An Illusion of Trust (Sequel to The Brevity of Roses)

by Lewis, Linda Cassidy

  “Tell me that is a wig,” Jalal says.

  “No. It’s all mine. I had it cut and colored. How do you like it?”

  “I hate it.”

  I look him in the eye. “Good.” Then I kneel and reach my arms out for Adam. “I’m still Mama, little man. Just my hair is different.”

  He comes to me and touches it. “Red,” he says.

  “Indeed it is.” It’s a deep red shade called Vampire, in fact, but the color will soon wash away. The length will not. The longest locks, in front, hang only two inches below my ears. I gather Adam in my arms and stand. Mia Grace fusses at being ignored in her corral, so Kristen goes to get her. Aza still hasn’t said anything; she’s watching Jalal. His look of disbelief has hardened into one of angry comprehension.

  We stare at each other for a long minute, and then he pushes back his chair and stands. Without a word to any of us, he walks past me and out the door to the garage.

  I knew Jalal wouldn’t miss the kids’ bedtime, so I’m not surprised when he returns just as we start up the stairs. He takes up the rear as we inch upward behind Mia Grace. Adam complains at her pace and tries to duck between my legs. Jalal grabs him and says, “Ticky.” From the giggles that follow I know Adam lifted his shirt. We are a damaged family in this stairwell, two of us whole and happy, two of us hurt and bleeding.

  He runs the bath water while I undress them. I stand back and let him do the rest. He kisses them often and keeps up a stream of chatter, but his smiles don’t reach his eyes. I think he’s beginning to realize the price of his betrayal. He lifts Mia Grace from the tub, wraps her in a towel and hands her to me. I dress her for bed and nurse her while Jalal finishes up with Adam. Then Jalal reads to them in the nursery and I tidy the bathroom. Finally, our children are tucked in bed. Another normal bedtime routine—managed without any meaningful interaction between the two of us.

  Tonight, instead of going our separate ways, he motions for me to follow him into the hallway from Adam’s room. “Please, talk to me,” he says.

  “I’m tired.” I don’t want to do this now. I didn’t want to do this ever. His eyes plead with me. I sigh and sit down on the bench between our door and Adam’s.

  “Could we go downstairs?” he asks. I shake my head. He leans back against the banister opposite me. “Why did you cut your hair?”

  “You’re a poet; you understand symbolism.”

  “Yes.” He looks down, apparently studying my feet. “But how can you give up on us that easily? You used to be a fighter.”

  “You think—” At his glance toward Adam’s door, I lower my voice. “You think this is easy?”

  “I think you need counseling. You are making horrible decisions based on fantasy. I have done nothing—”

  “You destroyed the thing I need most, Jalal.”

  “Trust? You can trust me. None of what you imagined has—”

  I jump to my feet and stride to the back hall so there’s no chance the kids can hear us. He follows. I turn on him. “Don’t you lie. Just don’t fucking lie to me anymore. None of this is my imagination. I know what you’re doing. Eduardo saw you in Bahía when you told me you were here at City Hall. I found a receipt for Neptune’s where you had lunch with Diane. And if you think I’m stupid enough to believe you make middle of the night calls to Hank, you’re crazier than you’ve tried to make me feel I am.”

  “I have never—”

  “Stop! Just stop. I’ve already talked to Diane, so stop the lying and admit you’re having an affair with her.”

  His face registers disbelief perfectly. “She told you that?’ He shakes his head. “She lied. I swear—”

  “How dare you swear you’re telling the truth. If you hadn’t fucked her in our house in Bahía, how could she describe the painting on the wall at the end of the bed?”

  “The painting …” The expression on his face slowly transforms from mystified to outraged. “Are you saying Diane used that as proof she slept with me?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  He grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall to the door leading to Aza’s apartment. “What are you doing?”

  “Diane’s here. I saw her car outside.”

  He flings our door open and does the same on her side of the landing. “Aza,” he yells.

  He’s shaking and that scares me. I’ve only seen him this angry once before, on the day I confronted him about accepting Meredith’s death.

  With me still in tow, he barges down the hall to the kitchen where a startled Aza now stands. He pushes past her and drops my hand. Diane is sitting at the dining table, but when she sees Jalal heading toward her she jumps to her feet and backs away.

  “You filthy bitch,” he yells.

  Aza turns to me, her alarm telegraphing a plea for me to control Jalal. But right now, I’m in a room with three people I can’t trust, and I’m not taking anyone’s side.

  Jalal stands, fists clenched, several feet back from Diane. I’m shocked to think he might not trust himself to get closer. Now, his breathing is so hard and rough he can’t speak, but his eyes are like his best knives, shredding her.

  “What’s going on?” Aza cries, looking at each of us in turn. “Somebody answer me.”

  “Figure it out,” I say. “I told you he was lying to you.”

  Jalal shakes his head at Aza, “She has it all wrong.”

  “What are you talking about?” Aza asks me.

  “Really, Aza? You never suspected he was fucking that.”

  “What?” breathes Aza. Her hand reaches out to a chair back for support as her eyes track from Jalal to Diane. “What?”

  “Diane lied to you, Renee,” Jalal says. “We are not having an affair.” He directed the last part to Diane through clenched teeth. “Tell them.” Her mouth screws up like she’s about to cry. Jalal’s not having it. “Now!”

  “I didn’t mean for—”

  “Did you tell Renee I fucked you?”

  “No, I—” Jalal takes a step toward her, stopping her tongue and backing her against the wall. She glances down at the table where her purse sits and then at the front door.

  Aza moves between Diane and Jalal. “What did you say, then?”

  “Aza, please, it’s all a misunderstanding.” Diane lurches forward and grabs her purse.

  “What did you tell Renee?”

  Diane ignores Aza’s question and looks at me. “You saw us together at the party, Renee.”

  “Nothing happened at the party,” Jalal says.

  Diane’s newly-tightened face barely registers a frown, but her pout is full. “You know that’s not true, Jalal. We were together.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You were there. I was there. We were not ‘together.’”

  Diane’s pout flattens to a sharp red line as she glares at Jalal. “You son of a bitch.”

  “Tell Renee nothing has ever happened between us.”

  “I’m not telling anyone anything. I’m leaving.”

  I step between her and the door. “Did you lie to me?”

  “You heard what you wanted to hear.”

  “I heard you tell me I wasn’t good enough for Jalal. I heard you tell me Jalal needed someone like you. I heard you tell me you loved the painting of Paris that hangs in our Bahía bedroom.” Every bit of the hatred I feel for her, she directs back toward me through her eyes.

  “Tell Renee how you know about that painting,” Jalal says, “because you sure as hell have never been in that room with me.”

  Diane says nothing, but Aza gasps. “You were talking about French artists at—”

  “The conference, yes. And I said I had the Utrillo hanging at the end of my bed, so I could see it first thing every morning.” Jalal said all that without taking his eyes off Diane, and now he moves to my side, spitting out each word. “Tell her the truth.”

  Diane’s eyes bore into Jalal as she tosses words at me like scraps to a beggar. “I never slept with your precious husband.” Her contempt extends
to Aza as she looks at her and sneers, “Now can I go?”

  “Not yet,” Jalal says. “Not until you understand you are not half the woman Renee is. Not only is she ‘good enough’ for me, she is too good for me. I could never deserve her. And if you think I would give her up for you, you are not only shallow, self-serving, and a lying bitch—you are insane.”

  Jalal takes my hand again and heads back the way we came.

  Diane calls after us. “Wow, Jalal, was I wrong about you. And you’re wrong too. You do deserve that piece of trash.”

  Jalal tenses. His step falters. “She’s not worth it,” I whisper and push him forward. We cross the landing into our hallway, and Jalal sinks back against the wall. He looks like hell, and misery dulls his eyes. He closes them.

  The yelling behind us stops and a door slams. A few seconds later, Aza peers down her hallway at us. I motion for her. “Will you come sit in the nursery while Jalal and I talk?” She doesn’t hesitate. Now it’s my turn to lead. I take Jalal by the hand and the three of us plod down the back hall to the main one, where Aza turns left toward the nursery and we turn right toward our room.

  Jalal hasn’t been in this room with me since we came home from Judith’s party. That seems to occur to us both at the same time because we stop in the middle, suddenly awkward, before Jalal moves to the alcove and collapses in a chair. He leans forward, cradling his head in his hands. I move a few feet away and sit on the floor, my back against the bed. We sit in silence for several minutes before he speaks.

  “When did she tell you that lie?” he asks.

  “This morning.”

  “She came here?”

  “I confronted her at the college. I went there to tell her to stay away from you.”

  He huffs a rueful laugh. “You were ready to fight for us.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you believed her.”

  “I’d suspected it for a while.”

  “Do you believe me, now?”

  “Did you sleep with her?”

  His head snaps up and he looks into my eyes. “No.”

  “But you considered it.”

  “No.”

  “You were close to it.”

  He shakes his head.

  “She believed you were, Jalal. I saw it in her eyes when she called you a son of a bitch.”

  He hangs his head again.

  “You encouraged her attention, she told me. She wasn’t lying about that part, was she?”

  He opens and closes his mouth twice before he speaks. “I enjoyed talking to her … about poetry … and teaching.”

  “At the party, you stood hip to hip, with her hand on your back—caressing you. That’s more than talking.”

  “It was not like that—”

  “Wasn’t it? You’ve been sleeping in another room—”

  “Because you told me to.”

  “No. Because you knew what I’d seen and you felt guilty.”

  He says nothing. We sit in silence again. I wait for him to tell the truth.

  “I am sorry I let her do that,” he says, finally, and then a moment later, “I guess that changes nothing.”

  I only look at him. Two of me look at him. The tough one says, Of course he’s sorry—sorry he got caught. The weak one says, He was tempted—so what? He never slept with her. I want to believe what I saw was the first and only intimate moment between them, but even so, that ripped the hole in my heart wider. What if the next time he’s tempted he doesn’t stop at a touch?

  “Please,” he says, meeting my gaze. “We have to fix this.” He waits for a response, but I can’t speak. He leans forward and buries his face in his hands. His shoulders rise and fall as he weeps.

  I watch him as though I’m not there, as though I’m not me. All the arguments I processed in the last few days, for and against this marriage, float through my mind. The scenarios of life with and without him are a mental slide show. Click. Click. Click.

  “Jalal, I have to leave.”

  “No. Please, stay. Please.”

  “I’m taking the kids to Bahía tomorrow. I can’t think here.”

  “But I …” He wipes his eyes and looks up at me. “You will upset them if you take them away.”

  “And they would be upset if I went without them.”

  “Then stay. I will give you all the space you need.”

  “I can’t be here … in this house.”

  “So you would rather disrupt—”

  “Don’t you dare! I didn’t start this. Don’t you dare make me the bad guy.”

  He looks down again.

  Our silences are not empty. We’re each processing thoughts and emotions. I close my eyes. From habit, I reach up to pull my braid over my shoulder but grasp nothing. I hate the way I look now. Too late, I realized I’d suffer the result of my angry impulse as much as Jalal would. Am I still acting irrationally? Nothing makes sense. I’m exhausted. I open my eyes and meet Jalal’s gaze. How long has he been watching me?

  “I love you, Renee. That will never change.” He stands and walks out of the room.

  The only sound is Adam’s faint snore carried by the monitor into a room that feels empty with me in it. I want to run after Jalal and tell him I don’t care about Diane. I don’t care about anything except having our happy little family back. But I can’t move. I can only curl into a ball on the floor and cry because I don’t know if we can ever be happy again.

  Twenty-Four

  Rain arrived sometime during the night, and judging from the leaden sky this morning, it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon. The adults in this house reflect that mood. For Adam and Mia Grace it’s just a normal breakfast before we leave for Bahía, like we’ve done so often these last few weeks. Aza sits quietly with us, glumly stirring her coffee. Obviously, Jalal talked to her last night after he left our room. When I leave the table to go upstairs to pack, she follows me.

  “I hope you believe I had no idea what Diane was up to,” she says. “I guess that makes me stupid or naive, but it’s true. I would never have brought her into …”

  She starts crying, which chokes me up, and we hug. “I know,” I say. “And I’m sorry she hurt you too.”

  “I love you, Renee. And I love Jalal and the kids …” She struggles to get control and I need her to, because I have to. She releases me and goes to the tissue box, pulls out a handful, and divides them between us. “I wish you would reconsider leaving.” I start to respond and she motions for me to stop and says, “I know you can’t. You need to get away for a while. I understand; I’ve been there. Just please don’t make any rash decisions.”

  She probably didn’t mean to, but she glanced at my hair when she said that. I flick it. “No more stupid moves like this … or worse.” We exchange humorless smiles. “I’m just so confused, and being here, seeing Jalal makes it worse.”

  “You need to put it all in perspective.”

  “Yes. That’s it.”

  “I can pack for Adam and Mia Grace if you want.”

  I nod, and she leaves through the door into Adam’s room. I head to my closet and start grabbing clothes and shoes without much thought. The faster I get out of here the easier it will be for us all. We need to move past this particular nightmare.

  Aza beats me downstairs. When I come down, Jalal carries the kids to the play yard entry to dress them in their coats and shoes. Adam keeps up a steady chatter about Granny and Dardo. Just when I think we might get out of here without any drama, Adam realizes Jalal isn’t putting his coat on. “It’s cold outside, Baba Daddy.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Put you coat on,” Adam says.

  Jalal shakes his head.

  “You have to.”

  Jalal swallows hard and shakes his head again.

  Adam’s voice rises with panic. “Come with me, Baba Daddy.” He wraps his arms around Jalal’s leg and pulls.

  “Hey, little man.” Jalal pulls Adam’s hands loose and crouches to his level. “I
have work to do, but I will see you very soon.”

  “Tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Yester—” Adam stops and shakes his head. “Tomorrow?”

  “Soon.” Jalal picks him up and walks quickly out the door to the garage.

  I follow with Mia Grace, and Aza carries as many bags as she can. Adam is crying now and slapping at Jalal’s hands as he buckles him in the car seat. Tears are in Jalal’s eyes, but after he secures Adam, he says firmly, “Stop this. You will have fun with Granny and Dardo.”

  Jalal straightens and meets my eyes across the roof of the car. His gaze is empty, in the way it was when we first met. He turns away and returns to the kitchen for the rest of our things.

  Because Adam is upset, Mia Grace is crying too. I kiss her and put her in her car seat. I promise ice cream when we get there, but for the first time ever that fails to quiet them. When everything is packed in the car, Jalal kisses both the kids, then turns away quickly and goes back into the house.

  Aza kisses them and then hugs me. “Kristen’s going to be upset that she wasn’t here.”

  “I’ll call her tonight.”

  “Drive carefully,” she says, glancing out the door to the rain. “Call to let him know you got there safely. Please?”

  I nod and get in the car. I back out of the garage and follow the driveway out the gate. With two sobbing babies in the back seat, I cry as silently as I can.

  At a certain spot between Coelho and Bahía de Sueños, the road cuts through the middle of a hill, creating a rock cliff on either side, topped with trees that arch over the road, nearly touching. It’s beautiful in summer, but those trees are not evergreen, and in winter, on a sunless day like today, their bare branches resemble black, skeletal hands closing in. An omen. I’m afraid to drive on and afraid to turn back. I’m doing what I have to do, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I tell myself to make it through this day, this morning, this hour, and it will get easier.

  Because I promised the kids ice cream, I stop at the restaurant before going to the house. I text Jalal to let him know we’re in Bahía and then shepherd the kids in the door. I can tell by Jennie’s lack of surprise Jalal let her know we were on our way and prepared her for my new look. I wonder how much he told her about the reason for both.