Waiting to Exhale (7 page)

The next thing I know, some woman starts calling the house and hanging up. Then I get this anonymous letter at work, marked Confidential, but my secretary claimed she didn't see that, so she opened it. I didn't know what to think after I read it. It was typed. And it said this: "You're one stupid woman. Do you realize that the only reason Russell moved in with you was because the woman he was living with took his name off the lease, and since his credit was so bad, they evicted him? Did you know that? Did you know that a totally different woman helped him buy that 325i and when he got behind three payments she took his name off the title and reclaimed it? I bet he told you somebody stole it, didn't he? How much have you lent him? Has he promised to marry you too? Do you get the feeling that he's stalling because he keeps coming up with all kinds of lame-ass excuses why he can't 'make that move yet'? Dream on, honey. Dream on. You better get out now while you can." Whoever it was signed her name: "Burned Once But Not Twice."

I tore it to pieces. But I told Russell about it, and you know what he said? It must be some disgruntled woman from his past, trying to get back at him. He said he had no idea who it could be, and if I believed that bullshit, then it just meant I didn't have very much faith in him, and how could he think of marrying somebody who didn't have any faith in him? A few weeks went by. It was the Fourth of July weekend, and we had just come back from tubing on the Arizona River. We went on Russell's motorcycle, and when he pulled into the parking space next to our cars, somebody had slit the top of my-5.0 to shreds. That was the last straw. I didn't want to hear another one of his tired excuses. He couldn't apologize his way out of this. So I packed his clothes and put his ass out.

Once it sunk in that he was really gone, it felt like there was this big hole in my life that needed to be filled. I was a mess. I lost eight pounds in two weeks, and still haven't been able to gain it back. I didn't have that much ass to begin with, and now it's gone. I don't know why I didn't get fired: I forgot about meetings I had with brokers and couldn't come up with quotes I'd promised. At night I sat by the phone, waiting for it to ring, and when it did, it was never him.

But I got tired of being depressed, so to make myself feel better, I went on an extended shopping spree: from July until right after Christmas. If somebody was having a sale, I was there when the doors opened. I also became the queen of mail order. At least two or three times a week the UPS man would ring my doorbell or leave the packages behind the big pot of jumping cholla outside my front door. It felt good coming home and finding these boxes waiting for me. Half the time I forgot what I ordered, but I made a game out of trying to guess what was underneath the tissue paper. I ran all of my credit cards up to their limit, which was why I had to get that consolidation loan last month. The bank made me cut all nine of them up, right there in that office, but thank God they let me keep my Visa and Spiegel cards. Russell still hasn't paid me back a dime.

I did not like being by myself and wasn't used to it. I can't remember the last time I didn't have a man in my life. I needed some form of male stimulation and companionship before I went crazy or bankrupt, so I started making myself visible and accessible again. It didn't take long for me to find out that the pickings were slim, and I didn't know how rough it was "out there" until I found myself out there. But this time around, I was determined to learn how to tell the difference between the Real Thing and the Pretenders, and in the course of doing this, I spent many an evening with quite a few understudies. I call it trial and error.

These New Men of the Nineties are scared of women like me. I thought if I was honest and told them what I wanted, then all the cards would be on the table. Silly me. All I did was tell a few of them I was interested in having a serious relationship because I wanted to get married and have a baby. They ran like mice. What was the big deal?

I have always fantasized about what life would be like when I got married and had kids. I imagined it would be beautiful. I imagined it would be just like it was in the movies. We would fall hopelessly in love, and our wedding picture would get in Jet magazine. We would have a houseful of kids, because I hated being an only child. I would be a model mother. We would have an occasional fight, but we would always make up. And instead of drying up, our love would grow. We would be one hundred percent faithful to each other. People would envy us, wish they had what we had, and they'd ask us forty years later how we managed to beat the odds and still be so happy.

I was this stupid for a long time.

Lately, though, I've had to ask myself some pretty tough questions, like, What am I doing wrong? And why do I keep picking the wrong men to fall in love with? I don't know what I'm doing wrong, to tell the truth, but I do know that one of my major weaknesses has always been pretty men with big dicks. And Russell definitely fit the bill. I've been trying to figure out a way to get over this syndrome, but it's hard, especially when that's all you're used to.

I should've paid closer attention to what Linda Goodman and the Chinese astrologers have been saying all along. That I should stay away from Pisceans, Virgos, Aries, Libras, and Geminis. They're a disturbed group. And forget about those Boars, Cocks, Dragons, and Rats. I've had it with men born under these signs, I don't care how good they look or how big the bulge is in their pants. I've dated at least twenty or thirty of these weirdos, enough to notice similar patterns in their behavior, and it's taken me a long time to gain this astrological insight: Pisceans are habitual liars, lazy, irresponsible, and have no willpower; Virgos are perfectionists, obsessive about everything, and freaks in bed; Aries are egomaniacs, narcissistic, and have run-for-your-life tempers, but they're exquisite lovers; Libras are too sentimental and jealous, and so possessive you end up not wanting to sleep with them at all; and Geminis are boring as hell, but they think they're deep, and I've never met one who could fuck.

-I can't say I haven't been tempted to take Russell back, especially since he's been bugging me these last couple of months to do just that. He said he missed me something fierce and had mended his ways. But he couldn't prove it. I admit that I made the mistake of letting him spend the night a few times during the siege of my first dry spell, but last week Gloria told me something that made me want to spit nails. Desiree, the girl down at Oasis Hair who does my weave, told Gloria she saw this woman named Carolyn driving Russell's car, the car I basically bought him, and if she wasn't mistaken, when she got out, the woman looked pregnant. I told Gloria that Russell wasn't the only one in Phoenix who drove a black Z. "I know that," she said, "but who else do you know whose license plates say suave?"

Now I knew I didn't have dibs on him anymore, but I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth, so I left an urgent message for him at his job. He didn't call me back until two days later. He said he didn't know anybody named Carolyn. And as far as he knew, no woman was carrying his baby. But I knew he was lying through his teeth. I called him a low-life, garbage-eating javelina and hung up on him. He called me right back and said he didn't know who was spreading all these lies about him, but I could believe it if I wanted to. He said he was still interested in marrying me, as soon as he got his finances together, which he hoped would be sometime this year. And maybe we could work on having a baby too. But he sounded like a damn fool. He had humiliated me for too long and now embarrassed me no end. What I would like to do is give his ass to the dog pound so they could make soap out of him, or call the FBI and tell them he's responsible for those ax murders I just read about in the paper. I wish there was some way I could give him life imprisonment, because he needs to be stopped. He needs to suffer for a while, long enough for him to realize that a woman's love is a privilege and not his right.

There's no sense in me lying about it. I'm desperate. I haven't been "out" with a man now in over a month. I've been trying to convince myself that I'm still a good catch, but I can't pass a mirror these days without staring at myself. All I do is look for new flaws, trying to forgive myself for not looking twenty-four anymore and apologizing for being a six instead of a ten. I know I've limited myself by only dealing with pretty boys, which is probably the main reason I'm going to the other extreme tonight.

Right now I'm sitting here waiting for Michael, this man who's coming over for dinner. Michael is not pretty, but he's available. He's also a half hour late, and you think he's called? Maybe something happened to him. I hope nothing's happened to him. This is our first date. We work at the same insurance company, but in different departments. To be honest, Michael never dredged up much in me until I'd gone through my old phone book and noticed that all the men I used to date had been crossed off: the ones who'd gotten married or moved or were so pitiful in bed that I didn't have any other choice but to draw a line through their name. So when I saw Michael's picture in our newsletter sitting at his desk, saying he'd been promoted to marketing rep, which was why I hadn't seen him on the elevator lately, and it was clear that he wasn't wearing a wedding ring anymore, and since I'd just finished this assertiveness training seminar at Black Women on the Move, I decided to be assertive and sent him a note of congratulations. It couldn't have been more than two hours after I'd put it in our interoffice mail that he called and invited me to lunch. In his office. Needless to say, I accepted his invitation without thinking of the consequences, because I've never dated anybody I worked with. Well, once, but he doesn't count.

Anyway, he had already ordered two turkey and Swiss sandwiches, diet Pepsis, and Doritos. I must admit that his presumptuousness turned me on in a weird sort of way. I like men who take control. His teeth were obviously all capped, so they were nice and white, and he had sleepy eyes, which some women would call sexy bedroom eyes, but he looked like he'd had too much to drink to me. I put him at about thirty-eight or thirty-nine, because he was starting to get those laugh lines when he wasn't even laughing. Michael also had the shortest, fattest little hands I'd ever seen on any man, and I've heard all the stories about short men with thick fingers before, but there's a whole lot of lies floating around in the world that have become myths that ignorant folks believe. I say make me a believer.

- After the small talk about his two diseased marriages, two consequential children, dialing-for-dollars divorces, office politics, and what have you, it was clear to me that he was what teenagers call a nerd. But when Michael leaned forward in his chair and said, "So tell me, Robin, why isn't a beautiful woman such as yourself happily married?" he got my deepest attention, and all I could say was, "Because I haven't met a man I want to marry yet." I didn't dare tell him the truth, that no one had ever asked me, and Russell's phony little lightweight desperation plea doesn't even count. I couldn't believe Michael called me beautiful.

"What about you, Michael? Do you think you'll ever say 4I do' again?"

"Certainly," he said. "It's not that marriage itself is bad; it's the people we marry who give it a bad name." Then he sort of chuckled. "I think I'm wiser now, so I'll make a much better assessment the next time."

Assessment? Is that what you guys do, I thought, assess us? Well, if I had to assess him right now, on a scale of one to ten, I'd be generous in giving him a five. First of all, he's definitely not my type. He's light-skinned-pale when you get right down to it-and how about those freckles? His hair is that rusty reddish-brown, and he's about two inches shorter than I am, which would make him a whopping five foot seven. He's obviously not spending any time at the gym, because he's leaning toward pudgy. But I will say one thing. That baritone voice and those juicy lips could tip the scale in his favor.

So I had lunch with him again the next day, because he asked me. This time we went out to eat. Most men usually talk about themselves until you don't have any questions left to ask, but not Michael. He was actually curious about me.

"So, Robin," he said. "Tell me a little more about yourself."

I had already told him that I graduated from ASU and majored in anthropology, that I grew up in Sierra Vista because my daddy was in the army, and that I was an only child. "What else do you want to know?"

"How old are you?"

"How old do you think I am?"

"Twenty-seven. Twenty-nine at the most."

He got three points for that. "Thirty-five," I said.

"No kidding."

"No kidding," I said.

"Where's your family?"

"In Tucson."

"So at least you get to visit them."

"Yeah, I do, but it's not all that pleasant. My parents've been through living hell these last few years. My mother had to have a double mastectomy, and then two years ago my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Robin. Is he still able to be at home?"

"Yeah. Which is one reason why I try to get down there at least twice a month to help my mother out. He can't do too much for himself anymore. Look, can we talk about something else?"

"Okay," he said, and took a sip of his coffee. "Do you have any hobbies?"

"Hobbies?"

"You know, things you like to do on a regular basis."

"I used to sew a lot, make quilts, but I don't have much time for it anymore. I do collect black dolls, though."

"Really? What's your favorite color?"

"Orange."