Forgiven (13 page)

“I need you to be with me on this one,
Cassandra.”

She walked over to the bed, pulled the
blanket off and threw it at JT. “And I need you to sleep
downstairs.”

“Cassandra, be reasonable.”

“I’ve been too reasonable. That’s the
problem.” She picked up a glass and threw it at his head.

JT ducked and the glass shattered against the
bedroom door. JT’s eyes bucked. “Cassandra!” he said as if he was
shocked at her behavior.

She walked over to the mantle to grab hold of
the glass picture frame that held their wedding photo and threw
that at him as well. He dodged that one also. “I’m going to keep
throwing things until I find something to knock you out with. So
keep standing in here if you want.” She looked around the room for
something else to throw.

“All right, all right. You don’t want me to
sleep in here tonight. That’s fine; I’ll go hang out with the kids.
Just stop throwing things,” he said as he walked out of the room
and closed the door behind him.

Cassandra picked up the candy dish off the
nightstand and threw it at the door. It crashed and shattered
against the door just as the glass had. She sat down on her bed
thinking about the fool she had been to let down her guard and
trust JT Thomas with her heart again. She looked to heaven and
said, “See where all this trusting has gotten me? I’m headed to
court and will probably be in every newspaper in the city as the
silly wife whose husband can’t keep his pants up.

She had called this morning and cancelled her
appointment for Tuesday with Dr. Clarkson. She’d thought that she
and JT could work things out without the need of a therapist. But
now it looked like she would have to call his secretary and
reschedule her appointment. She needed to tell Dr. Clarkson that
she had found her anger.

Margie and Diane were seated in comfortable
black leather chairs in Luke Watson’s office. Luke had agreed to
represent them in their sexual abuse lawsuit against JT and Faith
Outreach Church. Margie was fidgety and her hands were shaking.
Diane was popping gum and sitting in her chair like a mac.

“So what’s next, Luke?” Diane asked.

Luke Watson looked at the paperwork on his
desk before he spoke. “Well, I had the proper documents filed
quickly like you asked. Someone at the church should have received
them yesterday. I’m still waiting on a response from their
attorney.”

“How long is that going to take? I’m not
trying to drag this out. I want everyone to know all about JT
Thomas’ womanizing right now,” Diane said with an emphasis on the
words ‘right now’.

“These things take time, Mrs. Benson,” Luke
said.

“Why? When you file a lawsuit don’t you get a
court date?”

“Yes, we’ll get a court date, but there’s a
lot we need to cover before we ever step into court. And I’ll need
the response back from Faith Outreach’s attorney so that we’ll know
what their defense will be.”

“JT has no defense. He’s a mangy dog and he
likes sex. That’s it, end of story,” Diane said.

“That may very well be the case, but I
guarantee you the response will not say anything like that. And you
need to remember we have alleged that Faith Outreach is just as
culpable as JT because they allowed his behavior. They may have a
very different take on that, and we need to see what they are going
to say,” Luke tried to explain.

“Whatever,” Diane said as she waved her hand
in the air as if dismissing Luke’s comment. “I don’t see why we
just can’t contact every television station in Cleveland and tell
them all about what JT did to us.”

Margie had been quietly listening to the back
and forth exchange between Diane and Mr. Watson. But when Diane
mentioned contacting the television stations, she raised her hand
as if she were in school and needed permission to speak.

Luke turned to Margie. “You have something
you want to say?”

Margie cleared her throat and nervously said,
“I-I didn’t agree to go on television. I want this handled as
quietly as possible.”

Diane swiveled around in her seat. “Margie,
now you need to stop being a doormat. You were misused by that man
more than anyone else. You should be thrilled about having him
exposed for the devil he is.”

“I’m not out for vengeance. I only want
justice. I agree that JT owes me, but that’s no reason to drag the
man and his family in the gutter.”

“You’re still in love with him.” Diane spat
the words at Margie.

“No. I realize that what JT and I had wasn’t
love.” She also knew that what she had at home wasn’t much closer
to love either. Love was offered to everyone else but her; until
she gave birth to Marissa. Thinking of Marissa gave her power. With
conviction she told Diane, “I have a child, and I don’t want her
hearing about all of this and being ashamed of her mother.”

“Who’s the mama, you or her? I’ve got kids
too, and if they ask me anything about my business, I just tell
them to stay in a child’s place and get out of my face,” Diane told
her with her hands on her hips. “You don’t let kids run your life.
That just doesn’t make sense.”

“Actually, Margie makes a very good point. I
think both of you ladies need to talk with your children if they
are old enough to understand what’s going on and you need to make
sure your husbands are okay with how a case like this will affect
their lives,” Luke told them.

“I’m not married,” Margie said with the same
look of shame she’d carried since she allowed Tony to move in with
her. But as she left her attorney’s office she decided that she did
owe Tony the courtesy of knowing what a case against JT could mean
for them. Yeah, Tony was fine with the lawsuit. He wanted to help
her spend the money. But did he want it blasted across every news
station in Cleveland that the mother of his child had an affair
with a married preacher?

She had signed up with a temp agency and was
supposed to go to their offices after the meeting in Luke’s office,
but she took a detour home so that she could talk to Tony first.
She pulled up in front of their apartment and got out of the car.
Tony had been laid off from his job over a year ago and hadn’t been
able to find employment since. But what bugged Margie was the fact
that she still had to take Marissa to the daycare even though she
knew Tony had given up looking for work six months ago. All he did
now was sit in the house, finding friends on Myspace and
Facebook.

“Tony,” she yelled as she opened the front
door. She picked up two glasses and two dirty plates off the coffee
table in the living room and took them to the kitchen. He was such
a slob. Margie didn’t understand why he couldn’t clean up after
himself since he was home all day making the mess in the first
place.

As she stood by the sink, she heard
whispering in her bedroom, as if Tony was talking to someone, but
didn’t want her to hear. She walked out of the kitchen and tried to
open her bedroom door. It was locked. “Tony, what’s going on in
there?” she asked.

The whispering stopped, but Tony didn’t
answer her.

She shook the knob. “Open the door. Who are
you talking to in my bedroom?”

Still no response.

“Don’t make me break this door down,
Tony.”

She heard someone on the other side of the
door whisper, “What are we going to do?”

“You’re going to open this door and get out
of my apartment. That’s what you’re going to do,” Margie
shouted.

The door opened and Tony stood in front of
her, no shirt on; pants unzipped. The woman behind Tony had a
yellow button down dress on, but her feet were bare. She had this
terrified look on her face as if she were playing a part in the
movie Obsessed, and Margie was about to beat her down.

Margie was normally very reserved. She’d been
raised in church by a God fearing mother who taught her to wear
long dresses and not to cross her legs when seated on the front
row. She’d stopped wearing long dresses when she became an unwed
mother and she’d not only not crossed her legs on the front pew,
she’d slept with the pastor.

Beyond that, Margie had given up her church,
her dignity and her relationship with her mother was now in tatters
all for the love of this man standing in front of her with a
shoeless woman behind him. So, Margie was about ready to let loose
and beat this girl until she never wanted to steal another woman’s
man. “You’ve got about five seconds to get out of my apartment,”
Margie told the woman.

“Where am I supposed to go?” Tony asked

“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to
that thang standing behind you,” Margie said as she reached her arm
into her room, trying to grab a hand full of the woman’s long red
hair. Tony grabbed her arm as the woman ran past him, picked her
shoes up out of the living room and ran out of the front door.

Margie pulled her arm out of Tony’s grasp and
said, “It’s going to take you more than five seconds to pack your
stuff. But I need you to go also.”

He picked his t-shirt up off the floor and
put it on. “What about Marissa? I guess you think you can raise her
on your own.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing,” she said as
she walked away from her bedroom. She couldn’t inhale the smells
that were coming out of that room one second longer, so she sat
down in the living room and put her head in her hands. She had
loved Tony and had given up everything to be with him. Within the
past few months she had come to understand that he didn’t care as
deeply for her as she did for him. But she’d never imagined that he
would disrespect her by having another woman in the place where she
paid all the bills.

“Oh, I don’t help. Is that what you’re trying
to say?” Tony spat.

“When’s the last time you paid child support,
Tony? And to think, I was nice enough to tell the child support
enforcement agency that you lived with me and was helping provide
for Marissa so they could stop the child support order.”

He was in the living room standing in front
of the couch now. “You weren’t lying. I do live here.”

She looked up at him and said, “Not anymore
you don’t. I’m tired, Tony. You won’t get a job. I’m paying all the
bills and now I come home and find you sleeping with some woman in
my bed!”

“So I don’t help out around here?”

“Are you listening to anything I’ve said? I
just caught you with another woman in my bed. Do you really think I
care that you do the dishes and take out the trash?” She rolled her
eyes and flung her hands in the air. “Just get out.”

“So that’s how it is, huh? You’re getting
ready to get all this money because you slept with a married
preacher and suddenly you don’t need me around anymore.”

His words stung. Yes, she had indeed gone
against all her mother’s teachings and fallen into the arms of a
married man. She had hurt Cassandra just as this mystery woman
she’d just found in her bedroom had hurt her. Her mother always
said, ‘you reap what you sow, little girl. So make sure you sow
seeds you want to reap on yourself one day.’ Oh, she was reaping
all right. But it wasn’t from the money she was going to get from a
lawsuit. Margie was reaping all the wrong she’d done and she didn’t
like it one bit.

***

Diane was ticked off by Luke’s suggestion
that she discuss this lawsuit with her husband. But as she left her
attorney’s office and thought about the fact that Joe was footing
the bill for her attorney, she’d thought better of talking things
over with him. She still wasn’t going to let him tell her what to
do though. What did she care what Joe had a problem with? He should
just be glad she was back home and helping him take care of them
brats.

She pulled into the parking lot and rolled
her eyes as she noted that people still weren’t buying cars. Joe
had scrimped and saved in order to buy this car dealership five
years ago. Money was flowing into their hands left and right in
those days. But when the economy tanked, folks stopped buying cars
and Joe had to get a second job. Since he could build a house from
scratch, he’d gotten an evening job at Lowe’s in the lumber
department. But things were still tight, so Diane was thinking
about suggesting that he get another job. Jamaican’s worked a bunch
of jobs, why couldn’t he?

Joe was on the show room floor talking to a
guy that looked as if he couldn’t count to ten, let alone come up
with the ten grand needed to purchase that marked down Capri. She
walked over to him and said, “We need to talk.”

Joe had been explaining the features of the
car to his customer when Diane approached. He turned to her and
said, “Why don’t you wait in my office, honey. I’ll be there in a
minute.”

Diane put her hands on her hips; neck bobbed
as her eyes bulged out of her head. She just knew this man had lost
his mind. Keep her waiting so he could talk to this
as-soon-as-my-luck-turns-I’ll-buy-a-car-so-called-customer. “I
don’t have all day, Joe.”

“Look, if this is a bad time, I could always
just take your business card and get back in touch with you,” the
customer said.

“No sir, you came at the right time. I’m sure
my wife will give us a few more minutes to discuss your interest in
this car.” He turned back to Diane and asked again, “Can you please
wait for me in my office?”

Diane huffed as she turned around and walked
out of the showroom. She didn’t have time to wait on Joe. Her
schedule was just as busy as his. He thought that she didn’t have
anything to do just because she worked at home. But housewives were
just as busy as working husbands.

As she drove out of the lot, Diane picked up
her cell phone and dialed Mattie. “Did my attorney contact you
about next week?” she asked as soon as Mattie said hello.

“Who is this?” Mattie asked.

“Don’t play games. You know who you’re
talking to.”