by CD Reiss
“Such as?”
“I know a guy who makes excellent designer drugs.”
“Fiona,” he scolded.
“I’m joking.” I joked because I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I wanted him to know I was thinking about it. I took my life seriously, even if I didn’t have the answers. So I riffed on a pebble of a notion Karen had left for me. “Maybe something with scarves and clever prints.” I moved my hands around as if spooling an idea around them. “I don’t think making stuff is my thing, but I’m good at people. People who make stuff. Like that. And I can wear the scarves out to parties. Calmer parties. The ones people with babies go to. Be seen. Get photographed. You know, that-do-that-I-do.”
“It’s a start,” he said. “Risky, but I guess your family won’t let you starve.”
I laughed. I thought of Karen, how she wouldn’t starve if she had something about herself to love.
Maybe this wasn’t a bad idea.
61
ELLIOT
I got to the Westonwood parking lot before Margie Drazen. We had a cup-of-tea bet going on about whether she’d make it first from Beverly Hills or I’d make it from Torrance. I cheated and left twenty minutes earlier than I said I would. She pulled in right behind me.
“What time did you leave?” she asked as she walked from her Mercedes toward my shit Honda. She had tall paper cups in each hand.
“Seven ten.” Admitting it made me a lousy cheater.
“You beat me fair and square.” She handed me a cup.
“We were starting at seven thirty.”
“I left at seven.”
“See you in hell.” I took a sip of my tea.
I’d just gotten done with an overnight at Chino State, where I usually waited for something to happen then felt grateful when nothing did. On-call crisis counselor was the only job I could get with my license being under review. It had been three months, and another three years could go by before I would be off probation. The board never approved of my relationship with Fiona, but I was clear she was the first and the last, and I wasn’t giving her up. They called it “lovesickness,” and I had to laugh. I was sick, and they were sick, and everyone who ever touched love was most certainly terminally ill. We all died from this disease of love.
“What color did you decide on for your office?” I asked.
“Green for money.”
Margie had left her job and started her own firm. She said she needed freedom to pursue her own interests. Like getting Deacon Bruce on a plane in the middle of the night. Like pressing the license review board in my case. Like delivering a set of keys to the director of a mental institution without being seen. Or aiding Declan Drazen in the expensive backhand dismantling of the Chiltons’ business. Bit by bit, movie by movie, relationship by relationship, Margie and Declan were moving the pieces on the chessboard to block, sabotage, and break the family. I didn’t have details, only the knowledge it was happening, and the news. Charlie Chilton had lost a huge directing deal in the previous week, and all permits for their half-built house had been rejected.
I pitied them. Their son would never recover. But I was just a man. They were in denial over the danger their son posed to other people, and he’d targeted someone I loved. My compassion had limits.
“They’re coming,” Margie said, putting her cup on the hood of my car.
Jonathan exited first and held the door open for his sister.
She was as breathtaking as ever.
Her strawberry hair bounced when she walked, her chin tilted upward when she saw us, and her body was the most perfectly fuckable thing to ever grace the earth. When she smiled at me and picked up the pace, I couldn’t help myself. I ran to her. She was worth running for. Worth every loss in my life. Worth stepping outside the law. Worth living, dying, and everything in between.
She fell into me, and we became arms and lips and hands. Breath and movement. I tasted her, felt her, understood in the way she moved that she and I were connected, and nothing had changed for her in the months we were separated. Even when she pushed herself against me and I felt the extra curve in her belly, nothing had changed.
“You’ve never been fucked like I’m going to fuck you,” I whispered.
I felt her shudder in my arms. Warm and pliable, sharp and twisted, fuck her was the least of it. I was going to love her brutally and unconditionally.
Forever and ever, amen.
62
FIONA
We said our good-byes and hurled ourselves into Elliot’s car. He took off down the winding road through Rancho at the speed limit. It was warm, so he wore a button-down shirt and slacks without a jacket. I saw his body move, the way his fingers controlled the wheel, the flicking of the wind in his sandy hair.
He didn’t say anything. No small talk. No dirty talk. His ocean eyes stayed on the road.
“You’ve been working out?” I asked.
“It helps redirect my energies.”
I put my hand on his knee. He took his hand off the gear shift and clasped mine.
“We have a lot to talk about,” I said.
“Yep.”
I had phrased the next part in my head a billion times. I didn’t know if I’d bring it up right away, but I didn’t expect the car ride to be the best time. The fact that he wasn’t looking at me would make it easier.
“I’m going to have a baby.”
“If it makes it easier for you, I already knew.”
“It does,” I said. “I don’t have to talk you down from shock.”
“How are you feeling, by the way?” He turned to me for a second. “They wouldn’t tell me anything, and Margie just said ‘fine.’”
“No morning sickness or anything. Just hungry.” I cleared my throat. “I did get this test done a couple of weeks ago.”
“Yes?” he asked.
“I was worried because I did some partying, and she seems okay.”
“She?”
“It’s a girl.”
He squeezed my hand and smiled. God, this was going to be hard.
“They had to put this needle in, and they tested the DNA also, and here’s the thing. I was with you, but also, God I hate this—”
“Fiona—”
“Shut up. It was a transition period. There was no crossover. Once it was you, it was you, and it’s not a big deal to me but…” I ran the rest together without punctuation. “But in the time this baby was conceived I was with both of you and if you’d let them get a cheek swab we’d know if it was yours I’m sorry but I don’t think it’s fair for you not to know.”
He laughed.
“What’s so funny?’
“You.”
“Why?”
“Because you think I give a shit.” He glanced at me to check my reaction then looked back at the road. “I will never, ever give you a cheek swab or anything else to prove this baby is or isn’t mine. You can leave me tomorrow, and I’ll claim that baby girl.”
I crossed my arms. “I don’t know if I’m relieved or annoyed.”
“You don’t have to be either.”
Then gently, as if turning into his own driveway on any other Tuesday, he turned onto a dirt road, followed until it went left, and stopped.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Alone.”
He fell onto me, lips and tongue on mine. Hands up my shirt, taking skin that hadn’t felt a man in too long, he cupped my breast and twisted a nipple that needed it so badly, I groaned and cried out at the same time.
“Right here,” he said. “I’m taking you right here.”
I didn’t know how we did it. The Honda had no room for two adults to become one twisting, curling, half-clothed mass of flesh. But against all the odds, against even the laws of physics and logic, we did.
Epilogue
FIONA
Theresa, for all her pearl-clutching and airs of civilized grace, wound up with a devil. He was as handsome and charming as the devil, too
. Dark eyes and hair. Full lips. Bit of a Roman nose but not too much. The eyelashes, a defining feminine feature on most people, actually set off a masculinity so intense he seemed as likely to pour from the wine bottle he held, as break it over someone’s head.
“Okay,” he said with an Italian accent. “Red then. A chianti.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you.”
He blinked, apparently incredulous. Behind him, the doors opened onto a guest-filled patio and, beyond that, a flowering olive orchard deep in Temecula.
“You’re eating,” he said. “You have to—”
“Antonio!” My sister Theresa broke in, wedding dress trailing over the tile floor. Good thing it was a huge kitchen. “She doesn’t drink. Get off her case.”
Bottle in one hand, glass in the other, he spread his arms as if he was the innocent victim of a foreign culture. “Perche, no?”
Theresa plucked the glass and wine from him and kissed him. “Get her some water, would you?”
“Come vuoi tu, Capo.” He kissed her back.
A guttural sound of flat disgust came from behind me. I jabbed Amanda in the sternum. She exhibited every single annoying trait of adolescence, but being grossed out by kissing and sex? Not annoying.
I didn’t want my daughter to be a sexless wonder. I wanted her to be liberated and enjoy her body, but one less thing to worry about was one less thing to worry about.
“I have water, thank you.” I tapped my glass with my spoon and the population of the kitchen joined in.
I’d discovered this old Italian tradition within an hour of arriving. If the guests tapped their glasses, the couple had to kiss. I winked at Amanda, and she rolled her eyes. They were blue. Shocking blue. A blue like I’d seen on a face only once before. She was tall and had jet black hair without a touch of red. I wondered if she was my daughter sometimes, especially when her report cards came in looking like every key on the teacher’s computer was broken except the letter A.
In response to the clinking glasses, Antonio and Theresa kissed like the newlyweds they were. He whispered something in her ear, and her knees bent a little. Sexual liberation came late to Theresa, but when it came, it came hard.
“Gross,” mumbled Amanda, turning a deep shade of red. “Are you going to let Alex see this?”
Alex was our ten-year-old. A pure-strain ADHD case with a joyful laugh and enthusiasm for just about everything. He had sea-green eyes and bright red hair. Completely unaware of social norms, he pushed between Antonio and Theresa to get to me. They separated, laughing.
“Mom!”
“Can you apologize to Aunt Theresa and Uncle Antonio for pushing them, please?”
He spun around. “Sorry!” Then he turned back to me.
I bent my knees to get on his eye-level. His shirt was already untucked and his jacket was probably under a rock somewhere. He could have survived a week on the hors d’ourves stuck to his tie.
“Uncle Jonathan says he can teach me to pitch, and I’m a lefty, so he said I can prob get on any varsity baseball team in the world if I can pitch, and he’ll teach me!”
“All right. You can start after the Thanksgiving break.”
“No! Today! He says today is as good a day as any and it’s only an hour or something out in the orchard please please please.
“You’re wearing your good shoes.”
He didn’t have time to answer before Jonathan appeared above me with a bag of oranges. He’d grown tall and strong and saved the Drazen empire from insolvency right out of grad school. An insolvency the press attributed to Daddy’s non-existent drinking problem. It was easier to say Declan Drazen was a drunk than that he’d spent almost every dime taking down Charlie Chilton. Daddy didn’t care if the world thought he was a drunk, as long as they didn’t know what he really did.
“So what?” Jonathan said. “It’s pitching. He’s not going to ruin his shoes.”
David, my sister Sheila’s twelve-year-old, handed Alex a lefty glove with a ball in it. “Had it in the car.”
Alex made a pleasepleaseplease face. I loved the fuck out of that kid. He loved doing things. Sports. Art. Writing. Tag. Dungeons and Dragons. People. Overall, he loved people, and I knew he cared more about spending time with his uncle and cousin than he cared about his curveball.
“Is your wife all right without you?” I asked Jonathan.
His wife, a stunning musician with a smart mouth, was about eight minutes to giving birth, and he doted like a mother hen.
“She’s surrounded by half of Naples. I can’t even get near her.” He slung the bag of oranges over his back. “We’ll be over that way.” He pointed at some vague place out yonder, toward the setting sun, beyond the tables and people dancing.
The three of them took off without another word from me.
An Italian dance had begun out in the yard, and Theresa was hoisted above the crowd like a lily bouncing on the water.
Amanda sat to the side, all in black, a puss on her face that would freeze oceans.
“She’s still sulking?” Elliot’s voice came from behind me.
“Yeah.”
He touched the back of my neck and ran his finger across my shoulder. He knew the exact right amount of pressure to make me forget everything. “You should let her go,” he said.
“I can’t discuss this anymore.”
“But she and I can.” He turned me around so I faced the kitchen. It had emptied out, so there was nothing to distract me from his ocean-green eyes. They’d earned some lines at the edges over the years. He’d gotten more impossibly handsome with age. “So she and I win.”
“No, you don’t.” I smoothed the front placket of his clerical shirt. He’d finally done his discernment for the Episcopal priesthood and gone back to spiritual practice. It had been a long, hard slog. Eight years. But at the end of it, he was a new man.
“How about this?” he said. “If you admit the real reason you don’t want her to go to Nambia, we’ll make other arrangements for next summer.” I was about to say she wouldn’t be safe when he held up his finger. “The real reason. You know she’s safe with Deacon. He’d burn the entire continent down before anything happened to her.”
I bit my lips then told him the real reason, which he was damned well aware of. “He’ll see her, and he’ll know. And she’ll know.”
“Know what?”
“She’s his.”
“She’s mine. She’s always been mine.”
“Can we stop kidding ourselves? Please?”
“I don’t care about her DNA. I really don’t. I’ve been her father for fifteen years, and he’s been a pen pal. When she wanted to sell Girl Scout cookies, who sat in front of the grocery store all weekend? When she wanted to play basketball, who coached the team? When she got her first period, who ran out to get her supplies? Me. She’s mine. And she’s going to go there and fall in love with the adventure and worship her Uncle Deacon like everyone else, but she knows she’s mine.”
“What about him?”
“I wouldn’t worry about him.” He’d always been so confident about his earned paternity, as if things being unimpeachably right in his world made them right everywhere. He was a believer in truth, and his one overarching truth was always that his family was whomever he claimed.
“How’s that?”
“I can take him in a fight.” He put his arms around me and put his lips to my forehead. “For my family, I’ll take him and a hundred like him.”
“Men,” I grumbled, putting my head on his chest. “Wait. I won the bet. Now that I admitted the real reason, she can go to Monterey next summer.”
“You don’t want her to, now that you’ve said the truth out loud.”
He was right as usual. Voicing my fear had taken the power from it. Amanda craved adventure and travel. I couldn’t hold her back much longer.
“What did I ever do to deserve you?” I asked.
“You let me love you.”
“Is that all?”
/> “Yes.”
I turned my back to him, and he wrapped his arms around me, burying his lips in my neck.
“Worth it,” I said.
Out on the flagstones, Antonio and Theresa danced. He held her, and when he looked up, our eyes met. He said something to Theresa and she protested, but he pushed her away and bounded up the steps and through the crowd to the sliding kitchen doors.
“You don’t drink wine?” he asked through the screen, as if being dry at a wedding was an impossible concept.
“Sixteen years sober, Antonio. You didn’t notice? I’ve known you six months already.”
“Do you have any fun at all?”
“Yes,” Elliot answered. “That’s my wife’s job.”
Antonio cocked his head.
“I’m seen having fun,” I said. “Didn’t Theresa tell you anything?”
“I didn’t understand it, I admit.”
Elliot let me go, leaving a hand on my neck.
“I find designers. I invest in them. I take them out. People talk. We build a business.”
I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or doubtful anyone could make money doing something so silly.
“Do you dance?” he asked.
I had to think for a minute. It had been a while. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do dance.”
Antonio slapped open the screen door and addressed Elliot. “I will never get used to a priest having a wife. But, do you mind if yours dances with me?”
“Not at all.” He took his hand off my neck. “Be careful with her. She’s the most valuable thing I have.”
“I will treat her like a precious flower,” Antonio said when I took his arm. “But she may have to hold me up. I’ve had too much wine.”
Antonio walked me out to the clearing where a crowd danced under the setting sun. At the edge of the orchard I could see Jonathan kneel next to my son to show him how to hold a baseball, and my nephew pitched oranges against a tree trunk. To my right my daughter pouted because I hadn’t told her that yes, she could go to Africa next summer, and behind me, Elliot watched as I danced with my brother in-law. My sister danced in her wedding gown. Margie spoke urgently to my parents. My brother’s wife waddled to the bathroom.