Bad Mommy

  “I have to go pick Mercy up from school,” I said, standing. If I hurried, I could fit in a quick cry before I left. I looked at the pile of tissues I’d left on the counter, but Fig scooped them up before I could.

  “Leave it. Go,” she said. “I’ll bring dinner over tonight so you don’t have to think about it.”

  I smiled, stepping out of the kitchen and into the garden. We were both teary eyed as she hugged me goodbye.

  I spent my mornings writing. It was supposed to be a book about love, but I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what that was. My fingers were hesitant to type the words, but the words were my duty … my livelihood. I pushed on, saying things I didn’t believe, creating characters too perfect to exist: men who fought for women, men who said all the right things. Were men all cowards? Did I know any good ones? My friends urged me on, told me to write the type of love I wished existed.

  At noon, Ryan texted me to ask how it was going. I hadn’t told him anything, not a word. As far as he knew, I was still living my happily ever after.

  Fine, I sent. Wrote all morning.

  How are you and Darius doing?

  How did he do that? He always reached out when I was curled in a corner, in the middle of a fight, or feeling like the loneliest fuck in the world. It’s like there was a string between us, and he could feel the friction on the other end. I narrowed my eyes at his words, reaching nervously for a coffee mug that wasn’t there. Hadn’t I brewed a pot? He never asked directly about Darius. I’d tell him little things here and there, but in general, we stayed away from each other’s personal lives. A rule, but why? Maybe we didn’t like to hear those details.

  We’re fine, I sent back. I hated lying to him. If anyone could give me solid advice it would be Ryan.

  Are you?

  I stared at the words for a long time. I didn’t know. Were we?

  What the hell, Ryan?

  A second later my phone rang. I saw Ryan’s number flashing across my screen, and I felt heat crawl up my neck. I had never spoken to him on the phone. I didn’t even remember what his voice sounded like. I thought about not answering it, but we’d just been texting and he’d call bullshit.

  “Hello?” Where was my goddamn coffee mug?

  “Hey there.” His voice was sexy. I immediately buried my face in the crook of my arm.

  “Since when do you call me?” I asked.

  “Since now. How are you?”

  “The same as I was two minutes ago when we were texting,” I smarted.

  He laughed, and I had the urge to sit in a corner and rock back and forth. What the ever living fuck, Jolene?

  “I’m okay,” I said. I could hear the somberness in my voice and tried to perk up. “Same ol’ same ol’.”

  “You’re not,” he said.

  “This is my voice,” I said sternly. “This is who I am.”

  If only my voice hadn’t cracked on the last word. Ryan honed into sadness like a fucking bloodhound.

  “What did he do?” he asked.

  I told him. At the end of it all he was so quiet that I wondered if I’d accidentally hung up on him.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” he said. “Do you want to hear what I think?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I had started to cry. The quality of his voice made me cry, the deep, husky concern.

  “He promised you a lot and he promised it to someone who needed it to be true. There was a disconnect in your relationship—I don’t know where it stems from or why, but he did know that for once in your life you needed to not be let down. He wasn’t selfless enough to do that.”

  Oh fuck it. I just cried. Hard, and on the phone with the guy who’d pretty much been the cause of me finding out that Darius was cheating.

  “I have to tell you,” he said after I calmed down. “Something really strange happened last week.”

  “Strange?” I asked. “You’re calling to tell me about something strange?”

  “Well, yes. It has to do with you.”

  “Me?” I repeated.

  “You. It’s always about you.”

  WHAT DID THAT MEAN? OH MY GOD, WHAT DID THAT MEAN?

  “I’m listening.”

  I heard him shifting the phone from one shoulder to the other. I wondered what he was doing.

  “I got an e-mail. The address wasn’t legit: wink1986. There was an underscore somewhere in there too.”

  “Okay…” I heard a hissing noise, and then the sound of metal on metal. He was cooking.

  “This is awkward,” he said. “Hold on a minute.” When he spoke again the hissing had stopped and his voice was clear and focused. “The e-mail had videos in it. Of who I presume is your husband.”

  “Darius? What kind of videos?”

  Ryan cleared his throat. “They’re of a sexual nature.”

  Blood rushed to my head. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head even though no one could see me.

  No, no, no, no.

  “Look, I can send them to you, but I’m not sure you want to see them. And I’m also not entirely sure why someone would send them to me, or how they got my e-mail address.”

  “How do you know it’s him?” I rushed.

  “It’s him.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Send them.”

  “Are you-”

  “-Send them.”

  I hung up before he could say anything else. Then I went to all of Ryan’s social media profiles to see if he listed his e-mail address publicly. He did. But, who could have wanted him to see those videos? Who had something to gain? It certainly wasn’t Darius.

  A minute later I got a notification that Ryan21 had sent me an e-mail. I poured myself a drink before opening it. There were three files attached to the e-mail. He’d left the title blank.

  I clicked on the first one. Darius—clear as day—sitting backward on the toilet in the spare bathroom, only the bottom half of his face showing. My eyes focused on his dick. It was right there in the frame. His lips were moving. He was saying something. I turned up the sound.

  “You have the prettiest pussy.”

  The prettiest pussy. Oh my fucking god.

  The next video I opened he was masturbating. I closed it before it finished. I couldn’t. The last one he was speaking to the girl—Nicole—or whoever else he’d sent the video to. I turned up the volume once again. He was rubbing his hand up and down his dick, biting on his bottom lip. “She’s gone. Come over,” he said. “I can’t wait to be inside you again.”

  You knew it was coming. Everything pointed to it. He was a cheater. He violated oaths he took in his profession, why wouldn’t he bring those addictions closer to home? There were no lines; he had no boundaries. He was this thing that used women. Who had sent me this? Who had wanted me to see? And why drag Ryan into it?

  In early June, George sent me a text, saying he wanted to meet for coffee. I stared at it for a few minutes trying to figure out how he got my number. I had no memory of ever giving it to him. Hesitantly, I agreed. I was busy. I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t seen either of them since the thing with Darius had come out. Curtains drawn, and cars pulled into the garage like all of a sudden they were hiding from something. I couldn’t be bothered. I needed space from any sort of drama. It was raining bitches and bogs outside on the day I was supposed to meet him. I put on my rain boots and rain jacket and walked the mile to a grungy little coffee place called the Tin Pin. I arrived before he did, so I paid for a tea and carried it over to a scarred table in the corner. Someone had scratched Mona is a whore into the wood. I stirred my tea and glared down at the message. Another example of the fucked up way society viewed women. All the men who slept with Mona were left untouched, while our girl Mona was being called out. I took out the pocket knife I kept in my bag and scratched so are all the men she fucked underneath it.

  One of the baristas saw me and said, “You can’t do that.”

  “It was already done, I’m fixing it,” I said. She rolled her eyes and retre
ated back behind the counter.

  Freedom of speech was fine. Just get it right, you assholes.

  George walked in ten minutes late and dripping wet. I waved him over to Mona’s table, kicking out the chair for him.

  “Hi,” he said, shrugging out of his coat.

  “Hi yourself.”

  He left to get a drink, while I finished mine. When he came back carrying a coffee I noticed how tired he looked. Or maybe he always looked that way. How often did I actually look at George? He was practically a hermit. We’d shared an occasional wave when he pulled into the driveway and I was outside.

  “Fig and Darius were having an affair,” he said.

  The tea curdled in my stomach. I wrapped an arm around my waist as I slumped in my chair.

  “Say something,” said George. “God, this is fucked up.” He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair as he shifted around in his seat like a toddler. I saw him reading Mona’s inscription while I grappled with his words.

  What was I supposed to say? Was I even surprised? Yes, yes, I was actually.

  “Da fuck,” I said. “You have to be shitting me?”

  He looked relieved that I’d finally said something. “I’m not, unfortunately.”

  “When?” I said. “How?”

  “When you left, when she said she was out for a run, or going to the market for something. I don’t know. They found ways. Don’t people like that always find ways?”

  I was lightheaded, my vision swimming in and out of focus. My house. He betrayed me in my own house. The one I let him move into and share with me. The one he freeloaded in while his debt built up, and lawsuits were filed against him. For months since I caught Darius I’d been searching for ways to cope, to forgive and to burn off the bitterness that was trying to build stage in my heart. I wouldn’t let a man like that take my hope. But, this—this was different. He brought his shit home, into the safe place I created for my daughter. And her, that woman. I’d pushed aside the warnings, I’d pushed aside my book, and my daughter, and my friends to … help her. What type of world was this where the people who you thought loved you the most were the betrayers? I looked at George. He was haggard, thin; he couldn’t keep still. He’d cut himself shaving. There was a little bit of dried blood on his chin.

  “When did you find out? What month?”

  “March,” he said, “of last year.”

  I cringed. That was just a few months after they moved into the house next door.

  “That’s when I was in Phoenix with my dad,” I said, softly. “Was that…?”

  “That’s when I caught them,” George said. He rubbed a hand over his face. “I saw his name on her phone. Thought it was strange that he was texting her so late at night.”

  “And when you looked, what did you see?”

  He shook his head, his eyes glued to the table. How bad was it that he wouldn’t say? I mean, I knew, didn’t I? I saw the pictures on Darius’s phone. Fig’s body parts could have been among the ones I’d seen the night I kicked him out. Darius liked to keep their faces out of it. He didn’t want to look at the person, make them a person. How many times had I written the words, “A stabbing pain through her heart?” Had I ever felt it until this moment? No, surely not. It was the most awful thing.

  “They were fucking. While I was away seeing my dying father? He sent my daughter away to his mother’s and fucked that woman in my house?”

  George wasn’t really looking at me anymore. He was staring off at nothing. I was angry with him—if he’d told me when he caught them I could have confronted Darius, left him. I’d be well into my healing instead of having the scab ripped off and being left without answers. He was just as much of a coward as they were. The only pity I felt for him was the fact that he’d fallen in love with someone like Fig, fallen prey to the leech that she was. When I kicked Darius out I marveled at her empathy. I thought she was hurting for me—with me. Yeah, right. That bitch had just found out that Darius was cheating on her too. She was fucking grieving alongside me.

  “You still want to be with her, don’t you? You caught her cheating on you and you stayed. You didn’t tell anyone. Just holed up and tried to fix it.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he said. “She was suicidal.”

  “Ah, yes! Did you catch her on the train tracks, or did you have your own special thing?”

  He stared at me blankly.

  “Did you ever think she used suicide to distract you from what you just found out? She was manipulating you.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he said.

  “No, you idiot, it is that simple. Your ego is bruised because she doesn’t want you. She took advantage of you, George. You’re not going to make yourself feel better by trying to convince yourself she still wants you. My god, you’re all the dumbest shits.” I stood up, my chair screeching loudly across the floor. “Is there anything else you want to tell me, George? I’m afraid I need to leave before I act on the overwhelming urge to punch you in the face.”

  He looked up at me, surprised. I thought maybe he wanted to laugh.

  “I think that about covers it,” he said. I grabbed my bag and started to walk toward the door. But, then I thought of one more thing.

  “By the way, George, you stink like my piece of shit ex-husband. That cologne she bought for you—Darius wears it.”

  He paled. “She said she found it at Nordstrom,” he said.

  “They don’t sell that shit at Nordstrom. She found it on my husband.”

  My mother named me Jolene after the Dolly Parton song. Dolly could have used a different name. I could have been Darlene, or Cailene, or Arlene. Instead I am Jolene because that’s what Dolly chose after some redheaded bank teller flirted with her husband right in front of her. And imagine that, someone tried to steal your man so you turned it into art and made a buck. That lady’s got more than just huge tits, you know? I liked her style.

  I’d had one of those friends who was too dense to see the truth. My god, they were frustrating. It was right there in front of their fucking face and they went Helen Keller with that shit? I didn’t think it would ever be me, especially since I could see it so clearly in others. The hypocrisy of human nature. I tried to see the best in people, you see. I fell in love with who a person could be and then Helen Keller dug her fingers into my brain and I was all hear no evil, see no evil, la la la la la. They didn’t always choose to be what they could be. That’s what happened with Fig, I think. I was learning. Slowly, but surely, like one of Fig’s suicide trains. Chugging up the tracks, gaining speed. I could see the truth in people now. For example, Mercy’s father was a dunce. He didn’t come with the cap, though. I would have liked the cap. He just came with a great big, “fuck you,” and walked out of our lives. I wasn’t afraid to be pregnant and alone. It felt more like a relief after he left, like I wasn’t going to have to do this great big thing, with this great big idiot. So I grew my baby and wrote my books. And before I was even showing, in pops Darius, a blast from the past, who said all the right things, and did all the right things. Hook, line, and sinker, I swallowed it all down and let him put a ring on my swollen finger. And when she came, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he loved that little girl. She was ours. But, in the end he didn’t love her, did he? At least not more than he loved himself. Darius didn’t love anyone more than he loved himself. And perhaps he couldn’t help the way he was, but he could have helped what he did. And her, she was just as disgusting as he was. She liked to play games, see how much she could get. She didn’t have cancer, and she wasn’t suicidal. She used those things to control people’s reactions. She was whoever you wanted her to be.

  One day in early fall of the following year, I was at home, trying to burn time until I had to pick Mercy up from pre-school. It had become my thing, finding ways to amuse myself whilst my four-year-old was eating goldfish crackers and learning nursery rhymes. She’d stopped asking about Darius after my dad passed. She hadn’t seen me cry until th
en, and it was almost as if she understood the gravity of someone forced to leave, and someone who chose to leave.

  At any rate I was wandering from room to room, dusting books, and rearranging furniture, feeling completely useless without a book to write—when there was a pounding on my front door. If it was the Fed Ex guy he’d leave the package, I didn’t much fancy seeing anyone at the moment. But, the pounding didn’t go away, it increased in fervency and eventually I made my way to the front door, duster still in hand. I looked through the peephole. Fig was on my doorstep, a black baseball cap pulled down over her hair. She was gaunt, her face deeply lined, and her clothes limply hanging on her bones. My better sense told me not to open the door, but I was curious about what she had to say. She had to know that I knew at this point.

  When I opened the door her face was already arranged. The first words out of her mouth were somewhat thrown at me. I couldn’t tell if her voice was frantic or aggressive. “I’m sorry, all right? I’m not above saying I’m sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for?” I asked. Maybe this was my time to punch her in the face, cuss her out, and tell her what I really thought, but like always, I found myself drawn into her madness. Wanting to know how she was processing everything.

  “What I did. That’s not me, it’s not who I am.” She started to make crying sounds, but I watched for the tears and there were none. She’d told me once that before she moved to Washington with George she’d had a relationship with a man from her hometown. So, in fact it was who she was. Lie number one.

  “Darius was the only one who spoke to me. I was so alone … George was … well, you know how he is. He wasn’t there for me.”

  “I spoke to you,” I said. “I was there for you.”

  I felt pity for her. So desperate to be something she wasn’t. Her eyes were wide, watery. I imagined she was backtracking, thinking of a new tactic. I looked at her then, I mean I really looked at her. Not in the way I’d wanted to see her before, finding only the good. The way she evaluated, glanced, said things to garner a reaction. If you were a kind person, she’d be a kind person. If you believed in saving the environment, she’d be into it, too. We’d once been out with her and George when I’d been telling them about the various strange illnesses I’d had in the past few years. She’d sympathized with me and then told her own stories about getting the swine flu and how awful that had been. I’d believed her until George’s face had screwed up and he’d said, “When did you have the swine flu?”