by Cydney Rax
“Busy. Insane meeting schedule. Unreasonable expectations.”
“What makes the expectations unreasonable?”
Neil sets aside his chips and peers at me. “Anya, you hardly ever ask me about work, especially like what you’re doing now. Are you worried about something?”
“No, nooo, Neil. Not worried. I’m—I’m trying to communicate with you.”
He frowns and it hurts to watch him make that face. I feel like he’s being unnecessarily disrespectful.
“Neil,” I say. “We have to start somewhere to get somewhere, right?”
He sighs like there’s no good argument left in him.
We eat in silence.
“How was your day?” he finally asks. In no time he’s finished off three bags of chips. I’m sure he would’ve eaten more if I’d brought them outside.
“It wasn’t too bad. Reesy and I drove to the Museum District. I started to take her to the Downtown Aquarium to see the tropical fish, but I wanted to make sure you’re with us when we go.”
“Oh yeah, why’s that?”
“It’s a family-type place. Lots of kids, parents, things like that.”
“Oh.” Neil picks up an empty chip bag, looks inside, and sets it down. His large hand sweeps across the back of his head, rubbing, and he stares at the sky.
“Neil, what’s happening with us? In the past going to places like the aquarium wasn’t a chore at all. But now…”
He says nothing for a long time. That makes me nervous. I hope we aren’t getting like an old married couple who become too familiar with each other.
“Well, there is something happening that is on my mind,” Neil admits.
“And what would that be?”
“It’s almost time for…for Ms. Frazier to come back to work.”
I flinch and stand up. “Why are you telling me?”
He says nothing.
“Now that she’s returning, are you trying to pick my wore-out brain for answers on how to handle this situation? Neil, you’ve done a lot of questionable things, but this is a bit much.” I swing my fist and smack the pitcher of tea. It falls on its side. The brown liquid flows out of the mouth of the pitcher like it’s sick and puking. It looks just like how I feel.
The fact that Neil doesn’t quickly upright the pitcher says something. Has he gotten to the point where he doesn’t care? What can I do to make this man think about me for a change?
I force myself to pick up the pitcher just before it runs totally empty. The grass is now soaked and doesn’t seem as green as it was before. I wonder if the tea will kill it.
“Okay, I’m sorry, Neil. I just…This is too much sometimes. I mean, I try. I’m trying to—I wish I could understand and be the woman I’m supposed to be, but who can I turn to that can tell me what to do?”
“Go to church, Anya,” Neil says mechanically.
“Church? You go to church. You were going to church when all this happened. If church didn’t keep you from screwing up, how in the hell you think church can help me?” I question my mental state, and wonder if it’s even healthy for us to coexist. Maybe I should ask him to leave. Then I could be free to cry and scream and curse and kick the walls with my bare feet and not feel self-conscious about letting him know how far gone he’s made me go. I want him to know I’m hurt—I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. But I don’t want things to disintegrate to the point where he thinks I’m so loopy that I’m not valuable anymore. Then what would I do? I have to get a grip.
“Want more chips, Neil? I can bring you a few bags if you’d like.” My voice is light and airy, like I’m living in Ditz City.
Neil stares at me with such a penetrating look that I stumble back into the house, grab my keys, jump in my car, and drive until my mind is regulated to the point where I know that my mental doors aren’t off the hinges.
7
* * *
Neil
To establish a strong foundation, Anya and I decide to do two things. One, I agree to pray every day for ten minutes. Praying should be the first thing I do when I get up in the morning. I won’t run to the kitchen and put on the coffee. I won’t turn on the TV and check out the weather forecast. Prayer must be number one.
“Jesus, God, Father Almighty. Take me, this broken man, and direct me in the way that I should go. I know that no matter how things look, this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. God bless my wife, my–my kids, and help us, oh God. Help me.”
I feel stupid doing this; afraid I’m wasting God’s time. I wonder if I have to be perfect before the Lord will listen to the prayers of a man like me. But then I think about the robber dying on the cross next to Jesus. This robber believed in Jesus’ goodness, figured that He hadn’t done anything wrong, yet He was about to die. And he told the Messiah, “Remember me.” And Jesus said, “This day you’ll be with me in paradise.” Well, even though I’m not a crook, I feel connected to the robber, like I’m being crucified. But because the robber believed, even if it was at the last minute, Jesus honored his faith. So even if I think my tiny bit of faith won’t warrant much, I hope it will start to lead me to a healthier place. And these days, when I get through praying, I feel better than I did before I started.
The second thing we want to do is continue carrying out the non-stressful, doable parts of our marital arrangement. Maybe if I’m more committed and give a little effort, it will yield positive results. So Wednesday afternoon I call Anya from my office.
“Hey, Anya. What were you doing?”
“Reesy’s napping and I started ironing some sheets. Why? What’s up?” She sounds tense. I’ve gotten out of the habit of calling her during the middle of the day; maybe she fears something bad happened.
“I want you to be dressed when I come home.”
“Be dressed? You sound like I walk around naked all day or something.”
I actually laugh. “No, I mean don’t be standing in the kitchen wearing either your sweats or your pj’s and house shoes. We’re going out to eat.”
“Oh, okay.” She perks up. “Sounds good. I’ll be ready.”
“Reesy, too, now.”
“Why, of course.” Her voice sounds gentle, appreciative.
We talk a couple minutes longer, then hang up. I think I’ve just increased my stock with my wife. But I don’t want it to seem like, Neil Braxton Meadows is doing something decent for a change; he’s actually carrying out one part of his marital arrangement—to take the family out to dinner twice per week.
Instead I want the arrangement to become so natural that it doesn’t seem like an arrangement anymore, but something I’m doing because I sincerely want to. I don’t want to have to refer to these papers in order to remember what I need to do. Going out to eat will be a start. Like Anya said, we have to start somewhere to get somewhere.
During dinner, I get to observe my wife and see how attractive she really is. The weight gain that she worries about has never really been an issue for me. Underneath it all, Anya is still Anya. But I have failed to make her see that no matter how many times I’ve complimented her. She always seems reluctant to accept praise, so after a while I just stopped telling her, “You look good, baby” or “I love how that perfume smells on you.” And when my wife noticed the compliments weren’t as frequent as they used to be, I’d get, “Okay, Neil, I see you’re slipping on the part of our arrangement which says…,” and her voice would taper off. I know she was embarrassed to have to say it. She didn’t want to have to refer to the things I should automatically be doing—flattering her, letting her know how much I value her. I guess we should have added a clause to the arrangement that says, Yes, Neil should compliment his wife three times per week, but when he does, his wife should believe him and not look suspicious, like he’s doing something wrong.
Give me some kind of credit. If I didn’t love Anya, I never would have married her. I don’t need to grab at any old insincere statement to keep her interested and vice versa. I j
ust wish she’d chill out and understand that because I do care about her, being the imperfect man that I am, all this arrangement stuff isn’t necessary. All the arrangement stuff could be an old memory.
We are on our way home from the restaurant. I want to stop by the post office and check my mailbox, something I rented even before I got married because I tended to change apartments a lot.
“Why you need a P.O. box, Neil? You got a girlfriend on the side?” Anya would laugh and tease me back when we met. I told her, “Just because you have a P.O. box doesn’t mean you have a girlfriend. If that’s all it took, every man in Houston would have a P.O. box.” She shut up and let me be me.
When we arrive outside the postal station, Reese and Anya want to get out the car. They linger in front of the broken stamp machine while I retrieve my mail: a sales paper addressed to Nia’s Gifts and Things, an unsolicited credit-card application, a Foley’s bill, and an issue of Black Enterprise magazine.
I’m checking out my mail when Anya comes up to me trying to see what I’m looking at. I shake my head at her, smile, and resume going through the parcels.
“Hey, Neil.” Anya and I turn toward a friendly female voice.
I clear my throat. “Hey, how’s it going?” I say to the woman.
Anya stares at the woman so hard that the woman gives Anya an unsettled look, widening her eyes, then turns more toward me. She has a baby gripping her hip, a precious little girl who’s napping. Her face is pressed against her mother’s neck and her mom is stroking her back.
“Ah, the little one must’ve had a long day, huh?” I ask.
“Yep, we went to the mall and I let her rip and run at one of those Playland thingys. You know how kids can be.”
Anya steps around and grabs my arm.
My mouth grows rigid, like I can feel my bones protruding outside my face. When Anya squeezes again, I gently remove her claws from my elbow.
“I guess I’ll see you at work tomorrow. Bye, Neil.”
“Later,” I tell her. My face is heated up. I have such an awful distaste in my mouth, I want to spit on the floor, as if that would release me from feeling uptight.
“Daddy, I’m ready to go home.”
“Go sit in the car, Reese.” I point my remote-access transmitter at my black late-model Explorer. “Get in, I unlocked the door. We’ll be there in a sec.”
Reese skips off toward the car. I turn to face Anya. Her eyes are blazing fire, which alters her appearance. I don’t recognize her anymore.
“What was that?”
“Anya, look…”
“Who was she?”
“It wasn’t who you think it was. Didn’t you notice she was holding a two-year-old girl?”
“So that baby’s not yours?”
I stare at Anya and resist the urge to smack her across her ridiculous mouth.
“Okay, okay. Well, why didn’t you introduce us, Neil? I don’t get that part.”
She’s acting so insecure I almost don’t want to be seen with her. Even though dinner was uneventful, was I imagining things or did Anya stare at every woman who came into the restaurant? Maybe she thought I was like an athlete who gets tickets to the game for both the wife and the girlfriend, and they end up sitting one row away from each other.
“Neil, can’t you see you disrespected me big-time? That hurt.”
“Anya, I didn’t disrespect you. You’re going to have to learn how to trust.”
“Trust?”
“Yes, trust,” I say, standing right in her face. “Even if I screw up every single day, if you wanna be with me, you’ll have to trust me. You’ll have to believe I’m not sticking it in every woman we pass by. I am not having an affair with every female on my job. Besides, we’re in this situation because of you, Anya, not me!”
“Oh, hell no.” She backs away like I’ve slugged her in the face. She clutches her belly and bends over, but then rises real fast.
“I should’ve known this wouldn’t work, Neil. If you wanna blame me, fine, but at least I can hold my head up in public.” Her voice cracks. “At least I’m trying to hold my head up.” Even though no one sees us, I still feel embarrassed, like everybody knows all the things I wish they didn’t know.
I step up to Anya, drop my mail on the floor, and pull her against my chest. I close my eyes and pat her back until her anger subsides and her body stops trembling.
“Anya, listen to me good.” I stare into her eyes. “I have a son and it means I’ll be interacting with the mother. That’s only natural. It doesn’t mean that I see her every day, except I will at work, and I can’t help that. But we are not out to make you miserable, my dear Anya. I am there because of the child. Think about the child.”
She wipes her dripping nostrils and looks up at me. “Okay, cool, the child. But Neil, I find it strange you’ve never brought him to the house. Maybe you could do that sometime.”
Anya removes herself from my arms and heads to the car.
I retrieve my mail from the floor and toss the junk mail into a garbage can.
Brax is squirming in some warm, sudsy bathwater. He gurgles while I take a soft cloth and wipe his forehead and soap up his arms. It feels peaceful and I enjoy looking at my son’s features: the nose he got from me, the large doe eyes he inherited from his mom. I wonder if the fact that he has a large head means he’ll be superintelligent one day.
We are holed up in Dani’s bathroom. Brax is cooing and enjoying the water that fills his tabletop portable bathtub. It’s decorated with seahorses and has a large, soft pillow to support his back. He likes sucking on the washcloth sometimes, but Dani always fusses when she sees me pretending to let the baby have his way.
I’ve finished rinsing my son and call out, “Hey, can you bring me that towel that’s on the bed?”
“What you say, Daddy?”
“The towel. Bring it here.”
“Okayyy.”
Reese runs into the bathroom huffing and puffing like she’s worn out. Her eyes twinkle while she stares at the baby. I hoist Brax out of the tub and place him on a large white body towel. He smells so fresh I want to kiss his feet. But they’re moving fast, like he’s pedaling a bicycle.
“Can I hold him, Daddy?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Maybe later,” I say.
We go to Danielle’s room. I nearly ask Reese to wait for me in the living room. I hate for her to be anywhere near Dani’s bedroom, but I’d rather keep her where I can see her. Moments ago I had to get on Reese because when she was in the kitchen she told me she washed her hands five times in a row, and she’d gotten water all over the place.
“What’s that baby’s name, Daddy?”
“Call him Braxton.”
“Braxton?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Like your middle name?”
“Uh, yeah.” I rub Brax’s thick hair with the towel and watch her at the same time.
She stares at the baby, then at me, then at the baby.
“Bring me some baby powder, okay, sweetie?”
“It makes me cough.” She starts hacking, clasps her hands around her neck, and rolls her eyes like she’s having convulsions.
“You’re so silly, Reese. Just bring it.”
“Okay, Daddy.” The pitter-patter of her feet fades toward the bathroom. I lay Brax on the bed and watch his legs kick. I go to his drawer and fish out a sleeper that has footed pants so his little toes won’t get cold.
“Having fun?”
I almost drop Brax’s sleeper on the floor.
“What are you doing here?”
Dani smiles at me and winks. I point my head toward the bathroom. Her eyes enlarge.
“Reese,” I whisper.
“Oh,” she says, and rushes out the room. I’m not ready for Dani and Reese to meet just yet. It’s the first time I’ve brought Reese over, and I asked Dani to wait it out in her car. Once she sees me leave, she knows it’s fine to return to her apartment. The baby
’s only left alone for a brief minute.
Even though certain things appear organized, I still feel uneasy. I have a need to merge my two families in a way that’s workable but haven’t figured out how to do it yet.
I dress Braxton and place him in his crib, then motion at Reese. We leave Dani’s apartment and get situated in my SUV.
“Now,” I say to Reese. “You won’t tell Mommy about this, right? This is our secret, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, I promise, I promise.”
The day that Dani returns to work, Anya calls me shortly after noon.
“Yes, Anya.”
“Neil, uh, are you sitting down?”
I stand up. “Yes, no, what’s wrong? Is it Reese?”
She cackles but says, “No, no, it’s not Reese.” She pauses. “It’s that ring.”
“The ring I bought you?” I ask.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Three-thousand-dollar one, right?”
“Was it insured, Neil?”
“Uh, no, it wasn’t.”
“Well, damn,” she says.
“What happened, Anya?”
“I–I can’t find it. Been looking for an hour. I doubt anyone stole it. It’s usually in my drawer but it’s missing. Everything else in the house seems to be in place, though.”
I wonder if she’s toying with me.
“Well, Neil, sorry to bother you. I know you’re busy. But I just wanted you to know so you can keep your eyes open. Maybe it’s right in front of my face but I just can’t see it. You know how that happens sometimes.”
“Uh, yes. Let’s hope it’s just temporarily misplaced. I mean, what else can I do?”
“Three grand is a lot of money, Neil.”
I don’t know if I should be flattered that she cares about the expense or what. But maybe I shouldn’t have even told her how much it cost. Maybe she feels I care more about the cost than the fact that she deserves some jewelry.
“Yes,” I agree, “that is a lot…”
“But?” she says.