Unashamed (10 page)

He was relaxed and calm. “I don’t know. Where?”

“Las Vegas!”

“You are? What are you doing there?”

“I’m getting married tomorrow. Do you want to talk to your future son-in-law?” I said it all in one fell swoop. It was so easy for me to smile and say it without shaking or worry because the clarity of the decision to be married was so obvious. I knew I was hurting feelings and crushing parental dreams, but I never once second-guessed myself. And, believe me, I am typically the queen of needing constant reassurance. It was pure self-centered bliss with Doug, and anything outside of my protective box meant nothing, even breaking my father’s heart.

“WHAT!” he yelled, outraged. “No, I don’t want to talk to him! Who is this kid? I’ve never heard you talk about…what’s his name? Where did you meet him? What about Robert?”

I attempted to calm him. “Dad. He’s twenty-five, about six-foot-two, one hundred sixty-five pounds, dark hair, big brown eyes. His parents are Spanish, German, and Italian. They live in Vegas and we are staying with them right now…”

Dad cut me off. “Italian. Are they in the mob?” For a second he thought all of this was a joke, and he actually laughed. “You are kidding, right?”

“What? Oh my God, Dad, no.” I laughed a bit, thinking he was taking this pretty well.

 “No, Dad, I’m serious. I’m going to marry him tomorrow. We are going to a chapel…”

I heard my dad mumble, then shout something before he threw the phone down. So there I was, sitting on the bed mouthing the words “he’s pissed” to Doug and my future mother-in-law, who walked in with her arms crossed with uncertainty.

My sister picked up the phone. With disapproval in her hushed voice, she said, “Emma, what did you say to him? He is pissed and I think he is crying.”

“I’m in Las Vegas and I’m getting married tomorrow,” I announced without hesitation.

“You are not! Are you kidding me? This is not funny. He is in the other room in tears, and Robert lost twenty pounds since you broke off the engagement. What are you doing?” she quietly yelled at me.

“He did?” I murmured.

“This is not funny. I don’t even want to talk to you right now.” I could hear her give the phone to my stepmother.

“Emma.” She drew out my name in a way that neither calmed nor scolded me. She used a pale, smooth voice and very slowly said, “Your dad is very upset. I don’t know what’s going on or what you said. I have never seen him like this, but I’m going to hang up now.”

I could tell she pushed the button on the phone to quietly end the call in eerie silence rather than the familiar clicking sound when you just put the receiver down. I looked to Doug, who was staring at me with eyes bigger than a Precious Moments figurine.

“Oh my God. He is crying,” I told him.

Doug translated the events to his mother in Spanish. She teared up a bit with loving, understanding eyes, and, in broken English, said, “I understand. It’s too mush, mijo. Too mush.” She shook her head and cried while explaining a few things in Spanish. I didn’t need to understand the words to get that we were not just building our dreams, but we were killing theirs.

Despite confusion and reservation, Doug’s family slap-dashed themselves into appropriate attire for an impromptu Vegas wedding. We traveled from chapel to chapel, trying to find one that was open. Unfortunately, it was around the Thanksgiving holiday and even in the City of Sin, locals closed shop early to spend time with their families.

Doug, in the backseat with me, became sullen as sweat oozed from each of his pores. At every chapel we were met with disappointment and neon “Closed” signs in the windows. Between stops the traffic was nearly halted to a complete stop, prolonging our disastrous attempt to be married.

After the first hour of chapel hunting, Doug began to smell so bad that we had to open the windows for fresh air. The sweat soaked through his clothing, and his face seemed to be an unnatural hue of green. “Are you okay, honey? You’re not talking much,” I said as I patted his forehead with the back of my hand.

“I’m okay,” he said with a forced smile. “I just don’t feel well. Maybe it’s nerves.”

“Well, you smell like ass. Do you want to go home?”

“I’m sorry, but no, I’m okay. Let’s get married.” He gathered all of his energy to push himself out of the slumped position he was in against the door. He was humble to pretend it was nothing but a case of bad nerves.

A half-hour and three closed chapels later, Doug was not laughing at any jokes and smelled like a hot landfill under the Georgia sun. By this point, the family was becoming fixated on locating any open chapel on the strip.

From the backseat I requested to go back home because it was obvious Douglas’s state of health was in jeopardy. “We should stop. Everything is closed and Doug is really sick. We can always come back.”

Rico, my future brother-in-law, turned from the driver’s seat, his butt-chin protruding in Doug’s general direction. “Maybe this is an omen telling you not to marry this dumb-leva!”

Doug’s mother scolded him for not paying attention to the road before they spoke in Spanish. Suddenly Rico was turning onto a side street, headed home, and I was smirking quietly in the back at my future mother-in-law’s ability to control her adult children with a few words. By the time we arrived, Doug was moaning horribly and smelled of sewer sludge. We helped him up the stairs, where he succumbed to vomiting and diarrhea from suspected food poisoning. Before going to bed, Doug asked me if I thought this really was an omen.

“No,” I told him. “This just means you are a jackass for eating rotten yams. Now go to sleep because you smell so fucking bad. I love you.”

In the week following our adventure to Las Vegas, I discussed my desperation for a place to marry with a coworker. A friend who received his judgeship was already in order to make it official. We did not choose the day of our marriage; it was a process of elimination that boiled down to availability of the judge, witnesses, and location.

For us, nothing was as important as the marriage itself. I remember Doug’s concern was real and genuine when he asked if ditching the traditions was what I really wanted to do on our return from Las Vegas. “Do you want to get married in a church?”

“For what? We’re not religious, so I think it would be hypocritical.”

“What about a dress and flowers?” He dug further to verify my wishes.

“Honey, you know I don’t give a shit about some dress. I don’t care if we get married in jeans.”

“Are you sure? Because you know I couldn’t care less about all that traditional crap. That’s a woman thing anyway, but, if you want it, I will make it happen.”

“I honestly swear to you that I don’t want it.” I placed my hand on his leg as he drove to assure him that the words coming out of my mouth were truth.

With sincerity and intention he proclaimed, “I’ll get you a ring in a few months, I promise.”

“Seriously, I don’t want a ring either,” I immediately corrected him. “A ring means nothing to me and, really, I think we should spend our money on things we need.”

He reiterated, “So no ring, no church, no dress?” as he held up a finger to each item.

“Right. And my judge friend will perform the ceremony for free. God, I’m the best fiancée on the planet! No wonder you love me.”

“The most important thing is getting married, not how or where it’s done,” he replied.

This truly was the case because when Jason, the newly ordained judge, arrived at the house, he was in a terrible hurry to coach his son’s baseball game. If something were more important to us than getting married, we would have never let Jason walk into that house in full uniform, including cleats, under his black judge’s robe.

Doug’s roommate, two of my coworkers, and the homeowners with whom I had met ten minutes prior to the ceremony were witnesses.

Judge Jason rolled up to the address with his window rolled down, “You want to get married in a house? Well, I hate to rush things, but I have my son’s game to coach and I am running so late, so I hope you don’t mind we hurry this up a bit. God, I am sweating. My air conditioner broke yesterday.” He walked and, as he did, the cleats he wore clicked against the cement.

“Well,
this
must be the lucky man!” Jason extended his hand to Doug for a hearty handshake.

Douglas tried to introduce himself and give thanks for doing this on such a short notice, but Jason was rushing him into the house with a hand on the middle of his back. “Listen, let’s go inside. Do they have a room so we can do a little private counseling before we start?” His eyes darted back and forth between us. Just then, the homeowners opened the door to their home. My friend, who organized the whole thing, pushed through the homeowners to give me a hug and shake Doug’s hand. Meanwhile, Jason introduced himself to everyone else as Doug whispered hard, “He has fucking cleats on. Did you see that?” Then he laughed so loud I had to rub the ringing in my ear out. Once we were in the door, we immediately noticed artwork that we both found horrendous. Doug whispered again, “Dude, they have a velvet pug picture on the fucking wall.”

I nudged him hard, “You realize you aren’t whispering anymore!”

We gathered eight adults in a very small living room, each of us involved in deep, separate thoughts. The homeowners were sort of pushed into the adjacent dining room area. They probably couldn’t believe they’d said yes to this. The wife was obliviously staring at Jason’s shoes. Doug’s roommate was excited but somewhat indifferent. He just wanted to know about the after party as he stood with crossed arms next to the wall with the velvet pug. My coworkers stood in uniform next to each other with smiles from ear to ear. They’d recently begun an affair that hadn’t quite turned sexual—or maybe it had. They too thought, “These white folks are crazy!”

Douglas and I held hands. Our hearts and minds felt the same love. Then there was Jason, frantic with the preoccupation of his son’s game. “So, come on, come on, come on in here guys…you don’t mind if we use your bedroom for a minute, do you?” The hosting couple reluctantly waved us in. Hell, why not?

We sat on their bed as Jason knelt next to us. He pulled out folded papers and a pen from his robe pocket, flattening them as best as he could onto his robe, then the mattress. “Okay, you are Douglas,” he muttered, scribbling it over a name already crossed out. “Do you prefer Doug or Douglas?”

“Either one,” he answered.

“Are you guys religious?”

“No. You can take out the God stuff,” I said.

Jason mumbled some of the text and crossed out three paragraphs. He flipped a few pages and marked through a whole page. “Shit, that got rid of a lot! This is my first time, guys. Hang tight. So I’m going to say, ‘Do you Doug take Emma blah bibbity blah, and, when I say ‘With this ring…’ Do you have the rings?”

“We don’t.”

Jason entered into a whole other state of panic, “What do you mean?” He looked to Doug for his answer. “Like, you don’t have them now?”

“No.” I had to put his mind at ease. “We don’t need rings to symbolize our love.”

Jason instantaneously rushed through his pages again and removed additional paragraphs. The sweat was dripping down his left temple, but no one told him and he didn’t bother to wipe it away. “Well, guys, this is great, I have less than a page to read. It’s going to be like, do you…do you…talk a little bit about unity and love then kissy-kissy, sign the papers, and I’m out. I got to get to the game. Do you have any questions?”

“I’m good. Let’s get hitched,” we declared in unison.

We walked out and stood near the velvet pug picture as Jason read his one-page ceremony. We cried, did the kissy-kissy, and signed the papers, just as instructed. After thanking the homeowners, we left to eat at a restaurant we couldn’t afford and ended up going to sleep around ten-thirty that night on a twin bed in the barracks. We reminisced over our attempts to be married in Las Vegas, the cleats, and velvet pugs.

“That would be a good book,” Doug remarked, “about how you dissed me at the club, dumped your ex, the whole Vegas food poisoning thing, which is an omen I just ignored, by the way, and now the judge with the baseball uniform under his robe. I’m going to tell my grandkid, ‘Hey, little Johnny, I remember my beautiful wedding to your grandma back in 1997. See the photos with the velvet pug? We had our honeymoon on a twin bed in the barracks.’” He laughed and snuggled closer to me.

I replied with a yawn and a hiccup from one too many Long Island iced teas with my steak. “Well, I think it’s a FAN-fucking-TASTIC story, but I’m totally falling to sleep.”

“What about honeymoon sex?” Doug slurred most of his words.

“Tomorrow, honey. We can tomorrow,” I mumbled as I awkwardly tapped his thigh.

“Okay, good, because I think my soldier’s unable to…the position of attention…” He lifted the blankets and yelled in the darkness. “A-ten-CHUN! Medic! Nope, see, he’s dead.”

I hiccupped again and laughed. God, I loved my husband.

Chapter 8

The next step was to begin sharing a life together and build a unity between two people. We became ecstatic over little pleasures, like picking out dishes and shower curtains. We held hands as we said yes to the loan for our cherry wood bedroom set, leather couch, and Lhasa Apso we lovingly named Bean.

Accepting our stance as a future yuppie couple included items purchased beyond our means and eating new and healthy foods. We played the latest music, had a new car, and never wore old clothes. All of which set the standard for where we wanted to be in twenty years.

They say the things you do reflect where you are in your life. For instance, if you do a massive cleaning of your closet and donate all the crap you don’t use, it means you are starting over or beginning a new chapter. Out with the old, in with the new! If you look in your wardrobe and realize that the once vibrant, gemstone items have all gone to earth tones, you have either found security and settled or seek a change.

If everything one does is reflective of one’s life, it is clear that I was in a fresh, positive start to a long-term relationship. Let’s analyze the symbolism, shall we? Cherry wood is hard, uncommon, and has a fine polished look. Leather is durable, yet flexible. A new puppy takes patience, nurturing, and communication. All descriptions are worthy of comparison to my life, my outlook, and my relationship.

I was happy, content, and every other wonderful word to describe utopia. We had everything we needed and began to live as one, eventually settling into a groove of our own. Morning routines were well-choreographed dances in and out of the bathroom timed with designated days for walking the dog. I fell more and more in love with Doug every time he made the bed or brought home a houseplant because he knew I had a green thumb. I loved the quick, playful squeezes as we passed each other to do mundane household chores. My infamous finger-up-his-ass move was perfected for just the right high-pitched yelp that always threw me into hysterics.

Expendable dog-children aside, I never wanted kids. As far as I can remember, this fact held true even when, at fourteen, my stepmom predicted I would be barefoot and pregnant in my trailer by the time my twenty-second birthday arrived. This was part of dinner conversation that my family shirked off as a joke until the prediction for my sister was successful businesswoman, unmarried in a new home with a new car in the driveway. But, I digress.

I probably informed Doug of this long-standing opinion on our way to get our marriage license, somewhere in between his possible bastard son confession and my genital warts admittance. He was just tickled pink over this news. One of the many reasons he married me, I'm sure.

So it was a shock to him when, early into our marriage, I begged almost daily to start a family.

At lunchtime we traditionally met at our apartment. One afternoon, my emotions got the best of me and I decided I wanted to have kids. He walked in the door to find me crying on the couch with Bean, our Lhasa Aphso, balled comfortably on my lap. “What are you blubbering about?” He walked passed me toward the kitchen.

“We should have a baby, Doug. No! We should adopt!” I smeared tears on the sleeve of my military uniform.

He laughed and looked to the TV to see the station dedicated to women’s issues, stories, and, as Doug would call it, the “Period-hormonal, I’m Not a Sex Object Bullshit Whiny” channel. “Oh God, are you watching the adoption show again?” he said as he opened a can of soup and put it in the microwave. He walked into the living room to stand between me and the television as he waited for his lunch to cook.

I shook my head yes and wiped heartbreaking tears from my face again with the sleeve of my uniform. “I can't help it. There are so many kids out there…we would make good parents.”

“We are good parents, aren’t we, Bean?” Doug said in his best voice as he ruffled the top of the dog’s head. Bean backed away from him in my lap with her ears down and peed on my uniform. “We have plenty of time for that, Emma. Anyway, whatever happened to you
not ever
wanting kids?” He returned to the kitchen to stir his food.

“Throw me a towel. I don’t know; I changed my mind,” I said.

“You need to stop watching that tampon channel. It’s infectious. Next you’ll bedazzle the couch and decoupage my fish tank!” He threw the towel across the room and it smacked me in the face, but his comments were lighthearted and he was giggling. The dog, however, was irritated when I scooted her out of the way to soak up the piss on my leg.

“You are an insensitive cock head,” I pouted as I wiped and patted my lap.

“And you is a whiny
ha-o
!” He smiled and blew on his hot soup to cool it down.

“A what?”

He smiled gladly willing to repeat it. “A
ha-o
!” Doug rolled his neck for additional giggles.

“A ho? Are you trying to be ghetto?” It was comical to hear him say any word in slang since his vocabulary was extensive and his mindset could be considered on the brink of scholarly.

“Yeah, nigga,” he said as he placed a hand over his balls with a face reminiscent of
An American Pimp
after the character told his ho to “Bring me my money, bitch!”

“Oh,
lord
! You are right. I don’t want kids with you; they will come out retarded, and I’ll have to walk them to the short bus that you will be driving.”

“You know you
luuuuv
me.” His head rolled again as he shoveled another two scoops of soup into his mouth in a hurry to get back to work.

“I don’t love you.”

He drank the last of the soup from the bowl, and with food still in his mouth he said, “You just love my doggie style.” Doug laughed as he rinsed the bowl out and placed it into the dishwasher perfectly aligned and spaced evenly from the other dirty ones.

“What size helmet do you wear?” I said with “smartass” written all over my face.

“What? I can’t hear what you’re saying with my cock in your mouth.” His high-pitched laugh began a familiar techno beat as he walked over to me, Bean, and the piss-soaked towel.

“Fucker.” It was all I could manage to come back with as I sniffed the last of the snot from my nose.

“Puta la gata,” he said as he gently cradled my head with his hand to bring it forward. He gave me a loving kiss on my forehead and lingered in that position for a second before he stepped away. “I love you. I’ve got to go.”

Bean climbed into her comfortable curled position on my lap, lifted her jowls, exposed teeth, and timidly growled. Doug pointed his finger right in her face, making the dog flinch. “
You
…are expendable.”

Once our names came up on the list to obtain on-post housing, we moved from our cozy apartment to a place inside the military installation. At the time, government housing in Arizona was lacking in aesthetics, to say the least. Curb appeal was nonexistent.

Our backyard, which was supposed to be lush green grass, according to post regulations, was regular, dry desert dirt. It was hard and packed down. Only a few yellow patches of grass managed to sprout through where weeds native to Arizona hadn’t taken over already. Nevertheless, Doug and I took great pains to keep it free of debris and water it often after hand-tossing grass seeds in an attempt to grow our own oasis. We took turns holding the hose to spray our seedlings as the other raked dog shit from the Labrador and German Shepherd we adopted.

Bean was in a better home by this time since Doug’s ultimatum was “It’s me or the dog.” Poor Bean had to go. Our new dogs couldn’t have cared less if grass was there or not. As long as we raked, they were happy to crap on clean ground. But we tried; Lord knows we did.

As the realization of wasted effort began to set in, we inevitably just threw the hose off of the back patio and let the water run down to pool in the yard. Surely the grass would drink and we would be the envy of our neighbors.

One late afternoon in the midst of our ritualistic attempts at landscaping, a neighbor walked from her driveway to our back gate to say hello. She carefully held the hand of a three-year-old child as her silky brown ponytail swayed across her back. Her cheeks were thick and pink when she smiled to introduce herself. “Doncha love the grass here? Hi, I am Kay. My husband and I see ya’ll workin’ so hard to fix it, but, believe me, it just blows away in the desert. This is my daughter, Ellie.”

There was just something warm and welcoming about Kay and her big brown eyes. She was refreshingly honest and open right from the beginning. It’s unexplainable, really, but the connection was very sisterly and genuine. Our entire conversation was instant bonding on every level.

After talking a while, we became so comfortable with each other that the skeletons simply ran out of the closet! Her daughter was a product of her first marriage, in which she had an affair after she found out that her husband had given her a venereal disease. Kay told me that she really did not know if the baby was that of her ex-husband or the other man.

“The doctors told me that, because of the scarring, I may not be able to carry a pregnancy to full term, so, girl, I freaked and tried for six months before she came. But Tim doesn’t know this, and I think he would break down if I told him all of it,” she confessed. Then just as quickly as she told me her secrets, she changed the subject completely. “Oh, ya’ll should come over for supper tomorrow. I’ll make brisket.”

The meet and greet was quick, fierce, and well received by both couples. The next evening we shared a meal of Texas-style mashed potatoes, brisket with various vegetables and spices, and a dessert to die for, with beer for the boys. I’d say that was some good old-fashioned entertainment.

Doug and I laughed all evening and shared stories with Kay and Tim as if we had known them for years. I helped Kay clean up the table as Tim and Doug discussed “man stuff” that we were not privy to as they tossed toys for the dogs. It was absolutely wonderful to meet friends who were just like us: young, happily married, and all around good people. When the night finally closed in, Doug and I walked through our shit-free, dirt backyard hand in hand.

Over the next week our nightly watering became a running joke between the four of us. By the following week, when they came over for our dinner invite, the only life that had grown was a grass patch in the spot where Doug and I stood to water the dirt. Apparently our leaking nozzle gave the extra nourishment it needed to grow. Tim and Kay took great care to jump over our precious green patch before knocking at our sliding glass door, alcohol in hand. Once again, dinner was more of the same happy atmosphere, and, when it was over, the boys were told to do the dishes this time while the ladies freshened up for our night out.

Kay was plain and very forgettable, if not for her fantastic smile that produced dimples emphasizing her vivacious personality. She was not in the best shape, but she was by no means fat. Her body would have toned up nicely if she had time away from being a full-time mother to do a few sit-ups every now and then. Kay was a typical cute mom, the kind that dotes over her husband at every military barbecue and volunteers at the county fair painting kids’ faces for free. But this description makes her seem almost dowdy, homely, or like a jolly fat lady in a muumuu. Kay was not to be associated with a woman who wears a tent and calls it a dress, no sir. She dressed very well when the occasion called for it, and that night her hair was down and styled to look rich and silky like fine chocolate, unlike the frayed ponytail I had seen her wear all week. Her eyes were framed with a little brown eyeliner and mascara that brightened her almond color. Kay wore the most daring red lipstick, which looked a little sleazy, but, somehow, sexy at the same time. Her jeans fit every curve, and her top peeked open at the chest to reveal a black lace bra if she tilted just right.

“My daughter painted my nails this color, girl. I didn't have time to take it off, so I just found this lipstick and slapped it on so it would match. Is it too much? Do I look like a hooker?” She laughed and didn’t give me time to answer. “Well ya’ll,” she said into the mirror, “I’m not a housewife tonight!” Kay gave her reflection a kiss before we opened the door to the bathroom, walked through the hairspray cloud, and went down the hallway to the kitchen. Doug and Tim finished their cleaning duties and held prepared drinks for us as we pranced toward them.

“Ta da!” Kay shouted as the boys whistled. “What were ya’ll talkin’ about while we were putting our faces on?” She pulled out a bar stool and sat on it. I followed suit.

“That we are the luckiest men on this earth with hot wives,” Tim said as he handed drinks out to each of us.

We were swooned by this gesture of our suave men. As we took our first sip, Doug chimed in, “And how you are all getting fucked in the butt tonight.” The guys burst into red-faced laughter as they leaned on each other for support and slapped the countertop. Kay and I heaved forward in an attempt to keep the fluid from bursting out of our mouths, but our attempts were futile.

“You assholes!” I wiped mixed drink from my nose and scurried to the sink. “I almost fucking choked!” I hovered over the sink, letting the booze drip from my nose as I spit and eventually tried to clean off my face without smearing my makeup.

Tim switched into the kind of laughter that some people refer to as “the silent tick.” Apparently, it’s when something is so funny it steals all sound, yet they are able to tick and laugh with their mouths wide open. A tear couldn’t have made its way out of his eyes they were squeezed so tightly. Tim was frozen in this position as his face just deepened in its shade of red. From the quiet pressure of the silent tick, a moist clicking noise squeaked through every time he tried to breathe.