Brock looked at me and frowned. Then he broke into another laugh. “Ain’t this something,” he said. “Now it sounds like you’re defending him, and I’m ranting about him.”
I laughed at the irony myself. “Well, I just thought about it, you know. Sometimes it takes us time to realize things. I mean, Jordan came into the league very young and worked very hard at what he was doing, and he’s just now starting to pay attention to other things around him. It just took him a while to open his eyes to the real X’s and O’s and it’s not basketball.”
“Yeah, I guess everybody can’t be like Isiah Thomas,” Brock said.
I nodded. “You got that right. Because Isiah Thomas is ready to take care of business. Basketball ownership! That’s what I’m talking about! And he’ll get his chance, too. To hell with Canada!”
Brock chuckled. “Sounds like you’ve been watching the ESPN channel.”
“Yeah, well, if Jimmy’s going to be in line to get a basketball scholarship in three years, then I figured I’d better start paying attention to what’s going on.”
When we pulled up to the restaurant near downtown Chicago, Brock paid for valet parking.
“You were right, this place is low-key,” I told him. The Shark Bar had a space all to itself, like a warehouse property. “I would have never been able to find this place,” I commented.
We walked in, and Brock gave the receptionist his name.
“Okay, right this way.” The sister led us to our quarter moon-shaped booth. It wasn’t much of a fancy place, just very relaxing. It had an organic feel to it, with plenty of earth tones, space, and a brick wall background. I guess it was a warehouse, and they had done a heck of a job renovating the place into a restaurant. Before I knew it, I melted into my seat and felt totally at home.
“You know what? I think I like this place. It just feels good in here,” I commented.
Brock smiled at me. “Yeah, it has that laid-back, relaxed feeling, right?”
“Exactly. Because some of these restaurants try to be extra fancy and end up overdoing things.”
I looked over the menu to order a drink, and noticed that every employee there was black. I was tempted to ask somebody if it was black owned, but I just decided to enjoy it.
“I’ll have a martini,” I told our waitress.
Brock grinned. “Give me one of those, too.”
“Okay, that’s two martinis, and I’ll be right back with your salads.”
Even the waitresses had an organic mood to them. They were good-looking sisters who were too mellow to be snobbish, and too professional to be ghetto.
“You seem to be really enjoying yourself,” Brock commented.
“Oh, I am.”
“I’m glad you like it,” he told me. “So how has Nikita been doing lately?” he asked.
I stopped and thought about it. Then I shook my head. “Do you have to ruin my mood with that?” I asked with a smile. I was serious though. I didn’t need to think about Nikita. I had to check up on her and Cheron the whole time my mother was vacationing in Florida. Then I ended up watching Cheron for three days out of the nine that my mother was gone. And Nikita did have a nighttime job, but I didn’t want to think about that either. The hours they had her working were plain ridiculous.
Brock said, “I’m sorry. I guess that was the wrong question to ask. I just figured I’d stop you from thinking about the restaurant so we can just enjoy each other. I mean, I like the place too, but damn!”
“So, I can’t get excited about something?”
“Oh, no, I’m not saying that. Trust me, I love when you get excited. I’d just rather have your excitement be about me.”
I broke out laughing. “I don’t believe that you’re jealous of a restaurant. And you’re the one who brought me here.”
“Well, I wouldn’t take it that far.”
I started rubbing the seat and the tablecloth, real seductively.
Brock was tickled by it. He snapped, “You cut it out right now, woman, or I’m leaving.”
We shared another laugh as our salads and drinks arrived.
“Are you ready to order yet?” our waitress asked us.
Time flew by, and we talked about everything under the full moon while we devoured our food. Then Brock asked me, “So, how do you see the rest of your life filling out?”
What kind of a question is that? I thought. It just seemed so open-ended. I tried to answer it anyway. I said, “Well, I see both of my sons going to college and—”
“No, I’m talking about your life,” Brock responded, cutting me off.
I smiled and thought about Camellia. I guess a single mother really couldn’t separate her life from those of her kids. So much of our own lives were so intricately connected to theirs. It was like doing algebra, where the value of X depended on that of Y.
I thought about myself and said, “Well, I’ve been thinking about getting a bigger office space. My file cabinets are really starting to get crowded, and I want to make an extra set of backup files for all of my clients.”
Brock just shook his head. “You’re doing exactly what I thought you would do, talking about your sons and your work. I’m talking about you.”
“Well, what about me? My sons and my work aren’t a part of me?” I asked him. I figured out where he wanted to go. He wanted to talk about my social life, and that was as open-ended as his initial question.
“Have you ever thought about what happens when your sons do go away to college?” he asked me. “The years can fly past before you know it.”
“I guess it’ll be just me and you then,” I answered. I knew that Brock wasn’t expecting that.
He nodded and said, “Exactly.” Then he went inside of his suit jacket. “Denise, I’ve been thinking about this moment for months now, and I’m tired of putting it off.”
Oh my God! I panicked. My hands started to shake as I took a sip of my water. Brock had totally caught me off guard. I was ready to tell him that I had to use the bathroom before he opened that black ring case he was holding. Ironically, I really did have to go, but I didn’t want to ruin his moment. Brock looked like a brown prince in shining armor who was offering a hand to the damsel in distress. How would I look telling him right then and there that I had to use the bathroom? And there I was drinking more water out of pure nervousness and shock. I was just pulling his leg when I said that we would be together after my boys went off to college. I wasn’t serious! It would have been nice, but—
“Denise, will you marry me?”
The ring was right there in my face, a full carat. It had three circles with the two outside circles twisting diagonally into the middle circle which held the diamond. It was beautiful! Absolutely beautiful!
Oh my God, I’m going to pee on myself inside of this restaurant! I climbed up out of my seat and said, “I’ll be right back,” to run off to the bathroom. That’s when I noticed people peeking in our direction. Oh my God! I told myself again. I prayed that I could make it to the bathroom before I injured something. The Lord showed me the way, and boy did it feel good. But when I was finished, I had to face Brock and everyone else who saw that ring being offered to me. Suddenly I wished that the Shark Bar was darker, and crowded, and noisy, and everything else that I could possibly hide in.
Brock had really done it to me! I knew I couldn’t leave him out there for too long. I’m sure that he was dying from the suspense.
“Oh, I wasn’t ready for this!” I hollered at the mirror. “I just wasn’t ready for this!”
A sister walked in and looked at me as if I were crazy.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” I told her. “I am crazy.” I would say anything to release some of the anxiety I was feeling. However, with the sister in the bathroom with me, I knew I couldn’t stand there and mumble to myself like I wanted to, so I slowly walked out, thinking a mile a minute.
Everything was in slow motion as I walked back up the steps from the rest room area.
Oh my God! I
didn’t know what else to tell myself. I was walking on eggshells.
Dammit, I am turning thirty-five years old! I told myself. Suddenly, I found the strength to march up them steps and handle my business like a grown woman. I strutted through that place like I owned it, and sat back down at my booth with Brock. He sat there and smiled at me, confident, looking good and smelling good, with that one carat open on the table. I got nervous all over again.
Oh my God! I wanted to go back to the bathroom.
“Do you have to go to the bathroom now?” I asked him. I felt like a damn giddy teenager!
Brock stopped smiling. He said, “I understand how awkward this is for both of us, but I can’t keep holding this off. The sooner we get it out in the open, the better. I want us to be a part of each other for real, and I’m ready and willing to deal with whatever I have to deal with. Do you hear me, Denise? Whatever I have to deal with.”
I didn’t know what else to say. I finished my glass of water and looked for the waitress for a refill. “Ah, excuse me, can I have some more water, please. Thank you very much.”
Brock sat there and pushed that ring at me again. “Denise, the question is still standing.”
I looked away and tried to think. I needed time to think. Just give me some time to think! Okay? But I couldn’t say the damn words!
“Denise?”
I tried to act as if I were dreaming. Maybe Brock was calling me to wake me up. But when I turned my head to look at him, that ring was still in my face.
I dropped my face into my hands to hide myself from the attention. People were staring. Dammit, Brock! I just wasn’t prepared to answer a marriage proposal. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. The man couldn’t take a hint!
I took a deep breath, raised up my head, and said, “I am really … surprised.” Then I dropped my head back into my hands. I was as embarrassed as I ever could be. What happened to all of my strength? I felt like Samson with his hair cut off.
“I understand that,” Brock was saying, “but we’re not getting any younger.”
His hand was still on my shoulder. It felt like it weighed a ton. I was extra sensitive to touch, sound, taste, everything. I was just a wreck on the side of the road, waiting for the tow truck to come and get me. However, Brock wanted me to start up again and move on my own. I just couldn’t. I was in shock. Literally!
“Denise, what I want you to do is think about things over the next few days, even a week if you have to, and I won’t bother you until you come up with a decision. In the meantime, I want you to keep the ring, because if you don’t, I won’t know what to do with myself. Okay? Can you at least do that for me?”
I looked at him and nodded without a sound, as he pressed the ring case into my palms. Talk about your waiting to exhale, I was waiting to be born again! I didn’t have much left to say for the rest of that night, as that ring case burned a hole in my hand all the way back to my house. By then it was close to midnight.
Brock walked me back to the front door and kissed me on the lips. “I have a three-day trip starting on Monday morning to Texas and Louisiana. You think you’ll need more time than that?”
I said, “We’ll see. I just need some time.”
Brock smiled and said, “I know exactly what you mean. You’re just a little nervous about it.”
“What about you?” I asked him.
“Well, once you get it out in the open, you calm down a bit.”
“So, that means you’re still nervous then, a little.” I didn’t want to be the only one.
“Big decisions are always difficult to come up with, Denise. But we have to get through nervousness. Otherwise, we would never make any big decisions. And trust me, I know plenty of brothers who are scared to death of that word ‘marriage,’ because they know that the word implies wed-lock. The wed part ain’t so bad, it’s the lock that kills them. Brothers hear that word lock and start running like slaves from a plantation.”
I smiled and said, “Yeah, but then they always want to come back for free milk and cotton.”
Brock laughed. “That’s true, too,” he agreed. “I can’t even lie about it. But not with all men. Because some men leave, and you never will see them again.”
“What about sisters?” I asked. I figured, that as a woman, I should have been jumping for joy, or at least that’s what society told us we should do. Marriage was a woman’s ultimate validation.
Brock thought about the question. “It used to be that sisters had to be married to feel like they achieved anything in life, but nowadays, a large percentage of women don’t even expect it. And I don’t know if that’s just with black women, or with women in the nineties in general. But it just makes me wonder what will happen to the institution of marriage by the year two thousand.”
I wondered about that too. “That’s a good question,” I responded.
“Well, you just think about how the word applies to us. And I promise I won’t bother you about it. As long as I know something by next week,” he told me with a grin.
“What if you don’t know?” I was dead serious. I had to really think about it.
Brock was startled by the question. I guess he really felt that I was going to say yes.
“Well, like I said, give yourself some time to think about it, and that’s all that I can really ask. But from this day on, you can never say that you haven’t had a good man ask for your hand in marriage, because I am a good man. I love and I care about you and your sons, I’m employed, I’m intelligent, mature, and I am asking you to marry me. So you don’t have any excuses.
“Life is about taking chances, and neither one of us can sit here and predict what could or what will happen between us, because we don’t know. All that we can do is give it a try and see.”
I walked into both of my sons’ rooms and watched them as they slept. I wondered what they would think about their mother getting married at thirty-five. Maybe it would set a positive example for them that marriage was all right, so that they could expect to do the same when they were of age. Children do follow the example of their parents.
Then I thought about my mother and father. My image of them had been shattered. I saw the futility of the many bragged-about thirty- and forty-year marriages from the 1950s and ’60s. I felt like they were filled with lies and cover-ups of cheating, hiding secrets, and plenty of emotional stress and endured pain. Yet many marriages had somehow survived it all. I couldn’t understand how they were able to do it, and I was reluctant to even try. Maybe if society had as many open windows for divorces in the past as it does in the present, few of our parents would have remained married. Or if marriage was the broken institution that it had become in the nineties, maybe few of our parents would have married in the first place. That was a heavy thought to go to bed with that night. It was so heavy that I couldn’t sleep. So I called my mother after two o’clock in the morning, knowing that she was easy to wake up. How many years had she slept lightly, with the weight of the world always on her mind?
“Mom, what are you doing up so late?” I asked her. She was wide awake. I expected to be the one to awaken her.
“Cheron has a cold. I have to make sure she doesn’t get too congested.”
“Does Nikita know?”
“Yeah, she knows.”
And what did she do about it? I wanted to ask, but that wasn’t what I was calling for.
I asked, “Mom, can we talk for a minute?”
She said, “At two o’clock in the morning, that’s bout all that we can do.”
“I’m sorry, Mom, I just couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, thanks for not telling your sister what I told you,” she said. She had thanked me at least three times before.
I said, “Mom, the last thing Nikita needs to know is that Dad didn’t want her.”
“I never said he didn’t want her. I never said that. I just said that he wanted a boy.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, Mom.” I was snappy and impatient. I wanted to
get right to the point of my call without all of the small talk. It was too late at night for small talk.
I cut to the chase and asked, “Mom, what do you think about marriage?”
“Did Brock ask you?” She sounded excited. I guess Mom knew how to cut to the chase herself.
“No, but I am thinking about it,” I lied. I didn’t need my mother’s excitement, I needed her honest opinion.
She said, “Brock is a good man, a God-fearing man.”
Since when has God-fearing become a criterion? I wanted to ask. My mother only talked about religion when she wanted to, and she only went to church when she felt like it.
I said, “So it’s an individual man-and-woman thing instead of an institution?” I asked her.
“It’s both,” she told me. “And I hope you told Brock yes.”
I ignored her. I wasn’t going to lie twice. Once you start lying repetitively, you lose sight of what the truth is, and for the sake of Brock’s goodness, I didn’t want to do that. After all, he did ask me to marry him.
“So, you weren’t pressured to marry Dad at all? It was your idea to marry him, 100 percent? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Nobody got pressured into marrying unless the girl got pregnant. And if she was pregnant, then she made the decision to open up her legs in the first place, so she must have liked the boy. But now girls open up their legs for anybody, even guys who they don’t like. We had names for those kind of girls when I grew up.”
I was getting irritated. I said, “Mom, are you saying that everything is the woman’s fault? Guys got pressured into getting married too, didn’t they? Especially if the girl was pregnant. That seems like it was his fault, too. So let’s stop making this thing a one-way show.
“It just seems that everybody lets the man off the hook,” I argued. “We let them off the hook when they cheat and treat us badly. Then we let them come back to us and do more damage. And after all of that, we continue to blame ourselves.”
I don’t know how many different conversations Camellia, myself, and plenty of other single mothers had in our monthly meetings over the years, but in all that we discussed, the cycle of broken families continued to do damage to the emotional, economic, and cultural needs of mothers and children in every town in America. Maybe J.D. was right, we did need to hear the men’s side of the argument because all we seemed to be doing was spinning around in circles.