Authors: Nate Allen
She was the kind of woman likely to say what was on her mind, not reflexively but thoughtfully so, yet it was often what she didn’t say that was truly important. Like a seasoned politician she could be honest yet not entirely truthful, with an uncanny ability to edit herself even in emotional exchanges so as not to cause some impediment to achieving whatever her goal and purpose happened to be. She spoke with a careful
southern twang
, careful, because she never seemed uncertain of what was coming out of her mouth, and he would never hear her apologize for anything she had said, only the way it had been interpreted.
Sultry, in all its glory, did not only allow for imperfections, it didn’t seem to exist without them. Sometimes it was an overbite, a raspy voice, a scar with some tragic story attached, one of hers was a tooth, just slightly crooked, to your left as you faced her, that ruined the symmetry of her smile but gave it character and not as a distraction. She had grown to smile a little crooked as a child in a self-conscious attempt to hide it, but as an adult it presented itself as a hint of delightful wickedness, and it gave the impression that she knew a secret and wasn’t telling.
Ambitious, for a time she had worked in the weather department at a local TV station, an intelligent young woman, she had always been interested in science and meteorology, and had graduated from college with an undergraduate degree in Atmospheric Sciences, she hoped one day to work for the National Weather Service, EPA or FEMA perhaps, and all were realistic goals, and as luck would have it, she was given the opportunity to fill in on the 11 o’clock spot one evening when the weatherman failed to show. She nailed it, and eventually had the weekend morning slot. With an exploited childhood nickname like Raen Waters …how could she miss? Not a cloud in her sky …the future looked
bright
.
Frank Mangum was a fixture in the local community, “hell,” he was a fixture in the region. For the past 14 years he had been the station’s 6:00 and 11:00 sports desk anchor. He had played college basketball somewhere in the Big 10, Pac 10 or something like that, gotten into broadcasting, and wound up on Tobacco Road right in the thick of college hoops. He was well liked and more importantly respected by the area coaches, and thus entrenched in the local sports scene, yet in an unbiased way that someone from the area might be expected. It gave him credibility, and his audience and peers accordingly afforded him due respect. He was a good-looking guy, and it seemed like he never aged. Those of us who watch the news almost forget these people have families and real lives, and behind the scenes he and Rae Anne would become romantically involved, the knowledge of which only became apparent to their co-workers when an unexpected pregnancy arose.
He was married, and a quiet and very localized scandal ensued all while the rest of us were checking in to catch the scores, highlights, and tomorrow’s forecast, oblivious to it all. Fair or not, by virtue of his visibility and tenure he was of greater value to the affiliate, and presumably had some leverage of an assumable nature that required those who make such decisions to overlook his indiscretion, though truth be told, they were probably envious and high-fiving each other at the revelation when having drinks after work. But she on the other hand would be unable to hide her “
involvement
,” and right or wrong, while not fired, she was soon “off-the-air” so to speak.
In his defense, Frank had fallen in love with her and divorced his wife without as much drama as one might think, a childless union, the dissolution was fairly businesslike… Rae would later confess she thought there must’ve been something going on at the wife’s end as well, a handsome landscaper trimming the bush perhaps, and they married as soon as the divorce was final, but after the baby came, a son, Franklin, called Frankie, followed by another child soon after, whom they named Raymond James, after both their fathers… (Not the NFL stadium as people first thought), and they called him RJ for short. They lived a happy life, though he was sixteen years her senior he didn’t look it, and they made quite the couple. But marriages, as anyone who’s ever been married can attest to, are difficult to maintain, and Frank, being a local celebrity had his share of news groupies, which came with its distractions, temptations, opportunities …and eventual problems and excuses.
Past behavior being the best indication of future behavior, a suspicious Rae would find him one afternoon all bowed up at the Velvet Crown Inn with a local hockey team cheerleader, whereby she precipitously melted
down
, or blew
up
depending on your perspective. Their marriage of three and a half years came to a close. The relationship that had been born in infidelity, ended with infidelity as well, and as ironic as it would prove, she had a strong aversion to unfaithfulness and being cheated on. The incident scarred her it seemed, and even to this day she still had not gotten over it on some level. It had not been a blow to her confidence, that remained intact as she attributed the waywardness to his apparent stupidity, but it had damaged her ability to trust her instincts and intuition for a time. She had the appearance of strength in the aftermath, but it was really a fear of being vulnerable and a fierce determination not to be again. Reconciliation not being an option for her, they would eventually come to an agreeable parting for the benefit of the boys as divorced parents are often forced to do, and while it was not easy, they worked hard to maintain a good relationship in that regard, and the children grew up happy as a result.
Local TV personalities make more money than we sometimes think, especially in a top 30 market like Raleigh-Durham, and Frank acted responsibly in that regard, and child support and alimony were provided. Finances consequently were not the real issue for her in the wake of divorce, instead for the immediate future she would need the stability of a man emotionally supportive, and trustworthy …she found that in Glen Johnston.
Divorce, and the drama it had brought left her looking for answers, not uncommon, and in a characteristic effort to satisfy and understand some of the questions it had left her with, she went back to school part-time, not in pursuit of a degree, but as a matter of introspection and self-awareness. She didn’t trust it to someone else like a therapist to tell her the “why” or “what” of it all, she needed to discern those details for herself, and correct them.
More than a mere comely young divorcee, she was the quintessential M.I.L.F., and commanded all kinds of attention. Never acting out of desperation or loneliness, she was commendably true to herself and her responsibilities to the boys, she chose her partners, few though they were, cautiously. Like everyone she had her “types” that she gravitated towards, a predisposition it would seem for authority figures, older men, and bad-boy alpha males, the only common denominator being that they had to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation. She would eventually come to find something of what she sought, short-term perhaps, in Glen, her Developmental Psych professor. They would have a brief courtship before a Dillon South Carolina marriage and Myrtle Beach weekend honeymoon, and not long afterwards a daughter together, Natalie. However, for a psychology professor he wasn’t particularly insightful or intuitive. Perhaps because he dealt so much in theories and large schemes, that he missed the nuances of his own relationship, the warning signs, or billboards as they came to be, or perhaps, he would come to know after the fact he was simply out of his league with the woman. Intimidated by her on a number of important levels, and that seed of self-doubt, once planted in a man, cannot be unsown, and if unable to
weed
it out can render him incapable of satisfying those all important needs. And before long this marriage went the way of many others, becoming routine, emotionally vacant and impotent, and leaving some things to be desired by our gal Rae Anne, much as she may have in fact designed it. Enter our man Jake stage right…
He was different, and he knew it, how could anyone have come out of the confusion that was his childhood and not have been. He understood others’ efforts and inability to categorize him, but he cared very little about it and made no apology for it. “He was who he was,” and he didn’t ask for, nor need understanding, only acceptance. While the sixties and early seventies are often remembered as a simpler time, before the dime-store became the dollar-store, when TV was black and white, carpet was shag, Playboy was risqué, and pornographic miniature playing cards were the most coveted currency of elementary school playgrounds, they quickly became a confusing time, a period of transition, struggling to make some sense of the explosion of culture, drugs, sex and the war in Vietnam. The era exposed the same complexities of life that had always existed, only less publicly, and brought them and the imperfections of the illusion of family life out into the open, try to think of it if you can as a black and white Kodak moment meets YouTube.
Named after his father’s brother Jacob, and Garris after an Army buddy who had died in WWII, he had grown up in a middle class home in Guilford County, North Carolina, the son of two loving parents who did the best they could in terms of raising him. But he had come late in their lives, at a time when they thought having a child impossible, and both in their forties …at a time when they didn’t have the energy for one and as is sometimes the case, for better or worse, the older boys in the neighborhood would have a greater influence on his upbringing. He was an innately happy child, confidence was in his genetic make-up, his personal composition, but life seemed to be continually tripping him up and throwing obstacles in front of him and much as the acorn has the promise of the strength of an oak, it would be years in developing.
His parents had their shortcomings like everyone. His father was a brilliant, gentle man, one of the strongest men he would ever know, mentally and physically, but he had one great weakness and that was his wife Ann, and she would exaggerate other weaknesses in him. Ann wore the pants in the family. Jake could never decide whether it was simply apathy that she hid behind a professed wall of fear and overprotection or just perhaps that at her age she was not willing to be bothered and burdened with the commitments that come with allowing a child to participate in certain activities, but for whatever reason, he wasn’t allowed to do much, to pursue natural inclinations.
Needs
and
wants
can be squelched, but are difficult to eradicate and just as the roots of a stout tree will push up the sidewalk, like the weed that appears in the cracks, he would begin to assert himself as a teenager.
When the people who are supposed to provide you the things necessary and particular to your individual development don’t, as a matter of survival and necessity one learns to persuade others, individuals who are not obligated to do so by ties of blood or family to do them for you instead, and he became very adept at the skill and grew from a very endearing boy to a genuinely endearing man. It was a quality that would prove to be a great asset. While it’s important to instill confidence in a child, like anything that is given, it can also be taken away, but the confidence that comes from within, from surviving, with overcoming obstacles, born not only of success but of trying and failure, is much more enduring, and that is the confidence which would come to him, even if only realized much later in his life as a man.
After High School he attended a small Liberal Arts college, it was a school that had a reputation as an elite academic institution, and the curriculum, combined with his lack of discipline and abundance of appetite for all things, made his stay short. He bounced around from job to job, trying a bit of everything, in small doses. He would prove to have a short attention span when it came to many things, and employment was among them. Like many young folks, he knew not what he wanted to do, but he was quick to learn what he didn’t.
He would meet his wife, Rene, when he was home one weekend for his 10
th
High School class reunion. He was twenty-eight and she twenty-four, a hostess at the Country Club the event was held, and nursing student at an area community college near Greensboro. In typical whirlwind fashion they fell in love and successfully carried on a long-distance engagement for a year until her graduation before getting married and moving to Raleigh. The boy came two years later and solidified the union for a time, but as he was finding to be formulaic in his relationships, it would have an expiration date, and those married couples that don’t grow in the same direction grow apart. Five years into it they would part before irreparable animosity took root. He would readily concede she had been a good wife and a loving mother, and he would prove to be at best a dedicated father and
great
ex-husband. The period following the split and leading up to our story characterized by efforts to improve on his shortfalls, and the romantic landscape littered with one-night stands, brief, invisible and
meaningless
relationships. At which point our vixen enters stage left …and
everything
was subject to change.
He would spend the next day trying to focus on the tasks at hand, caring for his son, on auto-pilot regarding work, it was after all generally mindless physical tasks. He was conflicted about the situation, the only time he had ever been involved with a married women was unknowingly. She had told him she was legally separated …but apparently neglected to tell her husband, and that oversight had resulted in a very awkward conversation with an irate man on his doorstep while she lay naked and concerned in his bed.
On this instance however, still in the conceptual phase, it presented a different problem on his proverbial porch so to speak because it was inherently at odds with the image of the straight-up kind of guy he thought himself to be. But sometimes in life, situations arise where we are forced to make decisions …
difficult
decisions that require us to make a conscious choice to either abandon some aspect of our principles or personal code, or abandon those things which we desire with such fervor that it’s simply reduced to a question of betraying oneself, or committing to violate another in the pursuit. To step across the boundaries we have drawn around our lives that define us as individuals and willfully trespass. And while he didn’t even “know
”
the damn woman yet, the image he had concocted of her in his mind and the idea of who she might be, who she might become in his life, had infected him and he was now debating those selfish considerations all because of the touch of a hand …and the
nervousness
it had produced.