“That’s when I caught them,” George said. He rubbed a hand over his face. “I saw his name on her phone. Thought it was strange that he was texting her so late at night.”
“And when you looked, what did you see?”
He shook his head, his eyes glued to the table. How bad was it that he wouldn’t say? I mean, I knew, didn’t I? I saw the pictures on Darius’s phone. Fig’s body parts could have been among the ones I’d seen the night I kicked him out. Darius liked to keep their faces out of it. He didn’t want to look at the person, make them a person. How many times had I written the words, “A stabbing pain through her heart?” Had I ever felt it until this moment? No, surely not. It was the most awful thing.
“They were fucking. While I was away seeing my dying father? He sent my daughter away to his mother’s and fucked that woman in my house?”
George wasn’t really looking at me anymore. He was staring off at nothing. I was angry with him—if he’d told me when he caught them I could have confronted Darius, left him. I’d be well into my healing instead of having the scab ripped off and being left without answers. He was just as much of a coward as they were. The only pity I felt for him was the fact that he’d fallen in love with someone like Fig, fallen prey to the leech that she was. When I kicked Darius out I marveled at her empathy. I thought she was hurting for me—with me. Yeah, right. That bitch had just found out that Darius was cheating on her too. She was fucking grieving alongside me.
“You still want to be with her, don’t you? You caught her cheating on you and you stayed. You didn’t tell anyone. Just holed up and tried to fix it.”
“It’s not that simple,” he said. “She was suicidal.”
“Ah, yes! Did you catch her on the train tracks, or did you have your own special thing?”
He stared at me blankly.
“Did you ever think she used suicide to distract you from what you just found out? She was manipulating you.”
“It’s not that simple,” he said.
“No, you idiot, it is that simple. Your ego is bruised because she doesn’t want you. She took advantage of you, George. You’re not going to make yourself feel better by trying to convince yourself she still wants you. My god, you’re all the dumbest shits.” I stood up, my chair screeching loudly across the floor. “Is there anything else you want to tell me, George? I’m afraid I need to leave before I act on the overwhelming urge to punch you in the face.”
He looked up at me, surprised. I thought maybe he wanted to laugh.
“I think that about covers it,” he said. I grabbed my bag and started to walk toward the door. But, then I thought of one more thing.
“By the way, George, you stink like my piece of shit ex-husband. That cologne she bought for you—Darius wears it.”
He paled. “She said she found it at Nordstrom,” he said.
“They don’t sell that shit at Nordstrom. She found it on my husband.”
My mother named me Jolene after the Dolly Parton song. Dolly could have used a different name. I could have been Darlene, or Cailene, or Arlene. Instead I am Jolene because that’s what Dolly chose after some redheaded bank teller flirted with her husband right in front of her. And imagine that, someone tried to steal your man so you turned it into art and made a buck. That lady’s got more than just huge tits, you know? I liked her style.
I’d had one of those friends who was too dense to see the truth. My god, they were frustrating. It was right there in front of their fucking face and they went Helen Keller with that shit? I didn’t think it would ever be me, especially since I could see it so clearly in others. The hypocrisy of human nature. I tried to see the best in people, you see. I fell in love with who a person could be and then Helen Keller dug her fingers into my brain and I was all hear no evil, see no evil, la la la la la. They didn’t always choose to be what they could be. That’s what happened with Fig, I think. I was learning. Slowly, but surely, like one of Fig’s suicide trains. Chugging up the tracks, gaining speed. I could see the truth in people now. For example, Mercy’s father was a dunce. He didn’t come with the cap, though. I would have liked the cap. He just came with a great big, “fuck you,” and walked out of our lives. I wasn’t afraid to be pregnant and alone. It felt more like a relief after he left, like I wasn’t going to have to do this great big thing, with this great big idiot. So I grew my baby and wrote my books. And before I was even showing, in pops Darius, a blast from the past, who said all the right things, and did all the right things. Hook, line, and sinker, I swallowed it all down and let him put a ring on my swollen finger. And when she came, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he loved that little girl. She was ours. But, in the end he didn’t love her, did he? At least not more than he loved himself. Darius didn’t love anyone more than he loved himself. And perhaps he couldn’t help the way he was, but he could have helped what he did. And her, she was just as disgusting as he was. She liked to play games, see how much she could get. She didn’t have cancer, and she wasn’t suicidal. She used those things to control people’s reactions. She was whoever you wanted her to be.
One day in early fall of the following year, I was at home, trying to burn time until I had to pick Mercy up from pre-school. It had become my thing, finding ways to amuse myself whilst my four-year-old was eating goldfish crackers and learning nursery rhymes. She’d stopped asking about Darius after my dad passed. She hadn’t seen me cry until then, and it was almost as if she understood the gravity of someone forced to leave, and someone who chose to leave.