by Shea Lynn
“And Dayna.”
“And you’re in love with Dayna?” Karen asked me, her eyes now focused again on the picture in her hands.
“I know I am.” I admitted. “I’m so in love with her.”
“And Aaron?” she asked, her eyes now meeting mine.
“I love my husband, Karen. I love him very much.”
“But are you in love with him?”
I sighed. “I don’t think so. No, I know I’m not. But I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to do the right thing. The good Christian thing. I need to be with my husband. I need to stay in my marriage.”
She nodded and then we heard something akin to plastic clink against the hardwood floors in the hall. And a masculine voice utter a soft, “Shit.”
Both of our heads shot up and I realized we hadn’t closed my office door.
It was my turn to mutter, “Shit.” I leapt up from the couch and made my way to the doorway. There was my husband’s cousin bending down to tend to his now-broken designer shades.
Darnell heard me approach and looked up at me, his brow knitted, his eyes both shocked and embarrassed.
“How…how much did you hear?” I asked, my breath halting, my chest heaving up and down.
Darnell stood to his full six feet, his handsome brown face a mask of embarrassment and pity. “Enough to know you and my brother need to be having a serious conversation.”
“Fuck,” I murmured, my eyes filling with embarrassed tears. “You heard me.”
He nodded. “I did. I came in to get something and I - - -,” Darnell stopped himself and looked away.
Karen had left the office as well. She walked toward me and stood on my left side. Darnell smiled shyly at her and I wondered briefly if she was what he’d come looking for.
“Are you going to tell him?” she asked Darnell.
My husband’s cousin and I shared a look before he responded. “I don’t want to. I’d never want to tell another man about his own woman. Especially A. But if you don’t, I think I’ll have to.”
“She’s not even seeing her anymore,” said Karen, waging a battle on my behalf.
Darnell sighed and nervously rubbed at the back of his neck. “I don’t know what to say. I came in the house to get some vinegar and stumbled right into shit.”
“Please don’t say anything. I’m asking you. Sidney’s not asking. I am,” said Karen.
Darnell seemed to deflate and he chewed on his lips. “Alright. I won’t tell him. But Sidney….I think you should.”
Fuck.
I nodded. I had no intentions of hurting Aaron. And no intentions of telling Aaron anything. But all I could do at that moment was nod and agree like an obedient little solider.
Besides. We were over. Our romantic relationship severed.
Dayna was now back to being Mrs. Cameron Wilkins and I’d vowed to be the best Mrs. Aaron King I could be.
We were both being like Job.
Avoiding even the temptation of sin.
I met Darnell’s gaze, my eyes focused and intense, my words filled with conviction.
“I have no reason to hurt him. I love Aaron. And honestly…it’s over. Completely over with her.”
Chapter Forty-One: Aaron
We all had a great time that day. The sun stayed out all day and there was more than enough food to the keep the party going. Eating, talking, playing cards, dancing. The aura of a happy day followed us into the twilight and I watched Sidney take her sleeping pill before we got into bed that night.
I snuggled in next to her and she asked, “We had fun today, huh?
“Yeah, we did.”
She was quiet then, her even breath rising and falling amid the backdrop of silence in our now-empty home.
“Aaron, you know I love you, right?””
“I know you do. I love you, too.”
Another short pause and then I said, “Sidney?”
“Yeah?”
I hesitated for moment, not wanting to wreck her good mood and send her flying out of my arms to the waiting couch downstairs. “I want us to go away together. Take a short vacation. Just for a weekend. What do you think?”
I could hear her swallow. “I….I think that sounds great, Aaron. Do you want me to put something together? When were you thinking about?”
“No, no. Don’t you worry about it. I’ll handle all the arrangements.”
“Really? Are you sure?” I could hear the surprise in her voice.
“I’m sure. I’ll put everything together and let you know.”
“You have a place in mind?” she asked.
“I do. It’s a quiet place Darnell told me about.”
I heard her swallow again. “Oh.”
“And speaking of Darnell,” I began.
Sidney twisted in the bed. She moved away from me and rolled over onto her back.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Sure?”
“Yes. What were you saying?” she asked.
“Well, Darnell was talking about going back to school. Getting his degree.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” she whispered.
“Me too.”
“Darnell is very bright.”
“He is. He wanted me to talk to you about helping him get set up. He’s interested in going pre-law.”
I couldn’t see her in the darkness, but I knew that made her smile. “Really? What kind of law is he interested in?”
I shrugged, still on my left side. “I don’t know. But he told me to ask you to help him out.”
“Gladly. I’ll give him a call on Tuesday. Was that….was that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Oh okay.” When she spoke those two little words, her entire presence seemed to calm. She turned back on her side and scooted over to me.
I chuckled. “Are you feeling the sleeping pill buzz?”
She nodded. “Mmm hmm.”
Sidney had told me the pills worked very fast and that before her consciousness dropped off into a black depth of deep sleep, she felt funny and happy inside, almost as if she’d been buzzing on an illegal narcotic.
“Get some sleep, Sid.”
She nodded again and moments later, she was snoring softly.
Chapter Forty-Two: Dayna
I found new homes for nearly all of Cameron’s bachelorhood possessions on the same day he moved back home. Most of the new homes happened to be in our basement, but that was okay by me. And anything was okay with Cameron, so long as we shared one address.
It was nice spending time with him. In the midst of his cheating and my bitterness, I’d forgotten what it was like to be friends with Cameron. He was funny and witty and I began to remember falling in love with him. I say “remember” because even though I loved him, the in-love-ness just wasn’t happening for me.
My mother was ecstatic. Happier about Cameron’s return than I could ever hope to be. She insisted on us coming home to Indianapolis for the Memorial Day weekend and I felt powerless to refuse her request. We pulled into the driveway of my parent’s one-story bungalow early on Saturday afternoon. We were just in time for my mother’s holiday picnic and as she and my sister hurried to the car, I groaned deeply and Cameron chuckled at my antics.
“It’s just for two days. Really just 24 hours. It’s not so bad,” he whispered.
I gave him “the eye” and he looked away.
They opened the doors to my gray SUV and pulled us out of the vehicle. My sister Debbie, swept away my only child to spoil her with un-earned candy-coated treats and sugar-dipped good graces. I shook my head as she hurried her into the tidy house with the pristine white trim and earth-toned shingles. I hoped the sugar high Nina would get would wear off before she became intolerable.
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
“Hey Baby,” she beamed. Her cheeks were pulled tight with a prideful smile as she glanced between my husband and I. “It’s so good to see you.”
My mother was slightly
shorter than me. Busty and thick with creamy, tan skin and silky, dark ringlets that fell around her plump, freckled face. As we hugged, I smelled the same perfume she’d worn for the last 50 years and though it tickled my nose, it did make me feel at home. Her dark pink capris matched the unbuttoned short sleeve shirt she wore over a light pink t-shirt. The outfit was perfect for the warm, sunny day and as I stood in my jeans and long-sleeved tee, I hoped I wouldn’t be too hot.
My legs needed a good stretch after our three hour drive into Indianapolis, but Mom didn’t give me time for that. She grabbed Cameron and I and paraded us around to all of her friends from the church until I was sure they were sick of hearing about us and our picture-perfect life in Chicago. There were about a million people in her backyard and eventually, Cameron ran into a clump his old guy-friends. We separated from my mother then and I stood, chit-chatting with Robert, Darien, and Andy.
I was mildly uncomfortable. I knew that these “friends” knew more about my husband’s sex life than I ever would. They knew about his secret trysts and the faces and names I had never seen or heard. It was probably just my imagination, but they seemed to shift their eyes when they addressed me. Almost afraid a secret would spill from their lips.
When it was appropriate, I excused myself from the men and kissed Cameron on the cheek. I needed a break.
I wandered into my parent’s home from the back door and found myself standing in the worn, family kitchen. The linoleum could stand to be replaced, but apart from that, this space was immaculate and just as I’d remembered.
It was quiet inside. I needed the quiet.
I made my way to the living room and stood in front of the fireplace. There was a large painting of my father there, hung just over the mantle. It was my mother who’d commissioned it.
Daddy was sitting in a black robe, a white stole inlaid with one large, golden cross on both sides, was draped behind his neck, its golden crosses sitting proudly on my father’s chest. He was clasping an old-style, black, leather-bound King James bible in his right hand, holding it close to his side. My eyes traveled from the large golden crosses to his thick neck and the well-trimmed beard I’d known all my life.
A pair of black, wire-rimmed glasses with squared lenses sat atop his short, wide-nose and though he was a few shades darker than my mother, he still had a few freckles sprayed across his face. He was smiling. His thick lips parted to show a sliver of his white teeth.
Daddy’s dark eyes twinkled in the painting. He was regal in this image above the fireplace. Like a king sitting beside the throne of Jesus.
“What secrets do you have, Daddy?” I whispered aloud.
“More than you’d want to know,” came a voice from behind me.
Startled, I spun around to find the mystery voice. My sister Debbie was standing behind me on the dark rose carpet. She resembled me but was a little thicker and little less maintained than I was. She was a night nurse in the pediatric ward of the hospital. Long-nights and twelve hour shifts had darkened the bags under her pretty brown eyes and she kept her hair cut short in the style of early 90’s Halle Berry.
In her jeans and designer blue and red t-shirt, she looked a little more relaxed than she had during my last visit.
I held my hand to my chest, “Deb, you scared me.”
She smiled softly. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to give you a heart attack.”
“I didn’t even hear you come in.”
She shrugged. “I tip-toed. You seemed deep in thought.”
“I was.”
“About Daddy’s secrets?” she asked, her eyebrows raised with intrigued.
“Just thinking out loud.”
“Well, don’t stand here talking to yourself. Come with me. I’m taking a minute to regroup before I go back out there.”
“Where’s my Nina?” I asked her.
My older sister gestured toward the back of the house. “She’s out there. She saw Tyra and Anne Marie and I couldn’t separate them.”
I nodded. The two young girls had been Nina’s best friends before we’d moved westward.
“Come on,” said Debbie, turning away from the living room as we spoke.
“Where are we going?” I asked, following her.
“Your old room.”
“Why mine?”
“Because mine is now a sewing room.”
I frowned. “Oh. I didn’t know that.”
“I guess it’s Mom’s way of telling me I can’t come back home.”
I laughed. “I don’t think she’s ever in danger of that happening.”
“Damn right,” Debbie replied, pushing open the door to my old room.
It literally was my “old” room. There were no longer any traces of me at all in the space. All of my things had been boxed up and either given to me or stuck downstairs in the basement. The walls had been repainted a soft sea green and instead of the old, used full-sized mattress I’d had growing up, there was now a stylish day bed with a black wire frame.
“What are you doing in here?” I asked her, closing the door behind me.
“Having a smoke,” she said, pulling a white cigarette from a black leather case she then tossed onto the bed. Debbie took a seat by the large window in the room. It faced out to the street from behind a set of large, green hedges and though it was difficult for someone to see into the room from the street, we had a nearly unencumbered view of the neighborhood.
“You do realize that smoking can kill you?” I asked, taking a seat on the carpet beside her, as she coolly lit the thin, white stick and took a long inhale.
Debbie held her breath a moment before blowing the smoke out the window. “You’ve asked me that same question for over fifteen years. It’s played out, Dayna.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger. I just don’t want your lungs turning all black and sickly.”
My sister shrugged. “Girl, something’s gonna get you. One way or another we all have to go out. This at least helps keep me from killing somebody.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “Where’s Daddy?”
My older sister tossed me a look and raised an eyebrow. “Now you know why I’m smoking this cancer stick. He’s out ‘tending to the flock’.”
My father had used that phrase for as long as I could remember. And for as long as I could remember, I hated that darn phrase. It held much more meaning to us than our sanctified father attending to the needs of his congregation. It was the red flag for his marital indiscretions.
“He’s still tending the flock?” I asked.
“Yes he is. At sixty-six years of age, our father, the good reverend is still tending. He was here for a little while and then his phone rang. He told me to let Mom know he had an ‘emergency to tend to’”.
“He couldn’t even stay for the picnic?”
Debbie shook her head and took another drag. “Nope.”
“Why does she put up with it?” I wondered aloud.
Debbie shrugged again. “Why not? He’s given her the greatest gift he ever could: Being First Lady. And he’s a good husband….when he’s around.”
“You think the people at church know what he does?” I asked.
“Everybody knows. I bet he’s either slept with half the women in our backyard or their mothers. It’s sickening.”
I studied the hedges in front of me. “He’s such a hypocrite.”
“And the reason I refuse to get married. All men are shit.”
I sighed. “Not all men. Some are good. I don’t know where they hide, but some are good. At least that’s what I’m told.” I was thinking of Aaron when I voiced those words.
“How’s Cameron?” she asked.
I swallowed thickly and ran my hand through my hair once more. “He’s….better. We’re trying. I think he’s changed.”
Debbie was skeptical. “You really think so?”
“I do. So far, he’s been great.”
“Well maybe he really has changed. But I won’t hold my breath.”
I
sighed. “Neither will I. You dating anybody?”
Debbie blew another stream of white smoke out the window and spoke slowly. “Dayna. I’m 39 years old. At my age, all black men are either in jail, just out of jail, married, or gay.”
“Gay?” I asked.
“Yes. And half of the gay brothers are dating white men.”
I smiled. “Well, what about a brother from another mother?”
She furrowed her brow and her beautifully arched eyebrows made a “V” shape. “White guys?”
“Any guys.”
“I’m getting to that point. But I’m not really looking right now. I’m happy being single. I come and go as I please. I’m not the only single-near-forty woman in my circle of friends so we get together and hang out. Life’s not so bad. I’d rather be alone than settle.”
I nodded but I didn’t really understand that. All I’d ever seen was my mother settling. I didn’t know how not to settle. I didn’t understand that a woman didn’t have to just make do with the man life had given her.
We had choices.
Debbie had made a choice.
“You want kids?” I asked.
“No. Not really. I’ve got two Beta fish and a temperamental Siamese cat. I’ve got enough little personalities in my home right now.”
I was quiet then, watching her inhale and blow out the window. “Are you staying here tonight?” she asked.
“Yeah. Leaving after church tomorrow.”
My older sister smiled at me. “You’re always welcome to stay with me.”
“I’d love to stay with you. But Mom - - -,” I began.
Debbie held up a hand. “Enough said.”
I watched her go through two more cigarettes before we took deep cleansing breaths and headed back to the chaos of the backyard. Cameron, Nina, and I stole away for a few hours to visit with my husband’s family and when we returned the party was still going.
The picnic lasted into the night and the last guest pulled away at around nine that evening.
Reverend Emmanuel Taylor was still out tending to the flock.
I locked the front door, hearing my mother in the kitchen humming as she put away food.
“He’s not back yet?” I whispered to Debbie.