THE RED WAKE

CHAPTERS 1-3

CHAPTER 1

                                                

                                              

               "Farewell, My Desdemona:

               I’ll Come To Thee Straight."

                                                                -Othello, The Moor Of Venice.

       While the world was changing in the blink of an eye, Alan Whitmore was fighting with his estranged wife, Jillian. 

     He was losing the fight. 

     He hated to lose anything to her, but what he hated most, what really burned his ass was the fact that Jillian knew that he knew he was losing.

     "For God's sake, Alan, you're being obtuse,” she said.  “Let’s cut our losses and get the hell out now. Dump it while the market's stable and the economy's good." 

      She was making sense; Take whatever losses they had incurred while renovating the two hundred-year-old farmhouse, sell it and split the proceeds. So far the pre- divorce negotiations had been civil. They hadn't even brought in attorneys, agreeing to split everything evenly between them. Neither of them wanted this divorce to descend into another ugly, hurtful, pissing contest. So many of their friends had gone that route, no thank you very much. 

     But it was growing increasingly difficult to remain civil.

     “Look, we can make a cleaner break if we sell it outright and divide the money,” Jillian said. 

     “No,” he replied.

     They'd bought the place together, each contributing half of the one hundred thousand-dollar down payment. Jillian had borrowed half of her portion from her parents, while Alan had taken the responsibility for producing his half all on his own. 

     He'd been estranged from his father at that time, largely because Solomon Whitmore had never approved of Alan and Jillian's relationship. 

      What, son? You couldn’t find a wholly unacceptable black girl to throw in my face, like most of your friends? 

     Solomon had made no bones about his feelings regarding mixed marriages. And Alan had rebelled by cutting his father out of his life. They hadn't spoken for two years, not until Alan’s mother died suddenly of pneumonia. Solomon had found himself unexpectedly alone, with only pride and prejudice to keep him company. 

     The death of his wife broke something fierce and defiant in Solomon Whitmore's spirit. And suddenly, the idea of his son dating “outside his race” hadn't seemed quite so outrageous. In the light of his own unwillingly acquired solitude, Solomon was loath to deny his son the chance at the same kind of love he’d known, simply because Jillian happened to be of European descent.

     In the end Solomon had softened somewhat toward the idea, even invited the two of them up to Connecticut several times with the hope of hashing things over. But the three of them had never been comfortable together. There had been too much anger, too many hurtful words between them. 

     And so Alan had preferred to limit everyone’s discomfort to the occasional quickie visit, and holidays. He and Jillian had continued their own rocky relationship largely outside of Solomon’s purview.