by Mary Monroe
My mother rambled on for another few minutes about how cute Janet and her homely fiancé looked together. She ended the conversation by telling me, “I’m glad you done found somebody else. Matthew sounds nice. You say he’s a parole officer? Well, you better not do nothing to make him mad. Next thing you know, he’ll be working with the law to put you in jail. Your brother’s on some new medication, so maybe there’s hope for him to experience true love one of these days. I don’t care how afflicted somebody is. They need love, too. I hope Seth will realize that someday.”
Mama’s words rang in my ears. The fact that Janet had found love, and Matthew had made it clear that my family situation didn’t even faze him, brought tears to my eyes. Just thinking about the wounds that Seth had caused me and how they had just begun to heal, I got angry with him all over again.
I didn’t know where my relationship with Matthew was going, or if it was going anywhere at all. For one thing, I had not heard from him since the night at the casino a few weeks ago. Had I jumped the gun? Now I regretted telling Mama about Matthew and getting my hopes up. Especially since I had no idea if I’d even hear from him again.
As I lay in my bed, staring up at the ceiling, all kinds of unpleasant thoughts ran through my head. Like maybe Matthew had just been blowing smoke when he told me that my family’s mental illness issues didn’t bother him. Maybe he had gone home and thought about what I’d told him and decided he didn’t want to get involved with me, after all. I couldn’t think of any other reason why he had not called. The more I thought about his second rejection, the angrier I got. It didn’t take long for me to convince myself that Matthew was not serious about having a relationship with me. I dreaded telling Mama that I’d been wrong about a man again.
I went back and forth, cursing Matthew one minute and Seth the next, but my main focus was Seth. I had a few more things I wanted to do to him, just to make sure he would never forget me. But at the same time, I had to remind myself that he didn’t know I was the one responsible for all the miserable things that had been happening to him. Now that I had refreshed my anger at him, I decided that the sooner he found out just how mad he had made me, the better.
I was glad that I still had Skirt’s new cell phone number. Around ten I ate a ham and cheese sandwich. After I drank two glasses of wine to get up my nerve, I gave him a call.
“Hey, baby. It’s good to hear your voice,” he said. “I been thinking about you off and on since the last time we talked. I can still picture them juicy legs in one of them short tail dresses you wear sometime.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “Well, I’d like to talk business, if you have time right now,” I said.
“Now is as good a time as any. Talk to me, sweet thang.”
“Remember when I told you I wanted you to help me get into my ex’s house and, uh, do a thing or two to get back at him for not paying me some money he owes me?”
“I thought y’all settled that.”
“I thought so, too. He paid me with a check, but it bounced, and I haven’t been able to catch up with him. So, I need to get into his house, after all.”
“When do you want to do it?”
“Can we meet somewhere and discuss it?”
“How come I can’t come to your place? I ain’t going to bite you, but I will if you want me to.”
“Be serious. I’d feel more comfortable if we could meet in a public place. I never know when somebody’s going to knock on my door.”
“I can meet you somewhere, I guess. But before we do that, I want to know what’s in this deal for me. And when it comes to a job, I don’t do nothing on credit, and I don’t accept checks.”
“I’ll pay you three hundred dollars in cash.”
“Is that all? I can’t take none of the dude’s shit out of his house and hock it? I do business with every fence in town.”
“That’s not a good idea. I don’t think we should take anything.”
“Then what the fuck do you want to get into his pad for? I thought you wanted to borrow some of his shit and hold it until he paid you the money he owes you.”
“I did, but maybe taking his stuff might be too risky. But I still want to get into his place just to check it out. And you don’t have to come inside with me.”
“Girl, I don’t know what kind of TV shows you been watching, but that ain’t the way these things work. You want me to help you break into some dude’s house just so you can ‘check it out’? That’s the stupidest shit I ever heard of!”
“All right. I just want to find a picture of him and his family.”
“What the hell for?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Damn! I done heard some crazy shit in my life, but this ridiculous shit you cooking up takes the cake.” Skirt snickered.
“Get serious and listen to me.”
“Oh, I’m listening, all right. This is hella funny. Keep talking so I can laugh some more.”
“I’m not sure if he’s got an alarm system or not. Knowing him, he probably does have one. If so, I want you to disable it. I heard you could do that?” It was a question, not a statement.
“I know my shit, girl. There ain’t no alarm system in the world I can’t crack. And I ain’t been caught yet.”
“You’d better bring some of that tranquilizer spray, in case Seth has dogs.”
“Oh, I got plenty of that. The white boy I buy my meth from, he whips up this spray shit in the lab he works for, and it’s a good thing he do! Home owners done got a little too smart for me these days. Some of these paranoid motherfuckers is buying guard dogs left and right! Before I retire, I’d be happy to spray a few more dogs and humans that get in my way.”
In the back of my mind, I was sorry I had come this far. I was no criminal, but I was committing one criminal offense after another. But it was too late to turn back now.
“I don’t want this to get out of hand, you know.”
“What do you mean by ‘get out of hand’?”
“I don’t want anybody to get hurt. Not even a dog.”
“Look, woman. All is fair in love, war, and crime. When you break into somebody’s house, things is already ‘out of hand.’ Now, do you want to do this thing or not?”
“Yes, I do. Uh, you can stay outside and be the lookout while I go inside. I’ll give you three hundred bucks for doing practically nothing.”
“Except fucking up a dude’s alarm system and being the lookout and whatnot. In case you didn’t know, I’ll be what the cops call an accomplice.”
“The cops? Didn’t you just tell me you’ve never been caught breaking into a house?”
“Yeah, I did tell you that. But there is a first time for everything. Sooner or later, some smart-assed bastard will come up with some high-tech shit that’ll throw a hell of a monkey wrench into my line of work.”
“Skirt, if you don’t want to help me, just say so and I’ll get somebody else.”
“You ain’t got to do that. I’ll help you. I’ll make three hundred bucks, huh?”
“Three hundred bucks.”
“Can you throw in a tip?”
“A tip? Three hundred dollars is your tip.”
“I’m talking about a piece of ass, woman!”
“I don’t think so, Skirt. Now, do you want to do this thing with me or not?”
“All right. Call me back when you know when and where you want to meet. Now listen up. Since we done went into so much detail, this is a done deal, so I’m counting on that money. I’m a businessman, so even if you change your mind now, I expect to get paid whether I do the job or not. You feel me?”
“That’s fine. Now let me get off this phone. I’ll call you when I need you.”
I hung up and ran to my computer. I logged in to check Seth’s schedule. He had posted his and Darla’s appointments for the next two weeks. For a woman who had a baby and a big house to take care of, she sure got around. She had an appointment with her hairdresser, one with her manicu
rist, and one with her dentist all in the same day. But the one that jumped out at me was an appointment for Seth to take his son to talk to a therapist on Friday afternoon. Darla had another appointment at some spa during that same block of time.
That piqued my curiosity. I logged into Seth’s AOL account to check his e-mails. The first message I saw stunned me. In an e-mail posted a few hours earlier, Darnell had contacted him, complaining about not being able to reach Seth or Darla by telephone to let him know that he had lost his house key. Seth had responded right away and had told him that the spare key was under a flowerpot by the side of the front porch. Like it always is, he had written. I shook my head. Anybody stupid enough to leave a spare house key under a flowerpot these days was asking for trouble.
I wouldn’t need Skirt’s help, after all. Seth had all but left the door open and invited me into his home. And I would take him up on it that Friday afternoon, while Seth and Darnell were with that therapist and Darla was kicking back at that spa.
Chapter 61
Seth
I WAS SO FRAZZLED, I DIDN’T KNOW WHICH WAY WAS UP ANYMORE. I was forgetting appointments, I didn’t have much of an appetite, and I was not so meticulous about my appearance anymore. My hair looked and felt like barbed wire, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d washed it. Other people had begun to notice the changes in me.
“Baby, are you coming down with something?” Mother had asked earlier tonight, when I’d arrived for a visit. She had rushed up to me as soon as I’d entered the living room and had felt my forehead.
“I’ve just been working real hard,” I’d told her.
“You’d better stop working so hard,” Father had commented, with an unlit cigar dangling from his lip. “You’ve got more important things you need to be paying attention to. Your family, for one. How are things between you and Darla? I hope she’s still as sweet as she was when you up and decided to marry her practically right after you met her. . . .”
I went out of my way to avoid conversations with everybody about how quickly I’d left Rachel and married Darla. Especially since I had taken so much more time to get to know Rachel. It was hard, but I kept up the “happy face” front so well, nobody had a clue that my marriage was on life support.
“Darla is still a very sweet woman. If God made a sweeter woman, He kept her for himself.” I was surprised that God didn’t turn me into a pillar of salt for telling such a barefaced lie. “I’ll tell her you asked about her.”
After listening to my parents rattle on a few more minutes, I politely excused myself. The only reason I had come by in the first place was that I didn’t want to go home and face Darla. I was still angry about the way she had treated me before I left for work that morning. Surprisingly, she’d allowed me to make love to her. Just as I was about to climax, she’d sneezed and shoved me to the side. Then she had laughed about it.
When I got back to my car, I called up Howard from my cell phone. “Dude, can you meet me for a drink?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice from cracking.
“This time of night? Why didn’t you ask me before we left the office?”
“I didn’t need a drink then.”
“Seth, I wish I could meet you, but I have a date with a lady I’ve been trying to get next to for a long time. How about tomorrow?”
“Yeah, that’ll be fine.”
“You know, if you really need to talk, I can postpone my date.” Apparently, Howard had detected the desperation in my voice.
“I don’t want you to do that, bro.”
“I’ve noticed for some time now that you seem distracted. If you’re depressed about something, you need to do something about it before you wind up the way I did a few years ago.”
“I’m okay. Thanks for your concern. I just wanted to have a drink with you. But I don’t want you to break your date for me.” I tried to sound cheerful, but my pain was so deep, I broke down and cried after I got off the phone. I still didn’t want to go home, but I went, anyway. I was pleased to see that Darla had already turned in for the night. To make sure I wouldn’t have to deal with her, I slept on the living room couch.
I got up the next morning and tiptoed into my bedroom to get a change of clothes. I took my shower in the downstairs bathroom. When I opened the door to leave, Darnell was shuffling up the porch steps. It was 8:00 a.m.
“Where the hell have you been, boy?” I demanded.
“Why?” he snarled.
“Because I want to know! I’m going to put a stop to your behavior, young man. You are not going to be coming in at all hours of the day or night!”
“I will come in whenever I feel like it. Now, get out of my face.” He brushed past me, almost knocking me to the ground. I stumbled and dropped my briefcase.
“We . . . I can’t go on like this,” I whimpered, squatting down to retrieve my briefcase. Darnell turned around and was about to say something when he noticed the tears in my eyes.
“I know you ain’t fixing to cry! My old man is a fucking crybaby!” He let out a sinister laugh, and then he entered the house like he owned it.
I stumbled to my car and headed to work.
No one had arrived at the agency yet, but I went into my office and shut the door. I placed my head on my desk and had myself a good long cry. Around nine, Howard entered without knocking.
“Dude, you look like hell with those red, puffy eyes, so don’t sit there and tell me nothing is wrong. Whatever is bothering you, you need to let it all out,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything.” My lips were trembling and my voice was so hoarse, I didn’t even sound like myself.
Howard came around my desk and rubbed my shoulder. “Is it Darla?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “But she’s only part of it.”
“Well, business is good, so I know that can’t be bothering you.”
“My son is about to drive me crazy.”
“Is that all? What you need to do is beat the dog shit out of his young ass. That’s all it took for me. You remember how I was when I was his age. When my mama got fed up with my mess, she put her foot so far up my ass, I was shitting mush for days.”
Howard’s comment made me laugh. He rubbed my shoulder some more. “See there. It’s not so bad if you can laugh about it.”
“No, I guess it’s not. But I will not hit my son.”
“Do you want me to talk to him? Sometimes a dude will listen to another dude who is not too close to him.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think so.” I grabbed a few tissues from the box of Kleenex on my desk and honked into them. “Darnell is not that bad. . . .”
“I’m here for you, bro. If you still want to go for a drink after work today, just let me know.”
“Thanks, Howard. I’ll do that.”
I got busy doing things I normally would ask my secretary to do. I reorganized my files, typed a few letters, and answered most of my own e-mail. That helped, because I felt a lot better. A few minutes before ten, Howard and I went to the snack shop a few doors down for coffee. We sat at a table in the back for twenty minutes, discussing sports, politics, and work, and not once did I even mention Darnell or Darla. And I was glad he didn’t bring them up, either.
Less than a minute after I returned to my office, planning to water my plants, Darla called and told me that she and Darnell had just had another run-in.
“If you don’t get that boy some professional help, I’m leaving,” she warned. “All I asked him to do was not smoke weed in this house this morning and right in front of Gayle! I thought he was going to kill me when I got in his face!”
“Baby, I made an appointment for Darnell to talk to a therapist tomorrow afternoon.”
“Darnell needs more than therapy, Seth. He needs a good old-fashioned whupping, if you ask me!”
“That’s not the answer, honey. I’ll come home early today, and we can talk then.”
“Seth, we’ve talked and talked, and it’s done no good. That punk is ruining
our lives.”
“Darla, I’m doing everything I can. And that ‘punk’ is my son.”
“Well, you’re not doing enough! I’m afraid to be in the house with Darnell now more than ever! Gayle is afraid of him, and my friends and family have stopped coming around because of him! Now, how much longer do you think I’m going to live like this?”
“Darla, don’t ask me to choose between you and my son.”
“I’m not asking you to do that. But I have thought about it!” My head felt like it was in flames. And the rest of my body felt almost as hot. Dr. Spencer had told me to come in again, even though he had run a few tests previously and found nothing wrong with me physically. I didn’t need a doctor or anybody else to tell me that. I knew what was wrong with me: my life was a wreck. But the pain relievers that my doctor had prescribed helped. However, he had refused to renew my prescription until I paid him another visit, which I was able to do a couple of hours later, when he called and told me another patient had canceled.
Somehow I made it to Dr. Spencer’s office without wrecking my car or falling down from mental and physical exhaustion. My body felt as heavy as a dead horse as I dragged my feet into the building and shuffled toward the elevator. I was so preoccupied, I didn’t even realize I had reached my destination until the two people standing next to me told me.
“You’re fine, Mr. Garrett. You need to get more rest, stop worrying so much, and you need to drink less alcohol,” Dr. Spencer told me. He gave me a fatherly look, even though we were about the same age.
“I’ve been constipated, too,” I said, buttoning my shirt.
“Any over-the-counter laxative could remedy that.”
“I’ve tried a few already, and they didn’t work. As a matter of fact, they made me feel worse.”
“I’ll write you out a prescription for something that will work. In the meantime, I want you to reduce your alcohol intake and avoid dairy products. I’d like to see you again in two weeks. Have a nice day, Mr. Garrett.”