Young Wives

by Olivia Goldsmith

  He stood up abruptly, almost tipping his chair over. Michelle caught it, but Frank used his other arm to swing his sleeve across the table, past the blot on the Formica, against the now-empty glass that had held his scotch, which his arm flung across the kitchen into a bright whirling arc. It shattered with a pop against an upper cabinet and shards of glass showered the countertop and tile floor. Michelle gasped in surprise and more than a little fear. Frank paid no attention to the wreckage or her reaction. He was standing up, holding onto the edge of the table now and staring at her as if she were the one who had just done something crazy and out of control.

  “Are you stupid?” he asked. “Is that it? Have you gone stupid on me? Is everyone I deal with stupid? Is that it?”

  “I can’t testify, Frank” was all Michelle could say. She expected him to ask why. She expected him to try to find out if it was because she was too upset or too frightened. She expected him to beg her to reassure him that she believed he was innocent. She even expected him to cry and try to hold her, to nuzzle her neck or to stroke her hair, and beg her to look at him and tell him that she still loved him. Well, she was ashamed to admit that she still did love him, but she wasn’t prepared to tell him that now. She also wasn’t prepared for what he actually did.

  “What are you talking about?” he said with a snarl that she had never heard before. “Don’t give me shit now, Michelle. No nerves, no headaches. You’re going to testify, goddamnit.”

  And then he pushed her, hard against her shoulder. The force was so great that she lost her balance and was thrown from her chair. As she fell, it seemed that the corner of the table rushed up to meet her cheek, but it didn’t stop her from winding up sprawled across the floor, her already injured cheek coming down hard on the immaculate tile. For a moment she didn’t move. She felt nothing. Not for a moment, at least. Then she felt everything—fear, pain, shame, outrage. Her cheek and her temple began to burn. Then her eye began to throb.

  In all their years together, Frank had never touched her except with affection or longing, tenderness or lust. She had seen him angry, but she didn’t think he was capable of ever physically hurting her. Never. Now she lay stunned on the floor and knew she was wrong about that, as well as all the other things she’d been wrong about.

  She felt something wet drip down her cheek past her nose. She sat up. Her right eye was already swelling and blurry, but she could see the blood on the floor. It wasn’t a lot of blood, but it was very, very red. She put her hand up to her face and brought it away, looking down at it. It was slick with her blood, the palm and fingers and even the fingernail wells covered.

  Frank took two steps toward her. She wasn’t sure if he was going to shove her or kick her or help her up. But she didn’t move. He could shoot her and it wouldn’t make a difference. Instead, though, he hunkered down beside her sprawled figure. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Michelle. You’re cut. The table cut you,” Frank said as if his hand, his arm, his shoulder and brain had nothing to do with it. “Mich, I … I’m sorry. I think you need some stitches or something.”

  Michelle wasn’t sure if he was sorry that he’d pushed or that she needed a doctor. She felt more blood drip from her chin and looked down at the floor. How often had she washed this floor, she wondered, as if it were the most sensible question at that moment.

  Frank had moved away toward the sink. She heard the water running and he came back with a stack of paper towels, bunched and wet. He tried to daub at her cheek, but she flinched and he handed her the towels. She sat up to put their coolness against her face. After a moment, she pulled the towels away and revealed a gorier mess than she had expected to see. She let the bloody clump of papers fall to the kitchen floor.

  Frank handed her another and peered at her cheek, though he avoided looking into her eyes. “It’s not a big cut, Michelle. But it’s deep. Come on. We better go to the emergency room.” He went back to the sink and made another cold compress and brought it to her. Michelle took it and pressed it hard against her cheekbone, but let it rest only softly against her swollen eye.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said and turned her back on him. Dizzy as she was, she walked out of the kitchen, leaving the bloody mess behind her.

  32

  A trial—and bank—run

  Jada and Angie had been at it for what seemed like hours. Well, actually it was hours, because Jada had arrived a little after eight in the morning and Bill had just come in with sandwiches for lunch.

  Jada looked at her watch. Ten to twelve. Jada had had to skip work today and bow out of her morning walk with Michelle to do this. She didn’t like to do either one, and of all mornings, she’d needed a walk today the most. She’d been surprised that Michelle seemed eager to cancel. “I was going to call you anyway,” she’d said. “I’m just not up to it.” It worried Jada, but she had a lot of other things to worry about.

  Now, sitting across from poor Angie, Jada had realized that rehearsing for a court appearance was just like rehearsing for a play. Well, she supposed in a way it was a play. It wasn’t about reality, but about a stranger—in this case, Judge Arnold D. Sneed—and his opinion of reality.

  In the last few hours, Angie had been totally focused on the work in front of them. Jada had occasionally been reminded of Angie’s own situation and wondered how she could do it. I guess work can get you through some tough times, if you like your job, Jada thought. Looking at Angie, she’d said a silent prayer for her, a woman alone with a sad past and a big decision in her future.

  They had spent a long time carefully going through dozens of prepared questions. Angie cautioned Jada, who kept wanting to add things, to be sure not to offer any extra information. “You can be cross-examined on anything that we introduce, and by we, I mean both of us,” Angie warned. “I’ll protect you from unfair questions, but you can’t make give-away answers. The judge is going to award custody and make a division of assets at the trial. We don’t have much time for discovery. I already tried to get an extension, but this guy Creskin is a real operator. He’s forcing an emergency hearing.”

  Jada had merely nodded, and the two of them worked together, rehearsing for forty minutes at a time and then taking little coffee breaks, though Jada didn’t drink any of the coffee. Angie kept focused on the work. Jada had been spending more time at the bank, too. After all, what else was there to do? Her empty, childless house was a misery to her. She couldn’t read, she couldn’t stand television and the shows her kids liked to watch. All of the unfinished work that Clinton hadn’t done—that he would never do now—drove her more mad than ever.

  She looked across the desk at Angie. Jada might have been wrong about Angie’s NUP. She wasn’t the spoiled brat she’d thought. What was her suffering like, alone in that small, empty apartment? Neither one spoke of it.

  It was lunchtime and Jada looked at the ham and cheese sandwich she’d ordered as if it had come from another planet. She hadn’t been able to really eat in … well, she couldn’t exactly remember how long. Every now and then she forced herself to open a can of Campbell’s Chicken ’n’ Rice soup, and then she drank it right out of the can. She looked away from the sandwich.

  “Maybe I better call the office,” she said. As if all of this wasn’t enough, she had to worry about her absences from work. She didn’t want to tell Mr. Marcus anything more than she had to about her personal life. She looked over her sandwich to Angie. “You know what’s pretty ironic?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Angie said. “Just about everything I do know is ironic. But why don’t you add your irony to my list.” Angie smiled to soften her harsh words.

  The girl had a really nice smile. Jada didn’t just pity her, she truly liked her. “Well, I was going to say it was ironic that my husband—”

  “Your future former husband,” Angie corrected, just as her mother had corrected her.

  Jada nodded. “My soon-to-be-ex-husband is trying to prove that I’m a bad mother because I work too much, while
my boss may be trying to prove I’m a bad worker because I mother too much.”

  “Ho, ho, ho,” Angie said with very exaggerated sarcasm. “What a funny irony, Jada. Let’s throw it into the women’s smelter with all the other irony we’re trying to melt down.” She gestured to the food on the desk. “Eat your sandwich,” Angie directed. Then she paused and asked, “God, did I just sound like my mother?”

  “You could do a lot worse than sound like your mama,” Jada told her. “I’m not hungry. Can I use the phone?”

  “You need privacy?”

  Jada made a gesture at all the papers and notes that were already such an invasion. “You gotta be kidding,” she said.

  She dialed her office. Anne answered and read out a list of messages. Most of them were things that Jada could deal with tomorrow. She asked Anne to fax one document, had to give her the instructions twice, and then, just as she was about to hang up, Anne added a little bonus.

  “Oh! I don’t know if it’s important, but I think that Michelle Russo called you,” Jada’s secretary said. “It sounded like Michelle, but she wouldn’t say who it was.”

  Jada realized how much she truly disliked Anne and wondered if she could get her transferred or something. She thanked her coldly and hung up, then punched in Michelle’s phone number. “Michelle?” she asked when she heard the hello, but it sounded like an unfamiliar voice.

  “Jada, I’m sorry I called you at work. I didn’t want to but …”

  “I know,” Jada said. Boy, it must be an emergency if Michelle, with all her pride, had spoken to Anne. “What’s up?”

  “When will you be done with your lawyer stuff?” Michelle asked.

  “I don’t know. In another hour or so.” She looked over at Angie, who nodded.

  “And then you see the kids?”

  “Yeah, I pick ’em up after school. But I have to get them back to Yonkers by six. What is this about, Michelle?”

  Michelle began whispering. “I can’t talk about it,” she said. “Not now, and not over the phone. But I have to ask a really big favor. Really big. And it will be okay if you say no.”

  “Okay,” Jada said, trying to sound neutral.

  “Really, you can say no, Jada. It’s just that I have no one else to ask.”

  Little goosebumps rose on Jada’s arms and the back of her neck. She had never heard Michelle sound like this. It was worse than after the bust. “Hold on a minute,” she said. She turned to Angie. “Can we be done now?” she asked.

  Angie looked down at her notes and the file. “Give me another half hour.” She picked up half of Jada’s untouched ham and cheese. “God, I haven’t been hungry in weeks,” she said. “Now, all of a sudden, I’m famished.”

  “It happens like that,” Jada said, but didn’t want to bring up the pregnancy or anything she shouldn’t.

  “You’ve got an emergency?” Angie asked.

  “Apparently,” Jada said, and spoke into the phone again. “I’ll be at your house in an hour,” she told Michelle.

  “No. No,” Michelle pleaded, her voice sounding breathless, almost panicky. “I’ll meet you at the 7-Eleven on the Post Road next to the First Westchester Bank. You know the one.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jada said. “I can be there in forty-five minutes.”

  “Thanks, Jada. And remember, you don’t have to say yes.”

  “I want you to open a safety deposit box,” Michelle told Jada. Jada was leaning back in the driver’s seat of the Volvo, parked beside Michelle’s Lexus in the 7-Eleven lot. She was trying hard not to stare at her friend’s profile. Jada knew how precious some boundaries were. “I need it to be in your name, and I want you to keep both of the keys.” Michelle took a deep breath. “You have to hide them somewhere—not in your house or in the office.”

  Jada looked at her friend. She hadn’t said anything about the sunglasses or the awful bruise under Michelle’s eye. She hadn’t asked why Michelle, always perfectly dressed, with her hair beautifully tousled and her makeup perfectly applied, looked like something that washed up on a Barbados beach after a bad storm. But she figured she knew.

  Jada had seen enough women beaten by their husbands, and enough violence in her old Yonkers neighborhood to know not to ask. But poor Michelle. Poor Michelle, who had not only worshipped Frank but had always depended on him. She looked like she was falling apart, and Jada was too good a friend to touch Michelle’s arm and try to comfort her. She knew that Michelle was using everything she had to keep it together now, and Jada wanted to help her.

  She wondered what Frank was really up to. She wondered what Michelle knew, or what she suspected. Jada was too wise in the ways of police and lawbreakers to believe that a bust and an indictment meant guilt. Frank, in her opinion, could be anything from framed to a Mafia hit man and she wouldn’t be surprised. But she could tell Michelle was more than surprised. She was shell-shocked, and had been for days. Now, though, something had changed. “I have to ask you a question, Michelle,” Jada said, her voice as calming as she could make it.

  “You can say no,” Michelle said quickly. “I totally understand. It was a lot to ask and it’s okay, Jada. Really it is.”

  “Michelle, I’m not saying no. I just need to ask you if there are drugs in that bag. You know I’m not trying to insult you, and you know I’ll believe what you say. You understand why I have to ask that.”

  Michelle’s lip trembled. “I know,” she said. She reached across the seat of the Volvo and took Jada’s hand. “I promise you, it’s not. It’s not drugs. But it’s stuff I don’t want Frank to have access to.”

  “Okay,” Jada nodded. She knew she was taking a risk, but she trusted her friend. “So I’ll drive alone next door to First Westchester—our biggest competitor, I might add—take out a large box, and come back to you here.”

  Michelle nodded, and when she did, Jada could see that the bruise wasn’t just on her cheek, but that the eye behind her glasses was swollen and angry-colored. “Michelle, you don’t have to stay there,” Jada told her in a low, sweet voice. “You can stay with me.”

  “It was an accident,” Michelle said. “It really was. And it won’t happen again.”

  Jada didn’t believe the first part, but something in Michelle’s tone made her believe the second. Jada took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. Oh, Lord, there was a whole world of sadness out there, and at that moment it felt to Jada as if she and Michelle were drowning in it. Keep us afloat, Lord, she prayed silently. Then she let go of Michelle’s hand. “Buy yourself some wrap-around sunglasses,” she told Michelle. “I’ll be back here in about twenty minutes.”

  When Jada picked up the children, they weren’t interested in talking about school, Tonya Green, their grandma, or any other subject except going home. Jada, already worn out from the legal workout and the frightening episode with Michelle, didn’t have her best coping skills available. All she wanted was to kiss them, hold the baby, smell Kevon’s delicious boy-smell, and do Shavonne’s hair. Touch them. Love them. But the kids had another plan. “Can we go home now, Mama?” Kevon asked the very second he climbed into the car.

  Jada strapped Sherilee in beside him. Of course it wasn’t possible, but she didn’t want to spoil the few hours she had with them immediately. “Maybe later,” she said, though she knew the maybe was a lie. There was no maybe about it. “Who would like ice cream?” she asked as she got into the driver’s seat.

  “I wanna go home,” Shavonne said. “I don’t care about ice cream.”

  Jada turned to her daughter. “Something very hard is happening now, Shavonne,” she said.

  “Yeah. You and Daddy are going to get a divorce, right?”

  It was the first time Jada had heard one of the children say that. “Did Daddy talk with you?” she asked.

  “Grandma did,” Shavonne said, and then her face crumpled up in a way that was unbearable for Jada to watch. “I just want to go home,” Shavonne said.

  “Look,” Jada responded, “I only
have a little bit of time with you before dinner. I—”

  “Let’s have dinner at home,” Kevon said. “I wanna have dinner at home.”

  “Hey kids, work with me,” Jada told them. “We’ll go home for a little while, but then I promised Grandma that you’d have dinner over there.” Jada didn’t add that she would leave them at that point, or that the court wouldn’t allow them to stay with her, or that she was fighting to keep their home right now. She wondered if she was doing the right thing. Once she had been so sure of herself, so positive that everything she did was right. Now, between her morning with Angie and her strange errand with Michelle and this drive with the children to the house, she wasn’t sure of a single move she made.

  It was already dark when she pulled up to her mother-in-law’s in Yonkers. Sherilee was the first one to begin crying, but with that encouragement, Kevon joined her almost immediately. “I don’t want to go back there,” Shavonne said. “Not even just for dinner.”

  “It’s not going to last long,” Jada said. “I have a lawyer and we’re trying to get everything straightened out, so I’ll just leave you here and I’ll see you in two days.” Jada turned to the backseat. “Shh, babies, shh,” she said. When she turned back to Shavonne, her daughter’s face was a mask of fury and betrayal.

  “You mean we’re not going back home after dinner?” she asked.

  Sherrilee’s wails had become overwhelming. Kevon was unbuckling his seatbelt. Jada was forced to get out of the car and lift Sherilee from the backseat, and Shavonne met her on the sidewalk. Then there were lights, and Jada looked up to see Clinton with the video camera and the spotlights on, videotaping them as if this were a happy Christmas morning. But Shavonne paid no attention.

  “You lied,” she said. “I hate you.” And she ran toward the house and Clinton. Sherilee cried even louder, her little body stiff against Jada’s. Kevon had put his hands up to his eyes to avoid the harsh light and perhaps to avoid looking at her. She shouldn’t have taken them home. It had made it worse, not better.