Second Thoughts (19 page)

“And you didn’t say anything to Mom?”  Chance interposed.

I finally turned on the car, geared to drive, and began my exit from the parking garage. Soon, I had exited the airport and driven on the George Washington Memorial Parkway towards 395. The D.C. area traffic was still light. It was usually like this just after the last day of the school year in June until right before the new school year began in late August. I still expected gridlock at some point with all the construction that had been happening in the District. Since Obama’s Recovery Act, it seemed every intersection and corridor was getting a facelift.

I’d realized I had been driving in silence since leaving the airport, giving most of my attention to this tense conversation with Chance.

“Honestly,” I responded. “For a long time I didn’t know who to tell.  I thought Colleen should have known something was going on.”

“Patrick, that’s not fair.”

“Let’s not talk about what’s not fair, bro.”

In that moment, I’d become mad at Colleen all over again. What wasn’t fair was how I felt whenever I thought how my own father must have hated what he created to have done something like that to his own son. What wasn’t fair was how I feared sleep because I hated the nightmares that followed.

"I have one question for you,” Chance said.

“Please don’t ask me what happened?” I interjected.

“Trust me, man. I wasn’t going to ask you that.”

Chance sat on the other end of the phone, silent. His silence made me nervous. What the hell was he going to ask me?

“Where’s my father?” he finally asked.

I thought carefully about my response. I didn’t know what he already knew.

“What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Patrick. Don’t tell me you’re still protecting me?  And I guess that’s what Colleen has been doing, since she hasn’t said anything to me, either. At dinner you kept referring to Omar as this man I keep claiming to be my father.”

“I remember,” I admitted.

“What else are you and Mother not telling me?’ What Omar did, I don’t think my father would have done something like that to me, his own son. So I need you to tell me the truth. I’m twenty-four years old, so whatever the truth is, I’m sure I can handle it.”

“Okay.”

I waited for Chance to ask his question. I had a pretty good idea what he was going to ask. I hated that I would be the one to tell him, after we’ve managed to keep it from him all this time. I didn’t think there was any harm in helping Mother keep this undamaging truth from Chance, but after his disclosure, I’d realized keeping this from him had already done more harm than good. 

“Am I adopted?”

“Yes,” I answered without hesitating. 

Chance was quiet. Although he asked his question with certainty, it was obvious my reply had disappointed him.

I told Chance he was adopted from The Children’s Home in Tampa when he was two years old. Colleen and Omar had fallen in love with him the moment they saw him running through the house, his hands flailing above his head.  He had a carefree spirit and a smile to die for. The faces of those around him would disappear before they would become familiar, though not all of them had been so lucky. Some would leave only to return, for one reason or another, before they had a chance to be missed.

Chance’s mother was a teenager from California. After she’d met my mother, Omar, and me, the deal was sealed. He was introduced to us as Phillip-Michael. That’s all I remembered, no last name. By the time he came home he had become Chance Duvall-Parker, though every document, including his first basketball contract, was signed Chance Parker. I’m not sure when he’d stopped using the name that connected him to Omar, and I never bothered to ask.

“So you know my birthmother?”

“I don’t remember her name or much else about her, and I doubt any reference to her exists on your amended birth certificate. I know the best person for you to ask. Why don’t you meet me at Colleen’s? I haven’t told her I was coming, as grandma suggested, so seeing the two us there could be a nice surprise.”

“Cool.” Chance agreed. “I’ll see you there in a few.”

“Hey, Chance.  I need to tell you,” I started to add, but the silence on the other end interrupted me. Chance had hung up. I didn’t bother calling him back. If Khoury was pulling wool over my brother’s eyes, he was definitely going to know about it. I was hoping to tell him sooner rather than later, but it seemed I had no choice; later would have to do.

Chapter
21

DaMarcus…

Stupid

I stood in the living room looking at the large
wedding picture above the fireplace―the one that was taken as we renewed our vows. She looked happy. My story was persuasive. She believed me when I told her I was nothing like her ex-boyfriend Terrence, the only other man she’s every loved, the only other
man to hurt her. Staying around and waiting for a man to fall back in love with you is the worst thing a woman could do, and that’s exactly what Belinda did. Against her better judgment she allowed herself to fall deeper in love with Terrance while he fell deeper in love with the woman he now calls his wife. 

Belinda had no doubt that I was telling her the truth when I gave her the story that Taylor and her then fiancé Chad had been fighting, and she just needed someplace safe ‘till both their tempers had cooled. Taylor was enraged when she showed up at the house that night. Unfortunately, it was the same night Belinda and her best friend Shayna came home early from their Caribbean getaway to the Parrot Cay Resort in the Turks and Caicos Island.  What I didn’t tell Belinda was that Taylor and Chad had that fight because she’d decided to tell him the baby he thought was his, was actually mine. No, Belinda found that out from Taylor herself. Taylor sat in the front row in the backyard of Belinda’s childhood h
ome next to Dexter, Belinda’s best friend, and listened to my vows to Belinda, and then to Belinda’s vows. Before that, she and Dexter serenaded Belinda and me with their rendition of ‘For Love, For Ever’―just as I had asked her to.

Taylor wore a Cerulean
blue Armani couture gown with matching teardrop diamond earrings and a December Lady necklace whose heart-shaped diamond sat nestled in her cleavage between lifted breasts. Those were my hush gifts to her. I guess the only thing that would have kept Taylor quiet was having me to herself. After all, that was all she
’
s ever wanted. She
’
d made that clear on several occasions, but all I had to do to shut her up was to tell her I loved her. I was telling her the truth; I just didn
’
t love her enough to leave my w
ife. After Taylor watched Belinda and I renew our vows, she wrote her letter to Belinda
⎯
just like she wanted to. She knew what that admission would do to my marriage, but what did she care? I guess that was her way of righting her wrong, especially when sh
e realized her plans to get me for herself weren
’
t going to work. Instead of running to Taylor, I did what I needed to keep my wife in my life. Most of what I did was lie, but I wasn
’
t lying when I told my wife I loved her. What the hell would make Taylor think I would ever leave my wife for her anyway?

So, I was staring at this picture, looking at this woman who was no longer my wife, wondering how dumb could I have been to have messed that up. I had Belinda’s French style diamond wedding band on my pinky finger. She’d removed it from her finger and placed it on the divorce decree right after she’d signed her name. I held the cell phone in the other hand, trying to persuade myself not to call her, but the reasons why I shouldn’t had outnumbered the reasons I should, and I dialed anyway.

“I don’t know what you want, DaMarcus, but you better make this quick,” Belinda answered.

She sounded out of breath, as if she had just run up a flight of stairs.

“I was calling to see how you’re doing.”

“Just like the last phone call, and the ones before that, I’m doing just fine. Nothing has changed,” she answered horridly. “I’m getting along very well in my life without you, DaMarcus Nealon. Now, is that all? ‘Cause that response should just about cover any other questions you may have.”

Before I could answer, I heard his voice in the background.

“Honey, the Gala starts in another hour. We’re going to be late.  Who are you talking to?” 

Damn
, I thought,
someone else was calling Belinda “honey”
. My heart sank. But it was her response that made it sink even lower.

“It’s no one, baby,” Belinda responded as if whom she was talking to didn’t matter and could be easily dismissed. “Look, DaMarcus,” she said, speaking back directly into the phone, “I can’t stand here and entertain you. I have someplace to be with my fiancé.”

“Do you have to be so callous? You don’t have to act like I don’t matter; like you never loved me.”

“It’s not an act,” she declared. “When it comes to you, yes, I do have to be, as you say, callous, unless you think I’m supposed to give a damn about your feelings when you’ve pissed all over mine. Is that it, DaMarcus? Have I hurt your feelings? Okay, you want to know if you still matter, if I still love you? Fine. You
did
matter, DaMarcus, and I
did
love you, up until I found out about your lies. Now I get to feel that way about someone else, and I can’t help it if that someone else is not you.”

“So that’s it? Everything we had isn’t worth holding on to?”

“Everything? You know, that’s a funny word, coming from you. You did say I was your everything. The question is when did that become a lie, too?”

She paused and waited for me to respond.

“I wish you could hear how you sound. Just think. If it weren’t for Taylor and her conscience, I would still be laying next to you, thinking I almost lost you because I didn’t give my husband the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure Taylor had her reasons for telling me the truth, my only question is, why didn’t you?”

“The truth wouldn’t have made you stay.”

“Only now you will never know. I’d been so cautious when it came to love. I’d made mistakes that I wasn’t going to repeat when it came to a man’s love. I’d promised myself I would never let anyone close to my heart again, but I let my guard down and fell for you.  And look what I got for loving you. I used to think you hung the moon.”

“I know I hurt you,” I admitted.

“Really!?” she said sarcastically. “And how long did it take for you to figure that out.”

“He doesn’t understand you, Belinda.”

“Please. Leave Shedrick out of this. He’s only the beneficiary of your mistakes, your dishonesties, and your unfaithfulness. Need I go on? And don’t presume to know anything about him. He’ll learn from your mistake.  God knows you didn’t learn from anything I told you about Terrence. But you are just a man. You probably thought you could cheat better than he did. All Shedrick needs to understand is that I don’t want to be hurt. I thought you understood that, DaMarcus. You were supposed to take care of me.”

“And I did,” I quickly interjected.

“Forever,” she interrupted. “Not just until the next easy woman waved her panties in front of your face. That was the scent of your attraction. And now what? I know this isn’t exactly what you bargained for, DaMarcus,”

“Our time away hasn’t changed my love.”

“That’s your issue to deal with. Frankly, your love should have. As you can see, I’ve moved on.” She paused. “Don’t you have women throwing themselves at you during your football games? Now you have nothing to keep you from acknowledging their advances. Clearly your marriage to me never did.”

“I want it all back, Belinda,” I said as I sat on the floor next to the fireplace with my back against the wall and my knees folded close to my chest. I had my head in my hand, and although I hated to admit it, I was fighting back tears. I remembered the times I would rush home to her because I hated every minute I was away from her. I remembered when her nights belonged to me. I was ready to break into a verso of Mary J. Blige’s
I’m Going Down,
if it meant getting my wife back. That’s exactly where I felt like I was going.

“This ‘all’ you want back, does it include what you had with Taylor, too?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Sorry, my darling ex-husband,” she spoke mockingly. “Just like love doesn’t live here anymore, stupid moved out a long time ago, too. Stupid loved you. Stupid sat at home and cried every night that image of you and Taylor crept in. Stupid stood at that bedroom door while the tears brought headaches because I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the room I’d seen my husband and his woman in. Stupid sat at L’Enchantment and listened to your expertly crafted lies, and when it was all said and done, Stupid took your lying-ass back. So, no, I’m not being stupid. I didn’t take ‘all’ away from us, you did.” She paused. “Do me a favor, DaMarcus. Go find your next easy ass and leave me alone.”

“Look, Belinda, you really want me to leave you alone?”

“I mean, I thought I had been clear all along. Apparently, I wasn’t. If answering your calls gives you the wrong impression that you were making some headway, slowly making your way back, then forgive me. So yes, DaMarcus, I want you to leave me alone. Do you think you can do that? You made this happen. Your infidelities pushed me into the arms of another man. It was always you and I. You and your greed messed up that equation.”