A Cold Piece of Work

by Curtis Bunn

  He entered the house and went directly to the kitchen and took a seat at the bar, facing the oven. This was a psychological move. The kitchen was Michele’s haven, the place she felt most comfortable and was the most at-ease.

  “You don’t want to sit on the couch?” she asked.

  “Nah, I’m good right here,” Solomon said. “I like sitting up on the stool.”

  Michele came over and stood on the other side of the bar, next to the sink. Her arms were folded. Her facial expression and body language said she was uptight and upset.

  Solomon noticed and tried to loosen her up with some levity.

  He grinned. “You should unfold your arms before you give yourself a blood clot.”

  Michele did not budge—or smile.

  Instead, she got right to it.

  “So what are we going to do about this, Solomon? This is something I can’t bend on.”

  The cold Solomon would have tried to impose his will on the matter. This Solomon, well, he tried to remain poised and noncommittal.

  “I’m not some maniac who wants to beat a child all the time; that’s what you make me feel like when you get this upset and take this strong a stand,” he said. “Are you telling me that there’s nothing he can do that you think would warrant a whipping, beating, spanking? Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” she said without hesitation. “All conflicts can be resolved with words or some other form of punishment. That’s what I believe.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny, but how did you come to this way of thinking?” His smile irritated Michele, who started to say something but Solomon did not allow the opening. “You told me your parents beat you growing up. You turned out fine, from what I can tell. The way I look at my youth, the things I experienced helped shape me into who I am.

  “My mom made sure on Saturday morning I cleaned up my room and the bathroom. That’s what I do now, as an adult. My point is you learn things as a kid that you carry over into your adult life. How is it you can go in the other direction now?”

  “Because I didn’t like getting beatings,” she said. “I didn’t understand it.”

  “Come on, you had to understand it,” Solomon interjected. “Tell me you didn’t like the pain, but don’t tell me you didn’t understand why you got a beating. Did you do something they thought you shouldn’t have done, that you should have known not to do?”

  “Yes, but I still didn’t like it. And I do carry over things from my upbringing into my life now,” Michele said. “But I don’t bring the things I don’t agree with. Like eating pork. We ate pork— bacon, ham, chitlins, whatever—growing up. But I don’t now and I don’t serve it to Gerald.”

  “I understand, Michele,” Solomon said. “I want you to understand this. Please hear me on this: I wasn’t trying to hurt him. I love that boy. If he were a girl, I would probably look at it differently on how to discipline him. And so would you. One of the things you told me was that you always wanted a man in his life to help teach him on how to be a man.

  “Well, this is part of it. Respect. You give respect and you earn it. As his father, I cannot have him telling me ‘no’ about anything, ever. That can’t happen. I believe if this was traumatic enough for him, I won’t have this issue again.

  “But I’m old school, Michele: Part of being a male growing into a young man is to handle whatever comes your way. That’s why I got him in boxing. What’s going to happen when he has to really engage in a fight or has to protect himself? He can’t shy away from physical contact.

  “Listen, that’s a small part of it. I’m not trying to toughen him up through beating him. The bigger issue is respect. He’s a kid. If we allow him to dismiss what I say—or even what you say— what are we teaching him? What will he do next? We’ve got to control that right now.

  “He’s a great kid, but he’s a kid, and kids will test you to see how far they can go. And they’ll go as far as you let them. It’s human nature for them. I let him know that’s not the way to be with his father.”

  Michele sighed. “Solomon, we’re not getting anywhere with this.”

  “Well, what do you want me to say? That I’m not going to give him a whipping again? Well, I never thought I’d have to give him a whipping. I never wanted to give him a whipping,” Solomon said. “But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t tell me about how glad you are his father is in his life but then try to handcuff me when I have to do the tough things that fathers do.”

  “You said you love him. You said you love me,” Michele said. “If you do, then you’d do this for us. I don’t want to see him resent you. And I don’t want to resent you, either.”

  Before Solomon could answer, his cell phone rang. He had placed it on the counter, near where Michele stood.

  “Who’s calling you at this hour?”

  “I don’t know. Pick it up and see,” Solomon said. He had never given a woman that option before; he did not want to create a precedent he could not uphold. But he was so into the moment that he spoke before he really gave any consideration.

  “It says, ‘Charles Gold, DeKalb County Jail.’ What’s that about?” Michele questioned.

  “That’s the guy I ran into tonight. Why the hell is he calling me?” Solomon said. “He’s going to have to leave me a message.”

  “Ah, what’s this about jail? He works at the jail?”

  “No.”

  “Is he in jail?”

  “No.”

  “Then why does it say ‘DeKalb County Jail,’ Solomon?”

  Solomon looked away. He said nothing.

  “Were you in jail?”

  “About four years ago I spent almost two days in jail. That guy, Charles, I met him there,” he said after a lengthy delay. “He seemed like he had potential. A younger guy. I said that I would try to help him out.”

  Michele backed away from the bar until she backed into the counter behind her. The anger and resentment that dominated her face turned into confusion.

  “Why were you in jail, Solomon?”

  This was the one secret he had hoped to keep maximum security tight. Only Ray, among his vast collection of friends and associates, knew. He didn’t even tell his parents. He sure as hell did not want to tell Michele.

  “Are you a judgmental person?”

  “What’s there to judge? What did you do?”

  “I had the worst split second of my life.”

  “What did you do, Solomon?”

  He lifted his head up and looked into her eyes. He was good with words but he did not know how to cushion this news.

  “What?” she asked again.

  “This girl—woman—called the police on me.”

  “For what?”

  “I slapped her.”

  The expression that covered her face changed to something indescribable. It expressed pain and confusion and even a little fear.

  “You put your hands on a woman? You hit a woman? How could you do that? I was raised to believe that cowards beat women.”

  She paused and frowned.

  “You’re a woman-beater? I can’t believe this. So, you get off on hurting people when you don’t get your way?”

  Solomon was conflicted in his emotions, too. He was embarrassed that she knew, confused that she would call him a “woman-beater” and angry that she would judge him off of one sentence.

  “Hold on, now, don’t let your mind take you crazy places,” he said.

  “Crazy places? You just told me you smacked a woman. That’s a fact. That’s not a crazy place.”

  “Calling me a woman-beater, saying I get off on hurting people...that’s a crazy place.”

  Although he was not happy about having to defend his character, he was as calm as he had ever been in an intense situation.

  Michele left the kitchen and walked to the living room and sat on the couch. Solomon followed her.

  “Don’t sit next to me; don’t touch me.” There was venom in how she spoke, which actually scared Solomon.


  “Wait a minute, Michele. Don’t you want to hear what I have to say before you jump to any more wild conclusions?”

  “Go ahead. I want to hear this. I want you to convince me why it was all right for you to smack a woman.”

  “I can’t do that because I’m not going to try to; there is no justification for it.” He was sitting in a single chair, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his knees.

  “Before I told you why I was in jail, I said it was my weakest moment, and it was,” he went on. “I want to set the scene for you so you know why I had that moment; not to justify it in any way. The thing to do was to walk away. Even if I had cursed her out, that would’ve been a better option.

  “But it didn’t happen like that. We were at her house. We were kicking it, nothing serious. We had come in from dinner, where she had seen some guy she knew and had excused herself from the table to go speak to him at the bar.

  “I wasn’t cool with it, but I wasn’t going to make a scene or trip on it, either. So she goes and stays for, like, fifteen minutes. Her food had come to the table by the time she got back, and it got cold. So she starts complaining.

  “So, I’m livid, right? I wanted to do the right thing and wait for her before I started eating, but the more I waited, the more livid I got. Finally, I just ate.

  “The manager had seen her at the bar and told her that the food was hot when it arrived but it just sat there for several minutes, untouched. She was drunk or getting drunk because she got indignant. I had to intervene to convince the guy to have her plate warmed up.

  “Anyway, we get to her house and she pours some more wine and tells me I’m being a ‘bitch’ because I complained about her leaving me to go hang at the bar with another man. I’m ready to go off, but I realized she was drunk so I bit my tongue. But I was furious.

  “So I say, ‘You shouldn’t use that word after the way you acted tonight.’ She gets louder and more indignant. Spit is coming out of her mouth all over me.

  “I said, ‘Say it, don’t spray it.’ That makes her even more out of control. She’s saying all kinds of stuff, yelling, acting a fool. I said, ‘You know what? I’m gone.’ She starts again with calling me a ‘bitch’ and saying stuff like, ‘You’re a punk’ as she gets in my face.

  “She’s blocking my way from leaving and screaming nonsense at me and it was chaos. Then I snapped, for one second. I wanted to get out of there and for her to shut up. I slapped her. I’d had a few drinks, too, but I realized what I was doing. I didn’t hit her hard, but it was hard enough for her to stumble back.

  “She shut up then. I looked at her for a few seconds. I was shocked at myself. I apologized. ‘Damn, I’m sorry,’ I said. She felt her face and didn’t say anything. I apologized again, walked by her and left the house. I got about a mile away and the cops pulled me over. She had called the police. I ended up getting a domestic violence charge.”

  “But you hit her,” Michele said.

  “I don’t know what else you want me to say, Michele,” Solomon said. “I let her foolishness get the best of me. I felt bad about it, like a coward. You don’t hit women, period. That’s how I was raised. If I was defending myself, that would be another thing. But she didn’t hit me and didn’t deserve to get slapped, no matter how belligerent she was or how drunk she was.”

  “So you spent two days in jail and you have a police record?” Michele asked.

  “Yes, I did, but I don’t have a record,” he answered. “By the time the woman got me out on bail, she had sobered up and tried to have the charges dropped. But once domestic violence charges are filed against you in Georgia, that’s it; you can’t have the charges dropped. So, the state took up the case against me.”

  “So how is it you don’t have a record?” she wanted to know.

  “Well, I had no prior history of breaking the law and because the woman wanted the charges dropped, I was allowed to enter something called a diversion program. I had to complete twenty-four weeks of domestic violence/family classes. When I finished the class, I went back to court and the charges were expunged from my record. So I have no record.”

  “But you still have to live with the fact that you hit a woman,” Michele said.

  “And it’s not easy to live with; I know better,” he said. “All I can say is it was a horrible moment for me. I regret it. I apologized. The woman I slapped said she’s forgiven me and apologized to me because she recalled how crazy she was on all the alcohol.”

  “But you hit her,” Michele repeated.

  And Solomon’s patience began to crumble.

  “Why do you keep saying that? You’re going to judge me on something that happened four years ago? Something the woman has moved past? Something I’ve gotten past? What’s that about? How do you get to dump on me when we all have done stuff we regret, stuff we’re embarrassed about?”

  “I saw my college roommate go from her boyfriend slapping her to him beating her butt,” Michele said.

  And that was the fuse that set off the bomb in Solomon. “I don’t give a shit about what happened to your friend; that has nothing to do with me,” he said, his nose flaring. “You want to sit here and classify me as some sick bastard? You have some nerve. I could’ve told you that I was in jail for driving with a suspended license, or anything other than the truth.

  “And instead of trying to open your mind to someone making a one-time mistake, you tell me about how a slap escalated with your roommate, like that’s me or what would happen with me. Let me tell you something: I resent that crap. Don’t sit here in judgment of me. And don’t try to psychoanalyze me. You ain’t qualified.”

  With that, he got up from his seat and stormed out of the house. Michele was not sure what to do or how to respond. So she said nothing as he bolted.

  She flopped back on her couch as the realization that all the wonderful notions she had for her life were splintered. Worse, she was unsure how to cement them—or if she even wanted to.

  CHAPTER 20

  BALL OF CONFUSION

  For the second time in the same night, Solomon took a lonely drive home, confused about his feelings. This time, though, there was an added emotion: anger.

  He resented Michele taking his incident with another woman from four years earlier as an indication of something sinister about him. Solomon believed he deserved the benefit of the doubt; especially from someone who had professed her love for him.

  It was too late to call Ray or any of his friends or his dad. He had to deal with the turn of events by himself, which was dangerous.

  A fragile mind like his could go to some dark places, and Solomon’s anger guided him away from the light. By the time he reached Panola Road, near his house, he was practically sweating, he was so angry and so full of disdain.

  Simply put, his feelings were hurt, which, to a man, was tantamount to challenging his pride. The idea that women were stronger than men was hardly something any man agreed with; but the reality that a man’s emotions were more sensitive than a woman’s was something few men would admit.

  Solomon learned that men actually were as emotional as women, in different ways about different things. He told one of his fraternity brothers, Tony, “No, don’t get me wrong; I’m not talking about men crying over a movie or because you break up with a woman,” he said. “I’m talking about women always say, ‘Men are so unemotional,’ and I’m saying think about how we are when we get together to watch a football game at a sports bar. We’re jumping up and down and giving high-fives, ready to throw stuff at the TV.

  “That’s emotion; more emotion than you see a women having about something she’s passionate about. So, the idea that we’re just stale with no emotions or we’re afraid to show emotions is crazy. It’s really about showing our emotions about them. We just aren’t as excited about them as we are about our sports teams.

  “And if we are as excited about them, that’s when we get into heated arguments over something that really shouldn’t matter that much. But we
care, so we engage in it. Our emotions with women don’t come out in shedding tears. They come out in how we respond to some of their nonsense, but only if we care enough.”

  Solomon came to this way of thinking in the most ironic way. Because of the “domestic violence” arrest, he was entered into a diversion program to have the charges dropped and his record cleared. It required him to take twenty-four counseling classes that addressed a number of areas around dealing with relationships and emotions.

  Since he was too embarrassed to tell anyone about his arrest, he only shared what he learned when an opportunity arose. By the time he pulled into his garage that night, it occurred to him that he needed to find a way to temper his emotions, which were running on inferno.

  So he did something he rarely did. He pulled out a notepad and pen and started writing. Something about the ink oozing out of the instrument soothed him. He had rather neat penmanship, for a man, and liked to see his handwriting on paper.

  There were so many thoughts careening off his brain, so many raw emotions that he spent more than two hours at his kitchen table writing. He started by venting about Michele and how disappointed he was that she had misjudged him after he opened up to her.

  “It would be one thing,” he wrote, “if I had shown her some indication of being physically abusive. It actually was a relief to tell somebody about what happened. I chose her as that person, and she totally blew it. The sad thing is that I regret being honest with her. That’s not something I, or anyone, should ever feel; regret telling the truth. But if I had not, maybe I would not feel as I do about her and us.

  “And how do I feel about her and us? I’m not sure. That alone is not good. Just a few days ago I was as sure about her as I had ever been about a woman. And that made me sure about us. Now...I’m confused.”

  About Gerald, he wrote: “I can’t be mad at him; he did what he had been allowed to do. But I think I got my point across. Still, I must admit that I’m a little afraid that he will go into a shell and not feel the same about me as he did.

  “If that happens, I don’t know what I’d do. It’d be devastating. But I also know he’s a kid and he wants his dad around. And if I’m around, we’ll get past this and become even closer.