The Cheating Curve (15 page)

The ladies—from the church pews and business associations to the hair salons and day-care centers—particularly adored Dr. Philips. Women discreetly propositioned him in the presence of his wife and openly did so in her absence. He politely yet charmingly declined many more times than he ever accepted. Dr. Philips chalked it up as a hazard of the job.

That afternoon of burned cookies and muffled sobs, Dr. Philip’s secretary announced to Miss Lenora on her nineteenth-century Regency style carved-oak canapé that she was pregnant with her husband’s child and planned on raising their child, Aminah’s half-sibling, right there in Hempstead.

Miss Lenora wanted to pull her daughter out of the public school system, but Nicholas Philips thought it would look poorly to the community if his daughter didn’t attend the local public school. How could he prove that he had a personal vested interest if his own child didn’t attend? “Besides, the students like Aminah in the talented and gifted programs are receiving a superior education. It’s those average kids who are getting gypped.”

Aminah had forgotten how painful parts of her childhood were and respected her mother even more for being so emotionally strong through it all. Her mother had kept their family together by undeniable will and remarkable force.

“Yes, and if I could have protected you from all that, I would’ve.”

“Oh, Mother, stop it,” Aminah said firmly. “It’s not your fault. If anyone should have been trying to protect me more, it should’ve been my father. I was more confused than hurt. I just didn’t understand how my father could step out on you of all women. With such a beautiful, doting, intelligent woman at home who cooked, cleaned, and raised his daughter brilliantly—if I do say so myself. I didn’t understand why that wasn’t enough for him.”

Nick had confessed to only one affair, the one with his secretary, the single time he’d gotten caught, the only time that mattered. He’d fired her immediately with an incredible severance, convinced her to have an abortion (that he was present for at his wife’s insistence), and threatened to end her life if she didn’t move at least three thousand miles away and forget they’d ever known each other. “I got friends from the ghetto to the White House and in between, and more than one owes me a favor that’s just a phone call away.”

In front of a Romare Bearden original, Nicholas had stood at the head of his dining room table and apologized to his daughter and wife. He’d promised that nothing like that would ever come to their doorsteps again. Miss Lenora had immediately forgiven him publicly; privately, it had taken quite a few years, but Aminah never could tell.

Miss Lenora rubbed her daughter’s back. “I can’t answer that question for your father any more than you can for Aaron. If you need those answers, you need to ask him, but more importantly, you need to ask and answer for yourself why you stay. Be clear on those reasons, Aminah.”

Yes, clarity. That’s what Aminah desired, that and closure and contrition from Fame. All these years of staying with him for the sake of the family didn’t seem like enough anymore. His lack of remorse had always pissed Aminah off, but she’d just accepted it as par for the course. Quietly, she’d always felt a bit taken for granted.

“Why did you stay, Mother?” Aminah asked, hoping her mother’s answer would offer her some insight into herself.

“Because I wanted to. I loved our relationship, and I still do. Your father loves me, Aminah, and I him.”

“Did you ever feel humiliated?”

“Humiliated?” Miss Lenora asked while gathering all of Aminah’s hair back into a ponytail. “No, I had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Angry at your father enough to want to smother him with a pillow in his sleep, yes, but never humiliated.”

“Sometimes I feel like the other women have it better,” Aminah admitted. “They don’t have to put up with all that we wives have to. It seems like they get to have it all or at least the best of both worlds. The freedom of being single plus the perks of being with a married man.”

“Well, that’s just nonsense, Aminah,” Miss Lenora said, placing the paddle brush on the vanity table. She lifted her daughter’s chin and looked her squarely in the eyes. “Understand something, Aminah: the wife is always honored and respected. Back in my day, the mistress was lucky if she got any pity, never mind regard. A wife who stands by her husband can remarry with dignity if she so chooses. Look at Jackie O and Marilyn Monroe—which one was more revered, respected, and honored, while the other died shamefully? God bless the dead, but, well, she did kill herself.”

“
Muh-thurrr
,” Aminah whined again, thinking Marilyn Monroe had married—a few times, in fact. True, they were all troubled, but…

“Well, it’s true. Your generation is perhaps the first to try to make the mistress into something more than what she is. As if being one is something to aspire to. She suffers lonely birthdays and holidays. She bears bastards if she bears children at all. ‘Silly girl, you mean nothing to him, now scamper away. There may be dozens of you but only one of me.’”

Aminah thought that maybe that last comment was specifically directed at her father’s old secretary.

“Understand something, Aminah; there’s value and worth in being an exclusive commodity as opposed to a mass-market item,” Miss Lenora continued. “A woman’s value depreciates the more her body is used, and I don’t care how liberated or self-reliant women get, that piece of fact won’t ever change. The day will never come when a woman gains respect for the number of men she’s bedded. It’s been that way since the beginning of time in practically every culture.”

Aminah sighed and wondered if this speech was a part of the healing process.

“You cannot lose your mind because your husband cheats on you,” her mother continued. “You cannot fall apart because he has an affair. You cannot destroy your family because of his weaknesses. I’m sorry that the burden falls on us, but there is strength in that, beauty in that. Knowing I can keep my family together by my will and determination is empowering for me. Now, I’ll admit to you, Aminah, that Aaron has not been discreet enough for a woman of your caliber. But as you know, your father wasn’t always discreet either.”

Aminah nodded in agreement. “Do you worry about Dad cheating now?”

Miss Lenora laughed a long, full, hearty laugh. Her eyes actually watered. “Oh, Aminah, baby.”

“What’s so funny?” Aminah asked, genuinely confused. “I don’t get it.”

“Your father and I have been married for over thirty-five years, and we
know
each other. Do you know how amazing it is to be with someone who really knows you and you them? We’re each other’s best friends. I mean that. Not only is it cheaper to keep me, it’s easier. But when you get down to it, it’s never really been about the other woman. It’s always been about him and me. What we have, what we value, our agreement, our commitment. I never had any sort of agreement with that woman. She didn’t owe me anything, no allegiance. Nothing. I wanted your father’s respect. If being faithful is so hard, at least respect me enough, care about me enough so that it never gets back to me. Don’t ever give me a reason to suspect anything. Protect me and my feelings, me and my ego, my pride, my body. Insulate me, if you will.”

Aminah realized at that particular moment that she and her mother were indeed kindred spirits. Being insulated would have been enough for Aminah, too.

“I almost left your father,” Miss Lenora revealed.

“Are you serious, Mother?” Aminah asked while braiding down her ponytail.

“Yes. I was the one who insisted he fire his secretary and move her out of the state. And if he hadn’t done it immediately, I wasn’t going to settle for half. Oh, no, I was gonna take it
allll
, and I dared him to stop me. He ain’t the only one with connections from the hood to the DC lawn.”

Aminah laughed hysterically. She needed that. She hadn’t laughed in over a week, and hearing her mother paraphrase one of her father’s overused quotes tickled her.

“Yes, I did,” Miss Lenora continued. “It’s like playing out those last two hands in a good game of spades, and so far nobody’s thrown down the high or low joker. So everybody’s playing cautiously, but no one suspects you’re holding both of them. You gotta know the cards you’re holding, baby, when to play which card and when to throw them all down. You’ve got a good hand, Aminah—you know that, right?”

Aminah nodded and smiled. She’d sleep soundly that night knowing on Thanksgiving morning she’d be checking herself out of the P.I.P. room.

“Now, why don’t you give Dorian a call?” Miss Lenora suggested, affectionately smoothing the top of her daughter’s head. “I’m afraid your hair requires some professional attention I can’t give it.”

S
ean woke up on Thanksgiving morning with absolutely no appetite. Sneaking up on his wife having phone sex with another man had stripped him of his hunger for sex, food, and basketball. He was going through it.

Lang was uneasy. Watching her husband sip on the same can of room-temperature ginger ale from the night before concerned her. His “twenty-four-hour stomach virus” was runnin’ one hundred twenty hours straight right about now.

“You think we should just call Fame and cancel, babe?” Lang asked as she slid on her camel suede pants.

“No way,” Sean said, rubbing his hand back and forth across his stomach. “I promised Alia and Amir I’d be there, and when
I
make promises,
I
keep them.”

Sean couldn’t bring himself to flat-out confront Lang just yet. If Aminah hadn’t been going through her own thing, he would’ve been stepped to her about this.

Underneath her sienna cable-knit turtleneck, Lang raised her eyebrow as she pulled the sweater over her head.
Okay, what is that supposed to mean?
she wondered.

On their drive over to Queens, Sean recalled their last baby-making conversation. Weren’t they supposed to start planning for their offspring soon? Were all their plans now fucked up over one phone call?
It’s not like I actually caught her in bed with another man, just on the phone
, Sean thought to himself.
Right?
His stomach rumbled.

Lang didn’t hear the rumbling though. Not only was Dianne Reeves up way too loud, but Lang’s mind roamed elsewhere. As their quarter-to-eight—their BMW 745—hugged the curves of the Jackie Robinson Parkway, her thoughts were on trading it in for the new 6 Series.

Even though Lang knew how much Sean absolutely hated carrying a car note, she reasoned that whipping the latest was a necessary element of her job. How was she going to run a magazine that touted itself as the aficionado of what black celebrities were wearing, driving, buying, and applying if she herself didn’t live by those very same standards?

“You know you’re born with all the eggs you’ll ever have, right?” Sean asked, disrupting her mental car-shopping trip.

“What?” Lang asked in confusion, turning down Reeves’s soulful “Company.”

“These few eggs you have left now are some of your oldest eggs, just hanging on for dear life, hoping to be fertilized.”

“What in the hell are you talking about, Sean?” Lang asked, perturbed. Her Thanksgiving was not getting off to a good start.

“That’s why it’s so much harder for older women to conceive—you’re no longer carrying your youngest, strongest, healthiest eggs.”

Lang wondered if this stomach thing had traveled up to his head.

“Why the sudden concern for my eggs, Sean, huh? And since when did I become an older woman? ’Cause quite frankly, I’m more worried about
your
stomach.”

He knew this stomach thing was merely psychosomatic, but the state of her eggs and the future of their marriage truly did trouble him.

“Do you still want to have my children, Langston?”

Lang didn’t answer immediately. Not only would Sean not like what he’d hear, but Thanksgiving Day was not the time to discuss her apprehension about kids, especially when just four months ago they’d discussed her properly planning her maternity leave and proactively grooming her assistant for the transition.

“Sean, honey, I think it’s time we got some solid food in your system,” Lang said as she parked in the Andersons’ driveway. “‘Cause the shit that’s coming out your mouth has got to be from lack of sustenance.”

“No, the shit that’s coming out of my mouth is from lack of trust,” Sean said, slamming the car door.

“What?”

“You heard.”

“What reason have I given you not to trust me?” Lang asked, ringing the doorbell.

“Think about it, Langston,” Sean replied.

But she didn’t have a chance. Fame answered the door with a look of relief, pulling Sean through the doorway with a heartfelt embrace. Alia followed right behind her father, dragging Lang off in a completely different direction.

Inside the Anderson home it was blatantly apparent that Aminah hadn’t been there. For one, all the Daily Blossom arrangements that had arrived the day before were now sitting in a corner of the living room, while all the pumpkins were lined in size order down the middle of the dining room table.

Aminah had bought the orange-skinned fruits to greet her guests at the front doorstep and guide them up the indoor staircase opposite glowing votives; however, Glo had decided they’d work best simply as centerpieces.

The “pumpkin patch” was the first thing Miss Lenora had noticed when she entered the dining room an hour before Lang and Sean arrived.

“Who put these here, and where is Aminah?” she asked to no one in particular, reaching toward the largest pumpkin.

“Isn’t she with you?” Fame asked his mother-in-law, sounding all too distressed.

“No Aaron, honey,” Miss Lenora replied, concerned as she reached up to touch his shoulder. “She left this morning before Nick and I were even dressed. She said she’d see us later. I assumed she meant here, but clearly, with the pumpkin patch on the table and the flower garden on the floor, she’s not here.”

Glo leaned against the wall just outside the dining room. She’d strolled in minutes ago from her backyard cigarette break. Normally, Aminah and Fame did not allow smoking in or outside their home. But because Glo had sacrificed “living her life like it’s golden” for the past week to care for his children, Fame readily made an exception for his mother.

“
I
put the pumpkins on the table, and I think they look real nice up there,” Glo said defensively, strutting over to Lenora.

Miss Lenora had assumed Fame had thrown the pumpkins on the table in haste. She genuinely appreciated Gloria stepping in for Aminah and wasn’t about to belittle her efforts by making Thanksgiving at the Anderson home more uncomfortable than it already was without Aminah there.

“Oh, well, yes, they sure do, Gloria,” Miss Lenora lied, turning around to hug Glo, wrinkle up her nose at the lingering smell of cigarette smoke, and ask her how she was doing. To say they liked each other would be an overstatement; to say they didn’t would be a lie. They tolerated each other. Of course, Nick and Gloria got along just fine.

“You haven’t heard from her?” Nick asked, gripping his son-in-law’s right hand, pulling him in for a hug, patting him on the back and whispering, “You need to fix this, son.”

“I know. I know. I just don’t know how,” Fame responded.

The doorbell rang.

“We’ll talk later,” Nick promised.

Cousins, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, and friends filled the house by the minute. Everyone inquired about Aminah’s whereabouts.

The tristate-area folks informed the out-of-towners of the latest gossip circulating about Fame and Aminah. Some shook their heads, whispered she should leave him, take half his money, all this house, and split the kids. Others murmured she’d be a fool to put a good-looking, hardworking man like Fame back on the market to be snatched up by someone who’d be smart enough to look the other way and never complain while luxuriating in all his wealth before she could even get an appointment with a divorce attorney.

An hour and a half later while Amir was in the middle of impressing Sean and a few of his younger cousins with a card trick, the phone rang.

“Hi, Mom!” Amir shouted into the phone.

“Tell your mother I need to talk to her,” Sean whispered into his ear.

Amir nodded at Sean while telling his mother he was fine and, yes, he was co-manning the house with his dad, and that Grandma Glo was fun, but he missed her and wanted to know when she was coming home.

“Well, not today, sweetie,” Aminah said.

“Aw, Mom. Your friend’s not doing any better?” he asked, concerned.

“She is better, just not fully recovered.”

“Well, tell her to hurry up and get better because I need you home in time for Christmas.”

Aminah smiled. “I most certainly will. Now tell me a funny story.”

He did, and Aminah laughed her signature crescendo laugh. Amir smiled and asked how she was doing.

“Mommy is doing just fine, but she’ll be even better when you see her. Now go find your sister and let me speak to Uncle Sean.” Amir handed the phone to Sean and ran off to look for his sister.

“Hey, gorgeous, how are you?” Sean asked, smiling for the first time in days.

“I’m
much
better, Sean, thank you.”

“Then why aren’t you here?”

“Oh, Sean.” Aminah sighed. “I’m not ready to be in a house full of people or, for that matter, anywhere near Fame.”

“Damn,” Sean said, disappointed that he wouldn’t get to see her. “Well, where are you spending your Thanksgiving?”

“At the Ritz-Carlton in Battery Park,” Aminah said nonchalantly.

Sean could hear her smiling through the phone. He laughed. “That’s my girl.”

“You know they have a water sommelier here?”

“No, Aminah, only you would know that.” Sean laughed again. His stomach was feeling better already.

“I’m sorry I can’t be home on Thanksgiving, Sean. I really am. I’m still plotting my next move. You know? Figuring things out….” Her voice trailed off a bit.

“Plotting?” Sean asked, surprised. “You’re thinking about leaving Fame?”

“I’m thinking about me and my needs, for a change. Not my husband’s, not my children’s,
my
future and whether it includes my husband. And if it does, under what clear and concise terms.”

“Good for you, Aminah,” Sean said, meaning it. “Wish I could be there, too.”

“Uh-oh, something’s wrong,” Aminah detected. “You love holiday gatherings almost as much as basketball. What’s going on with you?”

Sean paused to figure out how he should ask Aminah if she had any idea who his wife was phone sexing. Who she was seeing later. Correction—who she couldn’t wait to see later.

“Listen, Aminah, I need to ask you something that…” He paused again.

“What is it, Sean?”

Sean rubbed his stomach. The nausea was returning, and Alia was walking toward him with her hand extended. He was running out of time.

“Who is my wife fucking around with?” Sean whispered through clenched teeth.

“Uncle Sean, lemme speak to Mommy. It’s my turn.”

“Listen, Alia’s here to speak with you,” Sean said, lowering his voice and turning away from Alia. “But we need to talk in person. Can I see you tomorrow?”

Aminah cleared her throat. “Uh, yeah, sure, sure.”

“Where? There?”

“Let me think about that. Maybe we can go somewhere to eat around here. I’ll call you on your cell around oneish.”

“Cool,” Sean said, swiveling around to face his goddaughter with a smile. “Well, here’s Alia, and Happy Thanksgiving, gorgeous.”

Alia assured her mother that she was being the lady of the house and explained to her that Grandma Glo did a lot of things different from what they were used to—“good different,” mostly.

“Has your Grandmother Lenora gotten there yet?” Aminah asked.

“Yes,” Alia responded. “Mommy?”

“Yes, sweetie.”

“I think it’s nice that you’re taking care of your friend Nia, but when are you coming home?”

“Real soon. Definitely in time for Christmas. Nia’s recovery is coming along nicely, but Daddy is doing a good job filling in for me, right?”

“Um, he’s doing a good job for Daddy, just not as good as you.” Alia laughed, recalling her father’s “lame” attempt at helping her shop for an outfit for “Dress-Down Day” at school.

Aminah laughed at her daughter’s candor. “Okay, well, that’s good enough. Would you get him for me, please?”

Fame took the call upstairs in their bedroom.

“Minah, baby, I’m so glad you called,” he said, sounding as nervous as he was relieved. “I was getting real worried about you, baby. Where are you? How long before you get here?”

Aminah said nothing.

“Minah, baby, you there?”

“I’m here, Fame,” Aminah said flatly.

“Where are you exactly? Everbody’s here. We’re just waitin’ on you.”

“Actually, that’s why I called.” Aminah paused to clear her throat. “I didn’t want to be rude and hold up dinner. Listen, I’m not coming home, Fame.”

This time Fame said nothing.

“Fame, you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Fame said, holding his head down and rubbing his forehead.

Neither said anything for a whole minute. Fame wrestled between feeling angry and being hurt. He settled on frustrated.

“Minah, baby, I can’t. I can’t do this without you.” Fame’s voice cracked. “Please, baby, come home. Please. Whatever it is you want me to do, need me to do, I’ll do it. Just don’t leave me, baby. Don’t do that. Please don’t do that. Don’t make me have to spend Thanksgiving without you. All of our family is here, baby, but it just ain’t family without you. Please, baby, I’m begging you. Come home, Minah. I miss you. I miss you more than the children do. Shit, they’re fine. I’m the one who’s falling apart over here. I can’t make music. I can’t, Minah. I can’t do this without you. You want me to give up the studio, Minah? Huh? I’ll do it. I’ll do it. Just say you’ll come home to me.”

Aminah swallowed back the tears but said nothing. She refused to cry. She’d done more than enough of that.
Concentrate on the healing. On the solution…on what you want, Aminah.
She replayed her mother’s advice.

“You’re willing to throw away all that we have, all that we built, over some bullshit, Aminah?”

“I’m not the one putting our marriage in jeopardy time and time again, Fame,” Aminah responded, incensed at Fame’s audacity. “You did that all by yourself. Don’t you dare try to flip this on me.”

Fame sighed.

“We barely spent enough time together as a couple or a family,” she continued. “How is it that you have the nerve to find time for an affair?”

“Let’s be clear on something, Minah,” Fame said angrily. “I have never had an affair. Never had a relationship with any other woman.
Relations
in the Clintonian sense of the word, okay, well, yeah. But no affair. No relationship.”