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“Well, your crush on Jackson seemed preposterous at the time.”
Watching me, seeming to take my measure, she asked, “Know where you fucked up? You were always the hero—hishero. It never occurred to you that just once Jackson wanted to beyourhero.”
No one ever understandsheis the one who savedme.
She continued, “Everyman wants to feel like a hero, no matter how big a fuck-up he is.”
Jackson reappeared. “I’m done. The movers will be here tomorrow?”
I nodded. “The estate agents will be here to prep for the sale on Friday the thirteenth. The sale is on the fourteenth and the fifteenth. Whatever doesn’t sell, they will arrange to donate to Habitat for Humanity. The movers are scheduled for the seventeenth. Settlement is Thursday the nineteenth at ten.”
“I’ll be there—”
“We’llbe there,” Kitt said, taking his arm.
“No, not you,” I said. “When Jackson and I started our life together, it was just the two of us. When we end it, I’d like it just to be the two of us.”
Jackson shot her a look, silencing her. “I’llbe there.”
“Come on, Jack,” Kitt said, tugging on his arm. I waited for Jackson’s decades old retort: “My name is Jackson, not Jack. Jack is my father.” When he didn’t say anything, I wondered if I’d known Jackson at all.
Saturday, May 7, 2016, Janus—“Hello, Sweetie,” Perils said, hugging me. “I’msosorry. I brought chocolate,” she added, handing me a beribboned box with the logo of her family’s restaurant emblazoned across the top. Perils is the CEO of her family’s restaurant, and under her leadership, they have opened chocolate outposts in a few cities on the East Coast and are rumored to be opening other outposts in California.
“Are there any pralines in there?” MJ asked, edging around Perils to kiss my cheek.
MJ had pried Perils from the exurbs to come help me pack, though I suspected they were here more to check on me and lift my spirits.
“It doesn’t look like he took much,” MJ said, looking around.
“He only took some clothes, his three books, his clocks, and his watches,” I told her.
Perils rocked back on her feet as if I’d dealt her a blow. “I told you about buying him watches! I told you time and again. Never buy a man a watch or shoes. If you do, you’ll ‘watch’ him walk away—”
“What?” MJ interrupted. “Where’d you hear that? I’ve never heard such a ridiculous—”
“Terpe told me.”
“Who’s Terpe?” MJ asked like a detective stumbling on a clue, or more accurately, a news reporter sniffing out a false story.
Perils sighed dramatically. “I’ve told you before. Terpe was my mother’s housekeeper when I was a kid, and she helped raise us. She was from the Virgin Islands and the smartest woman I’ve ever met.”
Terpe’s even wiser grandmother, a gifted obeah woman, had passed this dire warning on to her when she was eleven or twelve, Perils confided. MJ smiled indulgently at Perils, which Perils didn’t appreciate. “Go ahead, laugh. My friend Mona didn’t believe me either and she kept buying her husband shoes, even though I kept telling her not to.”
“What happened?” I asked, getting sucked in despite myself.
“He died,” Perils said, a hint of triumph in her voice.
What did you give to your husband? I wanted to ask Perils, she who had married and divorced the same man—a professional football player—twice. Instead, I said, “For forty years, I ate overcooked fish.”
“What?” MJ and Perils asked in unison.
“Jackson always overcooked fish. He was afraid he’d get food poisoning unless the fish was ashes and cinder,” I said.
“I know. That’s why I never came over for dinner on Fridays,” MJ said.
“For forty years, I ate overcooked fish,” I repeated. “For us to end? Like this?”
It wasn’t until I felt their arms around me that I realized I was crying.
