“Can I replace that for you?” he said before he’d even realized he’d formed a question in his mind.
There was no answer from her, just a smile and a nod of her head.
She was intoxicating from the beginning, had him doing things he’d never thought he’d do, kissing her in places he swore he’d never kiss. Giving her money whether she asked for it or not, buying gifts and sending flowers.
Meeting her after work and sometimes for lunch and playing taxi when she went out with her friends and needed a ride.
Buying her a cell phone and paying off those three little credit card bills that were preventing her from getting that new Jeep she wanted, the one he cosigned for.
Grammy would have called him a fool, a goddamn fool, if she knew. She would have said that that woman had put something on him.
Looking back, Donovan would have believed just that. She must have put something on him, some type of mojo, maybe in his food or down between her legs.
There had to be something, because that other side of him—that bruised and broken part of him that Clyde had left behind, the piece of himself that stopped believing in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and happy endings, that little-boy bit of himself that trusted no one—didn’t even warn him.
He’d circled the block twice to be sure. There were plenty of black Cherokee Jeeps, but only one with fuchsia-colored iridescent letters across the back windshield that spelled, JOY.
It was a quarter to two in the morning and the traffic that moved up and down Atlantic Avenue was sparse.
Donovan was on his way back from Hempstead, a Saturday-night dinner with his sister and her husband that had led to four games of blackjack and then a ten-minute conversation in the driveway.
He slowed his car down when he saw the vehicle sitting half on and half off the sidewalk beneath the overpass. Came to a complete stop when he was close enough to read the letters in the back window. He cut the lights, turned off the ignition, and exited his car.
The vehicle had to have been stolen. Snatched for a joyride and then dumped there, he told himself.
He crept up along the passenger side of it.
He’d spoken to Nina at eight, thought that maybe he would drop by after dinner, drop by for some dessert, he’d said.
“I’m having the girls over. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She’d kissed the receiver three times before hanging up.
Nina was home, sipping wine, playing music, and laughing with her girlfriends; that’s why she didn’t hear the car alarm, he reasoned.
He pressed his face against the tinted glass window. The keys were dangling from the ignition, and the radio was on.
That’s strange, he laughed to himself as he grabbed the door handle.
Nina loved a slow fuck. “Fuck me slow and deep,” she’d whisper in his ear when they made love. It made his blood boil just to hear her say it. “Harder, deeper,” she’d demand, and claw his back with her fingernails.
Sometimes she’d be on top, touching herself for him, running her tongue across her lips and tilting her head so far back on her neck that he could feel the feather-like ends of her hair brushing against his thighs.
And there she was now, in the same position she’d taken on top of him, making the same demands of someone else.
He’d probably been watching them for a good thirty seconds before the man Nina was on top of opened his eyes and looked dead into Donovan’s face.
“Fuck off!” he’d yelled, and the sudden blast of his voice snapped Nina out of her trance, and now Donovan had two sets of eyes glaring at him.
Donovan calmly closed the door and walked back to his car.
For a moment, while the car was still in park, his foot drumming the gas pedal, Clyde was laughing in his head and screeching, Do it, Cappy! Do it!
The engine revving, revving—he wanted to do it, wanted to slam into the back of that Cherokee, that JOY vehicle, but that would be cutting his nose off to spite his face, and besides, he thought as he threw the car into drive and sped off, Nina was still on top of him, and the impact might actually give her a thrill.
He never asked Nina why. Just went on ahead and had the Jeep repossessed, changed his telephone number. He had Grammy play gatekeeper when Nina came to the house wanting to explain, needing to talk.
“If you come here again, I’ll call the cops on you,” Grammy warned her.
He didn’t tell anyone what had happened, but Grammy knew that whatever it was it had to be bad, because she hadn’t seen her grandson’s eyes look so vacant since that steamy summer when he turned nine years old.
So no, he didn’t have a woman, not at the moment, and he tried hard not to feel bad about that when his relatives teased him.
“You’re thirty-six years old, ain’t you sowed them oats yet?”
He had sowed his oats years ago, and at this stage in his life had no desire to share his bed or his body with just anyone. There were too many diseases out there, and the increase in AIDS had just about wiped out his libido altogether.
He hadn’t been with a woman for over a year, and he was content for now with positioning the extra pillow just so against his back on nights when his king-size bed reminded him that he had no queen.
* * *
The trip would be a celebration of sorts, Campbell and her closest friends, Luscious, Macon, and her mother.
Everyone she cared about and loved.
But it hadn’t come together quite the way she expected.
Laverna had plans to be in Aspen. Anita, with her mother in Tulsa. Porsche couldn’t leave the kids, and she couldn’t afford to take them, and no, she wouldn’t allow Campbell to pay for them, absolutely not!
Luscious was afraid to fly, and Millie couldn’t get the time off work, so that just left Macon.
She was overdue for a trip, a little rest and relaxation. She had done ten showings in seven different states in the past three months. Touring, keeping up with the increasing demand for special-order collages, and looking for a house had taken a toll on her both mentally and physically.
Campbell had been thrown into a whole new world, one that was different from what she expected. Yes, the grass always seemed greener on the other side, until you actually got there and realized that it would be if it wasn’t for the bullshit.
The life she was leading now had been a fantasy she’d allowed herself to lapse into in order to feel better about herself when she happened upon people she’d known as a child, some man or woman who had married into a well-to-do family or had acquired an Ivy league degree and was now making a six-figure salary. They all seemed to have Park Avenue smiles, high-powered jobs, and sixty-thousand-dollar vehicles that they parked in their Nassau County driveways.
She came across them quite often at the ticket counter. At least one a week, traveling on business, or worse yet, pleasure, suntans still fresh on their skin from the last jaunt across the waters.
She tried not to hate them when they glanced and saw that her ring finger was empty but still asked, “Aren’t you married yet?”
She wanted to tell them that she’d had plenty of chances—well, at least two—but she wanted to get married for love and not convenience. She wanted to reel off the names of the men who had dropped to their knees and asked her for her hand forever, for always, and for love; but she’d just smile and say, “No, not yet.”
Because she’d been asked, but the love was one-sided, and she needed it to be all the way around.
And those old schoolmates, those people she tried so hard not to hate, they’d give her a pitiful smirk or that Don’t worry, it’ll be all right smile that made Campbell feel two feet tall.
And now she was at the place, that golden peak that everyone strived to get to. And shouldn’t she be happy? Yes, she should have been, but as the saying goes, Fame and money ain’t nothing if you have no one to share them with.
Feeling bad, sad, and empty is what propelled her into the American Express travel agency. She had gone in with
the full intention of just flipping through a brochure, but she walked out with two first-class tickets to Jamaica and two oceanfront suites at Beaches Negril.
It was a down payment on a house. That’s how much she just charged on her credit card. Merely looking at all those zeros made her want to puke.
But didn’t her agent Dottie assure her that she deserved it, that the collages were selling like hotcakes and that two major publishing companies had inquired about using her artwork on book jackets?
Hadn’t high-profile entertainers already commissioned her to do pieces for their summer and winter retreats?
What was ten thousand dollars when you had ten times that sitting in the bank and more constantly rolling in?
Millie had looked at her like she was crazy. “What the hell are you going to do in Jamaica during Christmas?”
“Lie on the beach and drink piña coladas.”
“Macon too?”
“Yes.”
Millie was distraught. “We’ve never spent a Christmas apart.”
It was true—they hadn’t spent a Christmas apart, not one—but Christmas had become a day filled with tension and too much wine.
Campbell wanted to start a different Christmas tradition, one that didn’t end with Millie stumbling drunk to the front door, swinging it open, pointing to the spot where they stood, mother and daughter, adulteress and bastard child, and screaming about Fred destroying her life.
She couldn’t have another Christmas like that. She wouldn’t.
So she and Macon spent the holidays lying beneath the Caribbean sun and listening to the stories the palm tree leaves brushed against their trunks and the songs the wood doves cooed at dawn and dusk, and when the clock struck twelve announcing the arrival of the new year, Campbell hugged her daughter tight in her arms and reminded herself of everything she had in her life to be thankful for and tried not to think of that one thing she didn’t.
* * *
“He called twice,” Millie said as she examined the bottles of rum Campbell had brought back.
“Who did?” Luscious asked as she bit into a piece of the coconut candy Macon had given her.
“Donovan,” Campbell said, and looked down at the piece of paper that Millie had written his name and number on.
“Well, do you know him?” Millie asked, and fingered the material of the T-shirt that had Jamaica written across it in small aqua and pink letters. “You look like you trying to figure out who he is.”
Campbell supposed she was a little mystified. It had been close to a month, and although she had tried to toss him out of her mind, he had haunted her since the first night they met.
“I know who he is. It’s just that it’s been awhile since we’ve spoken.”
“Well, I told him you were off in Jamaica.”
“You always giving out too much information. Suppose Campbell didn’t want anybody to know where she was?”
Millie made a face at Luscious and then looked back at Campbell. “Well, was it a secret?”
“No, Mom, it wasn’t.”
Millie stuck her tongue out at Luscious. She was in a playful mood. She was happy to have her daughter and granddaughter back home.
“See you later!” Macon yelled before rushing out of the front door.
“Can’t that child stay put?” Millie complained. “She ain’t been back in this country a good three hours, and already she’s off running the streets. Did she even unpack?”
“Leave her alone. She’s young; that’s what young people do. She unpacked enough to give me these coconut candies,” Luscious laughed.
“Which you don’t need,” Millie threw back at her.
“She misses her friends. She’s back to school next week,” Campbell interjected, but her eyes never left the paper, and her voice was barely a whisper.
Millie and Luscious exchanged glances.
“So, you going to call him or just stare at the message until he calls back?” Millie asked, and pulled a chair from the kitchen table.
“He’ll call again if he’s really interested,” Luscious said, and popped another candy in her mouth.
Millie shot her a look. “The man has called twice. What more proof do you need to have to know that he’s interested?”
Luscious just shrugged her shoulders.
Campbell stuffed the message into the back pocket of her jeans. “Anybody else call?” she asked, trying to pretend that the small piece of paper meant nothing at all.
“Uhm, that real estate woman—Sierra, Sienna?” Millie fumbled with the name.
“You looking for a house, baby?” Luscious asked, her eyes flying open.
“Well, kind of.”
Luscious narrowed her eyes and turned to Millie. “You ain’t tell me nothing about that.” And then back to Campbell: “You the one supposed to tell me to begin with.”
Campbell had two too many mothers to answer to. “I guess I just forgot,” she said, and her thoughts drifted back to the message. Twice, huh? she thought to herself, and a small smile pressed against her lips.
Again, Millie and Luscious exchanged looks.
“Baby, I think you got a touch of sunstroke down there in Jamaica,” Luscious said.
* * *
She waited three more days, waited until the sun-scorched skin on her nose and forehead had peeled away completely, before she called him.
His hello was soft, and she’d thought that maybe she’d woken him from a nap; it was just past two on a Sunday afternoon.
“Hey, how you been?” he muttered, and then clearing his throat and speaking more clearly he asked, “How was Jamaica?”
There was never a lag, not one uncomfortable pause in that two-hour exchange. There had been laughter and questions, and by the time Campbell said goodbye, she was curled up and warm beneath her comforter, a big smile plastered across her face, and his “I’ll come by tomorrow” still ringing in her ears.
He said he would be there by four, but by six he still hadn’t shown up. Millie didn’t say anything; she just watched her daughter move from the kitchen to the window, to the couch, and then back to the window.
The nervous energy that was spilling out of Campbell put Millie’s nerves on end, and she got up and went to her room.
When the phone rang at seven, Campbell was in the bathroom wiping off her lipstick and thinking about tying up her hair for the night.
The anticipation and then the disappointment she’d experienced over the past few hours had drained her. And now she just felt tired.
She heard Millie tell the person on the end of the phone to hold on. “Campbell,” she called from her bedroom, “pick up the phone.”
Campbell gave herself one last look in the mirror before clicking off the light and walking into her bedroom and picking up the phone. Millie didn’t say it was Donovan, so Campbell thought it must be one of her friends.
“Hello,” she said, her voice less than enthusiastic.
“Hey, what’s up?” the voice asked.
Did her heart skip a beat? Was that a stupid grin spreading across her face?
“Hey you,” she responded, and her voice climbing to a pleasant level.
“Sorry I didn’t get there on time. I got caught up at work. Is it too late to come by now?”
“No, no.” Campbell’s response was quick, and she kicked her ankle for sounding too damn eager.
“Okay, I’m right outside.”
“Okay,” Campbell said, and moved to peek out the window. He was right outside, parked directly across the street from the house.
Campbell was down the stairs and at the door before he’d even taken the first step.
“Hi,” she sang when she swung the door open.
He was filthy. Pants caked with oil, the Timberland boots he wore covered in grime.
Donovan saw the look on her face. “Work,” he said. “Someone threw a television in the middle of the track. I had to stop the train, get out, and move it.” He paused and looked down at his pant
s. “It’s nasty down on those tracks,” he added, and then laughed.
Campbell nodded.
“I won’t come in. I can’t even sit down, I’m so dirty. I just wanted to see you and say hello.” And then that wide bright smile. “You look good. I like your tan,” he said, and Campbell couldn’t help but blush.
“Oh, come on in. Don’t worry about it.” She stepped aside to let him in while her mind worked on what she would have this man sit on.
Donovan stepped into the hallway and then followed Campbell into the living room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen.
“This is a great house. I love all of this old woodwork; they don’t make houses like this anymore,” he remarked as he stopped to run his finger across the intricate designs of the mantelpiece.
“Here,” Campbell said and pulled the wooden chair from the kitchen table. “I don’t think your clothes will hurt this chair.”
“Thanks,” Donovan replied, and sat down.
“Can I get you something to drink, eat, or both?” She was nervous again. Under the bright lights of the kitchen she felt like she was the sole performer on a large empty stage.
“No, thanks,” Donovan said, and pushed the sleeves of his sweatshirt up to his elbows before resting his arms on the table.
Campbell remained standing, the small of her back pressed against the sink. The slight hum of the refrigerator was suddenly too loud. “Let me turn on the radio,” she blurted and scurried from his view.
She felt like an idiot. Like a sixteen-year-old on her first date. He was just a man. Just a man, she told herself as she fumbled with the dials on the stereo system.
Donovan simply shook his head.
Maxwell’s “Fortunate” came blaring out of the speakers. Campbell turned the sound down two notches and came back to the kitchen.
“I love this song,” Donovan said, and began to rock his head to the music.
“It is a great song.” Campbell reluctantly took the seat across from him. “Are you sure I can’t get anything for you?”
Donovan didn’t respond; he just waved his hand. “Love songs are my favorite. What about you?” He looked directly at her when he asked the question, and Campbell was caught like a deer in headlights when she peered into his eyes.
Loving Donovan Page 15