by Shea Lynn
Karen had gotten all she needed and we stood in line behind a scruffy young white guy in dingy jeans and a t-shirt.
“I forgot something. Can you stay here? I’ll be right back,” Karen asked, taking off before hearing my response.
I was still standing in line when the tall, dark-skinned guy sidled up beside me.
‘Oh shit’, I thought.
He turned to me, his voice soft with forced romanticism and he said, “Excuse me, do I know you from somewhere?”
I knew he didn’t know me and he knew he didn’t know me but it was a popular and often successful pick-up line. I couldn’t really fault him for trying.
I shook my head and tossed him a polite smile.
“You sure? You look really familiar. What’s your name again?” he asked, grinning at me like a Cheshire cat.
I sighed. “It’s Sidney.”
“Well, I’m Jerome. It’s a pleasure to meet you Miss Sidney with the pretty smile.”
“Nice meeting you Jerome.” I turned back around, eagerly awaiting the attention of the cashier, hoping to speed this process along and get out of Jerome’s line of sight.
But, Jerome wasn’t done with me. “Miss Sidney with the pretty smile, can I get your number? Maybe call you some time?”
Suddenly, as if she had appeared by magic, Karen was beside me. “Do you know that Miss Sidney with the pretty smile is Miss Married Sidney with the pretty smile? My sister’s a married woman.”
Jerome held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. I get it. But married or not, you are a beautiful woman Sidney. Your husband is a lucky man.”
My evening suitor headed for the door, a confident swagger in his step. He tossed me a soft smile before he disappeared into the darkness outside.
Karen took her basket of toiletries from my hand and stepped up to the counter, shaking her head in disbelief. “Girl, I leave you for five minutes and you pick up a new baby daddy,” she said with a smile.
I chuckled. “You were five minutes too early. I really wish you would have let me run my game.”
It was her turn to laugh. Our chuckles didn’t subside until we were getting back into my car.
As I pulled away from the parking lot, Karen said, “He never had a chance, girl. Even if he was a little more handsome, a little more suave, he doesn’t compare to what you have with Aaron. What you and Aaron have is so solid. It’s my benchmark, you know?”
I should have been flattered. But the sins on my heart turned her well-intentioned words into sharply pointed daggers. I winced and the silliness in the air between us quickly disappeared.
We were quiet for a moment before Karen noticed my pensive gaze. She asked me, “Why are you so quiet? Did I say something?”
I’d worked on myself for over a month. I’d sat on Dr. Diana Williamson’s couch for a total of four hours in the month of May and had spent a good quarter of that time shedding soul-cleansing tears.
But I wasn’t healed yet. The pain and tenderness of my absence from Dayna was still raw and exposed. I found my eyes growing misty and I blinked to clear them and see the road with no visual impairment.
“Sidney?” she asked.
“What if my marriage isn’t everything you think it is? What if I’m more flawed than anyone’s ever realized.”
My sister’s tone changed, I could sense the worry in her voice. “What are…what are you talking about? What do you mean? Is everything okay?”
I laughed bitterly. “I don’t know how to answer that. Everything is the way it should be, right? I have a wonderful husband, two beautiful kids, a house in the ‘burbs, great job, great career, great family all around.”
“But you’re not happy,” she surmised, instantly turning into a therapist on me.
“No. Not happy at all.”
“I thought you were happy, Sidney.”
I glanced at her briefly, my eyes full of the disdain that had been brewing in me for weeks. The shields were coming down and the façade of “Perfect Sidney” was fading away. The real Sidney, in all her flaws and bitter failings was slowly emerging.
“Happy? I don’t even know happy anymore, Karen. Happy is such a foreign state of being for me.”
Karen was quiet for a moment. I know her mind must have been racing, struggling to string together images of my past, of our past, hunting for the disconnect that she’d missed. Searching for the fissure in my life she’d overlooked.
She told me I could talk to her. That I could tell her anything and she wouldn’t judge me. I think my seriousness scared her. In our adult life I’d never really needed her. I’d never really needed anyone. Until now. The situation with Dayna had broken me down.
I turned onto my parent’s street. Pulled over to the curb, a few houses down from their two-story home in Evanston. I killed the engine and met my baby sister’s gaze, our eyes meeting in the faint street lights, flickering around us.
“Karen, I’m going to tell you something, okay?”
She nodded.
I swallowed hard and blinked back tears before I softly spoke, “I….I’m in love with my best friend.”
Her eyes flitted from side to side, searching again for bits and pieces of information. “Your best friend? Your best friend is Dayna?” she asked softly, almost matter-of-factly, as though she were a detective, putting together pieces of an abstract puzzle.
And I understood her confusion. She had assumed that my unhappiness must be because of Aaron. Because of something he was doing wrong. But my unhappiness was all about me. About her. About us. And the gap between the me I used to be and the me I was now.
I nodded and wiped a few hot tears from my flushed cheeks. I looked down, my head hanging in shame.
“Yes. Dayna. You haven’t met her. She moved here last year.”
The pieces seem to click into place and my baby sister eyed me curiously. I wouldn’t meet her eyes, but I could feel the heat of her gaze. “What are you saying, Sidney? How can you be in love with her?”
I shrugged my shoulders and replied, “I don’t know how it happened. But it’s happened. It’s been happening.”
Karen’s eyes opened wide and her mouth hung open. “Are you even gay?” she asked.
I shrugged and rolled my eyes at the absurdity of not having an answer for that question. “Is this a mutual thing or a one-sided thing?” Karen asked.
I sighed. “It was mutual.” I whispered, wiping at the wetness on my face.
“Are you….are you sleeping with her?” she asked, incredulity coating her voice.
My elbow was on my knee and my forehead found its way to my right hand. I answered my sister’s question, my voice strained and shaky. I told her that we had been intimate, but that the intimacy was over.
“You cheated on Aaron with this woman? Is that it?”
I nodded my head. “I’m having a really hard time - - -,” I began.
She cut me off, shaking her head as she spoke. I wasn’t prepared for her sharp tone and her soul slicing words. “You’re having a hard time? You’re living like the Huxtables and you want to go and fuck it up. I can’t even get my boyfriend to stay faithful and you’ve got Mr. Black Superman at your beck and call. Now you’re jonesing for your best friend?”
I stared at her, shocked by her reaction to my heart-felt confession. “You said I could tell you anything!”
Her eyes turned dark and she said, “Anything but this! What kind of world are you living in? You have no reason to complain about anything. Everything has been handed to you on a silver-fucking-platter and you go out and create problems. Create shit to be sad about. I can’t understand you, Sidney.
“I’ve been crying my eyes out for months over Daniel. Tell me how many times Aaron has cheated on you?”
My jaw was tense, my look hard and defensive. “He hasn’t.”
“Imagine that. Mr. Black Superman has never cheated on his wife. What did he do wrong? Love you too much?”
I shook my head and looked out the
windshield, filled with regret for opening my big mouth. “I never should have told you,” I said.
“Damn right. I don’t want to hear about it. It’s crazy. Just crazy,” she reached for the door handle.
My right hand leapt across the passenger seat and held on to her arm. “Where are you going?”
“In the house. I can’t sit here and listen to this shit. It’s ridiculous. I can’t do it.”
I must have looked so desperate. My eyes undoubtedly bloodshot and wet-rimmed, my faced flushed, and my gaze intense and frightened. “Wait!”
She stared down at my hand, as if it too had offended her. “What?” she spat at me.
“Please don’t tell Mom and Dad.”
Karen looked at me as if I’d suddenly grown stupid. She pulled away from me and stood on the side walk.
“Sidney, what the fuck would I say to them? How could I ever tell them this? This is none of my damn business and that’s the way you should have kept it. You have nothing to worry about.”
And with that, she slammed my door and started marching down the street, the extra pounds on her backside jiggling as she went.
I opened the door and stood on the street. “What about your bag?” I called.
“I’ll get it later,” she replied, never looking back at me.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Aaron
On the Friday evening of Memorial Day weekend, I was at my in-laws, waiting for Sidney and her sister to return from the airport. My father-in-law and I were watching the ball-game, eating salt-free chips, and sharing player stats as we watched his big-screen. It was a 73 inch flat screen, the players were damned near life-sized and I was mesmerized.
The Campbell residence was a roomy, two-story with a decent sized front yard and damn near an acre in the back. It was brick, like ours, but with pale yellow and white posts in the front. Yellow and white checkered curtains were visible from the street and Mrs. Campbell always made it a top priority to maintain the yellow and white tulips in the front garden. She had a whole slew of other plants and flowers I couldn’t name, but I did know about the tulips because she’d recruited me nearly every year to help her get the tulip bulbs and soil from the garden center.
In the back yard they had a picturesque oak tree with a hand-crafted wooden bench beneath it. Sidney had told me her brother Marcus had made it with her father, in memory of Mr. Campbell’s parents. Marcus had even affixed a small silver plaque with his grandparent’s names on it. And in the warm summer months, Mr. Campbell liked to sit under that tree in his neatly trimmed backyard and read. Sometimes he’d read the bible, other times he’d read books by ministers, and occasionally a literary classic.
Their home wasn’t small. It held four bedrooms and three baths with the master suite downstairs. Sidney had begun to worry how her parents were going to take care of so much space when her mother was getting older and slower and her father’s achy back was growing achier by the year.
This warm, middle-class home was a far cry from the two-bedroom spot my parents had down on the South side. My parents were laborers. Sidney’s were educators. Both retired school teachers who’d planned well and saved much. They’d built a family and a full life at a time where it wasn’t so easy for people of color to do so.
Coming in to their home, I was always met with a faint hint of vanilla. The front entryway was tiled in shiny dark-wood and the wood gave way to soft, green shag carpeting. The living room was off to the right and the kitchen off to the left. A small hallway leading to the downstairs half-bath and the master suite was laid out before me and to the left was a staircase leading up to three bedrooms on the second floor.
Family photos in circle and oval frames, in black and white, color, and sepia tones, lined the walls in the living room and in the hall. The Campbell home was infused with a sense of history and family unity and I always felt like I belonged.
From the moment I first met Sidney’s parents and their comfortable home, I knew I wanted to create a life that filled my walls. Warm memories to make me smile in my old age.
Turning my attention back to the game, I saw the Chicago Bulls point guard drive hard up the middle, dunk, and hang just slightly on the rim.
“Yeah! That’s what I’m talking ‘bout. You go boy,” Mr. Campbell exclaimed, slapping his knee.
“Hush all that, old man,” his wife called from the kitchen. She was in there with Devann and Aiden, making homemade chocolate chip cookies.
After a little cajoling and a promise that he would be my problem if anything bad happened, I’d finally convinced my mother-in-law to let her husband have one beer. He was savoring it, taking small sips and grinning like a baby with a piece of candy. Or like me in front of that 73 inch flat screen.
We were both in heaven when Karen knocked briefly on the front door before trying the knob and finding it unlocked.
An explosion of sound ensued.
Mrs. Campbell came rushing into the foyer, a clean white apron tied around her jeans and red sweatshirt. She swept Karen up in a hug and sang, “My baby’s home! My baby’s home!”
Always counted on to enjoy a good time, Aiden and Devann came in on Mrs. Campbell’s heels, wrapping their little arms around Auntie Karen where they could. “Auntie Karen!”
Mrs. Campbell finally let go of her youngest child and kissed each of Karen’s cheeks. “Girl you look good. I see you finally put on some weight.”
Karen rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to get rid of it, Ma.”
“No, don’t. It looks good on you, girl. Keep it. What do they say these days? A little junk in the trunk?”
“Ma! Please,” Karen replied, smiling broadly.
My father-in-law stood up and did his Fred Sanford walk over to my sister-in-law. “Hey girl. Come give your Daddy a hug, now.”
Mr. Campbell had always reminded me of a black version of the Yo Sam-eti-sam cartoon. He was small and brash with a gruff voice that may sound angry, but was always full of cheer. He had a mustache that was once black but now more salt than any other color and with his diminutive size and bowed legs, his shape even reminded me of the colorful cartoon gunslinger.
“Where is your sister?” asked Mrs. Campbell.
Karen tossed an errant look towards the door. “She’s coming,” she mumbled.
And then I saw her. Sidney had made her way up the front steps and was pulling Karen’s rolling suitcase. I rushed to take the bag and opened the door.
“I got it,” I said to her.
My wife smiled at me weakly before slipping past me and kissing her mother’s cheek.
“Hey Ma,” she said.
“Hey you. You’re looking so peaked these days,” said Mrs. Campbell, her eyes following my wife’s defeated stance.
Sidney shrugged. “Hey Daddy.”
“Hey Sunshine.”
Again, my wife tossed a small smile around the room and excused herself to the restroom.
I sighed, studying her as she retreated.
I could hear Mrs. Campbell in the background, talking to Karen. “I keep telling that girl to slow down. She’s putting too much pressure on herself these days.”
When I turned back toward the rest of the family, my sister-in-law’s gaze had been following Sidney’s quick departure and when Karen realized I was watching her watch Sidney, she smiled softly and said, “Hey Aaron. How are you?”
I nodded and we shared a brief hug.
“How are you doing, Brother-in-law?” she asked me.
Her words were warm and filled with genuine curiosity, but her eyes reflected a different truth. They were soft and sad and her hands moved nervously against one another. Something wasn’t quite right but I didn’t know what it was or if it was any of my business.
“I’m doing good. It’s good to see you, girl. Your mother has been talking about you non-stop for days now,” I said, winking at Mrs. Campbell.
The older woman patted my arm gently and said, “He’s something else, this man. Sometimes I’d swear your fat
her spit him out. He’s just a silly as this old man right here.”
My father-in-law threw up his hands in mock agitation, his raspy voice and bow-legged shuffle almost comical. “Here you go. This is why I stay out of the kitchen. This woman is driving me crazy. I’m gonna sit down with my bad back and my son-in-law and finish this game.” Then he made a great display of padding back over to his easy chair.
“Oh stop. You’re turning into an old fool already and it’s still early for you,” said Mrs. Campbell.
Karen and I snickered, our eyes ping-ponging back and forth between husband and wife.
Mr. Campbell pulled a lever on the side of his chair and his feet, clad in worn black socks, rose up, now even with his legs. Her tossed me a friendly look, “Come on over here, son. We got a game to watch.”
“Mother Campbell, you are gonnna get me in trouble here. Let me go and finish the game,” I said.
Sidney’s mother shook her head, smiling warmly at our antics. “Lester gets one more male in the house and thinks he’s the king of some kind of castle. Ya’ll go on and enjoy that ball game you’re watching. Karen, go put your bag in your room and come meet me in the kitchen.”
Karen grinned and said, “Well, I see nothing has changed. It’s good to be home, Mama.”
“Good to have you home, Sweet Pea. Now drop off that bag and come tell me about this Daniel fella.” With that, she went back into the kitchen with her little grandchildren-minions following her.
“Do you need some help, Karen?” I asked, now seated on the plush, maroon colored sofa.
She shook her head and turned town my offer of assistance.
I heard the toilet flush in the hall bathroom and Sidney made her way down the hall. She walked into the living room and as she moved to sit beside me, I heard Karen ask, “Sid, do you…you think you can help me with this?”
The next thing I knew, they both struggled with the suitcase and pulled it up the stairs.
“Women. You can’t understand them. Probably time for girl talk,” said Mr. Campbell, his gaze never leaving the television.