Young Wives (59 page)

Angie pulled back her mind to concentrate, and remembered how much she wanted this to happen, so she stood there silently while Lisa threw open the door. She followed Lisa into what had been her own living room, and Lisa seemed to have no remorse or concern at all. She flipped on a few lights, but Angie knew by the
Cosmo
magazine Jada had left that all was in progress. Show time. Angie concealed her glee, went right to the bookshelves, pretending to look through them while Lisa took off her coat, hung it up, and looked in the mirror on the back of the closet door to fluff her hair. Angie had never had a mirror there. It was a good idea. She hoped it made Lisa very happy. There was going to be lots of new things to see in the house in just a few minutes.

Angie heard a little noise, a murmur or a click of a lamp being switched on, and looked toward the stairwell. She kept running her hands over the books in the bookshelf though. “I don’t see it here, Lisa,” she whined, as if the journal wasn’t in her coat pocket. “Maybe I should go upstairs. Maybe I might have left it on that shelf across the top of the armoire.”

“Oh,” Lisa said. “Yeah, maybe. I can’t even reach up there.” Together they moved up the stairs and through the dark hallway. There was a light coming from under the door of the bedroom. Angie stopped.

“Is he here?” she asked again, trying to sound both frightened and accusatory.

“No,” Lisa reassured her. “He said he’d be late. And he would have said hello when I came in.”

She strode up to the door and Angie had a moment to wonder again whether Lisa, in pure spite, was hoping he was there, to finalize Angie’s humiliation. But she just shrugged and followed Lisa.

When the door was thrown open, the scene before them was better than Angie possibly could have imagined. The light spilled out of the room, freezing Lisa in the doorway. The shock of the scene, the colors, and the shapes were amazing: “Jenette’s” darkness, her brown legs bent up in high triangles on either side of Reid’s ruddy arms, the blond of his hair contrasted by Mich’s slightly darker tones, and her pale, matte back behind Jada’s deep glossy one. Even the orange and the pink of their bras and scanty panties added to the visual shock of it. This wasn’t some black lace prostitute or a red garter belt joke. The entire scene was so totally unpredictable, so real and yet so incredibly strange, it was mind-blowing. Michelle was sitting on Reid’s feet, while Jada, in the unbelievably tiny pair of panties, was sitting on his chest. Ha! Take that! Angie had expected it—but what was Lisa seeing? And what about Reid?

Golden Boy looked at Lisa with horror and comprehension, but it was when Angie stepped out from behind her that he turned a real fish-belly white.

Angie looked over his head to the wall. Taped over the bed were several photos, and more of them lay scattered on the floor.

“Oh my God!” Lisa gasped and took another step into the room. Jada jumped off Reid and stood by the side of the bed so that the view would be clear for Angie and Lisa. Her breasts were barely contained by the orange brassiere. The color made her mouth, her breasts, and her orange silk crotch stand out against the deep burnished color of her skin.

“Oh my God!” Angie echoed. It looked so real, and so very, very sordid. Ha! Oh yes!

Michelle now turned her head. Her hair floated like a princess’s, and her finely chiseled, beautiful face and milk-white body looked like a pornographer’s wet dream. “Oh my God!” she too said.

But Jada wasn’t going there. “You all religious?” she asked. “Or do you want to join us?”

“Lisa! Thank God! I mean…I…you don’t understand…I’m trapped here,” Reid said. “I’m…stuck. I mean it. I’m stuck to the mattress.”

“Hey baby, from what I hear, you’ve always been stuck on yourself,” Jada said, laughed and threw a smirk at Angie.

Lisa’s mouth opened and closed like a guppy’s. Angela stepped out from behind her and moved closer to the bed for a better look. Reid, his hands still cupped over his genitalia, gazed at her, his face becoming a mask of shock—and something else she couldn’t identify. Pain? Shame?

“Angie?” he asked, as if he doubted his vision. She just looked down at his package, and wondered just how much glue Jada had used. “I…I didn’t know you were in town,” he said. “I mean…I didn’t mean to see you.”

“That’s obvious. Oh, Reid. I thought you’d promised to stop these sick games of yours.” She almost laughed, and covered it with a choking noise. “I thought that maybe he was over all this.” She tried to sound sincerely disappointed. “I better go,” she said to Lisa. “I…I just better go.” She turned and walked out and down the stairs. Only then did she smile, the deeply satisfied grin of a happy consumer. After all, she had bought that mattress
and
the Crazy Glue that Reid was tethered to it with. She was pleased with both. Her grin broadened.

Jada had been right; the Polaroids were a really nice touch, and she knew that others had already been hidden in bureau drawers, in the desk, and even in the linen closet. If Lisa
did
hang around after this—which Angie truly doubted’—she’d go batshit all over again when she found the photos.

As she walked across the living room, Angie could hear yelling up in the bedroom. She better move fast. She had one more thing to do, sliding the little journal she’d prepared onto a shelf behind another book. It was only then that she realized that now she didn’t really care if Lisa and that idiot got married or not. They deserved each other. Her pain was cauterized, her envy gone. She walked out the door of her first home for the last time.

“You know, I think I
like
this underwear,” Michelle said. “And I
definitely
like the orange lipstick on you, Jada.”

“I should have put some on him,” Jada said, “instead of just settling for the panties on his head.”

“Oh yeah!” Michelle agreed enthusiastically. They were all pretty boisterous. “
And
a bra. To match his eyes. Why didn’t we think of that before?”

Angie, sitting between them in the uncomfortably small shuttle seat, laughed. “As if what she saw wasn’t enough for Lisa to chew on,” she said. “A
ménage à trois
. Lesbianism. Adultery. Miscegenation. Plus a pinch of sadomasochism
and
cross-dressing?” Angie began to cackle. “Poor Lisa!”

That made Michelle and Jada crack up. They probably sounded as if they were drunk, but aside from diet Coke nothing had been consumed—except, of course, Reid’s pride and Lisa’s smugness.

The shuttle jumped and settled as it hit some turbulence, but though Michelle clutched the armrests, Jada just shrugged. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a mountain sayin’ hello.”

Michelle glanced nervously out the window and Angie smiled at her friends. “If we’ve got to go down,” she said, “this is when I’d like to go. I’d smile all the way to the ground.” Then she thought of the baby and changed her mind. She adjusted the belt across her expanding belly and wondered if she could go the rest of the flight without having to make yet another trip to the lavatory.

“It was unbelievable,” Michelle said, over her fright flight. She turned her back from the clouds outside. “I felt so powerful. I ran the show. And it was so easy,” she marveled. “We should celebrate. We should have done something really great.”

“Yeah. We should have spent the night at the Ritz Carlton.”

“I still can’t believe we got away with it,” Michelle said.

“Most men are easy,” Jada told her. “I just loved it when you invited us over to
his
place.” She turned to Angie. “You should have seen him slaver. I could have filled a bucket with his saliva,” she added.

“So tell me again what happened at the very end?” Angie asked. “When I discreetly left the room so that I wouldn’t witness their shame.”

“Again?” Michelle smiled. “I have a feeling this may become baby’s favorite bedtime story,” she predicted. “Kind of like what happened on the day I was born.” She made her voice sugary, like those recordings for very young children. “And then Auntie Jada handed the Bad Witch Lisa a magic bottle of nail polish remover. And she said, ‘This has the power to break the spell. At least it’s how we got it unglued last time.’ And Auntie Michelle said, ‘It burns a little, but he’s into that. If you really want to, just blow on it.’ The Bad Witch started to yell at the Wicked Prince. While she did, Auntie Michelle hid the other naughty, naughty pictures all over the castle, for the Bad Witch Lisa to find later. And then the two good Aunties disappeared, and left the Wicked Prince with his dick in a bind.”

“Yeah. And then the Witch probably turned into a dragon and set the whole bed on fire,” Jada finished. “But we were already on the way to Logan by then. And taken we all had to wait on line at the car rental counter.”

“All stories end like that.” Angie said. “Instead of happily ever after. I just wonder if she unglues him?” Michelle asked.

“I wonder how much it will hurt,” Jada added.

“I always wondered why they called it Crazy Glue, but now I think I know,” Michelle laughed.

“Oh, I thought it was Five-Second Glue,” Angie said. “That would have been appropriate for Reid.”

Jada put her palm up. “Uh-uh. No details, sisterfriend. I don’t want to hear it. Yuck!”

Angie laughed. “God, it looked so kinky.”

“And he didn’t even get to touch us!” Jada gloated.

“Do you know the difference between sexy and kinky?” Michelle asked suddenly. Both of her friends shook their heads. “If you do it with a feather, it’s sexy,” Michelle said. “But with a whole chicken, it’s kinky.”

They all laughed. The flight attendant announced they were arriving in “the New York area.” Passing them, she looked annoyed, as if they were laughing at her. The three of them calmed down. Then Jada said, “God, I wished we’d brought a chicken.” Angie began to cackle, and her friends joined her. Jada shook her head. “Unbelievable,” she said. “I really do feel so…so powerful.”

“We
are
powerful,” Angie said. “Let’s not forget it.” She paused and looked from one to another. “Thank you, both of you, for your help.” She took their hands.

“Do we look like campfire girls at a seance?” Jada asked. “Or are we acting lesbian again?”

“Shut up,” Michelle said. “This is a tender moment.” She turned to Angie. “You’re welcome,” Michelle said. “He deserved every minute of it. And I hope Lisa finds the journal
and
shows it to him. Icing on the cake.”

“I hope she publishes it. What was in it? Where did you hide it?” Jada asked.

“I put the journal on the bookshelf. If she ever finds it, I wrote about how bad the sex was with him. I even put in something about how his dad felt me up at the Christmas party. And how Reid’s breath always stank in the morning. Plus, I made up this affair he had. The one with his friend from prep school.”

“A girlfriend or a boyfriend?” Michelle asked.

Angie grinned. “A boyfriend, of course.”

“What a bombshell!” Jada laughed.

“I didn’t say his name. I just used an initial—X. But I was really graphic. And I
did
say he was one of Reid’s closest friends. Let Lisa forever wonder. I wrote a really good couple of pages about finding him giving head in the men’s room of the club the night Reid passed out there, too.
Very
graphic.”

The plane was making its final descent as the three women laughed again.

“It was a good plan,” Jada admitted.

“Well, one down, two to go,” Angie told them.

In which Cinderella is delivered

Michelle went to open the numbered mailbox she had rented at Mailboxes, Etc. Not that she expected anything, she told herself. Don’t get your hopes up. Her idea was silly, and her ads were probably stupid, so she’d waited more than a week before she came to check each day telling herself not to bother.

Now, opening the tiny door reminded her suddenly of the other box—the lockbox full of drug money that Jada had trusted her about and innocently put in her name. Michelle had been having dreams almost every night about getting busted.

Despite all her fears and her bad dreams, Michelle had done nothing. Typical of her, she thought with disgust. Without someone to tell her what to do, it was almost guaranteed she’d do nothing. But Michelle felt that in her situation now, doing nothing was no longer an option. It wasn’t just herself and Frank but her children’s future, and now Jada’s and maybe even Angie’s at stake.

Since the Boston affair she’d felt as if…well, as if
she
could, maybe, make things happen. Now she struggled with the mailbox key and finally got the lock to turn. She opened the little door, and to her delight, there was a pile of envelopes. Michelle started to pull them out, but realized they were actually so densely packed that she couldn’t do it without tearing a few, so she stopped and just stared at the letters in front of her. They were all responses. Responses to the ads
she
had run.

She looked at the clump of mail for a moment, not believing her eyes. Then, with a whoop, she began to pull them out and tear them open. She stood at the counter of the mail drop, her fingers shaking, as she read them and sorted them by category. There were responses from people looking for work—people who wanted to be her employees! A few she saw right away wouldn’t do, but there were lots of nicely typed—and several handwritten—intelligent letters. Once she had taken out the obviously crazy and one obscene one, as well as the two who had not included a phone number or return address, she had sixteen legitimate responses for help.

But even more unbelievably, there were five requests for her services, or at least people who were interested in hearing more about them.

These little piles of letters represented a whole new life. Michelle just stood there and stared. She’d had the power to get this kind of response? And on her first try? With only a few ads? Even if she never heard from any of these people again, she felt she’d already scored some kind of victory. What was even more extraordinary to her was that she’d done it, all of it, by herself. Maybe she’d still be cleaning, but she wasn’t Cindy anymore and she didn’t need a prince. She stared at the letters for as long as she dared to. They represented a new life—the possibility of a clean life, in both senses of the word. Michelle didn’t have to be dependent on anyone. She could take care of herself and her children.