Bigamist

by Elaine Flowers

  “I’ll meet you up front,” Erick said as he fell in behind me.

  I busted through the door of the unisex restroom, locked the door, and planted my spreading behind on the toilet. I gave up trying to straddle public toilet seats at six months. My equilibrium had been jacked up the whole pregnancy. I’d tripped and fallen more carrying this boy than I had in my whole life. So, I sat. Knowing I was in for at least a three-minute leak, I dug into my purse and pulled out my phone. I turned the sound on and alerts dinged one after the other.

  I scanned through the comments and decided to go ahead and snap a shot of the ultrasound pic.

  Share.

  I can’t wait to meet

  my growing boy! <3

  Post.

  Instantly, several comments and hearts and thumbs-up icons calculated. I took in the love, smiled, and finished my business. But before I walked out:

  On my way to lunch

  with the hubster!

  Post.

  Every day I craved a grilled chicken salad from Firehouse Grill so that was where I demanded we go. We placed a booster chair next to Erick, but his lap was Jersey’s preferred seat. She was back and forth between his lap and standing next to him with her arms noosed around his neck.

  “Why don’t you make her sit?” I asked Erick while holding my glass up for the waitress to refill my iced tea.

  “She’s fine.” He kissed the top of her head. “I thought we talked about the artificial sweeteners.”

  I slid the two yellow packets back into the holder on the table and picked up four sugar packets.

  “And didn’t I hear you ask for sweet tea?”

  My phone was dinging with new alerts.

  “It’s not sweet enough,” I said and sighed. I then tossed the sugar packets back as well. “Are you coming home tonight—the roof guy came the other day—he said we need the whole thing replaced—we need to hire another company for the lawn.” I touched the screen on the front of my phone.

  “Can you put that thing away for just a minute? Damn.” Erick hated my social interactions. He made it clear that he didn’t want me discussing him online. He said that he was a high-profile surgeon and it wasn’t a good idea for him to be so public. I guess I understood that. It wasn’t like he needed to advertise his skills.

  “Sorry…” I said and then quickly…

  Check In:

  Having my favorite meal

  at the Firehouse

  Grill–love it! #yummy

  Post.

  “Okay, what was I saying?” I looked up and Erick was giving me stone eyes. I slipped my phone into my purse. “Oh yeah, the lawn guy didn’t show up and after that rain last week, the yard is a forest.”

  “Did you call?” he asked.

  “No, can you do it tomorrow?” I didn’t mind handling most of the household business, but it was nice when he was home to do it.

  “I don’t see why he wouldn’t show up.”

  A server placed my salad in front of me and, in front of him, a hot roast beef panini. I took my phone out of my purse, ready to snap a pic.

  “Dammit, Iris.”

  “Ooo, Daddy said a bad word.” Jersey covered her small mouth.

  “I’m under contract and people are genuinely interested in what I’m doing throughout the day,” I said matter of fact. I got why he was annoyed. He was a private person, and not to mention, a few generations behind me so Instagram and Twitter were things he had no real concept of.

  I met Erick under strange circumstances. We were both trying to catch a flight at LAX. He was on his way home to Dallas and I was making a connecting flight, headed to Hawaii when a man collapsed in front of me in the security check line. I was tempted to back away and call for help but everything happened so quickly. Before I knew it, Erick was down on all fours in front of me reviving the guy and talking to me, assuming that I was the man’s companion. There was no time for an explanation and I started helping him. Well, I was helping until the guy started foaming at the mouth. As disgusted as I was by the whole scene, I was impressed the way Erick jumped right in and kept working even after things got gross. And just before the EMTs arrived, the man started coming around and regaining his color. I couldn’t believe what I’d witnessed. He was a hero. A real one.

  When the whole scene was under control and over, we both discovered we’d missed our flights. We had a couple of hours until the next ones were available, so we sat at a bar getting acquainted. After two pink martinis, which was two too many for me, I became really familiar.

  “So, I notice you’re not wearing a wedding ring.” This was two martinis in.

  “No, I’m not.” He sipped on black label rum and was on his third.

  “I’m smart enough to know that means very little so, are you married?”

  “I’m married to my work.”

  Relieved, I shifted in my seat, hiking up my skirt a little. I knew he was considerably older, but I didn’t care. I had a weakness for a man who could make things happen and I had just witnessed him saving someone’s life. It got no better than that.

  “What do you do, Iris?”

  “Travel agent and I do some modeling and acting. I’m thinking about opening a bookstore… or a dress shop. I don’t know… I do a lot of things, actually.”

  “Sounds like it.” He sipped more from his glass.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” I placed my drink on the bar counter, waiting on his judgment.

  “I’m not thinking anything. You’re young so you should be exploring all avenues.” He placed his warm hand on my bare knee. “Relax. You’re doing what people your age should be doing; trying out many things to find their true interests before settling into a career they’ll soon grow to hate.” He squeezed my knee and withdrew it upward, dragging his finger toward my inner thigh.

  Between the drink, his eyes, and warm hands, I was wet. We made eye contact and held each other’s gazes for the longest time. If he had tried even a little, I would’ve given it up right there in an airport broom closet. But he was a gentleman until the end, later confessing that he knew he could’ve had me out of my panties, but he didn’t want me to regret it. And he wanted to see me again, so he kept his cool.

  “Are you vacationing in Honolulu?” he asked breaking the trance we both seemed to be in.

  “I’m meeting my boyfriend.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said unfazed. “I would really like to keep in touch with you.”

  I finished off the last drops of my martini and said, “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  The good doctor produced a card from the inside pocket of his sports coat and placed it on my lap, touching my leg once again. “It’s your call. When you get home from your vacation with your boyfriend, get in touch with me.” He stood and looked at his watch.

  I let the card sit at the hem of my skirt, simply glancing down at it. It was just his name, Erick Hart M.D., and a phone number. I could hardly wait to log into Google.

  Erick motioned for the bartender to close the tab. “You still have another hour, are you sure you don’t want a sandwich or something?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Hey, add a sandwich for the lady and close me out.” He turned to me. “I want you to be able to make your flight this time.”

  All of the sexual tension in the air left us silent and staring at each other. I could hardly stand it, so I kept counting from one to ten in my head, over and over.

  Erick signed the bill and tucked his credit card away. “By the way, where do you call home?”

  “Arkansas. Little Rock.” I slipped his card into my purse.

  “Well Iris, thank you for keeping me company while I waited on my flight.”

  “Thank you.” I wanted to say so much more but only inappropriate things swirled around in my head, so I didn’t trust what might fall out of my mouth.

  “And I really hope to hear from you.”

  With that, the back of his hand brushed up against that same thigh of mine and he
backed up and faded into a crowd.

  Three months later what’s-his-name and I had broken up and I called Erick. A month later he flew me to New York to meet him and a year later we were married. And with every passing day, despite our differences, I loved him more and more.

  “Iris, we already get to spend so little time together. Can you just respect that and lay off when I’m here?” Jersey was feeding him French fries from her plate.

  “You’re right, baby.” I tossed my phone in and snapped my purse closed. “Sorry.”

  Erick blew me a kiss across the table and all was, again, right with the world.

  3

  Amy Hart

  …the best years of our lives…

  The results were slowly coming together. I turned this way, and that. Standing in front of the mirror covering an entire wall in our master bathroom, I twisted and posed. Butt was plump, and stomach was still flat from last year’s surgeries and there was only one bandage remaining, waiting to be removed from my nose of this year’s face work. Yeah, black don’t crack but I didn’t get enough of it when I was being made, obviously. So, I had no problem letting a doctor do what God hadn’t.

  The very thing I used to enjoy, I came to no longer stand. And it only took me fifty-five years to get there. Blending in with white people became intolerable. When I was young I chose when, in a diabolical way, to use my pale skin and blonde hair. There were only a few times when I figuratively checked the Caucasian box but most of the time it was assumed and checked for me with little to know protesting from me. I was ashamed to admit it, but it was my truth.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like Ws, or that side of myself, after all, that would be self-hate, but what I didn’t like was how they just didn’t get it. And I really wanted them to get it. So, the more life experience I had, the more they were on my nerves for not getting it. I also wanted my brother to get it.

  Alan took after family on our father’s side. Because my father was a fair skinned black man and our mother being white, it was odd that Alan’s beautiful complexion was more than a little brown. It was a complexion I loved and envied and one he despised. He resented that the rest of us were ‘white’ as he put it. His issues with color kept us from having a real brother-sister relationship and once he graduated high school, he basically went out into the world, severing contact with all of us. It broke my mother’s heart, ultimately attributing to her early death. I’d lost my brother, my mother, and when my father’s health was failing, Ricky was there to help me put my life back together.

  Ricky wasn’t my first black boyfriend, but he was the first one that my father placed his stamp of approval on. But the last few years of his life, he seemed to not have much to say to or about Ricky. He never said why, he’d just go quiet whenever Ricky was around. I blamed it on his failing health which was on a steady decline the last few years of his life. The day before cancer won the war on his lungs and brain, he told me to take care of myself and to make sure I had money in an account with only my name on it. I lumped that in with all of the other irrational things the brain cancer was causing him to say.

  It was heartbreaking for Ricky to watch my father turn on him because he had adored Ricky in the beginning—when we were both brand new to adulthood. Even after my father had been gone for a decade Ricky wouldn’t talk about what ever happened between them.

  My freshmen year at Howard was when we met. Ricky was a senior and we were at a campus party, partying hard. I had totally embraced black college life—the unique educational process as well as the social side. I didn’t know it at the time but those were some of the best years of our lives—individually and as a couple.

  For the first decade of our marriage we kept in close contact with college friends and that helped us stay together. Once we moved to Texas we were isolated from our foundation and slowly became like roommates. We got along great and our intimacy was more than satisfactory, but there was no regular romance. Dinner and flowers on anniversaries, fine jewelry and sometimes a car on birthdays or Christmas was expected and given.

  At first I wanted the hot passion more than anything else. I wanted the declarations of undying love and to be the thing that Ricky couldn’t live without the way it was. But I learned that the only thing he couldn’t live without were his patients. They, separately and collectively, were the loves of his life. Without them, he would have no reason to exist; no reason to go on. So, I did what any other homemaker would do in this situation; I focused on our children and tried to find my own way.

  Whenever I’d get that lonely feeling, I’d remind myself how good Ricky was to the children and me. And all I had to do was compare my complaints to other women I knew, and I would come to the conclusion that I had no real complaints. Yes, he worked 24/7. Yes, the excitement of our sex was a series of hits and misses. Yes, I knew he placed his patients over his family at times. But he wasn’t gambling our money away. He wasn’t an alcoholic or drug addict. Now, I didn’t think he was a saint and I knew women had been after him for years, but I had no reason to think he’d been unfaithful in any meaningful way. Did I think I was the only woman he’d been intimate with in the 27 years of our marriage? Hell no. I had firsthand proof that wasn’t the case. But, I was his wife at the end of the day, whatever he had done, or not done, was of no real consequence to me. He took care of home and he took care of me.

  We had only been married a few years when I learned Ricky loved women. I suspected but didn’t know for sure until one day that suspicion was founded. That first time I didn’t think I’d ever get over it. But I did. So, the next time it was different. No panic, no incredible disbelief, no paralyzing shock, no thoughts of murder.

  There had been a big sale at Nordstrom and I had done my damage, stumbling through the back door of our home, weighed down with packages. I hadn’t heard anything and didn’t even notice the pair of red Payless pumps next to the sofa. I had dropped everything in the hallway and rushed to the powder room just off the garage.

  I relieved myself but before I could flush, I heard a woman’s voice. I pulled my panties and skirt up and quietly stepped back into the hallway. When I heard voices coming from upstairs, I made my way up there. No one should’ve been home, but I thought maybe one of the kids had come home with a friend. I actually couldn’t imagine a scenario and certainly never expected to see Ricky since we’d already been through this. He wouldn’t do this to me again. Surely.

  I moved at a normal pace up the stairs. When I realized the voices were coming from our master suite, beads of sweat formed on my forehead and in my armpits. I stood outside the closed double doors and listened to moans and groans and the sounds of sheets rustling. I sucked in a deep breath and held it. I didn’t make a conscious decision but the next thing I knew, I was standing in the doorway watching some wide-hipped, busty redhead straddle Ricky.

  I stood unnoticed in the doorway for several moments. I didn’t take in the details of what was happening at first, maybe it was too much listening to her talking dirty and watching her hips gyrate over him. At some point I ended up standing next to the bed, just over them. Ricky’s eyes were closed, the name Abigail was tattooed on the woman’s hip, and dank perspiration hung heavily in the air. Those were the things I noticed. The things I remembered.

  When Ricky finally opened his eyes, noticing me, I remained calm. Then, we made eye contact, with his eyes reading panic, and mine, void of emotion. Even I was surprised at my demeanor and I was certain he was too.

  The woman turned her head, obviously trying to see what had ghosted him. “Dr. Hart,” she said sharply and snatched the sheet covering her front.

  “Dr. Hart,” I echoed her, realizing at that moment she was most likely someone from the hospital.

  “Amy…”

  “Hi, I’m Amy—as he just said.” I gave a slight wave to the woman just before she slowly turned back to Ricky.

  “Um… Glenda,” she introduced herself.

  “Not Abigail?” I pointed to the
tattoo.

  The woman followed my finger as if she hadn’t remembered what was there.

  Before she could respond, Ricky slid her off him and swung his feet over the edge of the bed, reaching for his crumpled boxers on the floor.

  “Sorry to interrupt your fucking session on my new sheets,” I directed towards him as he rushed by me in search of his slacks.

  By this time Glenda was hurriedly searching for her things. “What’s going on?”

  “You were in bed with my husband.”

  Glenda had slipped into her panties and her khaki-colored dress, but she was holding her bra. Her eyes moved back and forth between Ricky and me. “Hey, look…”

  “Don’t worry about it. This isn’t the first time and right now, I’m more pissed about my sheets.”

  “Amy—”

  “I’ll deal with you later,” I interrupted him. “Get her out of here.” I still wasn’t angry and even I knew that wasn’t normal. But, I had been there and done that. What would be the point in going through the drama again?

  Ricky had confusion all over his face and for some reason I enjoyed that. He was so smart about most everything and I loved it when he didn’t understand something.

  To cut across the field, Ricky moved out for six months but eventually we made our way past that rough patch—once I decided to accept that my husband was a womanizing whoremonger. Okay, that’s a little harsh. The truth was, Ricky craved constant attention from women. That attention ultimately turned into sex. And that’s the truth. He slowed down over the years and that was only thanks to the pure adoration he received from his patients.

  Once I understood that about him, it was easy to remember why I loved him. He was my friend—he was my family. We had been a part of each other’s lives for so long, I didn’t know how to be without him and he made no mention of leaving me for good. I asked him to stop bringing his whores to my house and as far as I know, it never happened again. Intimacy was on life support between us, but we remained married friends. It wasn’t just for the kids, either. It was just the easiest thing for us to do.