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.
At any rate I was wandering from room to room, dusting books, and rearranging furniture, feeling completely useless without a book to write—when there was a pounding on my front door. If it was the Fed Ex guy he’d leave the package, I didn’t much fancy seeing anyone at the moment. But, the pounding didn’t go away, it increased in fervency and eventually I made my way to the front door, duster still in hand. I looked through the peephole. Fig was on my doorstep, a black baseball cap pulled down over her hair. She was gaunt, her face deeply lined, and her clothes limply hanging on her bones. My better sense told me not to open the door, but I was curious about what she had to say. She had to know that I knew at this point.
When I opened the door her face was already arranged. The first words out of her mouth were somewhat thrown at me. I couldn’t tell if her voice was frantic or aggressive. “I’m sorry, all right? I’m not above saying I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” I asked. Maybe this was my time to punch her in the face, cuss her out, and tell her what I really thought, but like always, I found myself drawn into her madness. Wanting to know how she was processing everything.
“What I did. That’s not me, it’s not who I am.” She started to make crying sounds, but I watched for the tears and there were none. She’d told me once that before she moved to Washington with George she’d had a relationship with a man from her hometown. So, in fact it was who she was. Lie number one.