The Other Side of Love by Magali Ortiz - HTML preview

Chapter 14

 

“Gee, what do I say to that one? Obi wan Nicole, who always has an answer to everything.”

Everyone stayed silent for a few minutes, Aaron hoping that she would say yes, that she would love to adopt him.

Then Ivan commented, “This is one of those life-changing decisions you were talking about to me less than an hour ago.”

“This is one I don’t have to think over. I didn’t know how to react at first precisely because I didn’t expect this. I never suspected that he wanted me to become his mother. He always told me how much he loved me, but…I’m shocked.”

He smiled, hoping to convince her.

“This is a big, but easy decision to make.” She wrapped him in her arms again. “What do you think? Of course I will adopt you!” Then she let him go to look him in the eyes. “In fact, I will go with your father to start the proceedings tomorrow morning, but we’ll make it so that your grandparents will still be able to make decisions for your wellbeing. How does that sound?”

“That’s music to our ears,” said Merlin.

She looked up at him.

“That means that when the proceedings start, the four of us have to go together,” Cherie said.

Nicole got up and held Aaron’s hand, walking him into the house. “Come on in, guys.” Everyone went in and Ivan closed the door. “Did you have breakfast yet?”

“No, not yet,” Merlin said as he walked to the kitchen with Nicole, and Cherie, Ivan and Aaron settled in the living room and started watching cartoons together. Cherie and Ivan were very grown, but they would enjoy cartoons, too—some of them.

“Don’t make us anything fancy. Cereal is fine. We ran out of cereal and we were going to go to the grocery store to get some more. Then, Aaron said he wanted to go to Mom and Dad’s house.”

As Nicole served Corn Flakes for Merlin and Cherie, with milk, after getting the products out of the places they were in, in a lapse of one minute, Nicole turned to look at him and asked, stunned and openmouthed, “Mom and Dad?”

“That’s right,” Merlin said, looking at her like he was his daughter, the daughter he would’ve loved to have had, instead of the daughter he had and lost before he could work things out with her and have a parental relationship with her. “My grandson calls you Mom now.”

“Huh,” she said in a non-interrogatory tone, as she carried the bowls of cereal to the living room. She and Ivan didn’t mind their guests, especially their family members, eating outside the dining room, even if they made messes. The house had to be cleaned every certain amount of days anyway, and they opted not to have carpet anywhere in the house but the bedrooms, which were the rooms their guests would never go into, “I wonder what I did to deserve so much reverence and love.”

Aaron heard that, and for the first time he got into an adult conversation, to make clear to Nicole his feelings for her. “Love me,” he replied. “What you did to deserve reverence from me was love me.”

She had to hug him again. “You are so sweet. I didn’t know that one could still win someone over by being nice to them, especially a little angel like you!” She squeezed his nose with her thumb and her index finger and he laughed. “I thought that was impossible to do nowadays.”

“You are a wonderful person, Nicole. That’s all we know.” Ivan had to go to the bathroom. It was the perfect opportunity for Cherie to tell Nicole something about Ivan that she didn’t know, that could change their lives and their marriage forever, something good or bad, depending on how Nicole would take it in. The bathroom was very far away from the living room, so Cherie could tell her in the time it would take him to get to the nearest bathroom to that living room. Meanwhile, Merlin was back in the kitchen, preparing the toast, orange juice and coffee as compliments to his and Cherie’s cereal. This would only take a few minutes to do. “I hope you don’t hate Ivan after what I am about to tell you.”

“What could possibly make me hate him, after I married him, knowing him for less than seven months? I mean, I didn’t just marry the man. I promised to love, honor and respect him in good times and in bad. I already got myself in the hole, so to speak. There’s no getting me out of the hole this time because when I make a commitment, a promise, I keep it. No matter what. The only thing that would stop me from keeping a promise is death, although I appreciate you doing this.”

“Don’t think that Ivan has been keeping secrets from you all this time. He literally told you everything: his thoughts, his fears, his desires, his ambitions, you name it. But he left out one thing, just one, and I am going to tell you what it is he left out, right now. Like I said, I hope this doesn’t cause a strain in your marriage. They say love conquers all.”

“It sounds horrible.”

“Well, it is, depending on how you look at it.” She cleared her throat. “Because Marissa, my daughter was always telling him how inadequate and imperfect he was because of his disability…”

Nicole interrupted her. “Yeah, all that bullshit, I am sick of hearing it. No one’s perfect. Get over it, bitches. Ok, continue…”

“Well, he once told her that maybe, just maybe, he was better off committing to and marrying a disabled woman because only a disabled woman would love him and accept him just the way he was, that he hated her for believing that healthy and normal-looking, or beautiful in her case, meant perfect, when in reality, we all come from the same ruined mold.”

“And that’s it. That’s what would make me hate Ivan.”

“I thought maybe it would.”

“Actually, with all due respect, you couldn’t be more wrong, Cherie. May I call you Cherie?”

“Of course. You’re the stepmother and future legal mother of my grandson. We’re family. You can call me anything you want except a bad name, an insult. I am warning you, if you ever do that, no matter how angry I make you and drive you to it, I will slap you. Hard.”

Nicole laughed, making Cherie laugh, too. “You don’t have to worry about that. The only people I’ve ever insulted were my older sister, after she hit me, and Mark Saunders, after he kidnapped and hit me, too, and tried to rape me.”

“Yeah, I heard about that. What an asshole.”

Laughing, Nicole said, “Everybody seems to call him that instead of calling him Mark or Mark Saunders.”

The women couldn’t stop laughing at the moment. “Maybe because that’s what he is!”

They laughed again. “Well, to finish my thought, I can’t hate Ivan for saying that and for wanting a disabled woman as his wife, for life…ooh, that rhymed!”

More laughs.

“Because deep down, that’s what I wanted, too, to marry a disabled man, just like me. As a matter of fact I have searched for websites in which disabled men go to, seeking for a mate, a companion or just a date. I never created my profile because I knew that thousands of men would email me, and frankly, I hate hurting people’s feelings, and I would choose only one man and all the others would be hurt. I know because I’ve turned men down before. Several, and they get depressed, and obsessed, and you know, I always have to run home to my family and they end up watching me like I’m a baby or a teenager, making sure no one breaks into our house. That’s horrifying. Anyway, I decided I wanted a disabled man, too. Funny thing is that Ivan and I are disabled, and we fell in love and got married, but we didn’t even realize it. It feels like it just happened before we knew what was happening. We got closer and closer as the days went by, cared about one another more and more, told each other our thoughts, fears and secrets and suddenly we fell in love. We overlooked one another’s physiques as well. We fell in love with the people we were, each other’s personalities, good traits. I don’t think we fell in love with each other’s physical appearances ‘til this morning.”

“Interesting,” Cherie said. “Merlin and I were the same way.”

Merlin brought the toast, the coffee and the orange juice in a tray, so that it would be easier for him to carry everything around. “Say what?” He placed the tray on the coffee table.

“I was telling her how you and I fell in love with one another’s personalities before we fell in love with one another’s physical appearance.”

“Oh,” he said, sitting beside his wife and started eating. Luckily the cereal was just as fresh as when Nicole served it for him and it was only ten minutes from starting to become soggy. A few minutes later, his cereal was gone before he finished his thought. “That’s true.”

“It was only this morning when he got up, and I got up right after he did, that I noticed his beautiful, one of a kind, seemingly custom-made face…”

Ivan got back to the living room sooner than they expected and started listening to the conversation, unbeknown to them. He stood there in the doorway that led to the first hallway in the house, the closest one from the main living room and the front door.

“That body…oh, those muscles that would make any woman throw herself at him. And that butt, oh, my god, that butt! I want to spank it so bad…”

“Oh, we’re getting a little too intimate here,” commented Merlin. “Control those hormones, woman!”

“He’s so damn fine. So damn fine. There’s nothing about him that I want to change, inside or out. He’s just perfect. I don’t understand why it would even occur to anyone to call him ‘imperfect’ or ‘defective’ because he’s far from that. He’s the man every woman dreams of.”

“We went from naughty to downright romantic,” Cherie commented.

Walking closer to her, Ivan replied, “And you’re the woman every man dreams of and every man wants.” He sat beside Nicole. “And if what you’re saying is true, that I am the man every woman dreams of, then we’ve got it made, because no matter how badly they want us, we can only have each other. Only I can have you, and only you can have me.”

“And then from romantic to sweet,” said Merlin. “This is nice. I just noted what a wonderful wife I have.” Merlin took Cherie’s hand in his hand. “She’s always nice to me, even when we argue, because she never insults me or says things that make me feel like dirt. When we argue, all she does is defend her current belief and her point of view. She never even points anything at me.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “I’ve always believed that love means respect. That’s why I treat my husband this way.”

Nicole and Ivan also held hands. “Ivan and I behave the same way when we have a disagreement, and that was when we were just friends. Now that we’re husband and wife, we’ll be even more careful with the words we say.”

“Well, I have to go back to the bathroom,” Ivan said. “Isn’t that scary?”

“Are you ok?”

“People with my condition are commonly lactose intolerant. I forgot to buy my lactaid pills. It’s a miserable life, and I can’t avoid dairy because almost everything we eat has dairy in it.” He went back to the bathroom. I have to take a shower, too. He didn’t say this out loud because he didn’t want to make anyone more disgusted than they already were.

While everyone finished eating in the living room, except Merlin, because he rushed to the pharmacy to get the over-the-counter lactaid pills, Ivan took a shower, embarrassed. He wasn’t all full of his waste, but he had the odor-eliminating vent in the bathroom in full swing, and he’d sprayed Lysol disinfectant all over the bathroom. He had also activated that thing that cleanses the toilet while turning the water bright-blue and he had his clothes apart from all the other dirty clothes, to take them straight to the laundry room when he got out of the bathroom. There was only one problem. Ivan got so hysterical with the whole situation that he forgot to get his change of clothes. Fortunately, his wife had left her figuratively blood-red robe there. It was a sign that she wanted something from him today, something he couldn’t go get at the store. He put on the red robe after drying himself with the towel and raced out of the bathroom. When he closed the door behind him, Aaron was standing there with clothes and underwear for him to change into. “Were you going to go get this?” Aaron had a great fashion sense. He’d spent a half an hour in his father’s room, just deciding what clothes looked best on his father and making sure they would match, like they were part of an outfit. Ivan figured Aaron would grow up to be a fashion designer, but a very masculine and straight one. Ivan knew his boy’s orientation because of the way he acted with girls. He’d never get fresh with a girl, but he looked at all of them with his eyes full of love, drooling, while the guys, he wouldn’t even acknowledge their good looks, just Aaron’s own good looks. Sometimes girls would be around him and he would be there smiling like a little clown just because the girls were around him. He’d never touch them, kiss them or anything, but he couldn’t hide the fact that he thought that girls were God’s very best creation. “I somehow knew red looked great on you. That’s why I picked out this red shirt with black pants, and then red socks and black shoes, and just so your pants would match better with your shirt, I also picked out a black t-shirt for you to wear underneath your jacket-style shirt. Is that ok?”

“You never cease to impress me.” Ivan took all the clothes in both hands, opened the bathroom door, and rushed right back in. Even his underwear was black. Amazing. He put everything on in a matter of minutes, blow-dried and styled his hair and walked back out of the bathroom. Aaron was still standing there. He worried Ivan wouldn’t like the clothes, and he was wearing them just so no one would see him naked, with a towel around his waist, or wearing a robe, while he went to his room to change his clothes again. “Something wrong?”

“No.”

“You need anything?”

“I just need to know if you liked the clothes.”

“Of course I did. Not every garment you put on has to be the same color in order to match. You put two colors together and they match pretty well.” They walked to Ivan’s room together. “For instance, red and black and red and white are excellent combinations. Anything with black or white matches perfectly, I think. I am no fashion designer, but I’ve seen it work pretty well. Gray matches with black and white, but I think you ought to watch out for combinations like red and green, red and yellow, red and orange, you know, uncommon stuff like that. You know. You picked out the perfect clothes for me to wear.”

Aaron heard someone coming through the door but Ivan didn’t hear that because his voice had become deeper and louder, just like Langston’s. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“They just let that person in like nothing. I hope it’s Papa Merlin,” he said, rushing out of the room, “because if it’s someone else…”

Aaron and Ivan rushed to the living room. It was Merlin indeed, with Ivan’s OTC medicine…and Norman Ainsworth. Norman hadn’t had the chance to meet Ivan in person yet because he was a registered nurse and this week, there were a lot more emergencies and he had to work a lot harder and many more hours than usual. You could notice the dark circles under his eyes from his lack of sleep. However, they’d talked on the phone a lot, and since Ivan was a PT, he was always giving Norman tips on how to handle a patient when he or she had pain in his or her body or the extremities, while they were being transferred from one place to the other, as to what exercises to perform to make the patient feel better. Because of that, Norman became everyone’s favorite nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital. He was gigantic and strong, could carry a patient that weighed up to 500 pounds without the assistance of a Hoyer lift, without suffering from back problems or minimal discomfort, only for a few minutes, during a transfer, though, and on top of that, he was sweet and compassionate. He would always talk to his patients like they were family, and he would never yell at them or talk rough to them for any reason. Norman and Ivan hugged. They shook hands. “How are you doing, man?”

“Fine,” said Ivan. “I’m a newlywed, so you can imagine.”

“Yes, I can imagine, all right? I’m nowhere near there because I am the youngest child of London Ainsworth’s first marriage, but hey, I manage. All of our siblings were born one right after the other. Mom would give birth and one month later she would be pregnant again. That’s how you can explain that there are four of us, born right after you and Langston, and the short age differences.”

“Wow. Mom and Dad were pretty busy weren’t they?”

“Yes, they were, and when Mom died, Dad got married again and had three more children with his second wife. Three? Man, I don’t know. I’ve lost count.”

Everyone laughed.

“At least our father has only had children with two women and he’s not spreading himself like a plague, like my wife’s kidnapper is.”

“Oh, yeah, whatever became of that freak.”

They sat down together. It was a gigantic sofa. “He’s in jail now, facing a fifty-year sentence just for masterminding a kidnapping, and twenty more years for sexual assault, and fifteen more years for torture, so basically he’s going to spend the rest of his life behind bars, no chance of parole because of the graveness of his crimes.”

“Unless his attorney comes up with a great defense.”

“Oh, I doubt that. All the proof is there. It all started with an old lady’s photo of my wife, fighting for her life with Mark’s minions, and it escalated when police saw the condition my wife was in, when they got to that disgraced cabin. My wife gave her statement and, man, with all the irrefutable physical evidence, man, that motherfucker is doomed. Just doomed. His only way out of jail is a pardon from the governor, and I doubt that’s ever going to happen. Governors may pardon murderers and bank-robbers, but I doubt any governor or major authority figure in this whole planet would pardon a rapist. There’s just no way. That man is ill in the head, anyway. They’re going to figure it out and send him to a loony bin.”

“Man, I know this isn’t funny,” said Ivan, cracking up, “but I can’t help laughing. Ivan, you are a total son of a gun when you want to be, I swear.”

“Oh, yes I am. I may be nice, according to other people that is, but when someone messes with my family and tries to take what’s mine, I get up in their ass. I really get up there, causing indescribable pain.”

The laughs couldn’t stop.

“I get my head that’s above my neck, up in their ass, and I make my way in until my whole body’s in there. No one messes with mine. Everybody’s got a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde inside them and I really embrace mine and get the most of Mr. Hyde when someone hurts someone I love. I bet you anything his attorney knows his case is a lost cause, and he either quit already or is getting ready to quit. Karma’s a bitch, and she doesn’t forgive you when you hurt innocent people. That’s actually when her bitchiness is at its worst.”

Sure enough, Mark’s attorney, Attorney Kensington, went to the prison to give Mark the news that no prisoner or anyone with a criminal or civil case pending, wanted to hear: he was quitting. Mark had told him, when the state assigned him to Mark, that he never tried to rape Nicole, that he’d never do that, that all he wanted to do was make her suffer by keeping her away from her family for a while, to hurt Ivan for what Ivan did to him. Attorney Kensington had just gotten proof of the sexual assault that would’ve been rape if Mark had had intercourse with Nicole. He was just shown photos of her torn clothes, and although torn clothes weren’t enough proof because Nicole could’ve torn them herself, DNA tests had done on Nicole to know if Mark had been stupid enough to leave traces of his DNA on her. He did. He had kissed her cheek and her neck, and her shoulders, and not just with his lips. Another big mistake. That could’ve been proof of wanted affection while playing a twisted sexual game of having those things done to you when you were tied up, except there were bite marks all over Mark’s neck and shoulders, strong bite marks, like a vampire’s, and those marks wouldn’t fade for a couple weeks. Nicole couldn’t defend herself with her hands and her nails, so she used her mouth to do so instead. There was more than enough evidence that Nicole didn’t respond to his advances. Attorney Kensington would never forgive his clients for lying to him because a lie, just one, no matter how seemingly insignificant, like saying an attacker was wearing a green shirt and not a gray one at the time of the attack, when in reality he was wearing a gray shirt, could make him lose the case, and although a lie like that wasn’t really a lie, but an honest mistake, Attorney Kensington wouldn’t let that pass, either because he could lose his case, and his squeaky-clean reputation as one of few lawyers who had never lost a case, would be ruined. Even if it was the client’s fault, it was still a case lost, and it wouldn’t look good in an attorney’s record because then, people wouldn’t trust him or her. Kensington sat right in front of Mark, and glass separated them. They had to communicate through phone receivers.

“Hello.”

“Saunders, I am quitting. I am not working for you anymore. I can’t.”

“Whoa! What the hell…?”

“I can’t do this anymore, Saunders. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, wait a second! Hold up!” Mark got up and the guard grabbed him by the shoulder and exerted enough force on him to make him sit back down. “Why are you quitting, man? Why are you doing this to me? Did you know you’re not my first attorney? You know how many sons of whores have done this to me?”

“Maybe because you did to them the same thing you did to me.”

“What did I do to you?”

“You lied to me, Mark!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You lied to your former attorneys and you lied to me. I know that now. Your parents were paying for your other attorneys’ services until they ran out of money and then the state assigned me to you. I was your last chance, man, and I could’ve gotten your imminent sentence reduced if you had been honest with me from the very beginning! Why did you lie?”

“Would you please quit yelling and tell me what I lied about?”

“You know what you lied about! You’re not stupid!”

“That’s what you have to quit, the yelling! You don’t have to quit me.”

“I can’t quit the yelling and I have to quit y