The Double Life: A Novel By Shea Lynn

by Shea Lynn

  She shook her head sadly and sighed. “No. And Mom’s already winding up.”

  I knew what she meant. This was a dysfunctional family ritual. Daddy out “tending to the flock” and Mom in the kitchen maniacally humming old Negro spirituals.

  I could faintly hear the notes to “Go Down Moses” in the background.

  Cameron emerged from the hall. He’d carried a sleeping Nina into the guest room and laid her down on the bed. “Can I help with anything?” he asked.

  “Daddy’s not back yet,” I whispered to him.

  Cameron’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Still?”

  I nodded. “He’s out tending.”

  My husband’s eyeballs looked as though they might pop out of his head. “Tending? Tonight? I thought your mother said there was an emergency,” he whispered.

  Debbie tossed him a patronizing smile. “There have been a total of three real emergencies in my entire life. The odds of that happening today, of all days, is about a million to one. He’s out ‘tending’.”

  My voice returned to normal level. “Cam, Mom probably needs help putting up the rest of the food and cleaning up out back. Can you help her with that, please?”

  My husband nodded. “Yeah, no problem,” he said, before disappearing into the kitchen.

  Debbie and I watched him go, as though we were watching a television show. My mother stopped humming and they chit chatted, moving about in the kitchen.

  Cameron hadn’t been a “flock-tender”, but he’d been a card-carrying cheater. His sins mirrored those of my father and I refused to have a conversation where my husband had even the slightest opportunity to condemn my father. He was no better than the righteous Reverend Taylor and I didn’t want to have to think about the locations Cameron might have been when he wasn’t with me.

  With my mother and husband in the kitchen, Debbie and I cleaned up the backyard, using the floodlights to help guide the way. When the food was put up, Cameron let me know he was tired and headed to bed and that my mother was going to take a shower and go to bed as well.

  Debbie and I had shared a look. We knew our mother had no intention of actually going to bed. She had every intention of sitting in her rocking chair in the living room, humming Negro spirituals, and awaiting my father’s return. And that’s exactly where we found her, thirty minutes later.

  She was in her nightgown and long, white zippered robe. She had a bible in her hand and she was rocking away as Debbie and I entered the room and sat down on the couch.

  My sister and I were grown women, but this scene dialed the clock back nearly twenty years. We’d shared many a night like this. Watching our mother border on religious insanity, awaiting our father in the night. We never talked about it. Ever. And each time it happened, my mother pretended that it didn’t.

  She was great at pretending.

  Debbie and I sat motionless on the couch, each afraid to say anything.

  Finally, my mother broke the silence, still rocking and clutching the bible. “I know he’s out there. I know where he’s at.”

  Debbie sighed and moved to the rocking chair. She sat down at my mother’s side and held her hand in a silent show of support.

  “I know where’s at. He acts like I don’t know. But I do know.”

  And then the tears began to trickle down her tan, freckled face. There weren’t always tears. The salty stuff was a variable that could always change, but the rocking was a constant in these late-night sessions. And so was the humming.

  I heard the first few bars of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” before I leapt from the couch and found some tissues.

  I bent on the other side of my mother and held her other hand, wiping her tears as she rocked.

  “It’s okay, Mom”, I whispered.

  She continued to hum and rock as the tears slipped down and wet her cheeks. But I was there to catch the tears.

  Did I have a destiny to follow in my mother’s footsteps? To sit up at night waiting for the king of my castle to return home? To sit in a rocking chair and hum my way to mental illness with my daughter keeping vigil? Was this the life I was destined to lead?

  Our circumstances were different, but the worry and the cheating were the same.

  At the end of “Swing Low”, we saw my father’s headlights shine in the driveway. He’d finally made it home.

  Mom stopped humming and straightened herself. Debbie and I rose from our positions and stood with arms folded across our chests awaiting his entrance.

  His face was fuller than it was in the portrait over the mantle. But his squared lenses were the same. His eyes lit up when he saw me standing there and he said, “Dayna Denise, girl, come here.”

  It wasn’t my place to mention my father’s “tending”. I’d been conditioned to ignore and pretend and that’s just what I did.

  “Hi, Daddy,” I said softly. I stepped closer to him and he pulled me into a tight bear hug.

  “How are you, Baby Girl?” he asked, his voice hoarse, yet booming.

  “I’m fine, Dad,” I replied as he finally released me from his strong embrace.

  Daddy looked at my sister and said, “Deborah, where you been girl? I haven’t seen you in months and we live in the same city.”

  “I’ve been working, Dad. Twelve-hours shifts don’t leave me much free time.”

  “Well, you need to make time for the Lord. I haven’t seen you on Sunday mornings.”

  Debbie sighed, frustrated and exhausted with the absurdity we’d just experienced. She turned to our mother, kissed her cheek, and squeezed her hand. “Good night, Ma. I love you. I’m heading home now.”

  My mother patted Debbie’s hand and smiled. “Good night, Deborah. You’ll be at church in the morning?”

  My sister squinted and through gritted teeth replied, “Yes, Ma’am.”

  That made our mother smile.

  Debbie walked out then. Walked right past our father and tossed him an emotionless, “Good-night, Dad,” before opening the front door and stepping out.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” I called, following her to the porch and down the street to her car.

  My sister walked briskly and I struggled to keep up. “They are so fucked up. He’s such an ass. Such an ass. And then he asks me about church like he hasn’t been out fucking some other woman all night long,” Debbie mumbled, more to herself than to me.

  “This is why I don’t come over here,” she continued. “The shit just doesn’t stop. It goes on and on and on. He’s damned near seventy years old. When is it enough?”

  We reached her car, a sporty silver coupe. Debbie opened the door and got behind the wheel. I walked over to her door and her eyes told me she was just realizing she hadn’t stormed out alone.

  “This was real, right?” she asked me.

  I nodded. “Yeah, it was.”

  “Is she crazy?”

  I sighed. “She’s crazy in love. With him and the church.”

  My sister’s dark eyes grew serious and stared hard at me. “Don’t let Cameron turn you into a fucking psycho. No man is worth that. It’s better to be alone than to settle, Dane. Much, much better. Never settle.”

  We shared our good-byes and we both knew that for my mother’s sake, I would see my sister at service in the morning.

  Chapter Forty-Three: Cameron

  Our mini family vacation to Indy had been more stressful than my actual 9-to-5. If I hadn’t been a witness to the Taylor family dysfunction, I would not have believed it. Though I hadn’t been standing in the living room with Dayna and Debbie, I could still hear the humming of their mother and the hushed and frantic whispers of the sisters as the trio awaited the return of Reverend Taylor.

  Lying awake in the guest room, flat on my back with my legs crossed at the ankles and my arms folded behind my head, I’d heard Emmanuel’s car creep into the driveway. He’d grunted loud enough for me to hear before closing his door and making his way to the front of the house. There’d been a brief hustle and bustle in t
he living room before he entered and as my eyes ping ponged back and forth in the darkness, I wondered just how this climatic family moment would unfold.

  There were no fireworks. No angry, shaking fingers from Mrs. Taylor. I couldn’t make out the words but the family reunion was hushed and genteel and as I heard the Taylors shuffle off to bed, I looked over at my five year old, snoring softly beside me on the mattress, and I shook my head in disgust. There was no way I would ever put her through the worry and anxiety Reverend Taylor had put his daughters through.

  Dayna and I had been married for seven years, but this was my first time serving as a witness to Reverend Taylor’s return from his “flock tending”. My wife had mentioned it before and I understood the meaning behind their colloquial term, but I’d never actually seen the shit with my own eyes or heard it with my own ears.

  It was no wonder Dayna had put up with me for so long. Compared to her father, I was a saint. In the earlies, I’d been extra careful and it wasn’t until the end of our time in Indy that I got sloppy. I’d always respected Dayna enough to keep her ignorant of my indiscretions. I hadn’t been out to punish her in any way. I was just a horny man with a need for rough, raw sex and I didn’t want my wife to know about that side of me.

  “Such a fucking idiot,” I whispered to myself, referring to myself.

  I’d been no better than the righteous reverend across the hall. But there was a difference between him and me: I was a changed man. I’d seen the error of my ways and had taken advantage of having the opportunity to change. I was a different man.

  When Dayna came to our room in the night, she assumed I was asleep. And though I was fully alert, I let her think I was sleeping. Dayna slid in bed on the other side of Nina, our child serving as a barrier between us. She rubbed our baby’s belly and kissed her forehead lovingly, before turning over and going to sleep herself.

  Dayna’s breathing evened out and as it did, my eyes popped back open. They saw the darkness of the room, but behind them, a colorful history was flashing in my mind. Sights, sounds, and faces of the old me flickered around, whispering in the darkness. A memory peeked out from behind a door I’d been trying to close for nearly a year and though I didn’t want to think about it, I couldn’t help it.

  It was a Tuesday afternoon and I was sitting at the edge of my desk in my new office at St. Paul’s Hospital. The facility was the best of its kind and world-renown for its advances in cardiac medicine and I was lucky to snag the role as the hospital’s new administrator. My father was an influential heart surgeon and though he’d pressured me to follow in his footsteps, I didn’t want to look at blood and tissue all day long. So I’d gotten my undergraduate degree in general studies and then an MBA with a dual concentration in general business and hospital administration.

  I’d come to my father one night, telling him that I needed to get out of Indianapolis. I needed a change if I had any hope of salvaging my marriage. Two days later, I’d gotten a call about this job in Evanston. Dad had pulled a couple of strings for me.

  And on that Tuesday afternoon, as I sat at the edge of my brand new desk, in my favorite charcoal, pin-striped suit, I grinned widely at the beautiful woman seated in the chair in front of me. Gwendolyn Pierce was a nurse on staff and she’d been flirting with me since we first made eye contact. As we sat and flirted, she batted her long lashes at me, her hooded lids slipping up and down over a pair of smoky gray eyes.

  She was biracial. The product of a black father and a white mother and her silky dark hair fell loose around her shoulders, a natural curl adding body to her thick, sexy mane. Her skin matched the color of a sliced almond and the scent of that sweet nut tickled my nose.

  Gwen was built just like I like my women. Thin in the waist and legs, busty and thick in the hips. As I sat there, grinning like a boy in a toy store, I had to fight to keep my manhood from betraying the lust that coated me like a heavy cloak.

  “What’s that scent you’re wearing?” I asked, flashing her my best smile.

  Her smoky gray eyes twinkled at me, “D’amande. It’s French.”

  “Smells like almonds,” I replied.

  She shrugged. “There’s a little bit of this, a little bit of that. The name means honey.”

  That was my opening. “Do you taste like honey?”

  Gwen’s heavy lids blinked lazily before she whispered, “You tell me.”

  She stood up and kissed me then. A long, deep kiss that made my shit grow hard. Her tongue touched mine. Tasted every inch of my mouth and then she sucked my bottom lip, nibbled at it and sucked it again.

  Before I knew it, I’d locked my door and had her against the wall, her leg in my right hand, wrapped around my waist. I tongued her down, rubbing myself against her soft skin, easing the ache in my dick with each slow thrust. She could feel me. Through the uniform-grade white pants and colorful patterned top of her outfit, she could still feel me.

  I pulled away from her lips, sucking the skin of her neck, nibbling at the smooth scent of D’amande.

  “I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you,” she whispered, her voice heavy with want.

  I didn’t respond. I was too busy tasting her skin.

  “Did I make you this hard?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  A second later I felt her hand rubbing my dick through the fabric of my charcoal, pin-striped pants. “Mmm,”I whispered. “Don’t do that, girl.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Cause you can’t tease him. He doesn’t like to be teased.” My eyes locked on hers.

  “I’m not teasing. I want to feel him inside of me. I’ve been waiting to feel him inside of me for a couple of weeks now.”

  That did it, my shit was aching now. I leaned my head against her neck and said, “Fuck.”

  “That’s what I had in mind.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t do that right now. Not in here. Someone’ll hear us. Besides, I don’t have a rubber. I don’t have any on me.” That was a cardinal rule for me: don’t fuck around and leave evidence. No STDs and no outside kids. Besides, making her wait was also part of the game. The more she waited, the more willing she would be. They always were.

  She sighed then. I looked back into her gray eyes and saw them flicker with frustration. “Then when?”

  “Tonight. I’ll get out of the house tonight. I’ll come meet you at your crib. Is that cool?”

  She nodded then and chewed her lip, the lust still dancing in her eyes, her sliced-almond cheeks flushed. Gwen glanced down at the bulge in my pants. “That’s cool. But can he wait?”

  I sighed. “I hope so. You got him going crazy. You so damn sexy. You smell so good,” I said, rubbing my hands up and down the sleeves of her white coat.

  She started beeping then and whispered, “Fuck. I gotta go.”

  I nodded and stepped back, my senses still reeling from her presence. “Okay. I’ll call you tonight.”

  Gwen nodded and kissed me one last time before we both tried to smooth ourselves out and hide our private office interaction. I walked her to my door and opened it. She stood there for a moment and winked at me, fingering my tan and black, silk checkered tie before she beeped again.

  Gwen whispered, “See you tonight,” before she hurried off, throwing me a sexy, sweet look over her shoulder.

  I followed that look and followed her ass with my eyes. And when Gwen’s ass turned the corner, I looked up and saw Dayna eyeballing me.

  “Fuck,” I whispered.

  This was exactly the wrong time for her to show up.

  Dayna was pissed. Her lips twisted and her eyes squinted. I thought she might shoot venom. But she didn’t.

  My wife didn’t say a word to me. She turned around, got into the elevator and didn’t look back.

  I didn’t follow her. I didn’t know what to say. I figured I would give her time to cool off and that I’d make it up to her that night. Maybe take her out to dinner, bring some roses to the house. She loved r
oses: especially yellow ones.

  When I got home, all of my shit was sitting in the living room, waiting for me to take it somewhere. Anywhere but home. Dayna refused to speak with me and though I tried to plead my case with lies about how she hadn’t seen what she’d seen, my pleas fell on deaf ears.

  I didn’t make it to Gwen’s that night and to be honest, I pretty much forgot all about our pre-set rendezvous.

  Fast forward almost a year and here I was: a reformed serial cheater, praying my wife wouldn’t realize just how close my sins were to that of her wayward father.

  “Fucking idiot,” I thought to myself.

  Chapter Forty-Four: Dayna

  True to her word, Debbie made it to church the next morning. And she was early. We hurried into the sanctuary before the start of the morning’s service and sat next to my mother in her white dress on the first pew.

  Daddy stood in the raised pulpit, behind the wooden podium. An array of six associate pastors and deacons sat behind him in a semi-circle of old, heavy, wooden chairs. He was wearing his favorite dark-blue robe and he looked fresh and crisp. His low-cropped haircut, with the receding hairline had been trimmed that morning, as had his beard.

  I knew that, because he’d been lined up and trimmed nearly every Sunday morning of my youth.

  Daddy gripped the sides of the podium, smiling at his congregation. “Good morning church,” he called, in a deep booming rhythm, characteristic of southern Baptist ministers both past and present.

  “Good morning!” the congregation called back to him. My mother was the loudest voice of all.

  My father, filled with his signature, charismatic style, turned his head back to his row of pastors and deacons. “Is anyone here today, ya’ll?”

  Daddy turned back to the front and repeated his greeting. “I said, good morning church!”

  Morning sounded more like “moanin’” and the response this time was ear-shattering.

  Pleased with the cheerful sounds, my father turned to the director of music, “Brother Gregory, I believe we’re gonna have some church this morning.”

  Brother Gregory, was tall and thin with a close-cropped haircut and beautiful smile. He said, “Amen, Pastor.” And then he played a melody of upbeat notes on the organ.