CHAPTER 29

Maxwell arrived home mentally and physically spent. He went straight to the bar and poured himself a scotch on the rocks. Drink in hand, he plopped down on his living room sofa and tried to unwind. Normally, his spacious loft apartment was a welcome escape from the nonstop hustle of the salon. Tonight, however, his mind roamed to and fro—restlessly, anxiously. Dee Dee’s demands. Theresa’s expectations.

Dee Dee has got me running around making sure everything is going right with the upcoming magazine shoot.

And Theresa. I don’t know what to do with her. It’s obvious that she wants me back, but I can’t go back there, I can’t open my heart again…

He closed his eyes and thought about all the good times they’d had. They had been so happy. When she walked into Behave Hair Salon, to him, Theresa was like a breath of fresh air. They quickly fell in love, and after only six months of dating, he proposed to her; she had him that sprung.

Then he found out about her past.

The sad part was that Theresa’s own mama told him. Told him about the real Theresa. All the stories she’d told him of her childhood—growing up an only child

…her parents death…being raised by her loving grandparents…

Lies, lies, lies…all lies.

“Is this Maxwell Alexander?”

Of all the places to call, she had to call him at his job.

“Yes. Who may I ask is calling?”

“This is Carol, Theresa’s mother.”

“That’s impossible. Her mother is dead.”

“Humph. So that’s what she’s going around saying this time? Well, believe you me, I’m alive and kicking, baby.”

Maxwell started coughing and reached for a glass of water.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I think you’ve got the wrong person.”

“This is the Maxwell Alexander that’s engaged to my only daughter, Theresa Bryant, isn’t it?”

“No, ma’am, my fiancée’s name is Theresa McArthur.”

“I’m talking about her maiden name—Bryant, not her ex-husband’s name.”

“No, no, you’ve got the wrong man. Theresa has never been married.”

She laughed then, long and raspy, almost like a cough.

“So you’re saying that Theresa was not raised by her grandparents?”

“That lyin’ hussy! She don’t even know her grandparents. Listen, that’s why I called you. I figured you needed to know the truth about who you really dealing with…”

And so she told him about Theresa’s wild days as a teenager, her sexual escapades, her problems with drugs and alcohol. It was a list without end. Or so it seemed.

“Five?”

“You heard me boy, five miscarriages. And them just the ones I know about. Yeah, that hussy is dry as a bone. Doctors say she done messed her insides all up with all the drugs, so ain’t a chance in the world that she can have a baby.”

“You saying she can’t have children?”

“Nope. That girl is barren as the Sahara desert. She can’t never have no kids. What she do, lie and tell you that she want a big family?”

She started laughing hysterically.

“Boy, wait ‘til I tell Harold that she done caught another one talking about that family mess again. He gonna laugh ‘til his head fall off!”

“What do you mean, ‘another one’?”

“Boy, you really think you special, don’t you? You would probably be her fourth husband, and probably the tenth or eleventh person she’s been engaged to. Ain’t you been listenin’ to anything I’ve been sayin’? She’s a fraud, son, a fake, a phony. Ain’t nothing real on her, except I am surprised that she kept her first name this time. Look, you tell her the jig is up, okay?”

Maxwell remembered his hands shaking from anger.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“ ’Cause it ain’t right what she be doing. I thought that maybe if you knew who she was, who she really was, it might help you decide whether or not you would want to spend the rest of your life with this girl. I mean, wouldn’t you want to know who you was marryin’?”

“Yes,” Maxwell said, his voice cracking. “Yes, I would like to know. Thank you, I guess.”

“I ain’t saying y’all got to break up; I’m just saying you should know the whole deal, that’s all.”

When the call ended, Maxwell didn’t know what to think, much less how to process what he’d been told. All this time working together and then falling in love, and now this. Everything she ever said was a lie. She was a lie.

He later confronted Theresa about what her very alive mother had alleged, and fully expected her to scream and shout, “Lies!” He expected her to say, “They’re all lies!”

Instead, she just sat down on the couch and cried soundlessly. She admitted everything and then some. Admitted things he didn’t want or need to know.

“Do you still love me?” she asked, her face red and puffy.

“Theresa, how can I still love you when I don’t even know who you are?”

She nodded, slid the three-carat engagement ring off her finger, and walked out of his apartment for the last time.

It broke his heart to see her leave, but there was no way he could be with someone whose life was a web of lies and deceit. And what about children? Not having kids was a big deal to him. A very big deal. If they had gotten married, how was she planning to get around that? With another lie? And yet another to keep her deception alive?

She never came back to work after that. Dee Dee simply said she had resigned due to personal problems.

Yeah, she had personal problems.

Over the next year or so, he heard reports of her moving around a lot—New York, Chicago, L.A. She wrote him from D.C. apologizing for everything she’d done and asking him to call her so they could start over. He kept the letter for a couple of weeks and then threw it away, angry at himself for actually considering it.

She resurfaced in Houston a couple of months ago, and was hired immediately as one of the assistant managers. Maxwell now regretted having complained to Dee Dee about his workload. If he hadn’t, maybe they would have never seen each other again.

What was she doing? I thought I could handle being around her, thought that after all this time I was strong enough. But every day gets harder and harder. She even smells the same, like warm vanilla. He closed his eyes, trying to remember what it felt like to be with her.

He sat straight up. I’m not going down that road again. I’ve been a fool once; I’m not gonna be a fool twice. I’m getting too old for this mess. I want to settle down, have some kids. I’m thirty-six years old, thirty-seven in a couple of months. I don’t want to be a bachelor forever.

Maxwell picked up the remote and clicked on the TV, effectively blocking Theresa from his mind. For now, anyway.