by Candice Dow
I felt dizzy as I stood up to get off. I couldn’t believe my ears. So many advisors told me to get boys, because girls used the sexual-abuse thing too much and they could ruin your life. I refused to believe that and got girls anyway. I thought I could help them.
“Ma, let me go. I have to get my bags.”
“Clark, just keep your eyes and ears open. You just never know. They don’t arrest you unless they have strong evidence.”
I hung up the phone. I couldn’t take another second of it. Reggie had brainwashed her. I couldn’t have been that blind. There was no way I could be married to a predator and not know it.
I called Teeny after I got my bags and headed out of the airport. When I got in the car, I began to be plagued with doubt, too. Teeny told me that Raven claimed that when she visited Kenneth for therapy sessions, they would have sex. It began merely with her giving him oral sex and then progressed to an all-out relationship. He supposedly gave her money to go out, and also bought her clothes.
As she rolled off the allegations, I said, “So what made her tell now?”
Kenneth had to cancel her session and she flipped out on his receptionist, claiming he was her man. The receptionist called the police on Raven, but Kenneth was the one they hauled away. Teeny warned, “You know it’s typical for young girls to fall in love with their therapists. Right?”
I nodded, feeling strange.
“I’m thinking she’s just obsessed with him. And not only that, Clark, Raven is obsessed with you. You know how she wants everything you have. That includes your man.”
My heart plunged. Raven had seen me walk out of the room with Devin at the conference. Could it be that if she thought I was cheating, that would give her full rein on my husband? I started sweating. Just when I’d convinced myself that being true to myself wouldn’t kill anyone, here it was my husband was about to lose everything, after years of grinding, after all the blood, sweat, and tears. Guilt consumed me. I had to get him out of jail and hold him until it felt better. This was all my fault.
The next morning, I took the deed to my house to the courthouse, and a few hours later I picked up Kenneth. He hadn’t shaved, and he looked like he’d been crying the whole time he was in there. I got out of my car and ran to hug him. This man who never cries, rarely shows emotion, wept on my shoulder.
“Baby,” he said.
“I know. I understand.”
“I didn’t do it. I swear.”
That was all I needed to hear. I knew there was no way possible Kenneth could sleep with that on his conscience. “It’s okay, baby. Let’s go home. I’m here now.”
He kissed my cheek. “Thank you so much, Clark. Thank you.”
He didn’t have to thank me. This was what marriage was about. My plans to run off and leave him high and dry were now a thing of the past. I had to focus on the future of my marriage. This was my obligation and, if nothing more, I vowed to be with him through this.
When we got back home, he wanted to talk about why Raven wanted to hurt him. I’d already concluded all these things. I told him that he didn’t have to explain, that I believed him. End of subject.
When I got a private moment, I e-mailed Devin. We were on ice until further notice. I had to handle this situation, and at that moment I wasn’t sure I could leave or even that I wanted to.
38
DEVIN
If you love something, don’t fuck it up, because you may not ever get it again. Just when I had Clark on the right path, everything blew up. She felt more guilt than question. If this man was a molester, she should have been anxious to get out of the marriage. Yet she couldn’t even wrap her mind around the possibility that he could be involved.
Beyond wanting to be Clark’s man, I wanted the best for her, too. So I transferred twenty thousand dollars into Clark’s bank account. The thanks I got was an e-mail telling me it was possible that our relationship was over. It wasn’t as if I could do anything but wait.
By the time I arrived back home, I hadn’t heard from Clark and I wondered if I should disrupt my home for something so unstable. When I got off the plane, I decided not to call Taylor. I wasn’t sure what angle I was coming from yet. Instead, I sent Clark a text: HOW IS EVERYTHING?
When I sat in the car, I checked my phone and she responded: DEVIN, I LOVE YOU AND I ALWAYS WILL, BUT IT’S JUST NOT OUR TIME RIGHT NOW.
Clark had a way of hitting where it hurt. I was crushed as I reflected on all the plans we had made in Nicaragua, and now it wasn’t our time. When the driver pulled up to the house, he got my luggage from the car, and I opened the garage door. Taylor’s car was gone, and I was thankful I had a minute to gather my thoughts before I saw her.
I dragged myself into the house and turned on the light. I sat at the island in the kitchen and just stared into space. It was ironic because I was semihappy before Clark appeared, and now everything Taylor did was wrong.
Suddenly, I reverted to my ex–best friend, Jason: You spoiled-ass, selfish motherfucker. You don’t give a shit about anybody, as long as you get what you want. That shit weighed heavy on me as I reflected on everything, how I’d abruptly left Clark and married Jennifer, how I’d ignored his request and not only dated Taylor but married her. Now I was considering leaving Taylor because the opportunity to be with Clark arose. What the fuck is wrong with me? I banged my fist on the granite countertop.
I looked at my cell phone and I felt like I wanted to call my boy, but I knew it would be the same as the other times I’ve tried—straight to voice mail. Was Clark really the solution to all the problems in my life? Could it be that the idea of Clark was just something I conjured up in my mind to justify my irrational behavior? Never enough. What if I finally got the chance to have Clark and I still wasn’t happy? What then? Could I really afford that risk without looking like a damn loose cannon?
Taylor entered through the side door and startled me. I hadn’t even heard the garage door. She said, “Hey, baby.”
She hugged me and landed kisses all over me. Something seemed superficial about her love. “I missed you, honey.”
That was hard for me to believe, considering she wasn’t even home when I arrived. As I battled internally with her, she hugged me again tightly. I slightly pushed her from me. She looked confused. “Baby, don’t act like that.”
After spending the week with Clark, I knew what I was missing in my relationship. And maybe if she understood what I needed, I could abandon the thought of leaving her for Clark. Especially considering Clark was torn and convinced it wasn’t our time. And after the way she bolted out of there, prepared to defend this man against all odds, I wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready to let go. Clark was committed, and until someone hurt her she probably would never simply walk out. And I probably wouldn’t even want her in that condition, so maybe, I thought, I should just be thankful for what I have.
I looked Taylor in the eye. “If this marriage is going to work, I need some things from you.”
Her head snapped back as if she was surprised. I nodded. “Yes, if this marriage is going to work, I need you to be my wife. If I wanted a damn buddy, I would have stayed single. I need you to be supportive. I need you at fund-raising events. I want you to travel with me on my missions. I need you to connect to my emotions.”
“What?”
“Taylor, I work with women all the time, and they always want to know where my wife is.”
“But you liked that about me, that I never got in your business.”
“That was when we were dating, Taylor. You’re my wife. You’re a part of my business now. Act like it.”
She looked like she understood, and I wanted her to say something that made sense. Instead, she hit me with “Are you threatening me?”
I hung my head, because it was clear that words could not explain what I needed. Either it came naturally or it didn’t. “No, Taylor I’m not threatening you. I’m pleading with you.”
She stared out the patio doors for a few seconds. Final
ly, she turned to face me. “I’ll do my best, Devin.”
“That’s all I can ask for.”
I stood up and she stood up, too. She followed me up the stairs as I took my luggage into the room. When we got into the room, she asked me for a kiss. I gave her a halfhearted peck. She lifted my shirt and kissed on my chest.
“Taylor, stop. I’m tired. I had a long flight.”
She pouted, walked into her closet, and changed into her pajamas. I went in the bathroom to brush my teeth and got prepared for bed. As I walked out, Taylor brushed up against me while coming in. She sucked her teeth. I didn’t acknowledge her. She was offended, but I was in search of something greater, something to settle the hunger, something that made me feel like I felt when I was with Clark.
39
CLARK
The court date was scheduled for the middle of October. It would be five months of agony before Kenneth cleared his name. The money that Devin gave me wouldn’t nearly be enough to carry us through the trial. I didn’t know what we were going to do, but whatever had to be done, I guessed we would do it together, because everyone else had incriminated him. Teeny was probably the only person who believed him and that was because she worked with these girls. Like us, she knew they cause these types of scandals for attention. It was too bad that we both suffered. All of Kenneth’s contracts had been stripped. He was forced to lay off his entire staff and so was I, because all of the girls had been removed from the home. We had nothing but each other.
Kenneth was talking to me again. He was forced to seek emotional strength in me. So I’d begun to remember why we fell in love again. Our love was different from Devin’s and mine, but it was still love. It was that long-term, for-better-or-worse kind of love. I wondered if Devin would have even stayed through all my fertility issues. I wondered if Devin would love me on my bad days. Devin and I have hallucinating, breathtaking, addictive love, but I often wondered if it was real. Could it stand the test of time? I made the decision not to risk my marriage to see. This scandal was simply a wake-up call.
When Mia came home from school, she had already heard bits and pieces from Morgan. She kept asking me if there was something I wanted to say to her and would I tell her when she got home. On the day she arrived, I think both Kenneth and I were nervous. He didn’t want to have to tell her and I didn’t want her to have only my mother and Reggie’s version of the story. It was around eight o’clock in the evening, but the sun hadn’t set yet as she pulled up in the driveway, her small car packed to the roof. I stood in the living room, watching her. Her medium-length, dark brown hair was pulled into a short ponytail, and her long, thick brown legs were sticking out of a pair of very short khaki shorts. She wore a red Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt and a pair of flip-flops. She slouched around to the passenger side, grabbed a large backpack, and headed in through the garage.
I walked through the house and into the kitchen. Kenneth was sitting in the family room, and I let him know she was on her way in. He looked at me like he was helpless, like he didn’t know how to begin the conversation. I gave him a confident nod and smirk like I had it. Mia opened the door, and her big brown eyes looked into mine. She wanted to know everything. I gave her a hug and she said, “Hey, Ma.”
“Hey, Mia-Mia.”
She dropped her bag and went in the family room to hug Kenneth. They embraced for a long time and I heard them mumbling in each other’s ears, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I walked in to sit in the chair opposite the couch where they stood. When they pulled apart, I noticed they both had tears in their eyes.
Kenneth looked at me and I said, “Mia, I know you’ve heard bits and pieces of things from everybody and I know you just want to know what’s going on.”
She gave me her infamous duh expression, and I continued, “Well, I’m not sure if you remember Raven. She’s only been in the group home for about a year and a half.”
“Yeah, I know her.”
“Well, she’s the one. She’s the one trying to say that your father molested her.”
She looked at Kenneth. “Daddy, why is she saying that?”
“She’s sick, Mia. She’s a very sick girl. She’s bipolar and has a host of other mental issues. I never touched that girl, and Clark knows I never touched her, so we’re just going to fight this.”
Mia dropped her face in her hands and finally looked up and said, “But it’s your word against her word. What if you get wrongly convicted? Morgan told me that they found raunchy text messages between the two of you.”
Kenneth’s tone elevated. “Mia, look! I have never sent this little girl any text message. If anything, I may have left my cell phone unattended around her and she sent the messages to herself. I don’t know.”
Mia shrugged and looked at me. “Whatchu think, Ma?”
“I agree. Raven is very sick. She has a very sick obsession. That’s what I think.”
Mia looked like she trusted us. I walked over to sit beside them. I held both Mia’s hand and Kenneth’s, and I said, “We’ll get through this like a family.”
Mia joked, “So, Daddy. You want me to go beat her up?”
We laughed a little, but I knew Mia had no clue about our financial state. When she realized we might need her money from her summer job, which would eliminate her ability to shop, she probably would want to fight Raven.
There was no summer vacation, just Kenneth and me sitting in the house wondering how something so tragic could have wedged its way into our lives. I just wanted the nightmare to be over. Bill collectors had begun to call. Our lives were falling to pieces, one brick at a time. We were forced to put the group home up for sale because there was no way we could continue footing the bill. I prayed that it would sell in time to pay some of our legal fees, but the housing market was horrible. It would probably end up being foreclosed on. Reggie was helping me a lot financially, and I was beginning to feel too dependent. Not to mention, he’d been acting irritated about giving me money, primarily because he questioned Kenneth’s innocence.
If my career in human services was over, I had to make some money somehow. I never thought I would have to do it again, but I began putting my résumé back out there for engineering positions. I knew that would pay the bills, but I was afraid that no one would hire me after I’d been out of the field for so long. As August approached, I started desperately posting my résumé on every career Web site available, because if I didn’t get a job, we would be on the street by September.
40
DEVIN
A week after I told Taylor what I needed, she woke up and said, “Devin, maybe we should go to counseling. Before you, I hadn’t had a real relationship. And I had to put all these things and activities in place so that I could still enjoy single life, and I guess I’ve never gotten rid of them. I was anxious to get married. But I think we missed a step. I was just becoming good at being a girlfriend, and the next thing I knew, I was a wife.”
“Thank you. Do you want your father to do it?”
“Nah, I think another minister would be better.”
We had a few sessions with a minister at the church, and he’d confirmed that I wasn’t a basket case. Taylor was not being supportive, but it turned out that she resented how supportive her mother had been, sacrificing everything to be the preacher’s wife, and Taylor refused to live in her husband’s shadow. While I understood her issue, she had to understand this was a different form of support. I wasn’t asking her to sit down and shut up; I wanted her beside me. Once we came to that conclusion, she agreed that she would do it.
As the weeks passed, our relationship was growing and I was the front-runner in the election. Thousands of Taylor’s father’s church members lived in District 4, and the race was scheduled to be a steal. My campaign was heavily funded, and we’d geared up to smoothly transition into the House of Representatives. The first week of August was when most candidates really began to air commercials and make themselves known. We took a head start and began flo
oding the airwaves on July 28. Everything was coming together.
Nicole had been with me for the entire summer, so I’d been able to spend a lot of quality time with her. It bothered me that she’d told me that she didn’t like Taylor. Whenever I asked her why, she’d say, “It’s just a feeling.”
While it bothered me, it tripped me out at the same time. Nicole was definitely my child, because we acted on feelings and rarely on facts. I’d brushed it off since there was nothing she could pinpoint. I figured she’d grow out of it, assuming maybe it was just a slight rivalry, because Nicole had always been number one and now she shared the spotlight.
I stepped out of the car to grab Nicole from day camp. While I was in there for five short minutes, Curtis called nearly seven times. There was obviously something wrong. When I sat in the car, I called him on the car phone. Without greeting me, he said, “Dawg, tell me you didn’t take your mistress to Nicaragua with you.”
I looked in the rearview mirror to see if Nicole heard him or even knew what he said. She squinted slightly. Then, my stomach dropped as I pushed the phone button and held my phone to my ear. “What?”
“Ted Denorges is about to run a negative commercial, showing pictures of you and some chick in Nicaragua. Say it isn’t so.”
I sat in shock and said nothing.
Curtis said, “Devin, please don’t tell me you’re stupid enough to fuck the whole thing up over a piece of ass.”
I felt like a complete asshole. Not only did I not have Clark, I was in jeopardy of blowing this election. No Clark. No Congress. Curtis yelled into the phone, “Say something, man! Shit! I gotta schedule a press conference like now to refute these claims.”
Finally, I stepped out of the car. “Man, it wasn’t just a piece of ass.”
“What the hell was it?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“Look, you gotta be honest with me.”