A Mighty Love

by Anita Doreen Diggs

  Lloyd called at four. “I have an emergency meeting outside the office. Can you tell me this good news around six over a drink at my apartment?”

  Maybe Charlene was right. He did expect her to sleep with him in return for the money. “Why can’t we talk somewhere else?” Adrienne asked suspiciously.

  A lazy chuckle came from his throat. “My God, Adrienne! I thought we were long past this issue. I just want to show off my new home, but if you really don’t trust me, I’ll meet you back here.”

  Once again, Adrienne felt foolish. “I’m sorry, Lloyd. Give me your address.”

  He lived in a doorman building on the Upper East Side. The lobby was bigger than the first floor of many museums. Adrienne gave her name and the doorman waved her on by. Her high heels clicked across the marble floor of the lobby until she reached the elevator. It was a smooth, quiet ride to the penthouse floor. She was shocked when the elevator door opened and she found herself in Lloyd’s foyer.

  He was wearing a crisp, light-blue oxford button-down shirt, a pair of ironed blue jeans, and his bare feet were tucked into Gucci loafers. He grinned at her. “Hi, there, gorgeous.”

  He looked so sexy in jeans that Adrienne could only mumble a “hello” in return. She peeked over his shoulder. The place looked enormous.

  “Why don’t I take your coat and hang it up while you have a look around?”

  A white sofa on white carpet was in the living room. Several pieces of expensive art lined the walls, along with Lloyd’s diplomas, but there wasn’t a single picture of Lloyd at all or a woman who could have been his ex-girlfriend, Patricia. In fact, there were no photos of anyone. There was no way to peek into Lloyd’s past, present, or what the man intended for his future.

  He bounded into the room, plunked himself down on the sofa, and patted the space beside him. “I’ve asked my maid to bring us some wine, but you must sit down and tell me what’s going on before I burst from curiosity.”

  Adrienne gave him a teasing smile. “I’m sure you’ll live until I get back from your bathroom. Where is it?”

  He pointed. “Up those stairs.”

  She climbed the circular staircase up to the second floor. The first door opened onto a bathroom that was as big as her living room. All of the fixtures including the bathtub were ivory and gold. The tub’s gilded legs stood on cream-colored floor tiles with an exquisite inlaid design of the same color. There was a huge movie-star mirror with lightbulbs on all four sides that was fixed to the wall above the double sink. Adrienne was in awe. She stood in the sumptuous room and remembered the desperate young boy she had known in high school. He had dragged himself from a situation that would have defeated a lesser human. It was quite a feat, and her admiration for LaMar had never been greater.

  Adrienne went down the stairs and found Lloyd still sitting on the sofa. There was a spread of crackers, cheese, and fruit on the table in front of him, along with a bottle of wine and two crystal glasses. She sat down beside him and started rummaging through her briefcase for the papers she had printed out. When she found them, she positioned her body so that they were facing each other.

  “Lloyd, you have done so much for me in the last couple of months, and I gave a lot of thought to finding a special way to repay you for the job, the money, and just being an all-around caring friend. I found the answer yesterday, and I hope that these papers bring you all the happiness that you’ve always deserved.” She extended the papers and he eagerly took them from her hand.

  Lloyd skimmed the first page, and his facial expression changed from happiness to a mask of shock.

  Adrienne sat waiting for the gleeful shriek and the dancing around the room that she had imagined so vividly. Lloyd read the skimpy information and then placed the papers on the sofa between them. Adrienne was starting to feel uneasy. Something was terribly wrong. Why did Lloyd seem frozen in place? Why were his eyes impossible to read? Why were his hands curling into fists? She opened her mouth to speak, but the words stuck in her throat. Her mind told her to flee, but that didn’t make sense. She sat rooted to the spot, utterly bewildered.

  “You decided to find my sisters.” It was an icy declaration.

  “Lloyd, what’s the matter?”

  “I’ve known where my sisters are for a long time. If I wanted to see them, I could have done it a long time ago.” His jaw was locked tightly, and his voice was so low he nearly hissed the words that he spoke.

  Adrienne trembled at the glacial gaze he fixed on her. She was confused by his anger. “I . . . I don’t know what to say . . . You used to love your family and I thought . . .”

  “How dare you meddle in my private affairs!”

  “I . . . I . . . I,” Adrienne began to cry.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Adrienne’s instincts told her not to respond.

  His tirade was just beginning. He threw his wineglass at the wall, shattering the glass frame of one painting.

  “Lloyd, take it easy,” Adrienne began.

  “No. I’m mad as hell, and I’ll never forgive you for this. May I ask you a question?”

  “What?”

  “Why didn’t you clean up your own backyard before you leaped the fence to fiddle around in someone else’s garden?”

  “My own backyard?”

  “That’s right. Don’t you have serious issues in your own home? I mean, from what I saw at your brother’s house, your marriage needs every ounce of energy you can muster up. Or have things changed dramatically? Tell me, Adrienne, are you and hubby soaking in a tub of marital bliss?”

  “Lloyd, you’re being mean, and if I thought you were going to act like this . . .”

  “I don’t have to read a list of phone numbers to know what is going on with my sisters. Did you talk to them?”

  “I . . . uh . . . talked to Denise. I wanted to talk to Noney, but there was no listing for her on the search engine.”

  “That’s how much you know about my family. Of course you couldn’t find anyone named Noney. That’s what I called her because when I was a little boy, I couldn’t pronounce the word ‘Noreen.’”

  “Anyway, that’s the only number that Denise doesn’t have.” She stood up. “May I have my coat, please?”

  “No. Not until you understand what you’ve done. I suppose you told Denise everything about my new life?”

  “No, I didn’t. I simply told her that I was in touch with her long-lost brother and was going to surprise him with the information she gave me. She got very excited and can’t wait to see you. She asked a lot of questions, but I figured it wasn’t my place to answer them. She can’t wait to see you.”

  “See me?” Lloyd laughed bitterly. “When I hired someone to find them a few years ago, he came back and told me that Denise has five fucking kids, no man, and runs the street all day. Pamela was a cable TV installer living in the Bronx with two kids and no husband. Annie was a drunk. No one knew where Noreen was. Brenda was the only one who graduated from college. The last I heard, she was headed for medical school. She was the only one who made something out of her goddamned life. Yeah, I’ll just bet Denise wants to see me. She probably wants to know if I have any money to give her and that bunch of squalling brats.”

  Adrienne was disgusted. “Do you know how much it costs to go to medical school? Do you know how many loans and grants Brenda will have to get in order to make it? How much debt she’ll be in when she completes her residency? How can you not want to contact her and do what you can to help?”

  “Because she’ll want to talk me into seeing the others, and it won’t stop there. It’ll be one thing after another until I’m dragged deep back into that world, and this time I’ll never find my way out. Can’t you see that?”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Well, that’s just too bad, Adrienne. If I get involved with those people again, they’ll bring me down with them! God only knows how many kids, boyfriends, and bail bondsmen I’ll have to pay for. I busted my ass so I wouldn�
��t have to go through that again!”

  “You hang out in five-star restaurants, ride around in a limo, and don’t even know if your nieces and nephews have enough to eat. If success makes a person act like that, then maybe I was better off in the secretarial bull pen.”

  “You can go back there if you choose, but I worked hard to become a success, Adrienne, and I’m not letting anyone take it away from me.”

  Adrienne had heard enough. “You’re not a success, LaMar Jenkins. Anyone who can turn their back on family like this is the worst kind of failure. I don’t even see you as a man anymore. You’re just a scared, sniveling, well-dressed coward. Now, I’m going to ask you one more time for my coat, and if you don’t give it to me, I’m going to start screaming until someone calls upstairs to find out what is going on.”

  Adrienne snatched the coat from his hand, and when the elevator door opened, she left without saying good-bye.

  Her heels clicked across the marble lobby floor, and she swept past the doorman and out onto Third Avenue. Although there were several cabs parked in front of Lloyd’s building, Adrienne started to walk.

  Charlene’s words came and went as she made her way to the West Side. Poor Mel, it was his loss, too, you know. . . . You shut Mel out when he needed you most . . . LaMar is gone, Adrienne . . . The man who came to dinner is nothing like the teenager you described.

  The more Adrienne remembered Charlene’s observations, the more she realized that she had been running away from her problems for many years.

  She had run away from her challenges in the music industry and buried her true self in a marriage to Mel. She ran away from Delilah’s death by refusing to talk about it and hiding in darkness. She had been running from the reality of Mel’s drinking problem for months by just ignoring all the signs. And Lillian! She had never stopped running from unpleasantness long enough to pin him down about that.

  Adrienne paused at the corner to wait for the traffic light. Lloyd had just been a fancy place to run toward because her marriage was troubled.

  No wonder Lloyd had achieved so much at such a young age. He was a coldhearted, selfish son of a bitch who thought only of his own needs. Mel had plenty of faults, but he always looked out for Debra. Mel believed in family. “I’m going to quit that job and make it without Lloyd’s help,” she told herself as tears of disappointment and rage stung the backs of her eyelids. “I don’t need a knight on a white horse to ride in and save me from my pathetic life.”

  The light changed to green, and as Adrienne stepped into the intersection, she knew that neither Lloyd nor Mel was the source of her problems. It was time to stop running, turn around, and face her demons head-on.

  Adrienne Montgomery Jordan was about to regain control of her life, and the place to start was in the unoccupied bedroom in their apartment, which held her stash of infant gear. Maybe someday she and Mel would be ready to have another baby, but they were a long way from that. The baby clothes were going to the Salvation Army first thing in the morning.

  Adrienne allowed herself to feel the pain. By the time she got home and called Charlene, the events of the past hour already seemed part of the distant past. Much of her shock and anger had been replaced with sorrow for Lloyd. He was no longer a giant in her eyes. He was a punk.

  After he finished his shift and parked his bus at the uptown depot on 125th, Mel found himself walking, and when he couldn’t walk anymore, he ran. He ran down the inside of the streets and out in the middle of dark, dirty alleyways. He thought if he could just run fast enough, he could outrun his own desire, the need that seemed to be swelling up inside him until he couldn’t hear anything but the longing and the blood. His body was calling for the cocaine, and the call was growing stronger with every minute. He would have called Debra, his wife, maybe even Lillian if he thought she’d give a damn, but he was too ashamed.

  A man was supposed to be able to meet his needs, to know them and not be crushed by the weight of them.

  Mel ran until his chest burned, and then he walked until his feet felt heavy and leaden, his hands trembling so, he could barely hold them in his pockets. No one met his eye as he stumbled past silent buildings and ramshackle storefronts, his MTA uniform not dark or formal enough to disguise the need in his walk. Back in another life, before a burning heartache sharp as a baby’s cry in the middle of the night, he would have called his walk a junkie stroll. If he could have seen himself coming down the street as he was now, movements jerky, erratic, equilibrium off balance, lips all chapped, that would have been the first thought that crossed his mind. There go one of them junkies, walk-running, skittering down the street. When he was young and running the streets himself, he and his roughneck friends liked to shoot hoops and throw rocks at the drug addicts, to watch them run, jaws slack, eyes vacant at first, then wide and frightened. They thought that shit was funny back then, but that was another life. Now Mel found himself doing his own version of the junkie stroll, and he couldn’t stop himself to save his life.

  Why bother? he thought as he turned a corner, searching for Little Jimmy or any other dealer with a pocketful of cocaine and an answer to quiet his hellish dreams. And it was the same dreams always. Delilah. Delilah dying. I ain’t worth saving, he thought. Couldn’t even save my own child. What kind of fool would fall asleep with a lit cigarette?

  He couldn’t tell Adrienne that he blamed himself. He didn’t have to. She never pointed a finger at him, but he already knew she blamed him. It was in her face when she thought he wasn’t looking, in her voice when she wasn’t even saying anything, and in her heart when he held her close to his chest, and he still didn’t feel any closer to her. But those weren’t the kinds of things you said to your wife, not to a wife who’s grieving, half out of her mind from grief. Mel carried those feelings down low, where nothing could touch them but the coke, where his need outweighed every thought, even Delilah. Even Adrienne . . .

  At the same time, Adrienne was wandering around the apartment, wondering where Mel was. If he is at Debra’s house getting drunk, I’m going to tell him to come home, pack his shit, and go hang on to his sister’s skirt tail for good. She called Debra’s house, but there was no answer. She made herself a stiff drink of vodka and orange juice, then rummaged around in the cabinet for some potato chips or crackers. There were none. Back in the bedroom, she put Set It Off in the VCR. Halfway through the movie and after her third drink, Adrienne was wishing that Queen Latifah or Jada Pinkett would lend her one of their weapons so she could blow Mel to kingdom come. If he walks in here and says that he was at his sister’s house, I’ll know his ass is lying, she thought. After what happened at Dan’s house, he probably thinks I’m so stupid that he can just tell me anything.

  The movie was over, and she was lying in bed thinking about the evening’s shocking turn of events when she heard Mel’s key turn in the lock. She looked up, and her nonchalant expression turned to alarm when Mel skipped into the bedroom. His face was dripping with sweat, and he was wearing a lime green windbreaker that barely covered his chest. Adrienne had never seen the garment before. As she swung her legs over the side of the bed, Mel spoke to her. His tongue was thick. His lips were twisted to the right. His eyes were even bigger and rounder than usual. “Hey, baby,” Mel said. “I just came by to get something . . . can’t stay . . . gotta go back out.”

  Adrienne stood up and reached out to touch him. Why is Mel’s mouth so contorted? Has he had a stroke? Can stroke victims have one and not know it? Do they move so fast? Her thoughts came and went in a millisecond.

  Mel jumped away from her and ricocheted to his bureau drawer. He spoke with his back to her as he riffled through his underwear, socks, and T-shirts. “I’m lookin’ for my money . . . saved some last paycheck . . . be back later.”

  Adrienne’s heart started beating erratically. “Mel, look at me!” she commanded. He did. His mouth smiled, but the eyes did not. He had some bills in one hand.

  Adrienne reached toward the phone. “You’re no
t going anywhere, Mel. I’m calling an ambulance and we’re—”

  Before she could lift the receiver, Mel sprinted around the bed, snatched the phone from the nightstand, and pulled it so hard that the line was wrenched from the wall jack. Fear and horror lodged in her chest. He ran from the apartment without a backward glance and left the door wide open.

  Adrienne ran out into the hallway, calling his name as he thundered down the steps. She watched as Mel barreled out of the building. She ran back into the apartment with her eyes shut, fighting the reality forcing itself into her unwilling mind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Mel had snorted over two hundred dollars’ worth of cocaine that night. He had run out of money and gone home to get cash for more drugs. Now he dragged himself through the inky night. There were lots of people out on the street. Lovers walked hand in hand, kissing and laughing. Knots of teenage boys hung out on the corners enjoying the music that blasted from their big radios. The cafés on Columbus Avenue were crowded, and the people sitting at those tables were conversing; ice tinkled in their drinking glasses, and their knives and forks clinked against their plates.

  Mel’s thoughts were exploding in all directions, and he couldn’t focus on any of them. Seeing Adrienne, and her yelling at him as if he were some child really set him off. Lloyd Cooper and Adrienne’s been gittin’ it on, he thought. They gotta be crazy to think I don’t see it. This is God payin’ me back because if Delilah was still livin’, none of this would have happened.

  He stumbled forward into traffic, hoping that a car would strike his body, send it soaring toward the top of the buildings and plummeting back to the pavement, where it would explode into a hot, red, sticky, gory mess. No, even that would not be enough to pay Delilah and Adrienne back for what he had done. Better that an eighteen-wheeler come barreling down the avenue and hit him, letting gasoline wash over his body; then a crackhead could saunter by at just that moment and idly toss away a cigarette. The fire at the end of the cigarette would come into contact with the gasoline, and he would go up in flames the way his daughter had.