Young Wives

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “Well. Yes. Well, of course,” the woman said, and named a higher figure.

  Michelle nodded, and the saleswoman turned to the safe to take out the cash.

  By the time Michelle got home, she was as limp as a three-day-dead sea scallop. As she walked up to the door of the apartment, Michelle felt good for the first time in weeks and weeks. Living with Angie and Jada felt a little bit like being in a camp bunk—not that Michelle had ever lived in one, and not that dorms allowed children and dogs.

  But Michelle had never had a roommate except for Frank. Despite what they were going through, there was something nice about opening the door and finding who had been shopping, if anyone had started dinner, or what new outrage Jada or Angie had confronted at work. Michelle had bought filet mignon and was going to make her famous twice-baked potatoes as a treat. Unless, of course, Jada had already made macaroni and cheese. She was humming to herself as she opened the door.

  “Mommy! Mommy! Auntie Angie got a party invitation and she doesn’t want to go,” Frankie said as Michelle got in the door. She put the groceries down on the counter.

  Jenna was sitting on one of the dinette chairs, her eyes big. “Shut up, Frankie,” she said. “It isn’t a party. It’s a wedding.”

  Michelle put down her purse and took off her coat. Had they gotten weddings and divorces confused? “I like to get invitations to parties,” Frankie said. “So why is Auntie Angie crying?”

  “Where is she?” Michelle asked. Jenna indicated the bedroom with a twist of her chin. Michelle knocked on the closed door, but didn’t even wait for an answer before she walked in. It was worse than she expected. Angie was lying on the bed, her face buried in the pillow, and Jada was sitting next to her. Angie’s sobs were muffled, but not enough for the children not to hear, so Michelle quickly closed the door behind her.

  Jada looked up and shook her head. She held out an envelope addressed to Angie. It was cream-colored vellum and postmarked Boston. It looked like trouble. Michelle pulled out the contents. There was a small clipping from a newspaper announcing the engagement of Reid Wakefield III to Lisa Emily Randall. But it was worse than that. Because there was also a wedding invitation—an invitation to their wedding next summer. It was engraved, and even Michelle, who had sent photocopied invitations to her own wedding, knew engraving when she saw it. She moved to the bed and sat on the other side of Angie. “Holy shit” was all she could say. Then she thought about it for a moment. “Who sent this?” she asked.

  “It’s Lisa’s handwriting,” Angie said, coming up for air.

  “I can’t believe it,” Jada said. “She’s DAS as well as mean.”

  “Are you even legally separated?” Michelle asked, staring at the engagement announcement.

  Angie raised her shoulders in a shrug at Michelle. “Maybe three hundred miles makes it legal,” she said with a weak smile, wiping her face with the Kleenex Jada handed her.

  “Maybe I’m dumb and stupid,” Michelle said, “but how can these two shit birds announce their engagement if you’re not even divorced?”

  Angie shook her head. “It’s not illegal,” she said.

  “Spoken like a true lawyer,” Jada said. “It’s not illegal. Just heartless, insensitive, immoral, and pathetic.”

  “I’m going to have to go up there to finalize it.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you. I’d never give that bitch the satisfaction of a legal wedding,” Michelle declared. “Don’t agree. Don’t give him a divorce.”

  “Forget about it,” Jada said. “It’s Massachusetts, Cindy, not some fairy tale. Kennedys get annulments the way other people get mail. And since Reid’s a lawyer …”

  “Reid’s a lying ugly male pig, but he’s a LUMP with clout,” Angie agreed.

  “What does CLOUT stand for?” Michelle asked.

  “It isn’t an acronym, it’s a way of life,” Jada told her.

  45

  In which Angela drops her dead camel

  A few hours later, the three friends were lying on Angie’s bed, still talking over the horrors of this latest saga.

  “Look, it’s in bad taste, but I want this divorce to go through as quickly as possible, too. I mean, it’s not like I want to get him back,” Angie said.

  “No, sisterfriend, but you ought to want to get back at him. Contest it. Delay it. Make him work for it. And make that little creep he’s about to marry sweat it out for a year or two,” Jada suggested.

  “How did he get the case called so quickly?” Michelle asked.

  “If the Wakefields don’t have connections in Boston, who does?” Angie asked, stretching. Her back ached and her jaw throbbed. “I guess I’ll just do it. Get it over with. Put it all behind me.”

  Jada patted Angie’s bubble belly. “I’m afraid you’re putting it all in front of you, dear. Have you thought of what he might say about a Wakefield the Fourth?”

  Angie’s eyes opened wide. “I don’t really show that much, do I? I mean I know I look awful, but don’t I mostly look fat?” She felt herself going cold with fear. “I don’t want him to know anything about this. I couldn’t bear it. I don’t want to have to deal with Reid and his family for the rest of my life.”

  “Well then, you better get up there and move it along,” Jada advised. “Who’s your lawyer?”

  “I guess I’ll be my own lawyer,” Angie said.

  “Hey, forget about that,” Michelle said. “What is that expression? ‘A man who serves as his own attorney has a fool for a client.’”

  “I’m not a man,” Angie said.

  “But you are a fool,” Jada told her. “And you can’t go up there alone.”

  “We could come,” Michelle volunteered.

  “I’d be willing to, but I’m not a lawyer, either.” Jada looked at Angie. “Take Michael Rice, why don’t you. He’s not DDG, but he’s kinda hot, in a slow-burning way.”

  “He’s also VRD,” Angie said, throwing the made-up acronym back at crazy Jada, who raised her brows. “Very Recently Divorced,” Angie said. “Even I know enough to keep away from men who are newly separated.”

  “I think you should call your mother,” Jada said. “And maybe your dad.”

  Angie laughed. “You don’t understand,” she said. “My parents aren’t like yours. If I went up with them, we’d have to relive their divorce.” Angie was silent for a few minutes. Jada had told her all about her mother and father and their visit. In a way, Angie was envious. Jada’s parents might not be sophisticated in the ways of the law, but they were united and supportive. Not that her mother and father weren’t supportive—it was just that they got so involved in arguing with each other.

  “You can’t go up there alone, Angie,” Jada said. “We just won’t let you.”

  It could have been a very civilized event, Angie thought. Reid looked as perfect as ever and he actually smiled and came over to Angie as she arrived. “Thanks for responding so quickly,” he said. Then her father walked into the courtroom behind her.

  “Shut up, you son-of-a-bitch,” he said. “If you say one more word to my little girl, I’ll twist your nuts off.”

  “You shut up, Anthony,” Natalie said. “Or I’ll twist your nuts off. This is a court of law.” Then she looked at Reid. “You have got to be one of the more pointless living scumbags in recent history,” she said. “Get on the other side of the courtroom and stay where you belong until this is over. We’re not doing this for your convenience, we’re doing it for Angie.”

  Angie, Natalie, and Tom, the lawyer Natalie knew, sat down together. Anthony was resentful that he had to sit behind them and twice asked to come up to the table. Twice her mother denied him. The two of them had bickered all the way up to Boston. The only good thing about it was, it had distracted Angie from what was coming next.

  But now she was here and could look across at her husband. It still amazed her how attractive he was, and how unaware he seemed to be of the damage he’d done. Unconsciously, Angie put her hands over her belly. Sitt
ing across from the man she had married and planned to spend her life with, hearing but not hearing the lawyers drone, she thought of how very odd it was to be in the same room with the father of her unborn child. A man who didn’t even know about the son or daughter she was carrying. Somehow all of it seemed surreal, a feminine Kafka novel.

  Angie definitely didn’t like the feeling of boredom combined with horror. It was kind of like what she’d thought the Basketball Hall of Fame might be like. The divorce proceedings didn’t take long. Neither did breaking a bone or removing a tooth, but the sense of loss and the pain was just as acute. It was odd for Angie to be the client, not the lawyer. And it was equally odd to realize that love, or whatever it was that Reid had felt for her, could be there one day and gone the next. What could she count on?

  What she could count on was that Anthony and Natalie began bickering the moment they all left the courtroom together. And the bickering continued in the taxi, at the airport, and boarding the shuttle. Angie finally turned to them. They were arguing about whether she should sit with Anthony or with Natalie, because the two of them didn’t want to sit together.

  “This one’s an easy one,” Angie said. “Thank you for your support, but I’m sitting by myself. I might as well get used to it,” she said. Then, in silence, the three divorced members of the Romazzano family boarded the plane.

  46

  In which Jada gets her parents back

  Even though Jada left early, the traffic to JFK had been backed up at the Whitestone Bridge and she was late getting to the airport. She parked and walked what seemed like miles to the baggage claim area for her parents’ flight, but she realized she must be very late—the area was virtually deserted, with just a few forgotten or abandoned suitcases lined up in the center of the floor, her parents standing beside them with their own battered baggage, looking equally abandoned. Even from a distance, Jada was surprised at how much more gray there was in her mother’s hair, how smaller and more stooped her father looked.

  These people had worked hard all their lives, had been good parents, good church-goers, and good to one another. Now, Jada would reward them by letting them get a look at the shattered pieces of her and their grandchildren’s lives. Perhaps this had been a terrible mistake on her part. She shouldn’t have involved them.

  But it was too late for an attack of conscience now. “Mama,” Jada called across the empty terminal and rushed up to embrace the older woman. Jada was a lot taller than her mother, so she bent a little at the knee. It allowed her mother to reach around her shoulders and give her a proper hug.

  “Oh, don’t you look like a warm stove on a cold night,” her mother said, reaching up to pat her face. “We thought maybe you’d forgotten us.”

  Her father, as always, stood a step behind his wife, patiently waiting for his turn. Jada kissed him and he smiled with pleasure, then hugged her, and looked up into her eyes. “I’m sorry for your troubles, daughter,” he said.

  Jada almost burst into tears at that, but wouldn’t let herself. Oh, it felt good to be with people who had taken care of her, who knew her when she was four, and when she was nine, and when she was eleven, and when she was a very bad teenager. “I’m sorry I was late for you,” she apologized. “There was some kind of accident on the way and the traffic was horribly backed up.”

  “Anyone hurt?” her father asked.

  Jada almost smiled, remembering in a flash how different island people were. “I’m not sure,” she admitted to her father.

  “Well, let’s say a prayer for them just in case,” her mother suggested. They did, and then gathered the bags to go.

  “Was it a good flight?”

  “As good as being thirty thousand feet in the air can be,” her mother told her.

  “I’m afraid the car is parked way on the other side of the lot.”

  “That’s all right,” her daddy assured her. “We’re used to walking.”

  But they weren’t used to the weather. It wasn’t a particularly cold day, but the temperature seemed to attack and diminish both of them. By the time they got to the Volvo, her mother was shivering and her father’s face (he’d insisted on carrying both of the big bags) looked ashen. “Are you all right?” she asked him.

  “Be a damn sight better when you put some heat in the car.”

  “Benjamin! You watch your language,” her mother scolded. Jada got in and turned the temperature control to max heat. It would be too stuffy for her, but it was the only part of the Volvo that worked perfectly. Before they were back on the highway, her parents, like delicate plants brought into a hothouse, had bloomed again.

  “Now tell us again, now that we’re not paying overseas telephone rates, how all this here sad business happened to you,” her father suggested.

  Jada, watching the road ahead, hated the idea of letting them know just how bad it was, but that’s why they had come, after all. And so she launched into the story, sparing them and herself nothing. Her father asked a few questions, but her mother was silent, though she let a few gasps and tooth-sucking noises escape her. The recitation got them past the BQE and the Van Wyck, past LaGuardia and almost to the Westchester county line. Then they were all silent for a little while, taking it in.

  “Well, what I can’t understand,” her mother said, “is how your mother-in-law could let her son behave that way. Benjamin, I think you should go and box Clinton’s ears. What all could make a man behave that way?”

  In the rearview mirror, Jada could see her father shaking his head. “When you never had no daddy you don’t know how to behave like one,” he said. It was as critical as he ever got.

  “No kind of excuse. A person can always learn,” her mother said. “How he could take his two daughters away, his daughters who need their mama …?”

  “What kind of example is that for his son? Showing the boy how to be no-account trash?” Jada’s father asked.

  Her mother turned to her. “We will get to see them, won’t we?”

  Jada didn’t have the heart to tell them that she didn’t know yet, that she’d asked Ms. Patel and that her attorney—who was also her roommate—had called the judge to find out. She had another bit of news to tell them, as well. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay in a motel,” she said.

  “Why is that? Clinton won’t let us in the house?”

  “Clinton won’t let me in the house,” Jada explained, and told them the last bit—about how she had lost her home as well as her job and the payments she was supposed to make. Both of her parents were silent for a moment.

  “Why, that’s just plain crazy,” her mother said. “So where is it that you’re living?”

  Jada explained about Angie and the apartment. Also about Michelle, along with a brief rundown of her problem. “They both hooked up with LUMPS—Lying Ugly Male Pigs,” Jada said. “And they’re both white girls.”

  “Has everybody in this country gone crazy?” her father asked. “Clinton wants you to support him? And he takes away your home and your children? Don’t these men know how to be men?”

  “It doesn’t seem so,” Jada told him.

  Jada’s parents had settled into the inexpensive motel room. They had, thank the Lord, gotten to see their grandchildren, and now they were just finishing up the remains of a big Bajan dinner that Jada and her mother had cooked for Angie, Michelle, and her children. It was hard to imagine squeezing even two more people into Angie’s tiny apartment, but that was one thing that hadn’t bothered her parents, though Jada had to smile at their discomfort with Pookie.

  Now, after cleaning up the dishes, both Angie and Michelle had retreated to the two bedrooms with the kids, leaving Jada in the living room with her parents. It was odd how over the last month or two Jada had finally become truly color-blind: her friends were her friends and the people who didn’t wish her well were as often her race as any other.

  “They’re nice girls,” Benjamin said with approval as he brought their coffee cups over to the sink and the
n settled himself, as best he could, on one of the tiny dinette chairs.

  “They’re good girls and they’re good friends to you,” her mother said. She said nothing, Jada noticed, about them being white. “I’m surprised, though, that the women from the church didn’t rise to the occasion. Didn’t any of them offer to help you out?”

  “I think,” Jada began, “they were … almost happy to see me fall. It proved that you couldn’t do what I did. Not without being punished.” It was the only way Jada could understand the little support she’d been offered. “And Tonya Green is a member. I think long before I saw this coming, she managed to put in a lot of bad words on my behalf.”

  “And they believed her? Well, if Reverend Marsh was still there, he wouldn’t listen to some Magdalene woman,” her mother said.

  “But he’s been gone a long, long time,” Jada told her mother. “I don’t even know this preacher very well. He’s only been there two years, and with work and the children and all I haven’t been as active as I once was. I didn’t get to really know him.”

  Her mother looked up from her lap and—for the first time since she’d arrived—she criticized her daughter. “Well, that was a mistake on your part,” she said. “How can you not know your preacher, and for over two years? Part of your work must always be helping the congregation. The poor will always be among us.”

  The words weren’t said harshly, but even so they brought a sting to Jada’s eyes. How could she explain to her mother about how busy she’d been? About how draining the job at the bank was, about taking care of the house, and paying the bills, and having to dress right, and tutoring the children and all the rest of it?