November - December 2002
Our time in Virginia came to an end when Justin started doing the promotional stuff for Justified. He did the VMA’s in August and things just spiraled out of control from there. Justin unleashed a full scale media assault on the world. There wasn’t a magazine or tv show that he didn’t manage to get his mug on. He would have shown up for the opening of an umbrella if it gave him an opportunity to pimp himself and his cd. All his dreams were coming true and he was having the time of his life. Wish I could say the same for myself.
Justin’s time in Virginia had come to an end, but Jonah and I were still there. Before renting the house in Virginia, Justin had been shacking up with Britney. Now that they were kaput, he needed to buy his own house in Los Angeles. He said that it would be easier for me to just stay where I was until he could buy a new house and get it fixed up for me and Jonah. Mari was also staying in Virginia with me. Justin and I had decided that she would come with us to Los Angeles. She was good with Jonah, loyal, trustworthy and above all else, she knew how to keep a secret.
Mari turned out to be a good person to have around. She could speak and understand much more English than she had originally let on. She just feigned ignorance of the language because she didn’t want to be drawn into any of our arguments. Also, she liked being able to wander around the house cursing Justin out in Portuguese. She used the word "pentelho" a lot. Roughly translated, I’m pretty sure that means "asshole."
But even with Mari there, being in Virginia Beach without Justin was a very lonely time for me and Jonah. Justin would pop in to see us whenever he could, but those visits were few and far between. Most of the time I didn’t even know where he was. I had to get most of my information about what he was up to from US Weekly, and that was hard to do because he would get Mari to do a sweep of the house and toss out any glossy magazines she came across.
Justin did his best to keep me in the dark about where he was, what he was doing and who he was doing it with. But sometimes I still managed to find out things that he didn’t want me to know. There was always some woman that was being declared as Justin’s latest conquest. These rumors would filter in to me from various sources. Be it Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood or a random issue of People magazine that I might flip through in the waiting room at Jonah’s pediatrician.
The rumors were running rampant, but Justin had an explanation for everything. Usually an unsolicited explanation. He would do something I like to call preemptive damage control. He had answers for questions that I hadn’t even asked. But you know what they say, a hit dog will holler. And Justin was one mutt that was howling up a storm.
These are just a few of the lines that he hit me with to combat the gossip that was circulating:
"Kay, I did not kiss Janet at Missy Elliot’s birthday party. I was just hanging out with her, but you know how people like to start shit. Nothing happened, I swear. Besides, she’s too damned old for me."
"I was not trying to hook up with Alicia. We just met for lunch and talked about working together on something. As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure that she likes men. Keep that on the low."
"Christina? Come on now. We’re thinking about touring together or something. I’ve known mighty mouth for way too long to even think of her like that. I wouldn’t ever try to get with her. For one thing, she kind of scares me. And two, she doesn’t even date white guys."
But this one had to be my all time favorite:
"Kay, I don’t even really know who Alyssa Milano is. I ran into her at some party and she was clinging to me, doing some hardcore flirting. I made it perfectly clear to her that I wasn’t interested. I can’t help it if she keeps showing up wherever I go. I think she might be stalking me."
And in case you’re wondering, he did say all that mess with a straight face.
Not that it really mattered. I had adopted a very strict "If I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen," policy. I didn’t want to know what he was up to, so I believed every lie he told without question. Not because they were particularly convincing lies; I believed him because I wanted to.
We had the perfect little set up going on. Justin liked lying and I liked being lied to. It was working out just fine, until Justin broke the unspoken rule that he and I had.
He let me catch him in the act.
******************************************************************************
Justin purchased a house in September and told me to give him a little while to get it fixed up and furnished. Justin is a neat freak with very specific tastes, so I knew that it would take some time for him to get the house the way that he wanted it, therefore I tried to be patient. But by the time November rolled around, I had run out of patience.
When Justin popped in for one of his random visits, I told him that Jonah and I were coming to Los Angeles on the very next plane or we would be moving back to Atlanta. My ultimatum seemed to light a fire under him. He told me that he just needed another week to finish getting everything in order.
The plan was for Mari to go to Los Angeles ahead of me, so that she could get familiar with the layout of the house and give Justin a hand putting the finishing touches on Jonah’s nursery. In the meantime, Jonah and I were supposed to spend a week visiting Rachel. Justin promised that if I just gave him that week, then everything would be okay.
My visit with Rachel didn’t go as well as I would have hoped. Our relationship had been strained since I had agreed to live with Justin. Rachel thought that I was wasting my life away with him and she didn’t bite her tongue about saying so. She started lecturing me the second that she picked me and Jonah up from the airport.
In her opinion, Justin wasn’t ever going to make good on any of the promises he had made to me. She didn’t believe that he had any intention of telling his family or anyone else about me and Jonah. And she said I was delusional if I thought he was ever going to make any kind of real commitment to me. She brought out that old "why should he buy the cow, if the milk is free" argument. As you can well imagine, I was not all that thrilled about being compared to a cow. Needless to say, my visit with her was all downhill from there.
The entire time that I was there all I got from Rachel was one long tirade about how she couldn’t understand the choices I was making for my life. She said she felt like she didn’t know me anymore and she didn’t like the person that I was turning in to.
Everything Rachel said was true, but she was trying to give me a reality check that I wasn’t ready for. After a few days of her trying to convince me to move back to Atlanta and tell Justin to kiss my ass, I couldn’t take anymore. My friendship with Rachel was hanging by a very thin thread and I knew I needed to leave before that thread was severed completely. I decided to go to Los Angeles a few days early.
When Jonah and I landed at LAX, I tried calling Justin’s cell, but I couldn’t get any answer. I couldn’t call the house because the phones had just been installed and I didn’t have the number yet. So I decided to get a cab. Seems like I would have learned my lesson about dropping in on Justin unannounced. But cest la vie.
The security gates were open so the cab drove right up to the front door. The driver helped me unload Jonah and our luggage and then he took off. I gathered Jonah into my arms and approached the front door, but the door swung open before I could ring the bell. And there was Justin, skinning and grinning with a slender dark haired woman.
The woman looked an awful lot like Alyssa Milano, but that couldn’t be, right? Justin had claimed that he didn’t even know her. Stalking him, my ass.
Looking back on it now, the look on Justin’s face when he looked up and saw me was hilarious. It was even better than the "oh shit, I’ve been caught" look he gave me when I first found out about Britney. Naturally, I didn’t see the humor at that moment.
Justin approached me cautiously with his hands held up in a defensive pose. "Kay," he spoke slowly, the way that you would speak to a high strung child, "Just let me explain."
Normally I never would have raised my voice while I had Jonah in my arms, but this was not normal circumstances. I couldn’t stop myself. "What the hell is this, Justin?"
"I swear, it’s not what you think."
Why do people always say that shit? Nine times out of ten, when someone says "it’s not what you think," it’s exactly what you think.
"Well, maybe I’m hallucinating, because what I think is that you and this tired ass trick have been screwing around." I know I shouldn’t have insulted Alyssa. I’m sure that Justin hadn’t told her anything about me or Jonah. My beef wasn’t with her, but I was pissed.
Alyssa tried to take the high road by not addressing me directly. Instead, she directed her question toward the real culprit. "Justin, who is this?"
"Mind your business." He didn’t even spare her a glance. He directed his attention to me instead. "Kayla, just let me get rid of her and I swear I will explain everything."
Alyssa tried to insert herself into the conversation again. "Do not ignore me, Justin. What’s going on here?"
Justin turned his icy blue eyes on her. "This does not concern you." Alyssa started to open her mouth again, but Justin shut her down. "I already told you to mind your fucking business. Don’t make me say it again."
When he said that, Alyssa got a look in her eyes that I can’t even describe. Apparently she was not used to anyone talking to her that way. She started cursing Justin out and swinging on him like he had stolen something from her. That chick was mad as hell. Don’t let the Hollywood pedigree fool you. Alyssa has a lot of New York hoodrat in her.
To put it plainly, Alyssa was beating Justin’s ass. Mostly because he wouldn’t hit her back, but still homegirl was holding her own. I could have watched her whoop on him all afternoon, but Jonah started screaming. He was wailing, crying his eyes out and that brought me back to my senses. I felt horrible because I had become so wrapped up in the drama going on that I had forgotten that I was even holding my son. I might have been content to watch the ridiculous scene that was unfolding, but I certainly didn’t want Jonah to see what was going on.
I left Alyssa and Justin to have it out in the driveway. She could have beat the hell out of him for all that I cared. I took Jonah into the house and I locked the door behind me.
Mari greeted me and took me upstairs to Jonah’s nursery. I got Jonah calmed down and then I took my time getting him settled in. When he drifted off to sleep, I went back downstairs, poured myself a stiff drink and waited. A few minutes later Justin tried to get in the house. When the knob wouldn’t turn he started knocking.
Mari went to let him in, but I stopped her. "Leave him out there."
"But . . ."
"I said leave him out there."
Mari muttered some Portuguese curse word under her breath and beat a path to the kitchen. She knew enough to not to get in the middle of what was about to go down.
I leisurely sipped on my cocktail while Justin’s knocking turned into banging. When I felt like it, I got up and went to the door. I opened the door, just far enough so that I could see him.
Justin pressed himself against the crack I’d made. He was all red in the face and there was sweat beading on his forehead. He huffed and puffed and when he finally caught his breath, he started yelling at me. "What the hell do you mean by locking me out of my own damn house?"
"I know you’re not catching an attitude with me after what I just saw."
When Justin saw that his usual approach of shouting me down wasn’t going to work, he softened his voice. "I didn’t meant to yell at you, baby. If you’ll just let me in, I can explain everything."
"You don’t need to be in here to explain yourself. You can do that from right where you are. You can start by telling me what the hell Alyssa Milano was doing coming out of this house. I thought you said that you didn’t even know her."
"Is that what I said?"
"Don’t play with me, Justin."
Justin was quiet for a minute. I guess he was weighing his options. As a last resort, he decided to tell me the truth. Or at least as much of the truth as he was capable of telling.
"Alyssa started turning up everywhere I went and she was always flirting and grinning in my face. I guess I was flattered by the attention. We’ve just been hanging out a little bit."
"Did you sleep with her?"
"No. Of course not." He had the nerve to sound indignant, as though the idea that he would cheat on me was farfetched and ridiculous.
"I don’t believe you."
"I did not have sex with her. I swear I didn’t do anything to that woman."
Did you catch the wording on that sentence? He may not have done anything to her, but that left the door wide open for what she might have done to him. Justin thought he could run that old semantics, Bill Clinton type bull on me. But I wasn’t having it.
"What did she do to you?"
"Huh?" My question had caught him off guard. Usually there wasn’t any situation that I wouldn’t let him talk himself out of, but I was tired of playing dumb.
"Don’t act like you’re deaf. I think you’re trying to play one of your word games with me, so I’m asking you straight out. Did you have any kind of sex with her?"
"Well. . .kind of."
"Kind of? You are so full of shit." I started to close the door, but Justin stuck his foot out before I could get the door completely closed.
"If you want that foot, you’d better move it."
"Will you just hear me out? I made a mistake and I’m sorry. I was missing you and she came over. One thing just led to another. I didn’t even want her to do it. She begged me."
"Far be it from you to turn down a begging woman."
"She seduced me. She offered me something that I don’t get from you all that often."
How predictable. I was wondering when he would get around to making his infidelity my fault. "I get it now. If I spent more time on my knees, none of this would have ever happened."
"That’s not what I said, Kayla."
"I can’t believe that you’re trying to blame me for the fact that you can’t keep it in your pants."
"I’m not blaming you. I was just confused." Justin was grasping at straws and throwing out every excuse he could think of.
"I’ve heard that confused bullshit before. You’re going to have to do a lot better than that if you don’t want me to let this door close on your foot."
"You wouldn’t."
"You want to try me?"
That was when Justin ran out of patience. "I’m tired of playing with you, Kay."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that this is my house and I don’t intend to spend the night yelling at you from the wrong side of this door. I’m giving you five seconds to move and then I’m going to bust the door down. If you get hurt, it’s your own fault.
Can you believe that fool actually tried to threaten me? That was the last straw. "I’m closing the door now."
"Kayla, if you close this heavy ass door on my foot, you’ll be sorry."
"Move it."
"Make me."
I closed the door with all the force that I could muster. The door was thick and made from solid oak. It had a lot of weight behind it and it slammed on Justin’s foot a lot harder than I thought it would. Justin hadn’t tried to stop me or brace himself because he obviously thought I was bluffing.
By the time that he realized I was serious, it was too late. The door caught him right on his arch. When he tried to twist his foot out of the way, I heard a sickening snap and Justin fell onto the front steps screaming and cursing like nothing I’d ever heard before.
I opened the door and knelt down beside him. "Oh, god. Justin, I am so sorry."
I reached out and tried to help him, but he squirmed out of my reach. "Don’t fucking touch me."
"Justin just let me help you."
"Get away from me."
"Justin, please . . ."
"Just leave me alone." Justin pulled his cell out of his pocket and made a phone call. Mike was there in a few minutes time. He loaded Justin into his Range Rover and they drove off.
Many hours later, Justin came hopping through the door on a pair of crutches. He also had a little bandage on his cheek. I guess Alyssa had drawn some blood after all. Justin wouldn’t even speak to me. He just sat on the sofa and glared. After getting the evil eye from him for almost twenty minutes, I finally broke the silence.
"What did the doctor say?"
Justin took a deep breath and then very calmly said, "The doctor said that my foot is broken."
"I am so sorry."
"You broke my mother fucking foot, Kayla."
"I said I was sorry."
"Sorry doesn’t begin to cover this. Do you have any idea of what you’ve done? Do you know how many appearances I’m going to have to reschedule or cancel altogether? How could you do this to me?"
"I didn’t mean to. How was I supposed to know that it could be that easy to break someone’s foot?"
"You’re a nurse!"
"I’m a nurse, not an orthopedic surgeon."
"Do you realize that you may have ruined my career?"
His whining was erasing any residual feelings of guilt that I had. "Don’t be so melodramatic. I’m sure that you and your precious career can survive a few weeks in a cast. Besides if you really think about it, this is all your fault."
Justin looked at me like I was deranged. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"If you hadn’t been cheating on me, I wouldn’t have locked you out. If I hadn’t locked you out, you wouldn’t have tried to stick your foot in the door. If you hadn’t stuck your foot in the door, I wouldn’t have slammed the door on you. Like I said, this is your fault."
"Have you lost your damned mind, Kayla?"
"Maybe. Maybe you have finally succeeded in driving me nuts."
"I’m not about to take all the credit for that. You must have had at least one wing over the cuckoo’s nest before I met you."
That’s when I started laughing. To this day, I can’t explain why. Maybe I really was crazy. Or I guess the absurdity of everything had finally sunk in on me. All I know is that I started laughing and I couldn’t stop.
"What the hell are you laughing about?"
I couldn’t even answer him because I was laughing too damn hard. The more I laughed, the less angry Justin looked. He started to look concerned. I think he thought I had really gone over the edge. "What’s wrong with you?"
I was able to choke out a reply in between laughs. "I broke your foot."
"I’m still looking for the funny part."
"I’m not sorry."
"What?"
"I only said that I was sorry because I felt like I should. But I’m not sorry and if I had the chance, I’d do it again. The only thing I’m sorry about is that I only got your foot. I wish I’d broken the whole damn leg."
Justin looked like he didn’t know whether he should curse me out or start trying to limp his way to safety. To my surprise, he didn’t do either. Instead he started laughing too. "You know what?"
"What?"
"I think we’re both crazy as hell."
I think that in that moment we were both crazy. Or maybe that was one brief moment where the insanity lifted and we saw things for the way they really were. We both sat there and laughed until we cried.
Mari poked her head in the door and looked at us. She shook her head, made the sign of the cross in the air, then she backed out of the room.
When the laughter died down, reality started to settle in. I wasn’t even angry anymore. I was just tired. At that point, I just wanted out.
"This whole thing we’ve got going here is a farce. It’s pretty obvious that we don’t belong together. I think that Jonah and I should go back to Atlanta."
"Go back to what in Atlanta? Sharing a cramped apartment with Rachel and her boyfriend?"
"I can find somewhere for Jonah and I to live. The point is that I can’t stay with you."
The seriousness and finality in my voice dried up all of Justin’s sarcasm and amusement. In spite of everything that had happened that day, the thought that I might leave him had never even crossed his mind. "You can’t leave. You can’t take Jonah away from me."
A different kind of woman might have pointed out that he didn’t seem that concerned about Jonah when he was whoring his way from one coast to the other, but I didn’t want to argue with him.
"You can see Jonah as often as you want. We don’t have to be together in order for you to be a good father. The environment that we’re creating isn’t healthy for Jonah. Or us for that matter. I broke your foot. I caused you actual bodily harm. I didn’t mean to do it, but you’ve got to admit that’s messed up."
"I know that. But I also know that we can make this work. I’ll do anything to change your mind. Just tell me what you want."
"You had your opportunity to give me what I wanted and you didn’t. Right now the only thing I want is out of this. . .whatever this thing is that we have. I don’t even know what to call it, because it’s not a relationship."
"Don’t say that. There’s something between us. It’s strong and it’s real. I made a mistake and I’m more sorry than I can say. But you have to know that I love you."
"I’ve tried to believe that you love me, Justin. You know that I’ve tried. I have looked the other way more times than I can count. I tried to pretend that I didn’t know that you were lying and cheating, but I can’t do that anymore. That’s not me. I can’t be the good little woman, stuck at home while you run around the world screwing everything in sight. I can’t be that person for you."
"I haven’t been screwing everything in sight. This is the only time that I’ve been with someone else."
"This is the only time that you’ve been caught red handed."
"I made a mistake. You can’t leave me for one mistake, Kayla."
"Yes, I can. You are completely untrustworthy. I can’t live the rest of my life wondering what you’re doing when I’m not looking at you."
"What if you and Jonah come with me?"
"Come with you where?"
"When I go on the road. I’m going to London in January. You and Jonah could come with me."
I had never seen Justin like that before. It was definitely a role reversal. I was calm and rational, while he was desperately hanging on.
"Justin, suppose that Jonah and I go with you. Suppose that you were a perfect angel the entire time that we were together. Then what?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean eventually Jonah and I would have to come home. We can’t follow you all over the world. Would you start lying and cheating as soon as we were out of your sight?"
"I don’t know." That was the most honest thing he’d ever said to me. "I don’t know what will happen. But can’t we just work through that when we get to it?"
"That’s not good enough, Justin. Not this time."
"Will you at least stay until Christmas? Can you just give me that much time?"
Against my better judgement, I started to feel sorry for Justin. That was the first time I noticed that there was something deeply wrong with him. I didn’t know if it was his relationship with Britney or his daddy issues, but something had screwed him up royally. He never would have admitted it out loud, but he had a fear of abandonment that rivaled mine.
"Jonah and I will be here for Christmas, but that’s it Justin."
Justin released the breath he’d been holding and gave me a grateful smile. "Thank you."
"Whatever." Justin rambled on and on about what a great Christmas it was going to be. He said that he would prove to me that he loved me and that he cared. I tuned out all his yakking and pie in the sky promises.
In my mind, Justin and I were over. It had finally sunk in on me that Justin wasn’t ever going to offer me or Jonah any real sense of stability and commitment. I would give him the Christmas that he wanted, but that was it. I was convinced that there wasn’t a damned thing that Justin could do to get me to hang around one day past December 25th.
But I had greatly underestimated the lengths that Justin would go to, to keep me under his thumb. I thought he had used all his best lines and powers of manipulation, but he had a couple more tricks up his sleeves and they were the best ones yet.
Justin came through on his promise to give me the best Christmas I’d ever had. The gifts he gave me were thoughtful, unexpected, exactly what I wanted and strategically engineered to get me to change my mind about leaving.
Emotional blackmail at it’s finest.
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As it turned out Justin’s foot wasn’t broken that badly. He didn’t have to cancel nearly as many appearances as he originally thought. He couldn’t do a lot of traveling, but he was able to spend the remainder of November and the beginning of December doing various performances around Los Angeles. He spent the rest of his time at home with me and Jonah.
Every once in a while I would catch Justin on the phone having whispered conversations. Conversations that would come to an abrupt end when he saw me watching him. I figured that he was just up to his old tricks again, but I didn’t care one way or another.
I had talked to Rachel and patched things up with her. She said that Jonah and I could stay with her and Brian until we could find our own place. I was all set and ready to go. My bags were packed and I had my plane tickets. Justin could do whatever he wanted because in my mind, I was already gone.
Justin had already arranged to celebrate an early Christmas with his family in Tennessee. He spent about a week with them, but he was back in Los Angeles by Christmas Eve.
We had dinner together and then we sat down by the tree with Jonah and opened a couple of gifts. Or I guess I should say that we helped Jonah opened gifts. There was a mountain of presents for me, but I wouldn’t touch any of them. As for Justin, there wasn’t a damned thing for him under that tree, because I hadn’t bought him shit. I thought that Justin would have some sort of fit about that, but he really didn’t seem to mind at all.
As a matter of fact, he had been tantrum and attitude free ever since I’d told him I was leaving. That should have been my first clue that he was up to something, but I was too busy counting the minutes until I could officially roll out to concern myself with the inner workings of Justin’s sneaky little mind.
On Christmas morning, Justin got up early and announced that he had a big surprise for me that he had to go and get. All I heard was blah, blah, blah. I didn’t care that he was leaving, I didn’t care about whatever so called surprise he was going to get. I wasn’t even especially concerned about him coming back.
But he did come back. And he wasn’t alone. He had a woman with him.
She was tall and thin, with honey brown skin, glossy black hair and eyes just like mine. My memories of her were confined to a couple of faded photographs, but I knew who she was immediately. I didn’t know how he’d done it, but Justin had found my mother.
I stood frozen to the spot, but she approached me and wrapped me up in her arms. I was so overwhelmed I didn’t know if I wanted to embrace her or push her away. I just stood there with my arms hanging stiffly by my sides. When she let me go, she brushed my hair behind my ears, so that she could get a really good look at my face.
"You’re so beautiful."
I was positively speechless. Christmas had always been a rather lackluster holiday for me. I had no mother, a father that didn’t visit and an aunt that wouldn’t even put up a tree. When I was younger, I spent every Christmas wishing that my mother would walk through the door and I was disappointed every single year. But now I’d gotten that wish and Justin was the one that had made it come true.
I had forgotten that Justin was in the room until he cleared his throat. "I know you two have a lot to talk about, so I’ll just leave you alone." Justin came closer to me, whispered "Merry Christmas," in my ear and then he hobbled his way out of the room.
After all those years of wishing for my mother, now that I actually had her in front of me, I didn’t know what to say. She sat down on the sofa and I sat beside her.
"You must have a lot of questions. I know there’s so much I want to tell you."
I didn’t have a lot of questions. I only had one. I snapped out of my catatonic state and asked her the one question that had been eating away at me for years. "Why? Why did you leave me?"
"I didn’t leave you. I left your father."
"But you left me there with him."
"I wanted to take you with me, but I couldn’t afford to. I didn’t have a job and I didn’t have any skills to get a job. I didn’t want to leave you but I knew that I couldn’t take care of you, so I left you with your father."
"You couldn’t have stayed with my father until you could afford to take me with you?"
"I made a mistake, Kayla. I was young and short sighted. I got mad with your father and made a hasty decision. If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have left him at all. And I certainly wouldn’t have ever left my baby."
"My father is an asshole. I can understand why you wanted to get away from him. I can even try to understand why you left me behind. But what I can’t understand is why you never came back for me."
"I did come back for you. I got a job and saved up enough money to get a place of my own. I tried to go back and get you, but it was too late."
"What do you mean?"
"Your father had moved and no one would tell me where he had taken you. His family refused to talk to me. I wanted to find you, but I didn’t even know where to start. After a while I stopped looking for you."
"Why?"
"I didn’t know what kind of things your father had probably told you about me. I figured that you might be better off without me."
"I wasn’t better off. I was miserable."
"I was miserable without you too. Not a day went by when I didn’t think about you. I wondered what you looked like and what kind of person you were becoming. I regretted my decision every single day. The only thing that kept me going was the thought that when you got older, you would look for me. I had almost given up hope that I would ever see you again, but then a couple of weeks ago, I got a call from someone that asked me if I had a daughter named Kayla."
"That must have been Justin."
"Yes. I must have asked him a million questions about you. He told me how kind and beautiful you were and what a good mother you’d become. We talked on the phone and then about a week ago, he came to Chicago to talk to me in person. Then we made the arrangements for me to come out here."
My mind was on overload. All I could think about was all the times that I had told Justin about my mother and how much I wanted to see her. I didn’t think he was listening and I didn’t think he cared. But he must have been listening. He used everything I’d ever said to track her down. My details about her were sketchy at best, but he cared enough to piece together enough information to find her.
It would turn out that I wouldn’t be able to maintain much of a relationship with my mother. Too much time had passed for us to have the kind of mother-daughter connection that we should have had. On the surface I had accepted her reasons for leaving me behind, but in my heart, I didn’t believe that anything was a good enough excuse for abandoning your child.
Also, we had some serious arguments about Justin. Whenever I tried to talk to my mother about him and his behavior, she took his side. My mother had developed a very angelic image of Justin. All she knew about him was that he had reunited her with her child. That made him infallible in her book. She thought the best of him because he only ever showed her his good side.
Justin can be very charming when he wants to be. People get so caught up with his baby face, pretty smile and smooth talk that they never notice the cold calculation that sometimes resides in his eyes. They don’t hear the emptiness behind his words. If I didn’t actually know what he was capable of, I wouldn’t believe some of the things he’s done either.
Frankly, I think my mother had a bit of a crush on Justin. At any rate, she wouldn’t hear a bad word about him. No matter what I said, she would give me that old school stand by your man nonsense. I found that to be suspect advice coming from a woman that had run out on her own boyfriend and one year old child. When I pointed out her hypocrisy, we had a big blowout and stopped talking to each other. So far, we’ve both been too stubborn to try and patch things up.
But our falling out was still a little ways down the road.
At that time all I knew was that Justin had given me the one thing I wanted most in the world. He had given me my mother. Of course he waited to find her until he had a situation where he could use it to his advantage, but I didn’t see it that way right then.
My mother and I talked for hours. Apparently she had already fallen under Justin’s spell because her conversation was peppered with high praise of him. In between her telling me about her life, she also took every opportunity to tell me how charming Justin was and how she could tell he loved me by the way he talked about me. I would like to think that Justin would not have been low enough to coach my mother on what to say, but I really wouldn’t put anything past him.
My mother and I talked until we were both exhausted. I insisted that she spend the night at the house instead of going back to the hotel. Mari fixed up a room for her and took her upstairs.
After my mother went to bed, Justin came back to the living room and sat down beside me. "How did it go?"
"It was. . ." I had to stop there because I really didn’t have any words to describe how I felt. "I can’t thank you enough for doing this for me."
"You don’t have to thank me. If it made you happy, that’s all that matters. This is why I asked you to stay with me until Christmas."
"You mean you’ve been planning this all along?"
"Yeah. I knew how much you wanted to see your mother and I also knew that you were scared to look for her on your own. That’s why I did it for you. I want you to know that I’d do anything for you."
I could tell that Justin was about to start bombarding me with more proclamations of everlasting love and I knew that I had been softened up enough to believe them. I needed to remove myself from his presence so that I could think clearly.
"Justin, I need to go to bed. We can talk in the morning." If you think that Justin was about to let me get away that easily, you haven’t been paying attention.
"No. We need to talk right now." Justin slid to the floor and awkwardly arranged himself on one knee.
"Get up from there before you hurt yourself. What are you doing?" I asked the question, but I had a pretty good idea of what he was doing.
"I have one more present for you." Without ever taking his eyes away from mine Justin reached into his pocket and pulled out a little velvet box. A ring box.
"I know that I don’t deserve it, but I hope that you can somehow find it in your heart to forgive me. I know that you love me and you know that I love you. I don’t always do the best job of showing it, but I do love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you."
He popped open the box he was holding and I found myself looking at the most beautiful diamond ring I’d ever seen. It wasn’t flashy or obnoxious because Justin knew that wasn’t my style. But it was flawless and absolutely perfect.
He took the ring out of the box and slipped it on my finger. "Just tell me that you’ll give me another chance to make you happy. Tell me that you still want to be with me."
That was an expertly worded non proposal. Justin and his word games at their very best. Notice how the phrase "marry me" never actually crossed his lips. When we discussed this conversation later (and believe me, we discussed it later), he was honestly able to say that he never actually proposed marriage to me. Boy was slicker than a greased pig.
But what he said and what I heard were two completely different things. I thought he was asking me to marry him. I really should have known better.
I could just tell you what happened next, but let’s try something different. Just for fun.
Pop Quiz
The father of your child is a low down, dirty, lying, cheating, manipulative jackass that wouldn’t know monogamy if it bit him on his narrow white behind. But he pulls a last minute Ebenezer Scrooge type turn around on Christmas Day. He reunites you with a long lost parent and drops to one knee offering up sappy platitudes and the fattest rock you’ve ever seen. Do you:
A. Thank him for the lovely parting gifts, leave him anyway and take that ring to the nearest pawn shop.
B. Thank him for finding your mother, tell him to keep the ring and leave him anyway.
C. Tell him that all is forgiven and hop on a plane to London with him.
If you answered A: You’re one smart cookie. Cash that ring in for all that you can get. He owes you for all the crap you’ve put up with.
If you answered B: You’re a sophisticated woman. While you certainly appreciate what he tried to do, you’ve got the common sense to know that a couple of good deeds can’t make up for a lot of rotten ones.
If you answered C: You’re an idiot. Anything that happens to you after this point is no one’s fault but your own.
Now you tell me. What do you think I did?
