Don’t Ever Wonder (15 page)

I lifted my
Corona in the air to chase down my third shot of Absolut. I was enjoying the flight that the alcohol had sent me on. I was looking around the bar, people-watching. It was my first trip to Chicago and at this point it could have been my last as far as I was concerned. My hotel accommodations sucked and my meetings weren’t going well. In part because I hadn’t been prepared for all the things that had gone wrong.

In the past few weeks Brendan’s condition had twice taken severe turns for the worse, prompting around-the-clock hospital visits. My work had definitely suffered and I had contemplated a leave of absence, but it wasn’t my style to quit because it was rough. Things between Shelly and me had gotten to the point where we barely communicated. The school year was fast coming to a conclusion and she would soon be back in town. I knew it was just a matter of time until the whole mess blew up in my face.

To top it off Nina and I weren’t getting much right other than sex. Since the night at her house after the Bar Nun, we had resumed our affair and started making love again, she was constantly bringing up my leaving her to marry Shelly. She needed more reassurance than any man should have been forced to give. “Are you sure you don’t still want her? How can I be sure you won’t abandon me again?” were questions she asked me constantly.

It was hard to admit but I was beginning to think that I had made yet another mistake. Shelly was the rock and Nina was the hard place. I was beginning to wonder if I was cursed for falling in love with them. They both had traits that made them easy to fall for but damned near impossible to stay with. They were both beautiful and intelligent, yet they each had a nasty streak that caused them to lash out unmercifully when things weren’t going well. To make it worse, they both nagged and held grudges way beyond what I felt was normal. There was no such thing as letting something go.

“You okay?” the waitress asked.

“Oh, I guess I’ll have another shot and a fresh Corona, don’t forget the lime.” When she nodded, I said, “Thanks.”

The spot was called Crocodile’s and they had a nice little thing going on. The music was a mix of old-school R&B and new hip-hop. I didn’t even realize that I was dancing in my seat as the deejay played “Enjoy Yourself” by Michael Jackson. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a table of women sitting to my right, laughing. I immediately felt a little insecure at the prospect that I was the object of their amusement. I stopped dancing and heard one of them yell out, “Don’t stop, brother.”

“Yeah, don’t stop till you get enough,” then she burst out laughing.

I stood up and surprised them when I moved toward their table. “So this how you Chicagoans treat a brother from out of town? You just gonna straight clown a brother, huh?”

I looked at all three of them. Two of them were rather attractive, and one especially. The one who wasn’t was, of course, the most vocal. When she opened her mouth I immediately thought of my orthodontist, Dr. David Harmon. He would have had a field day trying to straighten those choppers out. “No, my man, I was about to send you a drink over.” She thought she was funny because she began to laugh and put her busted grill on display.

“I see.”

“So where you from?”

“The Nation’s Capital.”

The prettiest one had the complexion of a Nestlé Crunch bar. She had the cutest button nose and eyes that looked as deep as the ocean. I had to catch myself to keep from staring. Her lips looked like she’d just left the Mac counter. They were a rusty red color and looked like they were drenched and sticky. To top it off, her cleavage was fighting for my attention and the only thing that kept my eyes from zooming in was her angelic face. She was cool, looking around the bar while I gazed at her. She just nodded her head to acknowledge my responses while the other two shot question after question about my business in the Windy City. What I noticed was that, unlike myself, the two asking all the questions were wearing wedding rings. I ended up joining them and when the waitress found me and brought my drinks over, I ended up buying a round for the ladies.

“What were you drinking, ladies?”

The funny face replied, “Bone crusher.” It figured. I was thinking more like a tooth crusher.

“A Long Island iced tea for me,” the second one chimed in.

Finally the unmarried sistah chimed in, “Another merlot, please.”

After another round I realized that I was close to being fucked up and decided to start drinking water. My speech was a little slurred but I didn’t think they noticed because all three of them had at least a nice buzz themselves. I was ecstatic when the two married sistahs got up to head for the bathroom leaving me alone with Miss Beautiful.

There was an uncomfortable silence for a minute while I thought. Why even bother. Why even try to connect with this woman. You have enough problems. I took a look at her and while she looked over at the dance floor I took in her beauty. She had something that I had never seen before. In addition to her good looks she had a radiance that personified class. Just staring at her I could tell that this woman had never been taken advantage of by a man like Nate or caught up in the type of confusion that I brought to relationships. She had probably never lowered herself or her standards to give a man a break in order to keep one. She was a real sistah in every sense of the word. I didn’t have to hear it come out of her mouth. I could feel that she was powerful, energetic, and spiritual.

I didn’t realize that while deep in thought, she noticed my drunken stare. “You all right, brother?” she asked.

I snapped out of it. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine…” I realized that I didn’t know her name. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Faith.”

“I’m Cory.” She smiled. Before I knew it her friends were back and they were up preparing to leave. I tried to stand too quickly and the liquor made me move slowly. I was so captivated by Faith that I was unable to get the words out.

“Nice meeting you.”

“Yeah, thanks for the drinks,” they said.

“Hey, uhh, Faith, do you think…” the words escaped my mouth but went unheard. Too low, too drunk, and Faith was too powerful for my weak attempt. Before I knew it, they were headed out the front door.

Nate’s calls went
unreturned. He didn’t know what to make of what had happened to his life. The weekend he’d spent with Anita had been the most beautiful one he could remember ever spending with a woman. Even more than the sex they’d shared, she had given him some serious soul satisfaction.

Lying in bed between their bouts of passion, Nate had confided things to Anita that he had never shared with anyone and he felt that she had done the same. Now he was torn between feeling foolish and feeling betrayed. What was different for him was that for once in his life he was able to take responsibility for his own actions and his feelings. He loved Anita and he knew that she didn’t love Lloyd, at least not the way that a woman was supposed to love her husband.

He’d just finished unpacking the last of his things into his new condo. It was a two-bedroom spot located on U Street near the Lincoln Theater. As he sat down on his couch to catch a quick break he couldn’t stop his mind from being overrun with thoughts of Anita and the time they spent. It was Saturday morning and he decided to go for a jog to try to clear his head. The one thing he hadn’t stopped doing was working out. He hadn’t been back to the church since his runin with Lloyd and there hadn’t been much else for him to do. He was through running women once and for all.

It was strange that when he thought of having sex now, he only thought of Anita. Janette had called him a couple of times, tempting him with erotic conversation, but gave up quicker each time, faced with his stern resistance. Nate wasn’t interested in using her, or any other woman for that matter. An old dog had been taught new tricks.

Other than working out he had spent a lot of time at the hospital with Brendan. He would take his Bible and visit him at least five times a week. He prayed and read scriptures while sitting in with him. He would talk to Brendan just like he always did, except now that Brendan couldn’t hear him, he elected on occasion to pour out his heart to him about the heartache he was facing. He knew that if anyone could understand a broken heart it would be Brendan.

Each day he would leave with, “Sorry, B, I didn’t mean to dump on you.” Then he would come back, often the next day, and do the exact same thing again.

During his jog, Nate found himself on Seventh Street, and he noticed what appeared to be a procession of cars with their lights on. He recognized that it was a funeral, which was no big deal to him. He kept running, even picking up his pace. After a few blocks he noticed that the procession had begun pouring out from the parking lot of what had been, up until his run-in with Lloyd, his church, the Word Church. Nate slowed his pace down and took a closer look. He recognized a few of the cars in the procession and a couple of faces as people began to quickly climb into cars to catch the procession.

He was desperately looking for Anita to come walking out of the church as he crossed the street. Nate was mixed in with people leaving the church who were not headed for the interment. Still hoping for a glimpse of the object of his desire, he asked an older gentleman standing nearby, “Who passed away, sir?”

The older man looked Nate up and down. Unsure of why Nate would be asking he told him anyway. “Miss Bethany, the reverend’s mother.” Then the old man put a cigarette in his mouth and sparked a lighter.

Nate could still see the people around him, but everything seemed to go silent. The last time he’d seen Miss Bethany she was as healthy as a woman twenty years her junior should have been. Aside from the occasional dementia, which sometimes seemed feigned on her part, Miss Bethany seemed as though she had many years left. Nate swallowed hard and held back the tears that were trying to form in his eyes. He had really come to like the lady who’d first called him Doc. Though she was originally just an excuse for him to go and spend time at the Lawson home, over time she’d earned a special place in his heart.

She would spit one-liners to Nate out of the blue about how tough it was growing up in the thirties and forties. “We didn’t have much, so we learned to feel rich inside…the only way to keep from going crazy, killing a cracker, and getting yourself lynched,” she would laugh.

One day she’d told him that the world had turned upside down and that there was no such thing as families anymore. When he’d chalked up her sayings as nonsense and said, “You have a wonderful family that loves you right here,” she had responded by warning him about trusting appearances.

“I’ma tell you, Doc, like my momma told me,” she had said, “everybody that lends you a hand ain’t trying to help you up, sometimes they just want to get a firm grip on you so they can make sure you go down as hard as possible.”

As he stood there watching the church parking lot empty out, he felt alone again. He thought about his own grandmother and how much she meant to him over the years. She was truly all he had left, with the exception of Cory and Brendan. As he walked away he heard someone talking about the repast in the cafeteria that was to take place in two hours. He took off jogging, contemplating returning with a card.
It would be a bad idea,
he thought to himself, but the thought of seeing Anita was tempting.

“Listen, baby, I
do miss you…” Nina was hitting me with one question after another. “It’s just that I’ve been busy up here…” She was trying to catch me in a lie. “Yeah, I did step out for a minute last night…” Wasn’t gonna happen. “Okay, so I left my phone in my room…I wasn’t out long…just needed a…” She hung up.

I was on my back staring at the ceiling. I began to reflect, as I often did when things weren’t going well. One half of my best friend duo was still in poor condition. Although I never admitted to anyone, my hope of him making it out of the coma was beginning to fade like the sunlight before a fast-approaching storm. Nothing was working for me. Nate was going through some things and it seemed like he had changed so much that I hardly knew him. I wanted to take his newfound spirituality serious, but he had been so treacherous all his life that sometimes it was hard to believe that he had given up all the womanizing. I wasn’t happy in my marriage and I was finding out that all the flip-flopping back and forth wasn’t working either. I realized then that I had to come to some type of decision to get control of my life. I wasn’t going back to D.C. into the same type of confusion and despair that I left. I decided to do something that I hadn’t really done in a long time. I got down on my knees and prayed.

I had two hours before I was due to check out at one p.m. I must have prayed for an hour. I asked for direction. I asked for a sign that would lead me to where I needed to go. Mostly though I prayed for Brendan, his family, and Nate. On the back end I sent one up for Renée because I was worried about her. Going into a marriage when I knew she still loved Brendan.

The airport was
packed, but I moved through quickly. The flight was nice and smooth. Up above the clouds I peered out the window and collected my thoughts. I thought about my life and wondered if I had the opportunity to change anything about it and the decisions that I’d made, good and bad, would I have?

I thought about when I was happiest or truly happy, period. I scanned over my life, chapter by chapter. As I pictured scene after scene I came to the conclusion that I was like a leaf blowing in the wind that somehow never seemed to hit the ground. I thought of each accomplishment, each woman I had conquered, the milestones reached, and the places I had seen. Finally it dawned on me that while I was thankful for each experience, I had never really made anything happen for myself. I had always drifted from one thing to the next, letting life take me on a journey and never carving out my own path. Even with my work. I hadn’t pursued the change in companies. The position with HE had fallen in my lap.

Women, jobs, and good times had been my life. Since my father passed, I couldn’t recall making a tough decision when it came to choosing a path to follow. I’d always taken the obvious choice or the path of least resistance. I had never committed to anything that threatened to be rough. When I thought about that, an epiphany came crashing down on me like a ton of bricks.