Crazy Thing Called Love

by Molly O'Keefe

  Hornsby opened the door and the two kids were standing in front of the fish tank, their faces illuminated by the light. A yellow fish swam by Charlie’s wide eyes.

  “What are you going to do about them?”

  “I’m trying to get custody. But I have to be accepted as a foster parent first, which might not be so easy.”

  Hornsby’s eyebrows lifted up to his hairline.

  “You can tone down the horror,” Billy muttered.

  “I’m not horrified. I’m surprised and … proud of you. If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know.”

  “Really? Because I’m going to need some serious character references … though you’ll probably have to lie.” He tried to make it a joke but Coach didn’t laugh. He clapped Billy on the back so hard, things were shaken lose inside his chest. All the resentment and bitterness toward those men in his life—all those well-meaning coaches and trainers, even Maddy’s dad—who would have been a father figure for him, all of it got pulled down. And instead of feeling claustrophobic he just felt grateful.

  “No,” Coach said. “I won’t have to lie at all.”

  Madelyn flopped back in the chair in front of her makeup table just as Ruth sat down in her customary seat in the corner. She’d practically run off the set after the cameras went dark. The applause had been empty, the grumbles behind the clapping loud and clear.

  “That was terrible,” Maddy said.

  “Awful.”

  “Dogs that juggle?”

  “It was all we could get on such short notice.”

  Maddy’s BlackBerry buzzed on the corner of her desk and she picked it up.

  She had to read the message twice before she could believe it.

  “He’s coming in,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Billy. He’s coming in to talk about doing the show. He’ll be here in an hour.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, and then suddenly they were hugging. Laughing and hugging.

  “You did it,” Ruth said.

  The sex did it, she thought and felt awful. Felt truly squeamish. It hadn’t been her intention, but the result was the same.

  She’d slept with him and now he was coming in to talk about the show.

  “It will be the perfect launch for our new format,” Ruth said and she was so right that it made Maddy feel sick. “We’ve got some work to do before he gets here. Go ahead and get changed, and then meet me in the conference room in ten minutes.”

  “Great,” she agreed and Ruth left, leaving Maddy with the sharp edges of her doubt. Not about the show, but about Billy. She shouldn’t have slept with him again. That was so obvious. All the warmth that had been generated from yesterday, that sense that they were in this together, it wilted.

  She felt mercenary.

  The phone on her desk buzzed and the receptionist from the front office got on the intercom. “Maddy, I have a call for you on line one. A reporter who wants to ask you some questions.”

  Maddy reached over to the phone and pressed line one, and lifted the receiver.

  “Maddy Cornish,” she said and then winced. “Madelyn,” she amended very quickly.

  “Hi, Maddy, it’s Dominick Murphy, I met you at the New School fund-raiser—”

  “Of course.” She smiled, thinking of the grizzled writer with the seasoned hair. “What can I do for you, Dom?”

  “Well, Billy has finally agreed to let me do a story on him and I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”

  “About the show?” she asked, unzipping her too tight boots. She got the first one off.

  “No.” He cleared his throat. “About your marriage.”

  The other boot fell.

  Her heartbeat echoed in her ears.

  “How … how did you find out?”

  “I’m a reporter, Madelyn. It’s what I do. So, can we meet?”

  Meet? she thought. How innocent. How utterly clueless he seemed to be about the pain of being Billy Wilkins’ wife. Like she would just talk about it. Like she had sweet, clever stories about their years together.

  With icy white clarity she saw the real mistake of Sunday. In kissing him, letting him into her bed, her fucking house. In falling right back in love with him, she’d opened herself up to that pain all over again.

  She’d opened up her life all over again.

  The thought shut her down. Closed every door that Billy had managed to open in their time together.

  This wasn’t about her identity. It was about survival. And she couldn’t survive that kind of pain again.

  She had to stop this now. Because if she continued, thinking she could handle him, handle her emotions, there’d be no keeping Billy out. He’d be her past and her present, and how long would it be until she just handed over her future? How long until they were saying things like Let’s try again?

  And how would they hurt each other this time? How would they fail each other? No. No, she wouldn’t do it. Couldn’t risk it.

  She liked her life. Cold and sterile, counting calories and relying on the products on infomercials to make her house a home, to make her life look like someone was actually living it.

  “I don’t talk about my relationship with Billy.”

  “Madelyn—”

  “Good-bye, Dom.” She hung up. Stared at the phone.

  Her life might not be happy, but at least it didn’t hurt.

  Billy walked back into the studio of AM Dallas with a headache, and a foulmouthed entourage.

  “What about Chuck E. Cheese?” Charlie whined.

  “I just have to do this first,” Billy said with fraying patience.

  “This is bullshit,” Becky muttered just loud enough for Billy to hear.

  He stopped and Charlie ran into the back of his legs. “Say it one more time, Becky,” he warned, staring up at the ceiling, “one more time, and I swear I’m going to take twenty bucks from the money I’ve given you.”

  “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

  Billy turned, murder in his heart. Charlie stepped backward and tried tugging Becky with him. But Becky didn’t go—nope, she put her chin up and faced him head-on.

  If all that murder weren’t in his heart, he might laugh.

  “What is with you?” he asked. “I thought … I thought we had a good day on Sunday. Why are you so mad?”

  “Why are you so mad?”

  He rolled his eyes as he turned, only to come face-to-face with Maddy. Who looked about as warm and welcoming as Becky.

  Great. Just great.

  “Hi, guys,” Maddy said, giving the kids one of her smiles, which seemed to dry up when she looked at him.

  “I had to bring them,” he said, wondering if she was mad because of the kids.

  “Of course. You guys can hang out in my office while we meet in the conference room. Ruth is waiting for you in there, Billy.”

  “Sounds like a blast,” Becky muttered and stormed past him.

  Maddy shot him a what the hell? look and all he could do was shrug, which for some mysterious feminine reason made her shake her head like she should have known. And then she was gone, catching up with Becky. He watched as Maddy lifted her hand as if to touch Becky’s back and then dropped it when she remembered. No one touched Becky.

  Maddy didn’t look particularly touchable either. Not at all like the woman from yesterday. She’d had half a beer and she’d told him about living in Miami, how her mom had lost a hundred pounds doing aqua aerobics and drinking tomato juice. He’d told her about meeting Luc in Toronto and how Luc had had an even more messed-up childhood than his own, which had gotten Billy seriously thinking about his New School idea. They both wondered if Becky would benefit from a program like that.

  And there hadn’t been a moment in the last fourteen years when he’d been half as happy.

  But as he watched Becky and Maddy walk off down the hallway, he felt a long way from yesterday. Years and miles.

  Thank God he still had Charlie. “What hav
e I done wrong?” he asked the three-year-old.

  “Maybe she wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese.”

  “That’s your solution to everything,” Billy muttered. Taking Charlie’s hand he followed the two most frustrating women in his life. At the corner, he sent Charlie on his way to Maddy’s office.

  “Can I have your phone?” Charlie asked. “I want to play the bird game.”

  “I’ve created a monster,” Billy said, before handing it to a kid who still crapped his pants.

  What has the world come to? he wondered, watching Charlie run down the hallway, zigging and zagging around the knees of the people walking by him like he was cutting up the ice.

  As frustrated as Billy was, as confused and strange as everything had become, he couldn’t help but smile.

  That kid was funny.

  Charlie came barging into her office and quickly made himself at home in her chair. He had Billy’s phone and she recognized the music from Angry Birds.

  The boy was three and he knew how to play that game—she didn’t know if she should be proud or worried.

  “So?” Becky asked. “What are we supposed to do? Just sit here?”

  Becky’s brown hair, pulled back in the same ponytail she’d been wearing since last Friday, was thick and shiny with a slight curl at the ends. When she wasn’t squinting or sneering or trying to look above it all, like when she’d been looking at Maddy’s bookshelf, her blue eyes were big and clear as ice, and in a few years when she realized the importance of mascara, they’d be stunning.

  “Well,” she said, “I thought you might like to meet a friend of mine.”

  “What kind of friend?”

  “The kind who does my hair and makeup every day.”

  Interest flashed before the girl quickly returned to looking bored. “Whatever.”

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “You guys are, like, obsessed with that.”

  “Fun?”

  Becky nodded, looking at her chewed-up fingernails.

  “You’re thirteen, you should be obsessed with fun.”

  Becky went back to work on her ravaged lips, delicately pulling off the skin that remained.

  Well, so much for that conversation.

  Maddy had to hope Gina’s bag of tricks would work better than her rooftop pool had.

  She used her phone to page Gina, and a few minutes later her hair and makeup guru was poking her head around the door.

  “You rang?” she asked.

  “I did. We did actually.” Madelyn stepped aside, putting her hand on the back of Becky’s chair. “You got time for a little hair and makeup?”

  Gina, bless her heart, acted like she couldn’t think of anything better. And maybe she couldn’t.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said and a moment later returned with her tackle box of makeup and her scissors case.

  “What’s that?” Becky asked, sitting up straighter.

  “Magic, sweetie. Magic in a box. Now, let’s get a look at you.” Gina pulled Becky’s ponytail out and fanned her hair over her shoulders. “Hmm … I think maybe some layers, make these curls bounce a little more. You’ve got some split ends, so we’ll get rid of those. And maybe some bangs? What do you think?”

  “Are you asking me?” Becky asked.

  “Well, of course I’m asking you.” Gina laughed and Becky smiled. Radiantly. Beautifully.

  But she pulled away, last minute. “Charlie needs a cut, though.”

  Gina glanced back at the boy, who didn’t look up from the Angry Birds game. “Please, that’s three seconds. Let’s start with you. What do you want?”

  It took Becky a second, but then the smile was back.

  “Bangs,” she said, a thirteen-year-old girl with nothing but a new haircut on her mind. “Totally bangs.”

  And my work here is done.

  “I’ll be back in a bit,” Maddy said.

  “Take your time,” Gina sang. She went to the closet and pulled out the cape she used when trimming Maddy’s hair.

  On those TV shows where ugly women got haircuts and put on some mascara, they looked so different afterward. That’s what Becky was counting on right now.

  Looking really different.

  “So, you’re thirteen?” Gina asked, brushing out Becky’s hair, running right over the snarls like they were speed bumps. “What’s that? Ninth Grade?”

  “Eighth.” Ouch. She winced.

  “You like school?”

  “It’s all right.”

  Gina got out a spray bottle and started spraying Becky’s head. “You got a favorite subject? Boys? Recess?”

  “I like English. And science.”

  “Those are not fooling-around subjects.”

  “Well, I don’t go all that often.”

  “Oh no,” Gina whisked her comb through Becky’s hair, sending droplets of water flying. “Don’t tell me you skip school.”

  “It’s just hard to get there sometimes.”

  “Right, that’s what my niece says. But I think really she’s too busy smoking cigarettes behind the school to actually get to her classes. Is that what you’re doing?”

  “No. I’m not smoking at school. I’m babysitting my brother.”

  “Well.” Gina got out all these clips and started putting big sections of her hair up on her head. In the mirror Becky made a face, just to make sure it was her. “My sister is sending my niece to that boarding school outside of Ft. Worth.”

  “What’s a boarding school?” Becky asked.

  “School where parents send kids to live when they can’t stand them anymore.” Gina laughed.

  “Really? They live at the school?” Becky asked. “Like forever?”

  “No. They go home for holidays and over the summer, but they stay at the school most of the time.”

  Gina got out a pair of silver scissors.

  “You ready for a big change?” she asked Becky, holding up the section of hair right in front of her face that she was going to cut into bangs.

  “I am,” Becky said, hugging herself tight against all the excitement in her body.

  In one long snip Gina sliced off the hair and Becky let out a sound that was part sob and part sigh. The actual sound of big change happening.

  Plan E was coming right up.

  The first hockey practice after the first time Billy and Maddy had sex, Billy was alone in the guys’ locker room at the arena with Maddy’s dad, Dougie. Billy was sure the old man knew what Billy had done to his daughter after prom. He was certain the man could smell it on him.

  While Billy changed his clothes, Dougie swept with his big push broom, picking up water bottles and tape, sweeping it all into the corner where Billy had his stuff.

  The silence was excruciating. And then Dougie started whistling and Billy nearly pissed his pants.

  “Maddy said you two had a good time,” he finally said and Billy was sure that was code for something, so he barely managed to nod.

  “That’s good,” Dougie said and swept his pile of garbage right out of the room.

  Billy exploded with relief. Literally fell down on the bench, thanking God.

  Sitting with Ruth in the conference room sort of felt like that. Except Billy was Dougie. And Ruth was him, and she was so totally uncomfortable, he almost started whistling.

  “I didn’t know about the kids,” Ruth finally blurted. “I mean, not until that morning.”

  “Well, you knew before I did, so you don’t get any points.”

  “Phil’s been fired.”

  “I heard.”

  Oh, the silence was amazing. So thick he could practically scoop it up in his hands.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, running his hands along the surface of the table as if wiping it all clean. “It’s actually worked out for the best.”

  Ruth’s eyes went wide behind her black glasses. “It has?”

  Billy explained that he was trying to get custody and Ruth didn’t seem nearly a
s horrified as he’d expected her to be, so he decided she wasn’t that bad.

  “Well, coming on AM Dallas should help you clear the air. Hopefully it will also help you in your case.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  Maddy walked in at that moment, sliding into the conference room on a current of arctic air.

  Déjà vu, he thought.

  “Billy, we’re glad you agreed to come in,” she said, sitting down on the other side of the table, next to Ruth. She didn’t look at him. Not at all. They were back to being strangers.

  What the fuck?

  “Has Ruth filled you in on some of the changes at the show?”

  “Ah …” He looked at Ruth. “I know Phil’s been fired.”

  “We’re making some drastic changes and we’re excited to have you as a part of our launch week. Our launch episode.” Maddy started talking about an hour-long conversation/issue show.

  “You want me to talk for an hour?” he asked.

  “Well, not a whole hour.” Her tight-lipped smile told him he was being stupid and he reeled back for a moment. Was this about the sex? Was she worried about Ruth knowing? Was she treating him like this so Ruth wouldn’t expect that the ice queen had gone slumming with the hockey thug? Again?

  He didn’t know whether to try and set her mind at ease or be insulted. He was leaning toward insulted.

  First the no-kissing thing and now this? He couldn’t believe she was pulling this nonsense after everything they’d been through, not just in their lives, but yesterday in particular.

  They weren’t teenagers anymore.

  “We just need to get the framework of the show,” Ruth said. “So we can put together some package ideas and questions and considering your … ah … past with the show, we thought you might want some input.”

  “Yeah. Fine,” he snapped, jerking his suit jacket out of the way. Ruth cleared her throat and consulted the list in front of her.

  “All right, do you want the kids to be a part of the interview?”

  “On air?” he asked, looking at Maddy. “No. Come on!”

  “Fair enough.” Ruth put her hands up like she was going to back away slowly. “I imagine we’ll start with your past? Your childhood?”