Quiet As It's Kept

by Monique Miller

  Will wondered if he had heard Tyler correctly. He’d said something about taking the little girl over to her mother’s house. As far as Will knew, Tyler was married and had been for at least four or five years. Will hadn’t seen Tyler in a while, and he figured the man must have been attending another service. It was hard to keep track of fellowship in a church of their size, which held three services. He wondered if Tyler and his wife weren’t together anymore. The puzzled look on Will’s face must have clued Tyler in on what he was thinking.

  “You heard me correctly. My wife and I aren’t together anymore,” Tyler said.

  “Oh, man, sorry to hear that. Sometimes things don’t always work out the way we want them to, but God knows what’s best.”

  Will didn’t know what else to say, but felt bad for Tyler, and bad for the cute little girl, who was now going to be living her life split between two homes. Again Will’s face and thoughts must have revealed what he was thinking, because Tyler spoke as if reading his mind.

  “Don’t let my situation dampen your mood. All is well.” Tyler’s face and words were sincere, and the man acted as if he didn’t have a care in the world except for his daughter.

  “So what about you? I heard you got married. But I hadn’t seen you in a while,” Tyler said.

  “Yep, I got married, and very soon after, our little one came. The rest is sort of history.”

  “Wow, it seems as if I just heard about your getting married. And how old is this little guy?”

  “Nine months.”

  “Oh, wow, you guys didn’t get a chance to have any time alone, did you?”

  “Not much, that’s for sure.” Will chuckled at the thought. “He’s a blessing. But I do sort of wish I’d had some more time alone with just my wife. We hadn’t even had a chance to celebrate our first anniversary before the baby was born.”

  “Ah, well, all things happen for a reason. Just embrace the blessing God has given you and your wife.”

  “Thanks, and I do.” Will nodded.

  Will wondered why Tyler was at the park with his child during the middle of the day. As he looked around at the other children playing, he saw that their mothers hovered closely. He and Tyler were the only two men out there. He was glad to have male company for once. Not that there was anything wrong with talking to the women, but lately Will was finding that he had much too much in common with them. Things like washing loads of laundry, making sure dinner was ready when their spouses got home, and thoughts of planning play dates.

  “So how have you been?” Tyler asked.

  “Not so great,” Will said. “I mean, health wise I am fine, thank the Lord, but I’ve been out of work since before my son was born. And the fact that I still can’t find a job is starting to get to me.” Will had no idea why he was spilling his guts to someone he only knew as a mere acquaintance, but he was. For some reason, somewhere in his spirit, he felt he could talk to Tyler. Other than Phillip, he didn’t have anyone he could confide in who was male. He was tired of dumping information on Phillip. It felt good to finally get his pressing thoughts out.

  Tyler listened as Will continued to let his thoughts flow out audibly. Will knew that what he was saying sounded like a jumble of words, especially since he wasn’t talking in a succinct way. The more he spoke, the more he felt comfortable telling Tyler his innermost thoughts about his job situation. By the time Will finished, he’d felt as if an incredible weight had been lifted off. By then he figured Tyler probably thought he was crazy.

  At first Tyler was silent, as if waiting to see if Will was finished spilling his guts. Then the man slowly shook his head. “Man, the Lord does work in mysterious ways,” he said, then smiled. “And He is always on point.” Then he shook his head again.

  Now Will guessed it was his turn to think someone else was talking out of his head and possibly not making any sense. Now he wished he’d just kept his thoughts to himself.

  “You know, God never stops amazing me. For the past three months, I’ve been out of work. And just this morning I was called with a job offer. I’ll be starting next week, so this will be the last time I’ll be bringing my little girl here during the day to enjoy the park,” Tyler said. “I hated it when I was laid off from my job. I didn’t stress over it at first, because I’ve got my master’s and my Ph.D. But after the first month rolled by, and then the second one, I started to get a little antsy.”

  Will nodded as he listened to Tyler speak. He and Tyler had much in common, especially as they were both well-educated men who had been laid off from their jobs.

  “As each and every week went by, I kept wondering why I couldn’t find a job. I prayed to God, but it was like I couldn’t get a break anywhere. Then, out of nowhere, I got a callback for a job I wanted, back at the company I originally worked for. And it was as if my whole world was turned back right side up. And when I thanked God for what He had done in giving me that job, I also wondered why I even had to go through what I went through in the first place.

  “Now I understand that oftentimes we don’t go through trials and tribulations for ourselves. We go through them to be a witness to someone else. It was meant for me to get the call this morning right before Jade and I came to the park. Otherwise, I might have stayed home and taken care of some things I know I won’t be able to take care of once I start working again.”

  Will listened intently, as he thought he knew where Tyler was going with his line of thinking.

  “It was meant for you and me to see each other today, meant for us to talk. And I think I know what God wants you to know. He wants you to hold on and continue to trust Him. In the end, everything will work out with your work situation and any other situation that you might be going through. And I hate that I had to go through what I went through these last couple of months, but now I understand that God wanted to use me as a vessel to talk to you,” Tyler said.

  Will nodded. “You don’t know how much I needed to hear that right now.”

  Jade stood and toddled over to her father. She pulled on his leg as she started to whimper. Tyler picked his little girl up and checked his watch. Will noticed a scar that looked like a burn on his forearm.

  “Okay, little bit. I see you are getting tired,” Will said.

  “It’s her nap time. And while this little lady is an angel, she can turn into a screaming and whining terror if she hasn’t had her beauty rest.” Tyler bounced the little girl up and down, trying to head off the additional whimpers. He pulled out a sippy cup filled with juice and gave it to her. She placed it in her mouth and laid her head on his chest.

  “Good, that should hold her off until we start riding in the car,” Tyler said. “Hey, it is always great to see and talk to another brother in Christ. What’s your phone number? Maybe we can talk again.”

  Will exchanged phone numbers with Tyler and then left the park a few minutes later. As he drove home he thought about the conversation between him and Tyler. He was still awed by how God could use divine timing to affect his life and strengthen his beliefs and spiritual walk with Christ. The Lord knew just how hard that walk had been . . . and just how much harder it was about to get.

  Chapter 5

  After wrapping the cord to the vacuum cleaner back up, Will folded the towels from the warm dryer and put them in the linen closet. As he did this, Isaiah crawled around on the floor in the laundry room. The day before, Will had found a list of possible jobs as he located new job search engines. He’d found one Web site that was a job search gold mine.

  He’d written down the search words he’d used and the names of the Web sites for the positions he’d seen. He wanted to print out copies of each job with their detailed job descriptions, but the printer ran out of ink. A new cartridge would cost at least forty or fifty dollars, and he didn’t have that much cash. He didn’t want to ask Morgan for the money, since he had just asked for money that morning to buy some oil for the cars.

  Since being unemployed, Will tried to think of ways to cut corners
, and changing his own oil was one of those ways. In the long run, it was cheaper for him to do so for both of their vehicles. But to Morgan, that part didn’t matter; what did matter was that he was asking her for money, and she complained each time he did. So he really didn’t want to hear her complain about the money he would need to buy a new ink cartridge for their printer, even though it could possibly help him in his job search.

  He wanted to get back on the Internet as soon as possible to look more closely at the jobs he had already seen, and then look for even more. He’d also located a Web site that provided sample templates for résumés. Will wanted to tweak his current résumé and try some different styles that might be a little more eye-catching.

  But the Internet would have to wait. He couldn’t sit down at the computer until he had peace of mind about the house being clean. There wasn’t any way he was going to have Morgan come home to a dirty house when she thought all he was doing was sitting around all day doing nothing. Morgan hadn’t stayed home with the baby to fully take care of him since she’d gone back to work after her maternity leave. He didn’t think that she understood just how hard it was to take care of a house and an active baby all day long for days at a time.

  He had gained a new respect for stay-at-home mothers for all the hard work they did to raise their children. And he couldn’t even begin to imagine doing what he was currently doing with two or more. He shuddered at the thought. Will imagined that with all the laundry and dishes alone that would pile up, he’d never have a chance to get a real breather.

  Will picked Isaiah up and placed him in his playpen near the kitchen doorway. Isaiah immediately grabbed one of his toys and placed it into his mouth to chew on. Will proceeded to retrieve the mop, bucket, and full bottle of Mop & Glo floor cleaner so that he could clean the kitchen floor. As he mopped, he thought about how much easier it would be for him to be able to print out the job descriptions and different versions of his résumé.

  He also thought about Morgan’s attitude lately when it came to money. Her attitude about money was totally new for him. Before they got married, money and its value seemed to be the furthest thing from Morgan’s mind. That is, when he was the one supplying the majority of the money.

  Will remembered the extravagant wedding Morgan had wanted and planned. In all it had ended up costing them over $13,000, most of which came from his pocket and savings. Her dress alone was $1,800. She paid for it herself, but the rest of the cost had ended up falling to him.

  Morgan had wanted her wedding to be memorable and beautiful and that was just the way it had turned out to be. They even had the photo albums and video to prove it. In a short amount of time she had planned their wedding like she was a professional, making sure each and every detail was perfect. It hadn’t been a large wedding, since Morgan didn’t have any family members on her side, just a few friends and her co-workers. Morgan’s parents had passed away.

  Except for his sister, Will had ended up having much of his family present, as well as friends and co-workers. The ushers had spread the guests out on each side to help even out the seating. It looked like both the bride and groom had an equal amount of people there to support them as they vowed their everlasting love to one another.

  The majority of the cost came from the intricacies of the wedding and the reception. Morgan had a habit of watching a wedding show on cable that showed people having what were called “platinum weddings.” She was bound and determined that her wedding would be worthy of being on the show. But when she sent in an application, the show had turned her down because the amount they were going to spend was nowhere near the amount the weddings on the show normally cost.

  Morgan had wanted to spend over $20,000 on their wedding, but Will told her that he wouldn’t pay anything over $10,000 and he still felt that amount was too much. In the end, once all the receipts were tallied, Morgan had gone $3,000 over the original budget. And, from what Will could tell, their wedding had ended up looking just as good or even better than some of the weddings on the show.

  Morgan had ended up looking like a royal princess as she walked down the aisle toward him that day. He couldn’t help crying as his beautiful wife-to-be approached him. Up until then he didn’t think that his fiancée could be any more beautiful than she already was, but somehow she had done so and he couldn’t wait to say “I do” to her.

  As soon as they received copies of their wedding DVD, Morgan placed one in an envelope and mailed it to the producers of the platinum wedding show. When Will asked her why she had done so, she told him the producers needed to see what they had missed out on. Will ended up shrugging his shoulders, figuring it was some kind of woman thing going on.

  Now he could kick himself for wasting so much money, which was a huge chunk of his savings. He wished that Morgan wasn’t suffering from money amnesia now that the tables were flipped. She should have remembered the time when she asked for money and he didn’t get upset about it.

  Of course, he hadn’t been out of work at that time, he could have easily said something about her using his credit cards and debit card for purchases that ultimately only benefited her. Not to mention the fact that she’d brought items for their new home that Will thought they didn’t need. He had been a bachelor with his own apartment full of items, and she also had a condo of her own that was full of items. So while he didn’t have a problem buying a new bedroom set with a king-sized bed, he didn’t see why they needed to buy a new living room set or dining room set, especially when they each already had one. But Morgan wanted their furniture to match the newness of their brand new home.

  She had wanted to buy a new couch and chair for their den, but Will put his foot down, telling her that he wanted the living room set that he’d had in his bachelor pad in there. He’d wanted something that was familiar to him, since most of what they now had was new. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe that he was now a family man in a two-story, 4,000-square-foot home, especially since his one-bedroom apartment had only been about 900 square foot.

  He used to live in the heart of downtown; now he lived in the suburbs, with front and back yards to mow, and a homeowners’ association. Sometimes he wanted to pinch himself to see if it was all real. And, as it happened, he didn’t have to pinch himself because a sharp pain shot through the heel of his foot, bringing him back to reality.

  He let out a yelp as he lifted his foot to see what had caused it. He saw that it was one of Morgan’s earrings. He placed his foot back down on the floor after pulling the earring out, then immediately pulled it back up and started hopping on the other foot. He had placed his foot back down on a wet section of the floor. The Mop & Glo had stung the wound, and the pain was searing.

  As he hopped around, he heard his son giggling. Will figured the baby must have thought his dad was acting silly to make him laugh. His son’s laughter helped his pain for a second, and he was glad that the baby was at least getting some fun out of it.

  He hopped over to the downstairs bathroom and pulled one of the decorative washcloths off of the towel bar. He ran cold water over it, then wiped the heel of his foot. And even though his foot hurt like no pain he had ever experienced before, he only saw a couple of drops of blood on the cloth.

  Once he was pretty sure he had cleaned the wound to the best of his ability, he limped back to the kitchen. Isaiah, who had found another toy to chew on, dropped it and began giggling again at his dad, who was now walking as if he had one wooden leg. At this point, Will had to laugh.

  He then glared at the earring on the counter, wondering how something so small could cause so much pain. Then he shrugged, thinking about the time he’d gotten his fraternity symbol branded onto his arm. That was pain he didn’t want to ever have to endure again. But he had been so gung-ho about having it done, at the time he hadn’t cared how much pain there would be.

  He ran his fingers over the skin on his arm that still had the marks from the day the hot iron branded his skin. For days he endured pain and placed
ointment on his arm, trying to ensure that he didn’t get an infection. And, after a couple of months, his skin looked just the way he had envisioned it would with a symbol of his fraternity. It had healed perfectly and the pain was long gone.

  His house shoes were upstairs in the bedroom, so Will limped over to the front foyer and slid on a pair of flip-flops. Morgan didn’t like shoes to be worn in the house, so he was glad she was at work as he continued to mop the floor with the flip-flops on. Even though he didn’t see any other foreign objects on the floor, he wanted to be safe, just in case he were to step on something else.

  After he finished mopping, he fed Isaiah and laid him down for a nap. Then, with the eagerness of a sixteen-year-old looking forward to his first time driving a car, Will sat back down at the computer and resumed his job search. With a pen and notebook ready for notes, he conducted Internet searches.

  Before he knew it, two hours had passed, and the baby was still sleeping soundly in his playpen. Will knew that if he didn’t go ahead and wake the baby up, he’d be up half the night. Within the two hours, Will had been able to fill up ten pages of the notebook with information on jobs that he might be interested in doing. He had even jotted down a few that didn’t interest him much, but would be something that might tide them over until he was able to find something else. The thoughts made him feel antsy. He was feeling more and more like he wasn’t doing enough, and Morgan didn’t help to dispel the feeling.

  Looking at the clock, he realized that Morgan would be home in a little over an hour and a half. Even though he wanted to continue his search, he needed to go ahead and get dinner started, and wake the baby up from his sound sleep. Will felt a lot better than he had that morning, knowing that he’d at least found some jobs that looked very interesting.

  By the time Morgan pulled into the garage, Will was pulling garlic rolls out of the oven. The spaghetti and meat sauce he had made was done, and the container of fresh-squeezed lemonade that he had placed in the freezer was chilled and ready to be served with their dinner. He had accomplished much as Isaiah sat in his high chair with a fresh diaper on. He had already bathed him and was just about to heat up a baby meal of spaghetti and meat sauce for him.