Olivia Goldsmith - Young Wives

“You mean she’s the one I met at your church pageant?” Michelle asked in disbelief. “The one with the hat, and the awful hennaed hair? No! ”

“Uh huh .” Jada snorted again, bent over, and threw some sofa stuffing into her trash bag. “I want you to believe me when I tell you I’m not jealous. I don’t want to sleep with him. But he’s my husband and he is committed to the family or he’s out the door. I just can’t get over his bad taste. You’d think fifteen years with a man would improve that. I weaned him off Colt 45 and got him drinking Budweiser. I threw out that Peach Glow hair dressing and taught him Paul Mitchell gels. But the man’s heading right back to funky Yonkers.”

“Forget him. How did the kids seem to you?” Michelle asked.

“A little shaken up,” Jada admitted. “But who wouldn’t be? This wasn’t a search, it was a vendetta.” She surveyed the visible damage as she swiveled her head around.

“It was worse,” Michelle said. “You should have seen it before I picked up the first eleven bags of garbage.”

Jada shook her head. “These men were out to find something,” she said. “And you mean to tell me they didn’t? Hell, you tear my house apart like this, you’re gonna find a marijuana seed left over from the sixties.” She shook her head again and bit her lips. “Um-um,” she said. “I didn’t know police ever did a job like this on white people.”

“Frank says they were out to get him.”

“Looks like they did get him, from the picture,” Jada said.

“What picture?” Michelle asked.

Jada shook her head and held up both her hands. “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” she said. She got real close to Michelle and took her by the shoulders. “I know you’re not a church-goer, Michelle, but this is a time when everybody needs to fall back on God, because it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”

“I fell back on Frank,” Michelle said. “And it can’t get worse than this,” she added, looking at the ransacked rooms.

Jada sighed. “Please God, I hope so. But people can be really, really cruel. And the courts can be worse than the cops. Believe me, I know plenty of people in White Plains who’ve been through it. Innocent people. And some guilty ones who still didn’t deserve to be treated like dog shit.” She let go of Michelle’s shoulders but patted her gently on the back for a moment. “Okay, honey, that was my version of a pep talk. Now let’s clean this place up the best we can before the kids have to get in here.”

Michelle looked at her friend. “Should I keep them home from school tomorrow?” she asked. “Let them recover for a day, or would it be worse to do that?”

Jada thought of Anne at the bank and her morbid curiosity, even pleasure, at Michelle’s bad luck. “Kids can be cruel,” Jada said. “Real mean. But you figure, if they have to face it, they might as well face it on Monday.”

In which Jada clears up and goes home to find Clinton’s cleared out

When Jada got back to her own house it was well past three A.M. She was dead beat. She and Michelle had filled more than twenty bags of trash, vacuumed the entire downstairs, put away the still-operational appliances, pots, and pans, thrown out all the broken china and other smashed bits from the kitchen, then swept and washed its floor. The house hadn’t looked really good, but it had lost some of its nightmare quality.

Jada, home at last, took her shoes off and put them on the mat by the door. The little area there was supposed to be a mud room, but Clinton had not finished the job. The floor was plywood and the slate for it lay where the bench and cabinet to hold boots and shoes should be. Jada, way too exhausted to be annoyed, took her coat off and put it across the back of a kitchen chair. Although she yelled at Clinton and the kids for doing the same thing, she was too tired to hang it up now. All she wanted was some sleep.

Cleaning up the wreckage next door had not only been physically exhausting but also emotionally draining. And it had frightened Jada. Somehow, despite her own massive problems, it had seemed that most other people’s lives were more secure. Ha! She knew that everything was in God’s hands, but to see Michelle’s home destroyed, her husband beaten, and her children paralyzed with fear frightened Jada, too.

She thought of Anne and the other girls at the bank. Two of them were single mothers and she knew that, like her, they lived from paycheck to paycheck She looked around her unfinished mud room and plywood kitchen floor. At one time she’d been proud of Clinton. She’d seen him as a builder, as a man who took action and made people and things come together. But now he was tearing them down and apart. Well, she had to try and be grateful. She said a short thanksgiving prayer. Things could always be so much worse.

She walked up the stairs as quietly as she could and passed the door of the baby’s room. That was one job Clinton had finished. He’d painted the room and built a changing table for Sherrilee. He’d even put her name on the door. Now Jada pushed it open and poked her head into the room for just a minute, only to check. But Sherrilee wasn’t there. She hoped that Clinton hadn’t let Jenna and Shavonne sleep with her. Walking more quickly to Shavonne’s door, she looked in. Jenna lay curled on one side of Shavonne’s double bed, but neither Shavonne nor Sherrilee was there.

That was strange, Jada thought, but perhaps they’d both crawled into bed with their daddy, though Shavonne didn’t do that much anymore. Of course, Shavonne could have had one of her frequent fights with Jenna and wanted to get away. Jada walked down the hall. Somehow this didn’t feel right. Not at all. But, she told herself, she was probably just spooked by the problems next door. Still, she couldn’t stop herself using unusual force.

She got to the door of their bedroom and threw it open. Nothing’s wrong , she told herself, but something was. No baby, no Shavonne, no Clinton. Only a note, lying in the middle of the unmade bed. Frightened, Jada strode over to it and snatched it up.

Jada,

I have made my decision. I have taken the children and I am leaving you. Your work schedule, your attitudes, and now your friendship with undesirables has led me to believe that you are not only a bad wife but also a bad mother. You will hear from my attorney, George Creskin and Associates. My children told me they didn’t want to stay with those drug kids.

Clinton

Jada’s eyes ran over the page a second time. Then a third. Clinton didn’t write like this. What was this? Was he insane? Her heart began to beat so fast that it felt like a thumping on the outside of her chest. She didn’t care. She didn’t matter. She ran to Kevon’s room and pulled the door ajar, but only Frankie was sleeping on the bottom bunk. She turned and ran back out into the hallway. She threw open the door of the linen closet where they kept their suitcases and backpacks. All the bags were gone. Like some kind of mad thing, she ran back into Shavonne’s room and slid open the closet door. Many empty hangers greeted her. She turned and pulled open the drawers of Shavonne’s bureau: underwear, socks, and T-shirts were gone. Gone. And her children gone, too.

Now, crazy with fear, she ran back down the hall to her own room. All of Clinton’s shoes were missing, along with his two good suits and his leather jacket. He was a madman! A madman! He had taken her children. Did he think that she would stand for this? Did he think that she had scrambled and worked the way she had so that he could take their family and walk out of the house? And what the hell would he do with them, with her children, now that he had them? He didn’t even take care of them here . Clinton had nowhere to go. How would he pay for a hotel, a baby-sitter? He had no job, no money, no help. He wasn’t even on good terms with his mother—hadn’t been since they married.

She began to run down the bedroom hall, but at the top of the stairs it all hit her. She stopped and stood statue-still. A fear deeper than any she had ever known hit Jada in the chest so hard that she had to sit down on the top step, one long leg tucked under her. Who should she call? What should she do? She put a hand up to her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream out loud. There were two children still sleeping in the house, though they weren’t hers.

She couldn’t call the police—this wasn’t a police matter, was it? She couldn’t call a lawyer at this time of night. Anyway, she didn’t know a lawyer. Her mother and father were in Barbados, and neither was young anymore. She couldn’t, wouldn’t , shock them with this.

Jada’s right hand clutched the railing of the banister as she sat at the top of the stairs, frozen. Clinton couldn’t do this to her. Surely he didn’t hate her this much. And the children: would they willingly leave her? Had he forced the kids to go? Had he lied to them? Jada shook her head back and forth as if trying to shake the reality out. But it wouldn’t go.

Her marriage was over. That was clear. Her family was broken, but Jada knew she would find her babies, bring them home, and save them. This house and those children were what she had sacrificed her life to and no one was going to take them away. She was still strong enough to make sure of that.

But now, in the darkness at the top of the staircase, Jada lowered her head to her knees and quietly began to sob.

Containing a visit to Marblehead by a marble-head

“You want, I’ll come with you,” Tony offered again as he dropped Angela at the shuttle. “You don’t have to do this. And you sure don’t have to do it alone. I can postpone my business trip, and I’d love to come.”

“I need to go alone, Daddy,” Angela told him, and patted his arm. “Mom offered to come with me, and I could have made a big deal out of it, but I’d rather just get in and get out. For my stuff. Reid can keep the stereo and the blender. I’m just getting some of my clothes, my pictures … you know.”

“He going to be there?” Tony growled. “Because that son-of-a—”

“He doesn’t even know I’m coming,” Angela assured her father. “I’m not going up there to see him. Don’t worry. He’s a sick puppy and he’s out of my life. I just want my own clothes.” She looked down at her cheap lawyer’s suit.

“Okay. So you got the movers all set up like I told you?”

“Yeah,” she said, and gathered up her purse and her scarf. “Just two guys with some boxes and a van. They go back and forth between Boston and New York all the time and they’ll bring the stuff down to your house next week.”

Anthony Romazzano nodded and bent awkwardly across the bucket seat to hug her. “Okay, baby,” he said. As Angie started to get out of the car, he added, “You sure you don’t want a limo to take you?” She shook her head. “Do you need any cash?”

Angela nodded. She hated accepting his offer, but she was really pretty strapped. Tony handed her a few hundred dollar bills and a credit card with her name on it.

“Just in case,” he said. Her eyes teared up. She bent her head to look into the front seat of the car. “Thanks a lot,” she said.

“No problem,” he answered. “And you’ll be home tonight?”

“Absolutely,” she told him. “I might see Lisa for a drink before I leave, but I’ll call your machine if I do.”

Angela was early, so when the plane started to board she got one of the bulkhead seats near the window. At eleven A.M., the shuttle wasn’t packed, though the flights at seven, eight, and nine must have been jammed. When the doors closed the seat beside her was still empty. She crossed her legs.