A Bride Worth Billions (30 page)

There was a knock at the door and I knew who it was. Without even asking, I asked Kenny to come in. He tiptoed to my bed as he thought I was sick. I had been in bed all morning, coughing occasionally. I got up and looked at his bright face; it was still cheerful as ever. I hugged him and tears rolled down my cheeks. I suddenly felt hatred for the man I had loved and respected all my life, my dad was taking away every relationship which mattered the most to me. He had the audacity to take my brother away from me and now he was trying the same with Connor.

I crawled into Kenny’s lap like childhood days and rocked back and forth. He brushed my hair with his fingers.

“I know he’s up to it again. Trying to control everything, trying to crush hopes and dreams.”

“What have you been up to all these years Kenny? Do you know how much I have missed you?”

“I know Mia.”

His grip tightened around me.

“I’ve been going places; seeing the world. I have been to Spain, France, England, Scotland, Malaysia, Venezuela, Australia, Denmark, and God knows places I can’t even pronounce.”

I could see his eyes light up with ambition and satisfaction.

“I was even invited to Julliard’s for a course in playwriting. It was a crash course, spent 6 months there. Mimi, those were the best 6 months of my life. I have been places, seen things, met people I can’t even begin to explain. Life is so much more than roaming around an air conditioned office, sipping coffee, going through awful cases all day long. It’s about exploring what you like, doing what you love.”

I suddenly noticed a scratch on his arm and began to inspect it.

“Oh, that’s nothing. I went surfing last summer in Australia. The Aussies are the best hosts Mimi. They taught me how to surf and I was so clumsy, I smashed into a rock. A ROCK Mimi! Geez, I was really embarrassed.”

I could see how content Kenny was with the choices he had made. I was expecting him to enter this room and sob about the remorseful choice he had made.  But I was wrong, wrong on so many different levels. Kenny was happy with the choices he had made; he was not a broke, miserable man. He was a proud play writer who had been invited to Julliard’s for a course in script writing. Who gets invited by Julliard’s?

“I know what’s happening in your life, Mimi. They explained it to me. I could sense the disgust dad is feeling by the way he said ‘that negro’. You have got to understand this Mimi; everybody has their own mindset and choices. I dislike courts and wearing suits all day long, I dread that. But that does not make me an awful person. The same way dad has his reservations about people and their….”

He hesitated.

“Tones. But you don’t have to hate him for that. He spent his youth working his day and nights so he could give us a life of luxuries.”

“I love him, Kenny.”

My voice was shaking; I was trembling with pain and anger.

“I know Mimi. And here’s the thing: You’ve gotta do what your heart tells you to do. It’s your life, Mimi. Dad is not going to bear the burden of the choices you make. You will. If you love him and are sure about it, then what are you here for? Shouldn’t you be in a room, writing wedding vows and making wedding papers for the two of you?”

“Dad won’t approve.”

“Well, he’s not the one who’s going to be kissing him in the morning when he goes off to work!”

I chuckled. Kenny was so bright and so lively. He could light up a situation without even any effort. My brother was the most amazing man on this planet and I couldn’t be close to him. I hugged him.

“Are you going to stay?”

“I gotta go, Mimi. The old man won’t let me stay here for any longer.”

“Mhm.”

He got up, brushed his pants and walked towards the door. Before leaving, he turned around, looked at me and said:

“You’ve gotta do what your heart tells you to do.”

And I knew, at that moment, what my heart was telling me to do. I got out of bed, took a shower, dressed up pretty and asked Nana to help me pack my things. While she was busy folding my clothes into perfect little squares, I grabbed a notepad and began scribbling words into it.

“Dear Dad,

Kenny said that every man has his own reservations and that does not make him worth hatred. He disliked law and the law routes and that does not mean you hate him. You dislike the black and the poor, which is sad, but that does not mean that I hate you. What makes you worth the hatred is that how you have zero regards for the worth and feelings of your family. Have you ever wondered why mom always has salon appointments when you’re home? Or why Kenny grew distant from you in high school years?

The matter of the fact is, you don’t care. You don’t care what goes on in the minds and hearts of other people. All you care about is what you want! You wanted Kenny to go to law school, but he had bigger dreams. He refused and you cut him off. Did you ever care or think about how mom and I would feel? You stripped my best friend out of my life dad! Kenny was my best friend.

You could only look at Connor’s house, bank balance and color. Did you ever look past that? Did you ever look at how smart he is? He is working in a law firm bigger than yours! I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. He is going to buy a house in a few months. He is doing better than you managed to do in a decade after you left high school. You might as well be jealous of the fact that a “Negro, broke” man has the ability to outperform you and also manage to acquire and guard the feelings of your daughter.

I’m sorry dad, but you’re a miserable, manipulative ad cunning man who I feel sad about referring to as my father. I sacrificed my dreams for you. I never complained, like Kenny, what I wanted to do with my life. I was a good daughter, but I can’t be that anymore. My love, the one who respect and cherishes me, waits for me. I cannot turn him down for a man who never had the heart or mind to acknowledge all I’ve given up for him.

I’m sorry daddy, but Kenny is right. I’ve gotta do what my heart is telling me to do. Inform me about any legal documentation
regarding the property and my expulsion from it via mail. I don’t want to hear from you from now onwards.

You’re Daughter,

Amelia Benedict.”

I slipped the letter into dad’s study while he was out. Mom was at the salon again, typical and I had the perfect chance to leave without any drama. As the cab moved away from the house, my eyes began burning and tearing up. I took one last look at the place I had spent my entire childhood at.

The car parked outside Connor’s apartment and I ran to his place. I rang the bell dozens of times, I was too anxious to see him. He opened the door, still looking like an angel. How could my dad call this man a Negro? He was so wrong about him. I hugged him and told him what had happened. I could feel his arms tightening around me.

“You have me, Mia. I’ll always be here for you no matter how old or groggy you get.”

I chuckled. I looked at the man I had left everything for. This was the man I was going to spend my future with.

It’s been 5 years since the day I left my dad’s house and got married to Connor. We have 3 beautiful kids now, all with hazel eyes and brunette hair. Kenny says we look like a walking talking zebra crossing, to which Connor snorts and tears up laughing. What I had found offensive all this time was surprisingly hilarious to him. We had moved out of Connor’s old apartment within the first 4 months of our marriage. I worked at a law firm to support our changing lifestyle for only a year till I got pregnant and Connor said that I should stop dreaming about being a working woman.

I turned around the bowl of salad that I had been preparing since the last 20 minutes, drizzled some olive oil on it and picked it up in one hand. With the other hand, I took off my apron. I walked towards the TV room, my heels clicked against the marble floor of the lavish house Connor had bought for us. I entered the room and all of my boys were crammed onto a single couch.

“There are more couches, boys.”

“We know mom! But I wanna sit in Uncle Kenny’s lap and Jacob wants to yell with dad.”

This was the life I would have missed out on if I hadn’t listened to Kenny that day. That day my heart had told me to stop being an obedient daughter and own up to the promise I had forced Connor to make to me. That promise was not a one sided thing, but I had to honor my end of the bargain as well. That is what my heart had told me that day.

I looked around at my house and my family and realized how everything was beautiful and almost perfect. I walked up to my room to fix my hair. I looked into the mirror and saw a content and relaxed expression which I had experienced 5 years from today. I had seen the same expression on Kenny’s face 5 years from now when he was explaining about his life. Maybe if I was in Kenny’s place today, I could tell someone about the beautiful experiences I’ve had with Connor and my beautiful two sons. Even I could tell someone, now, to follow what their heart was telling them to do.

My life of lost hopes, unnoticed sacrifices, and unacknowledged compromises was over. Now I was reminded every waking second of my life how I was valuable to Connor and to my kids. I brushed my hair and wrapped it into a bun. A perfect housewife hairstyle.

“Mrs. Amelia Connor”

I said to myself. I had grown in love with that name over these years and I still wanted to hear more of it. The bell rang downstairs and I knew that I had to take this one. I hopped across my pool of shoes and rushed downstairs, with my heel tightly clenched in my fists. While I ran towards the door, I hear Connor yell

“Slow Down Ossain Bolt! You’re going to fracture your ankle!”

I opened the door and was greeted with the old, wrinkly but happy face of Mr. and Mrs. Benedict. It was my daddy. I hugged him tightly and he hugged me back. Mom leaned in and kissed me.

“Where is that Negro!?”

Dad demanded.

“In the lounge dad!”

Connor yelled from inside. Dad pushed me aside and went to the lounge, patted Connor on the back and settled on the same couch. There were 3 grown men and 2 young boys seated on a couch meant for 2 people. I couldn’t imagine 5 years ago that my dad would finally accept the choices I had made and would acknowledge them. The letter that I had left that day made an impact on him. The letter had confronted him face to face about the mess he had made of his and other’s life. The letter stirred in him feelings of realization of the misery others were going through thanks to him. That letter changed him, according to mom.

My dad visited me after the birth of my first child and wept like a child. He apologized for forcing me to forgo my dreams.

“I’m proud of you Mia. I’m proud of the choices you’ve made. I love you, honor and respect this a lot.”

He kissed David, my son, hugged Connor and kissed my forehead. Ever since then, things have been like a Hollywood movie. Connor won 4 consecutive cases, multinational cases, I was soon pregnant with Jacob and my family was together. Dad even brought Kenny back home.

“Are you ready Mia? We are getting late for Kenny’s play!”

I heard dad call out to me and a tear rolled down my cheek.

THE END

On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, he moved in. His boxes of stuff had preceded him. They filled the apartment like silent masters, as if they had signed the lease themselves.

That night, he’d slept on top of a towel he’d laid flat on the wooden floor, surrounded by towers of cardboard and newly settled dust. His forearm ached the next morning from the weight of his head, and the pain in his neck crippled him for at least ten minutes before he’d managed to get out of “bed.” He would go on to sleep that way for a week.

The boxes waited. They made up a paper-smelling, looming maze inside the apartment, and if he’d had the ability to feel at the time, he would’ve grown to love weaving in and out of those narrow corners.

He finally unpacked when his neck pain became more pronounced and chronic throughout the day. It was a slow, difficult, and excruciating process. The first thing he took out were the essentials—his pens, rulers, measuring tapes, and papers. His desk took a little bit of time. He’d had to reassemble it, and some of the parts had been difficult to dig up from the large, narrow box they were in. He cleared one corner of the apartment, and set it up as his workspace. He had put off his new client’s mock-ups long enough. At least now he could catch up on some work.

Instead of unpacking the rest of his things, he left them alone that day, the initial excitement waning all too soon so that the melancholy crept back in and settled in his stomach as comfortably as if it had always lived there. His work station looked like an oasis of normalcy among the cardboard towers.

Next came the kitchen utensils, the rug, and the television. He’d left his bed in his old house but took the mattress with him. He covered the king-sized futon in a dark blue fitted sheet and shoved it into one corner of what was going to be his bedroom.

He left the empty picture frames for last, hanging them even though he’d thrown out what they used to contain. He had taken everything with him except for the fridge (too heavy), the bed frame (too flimsy), and those pictures (too painful).

When he was done, boxes lay in boxes, devoid now of things and power. He had kicked one waist-high cardboard tower just to watch it topple to the floor sadly, hollowly. He got rid of those boxes the next day and went back up to his apartment to gaze with dead eyes at his new home filled with familiar things that felt strange in this new place. Nothing felt like his. Nothing belonged. Not the furniture, not him.

He missed the smell of cardboard, so to replace it he bought incense from a pop-up bazaar he’d walked past one day on his way to work. He lit an incense stick every time he left for work, safety precautions be damned. If he came home one day, and his apartment had crumbled to soot and ash, there would be no love lost anyway. In the meantime, he liked opening the door and being greeted with the smell of green tea and aloe vera.

Slowly, his things settled. Chairs created scratches on the hand-me-down floors; the sofa buried its legs into the rug; his desk began to morph into a place of comfort and productivity.

His heart followed this meticulous settling, and one day he woke to find it beating steadily instead of trying to race out of his chest. He laid one hand over that stalwart thumping and another over his eyes.
Get up, Joel,
he told himself, and then he rolled out of bed.