Chapter Two #2
Macy’s dad, who I still called Mr. DuPree because he commanded that kind of respect, had made a fortune by investing small bits of his government job paycheck in emerging and small tech startups in the early and mid 90s, just before the rush of techies made their way to the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley.
He was a distinguished-looking Black man who took pride in his family’s roots and migration from Louisiana to California.
He and Mrs. DuPree, who’d passed many years ago, doted on Macy, their only child.
I avoided him as much as possible, not that I didn’t appreciate him as a father-in-law or Macy’s dad but because he always had something nitpicky to say about the direction of my life and career once I moved to California to be with Macy and raise our family.
And when faced with the reality that I would not make it to the NBA or even the NBA Developmental League and make back the money he invested in me to complete my undergraduate degree in California, Mr. DuPree had no need for me in his life other than being grandfather to Bracee and L.B.
“You ain’t gotta blame him. I came out here willingly when he summoned me to California. Having the DuPree last name opens doors, in case you didn’t know.”
She smiled. What Macy wanted, Macy got. Including me.
“You’re funny. And I know.”
“Oh, I know you know.”
We sat for a few seconds.
“Still, getting pregnant in the 2000s in college wasn’t the scandal he made it out to be,” Macy said.
“He was, and is, stuck on the idea of me as Macy DuPree, the Black Bay Area debutante and Miss Teen California, and not Macy DuPree, the free spirit who nabbed the college basketball star in Missouri.”
“Free spirit? Is that the genteel term for being a ho on campus?”
Again, Macy let out a loud laugh-snort chuckle.
“Oh please, you was hoeing around, too,” Macy said. “Just like most everyone does in college. Everyone wanted them some B.D. King back in college. You did as much shooting off the court than as the shooting guard on the court.”
“I mean, the treasures are everywhere when you’re a college athlete,” I said, lowering my voice. “Not that I condone that behavior now or in my athletes on campus.”
“Truth be told, it’s the same when you’re a cheerleader, or rather a little sideline ho, like that Monica song.” Macy smiled and hunched her shoulders. “I got dicked down daily when I wanted it.” Then she paused and looked at me. “If I’d known, maybe my dad wouldn’t have…I didn’t trick you, Brent.”
“Water under the bridge, as the old folks say,” I said softly. My sessions with Thea had gotten me to a peaceful place with this subject, though at times I had to hold back tears thinking about it. “Bracee is still mine, even if she’s not technically mine.”
“Still. I know my dad forced your hand. Made you and me leave Missouri. Made us marry. Paid for us to finish school out here. Investing in us when he thought you’d be going to the NBA before the injury ended all that.”
“And I’m grateful for all of it, Macy,” I said. I meant it. “I love you. I love the life we built. I love our kids. I love that you made me start therapy. Thank you.”
“Which you or I wouldn’t have started until Bracee’s accident unraveled the truth,” Macy said. “I truly didn’t know. I really thought it was you back then and up until…”
I shushed her. Lowered my voice. “I’m still her father.”
Macy scooted out of the breakfast nook bench, took the smoothies off the table, and put them in the new Thermador, part of our recent kitchen remodel and upgrade. Instead of rejoining me at the table, she leaned against the kitchen island.
“Speaking of Missouri, I guess we gotta decide if we’re going together or if you want to go solo when you get that Black Alumni award this month,” Macy said.
Macy remembered and organized everything in our family and our business ventures, and frankly, if it wasn’t for her, I’d have forgotten about the trip.
“I understand,” I said. “My teammates. Your sorors. Our pending separation and next steps.”
“Your coming out,” Macy said sharply. “Today, I don’t think I could handle going. But I’ll think about it and let you know.”
“No pressure.”
“Anyway,” she sighed. “We’ll survive. We’ll figure out the house, the gyms, money, and college costs.”
“Let’s just cross that bridge when it’s time,” I said. “Let’s stay present in this moment and what we’re discussing.”
I hadn’t told Macy yet, but I didn’t plan on taking or asking for anything.
It’d been primarily her father’s money that had set us up for our lifestyle now.
Besides paying for both of us to finish college out here, along with hooking up child care for us when Bracee was a baby, he’d put up the seed money for Macy and me to buy our first fitness club.
He’d given us the house we lived in—the one he and Macy’s late mom raised Macy in—when he upgraded to something newer and bigger in a nearby subdivision.
Controlling yet generous was the best I could say about Macy’s father.
I didn’t want anything else tied to him.
I knew I could survive solo on my salary as the director of athletics at C.U.
Bay Area, even in a city where a hundred grand was considered low income, two hundred grand almost middle.
My university benefits were taking care of Bracee’s college costs at the C.U.
campus near Los Angeles. If he didn’t get a soccer scholarship, Macy and I had saved more than enough to put Little through college, as all his life he’d insisted on going to a school in Michigan, of all places.
“Who’s gonna tell your dad? When are we gonna tell Bracee and Little? And how soon do you want me out?”
“We will figure it out,” Macy said. “There’s no rush, you know. Where will you go anyway?”
“I’ll probably get one of the employee condos the campus owns in San Francisco until I figure out what I want,” I said.
“It’ll save me commuting time and gas from here in the Oakland Hills.
It’ll get me out of the subdivision and away from all the couples and parents and friends in our scene here.
I want the separation to be easy for you, too. ”
“Thank you.”
I scooted away from the table, walked over to the kitchen island, and grabbed her hand again.
“I’m glad this conversation was easy,” I said, kissing her hand. “I hope we can keep everything beyond this easy as well.”
“I don’t plan to make it difficult,” Macy said. “My father, on the other hand…I’ll handle him if he does.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“I’m happy for you. I really am,” Macy said. “I’m just sad for all the wasted time. All the time when we could have really been happy. I mean, we were happy, but…you know what I mean.”
The time.
If I was going to be radically honest, the thing that got to me most was the issue of time. Time wasted. Time gone by. Time ahead.
“Time is precious,” I said. “I’m not going to hold anything against you or your father.
Trust me, I’ve worked through any feelings of resentment and anger with my sessions with Thea.
And all the what-ifs. What if you and I hadn’t met in college?
What if we stopped taking the breaks and getting back together over and over? What if I hadn’t taken that class?”
“Do you ever think about him?”
With individual, couple, and family therapy over the past few years, I had thought about him every once in a while, and it came out during some of our sessions.
I didn’t hold anything against Macy. But the life Macy and I built together in California took precedence, and I saw no point reminiscing or looking back.
“I gave that up for us and the life we have now. No regrets.”
I’d dated quite a few people before college and during undergrad, no doubt.
But outside of being with Macy in an on-and-off committed thing, Larenz was my guy.
My only guy. The one I would have risked it all for back then.
The one who got inside my heart in a way no one else ever really had.
But I shut him out like he was insignificant when Macy and I made the choices we made.
I owed him an apology and an explanation.
“What if you could have back today what you gave up then?” Macy asked.
Would I ever have a chance to?
This was one of many questions that I had discussed recently with Thea. As Thea often shared in our sessions, the answers to the what-ifs and could-have-beens have the potential to drive us mad because they’re all imaginary. What’s real is what is in front of us here and now.
I looked across at Macy. I was thankful for our mature and amicable conversation. I was scared, too, much like I imagined Macy might be with the prospect of starting a new chapter. It was scary and exciting.
I was full of questions about what could be. Like everything else I’d done up to this point in my life, I’d learn to face it with courage and would take it one day at a time.