Nasty (29 page)

After winning the Grammy for Best New Artist of the year and the MTV video award, he was busier than he wanted to be. He had to admit keeping his mind on the work did help him to avoid thinking about Javon so much. For that, he was grateful.

He walked into the front door of the home he shared with his wife and two kids. He heard Sherry telling their five-month-old sons that it sounded like Daddy. The two, Nehemiah and Isaac, squealed with delight when he entered the nursery. Sherry greeted him with a warm kiss.

“How the session go tonight, baby?”

“Making real progress. Should be finished very soon. And then the tour.”

“I can’t wait. These hours are so grueling. I know you want to spend more time with me and the kids.”

He hugged Sherry tightly. “Soon; we’ll be together soon.”

“Baby, don’t you know when we ain’t together, we together.”

Tarik pulled back and looked at his woman. She was not only physically beautiful but inside she was the queen he worshipped. Looking at Sherry this way, as if seeing her for the first time, he made an important decision.

“You know, woman, I absolutely love you.”

“You’d better!” She playfully threw a punch at him.

This loving feeling he had now with Sherry was real. It was good, rich, and special. Suddenly free from the weight of his guilt, he picked her up and playfully swung her around. The boys squealed with laughter

“We’ll take a trip. Just you and me.”

“What about the boys?”

“That’s what nannies and grandmas are for. It’ll be like a second honeymoon.” The trip would be a reaffirmation for him. A cleansing after all the grief that was in their life. Later that night in bed, after making passionate love to each other, Sherry basked in the glow of their love.

She remembered how she was in the beginning of the marriage. She never let her guard down. Didn’t even let him make love to her without a condom. But everything changed after the incident. After losing Javon, the closeness they’d always shared just deepened. She knew her man as she knew herself. They were one. The trust was pure. It was their blessing after losing their son.

“Oh, forgot to tell you. Jonathan called.”

“Haven’t spoken to him since he left for school.”

“I invited him to Sunday brunch. You’ll be there, right?”

When he’d last seen his brother before he’d left for school. he was still partially blaming him for what had happened to Javon. But now, in the light of the love he shared with Sherry, his new babies and the wonderful memories of a sweet four-year-old boy, he had no mixed emotions about Jonathan.

“Not see my baby brother? Hell, I wouldn’t even think about missing it.”

J
onathan felt extremely uncomfortable waiting in the visitor’s reception area. There were guards and orderlies posted everywhere overseeing the visits. He watched a female inmate bang her head against a table repeatedly as she shouted out profanities. Three orderlies pulled her away from the old couple who’d come to visit their granddaughter. They dragged her out of the room kicking and screaming. Jonathan turned to his mother.

“How’s Carlos’s condition usually?”

“When he’s on meds, he’s a…he’s a mess! Worse than the woman we just saw.”

And it was true. Every time they found a combination of medications that brought him “back,” Carlos could not handle reality. It was always the same scene. He’d look at what remained of his penis and scream. Then he would rant and rave about Javon, and scream out for mercy, begging God to put him to death. He would try to mutilate himself with whatever objects he could find.

The medical staff would discontinue the meds and he’d slip back into a walking coma. He was like a zombie. Most times when she visited Carlos, all he would do was stare out in to space. Unresponsive. He didn’t even blink when she would call
out to him. It was torture for her to see him like that. Ophelia faithfully visited him every other week without fail. She never gave up hope that one day he would come back.

Jonathan shuddered to think that Carlos acted out like the woman he had just seen. Quickly wanting to reassure him, Ophelia added, “But he’s off meds now, and here of late, he’s usually just quiet. Very quiet.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Well, it depends. Here he is now.”

Jonathan turned around. Two guards and a doctor led Carlos into the area. Both his hands and feet were in chains and he wore drab prison attire. Jonathan called out to him.

“Carlos. Hey, man…it’s me…Jonathan.”

But as soon as Jonathan saw him up close, he realized that he was talking to a zombie. There were no signs of life or brain activity in his face. Carlos never looked his way. Never even looked at his mother. Jonathan could not believe it. His once gregarious, cocky brother was now a card-carrying member of the walking dead society.

Tears flooded his eyes when the enormity of Carlos’s condition and how sick he really was finally smacked Jonathan upside his head. The guard led Carlos to a chair across from where Jonathan and Ophelia were sitting. They pushed him down, not hard but deliberately into a chair. Carlos never acknowledged anyone’s presence in the room. He just stared out into space. He was there but he really was not.

Jonathan desperately tried to connect with him again. “Carlos. How you doing? It’s me, Jonathan…talk to me…yell at me…something, man…anything!”

Ophelia put her hand over Jonathan’s and shook her head, signaling for him to calm down. Jonathan sat back in the chair. Nothing could have prepared him for this. Jonathan broke
down and cried out to himself:
Is this
w
hat Nicola and I did to him? We should both rot in hell.

“Hello, Carlos. It’s Mama Ophelia. I’ve brought Jonathan to visit. You know Jonathan.” Carlos never looked at them. He just rocked in his chair and stared out into space. He was in another time zone.

Not giving up, Ophelia continued, “Carlos, baby, how are you today?” She spoke to him as if he understood her. She talked with him as if he was listening. He never even grunted in response. This non-person who greeted her on visits. Sometimes she got angry with him, thinking that maybe he wasn’t trying hard enough.

Angry or not, she still visited and spoke to him just like folks did to comatose victims, hoping that somewhere there was a sane part of Carlos listening. She kept faith that one day that part would strengthen and regain control.

Jonathan couldn’t stand to see Carlos in his present condition. He’d expected his visit might agitate Carlos. He anticipated that Carlos might still be angry with him. He could handle that. But he could not deal with the vegetable who sat rocking in the chair as if he was trapped in a dense mental fog.

He’d give anything if Carlos snapped out of it and confronted him. Throw a punch or two at him. Whip his ass. That would be wonderful. Jonathan rose out of the chair and walked over to the window, wishing that the visit would end. Wishing that he had never come in the first place. He knew he could never erase the vision of whom and what Carlos had become.

Drained from the visit, Jonathan and his mother rode back to Brooklyn in silence. While negotiating heavy rush-hour traffic, Ophelia tried to put Carlos’s visit behind her by immersing herself in thoughts of her upcoming nuptials. Calling it a pre-
honeymoon vacation, Link had dropped by the house early that morning before she left with Jonathan, to tell her that he had booked a cruise to the Caribbean. In three days, they would fly down to Miami and then hop on a ship for an eight-day trip visiting Puerto Rico, Martinique and the Cayman Islands.

She needed the trip and looked forward to the special time with Link. Anything to take her mind away from Carlos and the scene that greeted her every other week when she visited him at the institution.

The entire trip home, Jonathan’s mind played vicious guilt games with him. He thought seeing his family would help him find peace in some way. When he spent time with Sherry, Tarik and their beautiful twins, he was pleased to see how happy they were. How they appeared to have moved on since the tragedy.

Seeing how his mother was engaged in a new relationship with Link encouraged him that progress was possible. But the trip to see Carlos shattered any hopes he had that peace or closure would ever be possible for him. He couldn’t wait to get back to school to see his counselor. He needed help.

Before she went to bed later that night, Ophelia opened a manila envelope. It had arrived earlier that day in the mail. Inside were several pages of documents. A note on top read:

Dear Mrs. Singleton,

By writing this letter to you, I am probably breaking every law of client privacy on the books. I did surveillance work for Nicola James almost a year ago. After seeing you interviewed on television about the tragedy that took place at your ex-husband’s funeral…I realized that you were the nurse who held baby Nicola in a photo taken when she was an infant in the hospital.

My investigation revealed horrible things about her past. When I heard that you would have adopted her if not for your husband’s drug issues, I wondered if you had known her full story…would you have been kinder to her in that interview. The press, media and you so viciously attacked her, that it upset me. I always felt that she, too, was a victim in the tragedy. In defense of Mrs. James…I felt compelled to share the contents of this package with you.

Thank you for your patience,

Sincerely, Max Whitlow, Private Investigator

After reading the documents, Ophelia cried like a baby. Upset, a call to Link was the only thing that would calm her down. After their conversation, she knew what she had to do.

The next morning, Ophelia contacted the private investigator. “I got your package, Mr. Whitlow. Now tell me, how can I reach Nicola James?”

N
icola rushed home. It was their anniversary. They’d been married one year. She was expecting their first child, and she’d never been happier. But it wasn’t easy. Four years ago, when she’d received an unexpected call from Mama Ophelia, she would have never guessed it would have led to the pure joy she now experienced in her life.

After that call, she’d started visiting Carlos. At first, he didn’t even know she was in the room. Slowly but surely, he began to “notice” her. When the psychiatrists saw the way he’d responded to her, they’d added “visits with Nicola” to Carlos’s therapeutic regimen. That and electroshock therapy seemed to do the trick. After four years in the institution, the parole board released Carlos in perfectly healthy mental condition.

When he left, Nicola was by his side. The first thing they did when he got out a year ago was to go to Atlantic City and tie the knot.

Their life wasn’t perfect. Though they had good relations with Mama Ophelia and her husband, Link, nothing in the world could change Sherry’s and Tarik’s mind. They refused all attempts at reconciliation. Carlos was disappointed, but he understood why they refused.

Carlos was still proud of his brother’s career. Tarik was now
a bona fide star. He had added acting to his list of accomplishments. His crowd-pleasing performance in a box-office hit had movie critics predicting he was a shoo-in for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Jonathan, now a second-year medical student, initially had trouble with their relationship. He changed his mind when he saw how normal Carlos was and that Nicola was no longer the vixen he once knew. Seeing them together helped Jonathan resolve the guilt he had carried around with him for years.

When Nicola pulled into their driveway, a young woman was waiting for her outside her home. She looked like a professor. Young, she wore bifocals, carried a worn briefcase and had a seriously intelligent look on her face.

“Hello, are you Mrs. Nicola Singleton?”

“Yes, I am. May I help you?”

“My name is Winsome Collins. I’m a journalist with the Associated Press. I have news that might be of interest to you.” She looked at Nicola’s pregnant belly and added, “And your family.”

The press had treated Nicola so badly in the past, she didn’t want anything to do with Winsome or her news. But something about the young woman made her reconsider. After checking her credentials, Nicola led her into her home.

“Mrs. Singleton, for the past year, I’ve been writing a book about Tarik’s father, Eli Griffith.”

“About Eli? Not Tarik? Strange choice.”

“I started off with Tarik, but Eli’s story was far more appealing.” Not interested in anything about Eli, Nicola looked at her watch. Carlos was due back any moment. Ms. Collins would have to speed up this interview.
Winsome could tell Nicola was about to throw her out. “I can tell you’re busy, so I’ll get right to the point. Did you ever work at Riker’s Island, Mrs. Singleton?”

“Why, why yes, I did. Many, many years ago. Why is that important?”

“My research revealed that when you were employed there, you were the technician responsible for an error that put Eli in a very unfortunate situation. It was why a gang led by a notorious male prostitute raped him. His name was…” Winsome looked through her papers, searching for the rapist’s identity, but Nicola knew who she was talking about.

“His name wouldn’t be Sebastian, would it? A big, old, ugly yellow devil?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.”

“That damn bastard has followed me.” Scenes of Sebastian and Harrison screwing popped up in her mind for the first time in years.

“My investigation also revealed, and I know this might be painful, that your first husband…”

“Sweetie, I know Harrison’s gay. Sebastian was his lover; that’s all ancient history.”

“So, you did know. I wondered about that. Anyway, Sebastian is now dying in a hospice from complications of AIDS.

“That I didn’t know.”

“I wanted to interview you for the book. But I also strongly suggest that you get tested for HIV. I’ve already contacted your first husband, Harrison James.”

“How is he?”

“Not too good. He tested positive for HIV.”