The Million Dollar Deception

by RM Johnson

  She rang his phone, but no one answered. Lewis didn’t want to speak to her, Monica figured.

  At midnight, she lay in bed, falling off to sleep. The phone rang. Monica turned, reached over, pressed the receiver to her face.

  “I’ll be home later.” Lewis’s voice was deep. He sounded sad. “Is Layla okay?”

  “She asked about you. Are you okay?”

  It took him a moment before saying, “I’m cool. I’ll try not to wake you when I come in.”

  Monica wanted to talk some more, but Lewis hung up.

  Now when Monica walked into the kitchen after showering and dressing for work, Layla was in her high chair, Lewis sitting beside her, both eating the breakfast he had made them. Lewis didn’t look up.

  “Morning, Monica,” Layla said.

  Monica walked over, stood between Layla’s and Lewis’s chairs. She kissed the child and then pressed a hand onto Lewis’s shoulder. “Can we talk?” she said softly to him.

  Lewis set his knife and fork on the rim of his plate. “I got a lot of stuff I have to do today. Can it be this evening?”

  “Sure,” Monica said.

  She did not eat, not wanting to deal with the attitude Lewis obviously had. Monica simply kissed Layla on the cheek good-bye, grabbed her purse, and walked out to her car.

  After stepping out of the house, Monica noticed an aging, pale green Ford sitting across the street.

  She had seen that car at least three times before. What struck her as odd was that the car was never empty. There was always an older lady with graying hair sitting behind the wheel, staring out at Monica. As the same lady was doing now.

  Monica stopped in midstride, thinking of walking across the street and approaching the woman, but deciding against it. She had better things to worry about than some lady who probably spent all of her days sitting in front of one stranger’s house or another.

  An hour later, Monica pulled her car up to the curb and stopped on the west side of the park where she had met Nate the other night. There was something going on with Lewis. He had one of his attitudes, and Monica was just not in the mood to be babying him. She wondered if it had anything to do with the other night when she supposedly picked up Tabatha.

  Sure it did. He was mad that she didn’t take him with her, but he couldn’t have known the real reason for that.

  He would just have to get over it. She wasn’t going to let him stress her out, and that was one of the reasons Monica came back out to this park, to relax and forget about that stuff before work. Monica looked out the window at the vast grassy area, shaded by huge oak trees, and the towering Chicago high-rise condominiums. It was 7:30 A.M. The time when parents took their children for walks before school and seniors marched in couples, getting their daily exercise. Monica stepped out of her car and started to stroll slowly down one of the paved paths that led through the park, toward the swings, where parents stood watching their children play.

  All of a sudden, Nate came to mind. She wondered if she had been too hard on him. Monica stopped at an empty bench and sat down, feeling sorry she had said those things to him. She breathed deep the fresh morning air. After another couple of minutes, she stood, told herself she would walk through the play area, probably wave at a few of the kids, and decide whether this was a place she could take Layla in the future.

  As she walked, she thought that maybe later she would ring Nate and apologize.

  He was once her husband, and just like he said, if things had worked out, it would have been the two of them standing just outside that play area, like the parents Monica was watching right now.

  She was fifty or so feet away from the yelling, laughing kids playing on the monkey bars when she took a second look at one of the parents. At first Monica thought the tall, brown-skinned man resembled Nate just a little, but now she realized it was him. Monica closed the distance between them by half. He had not noticed her, for he seemed deeply occupied with the play of the children.

  She wondered what he was doing here amidst the group of a dozen or so parents. Then she remembered how Nate had told her, when they thought she was pregnant, that he used to go to the window of the newborn nursery and watch the babies, eagerly anticipating the birth of his own.

  That’s what he was doing now, Monica believed, watching the children play, still wishing he had his own. Monica felt momentary failure deep within her. She forced it away, walked closer to her ex-husband, and said, “Nate?” Nate turned, appearing more shocked than she expected. He quickly looked back out toward the children playing, then back to her as she approached.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Just…enjoying the morning. I still come here sometimes,” he said, sounding uncertain.

  “I can understand why.”

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Monica said, “About the other night. I didn’t mean what I said. You know…the part about…I…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Nate said, trying to smile but failing. “I understand. You were mad. So it’s fine. Okay?” Nate said, glancing over at the children again.

  “Okay, good. I was going to call you today and tell you, but this works out just fine,” she said, smiling.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay then, I’ll see you around.”

  “Yeah,” Nate said.

  Monica turned, hearing the kids behind her still yelling, their voices loud, one of them calling, “Daddy!” to one of the parents.

  Monica was glad she had seen Nate this morning, but something didn’t seem quite right with him, so she decided she would make sure he was fine. When she turned around, she saw Nate lift a child from over the short rail that bordered the play area and set him on the ground in front of him. Nate looked at the child’s hands, pulled a packet of Wet-Naps from his pocket, kneeled down, and started to clean them.

  “So who is this?” Monica said, after she had walked back unnoticed by Nate.

  After looking up, Nate quickly stood, holding on to the boy’s hand. He didn’t speak a word.

  “Nate?” Monica said, looking at the little brown-skinned, curly headed boy. She felt that there was something very familiar about him.

  “Mommy!” the boy said all of a sudden.

  Shocked, Monica looked at Nate, then back at the boy.

  “Mommy!” he said again, and instantly Monica knew who the child was.

  “Nathaniel?” she said to Nate.

  “Okay, Nathaniel,” Nate said, picking the boy up in his arms. Nathaniel smiled at Monica with his huge, dark eyes.

  Monica was crushed. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It was supposed to happen the other night, but…I wasn’t expecting your guest, and…I didn’t want my son around him.”

  “Your son,” Monica said wistfully, taking one of the boy’s hands in hers.

  “You’re my mommy,” Nathaniel said again, squeezing two of Monica’s fingers.

  “Why is he saying that?” Monica asked.

  “Because it’s what I’ve always told him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s what I believed should have been. I’m sorry,” Nate said, sounding sincere. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told him that.”

  “No,” Monica said, shaking her head, feeling emotions she wasn’t comfortable with. “Why now? When I came to you when our marriage was failing…when I brought the idea to you…”

  “I know,” Nate said. “But I was wrong then. When you left, I realized how much. So I adopted him, and I’ve never made a better decision in my life. When I told you the other night that I was a different man, Nathaniel is the reason why.”

  Monica just stared at Nate with his…son. The happy family she should have been a part of, but wasn’t. She felt tricked by Nate yet again. For some reason she felt left out. “What am I supposed to say to this, Nate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should this mean something to me?”

  �
�I don’t know.”

  “It can’t. It doesn’t,” Monica said, feeling a single, thin tear roll down her cheek. “Nothing has changed. This means nothing to me.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m happy for you, though.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Good-bye, Nate. Good-bye, Nathaniel,” Monica said, turning, quickly walking away, faintly hearing the child ask his father, “Why is Mommy leaving?”

  36

  All day, Monica found herself thinking about Nate and his son, Nathaniel, the boy who could have been her son as well.

  She had also been thinking about the conversation she’d had with Nate the other night in the park. She had been bothered so much by these two things that at lunch Monica left the store and found herself sitting in Tabatha’s living room, talking to her friend on her day off. Monica had told Tabatha how she had bumped into Nate this morning, how she had met his adopted son.

  “He just seemed different,” Monica told Tabatha. “He seemed settled, and content, and more fulfilled than I’ve ever seen him.”

  “So?” Tabatha said.

  “He seems the way I knew he would have been if I would have given him the child he wanted.”

  “And how is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Monica said, smiling uncomfortably. “Perfect. He was a good man before, but there was always something missing, that thing he longed for. Now…”

  “With Nathaniel, he seems to have found it,” Tabatha finished for Monica.

  “Yeah.”

  “I say again, so?”

  “I know I told you that I don’t want you to talk about my situation with Lewis anymore, but I want you to tell me what you honestly think of it. I want you to tell me how I’m perceived by our friends, by our business associates.”

  Tabatha stood from the sofa. “Why would you want to hear that? You aren’t going to do nothing but marry Lewis anyway.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You’re scared,” Tabatha said, sitting back down again. “You’re frightened to death of being alone, otherwise you wouldn’t be with Lewis. You two have nothing in common.”

  “We both like the same foods. We like some of the same TV shows. And every now and then we have a good time together.”

  “You probably have that in common with every other man in Chicago, Monica. What do you have in common that matters? You have a master’s degree, he has a high school diploma. You own your own business, he works part-time. You like to talk business and politics, he likes to talk sports and rap music.”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t love him,” Monica said defensively.

  “No. It doesn’t mean that. But relationships are difficult enough with someone you share similar interests with. Why make things harder for yourself with someone like Lewis. Monica, look,” Tabatha said, scooting closer to her on the sofa. “You wanted to know what people think of the man you chose to be with. After being with Nate, people think you’re slumming. They think you’ve taken in a charity case, someone less than what you deserve, because you’ve been hurt and you don’t want the risk of being hurt again by someone on your level.”

  “That’s not true,” Monica said.

  “The reason why Lewis doesn’t like accompanying you to business functions is because he has nothing to say. He feels out of place around all those executives and corporate folks, talking about things he has no clue about.” Tabatha paused for a moment, looking at her friend with compassion. “Monica, you marry this man, all he’s going to do is keep you from going as far as you can go.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You might want to expand your business, but he’ll try to stop you, because he won’t want you to become more successful than you already are. You might want to go back to school to get your Ph.D., but he might not want you to, because the gap in your education is already wide enough.”

  Monica dropped her face in her hands. “It sounds like something Nate said the other night. He asked me did I expect to grow with Lewis? I couldn’t answer him.”

  “I think Nate still loves you.”

  “Don’t say that. I don’t need to hear that right now.”

  “Why not? Because you still have feelings for him? Because you know he’s a better man than Lewis could ever be, even after the stunt he pulled last year?”

  “No,” Monica said, looking up at Tabatha. “Because Lewis accepted me when Nate didn’t. Because Lewis gave me his child when he knew I couldn’t have one of my own. I can’t abandon him just because he doesn’t have a degree or watch CNN. He was the man who was there for me during a time when I had no one else.”

  “I’m sorry to say, but that time has gone, baby, and maybe Lewis should be gone too. You know what I mean?”

  Monica looked up sadly at her friend but did not say a word.

  37

  Wearing their blue work shirts, their names sewn onto the breast pockets, Lewis and Freddy painted the basement window frames of a twelve-unit apartment building Freddy’s uncle managed.

  Freddy had been quiet for the better part of the day.

  The words that Kia’s father had said had been constantly ringing in Freddy’s skull since his meeting with the man. He had repeated the insults almost verbatim to Kia last night as they lay in each other’s arms.

  “Don’t ever listen to a word he says, okay?” Kia said, her soft hand caressing the side of Freddy’s face.

  “But is he wrong?”

  “You’re doing things, baby. You are.”

  “Enough to be with someone like you?”

  “Yes,” Kia said.

  Freddy didn’t believe her. But oddly enough, Freddy found himself both thankful to and resentful of the man. The negative things Dr. James had said to him would only make Freddy work harder to prove that fool wrong. But the way he’d looked at Freddy, the way he spoke down to him, reminded Freddy of the way his own father used to treat him. He should have grabbed the man in his office, squeezed him around the throat till he took back every negative word he had said. But Freddy shook that idea out of his head.

  Violent thoughts were not good. They only triggered more violent thoughts. The image of Notty’s bloody face flashed through Freddy’s mind.

  Even though he had beaten the addict down days ago, the image still haunted Freddy. Now, when Freddy looked down, he had to tell himself the splotches of white paint on his hands and arms weren’t red, weren’t blood from the man he had almost killed.

  “Why you so quiet over there?”

  Freddy glanced at Lewis, then turned back to the up and down motions of his paintbrush. “I’m just not saying nothing.”

  “Naw. It’s more than that. What’s up?”

  Freddy set his brush on the edge of the can of paint, stood from his knees. “I’m thinking you should rethink this beating you planning on giving, ol’ boy.”

  Lewis stopped painting, set his brush on the rim of the same can. “You ain’t punkin’ out on me, are you? That ain’t like you, man.”

  “Naw, I ain’t punkin’ out. But what did the man do? Make a phone call ’cause he interested in your woman. He deserve a beat down for that?”

  “Yeah,” Lewis said, walking over to Freddy. “Hell yeah. And payback for when he got me.”

  “And what if it get out of hand? What if you climb on that fool, whuppin’ him so good that you can’t stop yourself, and you look down and find you almost killed him?”

  “That’s why you gonna be there. To pull me off before that happens.”

  “And what if it goes the other way? Say he whuppin’ on you?”

  Lewis smiled, laughed a little. “Guarantee that won’t happen. But again, that’s why you gonna be there.”

  Freddy shook his head, looked down at his hands again, attempted to rub the white spots from his wrists. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know what good gonna come from this. Maybe you should give this a little more thought, not do it today.”

  Lewis shook his head, seemi
ng disgusted with Freddy. “I tell you what. Today, after I get off work, I’m going to this man’s house. I’m going to hang in the bushes, just like he did me. And when he comes home, I’m gonna jump his ass and beat him down till all he can do is crawl to his phone and dial nine one one, just like he did me. Now you either gonna be with me, or you ain’t.”

  “Lewis, you don’t know what you could be starting by doing this. Something tells me you ain’t just gonna whup his ass and he gonna just go away.”

  “Freddy—either you with me, or you ain’t.”

  Freddy paused, and then said, “Yeah. I’m with you.”

  38

  Four hours later, when Nate pulled up in his driveway, he was happy, almost merry.

  It was because of what had happened this morning with Monica.

  After being introduced to Nathaniel, after hearing the boy call her Mommy, and after the look on her face, Monica told Nate that none of that made any difference, that nothing had changed.

  Nate didn’t believe that. Monica had been moved. A wall had come down somewhere within her, which he knew would ultimately make his job easier.

  Even though Nate wasn’t ready at the moment it took place, Monica had finally met Nathaniel, and she liked him.

  The only problem was that Nathaniel had instantly taken a liking to Monica as well. The boy could not stop talking about “his mommy” on the way to nursery school this morning.

  It was the reason why Nate had called Mrs. Weatherly from work and told her that he would pick up his son today.

  Nate wanted to see if it was just a passing infatuation. He worried that if his son got too attached to Monica, Nathaniel might truly be hurt once Nate followed through with his intentions and Nathaniel could no longer see his “mother.”

  Nate looked up into the rearview mirror at his son, strapped in his car seat.

  “I like Mommy,” Nathaniel said. To Nate’s disappointment, it was something Nathaniel had been saying the entire trip home.

  “Do you like Mommy?” the child asked.