by Reiss, CD
“What?”
“It’s too much. It’ll change the entire thing.”
“You mean, a little different? Or like this?” She pointed at the silver dress.
“Somewhere between.” I waved, wrinkling my nose to describe mitigated damage.
Doreen clapped as if I’d delivered fantastic news. “Perfect! Make it like this.” She took my face in her cold, spindly hands. “Make it as special as you are.”
I pressed her palms to my cheek, overwhelmed with gratitude for her, the most loving and supportive of the three mothers I’d had in my life.
31
LOGAN
Estella Papillion. My wife. Soon after I slept in her bed, I stopped thinking of our marriage as fake. In the month since, we’d woken up together every morning, and every night I came home as soon as I could because that was where she was.
I’d been wrong about marriage. It wasn’t a role. Nor was it a proper division of duties. Marriage was knowing that no matter what happened, she existed in the world. Our world.
“What are you looking at?” Ella asked as Loranda opened the back of the car for her.
“My wife.” I put my hand on the door, and my driver—our driver—retreated to get behind the wheel.
“Not the dress?” She swung her hips, and the pleats in the skirt rose above her knees, opening to reveal bright pink fabric that glittered.
“The…?” It was one of her father’s that she’d pulled from a closet in Bianca’s office. “No. It’s nice, but it’s not the dress. It’s you.”
“Careful,” she said. “Or you might get laid tonight.”
I traced the length of her collarbone. “If there’s a Ferrari parked in the garage, it’s a guarantee.”
Her mouth curled in a knowing smile, and she got in the car. I sat next to her and closed the door, arm around her as we pulled into the street to Bel-Air. I kissed the diamond in her nose.
Estella Papillion was my wife. My partner.
If she left me, she’d rip half my world off with her.
* * *
The anniversary party wasn’t a tenth the size of the housewarming where Ella and I had announced our marriage. No paparazzi. No faces I knew but didn’t quite know.
“Darling!” Bianca cried when she saw us. “It’s magnificent!”
She was talking about Ella’s dress.
“So is the woman wearing it,” I said after greeting my mother-in-law with a kiss.
Ella nudged me in modesty, and I kissed her humility away.
All the Crowne sibs were there, except Dante, who was known to go off the grid every once in a while. Colton wore one of his better suits and a backward cap. Liam’s son, Matt, was old enough to run around with second cousins and leave his dad to mingle. Lyric was in a corner with her friends, faces lit by their phones. Byron had Garrett on his shoulders, looking over the patio at the sunset, naming all the colors.
We went to the bar as the band played gentle versions of songs popular the year my parents were married.
“Mr. and Mrs. Crowne,” the bartender said, placing square napkins with the number thirty-six printed in gold foil in front of us.
I left it up to Ella to decide whether or not to correct her name, but she didn’t.
“I don’t know.” She scanned the bottles lined up behind the server.
“Gin?” I asked her. “Or a Shirley Temple, for old time’s sake?”
“How about…” She bit her lip, clearly thinking. I admired how—down to the smallest things—she didn’t get caught in a rut. “Something old school.”
“How about a gin rickey?” the bartender suggested.
“Great! I’m in.”
“Sounds fun,” I said. “I’ll have one too.”
“Who are you?” Ella said when the bartender turned away. “And what have you done with my husband?”
“Keeping you on your toes.”
“I’m not sure I like it. There’s something nice about a man who knows what he likes.”
“I can also be a man who finds new things to like.”
“True.” She put her back to the bar. “Look at them. They’re so perfect.”
I followed her gaze to my parents. My father wore a suit, as always, and Mom was in the dress that she’d worn on her tenth anniversary. Ella had added sleeves, and the butterflies crammed together on the skirt thinned on the bodice as if they were taking off, like the tattoo on my wife’s chest.
“You did a good job on the dress,” I said.
“It was fun.”
“How about more?” I waved to my parents, and they made their way to the bar, greeting guests on the way. “A gallery full of them.”
“It’s not quite art.”
Our drinks came.
“Then make it art. Call it sculpture. Start from scratch, like you said. Or buy another designer and destroy them. Could be a good business.”
She looked away from my parents to me and fixed my tie. “Not everything is business, Mr. Crowne.”
“But not everything isn’t, Ms. Papillion.”
She laid her hand on my chest, about to say something, and stopped. “What’s in here?” She tapped the place where the contents of my breast pocket made the jacket stiff.
“My first anniversary gift,” I whispered. “I’m taking you on a honeymoon.”
“Where are we going? Did you get tickets already?”
I laughed when she peeked into my jacket, but I pressed down the lapel and pulled her into me. “It’s just a card with a list of ideas. But I hear dinner on an oil rig in the South China Sea is nice.”
“Sounds romantic.” She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me.
“That’s enough of that,” my father’s voice came from my left.
Ella and I separated.
My mother was flushed, mouth agape, eyes shifting from me to my wife and back. She quivered as if a chill ran up her spine, a very different shake than the one caused by her Parkinson’s.
“Mom?” I asked.
“Oh my! It’s just even when I expect it, it’s unexpected.”
Ted laughed. “Finally!”
“I knew it was coming, Theodore,” she said.
“What was coming?” Colton said, breaking into our circle. Always late to the conversation.
“I have no idea,” Ella said.
“The tingle,” Ted said. “It came late.”
Arm around Ella, I pulled her closer.
We had the final approval. I picked up my drink and lifted it. “To the tingle!”
We all toasted, and I kissed my wife.
“About damn time,” Colton said. “I live with you guys and I’m always thinking you’re half broken up.” He took a swig of beer, and Ella’s hand tightened around my waist.
I needed to change the subject. Whatever he thought he’d observed, I didn’t want him revealing it in front of my parents.
“So, Dad—” I said, trying to change the subject without knowing what I was changing it to.
“Fighting’s healthy,” Mom said.
“Nah, nah, they don’t fight. This guy—” Colton punched me affectionately. “He’s so old-timey he had them like… what’s that show? I Love Lucy? With the separate beds.” He pointed between Ella and me. “They were in separate rooms until, like, what? A month ago?”
“No,” Ella said, but didn’t elaborate.
Mom seemed unmoved—as happy as ever—but Dad looked deeply into his drink.
“It’s cool, El, you wore him down.” He tipped his beer toward my wife in respect.
“What were you doing upstairs?” I growled, missing the point.
“Checking it out. I was bored. Then I went to look for my buddy’s ball—up on my roof? I told you?”
“I knew it,” Ted said, looking at me. “It was too easy.”
“Dad—” I started, but he held up his hand.
“This is disappointing.” He put his drink on the bar. “But not surprising.”
“What?
” Colton asked.
I could explain. Maybe Ella had had a cold when he went up there, or maybe I snored. I had to say something, anything, but no excuse looked strong enough to get through my father’s newfound disbelief. For the first time since Colton started running his mouth, I looked at Ella.
The color had drained from her face and her expression was frozen.
“You’re right,” Ella said, and with a hitch of breath as if she had to stop herself from saying more, she clamped her mouth shut and looked at me. She wasn’t asking what to do, but if she should do anything at all.
“Teddy,” Mom crooned, “I told you this would happen.”
“I didn’t expect to be lied to.”
Dad walked away. Damnit.
“I’m so sorry,” Ella said to my mother.
“Let me talk to him,” Mom said, following her husband without accepting Ella’s apology.
“I have no idea what the fuck just happened,” Colton said.
My wife had been hurt by two mothers, and she was about to be hurt again. Without even realizing it, I’d let that happen. I had to fix it, and I didn’t know how. I just wanted her out of the line of fire.
“Ella,” I said. “You should go.”
If I thought getting her out of the way would reduce the pain she was about to suffer, I was proven wrong by her expression. She looked as if I’d slapped her, and I couldn’t explain myself. Not right there. Not right then. I needed to be in that room with my family, and huddled in a dark corner with her at the same time.
“Just go,” I said urgently, trying to sound encouraging at the same time.
She had to know I would take care of it, that I wasn’t abandoning her, but I’d clearly just slapped her again, reddening both cheeks and filling her eyes with tears. “Okay.”
She left. She just did what I’d asked her to do and walked out, and suddenly I was in a room I didn’t want to be in, getting pulled away with every step that echoed against the high ceilings.
My family stared at me with wide eyes as if I was a man they’d never known.
I had a moment to choose between them and Ella. We were partners. She was my bulwark against the unexpected. The mitigation of all risk, and yet, I’d told her she didn’t belong.
My family could wait.
I chased her into the house. “Ella. Wait.”
“You’re right,” she said, descending the stairs. “And I’m not family. I never was. But I hoped…” She blinked, and lines of water dropped down her cheeks. “I hoped you saw it differently, and you don’t.” She laid her hand on my chest, where the honeymoon card stiffened the fabric. “It was wrong of me to work so hard to not love you and then fall in love with them.”
“Just go home. Wait for me.” I pulled a hankie out of my pocket and tried to dry her eyes for her, but she snapped it from my fingers and did it herself. “I’ll talk to them, and if it means you stay away from my parents until they come around, then that’s what we’ll do. Okay? I still run Crowne, so they can’t get rid of me.”
“It’s always about you.” She shook her head, refolding the hankie. “That’s never going to change. I should have seen it, I mean…” Her short laugh was aimed directly at herself. “God, you wanted me to sign off on naming our fictional children, for fuck’s sake. I’m so stupid.”
“If you’re so stupid, maybe I should make the plan.” I crossed my arms. “Because mine was pretty good.”
“A plan? I love you, you stupid shit.”
She loved me. I could barely hear that from behind the soundproof wall of my frustration at the collapse of our plan. I was turned around, facing the wrong direction, pulled by the tide of needs that I had assumed conflicted. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe it was all going in the same direction, and that direction was out to sea.
I’d had it all in my hands. Everything I’d worked for my adult life had been mine, and now it was all at risk because she loved me and I was a stupid shit.
Emotional inertia kept me full speed on the path she’d abandoned, grasping for what I thought I’d attained.
“That’s not relevant,” I barked.
My head must have sprouted a second face, because that was how she looked at me. As if I was insane. What was so hard about this? We had a fire to put out and she was adding gasoline.
“Of course you decide what’s relevant.”
I reached for her, but she turned and ran down the stairs, holding the handrail so her diamond ring scraped the wood. At the landing, she turned to look at me.
“We’ll talk when I home,” I said.
“Just stay away from me.”
She went down the next flight, and I was about to chase her when I heard my name.
“Logan!” Byron called, running.
“Later,” I said.
“It’s Dad.” He grabbed my wrist.
When I saw my brother’s face, I stopped cold.
* * *
My father was not a young man, but he wasn’t old enough to have a heart attack.
Maybe having his first son at twenty did it. Or the hours he worked could have weakened him. Or the travel.
Or me.
Maybe—probably—it was me. When I broke his trust, I broke him. He’d given me everything, and I’d stopped his heart with lies and deceit.
“Nice going, asshole,” Lyric said, taking her phone away from her face long enough to glare at me across the hospital’s VIP waiting room.
“Stop it,” Mom scolded.
“She’s right,” I said. “It’s my fault.”
“You’re not that important,” Byron muttered as he paced. Olivia and Garrett had gone home, and he looked naked without them.
“Wow,” Colton said, flipping channels on the flat screen TV. “It’s Take Shots at Logan day.”
“He deserves it,” Lyric said.
“We oughta call Liam in case he wants in on the gang-up,” Colton added. Liam had gone to put Matt to bed. “If we could find D-Tay, he’d have something to say too.”
D-Tay was baby Lyric’s pronunciation of Dante.
“Sorry you’re made of Teflon, jerk-off,” my sister spat back.
“Enough!” Mom cried. “Logan, you did what you thought you had to. We pushed you.”
I scoffed. I was a fully-grown man who’d taken a risk without considering any of the personal impacts. I’d hurt my father, my mother, disappointed my brothers and sister, shamed myself, and worst of all, I’d lost the one thing of value I’d gained in the deal.
Ella.
Overwhelmed with remorse and grief, I bent over in my seat, putting my face in my hands to block it all out. If I had my wife there, I’d be able to look my family in the face. Nothing would erase the guilt of what I’d done to my father, but with her at my side, I’d feel redeemable.
The cushions next to me sank, and a shaky hand was laid on my back.
“He just has to take it easy,” Mom said, rubbing my back. “You’re just like your father. You both work so hard you forget why you’re working in the first place.”
I folded my palms together and put the edge to my forehead, looking at my feet spread on the beige carpet. “He never lied.”
She laughed. “Of course he’s lied. Like a rug, that man’s lied.”
“Ma,” Lyric said, dropping her phone next to the fruit bowl. “Not cool.”
“Shush, you. Byron, sweetheart, sit down before you wear out your shoes. And you”—she tapped my back—“Stop hiding your face. You’re not the only sinner in this family.”
“Yo!” Colton raised his hand, still flipping channels. “I’m right over here.”
“Don’t call Daddy a liar just to make him feel better,” Lyric said.
“I agree,” I said. “I don’t want to feel better. And Lyric? That time you fell into the Wilkins’s empty pool? I lied. We didn’t follow you over there. You followed us.” I looked at Byron. “Sorry.”
My brother laughed. “I forgot about that.”
“I’m devastated
.” She rolled her eyes.
“Get it out, brah,” Colton said.
“I’ll tell Dad when we can see him,” I said. “And I’ll resign from Crowne.”
“No, you won’t,” Byron snapped. “You’re not dropping that in my lap.”
“I thought you wanted it.”
“It’s a time-suck. I have a wife who needs me.”
And I didn’t.
I had a wife who loved me and who I’d hurt—not with lies but indifference. We’d had a short time together, and I’d spent it taking her for granted. And when I stopped for a moment to appreciate her needs, I’d torn her open like a Christmas gift, shredded her defenses, only to take her for granted as soon as she said she loved me.
My family couldn’t leave me, no matter what I did to them. They’d never stop loving me.
But Ella? My star? The light source I revolved around?
“Ella,” I said, the name bittersweet on my tongue. “We got married based on a lie. I’m sorry for that. I can’t make it up to you guys, or her.”
“You love her?” Mom asked.
“Is it love if I tricked myself into it? Because I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
Mom sighed and folded her hands in her lap, which made her shoulders shake more. “Byron,” Mom said with a definitive air, “you aren’t my oldest child.”
We all shot up straight, asking “what?” at the same time.
“I had you two years after I married your father, but I was six weeks pregnant for our wedding.”
“Mom, what the—” Lyric started.
“We rushed a wedding to save face,” Mom interrupted. “I cried for a month. I wasn’t ready to be a mother or a wife, but I couldn’t tell my parents because if I did, they’d push to annul it. We were both still children, but I wanted to make my own decisions. Your grandparents were so controlling, and I couldn’t wait to get out of that house. If they knew, they’d try to convince me to raise the baby. I didn’t want to.”
“Byron’s still oldest if you terminated,” Lyric said.