Behind Closed Doors Read online

  In the bedroom, she moved toward the purple chaise and lifted the suit she’d laid there right before taking a shower. This one was her favorite. Partly because of the gold buttons down the front, but mainly because it was a size ten, and the waistband of the skirt no longer cut her circulation off.

  She was five foot six and not much on the heavy side, but over the past two years, she had put on five or six unwanted pounds straight through her midsection. Blaming it on being happily married and settled down. But four months ago, when she’d become completely fed up and hadn’t seen any other way to shed this dreadful weight, she’d persuaded Karen and her other good friend, Marilyn, to sign up for a Saturday morning aerobics class at the health club, and she’d eventually persuaded them to start working out with the toning machines two nights during the week. That is, until about three weeks ago, when Karen had started missing the class and each of the weeknight toning sessions. Tomorrow, though, Regina was going to call her bright and early, because it was already mid-April, and she surely did not want to hear Karen complaining about all the weight she’d picked up over the winter and how hard it was going to be for her to lose it before the break of summer, which was barely two months away.

  After hanging up her suit, Regina left the walk-in closet, went to the cherrywood king-size bed, and turned back the comforter. She sat down on the side and slipped off the Bulls T-shirt and black shorts she’d thrown on right after Larry had left. She debated as to whether she should slip on an everyday nightgown or take another shower and put on a sexy negligee. There was always the chance Larry would want to make love to her when he got home, and she wanted to be fresh. Of course, he hadn’t made any attempts the two previous Fridays when he’d finally arrived, but it was better to be ready anyway, just in case he wanted her tonight.

  When she stepped out of the shower, she dried off for the second time, sat on the edge of the tub, and lotioned her body. That peach-scented shower gel by Victoria’s Secret smelled better than it had in the store, and she was going to make sure and stock up on it the next time she shopped at Woodfield Mall.

  Regina was a beautiful woman. Her hair was perfectly cut in a short, faded style, similar to Anita Baker’s, but with a wavier texture to it. The color was a sandy brown, which complimented her light complexion—a complexion that had her convinced that being light-skinned proved she was just a little more attractive than any and every dark-skinned sister in existence. Celebrities, supermodels. It didn’t matter who they were or how gorgeous they looked. As far as she was concerned, the only competition she had when it came to beauty were other fair-skinned black women or women who were white. Which was why it had always bothered her when men seemed to direct their attention toward Karen whenever they went out to a club. Karen was dark-skinned, and it just didn’t make any sense. They would consistently ask Karen if she wanted to dance, if they could give her a call, or if they could take her to dinner. It had been that way all through college, and, quite honestly, not much different now that they were married. For the life of her, Regina couldn’t understand it. She just couldn’t see it.

  Regina walked back into the bedroom, slipped on her black silk, above-the-knee nightgown, climbed into bed, and reached toward her nightstand to pick up Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale. She had already finished two other contemporary novels that she’d purchased a month ago, but last week, she had decided to read this one again. She, of course, didn’t have any problems with finding or keeping a man the way the women in the book did, but she had still been thoroughly entertained by it.

  She leaned back on two down-filled pillows, stretched her legs out under the covers, and glanced over at the clock on the VCR. It was pushing close to eleven o’clock, and still no Larry. Where the hell was he? This mess was getting out of hand, and she couldn’t help but wonder what tired excuse he was going to conjure up this time. Damn him.

  CHAPTER 2

  KAREN RAISED UP on her side of the bed and glanced over at the brightly lit alarm clock. It was midnight, and John still wasn’t home yet. Damn, she thought. He must have his obsessive ass at that horse track again. Every Friday for the last two months, John had blundered and found his way to the horse track, where he’d blown practically every single dime of his paycheck. And today would be no different. Apparently, the Illinois State lottery just wasn’t enough for him anymore. Of course, she’d never approved of that either, but at least when he played the lottery, he wasn’t spending their bill money.

  Karen was getting fed up, and she was going to put an end to all of this nonsense as soon as he brought his compulsive ass through that back door. John had blown so much money this month that she’d been forced to withdraw funds from her employee credit union account to cover bills their paychecks should have easily satisfied. This was plain asinine, and she’d decided tonight that although they had a great marriage, she’d be by herself before she would let a trifling-ass gambler take her to the poorhouse. She simply wasn’t going to have this mess.

  Karen noticed a light flash through the master bedroom window and thought maybe it was John. She hopped up, marched over to the window, and peeped through one of the slats of the left mini-blind. But when she looked down at the driveway, all she saw was a smaller car pull in, back out, and then drive back toward the entrance of Ridgemore East’s subdivision. People were always using their driveway to redirect themselves when they had lost their way, and that was one of the main reasons she had despised purchasing a house on a cul-de-sac.

  Karen was more pissed off now than before. Here she was hightailing it to the window like a chicken with its head cut off while John was out practically tossing their money away.

  She tarried her tall, five-foot-nine-and-a-half-inch body across the light tan, plush carpet of the master bedroom and switched on the ceiling fan. As she passed by the mirror attached to the black lacquer triple dresser, she noticed a slight bulge in her abdomen. Ugh. With everything that had been going on between her and John, she hadn’t found much time to exercise. Actually, no time. But this abdomen thing wasn’t going to work. Especially since it had taken her six long months to get back into her twelves. That is, without being squeezed to death. And there was no way she was going to commence lugging around each and every one of those extra ten pounds she’d so miraculously been able to get rid of. She couldn’t bear the thought of hearing those comments from her sickening relatives and so-called friends all over again. “Looks like you’ve put on a few pounds.” “You look so different since you gained weight.” And the worst one of all was the one that came from that big-mouth woman from church that day she’d seen her at the grocery store. “Karen? Is that you? I almost didn’t recognize you since you’ve put on so much weight.” A strange statement coming from a heifer whose butt was wide, high, and slouchy enough to sit an entire set of luggage on it.

  The longer Karen gazed at her body in the mirror, the more disgusted she became. There was no question. She was going to have to start back getting on that treadmill every morning before going to work and meeting Regina at the health club on Saturday mornings.

  Other than weight, Karen really didn’t have any other physical characteristics to complain about. God had blessed her with a smooth, unblemished, medium chocolate complexion, and her hair was shoulder length and jet-black in color. Although she usually wore it back in a ponytail, thinking it was too coarse, not realizing that most black women would kill to acquire hair of that length and texture, and the ones who weren’t willing to go to that extreme merely went to one of those Asian beauty supply houses and bought them some.

  When she reached her arms up to tighten the black silk scarf wrapped around her head, she took special notice of the edges around her hairline. She had thought she could go two more weeks without getting a touch-up, but shoot, these naps right here were saying no later than next Friday. She’d have to call Luanne first thing tomorrow morning to make sure she could get an appointment sometime before the end of next week.

  She wal
ked over to the window and once again looked through the mini-blind. The least he could have done was call to let me know where he’s at. But John wasn’t crazy. Last week when he’d decided to phone Karen from the track, she’d called him everything but a child of God. Even used the F word, something that had never parted her lips until he’d started messing up their money. Now, though, that horrible word seemed to roll right off her tongue with ease. And there had been major changes with other words in her vocabulary as well. She’d always used petty cuss words from time to time like anybody else did, but now shoot had mostly become shit, butt had seriously become ass, and darn was straight up damn.

  By now, Karen’s head was starting to pound, so she walked back over to the bed, lay down, and shut her eyes. Without even checking her blood pressure, she knew it was sky high. When she had gone for her yearly exam last week, the doctor had informed her that her blood pressure was one hundred fifty over ninety-five, and Karen knew she had to take this seriously, since her mother had been recently diagnosed with high blood pressure and her grandmother had struggled with it until the day she passed away three years ago. Not to mention the fact that it was one of the most common health problems among African-Americans today.

  When she’d gotten her blood pressure checked during wellness week at the bank, the nurse had informed her that it was borderline high, and that she should consult her physician immediately. That was four weeks ago, and since it didn’t seem to be stabilizing, her doctor had written her a prescription for a medication called Dyazide and suggested that she purchase a blood pressure monitor so she could take readings on a regular basis. Before Karen had left the clinic, the female physician had asked her if she was going through any unusual stress, but Karen had told her no. She wasn’t sure why she had lied, though, because it clearly didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that she had been under an excessive amount of stress—for the last two months, to be exact. Here she was reluctantly making withdrawals from their savings account, trying terribly to make ends meet, and arguing with John every single Friday about the problem he swore he didn’t have. It was a wonder she hadn’t had a stroke.

  Karen couldn’t understand how after five years of a near-perfect marriage, John could pick up this crazy obsession with gambling. He’d always played two or three dollars every day in the lottery and sometimes five or ten on the weekend, but not once had he ever mentioned going to the horse track. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do if he didn’t stop these weekly rendezvous, because John was the kind of husband most women only dreamed about, and the thought of losing or having to get rid of him gave her an eerie and uneasy feeling.

  With twenty years at Chrysler’s auto assembly plant, he was definitely secure in his job as a tool and die maker, and until now, he’d always brought his money home. Plus, the man spent all of his time with her, the one thing she and Regina loved about their husbands the most. It was so ironic how they had both been able to find that one particular quality in the men they chose to marry. Of course, anything was possible, and no one should ever say never, but deep down inside, she’d always felt that John would be faithful to her until the very end. Not because she thought she was God’s gift to the world but because this man had proven his faithfulness to her for five years; unlike when she was married before, she never had to worry about what he might be doing out in the streets or, more importantly, who he might be out there doing it with. There was no doubt about it. This man loved her more than anything, and the feeling she had for him was the same.

  Regina was always carrying on and on about how good a man John was, and Karen’s mother loved John like her own son, as if she’d actually given birth to him. This, of course, was just the opposite of Karen’s relationship with John’s mother. That woman gave the word mother-in-law a new definition: bossy, two-faced, nosy, controlling, hypocritical, conniving, sneaky, and just plain sickening. Hell. She was honey, but even the bees didn’t want anything to do with her. It was amazing how a woman like that could actually produce a child that had turned out to be as warm and loving as John. But then, of course, miracles do happen.

  This woman despised all three of her daughters-in-law, mainly because they had married her precious little boys—little boys who were now in their late thirties. But Karen and her sisters-in-law couldn’t care less if she liked them or not, because they’d long stopped caring about the ground she walked on anyway. The woman had disliked Karen since the first day they’d met and had downright begged John not to marry her. “You don’t know nothin’ about that woman. Somethin’ just not right about her. You can’t trust her one bit. All she wants you for is your money.” Money? Last Karen had checked, she’d been working and supporting herself long before she’d even known who a John Jackson was.

  But it was always about money when it came to John’s mother, because before her sons had wives, “Mommie Dearest” had been receiving financial handouts from all three of her offspring. Sometimes on a weekly basis. That, of course, had come to a screeching halt when each of them had entered holy matrimony, and “Mommie D” has never gotten over it.

  She’d tried every trick in the book to stop her baby from marrying Karen, and tonight was the first time Karen wished her mother-in-law had succeeded. At least then she wouldn’t be sitting her butt here like some helpless child, waiting for his broke ass to get home.

  Just as she opened her eyes and turned to look at the clock again, she heard the garage door opening. It was twelve-thirty. She sprang up from the bed, took large steps over to the window, looked down toward the driveway, and shook her head in amazement. She saw John sitting in their black Beamer waiting to pull into the garage. She couldn’t believe he was still driving it to work. The transmission had started acting up during the middle of last week, and she had pleaded with him not to drive it until he could get it in and have it repaired. Damn. Why did he always have to be so hardheaded? All he was going to do was make bad matters worse. This man’s head was equivalent to steel. Come to think of it, the note on the Beamer was due next Wednesday, and she was willing to bet he didn’t have one nickel to pay it. They could pick the shit up for all she cared, because she wasn’t withdrawing one red cent to pay for a car she hardly drove in the first place.

  By now, she felt a sticky moisture pouring down from her underarms. She was angrier than she thought. It felt like it was one hundred degrees, but she knew that was far from possible for Schaumburg, Illinois. As a matter of fact, during the month of April, those living in the Chicago area were lucky if the temperature even hit seventy.

  Karen hurried out of the master bedroom, into the hallway, and down the open staircase. Today she wished they had bought that ranch-style house down the street instead of this two-story, because by the time she’d stepped on the bottom stair, the alarm system was already going off and John was inside. She had wanted to be at the back door right when he opened it, but getting down the stairs had caused her a short delay.

  She proceeded through the great room with a highly accelerated walk and then charged into the dining room. When she snapped on the light, John was standing at the other end of the glass dining room table and reaching toward the 15-button, ADT keypad, and from the astonished look on his face, she could tell he hadn’t expected to see her standing there.

  For a split second, she’d forgotten how upset she was, because the man was looking as gorgeous as ever. Like her, he had jet-black hair, a smooth, chocolate complexion, and he was tall. Six one, to be exact. His black Guess jeans, complimented by a black Guess sweatshirt, were perfectly starched, and he looked as though he should have been in this month’s—no, every—issue of GQ magazine.

  But so much for good looks. “Where the hell have you been?” she screamed.

  At first there was silence, but from the look on his wife’s face, John knew he had better respond with something. Even if it was a lie. “I drove into Rockford to visit my mother, and then met a couple of the guys from work for a drink.”

  �
��You know damn well you’re telling a got-damn lie. You’ve had your ass at the horse track all night, and now you’re trying to pretend you’ve been somewhere else? Hell, you must think I’m stupid or something.”

  “I did stop by—”

  Karen stepped closer to John and cut his explanation off. “Stop the bullshit, John. All I want to know is how much fuckin’ money you lost this time?” She couldn’t believe it. She’d just used that F word again. This was definitely going too far. This man was making her lose all of her religion, and it was going to have to cease. Her grandmother was probably doing a three-sixty turn in her grave by now, and her mother would go straight into cardiac arrest if she ever heard a word like that slipping out of her daughter’s mouth. “One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred?”

  John just stared at her and kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. How was he going to tell her he’d lost his entire paycheck? He was better off dead.

  “How much?”

  “All of it.” He couldn’t believe he’d just said that shit. While driving home, he had decided to tell Karen that he’d only lost one hundred dollars. He was planning to borrow the other seven hundred and some odd dollars from his brother, Derrick, tomorrow. Derrick had helped him out when he’d lost his entire paycheck three weeks ago, but fortunately for him, Karen was unaware of it.

  “Over eight hundred dollars? I just knew it. I hope you realize I’m not going to keep putting up with this shit? How in the hell do you plan on paying the note on that BMW next Wednesday? Did you think about that? How in the hell do you think we’re going to make ends meet if you keep taking your irresponsible ass to the track every Friday? I’m sick of this shit, and to tell you the truth, I’m sick of you. You need to grow up. I don’t know what your problem is, but you’d better fix it or you’re getting the hell out of here. I can do bad by myself, so I sure as hell don’t need some gambling addict like you helping me. This shit is so typical. As soon as two black people start building something good together, one of them always tries to find a way to tear it down. Hell, if I wanted a man who throws his money away, I could’ve stayed married to that jackass I divorced six years ago.”