Young Wives (44 page)

She’d gotten up early, cleaned the house, dropped Jenna off at hockey, taken Pookie to the vet, and had just waved off Frankie as he left with his dad for his all-time favorite activity—a visit to the hardware store. Michelle didn’t even bother to pull herself together before she put on her jacket and walked down the street to Jada’s. She’d called twice last night, but Jada hadn’t answered. God, she must have been suicidal.

She stepped quickly along the street to Jada’s. She expected the house of the dead. But when she opened the kitchen door and walked in, Michelle was surprised to hear animated voices in the house that had been so painfully silent for the last weeks. She stepped into the living room.

Jada was on her knees, putting something into a carton, and Angie was taping another carton up. Since when had these two become so friendly? Had Angie stayed over? Surely comforting Jada was Michelle’s job. For a moment she felt jealous. Then she told herself to grow up.

Jada raised her head. “Yo, Cindy! Just who I need,” she said. “I found out there’s one good thing about losing custody,” she told Mich. “No more WAR.”

“War? What war?”

“WAR. Worries About Reputation,” Jada said. “I guess I can see you now whenever we have the time—without worrying about my rep. It’s shot anyway.”

“So’s mine,” agreed Michelle. “It’s not the worst thing in the world. It saves on baking time—no more bake-sale requests.”

“My reputation is shot, too, at least as a lawyer,” Angie said, rubbing the tape on the box she had sealed. “First I walk out of my job up in Boston, then this.” She looked at the crinkled strip she’d laid down. “Maybe I could try a career as a crate packer.”

“You’re not much good at that, either,” Jada told Angie and added another strip of tape.

Michelle looked at the two women. How could they bear to go on? Jada’s life was ruined, and Angie had helped ruin it. Michelle opened her mouth, but no words came out. How could Jada leave this home, a home that meant everything to her? Michelle wondered how she herself would go on living a few doors away, having Clinton and that woman as neighbors. No more barbecues in the backyard. Frankie might play with Kevon, Shavonne might still pick on Jenna, but Mich would never let them enter that house again.

She picked up an empty box, but realized she didn’t even know what to pack in it. The other two seemed to be so organized, so in sync. But for Michelle there would be no best friend. No one to walk with. How was she going to deal with this? And how could Jada be coping so well? Michelle felt as if she were falling apart. Should she tell Jada again how sorry she was? Should she tell both of them how frightened she was about Frank’s trial? Should she tell them…? Just then Jada rose and came up to put an arm around her shoulder.

“I cried all night,” she said. “Now I just have to do the next thing I have to do. You’ll be okay, Mich,” she said, as if reading her mind. “Frank will fight this thing and the two of you will go back to normal.” Michelle looked up into her friend’s eyes and she just couldn’t stand it anymore. The secret she’d been carrying wouldn’t stay a secret.

Jada, her friend, had the decency to think about her at a time like this, while Frank…Frank…“He’s guilty,” Michelle said, and both Jada and Angie froze where they stood. “He’s guilty,” Michelle repeated. “It won’t be okay.” Saying the thought that had been with her constantly since her discovery in Jenna’s closet was both terrifying and a relief. She sat down on one of Jada’s mismatched dining room chairs and put her head in her hands. She couldn’t look at them.

There was silence in the room for a few moments. Michelle could hear her own heartbeat and Jada’s heavy breathing. “I’m so afraid. I really didn’t think he would do anything bad,” Michelle said to their silence. “Not really bad. When the cops came, I was sure it was payback for some business deal. Spite. Politics. That zoning thing. Even when he was indicted…” She glanced at them, then looked away, got up from the chair, and walked to the window, just so she’d have someplace else to look. “I know you think I’m stupid,” she said. “You think I’m gullible. But I wasn’t just having a Michelle moment. There was no way to know. No calls. No visits. Nothing. Nothing that involved us, ever.”

She turned around and looked at them. “Frank loves us. He swore to me, I mean, he really did, that he was clean. He
made
me believe him. But then I…I found out…” She paused. Even with these two friends, she wasn’t going to tell about the money. Not that she’d ever touch that cash. Blood money. For all she knew, it had come from teenagers or schoolchildren. She’d die before she’d have anything to do with that evidence. But she was afraid and ashamed to mention it, even to Jada and Angie. Would they understand?

“How long have you known?” Jada asked, her voice gentle. “I knew something was wrong with you, but I figured it was the pressure, the bullshit from the neighborhood. Or me. What was happening with me. I didn’t know it was—” She stopped and then added, “I’m
so
sorry, Michelle.”

Angie came up to the window. Michelle had never noticed how short Angie was. She looked down, into Angie’s eyes. “You need a good lawyer, Michelle,” Angie said.

“I have one. I mean, Frank has one.”

Angie shook her head. “No, I mean a lawyer of your own. And a better one than I am.”

“What are you going to do?” Jada asked.

“What can I do?” Michelle answered, and the feeling of being trapped started closing in on her again. Sooner or later Frank would find out the money was gone. What would happen then? If she had one of those Xanax pills with her, she’d take it right now. It became hard to breathe. How could she have come out of the house without one? Was she crazy? “What can I do?” she repeated. “I don’t have a job, I have no family. Frank is the father of my kids. He’s good to them. He’s always been good to them, and he’s good to me.”

“Come on, Mich,” Jada said, and Michelle recognized her voice was the tough one she used sometimes at the bank. “He pushed you around. Is that what you consider good treatment? Clinton is a lazy bastard and a lazy father. He’s undependable and sneaky. He may have ruined my life, but he never hit me.”

Michelle pulled away and tried to stand up straight. “He pushed me and I fell into the corner of the table,” she said. “He was under so much pressure. He pushed me. Any woman can be hurt once.”

“Any woman who’s hurt once can be hurt twice,” Angie told her.

Michelle turned away from them both. “No,” she said. “Frank would never do it again. And he’d never hit me. He’s so ashamed.”

“Well, he should be,” Jada said. “And is he ashamed of lying to you and ashamed of that evil stuff he’s been up to?”

Michelle didn’t have the nerve to tell them she hadn’t discussed what she knew with Frank. They’d lose all respect for her. “Look, I’ll be fine,” she said. “I don’t have to testify
against
Frank. And I won’t lie for him. I’ll just keep quiet and maybe…maybe it won’t get too ugly.”

“Sounds about as much fun as a visit to the Basketball Hall of Fame,” Angie said.

“You ever been there, girlfriend?” Jada asked. “Clinton once made me and the kids go. Even Kevon was bored.”

Michelle wondered why did Jada seemed so, well…cheerful? Was this the calm before the storm? Or the aftermath? “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Where are
you
going to move to?”

“I don’t have much I have to take,” Jada said. “Mostly everything here belongs to the kids, except for Clinton’s tools that he never uses. For the time being, I’m just going to stay with Angie.”

“Oh. Great. That’s so nice for you,” Michelle said, and at that moment she meant it. She turned to Angie. “And so nice of you to invite her.”

Then Michelle’s loneliness and her envy hit. What was she? Crazy? She had her own beautiful home. She had her children, and her husband—despite what he had done—loved her. How could she possibly feel envy for these two women, both in trouble and both alone?

In which boxes are packed and notes are hidden

It felt like dying to Jada, but dying without the possibility of the white light. She was outside her body, somewhere in darkness, watching herself perform. Angie’s help and her generous offer of a place to stay, Michelle’s revelation—none of it managed to bring her back to her body. They turned into the municipal parking lot where Jada could see her Volvo, abandoned since the verdict.

It was drizzling, and Michelle’s windshield wipers were on slow. The noise was dreary. “Are you all right?” Michelle asked. “Can you drive yourself?”

“Considering the situation, I’m fine,” Jada answered. She should ask Michelle the same question, but she didn’t have the energy. Anyway, she’d always suspected Frank.

Michelle pulled her car up. “I’ll follow you. Then I can take a load over to Angie’s with you.”

“Thanks,” Jada said.

Jada nodded and slipped out from under Michelle’s hand. The foggy rain fell on her, but she felt nothing. She made her way over to her car and opened the door. As if she were pulling her own strings from some other place, she raised her hand and waved to Michelle, then got into the car.

She wasn’t angry, she wasn’t sad, she wasn’t accepting. She was past all that; she was some sort of robot, some kind of remote control creature that could pack and move and go to work but couldn’t feel anything anymore. Which was a good thing, she supposed, because anything she might feel right now would be dangerous: murderous rage, crushing sadness, and the wish to end her pain. As she drove, on automatic pilot and with Michelle’s car following her back to the house, Jada realized that she couldn’t even pray. God felt further away from her than she felt from herself.

When she got back to her house, Jada saw that Angie had already filled her own car and had boxes and bags lined up on the slate walk (which Clinton had never finished paving). Silently, the three women put the now-damp remaining boxes in the back of the Volvo and then laid the clothes from Jada’s closet, still on hangers, across the backseat of Michelle’s Lexus.

“I’ll try not to wrinkle them,” Michelle said. Jada smiled and nodded but she didn’t care. Michelle could burn them and she wouldn’t blink. Sackcloth and ashes would do just as well, she figured, although Mr. Marcus at the bank might object. The corporate dress code did not include hair shirts or biblical mourning wear.

Their convoy drove through the wet, gray suburban streets. Jada was thirty-four years old and everything she had was contained in these few wet boxes and bags piled in just three cars. Not much to show from life. What had she been working for? Why had she worked at all? She sighed. She’d never been materialistic. She’d only wanted her children safe around her and a decent house and a loving partner. How had that natural desire spawned this bizarre result? She wondered if she’d been greedy, or if God was punishing her for some other sin that she hadn’t recognized or acknowledged. Because, she realized now, she was being punished, and that this life, however it had happened, was as close to hell as she could imagine anything being.

They pulled up to the front of Angie’s apartment building. Angie got out of her car and walked back to the Volvo. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s no way to park closer to my door. We have to schlep all this stuff across the sidewalk, up the path, and around to my apartment. When I moved in, it was really a pain.”

“It’s not so much,” Jada said. “And I’m in no hurry. You don’t have to help. I can do it myself if I take it slow.”

“Don’t be silly. The three of us will do it together,” Angie said.

And they did. Back and forth, back and forth, through the rain, the three of them carried in all the bits and pieces left of Jada’s broken life. As they did it, Jada realized that she could just as easily have piled them on the sidewalk and set them on fire, but she continued doing what was expected. Hadn’t she always?

As they brought the last of the stuff in, the drizzle stopped, although the sky remained gray. “Perfect,” Michelle said. “It stops coming down just when you’re finished moving.”

“Rain is good luck on a moving day,” Angie said. “At least that’s what my mother always told me.”

“Was she wrong about anything else?” Jada asked.

“Just her marriage and mine,” Angie wisecracked lamely.

Jada looked around. They had tried to stack all the boxes in Angie’s small spare bedroom, and compulsive Michelle had already hung Jada’s clothes in the little closet. But there were some stray bags and objects that had trailed into the living room.

“Do you want to put your mattress in here even though its damp from being rained on?” Angela asked.

Jada shrugged. She didn’t care where she slept. The floor would be fine, but she knew she shouldn’t say so. It was good of Angie to worry about her, even if it was futile.

Angie lifted up one of the remaining boxes from the hallway and started to carry it into the room, but her face went pale and she stumbled, dropping the box and spilling socks, a pair of sneakers, and a black pump onto the floor. The wet box tore, and everything else poured out. Angie stood still, still bent from the waist. Jada could see her lip film with perspiration. “Are you okay?” Michelle asked.

All at once Jada remembered her friend’s condition. God, the three of them were a mess! “You shouldn’t be lifting, not when you’re pregnant,” she said. “I forgot.”

“You had other things on your mind,” Angie said, and slid her back down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. Michelle squatted down next to her. “You want some tea?” Michelle asked.

“How about some sympathy?” Jada added, and also sat on the floor. The three of them looked at one another then and for the first time in twenty-four hours, Jada felt herself connect, felt herself drawn back into her body, into her life, by the two pairs of eyes she saw, each as frightened and haunted as hers must have been.

She shook her head. It was a strange feeling, returning to herself. “What a sorry set of suckers we are,” she said. “Who do you think has been most ruined? Whose husband has been the most damaging?”

“Yours” both Angie and Michelle said at the same time.