When she hit the button for the other line, Marcus lit into her before she even had a chance to begin. About how she wasn’t there when he called earlier, about how uncooperative she’d been with the consultant, and then about the meeting and its rescheduling. On and on. Jada listened as long as she could stand it. Finally she interrupted. “Mr. Marcus, if you schedule the meeting for four o’clock, you’re welcome to have it without me. If you want me here, it’s two o’clock today or any time tomorrow afternoon.”
“Mrs. Jackson—Jada—I’m sorry, but I think you don’t understand. This isn’t a choice. In fact, you haven’t been making the right choices for a while now.” He cleared his throat. “I think it’s time for you to consider resignation.”
Jada froze. “Excuse me?” she said, but she’d heard him.
“Resignation, Mrs. Jackson. All that personal time you take. And Anne Cherril has kept a record of—”
“Of what?”
“Listen. It’s best to make this a simple resignation on your part. Less embarrassing for you and the bank.”
Jada couldn’t believe it. “And if not, are you firing me?” she asked.
“Well, let’s say I’d prefer your resignation.”
“Let’s say I’d prefer to tell you to go to hell. I’m not rolling over for you the way Michelle Russo did. I worked hard to get this job. I’ve done well. It’s been demonstrated. And if you think—”
“I think you got an uncollateralized ten thousand-dollar loan that was rushed through improperly.”
Jada felt her stomach sink, then the taste of bile in her throat. “I stopped the loan,” she protested.
“Not the point, Mrs. Jackson. Not the point at all. You improperly used a subordinate to procure a loan you couldn’t and shouldn’t have received. And did so conspiratorially. In sworn testimony, wouldn’t Mrs. Russo have to agree?”
“This has nothing to do with that, but you already know that,” Jada said. Just one more example of an uppity black woman reaping what her portion was.
Mr. Marcus began to say something, but Jada wasn’t waiting. She hung up. Then, without thinking anymore about it, she turned to the keyboard of her PC, typed, and then printed her resignation letter.
She’d give the people what they wanted. She wasn’t even that surprised. Doing this job was insane if all it did was pay Clinton and Tonya’s living expenses. What the hell. She signed the page and laid it on top of her desk. She said a quick good-bye to Michelle, then called Angie at work. “You,” she said when she heard Angie’s voice, “are a very lucky girl.”
“Why is that?” Angie asked cautiously, not knowing if this was a joke or not.
“Because you have the perfect roommate,” Jada said. “I’m depressed, single, and now I’m unemployed.”
41
In which Michelle is both dazed and confused
Michelle was folding laundry, smoothing it on top of the warm dryer, when she heard Pookie begin barking. The barking was followed by impatient whining at the back hallway door. Then Michelle heard the sound of Frank’s truck as it pulled in and she froze. For some reason—well, for a good reason—she was afraid of Frank. As he spent day after day with Rick Bruzeman or one of the other lawyers on the team, as his situation became graver, engulfing him, he’d become more and more short-tempered and unpredictable.
But his attitude wasn’t really what she feared. Michelle knew that eventually Frank would notice her discovery of his secret cache of money. She didn’t dare imagine the confrontation. The Xanax kept her from thinking about it too much. But so far, days had passed with nothing at all between them. Now, when the door outside the laundry room slammed open, Michelle froze without greeting Frank as he strode by in the hallway. Pookie didn’t greet him, either. The dog sat down hard, then actually backed behind her.
Frank didn’t call her name out, perhaps expecting to find her as he moved through the house. Or maybe he didn’t expect to find her. She stopped and listened intently. Then she heard his feet on the stairs. Pookie didn’t follow him; instead, the dog stayed with her, his dark eyes questioning her, his head tilted at an Angie. Both of them were listening. Michelle wondered if the dog was scared, too.
Michelle still stood there, one of Frankie’s T-shirts held against her chest. She didn’t know why she was so silent, nor why she wasn’t breathing, until she heard Frank’s bellow. This was it, then.
“Michelle!” he yelled, and he was clearly upstairs in one of the bedrooms—she could guess which one. His voice was so loud that Pookie actually jumped and ran into the small space between the cabinet and the wall. “Michelle!” Frank yelled again, and she heard him pounding down the stairs.
For a horrible moment, she thought about whether she could run out the door into the garage before he made it across the kitchen to her. But his truck was probably blocking her car, and the thought was insane. She had to stand up for herself and the children. She had to. She shouldn’t have put this off so long anyway. It put her a little on the defensive, when it was he who had done wrong. Michelle realized she should have told him about finding the money immediately. She should have confronted him instead of waiting for this. Why did she make such stupid mistakes? Now it would be worse. Why did she do everything wrong?
She heard her husband in the kitchen, then the back hallway. She finished folding the T-shirt, turned, and put it on top of the dryer with the other folded clothes. Without turning around, she knew that Frank had come all the way down the carpeted hall. She actually felt him standing in the doorway, as if he had some magnetic charge.
“Where is it, Michelle?” Frank said.
Michelle turned around and looked at him. His right shoulder was leaning against the door frame, his left hand was stretched to the other side. It was a menacing position, as if he was blocking her way, as if he was trapping her in this domestic little corner of their house. Don’t get yourself crazier than necessary, she thought, but Pookie whimpered from his spot beside the cabinet as if he felt the threat, too. Michelle didn’t make a sound.
“Where’s the money, Michelle?” Frank repeated.
For a moment, Michelle thought she just might try playing dumb. What the hell? Frank thought she was dumb anyway, didn’t he? He’d been counting on her blindness, her stupidity, for years. But now she couldn’t manage it. Her husband looked truly enraged, or maybe something worse. For the first time in her life, it seemed to her that Frank, her strong, fearless Frank, might himself be filled with terror. There was something glittering behind his dark eyes that she’d never seen before.
“Are you talking about the evidence?” she asked. “The evidence you hid in our daughter’s room?”
“I’m talking about the money, goddamnit. Where’s the money, Michelle?”
She tore her eyes away from his and turned back to the laundry basket, lifting out a pair of Jenna’s jeans. Jenna liked to wear them wrinkled, but sometimes Michelle pressed them anyway. Now she gathered them by the seams and began smoothing them. She was afraid to tell Frank the truth and afraid to lie. It wasn’t too late to say the police had come and taken the money, but what was the point? Frank would find out that it wasn’t true. She would have to confront him now. She would have to tell him what he had done to her, how he had deceived her and broken her heart and destroyed their family. And how she knew he had done it all and lied to her as he did it.
“Do you know how pathetic I am, Frank?” she asked. “I still can’t believe you’re guilty. I know you are, now. Once I found that blood money, that stash of yours. And I had a dream about it, too. But I still almost can’t believe it.” She shook her head. Who was this man? “How could you do it? How could you do it to me and the children? Drugs, Frank. You jeopardized everything.” Her voice was a shriek. “You ruined everything. How could you? And how could you lie about it all to me?”
She sensed him moving and turned enough to see Frank’s body convulse for a moment and then he spread out in the doorway again and smashed his forearm aga
inst the jamb. The noise made her wince and jump, dropping the jeans on the floor. She bent down to pick them up, but then she realized Frank had moved, fast as a cat, into the room, and was crouched opposite her. His right hand grabbed her left shoulder, first squeezing it, then giving it a shake. “Why don’t you ever trust me?” he asked.
She looked at him in disbelief. Was he crazy? Or did he think he could talk his way out of this, make believe it would all work out just fine? “Why did you lie?” she asked him.
“It’s not drug money.”
For a moment, Michelle was stopped by that, by his nerve. In her long nights of sleeplessness, she’d gone through every possible other explanation—savings, gambling winnings, untaxed profits, cash payments from clients, kickbacks from subcontractors. But she’d worked at a bank. She’d figured people’s incomes and mortgages. No way any of those sources could possibly add up to over half a million dollars in cash. Not unless Frank was something worse than involved with drugs on the side. The only other explanation was that he was a hit man, or something even more awful, if there was anything more awful.
“Frank, let me make this perfectly clear,” she said. “This is about how you lied to me and put me and the children and our home and our life at risk. I will not tolerate that behavior. If you had told me, you would have known I couldn’t tolerate the risk. Not for any reason.” She paused. “It was only luck that kept the police from finding that evidence. Do you know how I felt when I found it, Frank? Can you imagine how horrified I was, and how ashamed I am for believing in you? I believed you, Frank. I must have been crazy.”
Frank shook her shoulder again. “Oh, you weren’t so crazy when you were given the Lexus—all paid for, fully loaded,” he snarled. “You weren’t so crazy when we redid the kitchen, or put in the pool, or when you wanted a new piece of furniture, or when the kids needed school clothes, or party clothes, or birthday gifts. As long as I could pay for our vacations and the house and everything you ever dreamed of, you didn’t think you were crazy then. You never asked me, ‘Where is it all coming from, Frank?’ No. I was Frank the Magician and I never, not once, said no to you. It was my job not to say no to you. You mean to tell me you thought we could live this well from roofing contracts alone?”
She began to cry, but she would not back down. He made it sound as if it were all her fault, as if she had driven him to this. “I got rid of it, Frank,” she said. “I found it and I got it out of the house without getting caught and I got rid of it.”
He pinched her shoulder in a painful clinch and rose up from the crouch he was in, making her rise as well. “You’re hurting me,” she cried, and tried to pull herself out of his painful grip. His eyes were terrifying—mad.
“I need that money, Michelle. What have you done with it?”
“I burned it,” Michelle said. “I burned it to keep you safe. To keep the kids safe. Because if anyone ever saw that money, it was over. I had a dream you were behind bars, Frank. If anyone found the evidence, you’d be dead. Even your legal genius couldn’t get you out of that trouble.”
Frank stood almost stone still. “You did what?” he finally managed to ask, his voice low but more frightening than a shout. “For Christ’s sake, Michelle. Tell me you’re not that stupid.” Tears sprang into Michelle’s eyes, but he continued in a tone she’d never heard. “I need that money to pay the legal genius. You think Bruzeman would work one minute for free? I need that money to keep us going, to keep me out of jail. Please, dear Jesus, don’t tell me you burned it. Even you couldn’t be so fucking dumb. What did you do with the money, Michelle?”
His arm—the one that he had pressed across the door frame, lifted now to shoulder level as he pulled it back. Almost in slow motion, Michelle saw the hand coming toward her, but she couldn’t believe it. It was happening so fast, and yet very slowly. For a moment too long, her brain didn’t register the reality of what her eyes were seeing. So, a moment too late, she began to move her head, to tuck her chin in a little bit, but it was a mistake.
“I need the money,” he cried, and his hand hit the side of her face just above her ear with tremendous force. She felt it move slowly. As if it were a rock wrapped in sandpaper as it scraped across her upper cheek and then hit her eye. She fell across the space behind her and bumped the back of her head hard against the dryer. Pinkie, now fully mended, cushioned the blow, and she strangled the stuffed toy as she tried to scramble away, but Frank grabbed her by the front of her shirt and lifted her up. Then he hit her again, this time with his other hand, connecting with her jaw. She felt a horrible popping in her ear and she managed to scream. He was going to kill her, or get her to give him the money. She closed her eyes and got her hands up to ward off the next blow, but before it came, Frank himself screamed.
Michelle opened her eyes and looked through her fingers. Frank was bending toward one side. Pookie’s teeth were clamped on the back of Frank’s thigh and Frank screamed again, stamped his leg, and awkwardly tried to hit at the little spaniel. As shocked as she was, Michelle knew this was her opening, her only chance. Still clutching Pinkie, she rushed past him, out the laundry room door, and into the garage. She could hear Frank cursing, along with Pookie’s rare growl. She kept running. Behind her there was a high-pitched noise of pain, obviously the dog’s, and a thud that made her feel sick to her stomach.
She ran out the door of the open garage. Frank hadn’t blocked her car, and thank God she had the keys in her pocket. She got in the car and turned the ignition just as the school bus pulled to the stop across the road. Frank was running toward her, the dog behind him. “Pookie!” she screamed, and the little spaniel raced ahead and jumped into the car and onto her lap. She slammed the door shut. Breaking several laws at once, she backed into the street and across from the bus. She threw open the back door and screamed to Jenna and Frankie. “Get in the car!” she yelled. “Get in the car now!”
The two children looked at her and their faces froze in fear but thank God their legs moved and they scrambled into the backseat. “Lock the door!” she yelled to Jenna and Jenna did. Out of the side of the eye that wasn’t swollen, Michelle could see Frank limping down the driveway. She put her foot on the gas pedal and tore out, burning rubber.
She wiped her cheek as she passed the familiar houses at full speed. She glanced down at her hand to see it was covered with blood, spittle, and tears. “Mommy, what happened?” Jenna asked. “Did you fall again? Where are we going? And what happened to Pinkie?”
As Michelle turned the corner, the bloodstained stuffed animal slid across the dashboard. She couldn’t answer any of her daughter’s questions.
RING THREE
Living well is the best earthly revenge, but living well when your ex lives badly is heaven.
Nan Delano
42
Living cheek by jowl
Angie stepped out of the shower, dried herself with last night’s still-damp towel, and put on a bathrobe. Normally she didn’t bother with her robe, but since Michelle had shown up at her doorstep, bloodied and frightened, she and her kids were camped out in the living room—hence the robe. Angie never knew when one of the children would come ducking into the bathroom.
Angie decided she wouldn’t put her makeup on in the steamy room because this was the time of morning when people lined up on the other side of the bathroom door like outdoor concert-goers at port-a-potties. Sure enough, as Angie opened the bathroom door, she came face to face with the battered Michelle, who had her daughter in tow.
“Do you mind if we—”
“Go ahead,” Angie said. The truth was, she didn’t mind. For the last two days the apartment had been more like a public campground, or maybe a two-ring circus, but for Angie it beat the hell out of lying on the mattress and staring at her popcorn ceiling.
Yesterday she and Jada had gone to a mall and gotten a few basic clothes for Jenna and Frankie. They’d left their house with nothing, and Michelle had kept them with her the day before. Angie was plann
ing to drop them at school this morning, since Michelle was nervous about Frank showing up. Of course, Angie had already gotten an emergency restraining order, Michelle had had her eye checked at the emergency room, and Jada had baby-sat the kids, bribing them with some toys and books they’d picked up at the mall. Angie had moved her small television—her only television—into the living room. And the three women and the two children had spent Sunday night camped out on the floor watching the video of The Nutty Professor.
After Angie had gotten over the shock of Michelle’s battered face, and the children had gotten over both that and their surprise at being spirited away from home, it had actually evolved into a peaceful, pleasant evening. It was only now, when Angie had to dress for work, the kids had to be off to school, and virtually everyone was tired and cranky, that Angie began to feel as if she were in the Marx Brothers’ movie where a hundred people had to fit into Groucho’s ocean liner cabin. Angie smiled when she remembered she’d been afraid to get her own place, thinking she’d be lonely. Right now, this joint didn’t have wall-to-wall carpet, it had wall-to-wall beds.
She actually walked like Groucho as she bent from the waist and high-stepped over abandoned blankets, Frankie’s sleeping form, the sleeping dog, crinkled paper towels, and a few abandoned water glasses to get to the far side of the living room, which served as the kitchen. She was desperate for caffeine. But once there she found that her coffeemaker’s pot was missing. She thought for a minute; she remembered seeing it somewhere, but simply couldn’t place it, so she added the coffee and the water to the bin on top, and put her lonely mug underneath the spout to catch at least the first cup.
She looked back at the sleeping bodies littering her floor. Kids were definitely a lot of work, but she liked them. It was cozy to see Jenna and Frankie cuddled on Michelle’s lap last night, Jenna holding her stuffed toy.
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