Chapter Fifteen

​The tension between Marsha and Jeremy remained thick. This was the worst it had been since their early days. Though she kept a stern attitude, Marsha was sad. She already blamed herself for Oliver’s hospital visit and she half expected Jeremy to console her, and tell her she wasn’t a bad mother, remind her that everyone makes mistakes and that parents are not perfect. Instead though, he made her feel worse. Resentment built up and took residence inside of her with the speed of cheap new apartment complex. She couldn’t shake it. No matter what was going on between them before, she was happy to wake up to him. Now, she kept her distance because what she felt now was new to her and she wanted to wait them out. Weeks passed before she even came close.
“I gotta head down to Miami for a few weeks,” Jeremy casually mentioned while the family ate dinner one night. I’m gonna leave Tuesday. I’ll be back at the end of April.”
Marsha mentally noted that he would be gone through her and Oliver’s spring break. “Okay,” she said as she scooped a forkful of baked macaroni and cheese into her mouth.
Oliver, half oblivious to his parents’ drama rambled about school and then about how good dinner was. “I love this Mac and cheese,” he said. “It’s better than the one they make at school. All those kids love it. I tell them it’s just noodles and Velveeta. It’s not like how you make it Mom, with the difference cheeses and the crunch on top.”
Marsha watched as he smacked his lips and licked barbecue sauce off his fingers. “Use a napkin,” she said, shaking her head.
“You think you can take me to the airport?” Jeremy continued.
It was as if they were having three separate dinners.
“Yeah,” Marsha replied.
“My flight leaves at ten,” he said, jabbing at the green beans on his plate.
“Got it,” Marsha said.
“Why’re you going for so long Dad?” Oliver asked.
“I got a lot to take care of son,” Jeremy vaguely responded.
“You know me and Mom got spring break,” Oliver informed. “We should go down there too. Mom you wanna go to Miami? We can see Gran ak Granpapa.”
Marsha fought off a grimace.
“Mommy’s tired of Miami,” Jeremy said sarcastically.
Oliver turned to look at Marsha. “Even if we’re gonna see Gran ak Granpapa?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Marsha replied. “But I know when Daddy has a lot to do that usual means Granpapa has a lot to do. Remember the family works together in the music industry.”
“So we can’t spend time with Gran?” Oliver was persistent.
“I’ll talk to her about it,” Jeremy claimed.
Marsha stared at him from across the table. She wished he could read her mind. Di nerve of you, she thought. Mad at me for leaving him with your crazy family but you lie right in his face.
When Jeremy’s eyes finally caught with hers, Marsha looked away. She knew he couldn’t read her exact thoughts through her eyes. There was no point in glaring at him so hard.
Jeremy got up from the table, took his plate into the kitchen, and disappeared into the bedroom for the rest of the night.
When Marsha and Oliver finished eating, they cleaned the kitchen together. Most nights, Marsha would go in the bedroom to spend time with Jeremy, but she didn’t care to be close to him that night. In fact, since he mentioned going to Miami, she couldn’t wait for him to leave. She sent Oliver to shower and get ready for bed once the table was cleared, the dishes washed and put away, and the surfaces were wiped down. Stalling and hoping that Jeremy would be asleep when she finally went to bed herself, she decided to get on the computer and check out this thing called Facebook.
Everyone was on it except her it seemed. People were finding long lost relatives and schoolmates, and her coworkers just could not believe she didn’t have an account as well. Marsha wasn’t interested in finding people in past until that moment. After some time, she managed to create an account and the curiosity struck. She started searching for the names of old schoolmates, particularly the ones who had left Antigua. Most of them had private profiles that blocked her from viewing too much of their information or photos. Before she knew it, she’d gone down the rabbit hole of looking up random names she remembered from her childhood.
Marsha nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt Jeremy’s hand on her shoulder. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said as her heart pounded in her chest. “I just um, I just made a Facebook.”
“Oh,” said Jeremy. “I see.” He leaned over her shoulder. “You don’t have any friends,” he noted.
“That’s okay.”
Jeremy shrugged his shoulders. “When are you coming to bed?” he asked. “It’s getting late.”
He sounded different, as if somehow the tension had dissolved in the last few hours.
“I’m just gonna look up one more person,” Marsha said, as she quickly typed into the search engine. D-e-s-i-r-é, her fingers clicked.
Jeremy cleared his throat. “Marsha, you’re gonna be really tired in the morning, c’mon stop playing around on here.”
Marsha stopped typing and hit backspace. She closed the site and allowed the computer to shut down. I’ll check for Desiré another time, she thought to herself as she followed Jeremy to bed.
*****
Jeremy had to stop Marsha from looking Desiré up on Facebook and get her into bed. He hoped that she would lose interest in the site altogether. When everyone else was scrambling to join the site, Marsha showed no enthusiasm. It didn’t make sense to Jeremy that of all things that night, he would walk into the living room and find Marsha with a brand new Facebook account, searching for people she knew once upon a time.
As he lay in bed that evening while she was in the living room, he realized he couldn’t sleep without her. He tossed and turned and sleep would not make an appearance. Negative energy and all, he had to get her to join him in bed. An angry Marsha was better than no Marsha at all. When she finally joined him under the covers he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed.
Marsha wiggled a little as if she were trying to get away from him, but Jeremy wouldn’t let her go. He buried his nose in her neck and inhaled the combination of Dr. Bonners, Dove Soap, and Palmers cocoa butter lotion. He could’ve gone to sleep right then, but he didn’t. He felt the urge to do more, and didn’t stop until Marsha finally gave in. This fixes everything, he thought as he entered her in their spoon position.
They’d been together for eleven years, and every time they had sex after a fight or in this case, a period of tension, Jeremy felt he’d resolved everything. In Marsha’s moment of climax,  he felt he’d offered her the greatest apology and she had accepted it. When he released, he released all his ill feelings toward her and saw no need to apologize verbally. He figured, they had an understanding.
A week later, after Marsha dropped him to the airport, he boarded the flight to Miami with complete confidence that his marriage was back to where it was, where it needed to be. He felt it was back to perfect. When he landed in Miami, he stopped by his parents, stayed for one night, and in the morning, boarded another flight to Haiti. Everything was back on track with Marsha and he would have nothing to fear while he was in Haiti with Desirè.
Desiré’s eyes shone like Christmas lights as Jeremy made his way through the throngs of people leaving immigration. His steps felt lighter as they almost glided toward each other. He scooped Desiré into his arms, raising her less than an inch off the ground, as she was as tall as Marsha, and kissed her deeply. Haiti was where their story began, and Haiti was where they often met. It is where they felt most comfortable with each other.
For three weeks at Hotel Satama, they would bask in each other’s presence. Every night Jeremy would sneak off to call Marsha and Oliver, then he would return to Desiré to continue as if she were his only concern in the world. They ate all of their meals together, made love, and doted on each other day in and day out. Other than to call Marsha and Oliver, Jeremy sometimes stepped away to deal with the business of the bands. This was an annual routine and Jeremy was satisfied with it. As far as he was concerned, he’d rectified everything with Marsha, nothing negative was brewing between him and Desiré, and so, all was right with his world.
After one of his nightly phone calls with his wife and son, Jeremy went back into his hotel room to enjoy dinner with Desiré.
“Y’know,” Desiré began. “I thought by now you would be past this routine. But now I see, this is just the way it works with you.”
Not having a clue what she was talking about, all Jeremy could only respond with, “Huh?”
Desiré put her fork down and stared at him solemnly. “Do you remember when we met?” she asked.
Jeremy tried to bring the moment into his mind’s eye.
“In the airport,” Desiré continued. “Our flight to Miami was delayed. We were both flying with our families.”
“You were only thirteen,” Jeremy recalled.
Desiré nodded. “I have loved you ever since,” she said softly.
Jeremy waited to see what she was getting at as she recollected their past together.
“It’s like, I knew when we ran into each other here, nine years ago, that since you were married, we would never be married, but for some reason I didn’t believe it. For some reason, I thought you would eventually leave your wife for me.”
Jeremy was stunned. He never saw this coming. Desiré never expressed that she wanted more, so as far as he was concerned, their arrangement worked for her as well as it worked for him.
“I thought—” Jeremy stammered. “I thought you preferred it like this. I mean, you travel a lot for work and your family never wanted us together anyway. I thought it was all good.”
Desiré shook her head. “What can I say,” she pondered out loud. “This is my doing. I never told you how I really felt.”
Jeremy’s forehead wrinkled. “How do you really feel?”
“I feel like you should be my man,” Desiré blurted out. The look on her face told Jeremy that she shocked herself.
“Do you love me, Jeremy?” she asked.
“Yes. Of course I love you,” he stated what he thought fit the situation.
“Have you ever thought about being with me? Like for real? Not like this, sneaking around, spending one month out of the year together and a few nights here and there.”
It crossed his mind, but only when he was annoyed with Marsha. “I thought you liked things the way they are,” he reiterated, not wanting to give her false hope. “I mean, we both know our families will never get along so it wouldn’t work anyway. Plus, I have a son now.”
Desiré solemnly accepted his stance. Things were no longer the same between them after that night though.
*****
Jeremy left New Jersey on a good enough note that Marsha felt encouraged to make positive adjustments on her end. While Jeremy was away, she took the apartment apart, room by room, deep cleaning. Her plan was to have a cleaning company come after she purged the place of unnecessary junk, and then she would go ahead and replace and upgrade some of the furniture herself. She wanted to not only surprise Jeremy when he returned, but push him to seriously consider the benefits of owning a home. She accepted that they would not be traveling the world as a trio, but with that, she expected Jeremy to at the bare minimum, provide her with the space and comfort of a private home.
The weekend before Jeremy was to return, Marsha was in the process of deep cleaning the bedroom. She would have just enough time afterwards, to have the cleaning come in for a day, and then have some new pieces of furniture delivered. She blasted old calypso and soca music, sometimes calling Oliver into the room to dance with her in between cleaning out corners and packing bags for Good Will. There were two closets in their bedroom, and Jeremy’s closet was a constant disaster. What needed to go to the dry cleaners could be found in a heap on the floor amongst other regular laundry. Marsha couldn’t just scoop the clothes up and toss them, she would have to check his pockets as well because he almost never emptied them. At this point she was sure the cleaners had lucked up on several thousand dollars from Jeremy’s pants pockets. This is what made cleaning fun for her though. She was bound to find enough money to go on a small shopping spree.
As she lifted a heap of clothing out of the closet, a heavy belt buckle, hanging from a pair of slacks thumped on a stack of shoeboxes, causing them to tumble to the floor. Marsha sucked her teeth as she threw the stack of clothes out of the closet. She turned to take the shoeboxes out of the closet, one by one, until she reached the bottom of the stack. There sat a lockbox she’d never seen before. She pulled the lockbox from the closet and dragged it to the middle of the bedroom floor. She found out instantly, it was heavier than it looked. She sat on the floor beside it and attempted to flip the lid. Naturally, it did not just open up. It was locked. “Ollie!” she called out, realizing she couldn’t even flip the box over to see if there was possibly a key taped to the bottom.
Oliver peaked his head into the room. “Yes Mommy.”
“Come turn over dis box for me please,” she told him.
Oliver stepped all the way into the room and stared at her quizzically. “Why you wanna turn it over?” he asked.
“To look for di key,” Marsha said, as if he should have already known that.
“There’s no key for this Mommy,” Oliver explained.
Marsha watched as he joined her on the floor. He turned the box for her to see that there was a combination lock on it. He wheeled the numbers with his pudgy little fingers and the box lid clicked open. Oliver stood up and walked towards the bedroom door while Marsha sat with her mouth agape.
“Can we have pizza tonight?” Oliver asked before completely stepped out of the room.
Marsha didn’t answer as she slowly lifted the lid of the box.
“Mommy,” he pushed.
“How did you know di code?” Marsha needed to know.
“Daddy opens that box and throws stuff in it every time he comes back from a long trip.  I seen him do it and I memorized the combination.”
Marsha fingered the quality stationary, stained with scribbles of ink.
“Mommy,” Oliver pushed once more.
“What is it Ollie?” Marsha asked, finally looking up from the box.
“Can we have pizza for dinner tonight?”
“Yeah,” Marsha sighed with exasperation. She would say anything to get him out of the room in case the box was filled secrets she could not handle.
Oliver disappeared from the doorway, getting back to his video games no doubt.
Marsha opened the box all the way up. At first, there were just plane tickets and what appeared to be letters, but as she dug deeper, she found pictures. Her heart dropped down into her stomach, creating waves of nausea as she laid her eyes on photos of her husband with his arms around another woman, clearly at different Caribbean resorts. Upon closer look, she realized the woman is her high school best friend Desiré. Her heart dropped further into her bowels, making Marsha feel like she needed to pass a bowling ball. She dumped the contents of the box on the floor and rapidly sorted through everything. Her gut took imaginary hits as she read lines of love letters like, “Feeling you inside of me leaves me undone and yet makes my world whole every time.”
“Every time!” Marsha’s mind screamed.
The letters dated back the last nine years; a good portion of their relationship and all of Oliver’s life.
“What di fuck?” Marsha whispered as continued to arrange the contents of the box on the floor. Her head was hurting and her heart was pounding. She stood for a moment to close the bedroom door and lock it. She sat back on the floor amongst Jeremy’s secrets and the tears began to flow. Marsha felt so overwhelmed, she didn’t think she would ever stop crying. She could hear Oliver playing his Playstation in his room and she couldn’t fathom facing him now that she knew what she knew about his father. A war of emotions erupted inside her. What does one do when they find out the only man they ever loved was having an affair for over nine years with the only best friend they ever had?
Her tears fell in hard heavy splashes like summer rain, on the letters and photos. Marsha’s physical and mental vision blurred. “I can’t,” she mumbled to herself as snot pooled on her upper lip. “I can’t do this. I can’t live with this.” She crawled across the floor to her nightstand and reached for the letter opener. Unsure if she could follow through with what she was thinking of doing, she crawled back over to the letters. Time stretched on as she sat clutching the letter opener, staring at the evidence of Jeremy’s extramarital relationship, sobbing. Finally, on sudden impulse, Marsha lifted one arm over the other and just as she pressed the edge of the blade to her wrist and little drops of blood trickled out, there was a knock at the bedroom door.
The sound caused her to drop the letter opener. “Yes!” she yelled at the door.
Oliver, jiggled the door handle, but it was locked.
“What is it, Oliver?” Marsha hurled her words at the door, hoping her son would back away, but Oliver was persistent.
“Are you gonna order the pizza now?” he asked.
“I’ll call at dinner time!” Marsha yelled again.
“Mommy, I’m not tryna bother you. I’m just hungry.”
The sound of Oliver’s voice expressing those words, expressing his needs, that she as him mother had to fulfill, brought Marsha back to reality. There’s a better way to handle this, she thought to herself. “I’m gonna order it now,” Marsha said to her son, as she forced herself off the floor. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, and noticed how haggard she looked in just a matter of hours. “There is a better way,” she whispered to her reflection.
*****
Jeremy stayed slumped down in the passenger seat as Marsha pulled up to their apartment building and looked over him. He was giddy with rum in his system and drunk with lust in his eyes. That night after picking him up from the airport, they’d gone over to Monty’s for a few hours where they sat around drinking, chatting, and having good old adult fun. When Jeremy was too drunk to stand completely upright, Marsha announced it was time to go, and she ushered her six-foot man out the door, into the passenger seat of her red Lexus SUV.
On the drive, Jeremy thought to himself, “Thank goodness Oliver isn’t home.” Although he’d spent the last three weeks wrapped up in Desiré from head to toe, their last days together weren’t as blissful. His feelings for her were growing stale and he wondered if the month long rendezvous were still worth it. He missed his wife, and on his flight he realized how happy he was with the life they’d built together, even if Marsha felt she wasn’t getting all she wanted, he knew they had everything they needed.
He felt Marsh’a dainty long fingers tugging at his seatbelt. It was spring, but the night air held tight to winter chill, and yet crickets sounded in the background like early summer. Jeremy knew the cold would bite him as soon as he swung his long legs out of the car.
“You go on up,” Marsha said with a seductiveness he hadn’t heard from her in ages.
Jeremy grabbed her right thigh and squeezed. “Aren’t you coming with me?” he asked.
Marsha shook her head no. “No Coeur, I’m going to go and park dis car in di lot. I’ll meet you in di bedroom.”
Jeremy let his hand go up from her thigh to her waist and he squeezed there too. “I don’t have time to wait for you to put on fancy lingerie or whatever fancy shit you think I wanna see. I been away for three weeks… we partied with family, I’m full of rum, I want you now!”
Marsha sighed. “Jeremy, jus do what mi say.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes.
“You have no idea,” she said leaning over and looking into his eyes. Marsha’s tongue played with the words as they left her lips, “You really have no idea how much I’ve missed you, mi Coeur. We had so much goin on before you left, and I been everything but okay, while you were gone. We need to get back to us. So go on up. I’m comin.” Marsha’s tongue slipped from her lips, brushing over Jeremy’s lips, sending him into a frenzy.
He thought it would take a lot for Marsha to see that their relationship was great, they belonged together, and they didn’t need anything else. At this moment though, it seemed like their time apart had put them on the same page.
“Jeremy,” she said snapping him out of his trance. “Go upstairs. I want to make love to muh husband.”
 “Okay,” he agreed. “Don’t take too long.” He grabbed her chin and pressed his lips against hers hard.
Not wanting to delay, he rushed to the elevator. By the time he stepped onto his floor, he was carrying his leather jacket and t-shirt in his hand, and he had already undone his pants. He nearly kicked his own door in thinking, I am going to ravish this woman until we are on the bare mattress. The first thing he sees taped to a mirror in the foyer is a poster with what looks like a Facebook message.
The message read: I’ve missed you, Dou-dou. I am counting the hours until you are back with me, handling this body like the beast you are.
Jeremy’s heart jolted in his chest. Only one woman called him Dou-dou. His mouth watered a little bit as his eyes lowered and right beneath the message was a color poster of Desireé in lingerie only made of string and lace. Jeremy grabbed his chest as it all hit him at once. The message was old, Desireé had sent it to him months ago. The picture was old as well. How the fuck, Jeremy thought to himself. He charged through the living room, and on every screen, mirror, and window, messages between him and Desireé were plastered on poster-sized papers. The many seductive pictures that Desireé sent colored space between the messages like illustrations of an erotic storybook, but these were not made-up characters. He had been caught by his real-life wife, and indirectly confronted about his real-life mistress.
Jeremy’s heart pounded in his ears like sobering drums. The sweat that poured from his forehead couldn’t wash away the guilt that he now felt as evidence of his nine-year affair wrapped items of his home like gifts. What kept him going? Part of him feared that Marsha would rush in behind him and split his skull with a machete. She’d become unexpected, quiet fire. Still, he plowed deeper into the apartment. When he reached the bedroom, he dropped to his knees. An alligator-skinned briefcase given to him by Desiré had been shredded with a razor blade. Among the destroyed luxury bag lied the love letters, phone bills, passwords, glossy photographs, and more gifts that Desireé sent. Marsha had connected some of the expensive jewelry and watches back to Desiré.. His eyes wandered over to the closet that was now empty of Marsha’s belongings. Only his clothes and the overturned lockbox remained. In the middle of the bed was a note with a letter opener that read: I couldn’t imagine you having to clean up more of my blood than this, so I finished the job on the gator instead. Jeremy shuddered as he realized the splatter, he’d noticed on the note could be none other than blood from his wife’s veins.