by Mary Monroe
“Don’t you at least love Daddy? Doesn’t he love you?” I didn’t know what else to say. It was hard to absorb what I’d just heard because it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. “How can a person forget how to love?” I wanted to know. “I am your own flesh and blood.”
“We lost everything and everyone we loved. We were afraid to let it happen again. I have a different kind of affection for your father. It is all I have left to give.”
“Oh.” I dropped my head for a few moments. “And nothing left for me,” I managed. I rose to leave, but my mother grabbed my hand and pulled me back to my seat.
“Christine, things can change. I know that now. Your daddy knows that now. I know because I couldn’t stop myself from calling you,” Mama said. “And, I will call again ….”
“I will, too, Mama,” I said. Just as we rose from the table, I looked toward the door. Daddy stood there, with his head bowed. When he glanced up and saw me looking at him, he returned his attention to the floor. Just as I was about to leave, Mama came around the table and wrapped her arms around me. A few moments later, I felt Daddy’s arms embrace me from behind. The group hug lasted at least two minutes. Nothing was said, and it was not necessary now. At least not at this moment. I reluctantly pulled away, and then I left.
They say that when one door closes, another one opens. That’s what it felt like. I knew that my marriage was coming to an end. But I had a very hopeful feeling about resuming a relationship, a healthy one this time, with the parents I hardly knew.
“What do you mean you’re leaving your husband?” Nita asked as soon as she entered my house three days later.
Jesse Ray had finally returned to work. And, true to her word, Adele had stopped speaking to her brother. We had run into her and the twins at the mall a few times, but each time they’d ignored us. She refused to even enter or call the video store that Jesse Ray still allowed Mel to manage. Instead, when she needed to talk to Mel, she’d have one of the twins call the store and tell him to call her. Harvey and his lady friend had moved to Chinatown in San Francisco and rarely called or visited. I didn’t ask, and Jesse Ray didn’t volunteer the information, but I was certain that Harvey had changed his MO because Jesse Ray had cut off his credit, too. But none of that mattered anymore. I knew it was time for me to make a drastic change, too.
“Your man is finally doing everything you want him to do,” Nita added. “What more could you ask for?”
“I’ve got to get away from Jesse Ray,” I admitted. “He’s trying hard to make things work, and I appreciate him doing that, but I just can’t stay with him any longer. The wounds that his family opened up on me are still too fresh.” I needed to heal from my wounds. Especially the ones I’d inflicted.
“How are you going to live? Where are you going to live?”
“My mother wants me to move back in with her and Daddy until I figure out what I want to do,” I said, with a smile so broad, it made my face ache. Yes, it was true. My mother, the woman who had rejected me all my life, had invited me to move back into my old room so we could “sort things out starting from scratch.”
And, at this point I felt that it was the best move I could make.
“I hope things work out for you, ma’am,” Daisy said as she helped me pack and load my things into the SUV that Jesse Ray had just bought for me. I’d sold my other car because it contained too many memories of Wade. His scent had permeated the interior. At least, it seemed that way to me. I’d only driven it three times since I’d returned home. “Mr. Thurman will be hurt and surprised when he returns home this evening,” she added, with a sad look on her face.
“I’ll only be across town,” I told her, returning to the living room to give Miss Rosetta a long hug and tell her how much I’d appreciated her kindness. Her flat eyes didn’t even respond to my gesture. She didn’t even blink.
Nita followed me in her car to my parents’ apartment so she could help me unload my belongings. I was glad that both my parents had chosen to go to work that day. I wanted to be by myself again.
CHAPTER 64
An hour after Nita left, Jesse Ray called me up on the new cellular phone he’d purchased for me two days earlier.
“Christine, what the hell are you doing? I called the house to invite you to lunch, and Daisy tells me you’ve moved back in with your folks? How in the hell are we going to work things out with you over there and me over here?” he asked in a frantic voice. “I’m on my way over there!”
“And the only way you’ll get in is if you break in,” I warned. “I don’t want to see you.”
“What are you saying? Are you telling me that after all that’s happened—my spending another fortune to get you a new vehicle, too—you are leaving me, anyway?”
“I need some time to myself,” I explained. “I can’t think straight in your house.”
“My house? It’s your house just as much as it is mine.”
“Now it is. All those times when I tried to talk to you about the way things were going, you kept reminding me that everything was yours,” I said.
“Look, you are talking foolishness. Now let me get off this telephone so I can come over there and talk to you face-to-face.”
“I don’t want to see your face,” I revealed. “I just told you, I need to be by myself. I need to work on my relationship with my parents.”
“But you don’t need to work on your relationship with your husband? Is that how it’s going to be?”
“J.R., I still love you, but I don’t think … I don’t think I’m in love with you anymore,” I admitted.
“What do you want to do, Christine? Do you want a divorce?”
“The only thing I know that I want right now is to be away from you so I can think.”
“When will I see you again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I call you in a few days?”
“Yes.” I hung up so he couldn’t say anything else.
That evening I sat down to dinner with my parents, but they were just as uncomfortable as I was. But they were trying to piece our fractured relationship together, and so was I. The day before, Daddy had confided in me how much he was looking forward to retiring. That didn’t mean much to me until he told me that one of the things his retirement would mean was that he could spend more time with me.
And, no matter who I talked to, or what we talked about, the conversations always got around to Wade’s mother. I had not paid Miss Louise the visit that I had been meaning to pay her, but it was always good to hear about her. I was glad to hear that she was in good health and still working. She had gotten through her grief intact.
A month after I left Jesse Ray, he called me up one day and caught me in a good mood. I had just enjoyed dinner with my parents at Giovanni’s for the first time. Daddy had shared some of the few pleasant things that he could remember about his childhood. He’d raised a goat by himself. He’d taught himself how to swim when he was just five years old. Mama had seemed as fascinated by Daddy’s stories as I did. In fact, she had regaled me with a few of her own, laughing like a schoolgirl when she told me about the time a chicken chased her into the woods and pecked her on her legs.
Jesse Ray’s telephone call couldn’t have come at a better time, because I honestly did want to see him.
“Christine, can we get together tomorrow for a few drinks?” he asked, sounding as shy and meek as a schoolboy. I could hear the desperation in his voice. Other than visiting a few bars with Jeanette and Nita, I had done no socializing. And, getting back into the dating game was the furthest thing from my mind. After Wade and Jesse Ray, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to make love to another man again. But I knew that was an unrealistic notion. When Jesse Ray called, I felt that I was ready to go back in that direction, but one step at a time.
“Okay,” I said, with a sigh. “You can pick me up tomorrow around noon.”
Even with Jesse Ray, the conversation often ended up being about Miss Louise. After we�
�d chitchatted about Miss Rosetta’s health, which was no better, and about the rest of his family ignoring him, Jesse Ray’s tone took a disturbing turn. “Miss Louise is finally living the life she always wanted,” he started, toying with the stirrer in his rum and Coke. We were seated at a corner table in a secluded little bar in downtown San Francisco.
“I guess she’s finally gotten over what happened to her son,” I volunteered.
“She just bought a new condo, and she’s driving around in a brand-new Cadillac,” Jesse Ray reported.
I gave him a thoughtful look and blinked as I considered this piece of information. “Miss Louise always lived beyond her means,” I reminded. “She finally stopped borrowing from Daddy. As a matter of fact, she paid him back all she owed him, with interest. I guess she must have had a real good insurance policy on Wade.”
Jesse Ray shook his head. “Not a dime. That’s the problem with so many black folks. They don’t plan for the important things, like funeral costs.”
“How would you know?”
“Baby, I didn’t want you to ever know this, but Mel told me that Miss Louise got some church to raise money to bury Wade. Even I pitched in a few bucks anonymously,” Jesse Ray said, looking embarrassed. His words seemed to float above my head. I almost swallowed my tongue just thinking about what he’d just told me. Not only had my lover beat my husband out of a million dollars, but my husband helped pay for him to be laid to rest. It was too incredible to believe. If I’d seen this drama in a movie, I’d have walked out.
“That still doesn’t mean she didn’t have insurance on Wade. Maybe the insurance company didn’t pay off right away, and that’s why she had to get help with his funeral expenses. She came into some money somehow. She’s paying people back that she’s been owing for years. She just bought a new condo, a new car, new designer clothes. She must have won the lottery or … or …” I couldn’t finish my sentence.
“I doubt that. That bigmouthed woman would have told everybody on the planet.” Jesse Ray leaned across the table and started talking in a low voice. “Rumors are floating around town that Wade must have had some drug money stashed away in Miss Louise’s house, which she stumbled across when she started cleaning out Wade’s room. And, it had to be quite a pile for her to be spending the way she’s been spending.”
Like a million dollars! That was the only other explanation! Miss Louise had somehow gotten her greedy hands on the million-dollar ransom that Jesse Ray had paid Wade to get me back. That woman had to be in hog heaven now—even though she’d lost her precious only child. That explained why the police never found any money. Now it all made sense. After Wade had double-crossed me, Jason had attempted to double-cross him. But Wade had hidden the money, and that had to be why Jason had shot him.
As far as Wade having tapes of my conversations with him, he had never proved that to me. That hadn’t made sense when he told it to me, and it didn’t make any sense now. Wade had no reason to tape our conversations at the time. How could he have known in advance that I’d strike up a telephone conversation with him about him helping me plan a phony kidnapping? Wade had never been that clever. Yes, he had taken a few Polaroids of me in the Marriott Hotel, but all that proved was that we’d had a relationship. And everybody already knew about that. The pictures didn’t reveal a date, so I could have posed for Wade’s camera long before I married Jesse Ray. Wade had said himself how young I looked in the pictures.
“Does that big smile on your face mean yes?” Jesse Ray asked, squeezing my hand. My mind had been so far away that I had not heard what he’d asked.
“Yes for what?” I suddenly felt warm all over because now I had some answers. I had no proof, but I finally had some peace of mind.
“I just asked you if we could try to work on things. I want you to come on back home, baby,” Jesse Ray said, squeezing my hand again. “We’ll move anywhere you want to move. I think that would help.”
“I don’t want to leave Berkeley,” I said. “My parents are getting old, and they are going to need me now more than ever. I want to be here for them.”
“Oh. I guess that means you won’t be coming home with me today? We won’t be starting over? We can even start over from scratch. A few innocent dates, just like when we first got together. I didn’t pressure you for anything more then, and I won’t do it this time.”
I shook my head. “I won’t be coming home with you today.” I looked around the bar because for the first time I wanted everybody in it to see the glow on my face. Then I looked at Jesse Ray. “But maybe we can start over … from scratch.” It was a new beginning for me, my parents, and Jesse Ray.
“I’d like that, Christine,” he said, getting teary-eyed.
I had just as many tears in my eyes. “I’d like that, too,” I told him. And I meant it.
Don’t miss Mary Monroe’s latest novel in the God series …
God Ain’t Through Yet
Available now from Dafina Books
Here’s an excerpt from God Ain’t Through Yet …
CHAPTER 1
Richland, Ohio, 1997
My husband was the last man in town that the people in our close-knit circle of friends expected to have an affair. Why he didn’t cheat was as much of a mystery to me as it was to them. When I mentioned to one of my female friends that I was married to a man who didn’t cheat, her only question was, “What’s wrong with him?”
It saddened me to hear that some people thought that there was something wrong with a man who didn’t cheat on his wife.
“There is nothing wrong with my husband. He’s as normal as any other man,” I told that friend.
“Ha! If that’s the case, he’s not normal,” that friend told me.
Maybe she was right. If it was normal for a man to cheat, then Pee Wee was not normal.
Despite the fact that I had cheated on my husband just a few months ago (yes, I’d cheated, but I’ll get to that later) and had accused him of being unfaithful on numerous occasions, I knew in my heart that he had not slept with another woman since he married me. However, one of my concerns was the other women who were dying to get their hands on him.
“If you ever break up with Pee Wee, send him to me,” another female friend had jokingly suggested. “He’s perfect.”
When I told my mother what my friend had said, she told me, “Girl, as brazen and desperate as women are these days, I’d be worried if I were you.”
Even after my mother’s comment, I didn’t worry or complain because I felt secure and comfortable. Looking back on it now, I realize I was too comfortable. That was my first mistake. I had a ringside seat in the eye of a major hurricane, but I was so comfortable I didn’t realize that until it was too late.
The day that Pee Wee, my “perfect” husband, abruptly and cruelly left me for another woman had started out like any other day. It was the middle of March, and still a little too cold for my tastes. I’d been a resident of Ohio for over forty years by this time, and I still hadn’t adjusted to the weather. When I was a child growing up in Florida, I used to run around naked in our front yard in March. Kids doing such a thing in Ohio, in March, was unheard of.
I had crawled out of bed during the night and turned up the thermostat. When the weather was nice enough, Pee Wee slept in the nude, and I usually slept in something very skimpy. Right after dinner the night before, he had slid into a pair of flannel pajamas. I’d wiggled into a pair of purple thong panties, a matching Wonder-bra, and a snug cotton nightgown. I’d slid my freshly pedicured feet into a pair of nylon socks. Large pink sponge rollers covered every inch of my head, individually wrapped around my thick, recently dyed black hair. A rose-scented, wrinkle-busting, white gel, one of the many weapons that I used to fight Father Time, covered my face. We looked like we were made up for a Halloween party, but it had been a night of raw passion. I had peeled off my socks and that snug gown like a stripper. He’d helped me remove everything else. Within minutes I had his handprints on parts of my body
that hadn’t been touched since my last physical exam. And I had assumed positions that I hadn’t been in since I gave birth to my daughter. Afterward, I fell asleep in his arms. But when I opened my eyes the next morning, I was in bed alone.
Pee Wee had already left the house by the time I got up and made it downstairs to the kitchen. That was odd, but it wasn’t that big of a deal because he didn’t do it that often. He usually waited for me to fix his favorite breakfast: grits, biscuits, scrambled eggs with green bell peppers mixed in, and beef bacon. And when I didn’t get up in time to cook, he strapped on an apron and did it. The last time he had prepared breakfast, he had served it to me in bed.
For some reason, Pee Wee had not made breakfast this particular morning. He’d left the small clock radio on the kitchen counter on to some rap station (how many people listened to rap music this early in the morning?) and a mess on the kitchen table, which included the morning newspaper folded with the pages out of order, his empty coffee cup, a Krispy Kreme donut box, and an ashtray with the remnants of a thick marijuana cigarette piled up in it. I made a mental note to scold him about leaving a roach in plain view. It was hard enough trying to hide certain things and activities from our inquisitive eleven-year-old daughter, Charlotte, not to mention nosy relatives and friends who dropped in at the most inconvenient times. One day my mother went snooping through my bedroom closet and stumbled across an XXX-rated VHS tape that I often watched with Pee Wee when our sex life needed a shot in the arm. She took me aside and quoted Scripture nonstop for twenty minutes. By the time she got through with me, I felt like I knew every harlot in the Bible personally. She’d “excused” Pee Wee and “reminded” me that men were too weak, stupid, and horny to know better.