by Mary Monroe
Before the breakup of my marriage, a lot of people had accused me of being smug. Yes, I had been smug for years because I had convinced myself that my marriage was rock solid. The last time I asked my husband if he would ever get in another woman’s bed while he was married to me, he said, “Only if a storm blew me into it.” I kept my guard up and my eyes open because I was not about to let another woman take my husband away from me. Well, clearly I hadn’t kept my eyes open wide enough, because another woman took him from me anyway.
How in the world did this happen to me? I asked myself. I didn’t know where to look for answers. I didn’t really want to know all the details as to how it had happened anyway. Unfortunately, I already suspected that my past behavior had a major role in my life’s latest drama.
CHAPTER 9
Extramarital affairs were not new to me. The preacher before the current preacher at my Baptist church had been caught in bed with his wife’s younger sister two years ago. The man I worked for was in the middle of a nasty divorce because his wife had left him for his business partner. The list of philanderers I knew about was very long.
Unfortunately, my first experience with an extramarital affair involved my own parents. In a way, it was the end of my innocence, because from that point on, I had to grow up real fast. For years, people teased me by telling me that I was the “oldest” little girl they knew. To this day, sharp pains shoot through my chest every time I think about my parents’ breakup.
Out of nowhere, Daddy decided to run off with a white woman. They got married, and he had three more kids with her. Even as a child I could not understand why a pampered white woman from a prominent family, and during the turbulent fifties at that, would give up all that for a black man.
Well, that bold white woman’s fascination with black men didn’t last long. According to Daddy’s version of the events, she eventually couldn’t deal with the pressure of being married to a black man in the South. Segregation still ruled at the time, and black folks who didn’t stay in their place often ended up dead. Daddy’s new wife’s rebellion toward her family fizzled out in a big way. When the going got too tough for her, she got going. Not long after giving birth to her third child with Daddy, she ran off with a white man. When she died in an automobile accident, her family didn’t even mention Daddy or her three half-black kids in her obituary.
More than thirty years later, my parents got back together and now had one of the strongest marriages in Richland. It had not been easy for my mother to take Daddy back. Even though he put his hand on the Bible and swore to her that he’d never cheat on her again, she assured him that she would never trust him again anyway. She also threw his betrayal up in his face on a regular basis. Daddy was so afraid to look at another woman now, especially a white woman, that he behaved like a blind man when he had to be around one—no matter how young and pretty she was. He wouldn’t even go to a female doctor; and if a woman got too friendly with him in public, in Muh’Dear’s presence, he became hostile. It was no wonder that I avoided going anywhere with him as much as possible.
The bottom line was, cheating was nothing new to me. “We all have to deal with it sooner or later,” Muh’Dear had warned me years ago. “Ninety percent of marriages is the Titanic with a slow leak…bound to hit the bottom sooner or later. If you are lucky, you can plug it up and keep it afloat, but just for a while. Because sooner or later, somebody is gwine to punch another hole in it.” And so far, my mother had been right. I couldn’t think of a single one of her female friends, or mine, who hadn’t been cheated on. Even Rhoda O’Toole, my best friend, had not been spared this universal indignity.
Rhoda’s husband, Otis, had cheated on her at one of the most vulnerable times in a woman’s life. She had just given birth to her daughter. She had been experiencing post partum depression, and dealing with a huge weight gain. But Rhoda was not the kind of woman to take anything lying down. She would rise up during her autopsy to get revenge. She’d paid her husband back in spades. Otis’s ill-fated affair had lasted only a few weeks. It probably would have gone on a lot longer if Rhoda had not paid the other woman a visit and roughed her up a bit. But that was only part of her revenge. She resumed a relationship with a previous lover, who also happened to be her husband’s best friend. That man was still in the picture after more than twenty-five years! Rhoda told me on a regular basis that she was not about to end the affair, so that if her husband ever strayed again, she’d be ten steps ahead of him already.
I had never condoned Rhoda’s affair, and until last summer I was the kind of woman who had always looked down on married people who had affairs. I felt that way until I had one myself. But since I’d done so many other stupid things in my life, which included prostitution, having an affair with a man young enough to be my son was not that much of a stretch.
Rhoda knew about my affair from the beginning, and she had encouraged it. At the time, she was the only other person who knew that my husband had stopped making love to me. “Girl, you live in the same house with Pee Wee and he treats you like a stranger with bad breath. If that’s not a reason for you to sleep with another man, I don’t know what is,” she told me a few weeks before I took her advice.
“But Pee Wee is such a good man. I don’t want to hurt him,” I protested.
“Then don’t. If you can spend the rest of your life without sex and not go crazy, then it doesn’t matter.” Rhoda always gave me sly looks when she said things like that. I always knew that when she really wanted me to do something, she didn’t stop until I did it.
“You want me to cheat on my husband so you won’t feel so guilty about you cheating on yours, don’t you?”
“Honey, I don’t know what makes you think I feel guilty about cheatin’ on my husband.” Rhoda chuckled. “My husband has nothin’ to complain about. I’m a good wife.”
“That’s because he doesn’t know you’ve been sleeping with his best friend all these years,” I reminded. “I’m a good wife, too.”
I was a good wife, but when my husband went a year without touching me, even being a “good wife” didn’t stop me from crawling into bed with Louis Baines.
Louis seemed too good to be true. Unfortunately, that had been the case. He turned out to be a common con man. But he was one of the most dangerous kind—a smart one. He had me believing that he was in love with me and that he had no interest whatsoever in the fact that I had a high-paying job and access to large sums of money. He would ease sob stories into our conversations about one thing or another that were related to his “financial difficulties,” but he never asked me for money. He was so cunning he didn’t have to. All he had to do was display a puppy-dog face, break a few dates with me, and mention that his financial difficulties might impact our relationship, and I’d reach for my wallet. I had been a goose just waiting to get cooked, and he’d cooked my goose to a crisp. I’d given him thousands of dollars.
My ill-fated affair would probably still be going on if I had not overheard a telephone conversation between Louis and the fiancée he had back in North Carolina that I didn’t know about. Laughing like a hyena, he told her how he was going to shake me down for one last lump sum and then be on his merry way back to her. I cringed when I recalled some of the nasty names that he had used to refer to me, like “greasy black bitch” and “that funky, old, fat woman.”
After an ugly confrontation, where he attempted to blackmail me for more money, I had no choice but to run home and tell Pee Wee what I had been up to. It was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do in my life.
“Annette, I can forgive you for sleepin’ with another man, but I won’t ever forget it. If we want this marriage to work, both of us are goin’ to have to do our part,” Pee Wee said during one of our conversations after I’d confessed.
“Baby, I will work double time, triple time, night shift, day shift, three shifts in a row to repair this marriage,” I vowed.
That was just what I had been doing since the day we had t
hat conversation.
CHAPTER 10
There were certain moments of bliss with my husband that I could not get out of my head, especially if a certain song came on the radio or the TV, or if somebody said something that reminded me of him. There was no way I was going to forget all of the pleasant experiences that we had shared together.
There were those loathsome weekend fishing trips that I used to pretend I enjoyed, but only to please him. There were the picnics and camping trips in the summertime where I’d invariably get poison ivy on almost every square inch of my legs. There were the trips to the Bahamas, the trips to the spas in Cleveland, and even the cheap dates he took me on to greasy, back-alley restaurants in parts of town you couldn’t get a gangster to go to. Those were some fond memories for me. Despite the fact that I’d once been engaged to marry another man, Pee Wee had been my soul mate for years. I’d also wallowed around in bed with a slew of other men along the way, but Pee Wee was my only true love. I’d been with him longer, and in a more serious relationship—even before we got married—than I’d ever been with another man. We had a strong history, and because of our daughter, we would still have some kind of a future together.
And it was going to take more than a woman like Little Leg Lizzie to make me forget those moments of bliss. They kept me afloat just when it felt like I was about to go under.
I was compelled to reflect on my recent past to see if I could get a better understanding of what had gone wrong. I had to think back to events and conversations between Pee Wee and me that might have indicated that something was amiss. Not that it would do me much good now. But even if it was too late, I still wanted to know.
Even though Pee Wee was gone, he was still in my daily thoughts; things he’d said, things he’d done. It was almost like I could still hear his voice. “Woman, you are goin’ to spoil me! I must be the luckiest man in the world,” he declared one January evening about a week into the new year—just a couple of months ago! I had met him at the door with a cold beer and his slippers. He took a sip of the beer and let out a loud burp. He paused long enough to give me a hungry little kiss on the cheek. I sucked in my breath, and hauled off and kissed him so hard on the lips he stumbled backward and hit the wall. “Girl, please. Let me get in the house and get out my work clothes first.” He laughed. “Damn, you act like you just got out of prison.”
“I’m just happy to see you,” I told him, leading him to the couch in the living room. “I left work early today so I could get home in time to make your favorite dinner. As soon as the cornbread gets done, we can eat.”
“I bet you plannin’ on dumpin’ me in that tub full of bubble bath again,” Pee Wee whispered with an anxious look on his face.
“I sure am,” I purred, trying to sound as seductive as I could.
“And another one of them hot-oil foot massages, too?”
“And another hot-oil foot massage, too,” I said with a nod. “Later, if you feel up to it, I want to make love to you like I’ve never made love to you before.”
“Hmmm. That’s the same thing you said yesterday when I got home. You know, you don’t have to be doin’ all this. We ain’t so young no more. Listen up, all them positions that you twistin’ me in and out of these days, they are fun, but my back ain’t what it used to be, baby.” He laughed. I laughed, too.
“Do you want me to stop giving you so much special attention?” I asked with an exaggerated pout.
“Naw, you ain’t got to stop showin’ me so much attention. But it would make more sense if you showed me the kind of attention that wasn’t so physical. At the rate we’re goin’, I’ll be dead soon.”
I continued to pamper my husband, but only half as much. He seemed pleased and appreciative. By the end of that month, things had become downright humdrum. I got tired just looking at his face as he slumped in his ancient La-Z-Boy snoring like a moose.
Despite all of my efforts, Pee Wee reminded me of the same old sad sack that he’d been when I had the affair! I made up excuses to get out of the house so I wouldn’t have to look at his long face.
Thankfully, he continued to make love to me. And if he had stopped doing that again, too, I was still determined not to have another affair again.
There was no way I was going to let another affair disrupt or ruin my marriage.
“Baby, you’ve been down in the dumps a lot lately, and I don’t like to see you like that,” I told Pee Wee over dinner one evening. He had come home from the barbershop looking more depressed than ever. Our daughter, Charlotte, noticed it, too.
“Daddy, you look like a grumpy old man,” she told him, rushing through dinner so she could flee and go do whatever it was kids her age liked to do. Unlike me, Charlotte had never had to worry about her weight. She had just gobbled up three spicy chicken legs and a mountain of mashed potatoes. I’d steamed a skinless chicken breast and stir-fried some vegetables for myself. I ate fried chicken and most of the other fatty foods that I had consumed over the years only once or twice a week now. And since I’d shared a slab of ribs with Pee Wee and Charlotte for dinner the day before, I planned to eat skinless chicken and steamed veggies for a while.
“I am a grumpy old man, and I’m goin’ to be one until I’m a dead old man,” Pee Wee said with a straight face.
Charlotte, who had her father’s rich mocha skin, cute features, and long, thin arms, rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Can I be excused?” she asked, glancing at the Mickey Mouse watch on her narrow wrist. “I get bored sitting around old people.”
“You go clean up your room,” I ordered, using the sternest tone of voice that I could manage.
“Oh, I’d rather sit here and be bored than do that,” my daughter decided, rubbing her small, button-like nose.
“I think she should go clean up that pigsty of a room,” Pee Wee said, nodding in agreement.
“I want you to go over that room with a fine-toothed comb until you find that earring of mine that I told you to stop playing with,” I told my daughter. “And don’t you ever get into my jewelry box again. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am. Do I have to look for that old earring now?”
“Yes, you do, so get on it.” Pee Wee cleared his throat. It was impossible for me not to notice how distracted and nervous he was acting. I knew him well enough to know that there was something on his mind, and it was probably something I didn’t want to hear. My first thought was that it was something physical. That thought chilled me down to the bottom of my feet. I didn’t think I could deal with that. Last year when he had that cancer scare, he had not even told me about it until he received a clean bill of health from his doctor. That news had almost destroyed me—even after I knew that he was going to be all right. A very qualified doctor had treated him and assured him that he had nothing else to worry about. But doctors didn’t know everything. And even with all the knowledge they possessed today, they were often wrong. Before Pee Wee could utter his next sentence, I began to anticipate his funeral and my eventual nervous breakdown. “I need to talk to your mama about somethin’ anyway,” he added, making me even more apprehensive.
Charlotte and I looked at Pee Wee at the same time, then at each other. “Shoot. I hope we ain’t getting no divorce,” she said with a worried look. “Jimmy Proctor’s mama and daddy just got a divorce and now he ain’t no fun no more. Always sad…”
Divorce? I had not thought of that; but now that it had been mentioned, it was running a close second place to cancer! If it was either one, I was doomed! Now it was my funeral that I was anticipating.
Somehow I managed to force myself to remain calm. But the truth of the matter was, I was in mild agony. To me, divorce and cancer were two of the most feared words in the English language.
“Nobody is thinking about divorce,” I said weakly, addressing Charlotte but looking at my husband. My daughter released a loud sigh of relief before she strutted backward out of the kitchen and ran upstairs to her room. I turned to Pee Wee and held my breath
. “Are we?”
“Are we what?”
“Is anybody in this room thinking about a divorce?”
“If it is, it ain’t me. How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t want no divorce.”
I felt relieved, but only for a split second. With divorce off the plate, that left the demon that I feared the most. “Are you sick?” I rasped.
“No, I’m not. This ain’t got nothin’ to do with my health, praise the Lord.”
To say that I was even more relieved would have been putting it mildly. I was ecstatic. But that lasted only a few moments, because from the look on Pee Wee’s face, something was still very wrong.
“Then what do you want to talk to me about?” I asked him, my voice, hands, and half of everything else on my body trembling. One of my knees was shaking so hard it was tapping against the leg of the table like a baton.
He took his time answering my question. And when he did, he didn’t even look me in the eye. He tilted his head to the side, scratched his neck, and then spoke with his lips barely moving. “Baby, I need a change. I need a real change in my life, and I need it now.”
CHAPTER 11
“Mama, why are you looking so crazy?” My daughter had slunk back into the kitchen before I could respond to Pee Wee’s comments. “You are looking so mean, people would think somebody stole something from you.”