41
Cerise
THE DOORBELL RANG just after three o’clock and Cerise wasn’t the least bit surprised to see it was Kyle on her front step.
She and Barb had driven Elliott and Amanda directly to the airport from the police station. They weren’t due to fly out for a few more days, but not a single person in the car suggested they stay.
“Mother, I hope you’ll consider getting help,” Barb said as she pulled the car up to the airline’s curbside check-in.
“Help for what, dear?” said Amanda. Then she opened the door and stepped out, surrendering her hand to the smiling skycap who stood ready to assist her.
Elliott grunted. “Always on the lookout for a tip, those guys.” Then he leaned forward and shoved a fistful of cash into Barb’s hand. “For the baby,” he said.
Barb stared at him.
“You’re gonna need it. Kids are expensive.” He pushed the door open and stepped out, but stuck his face back into the car before closing it. “Almost forgot. I got Adam’s name onto the list at St. Sainsbury’s. Lemme know if they give you any grief.”
Barb scoffed as her father slammed the door behind him, and Cerise knew one thing for certain: there wouldn’t be any more contact with the Hesses until the annual call from the family accountant in the fall.
As for her parents, they were too mortified after the day’s fiasco to even leave their house. Baumgartners weren’t shy, except when it came to scandal, and Cerise suspected that the final three weeks of her maternity leave were not going to unfold as she’d hoped. Instead of finally getting Adam onto a manageable feeding schedule, she would be fielding calls from her mother followed by calls from her father followed by calls from her mother again in which she would try to convince Cerise to discount everything her father just said about her state of mind.
That drama could wait until tomorrow, though. Today, the person ringing their doorbell was in irrefutable need of some TLC.
“You okay?” She opened the door and Kyle stepped in, still wearing the same suit he’d worn to church that morning.
“Been better,” he said.
She led him into the living room and told him to take a seat. Then she went to the fridge to grab beer. She was still breast-feeding, but she’d give the baby a bottle of the milk she stored in the freezer. This was an occasion that called for alcohol.
Barb came in holding Adam, freshly changed and wide-awake from his nap.
“I hope at least one of those is for me,” she said, nodding at Cerise’s armload of bottles.
“Kyle’s here,” she whispered, guiding Barb with her eyes to the man now moping in their living room. They had expected him. They just hadn’t known when.
After everyone was settled with their respective bottles—Adam included—Kyle got straight to the point. “Rhonda called off the wedding. Gave me back the ring and took the first flight out.”
He plucked the brilliant platinum and diamond band from his pocket and flipped it back and forth in his fingers. The stone caught the afternoon light and tossed a prism of color across the room.
Barb and Cerise were so, so sorry.
“She blamed it all on me, of course. Said she couldn’t—” He stopped. “Actually, she said she wouldn’t marry a man who kept secrets.” He flipped the ring onto his palm and dropped it back into his pocket. “And you want to know the funny thing? I always sort of knew this was going to end. Whether I told her about the baby or not. Only, if I had told her, then her excuse would have been that she wouldn’t marry a man who had children with other women.”
“You still should have told her,” said Cerise, gently.
“I know,” Kyle said.
They were all quiet for a beat. Then Barb said, “Not to throw salt on this, Kyle, but you don’t actually have a child with us. We’d always agreed that you would remain essentially anonymous.” She hooked a thumb in the air between her and Cerise. “Adam has his two parents.”
“I know that, too,” he said again.
“So,” Barb continued, “what gives?”
Kyle sighed and fell back in his chair. He looked like a defeated man in every sense.
“I wish I knew,” he said finally. “I’ve made a mess of everything.” His eyes went from glassy to red and Cerise could feel the weight of his confusion overpowering the room, filling every space.
“Look,” she said, wanting to quell the tension. “Barb and I can deal with people knowing. Our mothers are going to have a field day with this, but we’ll manage. We always said we’d tell Adam when it was time, anyway.” She looked at Barb for confirmation that what she’d just said remained true. Barb nodded. “But I guess now we need to know that you’re going to be okay with the boundaries we set out from the beginning. That there isn’t something bigger going on.”
Kyle shook his head with a quick, firm assurance. “No. Nothing. I never meant to mess with you guys or the baby at all.”
Cerise believed him. He was telling the truth. It was one of the reasons they’d chosen Kyle all those years ago—his honesty—though Rhonda, she realized, had reason to disagree. Because it had been years, ever since the day Cerise had an abnormal pap and a cancer scare and the sudden realization that she may never be able to bear children. She and Barb made their plans quickly—who to ask as donor, what to do if the cancer got bad. Yet, only one of those two things came true. The cancer had been a false alarm, but Kyle had readily agreed and the donation was already on ice.
“Well, for what it’s worth, I think you were just looking for a way out with Rhonda,” said Barb. “And frankly, we’re fine with it.” She hooked her thumb in the air again and looked at Cerise.
Cerise nodded. She was very fine with it. Kyle had gone from dating to engaged in a matter of months, having invested little more effort in finding Rhonda than an eye exam. Cerise had already undergone her procedure at the ob-gyn by the time they even met her. In fact, for a time, Cerise had even wondered if she and Rhonda weren’t both pregnant. It would have explained their rush. Not to mention the absurdity of the match.
Kyle laughed. “If I were looking for an excuse—and that could well be true,” he said, “then that was the most bullshit, cowardly way I can think of to break off an engagement.”
“Go big or go home,” said Barb.
“I did that, all right,” agreed Kyle.
“You think Rhonda will be okay?”
Kyle hooted as if that were the funniest thing he’d heard all day, as if the last twenty-four hours hadn’t already been an around-the-clock circus of the absurd. “She was onto the next thing before I even dropped her at the airport. Like the end of our engagement was no more traumatic than canceling a doctor’s appointment. She screamed at me, gave back the ring, told me I ought to learn to be a ‘better man,’ then picked up her phone and ordered her assistant to get working on tomorrow’s calendar. That was it.”
He tossed his head against the back of his chair and blew out a long breath. “Oh, my god. What has become of my life?” Then again with the laughter, followed by another deep breath. He couldn’t seem to stop—breathe, laugh, breathe, laugh. He was nearly hysterical. But was it grief? Or relief? Cerise suspected maybe a bit of both.
“You’ve been under an enormous amount of pressure lately,” she said, doing her best to inject a touch of sanity. “Give yourself a bit of a break. Not everyone plans a wedding under the watchful eye of the FBI.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “God, that. I’d almost forgotten for a moment.”
“Sorry,” said Cerise.
“Heard anything more?” asked Barb.
“Another interview.” He emphasized the word as if it were a farce. “Later this week.” He ran a hand through his hair but it didn’t help. He still looked like a henpecked rooster. “Something tells me it’s not gonna be pretty.”
42
; Violet
VIOLET’S HEAD WAS splitting again. Not from the crack she’d taken to her skull months ago, but from the cleaving of what she’d always believed to be a safe and perfect world.
How on earth had that happened?
The weight of it all was still far too much to process and she thanked her brain for allowing her to do so gradually—in bite-size pieces—each one difficult to swallow, but not big enough to choke on and die.
First, she’d come to terms with the fact that Barb’s parents were awful human beings. Drunken, addled, groping, self-entitled heathens. It dumfounded her to think that she had been so fooled. But if that’s what money did to a family, she would have none of it. She was ready to donate Ed’s entire 401K to charity. Only, the Baumgartners weren’t nearly as well-off as the Hesses. And there was so much goodness that lay ahead for her and her dear Ed. No, she wouldn’t let Elliott and Amanda strip them of their golden years. She would stand firm. For baby Adam’s sake. Against selfishness and ego and the graying of the lines between right and wrong. She would teach him that good was good and evil was evil. She would show him that family was love, no matter what he saw in Ohio. The baptism, she knew now, had granted her a mandate. And she would not fail to fulfill it.
She’d come to terms, too, with the knowledge that life at Faithful Redeemer would never feel the same for her or dear Ed. Yes, people had been calling to offer their condolences, to offer their support. But she knew. She knew that those calls were just the prelude to the subsequent calls those friends would make to each other to gossip and tsk and whisper, Isn’t it just such a shame? As if this could never happen to them. As if their families were somehow immune to the shame the Baumgartners had been forced to bare before them. As if the Baumgartners were now a caste apart from the rest.
But so be it. She and Ed had raised a smart, beautiful, brave woman, who’d committed herself to a woman no less her equal. Together, Cerise and Barb had humbled themselves before God, had brought their son to His very altar and asked for His blessing in Holy Baptism. Even in the midst of her mortification—and, oh, it was crushing!—even when she could hear nothing but her own jeering thoughts, taunting her and pushing her back into the darkest corners of her mind, Violet felt the presence of grace, of wonder and of pride.
Yes, this weekend had shown her that she had two daughters now—two daughters and a grandson. And her daughters were lesbians to be admired among lesbians.
She made a mental note: Establish a lesbian fund in Cerise’s name?
Despite all the progress she’d made, she had not, however, come to terms with the facts of Adam’s biology. To think that Kyle Endres, the vanilla ice cream of men, the boy she’d always worried in high school would in fact impregnate her daughter, had done just that. It didn’t matter to Violet the pregnancy hadn’t happened in the exact physical manner she’d always feared, it had happened nevertheless. She and her family were forever inextricably bound to Kyle Endres.
Of all things.
Thankfully, Adam hadn’t inherited Eldris’s knobby knees. And he certainly seemed calmer than both Eldris and Richard. He was a prince of a baby, after all—sleeping and eating and playing exactly the way he ought to. He was a Baumgartner.
With 50 percent of Kyle Endres’s DNA.
She squeezed her eyes closed against the blood suddenly rushing from her head. One...two...three...four...five...
The phone startled her alert once more. She waited for Ed to answer it. He knew she wasn’t ready to screen sympathy from cynicism, and he’d been an absolute guardian angel all day. The stack of phone messages he’d taken for her sat neatly on her desk, ready for her just as soon as she was ready for them.
The phone, however, was still ringing. For heaven’s sake. Where was Ed?
She closed her eyes and let her breathing block out the noise. Six...seven...eight...nine...
Where on earth was Ed?
She couldn’t stand the sound of even one more ring.
“Hello. Baumgartner residence. Violet Baumgartner speaking.”
“Violet? Oh, I’m just tickled pink you picked up.”
The voice stumped her and shot a prickle up her spine. She knew this woman. Was she a friendly caller or a fellow congregant calling to gloat?
“And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
“It’s Meg, silly. From Dorcas Circle.”
Of course. That explained it. The end of the mutiny was at hand. The final coup. The last stab. Her Et tu, Brute? moment.
“Hello, Meg.” She would not make this easy. Meg would have to do her own dirty work.
“Violet, I just hope you know that I’ve been thinking of you.”
Of course she had. Waiting for Violet to fall. To be at her weakest. “Well. Thank you. How very nice.”
“No, I mean it, Violet. I’ve always looked up to you. You work so hard. You believe so deeply. It broke my heart to see what happened this morning.”
“Yes, well. It certainly didn’t go as planned.” If understatements were money.
“No,” Meg said gently.
They were both silent for a moment.
Violet waited for the sword to fall.
“Anyway,” said Meg. “I thought an encouraging word might be just what you need.”
What on earth?
Violet felt herself release the tiniest bit of the air she’d been holding hostage in her lungs. She wanted it back. Now was not the time to let her guard down.
“Well,” she said, using a tone she knew would bring an end to this call before it was too late. “Thank you again, Meg.”
“Just—before you go, Violet. I hope you know, no one is laughing at you. I mean it was shocking for all of us, yes. And in retrospect it seems absolutely ridiculous—”
Good gracious.
As if this woman had experienced anything but glee in the face of Violet’s pain. As if this woman hadn’t in fact called as some sort of territorial move, a reminder that Violet was weak, but she was strong. As if Violet should have to be on the receiving end of this woman’s emotional self-cleansing.
This would not stand.
“Yes. Like I said, thank you for calling.”
“Violet, wait.” The woman suddenly sounded urgent. “I’m sure you know that not everyone sees it the way I do. But I want you to know that if Sylvia grows up to be even half the woman that Cerise is, I’d be immensely proud.”
For heaven’s sake.
What in the world was she to make of this? Violet felt the air in her lungs swell and threaten to topple her.
She closed her eyes and breathed in slowly. One...two...three...four...five...
And out.
Huh.
There.
She felt it again.
Like a hum on the breeze. A whisper. The same sensation that had been breaking through since the baptism. Wisps of grace.
She held her breath, willing the moment to stay.
But now a question crashed its way through. She couldn’t ignore it. So loud and insistent.
How? Her mind raced. How had she not seen her daughter for what she was?
Because Cerise had always been this person, even as a child.
Strong. Absolute. And true.
Able to stand without apology. To say, This is me. This is my family. This is love.
Today Violet had watched her daughter become whole. Barb and Adam had made her whole.
Violet suddenly realized she’d never cried over the disaster at the baptism. The tears were there, yes, but they had yet to break through the emotional battlements holding them back.
Until now.
She took a wavering breath and felt the first tear tumble down her cheek. “Thank you, Meg.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. “Thank you so very much for calling.”
June 11, 2018
/>
Dear friends and supporters of EyeShine—
Due to recent news coverage, you are likely aware that eyewear known to have been donated to EyeShine in support of our mission to provide prescription eyewear to the poor in Africa has been discovered at the sites of unlawful protest outside US Federal Reserve Banks. The group claiming responsibility for these events calls themselves, “The Watchers.”
As the EyeShine Board of Directors, we wish to assure you we are cooperating fully with the federal authorities investigating this matter. Included in this cooperation is our surrender of a recently completed five-year audit by our accounting firm, Rivera, Rivera, & Craft.
We also wish to inform you that we have no current or prior knowledge of anyone within the EyeShine family engaged with or supporting The Watchers’ efforts.
We believe EyeShine will ultimately be exonerated of any wrongdoing, and we ask for your continued support as we fulfill our commitments for 2018 and beyond.
With heartfelt thanks,
The EyeShine Board of Directors
43
Richard
RICHARD WANTED ANOTHER cup of coffee but didn’t know if he could make it across the kitchen. He’d had to sleep in the den on that sinkhole of a pullout couch Eldris insisted they buy when her mother slipped on her obsessively mopped floors and broke her collarbone. Now his back was screaming like a witch and he could barely walk.
Not that Sunday’s mayhem was even his fault. But Eldris still wouldn’t listen to reason. Wouldn’t open the bedroom door. Wouldn’t eat the food he left for her. Wouldn’t even tell him where she kept the extra coffee filters—which meant he could now say with firsthand certainty that coffee brewed in toilet paper tasted like shit.
Maybe he didn’t even want another cup.
He’d talked to Kyle, though. Kid had called late last night and given him the what’s up. Rhonda was gone. The ring was back. Another appointment with the feds.
Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners Page 27