Unfaithful Ties (7 page)

When Lena’s business began to prosper and she became the breadwinner of the family her obsession of being in charge increased dramatically and she no longer remembered the person who’d fronted all the money to start her business in the first place. In her world a marriage could only succeed with the extent that the husband does what his wife dictates. That’s what her eyes witnessed as a young lady and that’s what her mother taught her. Her mother wore the pants and her father was powerless in their home. If her mother disapproved of her father’s friends, hobbies, clothes, or even his choice of entertainment he’d respect her wishes and do away with them because it’d been drummed in him that marriages succeeded if wives were happy, and dissenting a woman’s desires could only make life difficult.

Kenneth’s was always stressed, at work, at home, and between the sheets. The man hadn’t seen pleasure rip through his wife’s pores in what felt like centuries, her bitterness and predominance had imprisoned, paralyzed, and sickened their sexual chemistry. Once his sexual desires declined and the lovemaking stopped, their marriage encountered a domino effect, and everything else just tumbled down, shortly after. First it became passionless on her part, and then Kenneth simply stop initiating sex because he felt as though she was withdrawn from him during sexual intercourse. He’d killed for the days when he just couldn’t get enough of Lena. Like the time they traveled to Paradise Island, Bahamas for a seven day retreat.

Basically after Lena gave birth to the couple’s only son
McKhi she focused all of her attention on motherhood and seemed to have forgotten that she was also a wife.

****

Lena walked back to the bathroom, pulled the shower curtains back, and stepped into the hot drizzle. How did she get herself in this mess? She wanted to be a supportive wife but it was hard. The harder she fault to accept it, the more she wanted to change him. The more she realized that she couldn’t change him, the more she wanted to control him. Eventually she stopped pretending that life was paradisiacal.  Struggling was definitely not on her list of goals. She and Kenneth were supposed to be the seven figure couple. During their freshmen year in college they made a pact that they’d always work harder than hard to ensure that their kids didn’t experience the upbringings of being raised in poverty like they’d encountered as children, but now fourteen years since they’d graduated from North Carolina A & T University she felt like she was a poor helpless child all over again. The Mortgage Company had been leaving demanding voicemail messages on her cellular for months and so was Citicorp. What was she going to do?

Kenneth the tall, muscular built, dark-cocoa, clean-cut brother that stole her heart when they were just freshmen in high school wasn’t aware of any of it. Their mortgage hadn’t been paid in four months and he had no clue that they were behind on their payments.

Lena should have been honest with him years ago, and they wouldn’t be in this predicament. Now, she was standing underneath the shower spray, crying. Her heart was aching for Kenneth. Deep down she knew that she was the lucky one and that she hadn’t shown her husband the type of partnership, respect, or loyalty that he’d shown to her. Honestly she regretted the harsh comments that she’d yelled at him earlier. Kenneth would fight the devil to protect Lena if he had too, and she knew it. “I should’ve just accepted the damn gift” She whimpered. “I shouldn’t have treated him so harsh” The truth was, Lena treated Kenneth that way because she knew that she could get away with it.

In college Kenneth was the man that every woman on campus craved to be with. Back then Lena was honored to be the woman he carried on his arm. The way his buns looked in those basketball shorts while he ran up and down the court always had her mind elsewhere during the games. She vaguely remembered him scoring points like he was Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Byrd combined into in one athlete because she was to wrapped up in how good he looked doing it. Kenneth was a Kappa and the brother could dress his ass off. He was always clean cut and well groomed.
Always vibrant. Always flashing his million-dollar smile. He wasn’t arrogant. Arrogance is when you think that you’re the shit. Confidence is when you know it. This brother knew he had it going on. He was good to Lena too. Come to think about it he’s still the same caring, thoughtful, hardworking, loyal, and understanding man that he’s been since long before they vowed “For better or for worse”

Although most of the time Lena was an antagonistic bitch she was a superlative mother. Everything she imagined that
Mckhi would want, she bought it. An Xbox three sixty, a PlayStation three, an Nintendo Wii and DSI, over two hundred video games, a Suzuki four wheeler, a Fusion Pool Table, an Air Hockey Table, and a Foosball Table. The boy was spoiled rotten. No matter how exasperated Lena was after a long tiresome day at work she would still muster up the energy to attend Karate class, basketball games, football games, track meets, or any other sport that Mckhi participated in. On the weekends she chaperoned a host of young boys to the Georgia Aquarium, or Six Flaggs over Georgia, or Dave & Buster’s, or Stone Mountain Park, or Atlanta Golf, or The Coco-Cola Factory and wherever else MeKhi desired to go. They ate out at his choice of restaurant at least once a week. And school was very important to her so they studied at least an hour after practice every day. Each week he had a new list of words that he had to learn. This was her way of expanding his vocabulary. He’d maintained straight A’s since he’d started school. McKhi was pretty much a damn genius.

At age five, the kid new the meaning of the word sobriquet, and it’d only taken him two hours to learn it. He’d learned to spell his name at two and by the time he reached three he was writing his name on every wall in the house. Just like his dad he was a born athlete. Baseball was his favorite. The boy’s legs bolted faster than lighting. And he could hit that ball too. Knocked it out the park every single time.

McKhi’s annual tuition was fifteen thousand dollars, which was another bill that Lena had to worry about. She didn’t give a damn if she didn’t pay anything else; she was definitely going to pay for his tuition. She wouldn’t dream of sending him to public school. Not over her dead body would she allow that. The thought of Khi being exposed to gangs or drugs frightened the living daylights out of her. Kenneth disagreed, which was always just another argument. But he was right they hadn’t attended private school and look how they turned out. They even graduated college at the top of their class.

As Lena dried off, she wondered how she was going to get out of the mess she’d gotten herself into.  She wrapped herself in her robe, slid on her fluffy Persian Rose pink house shoes and walked back into the kitchen.  When she almost tripped over the velvet box she picked it up and admired the three-caret diamond tennis bracelet. Despite all the hell she’d raised about the jewelry earlier that evening, she ended up fastening it around her wrist after all.

****

Lena was sitting at the bar slurping up the last swallow of her cocktail beverage inside the bar at the LOWES hotel.

There were ten other burnt orange leather pub chairs with black legs, in front of the bar counter where she was sitting, and over three hundred different brands of liquor on the glass shelves behind the counter. The room was interiorized with Manzanita Branches, Bamboo Sticks, Lotus Pods, Wild Thistles, glass vases, burnt orange and mustard colored throw pillows, and beautiful expensive artwork. This place was designed to provide a sense of peace but at the moment nothing was tranquil in Lena’s world.

“Let me have another Peach Margarita, with no salt please” She said to the bartender. “Today has been one hell of a day”

“Sistah, I understand” the gorgeous woman behind the counter said. She looked fairly young, maybe twenty-five, definitely not any more than twenty-seven. Her hair was jet black and razor cut down to her pea head. The haircut really brought out her dark eyes, and warm mocha skin. She was slim with an oversized rump that looked like it was screaming to be freed from the skin-tight black slacks that she was wearing. Lena wondered was her ass real. It seemed like the thing to do now and days was to get silicone injected in your palms. Every woman in Atlanta had a big ass, even the white women. So now whenever Lena saw a woman with an ass that looked like it didn’t belong on her body she was puzzled as to whether or not she’d paid for it. “Peach Margarita with no salt” The woman repeated and set the abundant glass down in front of Lena.

Lena was so stressed that the tension had rushed up her spine and was throbbing the muscle on the back of her neck, so she massaged her fingers into it until the knot loosened some, then she glanced at her watch. It was only four thirty. She had about an hour and a half of freedom left because she had to pick up
Khi from football practice by seven, which meant she needed to leave by six in order to get there on time. The traffic was hectic.

The bar inside the luxury hotel was swarming with women dressed in designer suits glancing through case files and laptop screens. Most of the men were businessmen dressed in cufflinks designer slacks, and expensive shoes, carrying briefcases.

There was a woman sitting two chairs down from Lena that’d twirled her wedding ring around her finger for at least twenty minutes before she placed it on the bar counter. It was a huge rock encrusted with several diamonds swindling around it and she’d wiped about one hundred tears from her cheeks before she’d gained enough energy to do it. Lena thought to herself,
well at least I’m not the only one that’s going through it right now
.  The unaccompanied woman was beautiful, and designed in tip-top clothing. When she’d stood, then started to walk away and hadn’t grabbed her ring Lena stopped her. “Excuse me miss” Lena said. “You’re leaving your ring.”

“Trust me there is no point in me wearing it. My adulterous husband, soon to be ex-husband informed me this morning right before I left for work that he’s in love with a man. So there is no need for me to continue to wear it.” She spilled out, like she’d been waiting to vent all day.

Wow I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about anything like that,
“I’m sorry” Lena apologized and didn’t want to know anything else. She couldn’t believe that the woman had just confided something that was so private to a complete stranger.

“I’ll be fine
” She said. “Thanks” and she walked away.

For the next twenty minutes Lena made the best out of her birthday that she could until she overheard the conversation of the man who’d just sat in the empty chair beside her. She was trying to drown the words he was blabbing in her ear by swallowing down her beverage as quick as possible but she couldn’t avoid it, his words were burning her skin like she was being brazed with a torch. From what she could make out he was screwing a married man.

“You need to tell her, I can’t let you string me along anymore. Of course your son is not going to understand it, but waiting is not going to change the perception of how he’s going to feel about his father being in love with another man.”

These coward ass men
, Lena thought and then outburst aloud before she knew it. “You’re pathetic” She mumbled to the man, one because she didn’t agree with what he was doing and two because the Margarita was doing its job.

“Excuse me?’ The man said.

“Forget it” Lena snapped, and found another seat.

O
ver the next fifteen minutes Lena had ordered two more cocktails and was completely boozed by the time she was finished with them. Before she knew it she was letting the tears that had been screaming to be released from behind her eyes fall. “No..no.no! Stop it Lena. I’m not going to do this on my birthday” Lena didn’t know if the cocktail was the reason she was crying and seeing double the people are had the room really gotten crowded.

“Mind if I share this booth with you? There aren’t any more open seats.” Lena heard a feminine voice say.

Lena wiped her eyes and lifted her face, the woman standing before her was resplendent, a tall bright-skinned woman with shoulder length golden dreadlocks, maybe in her early thirties, wearing a Ash Gray skirt suit. “Absolutely not” Lena said.  She was sort of happy that someone was joining her.  Lena felt a bit pitiful sitting at the booth by herself on her birthday. The woman had the biggest Kool-Aid smile she’d seen in a long time. She was by far the most gleeful person in the bar.

The woman sat down on the empty side of the booth. “This place is crazy busy today”

“I guess everyone is drowning in their own misery and using Vodka, Tequila or some brand of liquor to rescue them.”

“Well I’m celebrating. I’ve just won the biggest case of my career. I’m sorry I haven’t even introduced myself
” She said apologetically. “I’m Chris”

“Nice to meet you Chris” Lena said. “I’m Lena” The alcohol beverage was really working now because for some strange reason, she found the woman attractive. Like a paranoid person, Lena checked her watch again for the tenth time. Just like always time flew by when you didn’t want it to. Right now for some stupid reason she wanted time to slow down. When Chris signaled for the waitress Lena ordered another Peach Margarita, and Chris ordered a Long Island Iced Tea.

“So what are you celebrating?”

The woman was in such high-spirits that Lena was starting to envy her. She remembered when she
use to feel that way about life. “I’m celebrating my birthday”

“Come on, this is no way to celebrate your birthday!”