Chasing Sophea: A Novel Read online

  “Oh God, Milky, what is happening to me? And why is it happening now?”

  “Try, honey. Can you remember something, anything?”

  She fell into her husband’s embrace and searched her mind for an answer to his question as well as her own. “No, I can’t remember anything at all. When I wake up, it’s all gone. I can’t explain it to you any other way.” Dahlia rose abruptly to take a shower. She was drenched with perspiration, and as usual, she had to remove any traces of the demon that delighted in stalking her. She stood under the powerful streams with her hands pressed against the tile. She didn’t know why she lied back there to her husband. God knows he was only trying to help. But somehow lying seemed the appropriate thing to do. The truth was becoming more than she could handle, and if she couldn’t make sense of what was going on in her dreams, how could she begin to explain it to him? She feared she was losing the battle, and she couldn’t allow him to go down with her.

  Phoebe allowed the man, Stephan something or other, to massage her neck. He begged to massage other parts of her body as well, but she wasn’t in the mood for a casual dalliance.

  “Hey, Steven, hands above the shoulders.”

  “Stephan,” he corrected, as he attempted to inch his hand up the back of her tank top. They met at the gym a few weeks ago, and he finally convinced her to accept his invitation for drinks. Naturally, after three heavenly mojitos at Xiomara, they ended up at his ornate town house on Marengo, where they experimented with banal conversation and plenty of Russian vodka. Most times this sort of thing didn’t interest her. She liked men, yes, but she didn’t usually have time to entertain such frivolity.

  “Look, Soren, I said watch yourself. I agreed to drinks, nothing else.”

  “Aw, come on, baby. You know you want me. I can feel it. I’ve seen the way you stare at the gym. I have a hunch that every time you do a squat, you’re thinking about me wiggling around underneath you.”

  “Servon, please, I’m not that drunk.”

  “Stephan. My name is Stephan.” She sensed that he was becoming irritated with her.

  Phoebe considered her options. It had certainly been a while, and her body was pleading with her to acquiesce. But even intoxicated, her mind had already wandered to another man, the only man. Quite expectedly, like last time and the time before that, the man in front of her hastily removing his clothes had become an annoyance, an unwelcome diversion from the target at hand. Who said she had to settle for some jack-off she didn’t want? She had waited this long, a little while longer wouldn’t kill her—frustrate her to no end perhaps, but certainly not kill her.

  “Simon, I have to go. Get off me.” She yanked her foot from his mouth and attempted to stand. He bit her big toe. She administered a roundhouse to the head courtesy of kickboxing class three times a week with Mauricio, the Brazilian. He fell backward. She ran out the door toward her car. She heard him cursing her in another language that she didn’t recognize. She laughed at the hilarity of it all. What a freak, she thought.

  It was nearly dawn, and as the alcohol began to wear off, the reality of her situation overwhelmed her. Once again, she was back at square one and had gained nothing. If she wanted to survive, she had to start making serious strides toward independence. Progress was a key to success here. With that in mind, she sped to the one place that inspired her to dream.

  Thirty-two fifty-two San Rafael Drive. That was the address this time. All Phoebe had to do was knock on the door, and the world as she knew it would end. The anticipation of impending chaos was strangely intoxicating. She imagined walking up the long driveway, and she imagined the look on his face when she told him that his life was a cleverly crafted work of fiction. She had lingered outside their house often and fantasized about a multitude of possible outcomes and, of course, how she would handle herself if the unspeakable happened. She wondered what it would feel like to betray the woman she had spent a lifetime protecting. What if he didn’t believe her? She’d probably have to convince him, dig into her bag of tricks. Maybe Dahlia would try to silence her, but Phoebe was the strong one. She was the survivor, and in her gut, Dahlia had to know that. One day soon, she intended to have answers to her questions, but not today. Today their world could keep revolving for a little while longer.

  Phoebe maneuvered the house keys back and forth in the palm of her hand. She could feel the grooves pressing roughly against her fingers. The sensation was so appealing that she almost wept. She had stolen the keys from Dahlia months ago, slipped them in her pocket one day when her friend wasn’t paying attention. Having carte blanche access to Dahlia’s life had always been necessary. She figured this day was coming anyway. She wasn’t stupid. From the beginning, there had always been some problem that only she could solve. Phoebe was a born fixer. She was the one who had calmed the storm when the storm descended out of nowhere hell bent on wiping out everything in its path. She was the one who had made a way out of no way. And now, without any warning, she had become the storm, and no one on this earth could make her change course. There was enough power in her truth to blow this family to pieces.

  For a long time, she’d held back because she loved Dahlia and protected her fiercely, but she smelled change in the air, and change for her wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Change meant that her relationship with Dahlia was in jeopardy, and she had been around too long to suddenly become a vague memory or a footnote in somebody’s life. No. It could not be, and she would not—could not—sit idly by while Dahlia tried to erase her. Suddenly her life wasn’t about Dahlia’s survival anymore. It was high time she battled for her own.

  It hadn’t always been this way. In the past, she didn’t mind being in the background. Now she realized after all these years that living in the background certainly had its disadvantages. No one had any idea how hard she’d worked or the sacrifices she’d made over the years. All she wanted was a little recognition for her contributions. Phoebe Graham was tired of being a nonentity, a ghost in the land of the living. And more important, she was tired of craving someone else’s life.

  It was storming outside when Dahlia left Dr. Kelly’s office. Fat droplets of Southern California rain decorated her camel-colored suede duster. It was November, two weeks before Thanksgiving, and she was cold, shivering on the way to her car. She was cold a lot these days, even when it wasn’t raining outside. Despite the cold, she adored the rain. It soothed her soul and reminded her of home, and today, for some odd reason, she was comforted. She adjusted the hood and tied the duster tighter around her body. It was a long coat designed to accentuate her tall frame. She preferred long coats. They covered everything and left room for an active imagination. She didn’t feel any better, though—not that she’d expected to. Perhaps it was because she couldn’t bring herself to say barely two words to the man. Why again, she asked herself, was she suffering such humiliation? And what was the point of spending $150 an hour if she wasn’t going to open her mouth? Aunt Baby would be disgusted with her wasting her money on such foolishness, and on a crazy people’s doctor no less. She could hear her now: “You might as well go on Oprah, telling all your business like that to a perfect stranger.”

  Aunt Baby’s voice was an invisible cord to her past, a rock that anchored her when her feet threatened to leave stable ground. Aunt Baby was her grandfather’s baby sister on her father’s side. She was diminutive in size but powerful nevertheless. She was obsessed with good posture and walked with the same determined strides she did when she was thirty. She was nearly a legend at home, the way a person could be in a small, close-knit community. She was a formidable woman quite well known for her quirky one-liners and recipes for life. She was famous for having a recipe for anything that plagued your mind, body, or soul. Whether your man left you or your hair was falling out at the roots, Aunt Baby had the solution. Although her recipes were somewhat unconventional, people back home still religiously wrote down every word. It was a wonder her picture wasn’t hanging up in some folk’s houses along with c
heesy velvet paintings of Jesus, Martin, and JFK.

  Once, when Dahlia was fifteen, this woman from Fort Worth stood in the kitchen scratching and rubbing off anything on her body that wasn’t attached by bone. The whole house was convinced that she’d pluck herself to death right there on the linoleum, which incidentally would have been fine considering that the embalming room was right down the hall. Aunt Baby told her to repeat the Twenty-third Psalm each time she had an inclination to scrub her birthmark with steel wool. She also prescribed a pot of collard greens with twenty cloves of garlic for ten days. In two weeks’ time, the itchy lady was raving about Aunt Baby just like everybody else.

  Dahlia missed her terribly, and lately their phone conversations hadn’t been enough to sustain her. They were a few days overdue for their weekly chat, but Dahlia needed to settle down first and calm her nerves. Concealing anything from that woman was impossible, so she attempted to relax and stop the hemorrhaging of her spirit with emotional Band-Aids. Pretending that everything was perfect had become a familiar routine, one that she depended on to float her from week to week.

  She drove the long way home to San Rafael, a quiet neighborhood on the west side of Pasadena, and tried to figure out what on earth she was going to say to Milky. They’d met some years ago in an upscale restaurant when he offered to buy her a cocktail. He was such a unique-looking man, unlike any man she had ever seen. He was tall and brown like a cup of coffee with two teaspoons of cream. He had jet-black hair that curled at the ends, and his eyes slanted when he smiled. Normally, she didn’t make it a habit of flirting with men more attractive than she, but she was drawn to him in a way that she couldn’t quite explain. It was as if he really saw her and liked her anyway. Oddly enough, he behaved as if he had known her for years. Although she politely declined his offer, explaining that she didn’t drink, he insisted that she sample her favorite, a specialty of the house. He returned shortly with cold chocolate milk in a martini glass dusted with the most decadent cocoa she’d ever tasted. She’d been calling him Milky ever since.

  She knew he was worried about her. He’d been asking a lot of questions lately, attempting to pick her brain apart when she wasn’t paying attention. She suspected he was trying to catch her off guard. It was difficult for her to hold his gaze anymore for any length of time. She was sure he was beginning to see it in her eyes, an unraveling that was happening from the inside out.

  Finally, she stood in front of her house and took a deep breath and admired the colorful jacaranda tree that always welcomed her home. She counted backward from a hundred and hummed “Love and Happiness” by Al Green. And then, like magic, confused, unhappy Dahlia was gone and Mommy was home.

  Wednesday • November 15 • 7:00p.m.

  Whoever said you were supposed to be sane 100percent of the time anyway? So what if a little craziness sneaks up on you? Most people can snap themselves out of it, you know, get back to the tuna casserole they were making or the blow job they were giving. For others, time passes and passes some more until one day they look up and twenty years have swept by, leaving them old, wrinkled, and tormented by cellulite.

  What happens when you wake up and realize that you’re no better than anyone else? You know what? You stand in front of the mirror lamenting how badly you screwed up your life. You blame your mama, your brother, and your crazy Uncle Scooter, too, for never believing in you and always telling you you’d never be someone anyone would want to know. Well, I say the hell with that bullshit. If you wake up one morning and the grass is blue or the sky is green, call a doctor and get a damn pill. Remedy your situation and move the fuck on. Next! I mean, seriously, there comes a time when you have to grow up and live your life. Blame and guilt are wasted emotions, and I seriously don’t have time for either of them.

  Dahlia doesn’t understand this kindergarten concept, and I’m tired of trying to explain it to her. I swear that woman has turned denial into a one-act play on Broadway. She just doesn’t want to put the past behind her. She’d rather piss on herself in public and listen to old-ass music. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph save me from the drama. If I have to listen to one more Al Green CD, I’m going to bang my head against the dashboard and pray that I go deaf. She is plucking my last nerve with this piss-poor, melancholy attitude. Whine, whine, whine, moan, moan, moan, bitch, bitch, bitch.

  Whatever happened to being grateful for what you have? Whatever happened to counting your blessings and playing the cards you’re dealt? Aunt Baby always did say she was prone to having brain tantrums like her mama. I mean, she has to know that most women would kill for her life: a bulging bank account, a scrumptious-looking husband, and a kid you can halfway stand to be around. Although as much as she’s been pissing me off lately, I can’t help worrying about her. That Milky is so sweet and attentive, too. In a way, I wish I could warn the poor bastard—tell him to build a bomb shelter because a nuke is coming straight for his ass.

  Phoebe closed her journal and reached for a joint. She should try calling Dahlia again and leaving her a message—or she should mind her own damn business for a change. Who would have thought it would come to this? Phoebe wondered when and if Dahlia would tell Michael what happened. She needed to tell somebody something, because God only knew what was going to happen next, what with the cheese beginning to slide off her cracker. Either way, though, Phoebe decided that she would take over if need be, pick up the pieces when Dahlia crashed. Simply do whatever was necessary if her friend’s mind spiraled in a thousand different directions.

  Milky paced the floor and tried to stop himself from thinking the worst. She was late again, and he couldn’t find her anywhere. There was no answer at work, and she wasn’t picking up her cell phone. What was he supposed to think at a time like this? What would any man think under such circumstances? She’s probably screwing somebody’s brains out right now, or she’s emptying the bank accounts and running off to an exotic getaway with our life savings—maybe Switzerland. She always wanted to go to Switzerland.

  “Daddy, Daddy.”

  “Yeah, princess,” Milky answered, still plagued by the ongoing dialogue he was having with himself. No. No, man, she’s just late again.

  “Daddy, when is Mommy coming home? I’m getting hungry.”

  Milky felt his right hand ball up into a fist. Calm down, Michael, don’t jump to conclusions. He didn’t know what to tell his child anymore. He watched her bounce around the living room with limitless energy and wished he could predict when Dahlia was coming home. He reached for the phone again. Dammit. He couldn’t go on this way. If she didn’t answer, he would go look for her himself. And this time, she was going to explain everything—account for each moment that she had been gone. This time, he would force her to tell him the truth even if it destroyed them both.

  “Daddy!”

  “Soon, baby girl. She’s coming home real soon. Dinner will be ready in about five minutes. Can you hold on until then?”

  “Daddy!”

  “Isabel, I said—”

  “Daddy, Mommy’s car is in the driveway. Look!”

  “What?”

  Milky raced over to the window and saw his wife standing outside underneath the jacaranda tree holding herself, shivering as if she were cold. In that moment, she reminded him of Isabel, lost and alone in a place where he couldn’t reach her. He almost ran to her then, but he didn’t want to intrude on whatever was happening outside. His heart was no longer racing or contemplating the unknown, and for that he was grateful. His wife was home again safe and sound, and he could breathe a little easier for now.

  “Mommy, you’re home!” Isabel squealed, jumping up and down. “Daddy’s making cocopan. Can you smell it?”

  Dahlia opened her arms to her six-year-old daughter and held on for dear life. Much to Dahlia’s dismay, Isabel became a life preserver from the moment she was born. Dahlia had never intended to put so much pressure on the child, but who was she to break the cycle? Mothers eventually devoured their daughters. Wasn’t that in th
e manual? No matter, in spite of earlier challenges, right now she was Mama. Tonight she would be a wife, and tomorrow … Well, tomorrow was a whole new day altogether. She was home sans some wet clothes and a bad attitude, and that was progress. She was accounted for and prepared to play the role to which she had been assigned. Twenty-seven cleansing breaths and her willingness for normalcy had to count for something.

  “Yes, Izzy girl, I can smell your daddy’s cooking. I’m sure the entire block can smell what’s cooking in here.”

  “I went to ballet today, Mama. Chandler Guzman pulled my hair.”

  “Really? That wasn’t very nice.”

  Milky watched their interaction from the kitchen. He couldn’t quite gauge Dahlia’s mood yet. Still, before he uttered one word, he needed to ascertain exactly how the evening was going to progress. His wife and their daughter looked so beautiful together, laughing and touching like it was the most normal thing in the world. If only this moment could stretch into tomorrow and the day after that. If only … He continued to eavesdrop, waiting for a tone, a facial expression, any sign that would indicate whether he needed to break open another bottle of Extra Strength Excedrin.

  “What did you do in school today, pumpkin?” he heard Dahlia ask.

  He’d considered calling Aunt Baby or even the father-in-law whom he’d never met for help but knew Dahlia would strangle him for sure.

  “I went outside. I took a nap. I played with toys,” Isabel continued in a singsong voice.

  “That sounds like fun, honey.” Dahlia laughed. “So, overall, you had a good day, then?”

  All neck wringing aside, Milky decided right then in the archway of his ultramodern kitchen to do whatever was necessary to save their marriage even if it meant further alienating his wife. Maybe he should travel to Dallas first, feel her family out. It was time, he thought, after eight years of marriage, that they all got to know one another.