Young Wives (65 page)

“Mrs. Russo. I want to thank you for this,” Douglas said, doing a fairly good impersonation of a human being. “You did the right thing. I know it couldn’t have been easy for you.” The clerk came over with the money, now wrapped in plastic bags. He handed a piece of paper to Douglas.

“Well, that’s it,” Douglas said. “The evidence we needed. I’ll have to ask you to sign for it.” He looked at Michelle. “Do you think there might be any more?” he asked.

“I didn’t find any other hiding places in the house. But you can certainly look,” she said, telling the truth. “Who knows?” And then they all rose, shook hands, and left the office.

In which Rice gets mushy

Angie had to make seventeen calls that morning to get permission for Jada to have her weekend visitation changed from Saturday to Sunday, in addition to permission to take the children to church. “My God,” she complained to Bill after she’d finally gotten call-backs, returned other calls, faxed the documentation, received receipt of the documentation back, spoken to the court clerk, spoken to the judge’s secretary, and finally confirmed it all with the supervisor of the Department of Social Welfare, “think what it would take if I was trying to get permission for them to be in a bump and grind show instead of just going to church.”

“That would be no problem,” Bill said. “Parents make little girls do that all the time. It’s called kiddie beauty pageants.”

Angie just shook her head. “Would you mind making copies of all of this? One for Mrs. Jackson, one for my file, and one for Mr. Jackson.”

“Should I do one for Michael, Latoya, Janet, and Jesse while I’m at it?” Bill asked.

“Boring,” Angie said.

“Me? Boring?” Michael asked as he walked into the room.

Bill, on his way out, passed him and raised his eyebrows. “You? The young—well, middle-aged—Lochinvar?”

Michael raised his brows in disapproval. “Loose lips sink ships,” he said.

“I haven’t said a word,” Angie protested. Michael raised his brows higher. Angie shook her head, assuring him of her innocence. “You know, Bill has a kind of genius for office gossip. It’s radar or something.”

“He didn’t know about my separation and divorce,” Michael said dryly. “But he knows that we’re an item.”

“I take your point, counselor,” Angie said rising. “But you only have two choices here. You can believe I’m lying to you or that I’m not.” She moved closer to him and put her hand on his shoulder, the edges of her fingers against his neck. “Which one is it going to be?”

“Dinner,” Michael replied. “Lobster, I think. And then we’ll explore this loose lips business.”

Angie actually blushed.

Dinner was great. Michael took her to an old house that had been converted into an inn. “Westchester is lousy with these joints,” he told her as they were seated at a table next to the fireplace. They talked a little bit about work, and about Angie’s mother, then Angie asked Michael a few questions about growing up. He’d been born in Minnesota. He was the oldest of three boys. The youngest had died of cancer just eleven months ago.

“With that and the divorce, it must have been a tough year for you,” she said.

He nodded, rotating the brandy snifter in his hand. “I’d have to agree with that,” he said. He looked into the glass. “Do you know that your eyes are exactly the same color as this Courvoisier?” he asked.

Angie shook her head. In the low light Michael looked almost boyish. And she could tell that he really, really liked her. “You know, it wasn’t easy to let my wife leave. She’s moved back to Omaha. She’s got a teaching job at the university there and I let the kids go with her. I miss them a lot.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“What I’m trying to say, Angie, is that it isn’t only women who suffer in a divorce. Men sometimes do, too.” He took another sip of his brandy. “I can’t wait to see my daughters. I only let them go because it was best for them.”

“That’s being a good parent in difficult circumstances,” Angie said, thinking of Jada. Michael smiled at her.

“Thanks,” he said, then reached out and took one of her corkscrew curls in his fingers. “How do you make it do that?” he asked, and Angie had to smile.

“It just grows out of my head that way,” she said. “It drives me nuts.”

“It drives me nuts, too,” he said and his voice was lower with insinuation.

His voice, sexy and deep like that, made her hold her breath. Suddenly Angie remembered looking at the hundred golden streaks in Reid’s hair and asking
him
how
he
had gotten it like that. She let out her breath slowly. She wondered if, in every relationship, there was someone who adored and someone who was adored. She also wondered who had the better deal.

She took Michael’s hand, gently untangling her hair from his grasp. It seemed to wake him out of his trance. “So, how many people are you living with now?” he asked. “Is it up to fifty yet? Do you have cats and turtles and hamsters, as well as girlfriends, dogs, and children? Do you have fiestas and grill goats on the holidays? Piñata parties? Chinese New Year? Do you sleep in shifts?”

“There are only nineteen of us,” Angie joked. “That’s nothing. And we don’t do piñatas. We do Mardi Gras and the High Holy Days.” She paused. “I know you don’t approve of mixing business with social life, but—”

“Hey, I’m in no position to talk,” he said, gesturing back and forth between them.

“Well, anyway, Jada and Michelle will be moving out pretty soon. They’re getting on their feet.” She would have liked to tell him about Marblehead and the rest of their audacious plans, but Michael was a man who believed in the law. She didn’t think he would inform on them, but she was certain he would try to stop her from helping. Angie, though, had decided she would take the risk. She just wouldn’t share it with Michael.

But when he wrapped her in her coat and helped her down the stairs outside the restaurant, she felt a pleasant tingling and hoped he’d invite her to his apartment for coffee. She also thought there might be other things she would enjoy sharing with Mr. Rice.

In which Jada sells out to Clinton

“No. No!
No!
” Angie shouted. “Look, we’ve gotten this far. I am not going to let you go insane.” She glared at Jada. So did Michelle, if she could ever be described as glaring. They were in Angie’s kitchen, just finishing their third cups of coffee. They were all pretty hyper.

“Honey, I have to agree with Angie. Everything else is all ready,” Michelle said to Jada. “Don’t mess it up. Your stuff is packed, the kids’ new things are all waiting to go. We’ve got it stowed in my car. You even have permission to take the kids to church. How can you do this now? Samuel should be here any minute.”

Angie took a deep breath. “Jada, you know how hard it was for me to agree to help with the kids’…disappearance. I just don’t think that there’s one more chance you can afford to take.”

Jada looked at her two friends. “I’m not asking you to do anything,” she said. “I’ll do it all by myself. But I’m going to do it.”

“Jada, it’s illegal and maybe even dangerous,” Angie reminded her.

“So is everything else I’m doing.”

Angie got up from the dinette chair and looked at Michelle. “Your friend has finally gone completely crazy. I cannot listen to this any longer. I’m an officer of the court. I could be disbarred. And what about me? You two are going to be gone. But people might come around here, sniffing.”

“What if they do?” Jada said. “It has nothing to do with you.”

Angie made a hopeless gesture with her hands. She spilled some of the coffee on the counter. “Michelle, you talk to your irresponsible, vengeful, risk-taking friend. I have no patience.” She walked down the hall and slammed her bedroom door.

Michelle looked at Jada, but Jada turned her head away. “She’s making sense and you’re not,” Michelle said.

“Oh, don’t be taking sides with her. You don’t know what it was like to live in that house for all those years! Your house was perfect. My kitchen floor was still raw plywood. You know what it’s like to try and keep that clean. And the garage door rotting off its track. And the upstairs bathroom never finished. And the guest room only framed in. The overhead light in the dining room was a bare bulb in an orange plastic construction cage.
Now
he’s fixing that place up?” Jada stopped to take a breath. She put her hand on the counter, smearing Angie’s spilled coffee. She’d spent years in that house, constantly troubled by the unfinished state of it, resenting Clinton, and yet paying the monthly mortgage. “I would
beg
him. I would buy the wallboard. I would drag it into the house myself. I even offered to pay someone
else
to finish up. He wouldn’t let me. He was offended. You were living in House Beautiful, but I was always in a construction zone.”

“Jada, calm down. Let’s remember what’s important. I’m leaving my whole house behind me. The carpets, the couches, the curtains. That’s not what’s important, Jada, and you know it.”

“Don’t you tell me what’s important.”

Michelle took a step back and Jada could tell she’d hurt her. She hadn’t meant to. It was just that these white women sometimes were so damn sure of everything. And people accused
black
women of being bossy. Jada took a deep breath.

She had tried to think it through calmly, but each time she did, it seemed that this was the last piece of unfinished business she had to complete. She couldn’t just leave the home she’d worked so hard to keep together, the home Clinton didn’t respect but would now inherit. She walked over to one of the cots that they borrowed from Natalie and perched at the end of it. She looked up at Michelle, who had gone to the sink, and in her usual crazy way was washing the two mugs that had been left on the drain board. But Jada knew Michelle was only doing that to cover her hurt.

“Michelle,” she said. “I’m sorry,” but Michelle couldn’t hear her with the water running. Hard as it was for Jada to apologize, she owed it to her friend. Jada got up, walked to the sink, and leaned over to look at Michelle. “I’m really sorry, Michelle,” she repeated.

“That’s okay,” Michelle said. Jada hoped that was true and took her friend’s soapy hands, rinsed them, and pulled her over to the cot.

They were already doing so much for her that Jada found it hard to ask for just one more thing—even if it was only understanding. But she wanted—
needed
—them to understand. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” was a quote that Jada had wrestled with over and over again, but this felt so right—even if it was risky—that she felt certain she had to do it. “Just sit down and listen?” she asked Michelle. “I have it all figured. If you agree, I know we can get Angie to see it.”

Michelle took a deep sigh. “Penis gluing, kidnapping, turning state’s evidence, and now…this. Why don’t we just join the mob?”

“Why don’t you just listen for a few minutes,” Jada said. “I’m telling you, I have it all worked out.”

And she did have it all worked out.

Michelle, reluctantly, made the call to Clinton. Of course, Tonya answered (which was only one of the reasons Michelle had to make the call) but Michelle asked for Clinton. Though it was clear the woman was reluctant to hand over the phone, Clinton did, at last, get on the line. Michelle had been letter perfect.

“You know, I’m moving,” she’d said. “All this trouble with Frank and all. Anyway, I thought you might want some of my furniture.” Jada couldn’t hear her husband’s response, but if Tonya was listening on the extension—and she probably was—Jada was pretty sure about the response. “I have a sofa and a love seat I don’t need. There’s a lot of other stuff, too.”

Angie joined them and listened to the phone call, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. She hadn’t said she would cooperate, but she would. Clinton, the freeloader, jumped on the offer. Jada knew he was the kind of hypocrite who didn’t want his kids to play with “a druggie’s children,” but he’d take the guy’s furniture into his house and let his kids sit on it. And so it was arranged that Tonya and Clinton would come over to Michelle’s on Sunday for the pick-up.

Michelle stood at the counter, making the arrangements with Clinton and sounding perfectly neutral, as if there were nothing unusual about offering her best friend’s enemy a gift.

Jada watched and listened and then noticed something really different. Truly different. Amazing, even. “Angie, look at this,” she whispered. “Do you see what I see?”

“I see a felony in the making,” Angie whispered.

“No. No. Look at the counter.” Michelle, just finishing her conversation on the phone, was standing before the mess of coffee cups and the smeared counter.
And she wasn’t picking up a sponge
. “She’s looking right at the mess and she isn’t doing a thing about it.”

“Oh my God,” Angie said. “You’re right.”

Jada had made sure that Michelle was very specific about the time, and she made sure that Clinton understood that if he didn’t get it then, he wouldn’t get it at all. “I may not be there, Clinton,” Michelle said. “But if not, if I’m already on the road, my lawyer will let you in and you can take the stuff.” Michelle hung up the phone and looked over at her two friends. “What are you staring at?” she asked them.

“Michelle, do you want to wipe down that counter?” Jada asked.

“Oh, fuck it,” Michelle said. “We have more important things to worry about.”

“Unbelievable,” Angie said.

Jada spread out her arms. “Cindy! Cindy, you’ve grown up.”

During which Michelle is briefly behind bars

Michelle had to be sure that she had a good alibi so that she wouldn’t be implicated in any way in what she thought of as “Jada’s housewarming party.” She figured the best thing to do was go to jail, because there was no place where you were photographed, observed, signed in, and signed out, the way you were there. It was kind of ironic—going to prison to be sure she didn’t go to prison. But Michelle supposed that Frank wouldn’t know the difference, and the DA would eventually like to know her whereabouts at the particular moment when Jada was finishing her caper.