Part 3 (1/2)

”I'm sorry,” her only child continued, ”but there's just not enough room.”

Franny closed her eyes as she felt the heaviness in her heart make its way up to her throat. She hung up the phone without saying good-bye. What else could she do? The heaviness in her heart would not allow her to speak, and now it was keeping her from moving her left arm.

Chapter Five.

Lorenzo turned the key in the lock and opened the front door. He reached into the pocket of his stench-filled jacket and took out the small plastic bag containing the last two pills. After he placed them on the living-room table, he took off his jacket and let it fall to the floor. Then he went into the living room, grabbed the blanket from the microfiber couch, and began folding it. After he was finished, he threw it on the back of the couch and the gust of air it created knocked the wedding picture of him and Tia off the end table.

Lorenzo picked up the courthouse photo and studied Tia's face framed by tiny locks of hair. They stood side by side, and he towered over her as she smiled into the camera. He remembered his parents attending the occasion, stoic witnesses, and then quickly leaving after the ceremony had ended.

It had been a dismal affair with everyone returning to whatever they had been doing afterward, treating the whole thing as something on their to-do list that could now be crossed off.

He gazed at his lean frame in the photograph, and then traveled up to the pathetic smile that was plastered on his face. That smile had made him look like a happy man, and he remembered praying to G.o.d that his union with Tia would somehow turn him into one.

He sat down on the couch and thought about when he'd first met Tia thirteen years ago at a War concert. He'd sworn it had been love at first sight. She had been so beautiful and pet.i.te, and he'd loved how his six-foot frame towered over hers at five-foot four.

They had maintained a long-distance relations.h.i.+p for a year, and then shortly after he had been introduced to Jesus, Tia had gotten pregnant. He could still recall her visiting him in Chicago, and how he had begun to share with her what he had learned about Jesus.

”See, we're all broken,” he'd said. ”And we all need fixing . . . and somebody to do the fixing.” That much he remembered saying to her. The rest he knew-whether he'd said it to her or not-was that something was missing, especially inside of him.

”You just have to trust G.o.d,” he'd said, and now she was going to church every Sunday without him.

When he'd told her they needed to do the right thing, he'd meant it. But needing to do the right thing and wanting to were two different things in Lorenzo's mind. Still, he'd asked her to marry him, and he remembered her saying, ”If you want me here, then this is where I'll be.”

He continued looking at the photograph he still held in his hand. Their first year of marriage had almost been their last. He'd been controlling and insensitive, and had actually put his hands on Tia once. To make matters worse, she had been eight months pregnant at the time. Lorenzo didn't know what had come over him. It was almost as if he had undergone a complete personality change once they'd gotten married.

He'd slapped her-he remembered that much. But he was unclear about the reason why. He rubbed his forehead. The pills he'd taken earlier were starting to do their job. His mind was getting foggy, and he didn't want to think about anything unpleasant. Still, he sat on the sofa, straining to remember what had happened.

Tia had brought something home from the grocery store. What had it been? He closed his eyes and thought harder. Caffeine. That's what it had been! She had bought a box of caffeinated tea bags-something he'd told her he didn't want her drinking while she was pregnant. He opened his eyes. Had that really been the reason for his inexcusable behavior or had he put his hands on her due to his own inner frustrations?

When he'd almost missed the birth of their daughter, that had been the last straw for Tia. ”I can't stay with you the way things are,” she'd said to him from her hospital bed.

She was going to leave him. One life had begun while his was ending. He could not be alone again. He remembered getting on his knees in the hospital room, crying as he'd asked Tia to forgive him before praying to G.o.d asking for that and much more.

Tia forgave him and stayed.

For a while, Lorenzo was all right. He kept his job as an electrical engineer and went to work every day. He couldn't say that he was happy, but he'd been renewed enough to feel contentment. But Lorenzo had failed to ask for what he really needed, which was healing and deliverance from the abuse he'd suffered as a young boy.

By the time their daughter, Serenity, was eleven years old, his recurring pain had intensified, and he could no longer deny that marrying Tia had done nothing to alleviate it. If anything, it seemed to have gotten worse. His weight had doubled since he'd gotten married, and he couldn't stand lying next to his own wife in bed night after night.

He put the photograph back on the end table. The past two years of his marriage had been blemished with too many resentments, and infrequent and dull episodes of intimacy between the two of them. Their marriage had become nothing more than a faade, and not a very good one at that. On top of all that, there had been issues with his attendance throughout the year and he'd been let go from his job. His only source of income was the weekly unemployment check he'd been receiving for the past six months.

He rubbed the creases in his forehead and turned on the DVD player. A sixteen-ounce bag of raisins drenched in a creamy blanket of milk chocolate lay on the coffee table next to an open bag of previously popped microwave popcorn. Lorenzo grabbed a handful of each and stuffed them all into his mouth as he began watching his favorite movie, Antwone Fisher.

Two hours later, the movie ended, and Lorenzo was catapulted back into reality. He stopped the DVD and switched back to the television. A well-endowed female with exaggerated cheekbones spoke loudly with an East Coast accent. Lorenzo tried to focus on what she was saying, but the dream he'd had the night before roared even louder in his memory.

It was always the same. In his dream there was a big open field behind a triangular building. Lorenzo always thought it was a mall. There was only one entrance, and that was through the front door. If anyone tried to enter from the back of the building they would end up in total darkness. Lorenzo would look up to see a big sign that read: WARNING. DO NOT ENTERTHROUGH THE REAR! Then the dream would end. It always ended there, and he would wake up feeling clammy and short of breath.

”Why are you always in such an irritated mood?” Tia would ask him.

”Irritated?” he'd shout. ”That's an understatement! You,” he'd point his finger in her face, ”have no idea how I feel!”

”You're right,” she'd say. ”I don't know how you feel!” Then her voice would suddenly soften. ”Tell me what it is. How can I help you if you won't tell me what's wrong?”

Lorenzo didn't know why, but he hated it when Tia softened her voice. It was as if she was trying to play psychiatrist with him or something. Well, he wasn't having it. Not at all. She was a nurse not a psychiatrist, and she needed to remember that!

”I'm not the enemy,” she'd said. ”I'm your wife.”

She'd almost got him with that comment. He'd opened his mouth to speak. He was going to try to tell her his secret when the next thing she'd said messed it all up.

”A real man would know the difference.”

A real man? So now she was implying that he was not a real man?

After she'd said that, Lorenzo knew he would not be able to tell her what was wrong. He cringed at the thought of how she might react if she knew he had been molested as a child by his uncle. Would she hold the same look in her eyes as his father had held in his? Would she blame him with unspoken words as his mother had done? Lorenzo had decided he couldn't take that risk. If Tia thought he wasn't a real man, she definitely wouldn't think so after he'd told her his secret.

So he left things the way they were-with his wife not knowing what he had been through or what he could not get past. He sighed heavily. He was so far from being irritated that to feel that way now would have been a blessing. No. Lorenzo was way past irritated. He was done. Defeated.

Game over.

Chapter Six.

Fifteen minutes later, Tia walked through the front door of her house. Her German shepherd, Catch, raced around the corner to greet her. He was as loyal as dogs came. He stood up on his hind legs, and the full force of his weight pushed her 115-pound frame backward until there was no s.p.a.ce left between her back and the mahogany door she'd just closed. He continued to lavish her with tongue licks and shoulder paws, and Tia thought about how some women often referred to men as dogs.

She looked over at Lorenzo slouched on the couch and-in his case-she wished he would act like a dog, their dog. She gave Catch a final hug and squeezed past his bulky frame.

”Hey,” she said to Lorenzo. She tried to make her voice sound light and airy. ”How's it going?”

”Fine,” Lorenzo answered simultaneously tapping his fingers on the end table.

A stifling silence filled the air.

”Where's Serenity?” Tia asked.

”At the library, I think, or over at one of her girlfriends' house. I'm not sure.”

”She's supposed to be home,” Tia said hanging up her coat. ”It's Wednesday night.”

Lorenzo got up and walked past Tia into the kitchen, slightly kicking his jacket on the floor as he pa.s.sed.

The stench attached to the jacket was activated by the movement, and Tia's nostrils flared. ”What's that smell?” she asked, frowning.