7. Yea

CHAPTER7

Yea

Wyn

“I’m a yea,” Kara stated, leaning into her island with her martini glass coasting over a plate of brie and thinly sliced apples.

Not a surprise, as Kara was my take-no-prisoners, eat-no-shit girl.

She was also petite, red-haired, wore glasses, had two children in their late teens who were more intelligent than our collective group, and thus they scared me, even as I adored them. She was also so good at makeup, a couple of times when our artists let us down and didn’t show up, in a pinch, she had shown up, and done a beautiful job.

Her full-time gig was as a pediatrician, though.

“I don’t know. I say nay and a meeting,” Bernice stated, sitting back, one arm wrapped around her middle, the other one holding up her martini glass.

Not a surprise, as Bernice was my heart-of-gold girl.

She was also delicately boned, dark-skinned, had a mass of fabulous braids knotted up in killer ways I took note of, because I wanted some of our models with that style for a future List and I was going to need to talk to her stylist. She had two boys who were the light of all of our lives, and she’d met her husband Cornell in a very traditional way: he was a pilot, she had been a flight attendant.

Since then, they’d made babies and she’d made a move that kept her close to home.

She was now air traffic control.

“I’m the newbie, I abstain,” Noel put in.

That night, Noel had been there when I got there, and he explained his presence by saying, “I’ve waited six years for a seat at this table to open, I wasn’t missing my chance.”

He was, of course, the perfect addition.

But now the vote of whether to oust Bea by just ghosting her (Kara’s “yea”) or to see if we could work on current issues by sitting her down and talking about why she was so negative all the time (Bernice’s “nay and a meeting”) was down to me.

“You know, I have to say, as much as it makes me sound like a bitch, I’ve been going through the motions with her for a long time,” Kara said. “Having her around, calling her for Cock and Snacktails, inviting her to things was just habit. But in thinking on it these past few days, when she is around, I try to avoid her.”

“She’s a good soul,” Bernice said.

“She is?” Noel asked.

It was, as we were showing, arguable.

But in some senses, she was.

This was why I piped up.

“Once, when Remy was in Houston visiting a site, I got sick. Weather flared up there and he couldn’t get back. The kids were little, I’d had all three by then, and I had a really bad flu. Like, nearly delirious, pass-out-and-lose-three-days flu where you just sweated out a fever and hoped. After waiting for a flight to be cleared for takeoff, giving up, renting a car and driving, it took Remy thirty-six hours to get home. In the meantime, Bea came over, took care of the kids and me, and she was there the whole time.”

Kara and Noel didn’t say anything.

But Bernice did.

“I will admit to what we were discussing earlier, and she absolutely tried to drive a wedge between Cor and me. But when my mom passed—”

Bernice stopped.

It had been years, she still wasn’t over it.

It had been years for mine too, so I got her.

“Langston and Ruth were here, we were all a mess,” she went on, referring to her big brother and younger sister. “Cor was trying to hold me together. And Bea came over and just did stuff. No questions, she just got to work. Like cleaning the dishes and bringing in food and making us eat and setting a meeting at the funeral parlor and with the pastor. She didn’t say anything about it, didn’t make a big deal, and when we pulled ourselves together, she just faded away. But the truth of it is, if she didn’t hustle us to the car and drive us there herself, I don’t even know if Mom would have had a service until maybe weeks later.”

“I’m seeing now why you put up with her shit,” Noel remarked.

“I told you she isn’t all bad,” I said.

“You’re right, she’s had her good times with me too. She’s also, as we talked about, had her bad. But Wyn, seriously? She was the worst with you,” Kara said, and it surprised me.

“Do you think?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah,” not Kara, but Bernice answered.

“Really?” I asked Bernice.

She nodded.

“I talked to her, you know,” Kara said. “After the Cor debacle, and when she seemed to be setting her sights on Remy, I sat her down and told her to lay off.”

“Really?” Noel, Bernice and I said at the same time.

Kara sipped her dirty martini and nodded. “It was too much. It was constant. It actually kinda freaked me out.”

“What did she say?” Bernice asked.

Kara shrugged. “At first, she stuck to her guns, was belligerent, said he was too alpha and maybe she shouldn’t be asked to be different, he should, which was hogwash. I mean, Remy is alpha, but he’s not a dick, and she was using those terms interchangeably. When I pushed it, she was vague. Looking back, it was kind of a confront the bully, the bully backs off situation. I didn’t let her get away with her lame excuses, she said whatever she had to say to get me to shut up about it, except that she’d do better. Then, of course, it came as no surprise she didn’t do better.”

“I just passed it off,” I mumbled.

“Because you love him, and nothing anyone said about him would change that,” Kara replied.

It was Bernice mumbling when she said, “Until it did.”

“Bea didn’t break us up, Remy walked out,” I reminded her.

“You know that wedge she had for me and Cor?” Bernice asked.

I nodded, because I so did.

“Well, she chucked that aside and grabbed a jackhammer to pick away at you and Remy,” Bernice went on.

I sat still and said nothing.

“Honest to God, it says a lot about the man he is, and the respect he had for you and your decisions, also the faith in your marriage, that he didn’t tell you he didn’t want you around her anymore,” Kara put in.

“Why would he do that?” I asked, ignoring the “faith in your marriage” part because a creeping feeling was sinking in.

“Oh, I don’t know, because she dug into him right to him,” Kara replied.

Oh my God.

He’d never said anything.

“She did?”

Kara nodded.

“I remember when he was talking about that project in Chicago, and you had that fundraiser you were doing with the queen bees of Scottsdale, which was a massive score for you, and he mentioned he was flying to Chicago, and she said, ‘Of course you are,’ all snotty,” Kara told me. “He couldn’t miss what she meant. He was leaving you with the kids when your plate was seriously full.”

“Sabre was fifteen then, sixteen?” I noted. “So Manon was thirteen and Yves eleven. It wasn’t like, for the most part, they couldn’t look after themselves, or Sabre couldn’t look after them. And I worked from home then. I was just across the garage. What was she on about?”

“That wasn’t her worst offense.”

We all turned at these words and saw Reed, Kara’s husband, strolling in.

He went right to his wife, and the brie, put some on a slice of apple, popped it in his mouth and chewed.

“Did I say you were allowed beyond the estrogen barrier?” Kara asked.

Reed tipped his head to Noel. “He broke the seal. For years I’ve been dying to tomcat with you kittens. Here I am.” He then faced Noel. “Thanks, man.”

“One, I love you, your phraseology is everything, and two, you are more than welcome,” Noel replied.

They smiled at each other.

I had no time for this, no matter how cute it was.

“What was her worst offense?” I asked.

Reed looked to me. “She’s a man-hater, Wyn. This was why Jordy left. She never ceased trying to emasculate him. Honest to Christ, I have no idea how he put up with it for so long. I don’t even know how they got together in the first place.”

I hadn’t thought about it until right then, but before she set her sights on Cor, and Remy, and yes, even saying things about Reed, she made comments about Jordy that weren’t…right.

Not from a wife.

But it was her, it had always been her. And if I carried that further, when Jordy was gone and she moved it to the other men in her circle, we were used to it and used to not processing it in any real way, so we didn’t.

“And even as a man who feels he’s pretty damned manly,” Reed carried on, “I’ll allow that there’s every possibility Remy’s dick is way bigger than mine.” He turned to his wife. “Figuratively speaking, sweetheart.”

“Of course, I will state with witnesses how satisfied I am with my husband’s package,” Kara, hand on heart, announced.

“Oh my God, I am so glad a seat opened at this table,” Noel breathed.

Bernice giggled.

I wanted to find this amusing.

I did not find this amusing.

“And?” I pushed, aiming this at Reed.

“And, if you women weren’t around, she went for his jugular. She was a virtuoso with it. Always saying shit that was meant to make him bleed, but she had plausible deniability and it struck at his manhood. Like, ‘Oh Remy, you’re too sensitive, of course I didn’t mean that.’ I mean, no man wants to prove to some bitchy woman he’s sensitive by being, well…sensitive to her bullshit. It was masterful.”

“Like what would she say?” I asked. Even though I didn’t want to know, for some reason, I really needed to know.

“That’s part of the genius of it,” Reed said. “I honestly cannot remember a bitchy thing she said, but I do remember a lot of times Remy looking like he wanted to strangle her and thinking after she said something, ‘Fucking ouch.’” He reached for an olive, popped it in his mouth, chewed, swallowed and finished, “But it wasn’t just Remy. She did it to all us men. It was just she kept the real zingers for him.”

I stared down at my martini not knowing what to make of this, but knowing it made me feel exceptionally uneasy.

“I still think we should find out what’s behind this,” Bernice said, but there wasn’t a lot of oomph to it. “I’m not real hip on having someone in my life who I care about, who I just give up on.”

“You’re such a buzz kill, always having a conscience and shit like that,” Kara complained.

Bernice smiled at her.

I took a sip of my martini.

“Have you gotten to the part where Remy isn’t over her yet?” Reed asked.

Noel was also sipping at his martini, and he almost did a spit take.

Bernice made a “peep” sound.

Kara smacked Reed’s arm and snapped, “Reed! What the hell!”

My chest caved in on itself.

“What?” Reed asked. “Should I take that as a no, you haven’t?”

“Don’t you men have some kind of code or something?” Kara asked.

“Not when one of my male friends, which Remy still is…. You got Wyn, I got Remy, but I’m taking Wyn back, as you can see.” Reed threw his arm up his front to indicate his current location. “I’ll finish what I started by saying, not when one of my male friends has his head up his ass, which Remy does.”

“You girlies so should have introduced testosterone years ago,” Noel noted. “I’d say, around three of them.”

“Remy just broke up with his live-in girlfriend,” I choked out.

“That woman was not a keeper,” Reed declared.

“Oh my God,” Kara said slowly to the ceiling. Then to her husband, “You are not getting sex until the end of time.”

“What?” Reed asked.

“Did you just refer to a woman as a ‘keeper?’” Kara asked back.

“Please do not sit there with your hens telling the rooster that you do not refer to men in the same way I just did to that woman Remy was seeing,” Reed returned.

“Now did you just refer to us as hens and yourself as a rooster?” Kara demanded.

Reed grinned at her then reached for a bacon-wrapped date stuffed with bleu cheese.

He ate it.

“Chiming in here,” Noel said. “Men, like I’m sure is the same with women,” he spoke that last quickly and in Kara’s direction, “do not find every reason under the sun to go invade an ex’s space to fight with her,” again to Kara and swiftly, “or him.”

“You and Remy do spend a lot of time together,” Bernice commented carefully.

“Flipside, if a woman, or man, isn’t into it, they do not allow the other person to invade their space and engage in said fight,” Noel concluded.

“We all know I wasn’t over Remy,” I pointed out.

“Did it occur to you, honey, that he had a woman at home, but he was at your doorstep a whole lot?” Reed asked gently. “And then maybe wonder why?”

I looked to my drink again.

Then, even if it was mostly full, I drank half of it.

“That hadn’t occurred to her,” Kara said, sotto voce.

“It destroyed me when he left,” I said to my glass.

No one had a response.

I looked to the beloved faces around the island all gazing at me gently, but intently.

“We were perfect together. Then we were not. He walked out, and the only way I could deal was not to admit to myself that I wasn’t dealing and that I was hanging on to him even when he moved into an apartment, then bought and furnished a home, then entered into a relationship with another woman where she was sleeping beside him every night.”

Not one of them, even Reed, could hide their flinch at my last.

“You’ve had lovers,” Bernice said softly.

I faced her. “Not in my bed, his bed, our bed. Neither of them met our kids. And I never spent the night with them night after night for a year.”

Bernice pursed her lips and looked to Kara.

I kept going.

“We fought about me going to California. We made up having sex. I went to California. I came back. And he had an apartment to go to. Not a hotel. An apartment. He’d been planning,” I reminded them. “Planning and following through with that plan before the California trip, which was a day. I was gone at seven o’clock in the morning and I was back in my bedroom, watching my husband pack, at ten o’clock the next day. When the kids went to him that next weekend, they had beds. You can buy beds in a week. He did not. He already had them, and told me so when he called, one day after he left, to share he wanted them for the weekend. He did not tell me any of this. He did not warn me about it. He did not warn me he was thinking about it. About leaving. About ending us. He did not agree to discuss it after. He filed when he could file. Our attorneys ironed out the arrangements. And he divorced me.”

No one spoke.

I did.

“I asked him to talk to me. I asked him to come back. I asked him to go to counseling. He said what needed to be said had been said. He didn’t come back. He built a new life without me, and he didn’t let another woman in his bed, he installed her in his home and in my children’s lives.”

“Babe,” Kara whispered.

“Now, she’s out and what? He realized what he lost? Or he’s looking for a rebound?” I asked. “Well, no. Because yes, indeed, I did just come to terms with the fact that I never stopped loving him. And maybe somewhere in his heart, he never stopped loving me. But he gave up on us. Not on me. On us. He just gave up. We were perfect, and many might argue my definition, but we were. And he walked away. And when he did, it hurt so bad, I couldn’t face it until three years later with a martini in my hand and my best people around me and…”

My voice cracked, my glass was swept away, and Bernice’s arms were around me with Noel patting me on my back because I’d lost it.

Three years of wracking grief and despair and heartbreak poured into Bernice’s (rather fabulous) yellow blouse, and I was ashamed to say, this went on for a while.

Eventually, through my sobs I heard Reed growl, “That stupid motherfucker.”

“Reed, honey, chill,” Kara whispered.

I sat back abruptly and swiped my face, announcing, “I’m okay.”

“Gurl, you’re a fucking mess. Shut up with that,” Noel replied.

I shook my head, short quick shakes while sniffing.

“I’m fine. I will be fine. Eventually, I’ll be fine.” I cleared my throat and picked up my glass again, taking a sip, then repeating, “I’m fine.”

“You have to know, if there’s one place in the world it’s okay you’re not fine, it’s here,” Kara said.

I nodded to her and looked to Reed and stated, “She slept at his side.”

He winced and whispered, “Sweetheart.”

“He didn’t cheat on me. We were over. But do you get me?” I asked Reed.

He didn’t answer me.

He looked at his wife and his voice was rough when he declared, “If you ever think of leaving me, I’m chaining you to my side.”

Her face got soft, and she touched his chest.

Bernice scooted her stool very close to mine on one side, and Noel did the same on his so I was sandwiched between them.

I reached for a date, but before putting it into my mouth, I said, “We’re not the sort of people who give up on a friend. Maybe Bea’s hurting and all of this has been a cry for help we’ve been avoiding because we didn’t want to confront it. We’ll talk to her. And then what will be, will be.”

“I’m a yea with that,” Kara said.

“Me too,” Bernice said.

“The estrogen barrier is back up on that one,” Reed said.

“Word, my brother,” Noel said.

I popped the date in my mouth and chewed.

I was sure it was delicious.

I didn’t taste a thing.