The Wrong Husband

by B. M. Hardin

  “What are you saying Eddie?”

  “I’m saying that if you want this marriage, if you want us to try to fix it, then we have to get rid of Polo. We have to kill him.”

  Lord…Eddie done lost his damn mind!

  ~***~

  I headed out for lunch and saw that Eddie was already there.

  I was back at work, and Eddie said that he’d wanted to talk.

  He’d given me back the kids, despite what he’d said but he hadn’t come back home.

  As for Polo, I hadn’t heard a peep out of him, so I wasn’t sure if he was even worth worrying about anymore.

  I thought about him sometimes, but I had my feelings under control and I knew what was important.

  “Hey.”

  Eddie didn’t say hey back.

  He started to talk but I cut him off.

  “Were you really serious about killing Polo? That’s crazy Eddie.”

  “No.”

  I let out a deep breath.

  I knew that he had to be kidding.

  “Well, what do you want to talk about?”

  We stopped at the restaurant.

  “My business hasn’t been doing as well as I have led you to believe. It was at first, but things have slowed down tremendously, and I think I may have to let it go.”

  I looked at him.

  I’d always thought that the business was doing fine.

  “Really? Is it that bad?”

  “Yeah, it is. I even have the IRS breathing down my neck for back taxes. After the success of the first year, I thought that money would keep coming in, abundantly, so I didn’t exactly do what needed to be done, and it back fired. I’m an accountant, surely I thought that I had projected the numbers right, but I hadn’t. Things have been so slow despite my long hours, hard work and attempts of finding new clients. Hell, sometimes I had to pull out of our savings to cover things. But you never noticed because I would find a way to put it back. Even if I had to ask Polo for the money.”

  Wow.

  I guess maybe he was stressed to the maximum from work and now I was sure that had something to do with his sexual performance.

  And the fact that he was keeping it from me probably made it worse.

  “Well, you have to do what you have to do. You’re going to go back to some big company again?”

  “From the looks of it I won’t have a choice.”

  “Well, are you coming home?”

  Eddie shook his head.

  “No. Actually, I went back and filed for the divorce after all Sassi. I don’t make you happy, no matter how much I tried. I don’t please you, how you want to be pleased and I think that for right now, this is for the best. I can’t get the images of you and Polo out of my mind, having sex, and maybe I will never get over it, but I have to try. But I can’t do it with you.”

  Eddie pulled out papers again.

  This time, he handed them to me.

  “Who knows, maybe Polo should have been the one to talk to you and marry you all along. He saw you first. Maybe I ruined your happily ever after. But believe me, both of you ruined mine.”

  I frowned.

  “What about you and Polo? Will y’all remain friends?”

  “I don’t know Sassi. But that’s all that you and I will be from this day forward.”

  Eddie got out of the car and opened my door.

  Tears streamed down my face, but he wiped them away.

  He didn’t say anything and neither did I.

  He hugged me and I could feel that he was happy to be free.

  Or maybe he was just happy with the choice that he’d made to not force what doesn’t fit.

  “I love you Sassi. I always will, no matter what.”

  I believed him.

  But if I said it back, I was sure that he wouldn’t believe me.

  ~***~

  “Eddie, what did you mean by that remark that you made about Micki? What did she do?”

  Eddie cleared his throat.

  “She is the one that told me about you and Polo.”

  What?

  I waited for Eddie and the kids to leave before I called Micki.

  “How could you?”

  She automatically knew what I was talking about.

  “Easy. I was trying to save you from yourself.”

  “I didn’t need you to save me Micki.”

  “Oh, but you did. You just don’t know it yet.”

  What the hell did she mean by that?

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Look, I never told you this but Polo gave me a loan, once.”

  What is she talking about?

  “We exchanged numbers one day a long while ago at your house and we chatted a few times. Of course he was trying to talk me out of my panties, but I never liked Polo on that level. He was sexy, but I knew that he had a thing for you, so I figured that I might as well play it smart. I was going through some tough times with bills, and he offered to help me out, as a friend, if you could even call him that. He said that he didn’t want anything in return. But every man says that. And in actuality, every man wants something. I shouldn’t have taken the money from him, but at the time I was desperate.”

  I listened attentively.

  “I told him that I would pay him back, but he told me not to worry about it. So I didn’t. After a while, and because I knew that we weren’t going anywhere, and because I’d started talking to someone else at the time, I stopped being friendly with Polo. If he called, I wouldn’t answer. If he texted, I wouldn’t respond. I learned real quick that Polo doesn’t like rejection. He started to text smart comments as to say that I’d used him like everyone else did and I was every bitch from here to Mexico. He just got real nasty, but I never asked him to do anything for me. He offered. But it was as though he’d forgotten that part of the story.”

  Sounds about right.

  I’d heard him say on several occasions that he was tired of being used.

  Mostly by his folks but I’d heard him say it in regards to women a few times too.

  There was even a time, with his last wife, that he’d pretended to be broke or average, until after they were married.

  He’d said that he’d wanted to be sure that she loved him for him and not the money.

  He’d rented a small apartment and everything.

  She married him, but she was a whore.

  She couldn’t seem to keep her legs closed, no matter how much money Polo had.

  Karma.

  “After a while, all of these strange things started to happen. The kid’s dog turned up dead. Someone had stabbed him and laid him right on the front porch, with the knife still in his chest, for the kids and me to see. Just sickening. And then my tires were mysteriously coming up flat once a week. At first I thought that it was my new neighbor’s weird ass kid that had just moved in. You remember me mentioning him?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah. But then I talked to him one day and found out that he wasn’t weird at all. He was just expressive with the way that he dressed. But things still kept happening. I went about two weeks without any mail. I had things getting turned off and when I called about them, they’d said that they had sent a notice but for some reason my mail was always missing. And then the time that my police raided my house for drugs, I knew that something crazy was going on. The police said that they’d received an anonymous tip. Tip my ass.”

  Interesting, something similar had happened to me.

  The only catch was that drugs had actually ended up in my purse, which made me think that the police officer might have been called to the grocery store just for me.

  At that point in time I had been ignoring Polo too, so if he was behind all of the things that had happened to Micki, because of rejection, he’d probably tried to get something to happen to me too.

  He’d probably paid that girl to bump me and put something in my purse.

  That’s if Polo was behind it all.

  “And then one day, it all just st
opped.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Because you would have told Eddie. Eddie would have told Polo and I didn’t want him to know that I knew that it was him. But I was positive that it was Polo. It all started happening right after he gave me the money and right after I started ignoring him. It had to be him,” Micki said.

  “That doesn’t mean that Polo was responsible for those things.”

  Micki laughed wickedly.

  “I know for a fact that he was. Polo is possessive. Polo is irrational and irresponsible. Polo is crazy,” Micki said.

  He hates to be called crazy.

  But I’d always said that he was a little off.

  But still, I didn’t know what to think about what Micki was saying.

  “You were headed for trouble Sassi. I had to stop you. Polo is trouble. I might have a few kids and I might didn’t go to college like the rest of you, but I can see straight through Polo. And I don’t like what I see. Work on you and Eddie and just leave Polo alone on that level. You sampled the goods, now go on.”

  Micki hung up before I could say anything else.

  I pressed on her name to call her back, but immediately, I hung up the call.

  I didn’t appreciate what she had done.

  Not one bit.

  But if what she was saying was true and if she knew for a fact that Polo had been the one doing those crazy things to her, than I could kind of see her reasoning.

  Maybe I should be thanking her for being messy instead.

  ~***~

  Things were tight!

  And Eddie’s past had caught up to us.

  Not only did Eddie have to let his business go, but the IRS had come in and taken everything that they could.

  I only still had my car because it was in mama’s name because I had bought it from her, cash, pretty much brand new, when she couldn’t get out of the contract, but decided that she preferred a smaller car instead.

  Thank goodness that we had been too lazy to actually get everything switched over because the IRS would have snatched it up too.

  We’d lost the house, Eddie lost his car and they went in and took our savings.

  I still had a small stash of mad money that even Eddie hadn’t known about, so I had been able to use it during these hard time.

  I’d down-sized to a two bedroom townhome.

  And the rent there was just as much as a mortgage but I tried not to complain.

  Things would be back to normal soon.

  With the kids and with Eddie not working or living with us, things were always chaotic, and since everything was now on me financial, I was so overwhelmed.

  But things could be worse.

  Time was flying by and it was almost Christmas.

  Eddie or his parents watched the boys while I worked, but even though that did save money, it wasn’t enough.

  My little savings had been gone and I was living from paycheck to paycheck and I didn’t like it.

  Not one bit.

  I could see how eager and stressed out Eddie was trying to find a job, but he hadn’t found one as of yet.

  Eddie was so desperate that he would take anything.

  But nothing had become available as of yet.

  And things were harder than they had ever been before.

  “Are you watching them here today?”

  “Yeah.”

  Though Eddie stayed with his parents, it was easier for him to watch the kids at my place sometimes.

  I headed out to work as Eddie continued to get our oldest son ready for school.

  I had been working over every day just to make ends meet.

  I clocked into work all of ten minutes late and just as I got settled at my desk, my boss motioned for me to come into his office.

  “Sassi, I don’t really know how to say this. But we’re going to have to let you go?”

  “What? No.”

  “Your job performance hasn’t been what we need lately. And that’s not including the leaving early, coming late, and the missing one day a week at least twice a month. Everyone is complaining and from a business perspective we are lacking.”

  “You know that I am going through a divorce and the IRS snatched everything that they could, so things have been tight. Things have been rough. But I’m good at this job and you know I can do the work. I promise I won’t miss any more days and to be here on time.”

  “I’m sorry Sassi. But it’s too late. I need your badge please.”

  I needed my job!

  With Eddie out of work, I couldn’t afford to be out of work too.

  “Please.”

  He reached his hand in my direction.

  I stood up and damn near threw my badge in his face.

  How inconsiderate!

  He knew that I was going through hell and he knew that I needed the money but he was firing me anyway.

  I was already so stressed out and this was the icing on the cake.

  Something just took over me.

  I started knocking over everything on his desk.

  I kicked over the chair that I had been sitting in and even pulled down the blinds from the big, glass windows surrounding his office.

  I was in a rage as I ranted on and on, as everyone watched me as though I was some kind of crazy lady.

  It wasn’t until the security for the building walked in my direction that reality kicked in and I realized that I had gone too far.

  And as the security led me outside, and the police pulled up, I knew then that I had definitely crossed the line.

  I was going to jail.

  Hours later, the cell door opened and I headed to sign some papers.

  Mama was there waiting for me.

  I’d called Micki to come bail me out and she must have called Mama.

  Knowing her she probably didn’t have a sitter or the money to even post my bail.

  “I don’t want to hear it Mama,” I said immediately as I stared at her judgmental facial expression.

  “I haven’t said a word…yet.”

  Really I just didn’t want to hear anything that she had to say.

  We got into her car and just as soon as we started driving, she started talking.

  “Sassi, you should have known that no good would have come from what you did. You brought this hell on yourself from screwing your husband’s best friend, and I don’t feel sorry for you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to feel sorry for me Mama. I lost my job. I lost my husband. I lost my house. And today, I think I lost my mind. So forgive me, but I don’t care what you think or what you feel about my situation. I already feel bad enough as it is.”

  “You and the kids can come live with me.”

  “I’d rather be homeless. I would live on the street first Mama before I came to live with you just to be reminded of what I did wrong every single day.”

  We pulled up at my townhomes and for some reason I couldn’t open the door.

  “Something is wrong with it. I’ll have to get out and open it from the outside,” Mama said.

  I tried to roll down the window, but that didn’t work either.

  “Sassi, I know you think that I’m being hard on you, I just never wanted to see you going through the things that I had to go through. I didn’t want you to make the same mistakes that I made.”

  I looked at her.

  “I left my husband for your father. Well actually, my husband left me. But I’d wanted him to. I’d met your father and fell for him, although I was married. I’d been married for years before I met him, and if I could turn back the hands of time, I would. Other than having you and your brother, getting involved with your father was the worst decision that I have ever made. We fooled around for a few months, and I fell head over heels in love with him. He was perfect, though it seemed, and I preferred him over my husband who was everything that I didn’t even know I needed at the time.”

  She took a deep breath.

  I never even knew that Mama had been married
before Daddy and no one had ever bothered to mention it either.

  “I stopped coming home. I didn’t care if he found out. And then finally he got tired and left me. As soon as he was gone, he filed for divorce and as soon as it was final, I moved your Daddy right on into the house that my husband had bought for me. The house that he’d offered to let me have so that he didn’t have to be reminded of me. Anyway, I was sure that your father was the one. I was sure that I’d made a mistake and married the wrong husband and that I should have waited and married your father instead. But I was wrong. It wasn’t until your father and I married that I saw his true colors and as you know, my life and our marriage was a waste since the day that we’d said “I do”. I regretted my decision for years and that was part of the reason that I stayed with your father and never left. I made my bed, so I had to lay in it. So you see, I was trying to stop you Sassi from becoming me. I was trying to stop you from ending up like me.”

  Mama was almost in tears, but I’d beat her to the punch.

  I was bawling and I knew at that moment, I should have listened to her.

  I’d ruined every good thing that I had.

  I’d even ruined Eddie, although he wasn’t as innocent in all of this as I’d wanted him to be.

  Just then I remembered Patrice’s confession.

  “Mama, Patrice lied about Daddy.”

  Mama looked at me.

  “He never touched her inappropriately. He never molested her. She’d wanted him to touch her that day, and he’d turned her down. So she lied. The whole thing had been a lie. She confessed it to me.”

  I could have filled her in on the rest of it, but what was the point?

  Daddy was dead and gone and Patrice was thousands of miles away.

  We would never see either of them again, so I didn’t need to tell her the whole truth just the part of the truth that actually mattered.

  Mama exhaled and then got out of the car.

  She walked around to the passenger side and opened it.

  I hugged her as soon as I was on my feet and told her that I loved her.

  She was only trying to protect me and I was thankful that she’d cared enough to give an effort, though I had messed everything up anyway.

  It was too early for the oldest to be out of school, but seeing Eddie’s car, I knew that he and our youngest boy was inside.