Should Have Known Better Read online

“Exactly—”

  “But couldn’t you have gone to her house or some other place? Please, coming up in here ain’t doing nothing but bringing me more trouble. I have to suspend two officers. And explain to my boss how in the hell they let you upstairs.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that.”

  “Look.” She looked into my eyes. “You just needed a better plan. One that didn’t include my job.”

  “I don’t know where she lives.”

  “Ahhh . . . phewww. . .” She sat back in her seat and looked at me crossly. “It’s almost time for my break.” She looked at the clock. “I have to go call my ex-husband to make sure he doesn’t have my kids around that slut he had the nerve to marry.” Her voice changed and she looked at the computer. “I still need you to fill out this statement though—saying you didn’t break the mirror, and you didn’t come here to fight Sasha Bellamy. Right?” She winked at me.

  “No, I didn’t come here for that.”

  “OK. So, I’m going to step out of the room and make my phone call. You can sit here and finish your statement.” She pushed away from the desk and I noticed that her voice had shifted from discipline to polite deception. “Now, don’t you come around here and try to sneak a peek at my computer. There’s lots of private and sensitive information on here.” She eyeballed me closely. “Addresses and information about employees. You just look up the last name and there they are.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like sensitive information,” I agreed.

  “But don’t you come over here looking for stuff. Could cost me my job. Especially if you ever tell someone how you got that kind of information.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, because I wouldn’t look at the computer.”

  “Well, I’m glad you wouldn’t do that. Because then I’d have to hurt you myself.” She stood up and the plump woman became tall and plump. She grabbed her keys and walked toward the door. “The call I need to make usually takes about five minutes. You can leave your statement on the desk.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  “And don’t you dare look at that computer.”

  7

  My mother’s house was dark and quiet. While no one inside knew what had happened at CNN and they were all probably asleep and dreaming, my embarrassment made me creep into the house like a teenager who’d snuck out and was trying to avoid her parents. My cell phone had died, so I plugged it into the wall in the living room and went to the dining room table to just sit and think. I’d written Sasha’s address down in the palm of my hand. Just the numbers, in big, looping, red ink. 593. That’s where she was. That’s where Reginald was.

  I looked at the dusty chandelier over the dining room table. It was a pear-shaped bulb covered with chipped, leaf-shaped pieces of glass falling down all around it. When I was little, maybe five, my mother had gathered all of the leaves off of the chandelier and put them into a pot with water and vinegar to soak. I saw the pot on the table and looked into it to see the little glass pieces sunken into the water, sitting in the bottom, sparkling and shining like diamonds. My mother was in the kitchen, so I put my hand inside to touch the diamonds. I fingered them in the water, turned them around, and then took one out to hold it to my finger like a diamond ring. I held it up and smiled. One day I’d have a ring like that. When I was big and a woman. I held it up farther, so it could catch the light shining in from outside of the living room window and I must’ve lost my balance in the chair because I fell over and both me and the pot of diamonds fell to the floor.

  I screamed, but the sound of all of that glass and the pot crashing into the wood was what made my mother come rushing in from the kitchen, my father from upstairs.

  I wasn’t hurt, so I jumped back up and tried to pretend nothing had happened, but the evidence, those chipped glass leaves, were scattered everywhere.

  “What is this?” my father asked.

  “Oh no, Dawn, what did you do?” my mother asked, getting down on her knees to inspect the broken pieces.

  “I was just playing,” I said. “They’re diamonds.”

  “I told you to leave it alone,” she said.

  “Leave it alone? You should be watching her!” My father’s voice boomed around the room like a siren.

  “I can’t watch her every minute of every day,” my mother complained as we stood around her.

  “You can’t watch her?” He bent down and slid his hand around her neck from the back, squeezing it so I could see his knuckles stick out. “You can’t do anything I ask you to do.” He pushed her down into the wet floor like a dog. “Get this cleaned up and watch her!” he said, finally letting her go and walking upstairs without even looking at me.

  It was the first time I’d ever seen them like that— seen my father try to hurt my mother—or maybe just the first time I recall.

  I rushed to her side as she gasped for air and continued picking up the leaves.

  “You OK, Mama?” I asked.

  “Just help me get this up,” she said. “I need to get this up before he comes back downstairs.”

  Remembering the look in her eyes, the detached, silenced look in her eyes, I turned from the red 593 on my hand and saw my father’s old liquor hiding place at the bottom of the china cabinet staring at me.

  I got up from the table and went to open the door, hoping and then not hoping I’d find something in there. He never stopped drinking until everything was gone and I was sure my mother hadn’t put anything else in there after he died. But with my memories and my realities, I wanted what my father always needed: a drink.

  There was a full bottle of Scotch inside. I always hated that rubbery taste that took over every sense as you struggled to get it down. But as they say, after a man has his first glass, the second is like water. And my third didn’t even require ice.

  Soon the bottle was half empty. And I had my legs spread up on the other chairs beneath the table. I stopped pretending to sit up and just slouched down in the seat, cursing the night for my life. If Reginald left me, if he really left me, I wouldn’t even have anywhere to go. I had no savings; hell, the library hardly paid me enough to buy groceries, and with R. J.’s medical bills, if he got sick or if any of us got sick, I’d have to . . . I’d probably have to come back home.

  I looked around the room—the scene of the place I’d hated so much my only plan in life was to leave and never ever come back—and thought there was no way I’d make my children live my nightmare.

  And what about Reginald? In his house on Lover’s Lane. In the bed with Sasha. Their meetings. Their big plans. Their future. All of this, and the past with me was so much of a nightmare that he had to leave without saying anything?

  I poured another glass and sipped until I couldn’t feel my tongue anymore. Sipped until my memories and thoughts were just clouds over the chandelier.

  And then my cell phone rang. It kicked into the dark house like a fire alarm and the vibrating made it coast all over the living room table. And I knew who it was. And why he was calling. I sat for the first ring, but then ran for the second.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? I’ve been calling you all night. Why in the hell would you go to Sasha’s job?” Reginald’s voice was so loud I had to move the phone from my ear.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “What is wrong with you, Dawn? Why would you go to her job?”

  “You said you would call. You never called. What’s going on? Why haven’t you come home?” I knew what was going on. We both knew what was going on. But I wanted him to say it to me. To say to me directly that he was having an affair with Sasha.

  “I told you I’d call.”

  “But you didn’t,” I charged. “And you didn’t answer my question—what the hell is going on?”

  “Nothing . . . I mean . . .” he stuttered. “I just need some time. Like I told you.”

  “Told me? You didn’t tell me anything. You just crept out of our house like some little boy. Ran
off and sent me a damn text to solve the case of my missing husband.”

  “I just need some space.”

  “Space for what, Reginald?” I asked and I could hear myself screaming then. “Space for what?”

  There was silence, but I waited. I waited and waited, because I swear I wasn’t going to allow him to just get off the hook with some half-baked lie about needing space.

  “Why did you have to go to her job? If you would’ve just waited until I called you,” he said weakly.

  “Well, I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait. And your children couldn’t wait. And have you even considered what your little disappearing act is doing to them? They wake up in the morning and their father is just gone? What am I supposed to say to them?” I snatched the phone from the charger.

  “Where are they?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Dawn, don’t play games. Where are my children?” he asked, but it sounded more like an order.

  “They’re with me.”

  “Where?”

  “OK, I’ll tell you,” I said. “I’ll tell you where we’re at if you tell me where you’re at.”

  There was loud banging on the phone and I could tell Reginald was hitting it against something hard.

  “You tell me where they’re at. They’re my kids and they have nothing to do with what’s going on between me and you.”

  “See, that’s the thing, Reginald,” I said. “I still don’t know what’s going on between you and me. Until Sasha showed up at our house, you seemed fine. And now, suddenly, you need space and you’re taking off and not calling to check on the children you now so quickly care about.”

  “Now you didn’t know I wasn’t happy?” he spat. “Please, you know I haven’t been happy in a long time. You just don’t do it for me. But now I know what I need.”

  “And what’s that? What do you need, you fucking bastard?” I cried. “You sound like a tape recorder. Is she sitting there, is she sitting there telling you what to say?”

  I saw my mother rushing down the steps in her nightgown. R. J. and Cheyenne were behind her rubbing their eyes.

  “Never mind her,” he said. “This has nothing to do with her.”

  “How doesn’t it?”

  “I’m not going to talk about that with you right now,” he said and I’ll say that was the farthest his voice, his thought, his concern had ever been from me. It was like I was speaking to another person. “Now, you claim I’ve abandoned my kids, so I want to see them.”

  “Oh, you want to see them now?”

  “Is that my daddy?” Cheyenne asked, coming over to me.

  “Come here, Cheyenne. Your mother’s on the phone,” my mother tried, but Cheyenne wouldn’t budge.

  “Yes, I want to see my children this weekend. I’m coming to get them,” Reginald said.

  “Get them? Get them and take them where?”

  “Where is no matter to you. Now stop making this hard!”

  “Making it hard? I’m making it hard?”

  “I want to speak to my daddy,” R. J. cried sleepily, stepping up behind his sister.

  “You know what,” I started, “I’m going to make this really easy for you. If you want your children, you’ll see them. You’ll see them right now!”

  “What are you saying?” he asked, but I hung up the phone.

  “What are you doing?” My mother pushed the twins out of the way and grabbed the phone.

  “Nothing. He said he wants to see the kids, so he’ll see the kids,” I answered coolly, but the alcohol added a sway to my voice. “Ya’ll go on upstairs and hurry up and put your shoes on,” I said to R. J. and Cheyenne.

  “For what, Mama? We’re going to see Daddy?” R. J. asked as the phone started ringing again.

  Cheyenne stepped to get it.

  “Don’t you dare touch that phone,” I forbade her and she stopped fast. “You two go upstairs and put your shoes on.”

  “But it’s twelve o’clock at night. You can’t have them out there so late,” my mother said, and the twins looked from her to me.

  “Go,” I ordered and they scrambled up the stairs.

  “What’s this?” my mother said over the ringing phone. “What’s going on with you?”

  She got closer to me and frowned.

  “You’ve been drinking,” she said. She looked over at the nearly empty bottle of Scotch. “Got that devil in you?”

  “Oh, Mama, please stop that.”

  “Don’t you know that ain’t no good? Didn’t your father show you what that stuff does to you?”

  “My father showed me a lot of things,” I said.

  “You can’t take those kids out of this house. It ain’t right.”

  “It ain’t right? No, what’s not right is what’s being done to me,” I cried. “And I want them to know what their father is doing and who he’s doing it with. I won’t keep his secret so he can save face.”

  R. J. and Cheyenne came back down the steps in their shoes and nightclothes.

  “This isn’t about you or him; it’s about them,” my mother said. “And I won’t let you do this.”

  “Oh, Mama. Save the speech.” I grabbed the phone from the couch.

  “Don’t do this,” she said. “It’s the devil in you.” She looked into my eyes. “I see it. I see your daddy. You’ve got to stop it. I know you wouldn’t do this if you weren’t drinking. And now you want to drive. At least let me come with you.”

  “Come with me?” I laughed. “You want to come? For what? To protect me? Please, you couldn’t protect me from him all those years ago, and you can’t protect me now.”

  Cheyenne and R. J. sat so close together, their little bodies fit into one seat in the back of the car. R. J. was crying and had his arms wrapped around Cheyenne’s neck.

  I watched them from the front, blinking in seconds to keep the alcohol from fading my vision.

  And I knew I was wrong. Knew I shouldn’t be listening to my cell phone tell me how to get to Sasha’s house in the middle of the night, drunk and taking my children along for the ride. But right and wrong had just left me. I was aching. Aching in every part of me. And nothing in me could control it. I was there, but then I wasn’t. The lanes raced beneath the car. I was screaming, angry. Hot. I couldn’t hear anything knocking in me. It was like I was hollowed out and desperate. And I knew it wasn’t just Reginald. Couldn’t be. There was more riding me in that car. No man could pull me from protecting my children. Risking my life and theirs. But I wasn’t me. I was someone who was angry at me.

  I got off of the highway exit and the pleasant little voice on the GPS on my phone told me to make a right. There was a long road ahead, winding and dipping down. I went so fast the car flopped on a bump. Our bodies hopped out of our seats and fell down hard.

  “I shouldn’t have let her into my home,” I said to Cheyenne’s wet eyes looking at me in the mirror.

  Cheyenne pointed up ahead to the windshield in front of me.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  I flicked my sight from the mirror to circling blue lights flashing ahead on the narrow road. There were two lanes with police cars set up on either side. A row of cars sat in the dark behind the police cars. Another, right down the middle, was streaming through.

  “What is it?” Cheyenne pressed.

  “I think it’s the police,” I said delicately. I slowed the car and came up gently behind the car in front of me that was edging into the streaming cars. Police officers came up on either side of that car and flashed their lights inside. The driver held his wallet out of the window.

  “What do they want?” R. J. cried.

  “It’s nothing, baby, just a roadblock.” I tried to calm him, but my whole heart was beating so fast I felt it was about to knock me over. I heard it in my head, my ears, and through my mouth. How could I pass them? I was drunk. I could smell myself. My face was wet with tears. The children were still crying. I tried to wipe my eyes and pushed on the gas when the car in
front was released. I told myself to smile. Sit up straight. Say it was a long night. I was just trying to get my children home to bed. I sucked in my stomach. I don’t know why.

  “Ma’am,” a voice behind a white light shining in my window called, “can I see your driver’s license and proof of insurance?”

  I could feel my forehead getting hot and wet beneath the light. I smiled and went into my purse. Through the corners of my eyes, I could see the light bounce over my shoulder and into the backseat where another light was shining.

  I started saying something about how dark it was and that I was surprised to see the roadblock up so late, but then the light came bouncing back to me and retracted back behind a round, lemon-colored face.

  “Ma’am, are you aware that your children are crying in the backseat?”

  I don’t remember if I said “yes” or if I was just thinking it, but next, I was out of the car and standing against the bumper with four police officers around me.

  “I didn’t drink anything,” I said, answering one of the officer’s questions for the third time.

  “Mrs. Johnson, you couldn’t tell us where you were going or why you’re in the area. And your children are nearly hysterical,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s time you started telling us what’s going on?”

  “I can,” I said. “I will.”

  “Now,” the lemon head jumped in, “how much have you had to drink?”

  “Not a lot,” I answered quickly.

  “So, is it ‘not a lot’ or ‘none’?” the officer with all of the questions asked.

  “I just had a little,” I tried. “I’m having a really bad day . . . and my husband,” I started crying, sobbing so heavily my nostrils were filled with salty tears. I could hear Cheyenne screaming for one of the officers not to remove R. J. from the car.

  “Mrs. Johnson, this isn’t about your day. This is about you drunk driving,” the lemon head said.

  “I’m not a drunk driver,” I said. “It’s not me. It’s just a bad day. I’m trying to get my children to my husband.”

  “Get off of him,” I heard Cheyenne scream and I turned immediately from the officers to see someone pulling R. J. from the backseat. His arms were flailing and he was crying silently in anger.