Playing the Hand You're Dealt Read online

  At the time, I honestly thought it was just a phase I was going through. A lustful attraction to a pretty face and a firm, young body. But when I found myself driving down to Atlanta to pick Sam up during school breaks and holidays, rather than sending her a plane ticket to come home, I couldn’t fool myself any longer. I took those long road trips because I wanted to see Emily. I wanted a chance to be in the same room with her and inhale the sweet scent of her perfumed skin. I wanted to see her look at me with her beautiful brown eyes that made me feel alive. Even though our conversations were usually brief and a bit awkward, I looked forward to them like a kid waiting for his allowance. That’s what she’d reduced me to. And although I was inwardly embarrassed by the thought, I still went back for more.

  Over the years, Emily always kept her distance from me. I wanted to believe that it was because she felt the same way I did, but knew it was too dangerous to cross the line. However, my rational mind forced me to accept the probable reality that she was simply uncomfortable around me. Whatever the reason, she had put up a wall that gave us clearly defined boundaries.

  I also had to admit that another reason why I was still sitting in my study was because I felt like such an ass. Even though therapy was a reasonable option to offer someone coping with a devastating loss, the look on Emily’s face told me that I had offended her. Actually, what I had really wanted to tell her was that I’d be here for her if she needed anything. But instead I played it safe because I had no other choice.

  I was also sure that she took notice of the fact that I didn’t comment on her hair. She’d always worn it loose, wild, and free, a stark contradiction to her disciplined and controlled manner. But now her thick mass of wiry hair was straight down her back, giving her a sleek, alluring aura. I couldn’t tell her how beautiful I thought she looked tonight because the next thing to follow would’ve been the kiss I have wanted to devour her with for the past eleven years. That was out of the question, so I offered her a psych referral instead.

  Everything inside me wanted to go upstairs to the guest room where Emily was sleeping and hold her close to me. But there was no way I could make a move like that, especially not in the house I shared with my wife. That would be like inviting hell to break loose, and we had been down that road before.

  Brenda and I didn’t have a loving relationship. We never had. She always thought I was having some sort of torrid affair. The truth was, yes, I had dipped my spoon in the past. They’d been meaningless affairs, quick thrills and simple indulgences. Brenda even caught me once and she never let me live it down. We went to counseling, but when the real issues of our marriage boiled to the surface, she told me that she’d had enough therapy. That was a long time ago, and now I was harmless and downright saintly, especially compared to a lot of the men I knew.

  Brenda and I had been together since college, and that was a long time to spend with the same person. I cared about her, but I couldn’t truthfully say that I’d ever been in love with her. We’d known each other practically all our lives. Our families vacationed together on the Vineyard every summer. Her older sister was married to my first cousin. We were connected and intertwined. But we didn’t start dating until our junior year at Howard University. I was president of our class and had been giving a speech for a peace rally in front of the student union when she approached me. I knew that political and social causes weren’t Brenda’s thing, but she volunteered to help me post flyers around campus after the event. I asked her out that evening and we’ve been together ever since. It may sound like a fairy tale, but it’s far from it.

  She was the sensible choice—attractive, smart, cultured, and respectable. Our families had both breathed a collective sigh of relief when we started dating, but I felt nuptial pressure almost from the very beginning of our relationship. We were in our senior year when she got pregnant, even though she’d been on the Pill. Three months passed before she told me that she’d missed her period. When I asked her why she had waited so long to tell me, she said it was because she didn’t know how to break the news to me. My best friend, Ross Morgan, still swears to this day that she set a trap for me.Whether Brenda stopped taking her pills on purpose or not had been a moot point back then. The bottom line was that I had a responsibility to own up to. I was raised to honor family, and that was what I planned to do.

  A month later we had a rushed but elaborate wedding with all the bells and whistles. Our son, Jeffery, was born five months after we married, and then Sam followed. Things happened so fast we really didn’t have time to examine our relationship. The span between the births of our children and my law school graduation was a blur. In the years that followed, there were ballet recitals for Sam, softball practices for Jeffery, volunteer activities for Brenda, and career climbing for me. We were so busy with “things” that Brenda and I never had time to focus on the two of us. Once we did, neither of us really liked what we saw.

  In Brenda’s view, I was too practical and analytical, as well as too stubborn, abrupt, and frugal. Essentially, what that meant was that I didn’t believe in putting on a show, and I didn’t act impulsively. I didn’t give in easily, and I didn’t have patience for pretension. And my crowning vice, the painful thorn in her side, was what she considered to be my frugality—translation—I lived well, but didn’t go overboard just because I possessed the material means to do so.

  On the other hand, my wife was a free spirit, as she described herself. Translation—she was full of drama, and she acted as if the flowers she grew in our backyard bloomed hundred-dollar bills every spring. She spent money like she was the one making it! But make no mistake, I was no penny pincher and I didn’t begrudge Brenda anything she wanted. But her extravagance and sense of entitlement have worn thin on me over the years.

  She was the baby of her family and was always taken care of by her parents and older siblings.When she became an adult, it was engrained into her that she would marry well and be kept up in the fashion to which she was accustomed. It wasn’t a second thought to Brenda that she’d have a husband who provided financially, and live-in help to take care of the kids and me. It was how she was brought up, so she simply followed the path that had been laid out in front of her.

  I guess that was why I gave my daughter a pass. Even though Sam and Brenda were like night and day, they shared the same blood, and being motherly wasn’t a component on their DNA strand. I loved Sam, but it bothered me that she was irresponsible as hell when it came to CJ. At one point I thought that having a child would force her to finally get her act together, but it didn’t.

  Sam’s got one of the best hearts of anyone you could ever meet—honest and sincere, loving and genuine. She was the kind of person who fought passionately for the people she loved. She tried to act hard-core, but underneath all the hardships that she created for herself, she was just a sweet kid who wanted validation—ironically from Brenda.

  During her teenage years, Sam was constantly in trouble. Most of her antics were deliberate, a result of her rebellious, defiant behavior. But her actions weren’t directed at me, or at herself. She acted out to get back at Brenda. The two of them had a contentious relationship, a push-pull kind of coexistence.

  But I had to accept some of the blame because I wasn’t around as much as I should have been during my kids’ early years.Working seventy hours a week didn’t leave much time to bond. But when I did spend time with Jeffery and Sam, I tried to make it count.We’d go on picnics in the park, or just throw a blanket down in the backyard and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Brenda thought I should’ve done something more culturally enriching with them. But after Jack and Jill, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, museum tours, and every other type of social activity Brenda squeezed into their hectic little schedules, I figured they needed a break to just be kids and hang out with their dad.

  Looking back, I wish I had spent more time with them, especially my son. Maybe if I’d been around for Jeffery he wouldn’t have turned into the angry, bitter person he is t
oday. Sam said that he confided in her right before he moved to Paris eight years ago that he was distancing himself from the family because of Brenda. But again, some of the blame rested on my shoulders as well. I felt a lot of regret when I thought about my son, but I was a man who knew that I couldn’t change what had already been done. I just had to move on and deal with the here and now.

  Dealing with the here and now meant that I needed to accept my current situation. Emily would be under my roof for what could be several weeks, and that meant I had to obey the rules I’d always followed with her, the two Cs . . . careful caution.

  Chapter 6

  Brenda . . .

  He Should Appreciate Her More

  Brenda propped her head up on one of her fluffy pillows and adjusted her body under the comfort of her luxurious sateen bed sheets. With carefree ease, she flipped the channel with the remote until she landed on HGTV. She nestled in, preparing to watch one of her favorite interior designers dispense decorating tips, when she heard the thud of her husband’s footsteps coming up the stairs. She sighed, slightly annoyed because she knew that once Ed entered the room he would ask her to turn the channel to MSNBC. She hated MSNBC!

  Brenda watched her husband as he walked toward the bed, noticing that he looked more preoccupied than usual.The last few weeks had been hectic for him, leading up to a big trial he’d been working on for months.

  “How was your day?” she asked, not bothering to turn down the volume on the TV or miss a single word of the designer’s presentation. She was ever the multitasker.

  Ed looked down at his watch. “Long, and tiring.”

  “Mine, too,” Brenda sighed, thinking about the exhausting day she’d had. After rising at eleven that morning, she read the Style section of the previous day’s newspaper, then took a long shower before getting dressed. She lunched at Clyde’s with her sister, Dorothy, then headed down the street to the Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa for her weekly hair appointment, facial, manicure, and full body massage. After that, she whisked over to Saks Jandel and picked up a dress she’d special ordered before jetting off to the Corcoran Gallery, arriving in just enough time to conduct a docent tour. Afterward, she briefly dropped by the house to welcome her daughter’s best friend to town, then she was off to an evening board meeting for her sorority.

  No one knows all the things I do in the course of a day, Brenda thought as she looked at her husband. Keeping her beautiful house in perfect order, making sure that Ed was well cared for, maintaining her personal appearance through well-managed care, and being a social butterfly, volunteer, and organizer were no small feats! “It takes talent to hold this fabulous life together while making it all look so effortless,” she’d told Porscha, her skilled massage therapist at the Red Door Spa, during her session earlier that day. “That’s why I need these weekly treatments,” she sighed as Porscha kneaded her back, trying to block out the song and dance that Brenda complained about every week.

  Of course, Gerti and others were there to help, but still, Brenda knew that things would fall apart without her careful instruction and guidance. It was work keeping everyone in line, and she felt that she’d had a long and tiring day, too, just like Ed.

  Brenda wanted to tell her husband that her schedule was just as busy and demanding as his, and that even though she didn’t rise at the crack of dawn every morning like he did, she still worked hard. She didn’t manage legal cases, but she knew how to manage the hell out of people. She was vigilant about making sure that the landscaper, water deliveryman, and even the mailman all provided their services on time, and she took meticulous care to ensure that she and Ed responded to social invitations and attended important events around the city that she carefully synchronized on both their calendars. Ensuring that all the fine details of their lives were attended to was what Brenda considered quite a heavy load.

  It frustrated her that Ed didn’t seem to grasp the magnitude of her many skills. Just because she didn’t litigate high-profile cases or fight to preserve the civil justice system didn’t mean that her activities were any less important—in her opinion. She wished Ed could trade places with her for just one day so he could see all the balls she juggled. If he did, she knew it would show him that he should appreciate her more.

  Brenda took a long look at her husband, who was now sitting on the edge of their bed. She noticed that his shoulders were hunched over like he’d been doing hard labor. Even though he was sitting with his back to her, she could see that he was worried about something. “Ed, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing, I just had a long day, that’s all.”

  She strained to hear him over the TV, wishing he’d speak up louder. “What did you say?”

  “Long day . . . I said I’ve had a long day,” Ed repeated, turning toward her.

  Brenda looked down at his hand and saw that he was still holding his brandy snifter. She thought that was very odd. Every night, like clockwork, Ed would unwind in his study by drinking a small snifter of his favorite brandy before heading up to bed. It had been his nightly ritual for as long as she could remember. But he never brought his glass upstairs. He always left it sitting on his large mahogany desk, and in the morning Gerti would retrieve it, clean it, and sit it back in the same spot for the cycle to begin anew.

  Brenda watched as her husband held the empty snifter in his hand. “Why did you bring that upstairs?” she asked, pointing to his glass.

  Ed looked down at his hand as though he’d just realized what he was holding. “I don’t know,” he responded in a faraway voice, shrugging his shoulders.

  Brenda knew that from time to time Ed could become a little distant when he was working on a major case, but his detachment was usually mixed with excitement from the sheer thrill of the hunt because he loved his work. However, she noticed that his energy was very different tonight, evidenced by the distinct melancholy clouding his mood. She hoped he wasn’t coming down with something because they had a very important event to attend tomorrow night. “Ed, you’re not getting sick, are you?”

  “No, like I said, it’s been a long day.”

  Brenda looked at him as he sat the empty snifter on the antique sitting bench at the foot of their bed before heading over to their large walk-in closet. A few minutes later he emerged in his T-shirt and boxers, then climbed into bed with a stack of documents in his hand. No matter how much he frustrated her, Brenda had to admit that she loved seeing her husband crawl in between the sheets. Even though their love life was nearly nonexistent, she still liked the fact that Ed was damn good to look at.

  She admired his smooth, caramel-colored skin, soft-looking dimples, and piercing brown eyes. Over the years he’d kept himself in astonishingly good shape by adhering to a disciplined workout regimen, from which he never wavered. Ed’s looks were like the vintage wines she savored, they got better and more robust with each passing year. For Brenda, outward appearances rated high on her scale of requirements and made up for their lack of physical intimacy and emotional affection.

  Brenda blocked out the designer on TV and watched Ed more closely. His reading glasses were perched on the bridge of his nose, but he didn’t seem to be reading at all. More than ten minutes had passed and he hadn’t moved beyond the first page in his pile of papers. She thought that was strange because by this time he would have normally gone through half the stack. And what was even more unsettling to her was that since he’d entered the room, he had yet to ask her to turn the channel to MSNBC. She knew that something was amiss.

  “Ed?” Brenda glared. “What’s wrong with you? You’re acting strange tonight.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.You’re walking around, looking like you just lost a case. You brought your brandy snifter upstairs, and you haven’t even asked me to turn the channel to your beloved MSNBC. Something must be wrong.”

  Ed let out a frustrated sigh, put his documents to the side, and turned to his wife. “Damn, Brenda, if I come home happy or excite
d, you say it’s because I must be up to something. If I ask you to turn the channel while you’re watching your shows, you say that I’m not being considerate. Just because I forgot to leave an empty glass downstairs, it doesn’t mean that something’s wrong, it simply means I had a hard day,” he said, agitation filling his voice. “Can you just give it a rest?”

  Brenda ran her fingers through her silky, shoulder-length hair as she sat up in bed. She crossed her arms and returned her husband’s stare. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a real argument. One of the things she’d grown to appreciate about their relationship was that she and Ed were at the stage in their marriage where they just let things go. But tonight she sensed a strange tension in the air. “You can save your analysis for the courtroom,” she snapped. “Don’t try and make me out to be the demanding, nagging wife. I’ve known you long enough to see when there’s something wrong. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of whatever has you in such a disagreeable mood.”

  Ed took a deep breath. “I had a rough day and I have to head back to the office bright and early tomorrow morning. We go to trial soon, so I’ve got to focus,” he said, then returned to his papers.

  “I hope you’re not planning to work all day and then come home in another bad mood.”

  Ed didn’t respond.

  “Well, if you must work, you must work. Just make sure that you’re up to going to the party.”

  “What party?”

  Brenda looked at her husband as if he’d just told her that he had forgotten his own birthday. She hit the power button on the remote, transforming the plasma screen into a silent, black slate. “Joe and Juanita Presley’s party!” she nearly gasped. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten? It’s been all the talk for the last month.”

  Ed glanced down at his wife over the rim of his glasses. “All what talk?”