Big Girls Do Cry (22 page)

“I’m not your big sexy anymore, so go call your bitch.”

His so-called seductive smile disappeared. “Loraine, I swear—”

“I know, I know, you swear on your dead grandmother…. Oh, please, Leon. Give it a rest, will you? Stop lying and stop calling on your grandmother. That poor woman is probably turning over in her grave right now.”

“Loraine, it’s been two and a half months. I need you, baby. We need you.” Leon looked down at his crotch, then back up to me. Pitiful. That was the look that used to melt me down, but it didn’t work this time.

“No. You should’ve thought about that shit when you was fuckin’ some bitch in my bed. But, nooooo, it got so good to you, you even had her in our living room. Where else in my house did you screw her?” Just thinking about some other woman in my house had me livid.

“Nowhere, dammit!” he exploded, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me. “I don’t know where the fuck that shit came from! All I know is that I want my wife back! Now, tell me, what’s it going to take so my life can get back to normal?”

He wasn’t hurting me, but it was scary the way he was screaming like a madman as he shook me. I wasn’t about to let him know he had rattled me, but the way his veins were popping out of the side of his neck, you would have thought he was about to kill me. I had to be careful that whatever I said didn’t escalate this situation, because he looked like he was about to snap, and I did not want to be the victim of a murder/suicide.

“You wanna know what it’s gonna take?”

“Yes!” he shouted.

“It’s going to take some counseling. You—we—need some help, Leon. We can’t do this by ourselves anymore. We both have too many issues. So, if you want us to have a chance, we have to go to some type of counseling.”

It was almost unfair. I had just placed him in the ultimate catch-22. The last thing Leon would ever do was go see a shrink. He’d said it a million times when I’d suggested it in the past,
when he was clearly going through depression over losing his uncle. He was like most black men; he didn’t believe in letting anyone inside his head.

He took a long, deep breath, letting go of my shoulders. It looked like he was calming down, probably trying to think of a way out of this quandary he had now gotten himself into.

“You want us to go to a marriage counselor?”

“Yes, Leon, I do.”

“Okay, I can do that,” he said.

“Huh?” I was stunned. “What’d you say?”

“I said I’ll do it. If that’s what it’ll take to show you how serious I am, I’ll do it. I’ll go to counseling. Matter of fact, I’ll even make the damn appointment.”

I couldn’t help it. A short laugh escaped my lips. His actions were getting so ridiculous they were funny. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he believed them himself. “Stop lying, Leon. You are not going to make any appointment.”

“I’m not lying. You’ll see.” I was more surprised by this than when I thought he was going over the deep end a few minutes ago.

“Call my bluff.”

So, although I didn’t let Leon in my bedroom that night, there I was at a marriage counselor with him three days later. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t going to do any good, but Leon seemed as happy as a pig in slop.

The therapist, Dr. Robena Marshall, was a highly respected marriage counselor in the Richmond-Petersburg area. I’d looked her up online, mostly because I didn’t trust Leon not to have one of his friends play therapist to trick me. I still couldn’t believe he’d actually made the appointment and shown up.

“So, why are we here today?” Dr. Marshall asked a few seconds after we were seated.

Leon and I glanced at each other, but neither of us spoke. We were sitting on a leather sofa across from the doctor, but I made sure he was on one end of the sofa and I was on the other, so that told a story in itself. She looked from one of us to the other, giving our physical space a pointed look. She then wrote something on a notepad.

“Okay, let’s not all speak up at the same time.” I guess that was supposed to be an icebreaker. Personally, I thought it was rude. “Leon, why don’t you start?”

I turned my entire body in his direction when he started to speak. “I love my wife. I love her more than anyone in the world. But my wife doesn’t want to be physical anymore. We’re just living together like roommates. We’re there in name only, and I don’t like it one bit. Not at all.”

“I see.” She glanced at me, her expression neutral, then back to Leon. “When was the last time you two were intimate?”

“It’s been two and a half months.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“Like I’m less than a man.” As I listened to Leon pour out his heart like he was the victim here, I felt myself getting angry. “Making love to your woman is a natural part of being a man. When she rejects me, I feel worthless. Like she’s tearing me apart or ripping at my self-esteem.”

“This is bull!” I stood up, pointing a finger at him. “You know why I haven’t given you any, and it damn sure ain’t got nothing to do with your self-esteem. Why don’t you tell her about the panties?”

“Loraine, would you please sit down?”

I ignored the doctor. “Tell her, Leon. Tell her about the panties I found in my bed. Tell her about the panties my sorority sister found stuck between the cushions of my sofa. Tell her.”

“I told you I don’t know how those panties got there,” Leon protested.

“Loraine, I must insist that you take your seat,” Dr. Marshall ordered.

I glared at her like I wasn’t about to take orders from her, but then I sat down anyway. I felt like knocking both of them out right there in her office, but I didn’t want her to take his side any more than she already had.

“Both of you calm down,” Dr. Marshall said, still as cool as a cucumber. “Now, Leon, you’re saying you don’t know anything about these panties, correct?”

“Yep.” That lying bastard. I wanted to reach across and slap that lie right out of his mouth.

“So, where do you think they came from?” In all the times we’d fought about this, he’d never offered an explanation for how else they might have gotten there. I was anxious to hear what story he would concoct for the good doctor.

“Dr. Marshall, if I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be paying you a hundred dollars an hour to help me get back with my wife.”

“What makes you think she’s going to help you get me back?” I asked. “I don’t even like you anymore, Leon. In fact, I’m planning on divorcing you.”

Leon’s face registered shock, but when I looked toward the doctor, her face was a blank canvas. Either she’d heard it all before and wasn’t surprised, or they taught them at whatever school a therapist goes to how to mask their true feelings.

“Loraine, it sounds like you’ve already made up your mind. Don’t you want to try to work things out? Otherwise, why did you come?”

I didn’t answer, because I was thinking about this situation. There was a side of me that didn’t want to get a divorce, but my proud side couldn’t take any more of Leon’s shit.

“Okay, Loraine. Besides finding the underwear—which Leon says he didn’t put there—what else bothers you about your husband? What other reason do you have to divorce him?”

Leon folded his arms, smirking like he didn’t have a care in the world. He had no idea what was coming, but since I was still worked up, I decided to drop a bomb right on his head. “The sex is horrible.”

“Huh? Are you serious?” Leon fixed his eyes on me with this incredulous stare, like he couldn’t believe his ears. I just rolled my eyes at him, and he turned to the doctor. “And she had the nerve to call me a liar. I thought we were supposed to be honest.”

“You are supposed to be honest. What makes you think she’s not being honest?”

I sat back and relaxed a bit. For the first time, she sounded like she might be on my side.

Leon stuck his chest out. “You don’t understand, Doc. Loraine’s body is like a canvas, and when we’re in the bedroom,
I’m Leonardo da Vinci. Our lovemaking is like fine art, a masterpiece.”

“I see.” She still wore that blank mask, but I wondered if she was holding back a laugh. Leon might have been trying hard to save our marriage, but his flowery description was taking things a little too far.

As for me, I just folded my arms and studied the titles of the books on her shelves, wishing I had never suggested a visit to a shrink. I had expected Leon to refuse, but I had no idea that I’d end up being the one who didn’t feel like talking about what was in my head. But now that I was here, the doctor wasn’t about to accept silence from me.

“So, what is it, Loraine? You don’t agree with Leon’s description of your lovemaking?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t think I was in the room when that picture was painted.”

“So, how would you describe it?”

“To use a metaphor like him, I see myself as a high-performance race car, and Leon’s the driver. But he only knows how to drive one speed, and that’s fast. He has no clue how to maneuver through the curves, so he crashes the car before the race ends—every time.” I looked at him, daring him to deny it. I wasn’t expecting him to sound so vulnerable when he answered.

“If I was so bad, why didn’t you say something?”

“I’ve tried to tell you, Leon, but you just wouldn’t listen. You can’t tell me how I’m supposed to feel. I’m supposed to tell you.”

“So, what are you trying to say?”

“For the past few years, you’ve been prematurely ejaculating. I can’t remember the last orgasm I had with you.”

Leon sat there looking like I just stabbed him in the heart. “You don’t have orgasms with me? Well, why didn’t you tell me?”

He was almost in tears, and though things were nowhere near resolved, I was starting to feel bad. I softened my tone a little. “It wasn’t always that bad. We used to have a lot of fun in the bedroom when we first got married.”

“My uncle.”

“What about your uncle, Leon?” the doctor asked.

“It started right around the time my uncle died, didn’t it?” It took me a second to realize he was talking to me.

“I never thought about it, but, yes, it did start around then.” I turned to the doctor. “He was very close with his uncle. Before he died, Leon had been his caregiver.”

“I see. Sometimes death can cause mental trauma that’s related to our sexual psyche.” Dr. Marshall wrote something in her pad before she continued. “How about if you start going out on dates, without any sex? You can touch, you can fondle, but no actual intercourse. Just old-fashioned petting. Couples have told me this method lights up a fire in them like being teenagers.”

“Well, I’d like that,” Leon said, brightening a little. “How about it, Loraine?”

I shook my head. “That’s not the only reason I’m sick of you, Leon. Don’t think I will ever forgot that you put your hands on me. I still have a mark on my chest where you hit me.” I turned to the doctor. “He’s an abusive man.”

The doctor glanced at Leon out of the corner of her eye, then wrote something in her notebook.

“Oh my goodness, Loraine. That’s not the whole story and you know it. You put your hands on me first,” Leon responded. “I was only defending my—”

“Wait a minute,” Dr. Marshall interrupted, her eyes on me.

“Are you the aggressor? Do you hit your husband first?”

“Well, ah …” Damn! This was not going well at all. How did I go from being the victim to looking like the bad guy?

“That’s a yes or no question.”

“Yes, but you see, I’m a businesswoman, and I’m used to getting on people when they mess up. Sometimes Leon gets disrespectful, and I’m not used to taking crap off of people. I always deal with them head-on, but with Leon, he knows how to push my buttons and he doesn’t give. So sometimes he makes me so angry I fly off the handle and smack him.”

Dr. Marshall shook her head, revealing a clear opinion for the
first time. “That’s a no-no. Neither one of you should be physically harming the other.”

“You’re right. I was wrong,” Leon admitted. “Even if she hit me first, I should have walked away. I’m sorry I ever laid hands on her, and I promise I will never hit her again. This is my wife, and I love her. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to win her back. I want my wife, and I want to save my marriage.”

“Okay, say that to your wife, not to me.”

“Loraine”—Leon turned toward me—”I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you in the past, but I swear I never disrespected you and brought no woman to our bed or in our house. I still don’t know how those underwear got there. I swear I’ll try to change in the bedroom. You’re a good woman, and my life has been better for you having been in it. Please, baby, give us a chance.”

I sat there quietly, lacing and unlacing my fingers. I was kind of touched by the way Leon humbled himself in front of another woman, even if she was our therapist. He was laying down all his cards on the table.

“What can I do to make our marriage better?” Leon asked.

I sat there, trying to formulate my answer. “Well, for one, you’re going to have to start talking to me more. I’d like to be kissed and held more. I have to build up our trust again, behind these panties. I don’t want to have sex again until I’m ready.”

Leon nodded in agreement.

Dr. Marshall glanced at her watch, then spoke up. “Well, I think we’ve made some progress. I’d like to see both of you again next week. How about Thursday?”

“That’s fine,” I said. I wasn’t sure how I felt about everything that had transpired, but I know I felt relieved as hell to be getting out of there. I stood up, and Leon and I headed for the door.

The doctor said, “Leon, I think there are some issues that are a lot deeper than any of us think. I’d like to see you again alone.”

Leon said, “If you think it will help with me and Loraine, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Wow, did he just agree to go to therapy on his own?

“Loraine, I think you could use a few sessions too. I think you have some anger issues.”

I looked at her and concentrated hard to keep my expression as neutral as hers. “No, thank you, Dr. Marshall. My anger issues will be just fine, as long as I don’t find any more panties in my house and he don’t call me a bitch.”