reins and work this to our advantage? We’ve got to be a team, baby, present a united front. I’ve got bitches coming at me all day long. I’ma need you with me, for real.”
Princess turned to face Kelvin. “I don’t like that word being used to describe women.”
“It doesn’t describe all women,” Kelvin said, now sitting up against the backboard. “Just the ones coming at me even though they know I’m married. Why y’all do that?” he asked, looking down at Princess and twirling a piece of her hair in his fingers. “Why y’all make it so hard on a brother to stay faithful?”
“That’s not all women,” Princess said, using the words that he’d just spoken. She rolled to her side, repositioned the sheet and yawned as she added, “Just those itches with needs they’re trying to scratch.”
“Ha! So bitches is a bad word, but itches is allowed?”
“Of course. Bitches are curses, but itches are simply inconveniences.”
Kelvin scooted back down next to Princess. “Damn, my baby’s smart!”
“Whatever, Kelvin! I want to go to sleep!”
“Okay, baby.” He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “But are you with me?”
A sigh and then, “Yes, I’m with you.”
“We’ll do the show?”
Princess reached over and placed his arm around her waist. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”
46
Home Is Where The Heart Is
“You can’t keep doing this, Obadiah.” Mama Max shook her head as she placed a steaming hot plate of grits, fried eggs, link sausage, freshly baked biscuits, and homemade strawberry jam in front of her estranged-yet-not-so-estranged husband. “Coming here at all hours of the morning and night, expecting to eat meals like it’s your due.”
“I’m your husband,” Obadiah replied around a forkful of grits and eggs. “It is my due.”
“Negro? Is you crazy or is you just lost your mind? What you did a year ago cancels out anything I ever owed you and fifty years of putting up with your mess marks my balance paid in full. You made your choice when you left this here house to sleep with Dorothea. You can’t have your … biscuit … and eat it, too!”
For a few moments, Obadiah ate in silence. Then he leaned back, picked up his cup of coffee (doctored with the preferred half and half and brown sugar combo that Maxine had perfected over half a century ago), and took a thoughtful sip. Finally, staring over the rim of his cup at his wife, he offered, “How many times do you want me to say it, Maxine? I was wrong.”
“Hmph. Is that all you have to say? That you were wrong? Hell, anybody looking at the situation can see that you’re wrong. Blind Bartimaeus can see that you’re wrong. A dead man peering through empty sockets can see that you’re wrong. That don’t change nothing about what’s happened—that you left your wife for a whore, and your pulpit for pussy that’s past its prime.”
“Maxine … ”
“Tell the truth, shame the devil.”
Better past its prime than not present at all! Wisely, Obadiah chose not to voice this thought. If he’d learned anything over the past several months it was that no amount of poontang could stack up to what the woman sitting across from him had added to his life. Pleasure pokes were a dime a dozen, but women like Maxine Fredonia Brook were like rare coins. Less than a month after leaving Mama Max for Dorothea, Obadiah was aware of the mistake he’d made. But his stubbornness mixed with the way Dorothea blew his pole convinced him that everything would get better with time. It hadn’t. It had gotten worse. Before coming back to Kansas City a week ago, Obadiah had spent a lot of time thinking about how he could rectify his life. And since the day after he’d arrived, when after being kicked out of his own house he’d set up residence at an extended stay hotel, he’d been devising the plan to get back into her good graces, into the Lord’s favor, and return to where he belonged.
“A man has needs, Maxine,” he said instead, placing the focus of the conversation on the matter that had aided in his leaving almost a year ago and that in one way or another had dominated their conversation for the past week. “We have’t shared the bedroom in ten, fifteen years. I tried to use … other means to answer nature’s call, but you had a problem with that way, too!”
“That plastic vagina? The full-sized, real-life blow-up doll?” Maxine was getting so worked up that she couldn’t sit still. She stood from the table, reached for her empty plate, and after placing it into the sink, began to fix herself a second cup of coffee. “You datgum right I had a problem with it, and any woman who wouldn’t have a problem with it needs to get smacked upside the head with that very doll!”
Had it been left up to Mama Max, that’s exactly what would have happened. A year ago, while Obadiah had been pastoring Gospel Truth Church in Palestine, Texas, and just before he left to be with Dorothea, Maxine had
made what to her was a gruesome discovery: an amazingly authentic life-size sex doll in a private room off from Obadiah’s study. Also found in the room was a comfy chair, flat-screen TV, porno tapes, and bottles of Viagra. After calming from the shock, Mama Max had loaded “plastic pussy” into her car, planning to take “her” to the church and leaving Obadiah as exposed as the doll’s almost-real vagina. Had it not been for Nettie Thicke Johnson talking sense, restoring order, and convincing Mama Max to handle “PP” in private, Lord only knows what would have taken place.
“We been round and round with this here issue,” Obadiah said into the silence. “We can’t really talk about it … we’ve tried not talking about it … I’ve tried going without it.”
Mama Max snorted.
“I’ve tried,” Obadiah continued. “But it ain’t natural not to do what comes naturally. I know you don’t understand it, and you don’t agree, honey, but that’s the God’s truth right there. It ain’t natural!”
Mama Max returned to the table and took a seat. She looked beyond Obadiah, out into the living room—a cozy combination of earth-tone colors and blended styles of country, contemporary, and antique. Mama Max’s love was draped throughout the room: doilies, needlepoint, and a knitted throw that, even if it was summer and eighty degrees, adorned the couch year round. She didn’t see any of this though. She looked beyond the furniture and out the window, back through more than sixty years of history and one of the moments that changed her life.
“I told you that I didn’t like it when we were courtin’… . You just didn’t believe me.”
“But you’ve never told me why. I figured with your being so fire and brimstone religious and all that, you were just making sure I kept my boundaries, but that after we got married you’d … you know … loosen up.”
“Mama did teach that sex was a sin, and that the only reason a man did his business with you was to make babies. I believed that.” Still do.
Obadiah took another sip of coffee, seeing past the septuagenarian who sat before him and into the eyes of the girl he’d fallen in love with and swore he’d marry when he was only sixteen. “It’s funny how in all of these years I never thought to ask you. But … did something happen, Maxine? Something else that makes you dislike being with a man?”
After a long moment, Maxine turned water-filled eyes on her husband and nodded. “I never told nobody. I only wanted to forget what I—”
“Mornin’, Maxie!”
Maxine hurried from the table, hollering as she went. “Mornin’, Henry. Come on in here and get some breakfast.”
“He’s going back to her. He’s going back to Maxine.” Dorothea paced the length of her one-bedroom apartment as she talked to her sister, still in her robe even though it was noon.
“Did he tell you that?” Dorothea’s sister, Katherine Noble, sat in her luxuriously appointed condominium in New Orleans, watching two birds flit between the branches just beyond her patio. She’d listened to her sister’s pain for the four-plus decades that Dorothea had pined after this married man, so even though she wasn’t in the mood for lamentations and would rather be shopping, she lent her support. “All you have is a note that says he’s going to Kansas City and doesn’t know when he’ll be back.”
“But why, Kat? Why would he just up and go to Kansas City without telling me? If there was something happening in his family, why wouldn’t he just tell me that? No, this is different,” Dorothea continued, her voice dripping with sadness. “I can feel it. I’m getting ready to lose my man … again.”
47
Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone
Obadiah sat stewing in the living room, holding a newspaper that he wasn’t reading and looking out the window without seeing a thing. It didn’t matter that Maxine insisted she and Henry were just friends, the fact that she wouldn’t stop her daily walks with him, even after Obadiah had asked her to (quite kindly, he would have added had anyone asked), was a serious stick in his craw. Not to mention the cakes and pies that she routinely took over, along with helpings of whatever dinner she’d prepared. Nor did he appreciate the smirk he swore happened every time Henry looked his way. It didn’t matter how Maxine felt about Henry. Obadiah hadn’t missed how Henry looked at Maxine; he was convinced that joining her for prayer service was not the type of meeting that her neighbor had in mind.
“I’m getting ready to put an end to these shenanigans,” Obadiah mumbled, tossing the newspaper aside as he rose from the couch. He walked over to the window, looked up and down the street, and tried to spot his wife and her neighbor.
Don’t you think you need to end something else first?
Obadiah scowled. He knew the voice of God almost as well as he knew his own. “Yes, Lord, I need to end things with her. I need to do right by Dorothea and send her on her way.”
Then what are you waiting on?
“She’s not going to like it. I’m not ready to face her drama.”
Are you ready to face your own?
A host of memories assailed Obadiah as he stood looking out the window. He’d loved Dorothea since they both were in their twenties, having met her shortly after his second child, Queen, was born.
The year was 1961. Obadiah was twenty-three years old and already a preaching sensation. His deep baritone, tall stature, and wealthy knowledge of scripture were known throughout Texas and beyond, as was his suave dressing and conked, Jackie Wilson-inspired hair. He’d always had a way with the ladies and the fact that he was married didn’t stop them from flocking to his anointed side like moths to a flame.
The night he first saw Dorothea, she took his breath away. She was easily the classiest, most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, could have given Lena Horne a run for her money any day of the week. During the service, he put her out of his mind, but after church—when he found himself seated next to her at the hosting pastor’s dinner table—he knew that he had to have her. She’d felt the same way, and let him know it.
“I can love you hard, but I can’t love you long.” That’s what he’d told her that night, before several rounds of lovemaking. But he did end up loving her long—for more than forty years.
“I love Maxine more,” Obadiah said, as if the statement was a revelation to his own ears. And in a way, it was. He’d taken many parts of Maxine for granted: her love, wisdom, faithfulness, and her God-fearing ways. He’d lessened the importance of what she’d been in his life, not only as a loyal companion but as the mother of his children and a faithful friend. She’s always been a good mother.
And a good wife—don’t leave that out. A wife who deserves better than how you’re treating her.
“You’re right, Lord,” Obadiah said. He turned away from the window and passed a hand over weary eyes as he made his way to the phone in his study. There’s never going to be a good time for this conversation. And even though he knew that it was probably one best handled in person, he couldn’t wait the ten hours it would take to drive to Dallas or even the ninety minutes it would take to fly.
“Obadiah! Where are you?” Dorothea had picked up on the first ring.
“I’m still in Kansas City, but I’ll be back this weekend.”
“Thank God. I was about to go crazy down here without my joy stick.”
Obadiah cleared his throat. “I’ve got to end things with us, Dorothea. I love you, but I’m married to Maxine and I can’t leave her. I know this will hurt you and I’m sorry. But I’m a man of God who’s been living in sin. I’ve got to get back in His will.”
A pause and then, “What happened? Did somebody find out about our arrangement here?”
“This ain’t about nobody finding out. It’s about me doing the right thing.”
“What, did Maxine finally get to you? According to you, she was fine with our being together, and even threatened to take over the divorce matter herself to speed things along. Right?”
“That was just hurt talking.”
“I don’t get it!” Panic raised the volume of Dorothea�
��s voice. “We’ve been basically living together for almost a year. She let you go. We’re supposed to be getting married. I’ve waited forty years!”
“I know, sugar. I’m sorry.”
When Dorothea spoke, Obadiah could hear her tears. “Don’t do this, Obadiah. Don’t let go of our love. If you have to go back home, fine. I understand you’re a man with a reputation to uphold. But don’t end us. I’ll do whatever it takes, whatever you want.”
“I’ll always love you, Dorothea. But I’ve made up my mind. I need to stay with Maxine if I want to make heaven my home.”
“She doesn’t love you like I do.”
“I know.”
“She won’t even sleep with you!”
“You’re right.”
When Dorothea spoke her voice had changed, hardened to a tone that Obadiah had never heard. “Come back to me, you selfish motherfucker! Come back or I’ll tell everybody about us!”
Obadiah sighed. “Do what you need to do, Dorothea. I’ll have a couple deacons from Gospel Truth come over and get the rest of my things out of the apartment before the end of the month.” Dorothea was openly crying now. “There’re some good men down there in Dallas, Dorothea. Some who’d give their eyeteeth for the pleasure of your company. It’s not too late for you to meet one and enjoy these last years of your life. And even though it will be hard knowing that I’ll never see you again—and believe me, it will—this is how it has to be.”
“All these years,” she whispered, her tone returning to one more familiar even though it was filled with torment and pain. “I gave you all these years of my life, bided my time, accepted your crumbs. And this is how you thank me?”
Divine Intervention Page 21