“What’s with the bags?” Bianca asks when I go to get them.
“I’m going home for a few days.”
“That bad?” she asks, barely hiding her glee that my marriage is falling apart after only a few months.
“Yeah,” I admit. “I might have to skip lunch today.”
She sighs. “Seriously? I came all the way to the Bronx to see you.”
“Sorry,” I say, though I’m not. I was getting tired of the parties and gossip anyway, but now it’s lost all appeal. I’m too worried about my husband leaving me to think about the most exclusive new lunch spot we need to hit to stay relevant. I don’t give two shits about being relevant. I want my marriage back. The realization shakes me. Am I turning into one of those pathetic women we hate? The ones who serve their husbands like slaves?
“It’s fine,” Bianca says with a huff. “It would take you forever to get ready anyway.”
“We’ll do it another day, okay?”
“I need to pick up something for my dad, anyway,” she says dismissively. “But if you turn into one of those boring old housewives who never goes out, I’m telling everyone you’re hiding because you got fat and have stretchmarks all over your ass.”
Best frenemies to the end.
When she’s gone, I just sit there for a few minutes, working on not going to pieces. I don’t know why I care about this stupid apartment. It’s not my home. It’s King’s. He bought it for us, a new place for us to make into our home together. But now I can’t stop seeing him taking off his ring, laying it so carefully on the dresser, and walking out.
I have no more tears. There’s no one to cry for. No one but me, and the little voice inside me who says we knew this was coming, I can’t count on anyone to stay. It’s just us, just me and my demons.
At last, I grab my bags and walk out, out of King’s place, out of my marriage. I leave his place as wrecked as our life together. Maybe he was right. Maybe this is for the best. I was starting to have feelings for him, and that’s something I can’t afford to have. It wouldn’t be fair to him. I’d start being jealous if he found another woman, and I can’t give myself to him the way he deserves. Leaving is the best thing I can do if I really care about him. He deserves more than a broken wife who wastes his youth, his prime, his beauty. His heart.
I call the driver and take the elevator to the lobby. I think about King coming home, walking into the ransacked, empty apartment. Will he think for a fraction of a second, before it sinks in, that I’m just out with my friends like usual? I’ve been purposely selfish. I don’t blame him for wanting me gone. But I know how it feels to open a drawer that used to be filled with the clothes of someone you love, only to find it empty. To stare into it and not quite believe it, even though you know they’re gone.
Not that King loves me. He made it clear he can’t, that he won’t. That I was nothing more than a business deal for him, a way to advance his career. I was his possession, and he made sure I knew it, putting me in line every time I tried to rebel and then tossing me like trash when he found out I was defective.
“Ready, Miss?” the driver asks, climbing out of the car. He puts my bags in the trunk. I watch, numb. I wonder if this is how my mother felt when she left us.
“I’m ready.” I climb into the car with one last look at the building that was my home for the summer. I’ve gained my freedom, but I don’t feel triumphant. I feel defeated.
I always imagined Mom was happy, full of hopes and dreams, a lifetime of promise ahead as she drove away, waving and smiling, to her new shiny life of fame and excitement. How could she do it? And not just to her husband, but her daughter?
“Where to, Miss?” the driver asks. His eyes in the mirror are sympathetic.
I sit up straight and take a deep breath, trying not to look like a failure who’s crawling home in defeat. This is for the best. If I stayed, King would have questions.
I don’t want him to go digging, to unearth the past. I don’t want him thinking he can be some kind of hero, save me from myself. I want him to leave it alone, to pretend it never happened, just like I do. But for the first time, I wish I knew him better, that I hadn’t spent the last few months keeping as much distance from him as possible, locking him out, telling him I hated him, that I didn’t want to know him.
Because now I don’t know him, and I need to. I need to know what he’s thinking, planning, feeling. Will he tell my father what I told him? Will he tell him how he found out, what he did to me last night? Who will end up dead because I couldn’t be a wife, couldn’t keep my mouth shut, couldn’t bring peace between families?
And on a more personal note, I want to know what is down in the depths of those deep, brooding eyes, what pain was reflected back when I shared mine. Was it about his sister, the one I didn’t even know was dead? That’s the most basic thing, something huge in his life I should have known. I saw his brothers at the wedding, and I envied their closeness, and I think someone even mentioned something about a sister, “Too bad she couldn’t be here.” But I was so wrapped up in my own worries that I didn’t ask. I didn’t care to know.
Now I wish I had. I wish I’d known him better, asked him what he wanted, tried to be some kind of wife to him. I wish I knew how he sees me now, if he can’t help but be repulsed by me and my fucked up trauma. Even more fucked up, now that I know he won’t see me as his sexy little wife anymore, that’s all I want. I want him to want me, to still think I’m desirable and fuckable instead of delicate and broken.
Which is ridiculous, since I didn’t want him to see me as sexy or fuckable before he knew.
It’s too late for that now, though. What’s done is done. He did what he did, and that damage cannot be undone. I opened my mouth and let him in, and I can’t undo that. All I can do is crawl home in shame and beg Dad to let me stay, to take pity on me, and maybe, to find me a new husband, one I know won’t be half as patient or understanding as King was.
twenty-one
King
“You ready?” Uncle Al asks, drawing me toward the room where I first met his men, the room where I took the oath.
I’m not ready. How could I be ready? My head’s been a mess for a week, since the evening I came home and found the apartment completely trashed and my wife gone. I’m ready to take my mind off her for a few hours, though, and that’s going to have to be good enough. I’m starting on understand my father better, to know what would make a man throw himself into his work with such single-minded focus.