Then I gabbed with Bessie handing her the same story with the same omissions I gave her Mom, skirting pointed questions because Bessie could smell bullshit a mile away and finally steering her into talking about herself, telling her I didn’t want to think of that shit and wanted us just to act normal. I felt shit about doing this. She was my best friend and I never kept anything from her but with the way things were with Ty and me, I didn’t have it in me to go into full disclosure. Bessie gave in but I knew she didn’t like it nor did she buy it. She was worried about me. That made me feel more guilt but I set it aside. I was feeling too much, something had to go and Bess had been through the thick and the thin of it with me. She’d stick through a new thin.
I also called Margot and she told me that she’d talked to the HR Director, a woman who had been there since the doors opened five decades ago (slight exaggeration), a woman who hired me, a woman who supported my four promotions, a woman who talked the CEO into taking a chance on me as head buyer even though I’d been assistant buyer for only a year and a half and never been allowed on a buying trip (the old head buyer was a bitch which was one reason why she was asked, nicely but firmly, to leave) which made me the youngest head buyer in Lowenstein’s history and, last, she was a woman who had no idea about Ronnie or Shift until Margot told her. Therefore she was a woman horrified, not that she’d employed me, but that I’d had to live with that. She was also stunned (in a good way) that I’d never let that leak into my work. And when Margot transferred my call to her she was a woman who told me I was brave, she admired me, she wished me all the luck in the world and she’d be happy to give me a stellar recommendation when it was needed, “You just call, shugah. Me and Lowenstein’s will be there for you.”
After hanging up with her, I realized I’d forgotten that Texan women liked strength, the quieter, the better, Texan women liked survivors and Texan women stuck together.
I should have remembered.
There you go. Thanks to Margot I left a bridge unburned and thanks to Ella I had clothes and shoes coming. Two good things.
When Ty said he didn’t know when he’d return, he meant he was going to return when I was asleep.
And he did.
Then he was gone again when I woke up. No note. No Charger. Another mid-morning phone call.
At my greeting, he said this: “At the garage, Wood took me back on. I start today. Boys are goin’ to Bubba’s after so I’ll be late. Wood knows we just got the Charger right now so he’ll pick me up for work tomorrow so you’ll have wheels. Later.”
Then he disconnected. That was it. He disconnected.
I’d said, “Hey, Ty,” and that was all I said.
And he did, indeed, get home late. I’d tried to stay up but I couldn’t. I wanted to talk to him or maybe, at that point, yell at him and I wanted that bad. Bad enough to stay up as long as I could. But I couldn’t stay up long enough that was how late he stayed out.
And again the next day I woke up and I did it early but no Ty, no note and that morning, no call. No call that afternoon. And no call that evening when five o’clock went to six, six went to seven and seven slid past eight.
And at this point, I was pissed. He was supposed to be a newlywed too. I didn’t know what his business was and maybe he was seeing to it. Any man let out of prison would want to get on with his life, I guessed, so starting a job would be good. I could see that. But disappearing for an entire day? Going out with his buds for drinks after work, drinks that lasted into the wee hours? Not coming home until way late? How did any of that say newlywed?
What the fuck was up with that?
This anger stopped me from calling him because I worried I’d shout at him over the phone and I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to do that because if I did, it was easy for him to hang up. When I shouted at him, I wanted it to be hard for him to get away from what I was saying.
At a quarter to nine, he came home in sweaty workout clothes, long shorts, skintight, sleeveless shirt, carrying a workout bag and two plastic grocery bags.
“Yo,” he said to me at my place on the couch watching TV.
Uh… yo?
Three days with the definition of minimal conversation, he comes home when I’m awake and he says, “Yo”?
Then he dropped the workout bag, turned to the counter, dumped the grocery bags on it and started to take stuff out of them.
I turned the volume down on the TV, rolled off the couch and approached the kitchen asking, “Where have you been?”
He turned slightly to me, very slightly, looked down at himself, glanced at me then turned back to the counter.
Although I knew these actions were a form of communication, he didn’t respond verbally.
I sucked in a calming breath so I didn’t unleash hellfire.
Then I started, “Ty –”
“Wiped,” he cut me off. “Gonna make a shake, hit the shower and hit the sack.”
It was then I saw he had a package of strawberries, a bunch of bananas, a pot of yogurt and a big, plastic vat of something I didn’t know what it was. He pulled the blender to him and started to peel a banana.
“Um… we need to talk,” I said, putting my hands flat on the island where I stood opposite him, the island between us, Ty at the counter at the back wall.
“’Bout what?” he asked.
About what?
“Where do you want me to start?” I asked back as he dumped the banana into the blender then opened the strawberries.
“Don’t care. Just start. Like I said, I’m wiped so, sooner we get it done, sooner I can hit the shower.”