Chapter 7

Deborah had just left the library. She’d met with a prospective client in one of the smaller conference rooms. Deborah didn’t like bringing any ole body to her home office, so she quite often reserved one of the public library’s conference rooms to hold her meetings.

The meeting had gone well. Deborah was excited about the possibility of beginning work on a project for the aspiring author with whom she’d met. It would involve Deborah doing some editing and adding content to beef up the project. It was a nonfiction work that consisted of several little inspirational stories the author had pulled from her own life. Talking to the woman had inspired Deborah. She had such wisdom and was extremely positive. Deborah was so moved by some of the stories the woman had relayed verbally, she actually would have done the project for free. That was how certain Deborah was that the writer’s words would bless her spirit and anyone else who read the book.

Deborah hadn’t even realized the meeting had gone over by a full hour until the librarian knocked on the door and told them the parties who had reserved the room next had arrived. Had that librarian not interrupted them, there was no telling how much longer Deborah would have sat there and gotten more than her fill of the woman’s sagacity and inspirational nuggets.

That extra hour was a setback timewise for Deborah. Now she sat in her car in the library parking lot, trying to figure out how in the world she was going to be able to prepare the meal she’d originally planned. She definitely needed to have started the meal an hour ago in order for it to be done at a decent time.

She’d served dinner at eight o’clock at night in the past, after not being able to pull herself away from a project. Or perhaps something else had delayed. Like the one time Lynox had needed her to search his computer for a document he couldn’t remember the name of and e-mail it to him. That had frustrated her to no end. She had had to search for forty-five minutes and had cracked open dozens of documents before she found the one he wanted. For the millionth time she’d given him a speech about handling his own business, being prepared, and being organized. As always, though, it had gone in one ear and out the other. The very next day he had called her, wanting her to look all over the house for a piece of paper he’d written a number down on.

Although it wasn’t likely, Deborah wondered whether Lynox had taken the liberty of starting dinner once he saw that it was getting late and she hadn’t returned home at the time she’d estimated. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed his number.

“Hey, wife,” he answered through the cell phone. “What’s up?” He sounded all happy and excited, like he’d had a pretty good day.

“Nothing,” Deborah replied. “Just getting out of this meeting. It went longer than I had anticipated, which is why I am calling. I was checking to see if maybe you had started dinner.”

“No,” Lynox said. “You should have told me to, and I would have.”

“Well, I figured that when you saw it was getting late, you would take the initiative and do it yourself so that Tyson wouldn’t have to eat at midnight.” A minute ago Deborah had felt so light and refreshed after speaking to her future client with all that positive energy. The snappishness in her voice showed that a dark cloud was slowly but surely making its way over to the sun.

“My bad,” Lynox said, his voice no longer as chipper as it had been when he first answered the phone. Deborah had wasted no time at all figuratively pissing in his Cheerios.

Deborah instantly felt convicted. She’d had a good day; he’d had a good day. Why mess that up? Besides, she didn’t want to be accused of stealing her man’s joy. She quickly changed her attitude for the better. “It’s okay. I’ll stop and get something. I’ll make tomorrow what I had planned on making tonight.”

“Well, Tyson is about to go have pizza, cake, and ice cream next door, anyway. It’s CJ’s birthday today.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s right,” Deborah said. “Wait a minute. I thought it was tomorrow. Oh, well. Anyway, I wrapped his present and left it out. It’s downstairs on my desk. I didn’t bring it upstairs, because I didn’t want Tyson snooping around and finding it.” Deborah kept a mini store in their basement. After Christmas, she would wait until all the stores marked their holiday merchandise at least 70 percent off; then she’d go to town. She’d purchase warm holiday pajama sets, snowflake bath sets, mug sets, and so on. She had bins in their basement that she had labeled women, men, boys, and girls. Items that didn’t look like they were strictly related to Christmas, she would place in a separate plastic bin. From there she would retrieve gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, baby showers, graduations, and whatnot, and that was where she had got the Spider-Man bath set she had all wrapped up and ready for CJ.

Time didn’t always allow Deborah to drop everything and go out and grab a gift, and if it did, she’d spend way more money than she liked. That was what usually happened when a person didn’t have time to compare prices. Even though she and Lynox were well off financially, there had been a period of time in Deborah’s life when she hadn’t been. She’d been alone and struggling on her own. She never wanted to revisit that time, so she made sure she always got the most for her money and never spent frivolously.

“Don’t send CJ over there empty-handed,” Deborah said. “I don’t want them thinking we sent our child over there to eat up all their food and didn’t even have the decency to get a gift.”

Lynox laughed. “They don’t care about all that.”

“Well, I do,” Deborah said. She’d heard folks talking in church prior to service starting about how they’d thrown their child a party at Chuck E. Cheese’s, and so-and-so had shown up with all their kids and hadn’t even brought a gift. No way was anyone ever going to be able to say that about Deborah. “What’s my other boy doing?”

“Keeping me from getting any work done.”

Just then Deborah heard the baby coo in the background, as if he knew he was being talked about.

“Now you know what it feels like,” Deborah said.

“No, but he’s fine. He’s tired. I fed his greedy butt and bathed him. He’s about to be out like a lightbulb.”

“Then it sounds like it’s just going to be me and you, huh?”

“I like the sound of that,” Lynox said with a hint of seduction.

All of a sudden Deborah pictured a nice romantic dinner of Chinese food with herself and her man, and perhaps catching a game or watching a movie. Maybe she’d even light some candles and incense, like couples in love did in movies. “I was thinking, I have a taste for Chinese, and since Tyson hates Chinese, this would be a perfect time to have it for dinner, when he’s not eating with us.”

“I’m cool with that,” Lynox said.

“Well, I’ll stop at that place over in the strip mall where Kroger is. I should be home in about a half hour.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

“All right. I’ll see you in a minute. Love you, husband.”

Deborah ended the call, and immediately her mind began to play out how her evening with Lynox would go even before it happened. She pictured herself pulling into the driveway. Lynox would come out and help her carry the food inside. The baby would already be asleep, and Tyson would be next door. She would jump in the shower real quick, and Lynox would light candles and incense while she was washing up. When she got out of the shower, she would walk into their bedroom, where the food would be all set up, and the room would be dim, lit only by the candles and the illumination from the television.

That scenario was something both Deborah and Lynox needed. She would finally be taking a moment to chill out, like Lynox had been suggesting she do. And for once Lynox would get some loving that wasn’t rushed or that she wasn’t too worn out to participate in at all. Yes, she was guilty of sometimes just lying there, hoping Lynox would hurry up and finish so she could roll over and close her eyes.

Besides that, Deborah had been tripping lately, and she knew it. And even though Lynox hadn’t said anything more about the whole incident with her taking the pills and leaving the kids at church, he was bothered by it, she was sure. Well, tonight she’d make him forget all about it. Then, once Tyson came home and was put to bed too, they wouldn’t hurry up and get anything over with. They’d take it nice and slow.

“Yes!” Deborah said, pulling her thoughts back to reality, but hardly able to wait to make her daydream come true. She pumped her fist after starting the car. “It’s on and popping now.”

***

Deborah pulled into the driveway of her home. She didn’t bother hitting the button to open the garage door. Since Lynox was home and his car wasn’t parked in the driveway, she assumed he’d parked in the garage. Even though they had a two-car garage, only one vehicle could be parked in it at a time since bikes, cases of books, tools, a lawn mower, and whatnot took up all the space on one side.

Looking at all the clutter would sometimes clutter Deborah’s brain, so she actually preferred parking in the driveway and bypassing that mess. After putting the car in park and turning it off, Deborah waited for a second. She watched for either the garage door to rise or for the front door to swing open.

Lynox knew she’d stopped to pick up food. He also knew that she’d left the house with her purse and her laptop bag. Therefore, he should have known that her hands would be full upon her return home. But he did not appear. She figured any other husband would have come to help his wife out. “I guess not mine,” Deborah huffed. She counted. It worked this time. She was not going to overreact. So this part of her vision wouldn’t come to pass. She could live with that. “Pick your battles, D,” she told herself.

Deborah got out of the car and walked around to the passenger’s side. She struggled to gather the food and all her belongings. She did not want to have to make a second trip back out to the car. Once she got to the front door, she realized she should have thought through her little juggling act a little better. With no free hand to open the door, she risked dropping something if she gave it a try. She pushed the doorbell. She stood there for about ten seconds and then rang it again.

“You’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me,” she spat. She tried ringing the bell one more time, but still Lynox didn’t answer the door. “Jesus!” Deborah had to set some things down on the porch and then fish her keys out of her purse. This time she used her breathing technique to maintain control.

Once she finally unlocked the door, she pushed it open and was greeted by the sound of loud music coming from the upstairs loft. “Is Lynox playing ‘Just Dance’?” Deborah asked out loud. The song sure did sound like the one she and Tyson performed whenever she played the Wii game with him. Well, with that music playing, there was no way Tatum was asleep. Deborah didn’t let that get to her. Surely, by the time she got out of the shower, Lynox would have him settled. Maybe that was what Lynox was doing; maybe he was upstairs, dancing silly, trying to entertain Tatum and put him to sleep.

Deborah sat the food down on the table and one of the two stools in the foyer. She then went back out onto the porch and grabbed her laptop bag, which she’d had to set down. She came back inside and locked the door. She exited the foyer and entered the living room. Her eyes immediately found the gift bag on the table, the one she’d put CJ’s birthday present in.

“He forgot to give him the gift, anyway? Geesh.” The next thing Deborah spotted was a balled-up diaper. A couple of Tatum’s baby toys were on the floor. A bottle was lying on the couch. Walking into a room that was full of clutter or where things were out of place was as skin crawling for Deborah as walking into a room full of roaches. “I can’t,” Deborah said, not knowing if she was going to be able to keep it together.

She immediately began picking up some of the items. She wouldn’t be able to have a nice, romantic, comfortable evening with Lynox if she knew her downstairs wasn’t in order. As Deborah was about to pick up the baby bottle, she heard giggling coming from the loft.

“You’re beating me!” she heard Lynox shout out.

Deborah wondered who he was talking to. Tyson should have been next door, at CJ’s. Deborah called out Lynox’s name as she began to climb the steps.

“We’re up here,” he shot back.

Once Deborah reached the top of the steps, she almost fell down them backward. She was taken aback by the huge catastrophe that she had once called a loft. There were fruit snack wrappers and empty Capri Sun packages strewn about. Tyson had kicked his shoes off in the middle of the floor, and they lay there, instead of under his bed, where she’d taught him to put them once he took them off. The crusts to a grilled cheese sandwich and potato chip crumbs littered a TV tray. Lego pieces were on the floor, instead of on the Lego table she had bought Tyson for Christmas but had let Santa Claus take the credit for.

Lynox and Tyson were having a ball jumping and dancing around to the Wii game. Sitting on the couch in his baby seat, watching it all, just as wide eyed as ever, was Tatum.

No, no, no, Deborah said to herself as she shook her head. This was not happening. “What is going on? The house is a mess, and you two fools are up here jumping around in it. How can you even think straight with all this mess everywhere? And the downstairs is looking just as crazy.” There was no turning off the aggravation now. As far as Deborah was concerned, the night couldn’t be salvaged, or should she say, “The night as she’d envisioned it?”

“Hey, babe,” Lynox said, ignoring the fact that Deborah had come in acting stank.

“Hey, Mommy,” Tyson said, not taking his eyes off the television screen while he worked his little butt off, trying not to miss a single dance step.

Deborah didn’t respond to either one of them. She immediately began cleaning up the loft in a huff. “Who wants to come home to this mess? Tyson has stuff everywhere. I can’t believe you let him tear up this place like this,” Deborah ranted. “Looks like a cyclone hit it.”

“Oh, he’s just a kid. Give him some slack,” Lynox said in the boy’s defense. He looked over at Tyson. “Say ‘Chill out, Mommy.’”

Tyson mimicked Lynox. “Chill out, Mommy.”

Lynox and Tyson laughed.

Deborah felt as if they were laughing at her. Not only that, but she felt Lynox was undermining her efforts to teach Tyson to pick up after himself. Maybe Lynox was even trying to pit Tyson against her, make her out to be the bad guy. Deborah was so furious, she absolutely wanted to cry. It was building up inside. She had to unleash her anger.

Deborah got up in Tyson’s face and yelled, “Don’t you ever get fresh at the mouth with me, you hear me?”

Her sudden outburst stopped the little dancing machine. He looked to see if she was serious or not. Lynox had told him what to say, and when he’d said it, Lynox had laughed, and so he’d laughed too. Didn’t that mean it was a joke? But what did he know? He was just a kid.

At the sound of Deborah’s harsh, angry voice, Tatum burst out crying.

Lynox shut the game down. “Deborah, are you that upset? Geesh. I’ll clean it up.”

“Yeah, right. If you were going to clean it up, it would already be clean. No, y’all sitting around waiting for me to do everything, like I don’t work all day and take care of the kids too. Not to mention cook and clean.” Deborah rambled on as she began picking up the trash in the loft.

Tyson was standing there, looking confused and scared. Poor thing didn’t know what to do.

“Tyson, why don’t you go in your room?” Lynox put his hand on Tyson’s shoulder. He wanted to let him know that everything was going to be all right.

Tyson headed to his room. Tatum still sat in his baby seat, crying. Lynox walked over and picked him up.

“Hey, little guy. It’s okay,” Lynox told his infant son.

“He’s probably ready to go to bed,” Deborah declared. “You said he was tired. But how did you expect him to go to sleep with you and Tyson up here making all that racket?” She pointed toward Tyson’s bedroom. “And what’s he doing home, anyway? Isn’t he supposed to be next door?”

“Oh, yeah, you were right. CJ’s birthday thing is tomorrow, not today,” Lynox said.

“Did they call you and tell you that?”

“No. When I walked Tyson over there with the gift in hand, Benji told me.”

Hearing that infuriated Deborah. In her eyes it made them look like bad parents, incompetent. “I told you it was tomorrow,” Deborah snapped. “You don’t listen. Got my baby looking stupid.”

“He didn’t look stupid, Deborah. It’s not that serious,” Lynox told her.

It might not have been that serious to Lynox, but any little mix-up, when it came to her children, stung. She never wanted to look like a mother who wasn’t on top of her game. A mother sending her kid to a birthday party the day before the actually party screamed failure in Deborah’s book. Couldn’t she even keep a calendar?

“Well, what made you think it was today?” Deborah asked.

“Tyson told me that—”

“So you gon’ let a kindergartner tell you something, and you run with it?” Deborah tightened her lips and let out a gust of wind that made her cheeks puff out. “Just dumb,” she said under her breath.

“Hold up. Did you call me dumb?” Lynox asked.

Deborah stood there with all the trash in her hands. Had she called her husband dumb? No way. There were two things she and Lynox had vowed never to do in their relationship, and calling each other names was one of them, and putting their hands on each other was the other. Well, Deborah had already broken one of those rules, so it would come as no surprise if she had broken the second one as well. Even though she just might have called him dumb, she was not going to admit it.

“I said listening to a kid, instead of to me, was dumb.” Deborah cleaned that up as best she could.

“You wanna go get Tatum ready for bed and put him down?” Lynox asked. “I’ll finish cleaning up, and then I’ll go get Tyson together.”

“You can put ’em both to bed,” Deborah said. “Heck, I do it all the time by myself. Half the time I feel like a married single mother.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Lynox asked, offended. No, he didn’t do as much around the house or with the kids as Deborah did, but he wasn’t some lazy dude who was lying around on the couch, drinking beer and not working, while the woman brought home all the bacon. He was always busy writing to keep up with his publishing house contracts, touring, or engaging his fans on social media. “You make it seem like I don’t ever help out.”

“Not enough to take some of the slack off of me. But just forget it.” Deborah threw all the trash she had collected down on the floor. “I’ll take him.” She went and snatched the fussy baby out of Lynox’s arms.

“Don’t be so rough,” Lynox said. “Be mad at me all you want, but don’t take it out on him.”

Deborah looked at Lynox with a twisted face. “I would never hurt my kids, so don’t even play like that.”

“Deb, I didn’t say you would hurt the kids.” Lynox could tell by the defensive mode Deborah was in that she was not going to let this go if he pushed the subject. “Just go on and put him down. He’s tired.” Lynox kissed his son on the forehead and picked up the pile of trash Deborah had thrown down on the floor.

While Deborah got the baby ready for bed, Lynox got Tyson ready. He then went and cleaned the downstairs.

Deborah fussed, cussed, and complained under her breath the entire time she was in the shower. This night had turned out nothing like she’d envisioned it. By the time she got out of the shower, she had a headache from thinking about how horribly things had turned out. An hour ago she couldn’t wait to get home, but she had had no idea what she’d be coming home to.

Deborah dried off, put on some lotion, body spray, and her pajamas, then headed out of the bathroom. Upon opening the bathroom door, she froze. She looked into her bedroom to see candles lit. She could smell the rain forest–scented incense burning. Lynox had fixed them each a plate of Chinese food and had warmed it in the microwave. He stood there with two glasses in one hand and a bottle of Stella Rosa in the other.

“I figured this is what you wanted to come home to,” he said.

Deborah’s heart instantly filled with regret. How could this man stand to put up with her nonsense and flip-flopping behavior? She’d been so mean to him and the kids, yet he’d still made her dream come true. So what if the evening hadn’t started off as planned? It was all about how it ended.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” Deborah said. She was not going to make the same mistake twice. She was going to apologize to her man when she knew she’d done wrong. “It’s just that I had pictured us having this nice, romantic—”

“Say no more,” Lynox said. “You think I don’t know you by now? Girl, you plan everything out in your head to the tee. The minute one thing gets off course, you act like there’s no hope. But you gotta learn to chill out, for real. Things aren’t always going to be like some fairy tale. Life has kinks in it. But sometimes those unforeseeable things can turn out to be some of life’s best surprises.”

Deborah stared at Lynox for a moment. “You are such a writer,” she said. “You do have a way with words.”

“I do indeed, if I must say so myself, but I wasn’t trying to be poetic or anything. That was the truth. Now, let’s sit down, relax, and enjoy our meal, now that the house is clean and both boys are asleep.”

“The boys,” Deborah said. “Let me go peek in on them real quick. I gave off such a mean vibe and negative energy. I need to go give them some Mommy love. I’ll be right back.” Whenever Deborah felt as though she had been unnecessarily snappy or hadn’t shown the boys the attention and love that she should have, it would really bother her. She wasn’t going to be able to focus on an evening with Lynox until she went and made it right with them.

She went to Tatum’s nursery first. “Hey, little fellow,” she said as she softly rubbed his head. He was sound asleep. She kissed him on the forehead. “Mommy loves you so much. She’s sorry she came in the house like a hurricane and didn’t love on you before you went to bed.” Deborah put her hand on the baby’s stomach. She closed her eyes and thought good thoughts of how much she loved him. She prayed to God these thoughts would transfer to his little being while he slept.

Next, she visited Tyson’s room. He was asleep as well. Deborah sat on his bed and put her hand on his back. Then she leaned down and whispered in his ear, “Hey, Ty.”

He moaned and squirmed a little.

“Hey, Mommy’s baby. I love you.”

Tyson’s eyes blinked open a couple of times, then stayed closed. “I love you too.”

That made Deborah smile. She was happy that he’d comprehended what she’d said. “I’m sorry for fussing. You forgive me?”

Tyson nodded his head while his eyes remained closed.

Deborah kissed him on the cheek and then returned to the bedroom she and Lynox shared.

When she walked into the room, Lynox was standing there, waiting for her in his birthday suit.

“Well, okay,” Deborah said, shocked.

“Dinner is cold, so I figured we’d skip to dessert, which is hot.”

Deborah walked toward Lynox, sliding out of her nightgown along the way. “I don’t see nothing wrong with a little dessert before dinner, do you?”

Lynox looked his wife up and down while licking his lips. “Sometimes you just wanna get right to the good stuff, and I know for a fact your stuff is good.”

Deborah play punched her husband while she blushed.

Lynox held Deborah by her face. All Deborah could see in his eyes was a genuine love for her. She didn’t even feel worthy to be loved. She’d married this man, knowing all the while that there was a chance that even though he brought out the best in her, she could be as bad as the worst. She closed her eyes, no longer able to bear looking at him. She felt like such a fraud.

“I’m going to do better,” Deborah said, making a promise to Lynox aloud.

He kissed her on the lips. “I know.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said in between the kisses he planted on her lips. “I promise I’m going to be good.”

He stopped and looked at her. “I hear you, but right now, if you don’t mind, I’d like for you to be bad.” Lynox passionately kissed his wife as he lifted her up and carried her over to the bed. “I accept your apology,” he added, and then they went on to share an evening with no apologies and no regrets.