Young Wives

She started to weave her way through the house to the bathroom. As she passed the living room she couldn’t help but wonder what frame of mind her father had been in when he furnished his house. The chairs were overstuffed and covered in blue velvet. The sofa was leather and one of those modern Italian shapes that looked like a surreal mountain range. Angie got a chill at the thought of having to continually sit on the leather furniture and touch it with her bare skin.

After his divorce from his second wife—a marriage that had been shorter than a normal menstrual cycle—her father had given up on the Park Avenue life he’d briefly attempted and moved to the suburbs. He’d dated a bunch of suburban women but complained that they bored him. So he worked compulsively, and watched a lot of sports on TV. It must be a work day, Angie realized, because if it was Saturday he’d be here, probably sitting on that cheesy sofa. What a life.

It was frightening to realize that it could become her life, too. She hadn’t been here long, but already she was feeling Middle-Aged Suburban Despair. And not just because of the horrible decor. Why was it, she wondered, that after a divorce men decorated so badly while women let their wardrobes go to hell? It was as if each gender blew off an area of good taste in a single legal instant. How long would it be before she was dressing in earth-tone stretch-waist pants and a leatherette jacket, coordinating perfectly with this room? Fuck joining Mother Teresa’s. Her life had ended.

Angela shivered, though the sweatshirt was warm. Yes, her life had ended. There had been the childhood phase, the preteen years, the high school and college coed period, law school, and the brief marriage. Now she would begin the Miss Haversham of Westchester segment, a segment that might—if she was as healthy as her Nana—last for fifty years. She looked down at the Ranger sweatshirt and wondered if it would also last that long. Not as dramatic as a wedding gown, but more practical, she thought. Now all she needed was a rosary.

She fell onto the couch and back asleep, woke long enough to catch the end of the Today show, and then fell asleep yet again. It was almost eleven when she next opened her eyes. It was odd: she had a morbid need to check the time. No place to go, nothing to do. Still, the idea that almost five hours had drifted by since she first woke up frightened her. When the phone rang, she jumped. Should she answer? It could be her dad, who checked in. She picked up and was relieved when Lisa’s voice greeted her.

“Hey, Angie,” she said. “How are you faring?”

Only Lisa would use the word faring. You had to be born in Back Bay Boston to get away with that. “Well, I’ll put it to you this way,” Angie told her friend. “If I were back in first grade right now, Mrs. Rickman would give me an ‘unsatisfactory’ for attitude.” Angie paused. “I really hurt. I miss Reid.”

“Let me tell you what your attitude should be,” Lisa said. “You should be furious and hurt and unforgiving. What Reid did means he doesn’t love you. He probably never did. You were his pet ethnic. Believe me, I know all about it. A little rebellion for the family. You don’t need that. You don’t need to do anything except move on.”

“I know, I know,” Angie agreed. “I’m such a fool. Of course I know it, but I have the weirdest feeling. I have the feeling I just want to hear his voice to ask him one more time whether he really meant to do it.”

“He meant it,” Lisa said, her voice full of certainty and controlled anger. “Look, it was unbelievable the way he did it, and unforgivable in the way he told you.”

Angie was about to agree when the doorbell rang. She started. “Hey, Lisa. Someone’s at the door. I gotta go.”

She hung up and glanced nervously at the front of the house. What was this? Nobody came to a suburban Westchester door—not in this section of Westchester—uninvited in the middle of a weekday morning. Who the hell could it be? Avon ladies? Jehovah’s Witnesses? Door-to-door electrologists? Whoever it was, Angie decided she wasn’t going to respond, until she peeked out the hall window and saw the florist’s truck. Then she flew to the door, threw it open, and had grabbed the two dozen white roses and snatched the note from the cellophane in less than thirty seconds.

It was from Reid! Obviously, it wasn’t in his handwriting, but he had dictated the words. I love you. Don’t punish me for telling the truth. Forgive me, Reid. The fragrance of the roses was faint but sweet. Oh God! He loved her. He’d fucked up—big time—but he loved her. One act of generosity on her part could free her and Reid from this pain. With one stroke, her conversations with her father and Lisa were stripped from her mind.

Yes. Yes! She would forgive Reid. What he had done was horrible, unforgivable, but she would forgive him. She was hot-tempered, like her father and mother. But she’d be big enough to do it. He had learned his lesson. Angie would look at this horror, this incident, as a last fling. Oh, she’d grant that most last flings came before the wedding, but Reid had always been a little slow emotionally. You couldn’t completely blame him. Look at his parents. He would promise to never do it again, he would shower her with more Shreve, Crump & Lowe boxes and they’d go back to their big white bed. She couldn’t restrain a shudder. Well, maybe they wouldn’t go right back to it, Angie realized. Maybe there would be some healing time necessary.

Then, in a single instant, the image of Reid alone, miserable, lying curled in a fetal position on their big white bed came to her. Guilty. Despairing. It had taken him this long to track her down. He had been frightened, then remorseful. She knew that without her he was lost. He needed her energy, her drive, her warmth.

Clutching his card to her Ranger sweatshirt, Angie ran to the phone and punched in their number. She heard the first ring and knew the stretch, the exact arc of his beautiful back as he reached for the phone. She could perfectly imagine that four hundred miles away in Marblehead, his hand was reaching across the sheets to the receiver. He was there, she knew it, too desolate, too sick, to go to work. He had been lying there in a painful pool of guilt and regret worse than her own misery. Because he did love her. Despite his cold parents, despite their disapproval, despite his own limitations, he loved her. The card in her hand said so, and Angie knew it deep in her gut.

When the phone was lifted from the receiver on the second ring Angie smiled in vindication and waited to hear his voice, a voice as deep and clear as the sea off the Marblehead coast.

“Hello,” a high-pitched woman’s voice said in a breathy exhalation. Angie nearly dropped the phone. “Hello?” the voice said again, this time in a questioning tone.

Angie pulled her hand from the receiver as if it were on fire. She dropped it into its cradle. “Oh my God,” she said aloud. “Oh my God.”

She’d called her house. Who had answered? Not a relative or an in-law. She didn’t have any sisters and neither did Reid. The voice certainly wasn’t his mother’s. What is going on? Angie looked down at the phone. She must have misdialed. She’d misdialed or, worse, Reid had already had the phone disconnected. Somebody new had their phone number. It must be one or the other. Angela snatched the receiver up and punched in their old number, but much more carefully this time. Had she remembered to dial the area code? Maybe she hadn’t and it had been a Westchester call.

The phone rang and Angie held her breath. She pictured Reid again, but this time the picture was a little … well, mistier. This time, again on the second ring, the phone was lifted and again the soprano voice said, “Hello.”

It wasn’t a wrong number. Reid had obviously changed numbers. But did they reassign phones so quickly? She should inquire. But her voice box was paralyzed. Maybe it was a cleaning lady. Yes. That was it. Or a stranger making a delivery or reading the meter. It could happen, she told herself. She looked down at the florist’s card she was still clutching to her chest.

“Hello?” the soprano said again. “Hello. Reid? Is that you?”

Since it wasn’t, Angela hung up the phone.

7 (#ulink_c9866e28-881a-522b-8cf3-66d65f65fd24)

Wherein Clinton and Jada have their talk, we learn about the nature of man, and the difference between milk, water, and blood

“Clinton, we have to talk.”

“Again?”

“I’m afraid so,” Jada said. Once the kids were on the bus, she closed the kitchen door and turned away and started wiping down the stove top. She could still see his face in the reflection of the stainless steel. She wondered when he had last cleaned the stove. “I’m afraid so,” she repeated, but she wasn’t really afraid. She was outraged. He had finally gone too damn far bringing dirt into the house.

Jada had suspected for years during their marriage that Clinton may have occasionally strayed. It was something she preferred not to think about, though awareness had sometimes been thrust upon her. That rich, bored woman in Armonk who had installed the two-hundred-thousand-dollar pool had called a little too often. And so had that black record producer’s wife, the Pound Ridge one who wanted to sing. Jada had decided to ignore them. They had never interfered in her marriage, never stopped Clinton from bringing home his paycheck, playing with his children, or loving her. Since then she’d learned that, in sales parlance, overly attentive client handling was called “petting the goldfish,” and if Clinton’s work had sometimes gotten a little up close and personal, Jada had turned a blind eye. He was a man, after all. And a good-looking, virile one. When men were offered what she thought of as POP—pussy on a plate—it was hard for them to walk away. Especially in Pound Ridge.

Jada sighed. That was back then, when her marriage was good and the children were small and she stayed home with them. Now her life was made up of working all day and cleaning all evening. Of getting meals on the table, laundry folded, and then waking up to do it all again. Clinton’s life, as far as she could see, was made up of lying around watching television, having it off with this new girlfriend of his, and in his free moments making sure the kids didn’t burn down the house. Jada wasn’t complaining about her life; she was doing this for her family and she could keep on doing it as long as she had to. It was just that when she looked at Clinton’s life, if he would only make a few changes, everything could be so much easier for both of them. Easier and worthwhile. And she knew a part of him wanted a worthwhile existence. But a part of him was also willing to risk what they had by being lazy, taking her for granted, and tickling the fancy of some woman in Pound Ridge. “Well, I’m not in Pound Ridge,” Jada said aloud and strode into the dining room, snatching up a tray and a rag as she passed her husband.

“Say what?” he said and followed her into the messy dining room.

Jada began throwing empty cups, cereal bowls, and a couple of crumpled paper napkins onto the tray. I’m losing it, Jada thought. It wasn’t just the glassware that rattled; she was, too. She was speaking her thoughts out loud. It was a family trait—her mother did it when she was disturbed. “I was saying we have to talk,” Jada snapped.

“Don’t you have to go to work?” he asked nervously.

“No. Why? Are you expecting someone over here? Let me straighten up for your guest.” She wiped down the table. It amazed her, even after all these years, that Clinton could stand there watching her do for him without lifting even a fork. That’s what came of marrying a man who was DDG. Well, that was the least of it. Jada felt she had risen above the small stuff; long ago she and Clinton had promised each other that if they had children—and they obviously had—that unlike the two generations of Jacksons before Clinton, their kids would grow up with a father. That was the big stuff. Until now, despite whatever brief flirtations might or might not have arisen from his work, Jada had never doubted that Clinton’s NUP was taking. Like most men. But there was a limit.

Jada, even now, with Clinton standing hang-dog and useless behind her while she picked up the placemats, tried not to make a moral judgment about it. People just had their NUP, like the color of their hair. Jada had to admit that Shavonne’s NUP was taking, too. Kevon, at least at this age, was more like Jada; his natural preference was to give. When she and Clinton had first met, the truth was Jada had liked to give. It had made her feel important and useful. Clinton needed to be taken care of and Jada guessed she needed to be needed. She’d cut his hair, she’d bought his clothes, she’d cooked for him. All Clinton had to do to make her happy was to say, “Nobody makes cornbread like Jada’s. Can’t eat no one else’s cornbread,” and Jada excused the double negative, feeling happy and content and ready to bake another fifty pans of cornbread. Now Jada knew Clinton-speak. “Can I help with dinner” meant “Why isn’t it on the table yet?”

From the time Clinton’s business had begun to fail, it had been one long slide on his side. Bit by bit. First he stopped bringing home money, then he stopped looking for work, stopped coaching Little League, stopped doing carpentry around the house. He’d even stopped what, in her opinion, was a married man’s most primal task—taking out the garbage.

Her parents’ marriage hadn’t prepared her for this. Her mother and her father loved and respected each other. They’d been bitterly disappointed when Jada married an American black man. Though she’d been born in New York, Jada’s parents were Bajans and they still thought of Barbados as home. “Americans. Forget them. They have no drive,” her father had said. “They have no morals,” her mother had warned her. Jada felt they were old-fashioned and definitely prejudiced, even more so against blacks than whites. Most of all they were prejudiced against other Islanders: they despised Jamaicans, were competitive with Antiguans, and were suspicious and contemptuous of the French islanders. American blacks were beneath them all.

It was ridiculous. Jada had laughed at them. But now occasionally Jada wondered if her parents hadn’t been right, at least about Clinton. She hoped her marriage calmed down again, because she didn’t look forward to giving them bad news. She wasn’t certain about all American black men, but hers was undependable and lazy.

Maybe it wasn’t true, but it felt true now. Maybe there had once been some kind of equilibrium between her and Clinton, when her giving had been balanced by Clinton’s money-earning and the wonderful loving, but both had ended long ago. He hadn’t earned even a dime in almost five years and they hadn’t made love in almost three (except for the New Year’s Eve when both of them had been drunker than they should have been and Sherrilee was accidentally conceived). They hadn’t had sex in so long that her diaphragm must have been torn. She wasn’t sure how it happened, but she’d gotten pregnant and—after what had happened once before—she couldn’t bear the thought of not bringing the baby into the world. She’d prayed over it, and God, or her heart, had spoken. Sherrilee was an adorable baby, good as gold, and though it had been difficult to work through her pregnancy and was difficult now to leave the baby behind when she went to work, Jada didn’t regret her decision. She had thought the baby might bring them closer, and Clinton had acted delighted and involved. But, as with most things, Clinton didn’t follow through and now she wondered if she had done the right thing.

“Jada. Please have patience. I need you,” Clinton said.

Need? Jada had been so damn needed that she’d run out—not out of giving, but out of feeling happy about doing it. The children had shown her that it was as natural as breathing to give to a nine-year-old, but definitely unnatural to have to give in the same way to a thirty-four-year-old man. Natural or not, Jada was damn tired of it.

“Yeah. You need me. But you say you love her.” Jada couldn’t believe he’d told her about this latest affair. She hadn’t wanted to hear a word, but he’d insisted. “Go need her,” she told Clinton, and turned her back

Jada stuck her head into Shavonne’s room looking for dirty laundry, Clinton behind her. She picked up the pile and moved down the hall. Tonya Green, the woman Clinton was seeing, claimed to love children, though Jada had heard that her two were living with her mother. What did she do all day? Jada wondered. She didn’t work. She had a reputation in their church for being very pious. She taught Bible school. Did she go to prayer meetings? Hang out in bars, hoping to meet a buff married man? Maybe she alternated. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, prayers. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, her prayers were answered.

Jada snorted. The oddest part of all this to Jada was that when it came to the sex—Clinton and Tonya together—she just didn’t care. Ten years ago she would have been filled with jealousy. She had thought that making love to Clinton was central to her life. Now she didn’t even miss it. Sleeping beside him was bad enough. Sex would be … well, she was too angry, too tired, and too disappointed in him to want it.

Jada didn’t think Clinton loved her. He just needed her, wanted her to love him. And she couldn’t. Clinton sometimes still wanted to make love to her. Clinton had wanted their baby. Clinton took good care of the baby now. But Jada didn’t feel like making love to him, and she didn’t feel like taking care of him. She wanted him to take care of her. She’d lost respect for Clinton and perhaps she had some responsibility for this pathetic affair with Tonya.

Jada had only been surprised that Clinton had bothered to tell her at all. He’d never bothered before. Surprisingly, she had merely thought, “One fewer thing I have to do. Let Tonya listen to his bullshit rap about the next useless, unrealistic scheme he’s going to fail at.” Jada realized then that she hadn’t really listened to him in years, after dozens of plans she had listened to, had critiqued and prayed for, had ended in nothing. Yet men had to be listened to by someone.

What she had to have, what she was working herself to the bone for, was a stable family. She wanted to live in their house, the house Clinton had begun but still hadn’t ever finished, and she wanted to see the kids do well in the community and really well in school. She wanted to see Shavonne win the local ice skating finals and go to the prom. She wanted Kevon to get his math scores straightened out and wind up with a scholarship to a really good college. She wanted the children to grow up with a father, as they’d both pledged before God. They all needed him there. He had to watch the baby while she worked. He’d promised to help raise the children. She didn’t think about the quality of her marriage—what was the point? But they had to have this Talk. Too bad she was so damn tired. She was always tired. Jada got to the door of their bedroom, and Clinton was right behind her. “I’m getting ready for work,” she said.

“I thought we were going to talk,” Clinton said.

Of course, he was right. She had begun this, but somehow between the kitchen clean-up, the dining room, the laundry check, and the assorted other things she had tried to get done, she had very little energy left. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I did say that.”