The Thing About Home, page 30
Granna’s words came to my memory. “Time don’t always belong to you.” She’d been talking about love, but it applied to everything. I didn’t want to waste three years doing something I dreaded starting. My great-grandmother Odessa’s words also hovered in the peripheral of my mind.
“The women before you could only dream their dreams. They hoped for a better day for their daughters and all the women down their family line.”
I owed it to them to choose my dream. I owed it to myself. And it wasn’t this job. It was a life in Georgetown with a vegetable in one hand and a camera in the other. My dream was a place. A place that had crept into my heart and settled there. It called to me from seven hundred miles away. I wasn’t experiencing reverse culture shock. My subconscious was rejecting the life I didn’t want.
Essie was off the phone. Just as I was about to tell her I had something to say, the door whooshed open, and a man entered bringing big-shot exuberance into the room. I recognized him from the website. He was the CEO. He walked to me and took my hand. I stood.
“Casey, Rick Lassiter. It’s a pleasure. I was told you had to delay this meeting. You have my condolences on the loss of your grandmother.”
I thanked him. He released my hand, barked an order for water, and took a seat across from me. Smiling, he said, “Let’s get this show on the road. I have a plane to catch.”
One of the women, I surmised an assistant whom they hadn’t even had the courtesy to name during introductions, rushed a bottled water to him. Essie stood. She picked up a remote and clicked it. A white screen slowly inched down. With another click, the first page of a presentation appeared.
“May I say something?” I inched my bottom out of my seat again and stood to my full height. All eyes were on me. “I appreciate this offer, but I’ve reconsidered.”
Rick pitched an eyebrow. “Reconsidered what?”
“The position.”
“What about it have you reconsidered?” Essie asked.
“I’m not going to take it.”
Every face in the room turned red. Rick cleared his throat. “Not taking it?”
I folded my hands together in front of my waist. “I’m not.”
“What is this? Are you looking for more money? The deal memo was sent to her, right?” Rick swung his swivel chair in the direction of Essie and the other executives.
The word yes flew out of all their mouths.
“I received the deal memo and the contract.”
“You agreed to the terms. The time for negotiation is over,” Essie said.
“I’m not trying to negotiate. It’s not about money.” I pressed my lips together and then opened my mouth again. “I’m not interested in the position. I apologize for wasting everyone’s time. I was already en route when I made my final decision.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” The woman who was introduced to me as the director of marketing was visibly livid. “You’ve got to be.” She looked at Essie, her next comment directed to her. “This is why I didn’t want her.” Then she looked back at me. “Do you not realize how lucky you are to have this? I didn’t want you. You got this as a favor to an old friend who had to beg us to offer it to you.”
Blood pumped loud and hard in my ears. My mind raced to thoughts about who could have fought for me, but I knew where the answer to that lay—with my mother. “I didn’t know I had friends in such high places,” I said. That further enraged them. “I’m sorry about your time.”
The marketing director laughed. “Good luck. You’re going to need it.” She dropped back into her chair and swiveled it around until tufted leather was all I could see.
I turned too. I didn’t give them a backward glance. They didn’t deserve it, not after screaming about how much they didn’t want me anyway. Adrenaline fueled by the conviction and strength I’d gotten from Odessa, Ida, and Victoria Black moved my feet across the floor until I was on the other side of the conference room door. I smiled and thanked the women who had the strength to endure so I could soar.
Within five minutes, I was back on the street and grateful to be breathing air outside the building. This time I ordered a rideshare. While I was waiting, I walked to the street vendor and got me a good ole New York City hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut. I took a selfie near the stand and uploaded it to the message for Nigel with the text: I told you I eat street food.
My car arrived. The driver confirmed I was going to Park Slope and pulled away from the curb. The ride out of the city was just as good as the ride coming in, but even better because I felt better, relieved, free. I decided to make a video. I’d learned a lot about myself over the past months. I could share with my followers. Who knows, maybe they would follow my photography.
I flopped down on a beanbag chair and opened my Instagram account. I turned on the camera. I pressed the button for Live. When I came into focus, I used my free hand to wave and then I said, “Hey, family. It’s me, Casey.”
I waited ten, twenty, forty, sixty seconds until the hearts and comments welcoming me back flooded in.
@YourGirlCaseyB We miss you!
@YourGirlCaseyB Where have you been?
@YourGirlCaseyB You look beautiful.
People said the same things over and over again.
I appreciated their kindness. I replied, “I miss you all. I took a break. A long one. I was burned out, so I needed it. I’m glad to see so many of you didn’t unfollow me.” I chuckled and continued. “Part of my message on this page was that all women are beautiful and that we all deserve happiness, but I’m not sure I have always believed it myself.
“After I first made the infamous video, my mother told me to pivot. To be honest and vulnerable. To help my followers see that bad things happen to all of us, even influencers, but I didn’t want to do it, and now I know why. I spoke beauty and authenticity, but when push came to shove, I couldn’t live it. But the break was a good thing. I learned a lot about myself and found a new fountain of strength.”
I paused to smile and read comments. “I can’t give you all the details yet because I have a project in the works, but I will say I’ve been healing and growing and learning. I have the happiness I deserve.”
I stayed online for an hour. My message had been only about ten minutes, but I spent the rest of the time chatting with my abandoned followers. I didn’t tell them I owned a farm or about Granna. I was saving that for the documentary. But I did tell them I would be publishing a new page where they could keep up with Casey Black. @YourGirlCaseyB was no longer who I was.
I looked at the time on the phone. Nigel hadn’t texted me back. He wasn’t on his phone all the time like most people—like me—so it was fine. I went to the page I made for him. As expected, it was still private. There was still only the one picture I’d uploaded, the one with the two of us sitting in the water near the edge of the beach. My head was back on his shoulder. My hair smooshed against the side of his face, the sun warming the richness of our skin. And then there was a new caption that he must have recently added: Looks like love.
The emotions I’d pushed way down when I left Georgetown came bubbling up. It did look like love. It felt like it too. I imagined him in the hot tub. Relaxed, shirtless, giving enough masculine energy to power every piece of farm equipment I owned. Was he missing me as much? Was he sulking as he soaked?
I hoped so because there was a Black for that problem, and it was me. I was slipping in as soon as I got back to Georgetown. But there was one thing I needed to do first.
38
This new season required turned soil.
I texted Drew and asked him to meet me at a restaurant near his office. I spotted the back of Drew’s head before the hostess moved in the direction of his table. Funny, he had his back to the door. Drew never did that. I curiously wondered if he was afraid to face me. The hostess stopped at the table, and Drew raised his eyes to mine. A slight smile tugged at the corner of his lips. Ever the gentleman, he scooted his chair back.
“No, stay,” I said, slipping into my chair without his help.
The hostess put menus in front of us. It had been only three months since I’d seen Drew, but it felt like years. I wasn’t being mean or critical when I assessed him. He looked tired and older.
“You look great.” He told no lies. I had never looked so good in my life.
I thanked him and reached for my menu.
He cleared his throat. “I read about the Now Cosmetics thing. Good for you.”
I shrugged as I perused the menu. “I turned it down.”
The waitress swooped in and placed two glasses of wine in front of us. I was quick to slide mine aside. “Actually, I’ll have . . .” I hesitated. “Do you have sweet tea?” The stuff had grown on a sistah.
“Sweetened tea.” She corrected me, northern style. “Lemon?”
“Yes, plenty of lemon and half the ice.” We used too much ice in the North. It froze the flavor out the glass.
“Did you need me to take that?” She pointed her pen in the direction of my glass of wine.
“No, he’ll have both.” I glanced at Drew, and he reached for his first glass. He always had two—especially at dinner.
“Did you need more time with the menu?”
He closed his menu. “I’m ready.” Those words had a double meaning—the look in his eyes clued me into that.
“Nothing for me,” I said. My phone pinged, and I reached for it while Drew placed his order.
It was Swella. I silenced the phone and returned it to my bag. “You wanted to talk.”
He cleared his throat. “I don’t want our last conversation to be the one we had on the street. I want you to know what happened at the end of the marriage wasn’t your fault.”
The heat of my temper rose, but I contained it. He didn’t deserve to see me emotional. “I know that. You couldn’t possibly think that I believe I deserved to be humiliated by you that way.”
“Of course not.” He took a deep breath. “Let me get this out, okay?” He took another sip of his wine. “I treated you poorly, and I’m sorry.”
“Drew, I know you’re in a relationship with that lawyer from your firm, and I know it started when we were together, so ‘sorry’ is cliché and tired.”
He smiled uncomfortably. “She doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
Only a coward would say his mistress had nothing to do with his marriage. “I don’t want to spend time talking about your girlfriend. What I don’t understand is why you couldn’t have told me before the ceremony. Why didn’t you let me cancel before everyone was there?”
“Because I was going to do the ceremony.” He stalled and cleared his throat. Again. It was a nervous habit. Another weakness for him as a lawyer. “My girlfriend gave me an ultimatum. She told me if I went through with the vow renewal, she would leave the country. She’s from England. Her family is still there. She was packing.”
I fought to keep my voice even and low. “Since when do you respond to ultimatums?”
The waitress interrupted, placing my tea on the table. Once she was gone, Drew continued. “Since she’s pregnant.”
I blinked rapidly a few times but held on to my nonemotional composure as best I could.
“Six months. I thought you knew. I thought your mother would tell you. She knew before I signed the divorce papers.”
He was having a baby without me, seemingly effortlessly. That stung—just a little, but it did. “She didn’t tell me.”
“I’m shocked. She didn’t like me much. I thought she’d revel in telling you that.”
I raised my glass and took a sip of my tea. It was nothing like the tea in South Carolina. There was no comfort in it. “Finish your story.”
“She thought I was leading her on when I told her . . .”
“That you didn’t love me anymore.” I nodded. “Otherwise, why would you be renewing your vows?”
“Right. I didn’t want her to leave.”
I guffawed. “You let your girlfriend manipulate you into embarrassing your wife.”
“I wanted the life I could have with her. A simpler life.”
I shot him a nasty look before I looked away to ask the next question. “So I was too complicated?” I cut my eyes back to him to see his truth.
Drew didn’t respond.
“You were supposed to say no.” I laughed bitterly. All efforts to not show emotion were over.
“Case, it’s like I said, it was the social media. It was everything, and I should have talked to you about it more. I should have told you I needed our lives to change, but I don’t know that I had the faith to believe that it would matter.”
“Why wouldn’t it have mattered?”
“Because it was bigger than me, Casey. There’s a man out there that can get you to put the phone down and pay attention. I’m not that man. You never loved me like that.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not, and you know it. This marriage has been a trio from the beginning.”
“You’re going to blame my mother now.”
“Not your mother. Your fandom.”
“And yet, up until today, I haven’t posted a single video since we split up.” I laughed. “See how you were wrong about me.”
“You’re right. I guess we were wrong about each other.” Drew reached for my hand, but I didn’t let him take it. “We grew apart, but I didn’t want you to believe a lie. I didn’t renew our vows because I was pressured not to and that was my bad. I owed you more than that. I owed you the truth way before that day at the church.” Drew took in a deep breath and let it out hard. “You’re an amazing woman, Casey. Whoever ends up with you is going to be a lucky man.”
Nigel entered my mind. Good, kind, patient, honest Nigel.
“Are you okay?” Drew asked.
“Yeah, I was just thinking about the man who’s going to end up with me. He’s waiting. I need to go.” I stood. “Thanks for the closure. I wish you well.” This time when my lips parted, my smile was genuine. I turned and strolled out of the restaurant on the same steam I’d used earlier when I left the conference room.
The soil was turned.
39
My mother was angry about the Now Cosmetics deal. We’d gone ten rounds about it already and I didn’t care. I’d stepped out of the spotlight, and I liked my new life. That wasn’t really what the tension was about it. She’d called in a favor, and I’d made her look bad. But that wasn’t my fault. She should have told me.
We were quiet for a long time. I wasn’t looking at her. She wasn’t looking at me. We both sat in dining room chairs with our legs crossed over our knees and elbows on the table looking at opposite sides of the room. We’d had more tension in the past three months than we’d had in years. My social media blowup had literally blown up my life. As painful and shameful as it had all been, I wouldn’t change it. I needed to inspect the wreckage it left behind. That wreckage was my life.
“You knew Drew’s girlfriend was pregnant.” I was expecting something to enter her eyes, but she was as stoic as if I’d mentioned Drew had an ingrown toenail. “Mother, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought it would hurt you, and you were already hurt enough because he left.”
“But, Mom, it’s been months. I’ve been playing the tape of my marriage over and over in my head, trying to figure out how I missed that Drew had so little love and regard for me. How I got caught out there like that. You could have answered that question.”
“I didn’t see you as being caught. This is his mess.”
“It isn’t just Drew’s mess. My marriage is a part of my story. It is the story of the ending of my marriage. And I had a right to know. You did the same thing Drew did.”
“Casey, when you have . . .” My mother stopped.
I knew what she was going to say. She’d said it a million times when I was growing up: “Go ahead. When you have a child, you’ll understand how hard it is to parent.”
“I’m not your child. I’m your adult daughter. Those two are not the same thing.”
My mother rolled her bottom lip in. Her lashes blinked rapidly a few times like I’d said something that jarred her.
“I had a right to know. I didn’t need to be blindsided in some restaurant by him. That was hurtful.”
My mother’s eyes widened. She shrugged and pushed back in her chair. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
We were quiet again, and my mother asked, “You’re going back to South Carolina, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Is that why you went looking for your daddy’s people? So you could replace me?”
I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “You will always be my mother.” I pinned her with my eyes. “Always.”
My mother placed her other hand on top of our hands. “Baby, I know that better than you do.”
“So you have no reason to think anybody can replace you.”
“The Blacks are so lucky. They get to come in for the shiny part of your life. After you’ve been raised.”
My mother was conveniently forgetting that she was the reason they got me after I’d been raised, but there was no point rehashing that. We’d already had that conversation. She did what she did, and she was apparently good with it.
“You keep talking about me having a new family, not me having more family. They are more family. More people to care about me and love me and teach me things. No one’s ever going to replace you.”
My mother took a deep breath and removed her hands from mine. “I was wrong to publish your page. And I see now that I should have talked to you about many things I did over the years, but this Drew thing, that wasn’t business, baby. I wanted to protect you.”
My mother’s eyes got wet. Again, a rare occurrence. She continued, “I knew things changed between you and Drew. Anyone looking from the outside in could see, so I wasn’t surprised to find out he had an affair, which is why I hired somebody to confirm it. I was determined he was not going to hurt you that way and then walk away with your hard-earned money so he could spend on his new woman.” She shook her head and swiped at her eyes. “I may not be perfect, but let me tell you this . . . I’d fight a lion for you.”
