Anthony gestured at the waitress. “Bring us two red wines,” he said.
Michael was too stunned to speak, so he looked around the lobby of the fancy old hotel. He felt like he was in a cathedral. The trim was gilded gold, and the ceiling was vaulted, and painted with red-faced cherubs, blue skies, and clouds. Everything was old here, even the bartenders. They seemed wise, knowing, like they understood exactly what was going on with Anthony, who cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple like the stub of a branch that had broken off a tree. “I had business in Chicago. Thought I’d jog north for a bit to see you. And Ann.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“She’s upstairs. In my room.”
“What’s she doing in your room?”
“Resting.”
“She’s resting in your room?”
“She isn’t feeling well.”
“I want to see her.”
Anthony held up his hand: stop. The waitress set the wine in front of them and left. Anthony held his glass a few inches from his face, closed his eyes, let his jaw go slack as if he were sleeping, and inhaled. “This is how you smell wine,” he said. “Breathe in with both your nose and your mouth, taste and smell at the same time. Try it.” He passed the glass to Michael.
“I don’t care about wine.” Michael pushed it back. Ann was in this guy’s room!
“How old are you now?”
“Eighteen. What’s she doing in there? She should go home.” It was all he could do to avoid dumping it all over Anthony’s expensive cashmere sweater, and smashing the glass against the wall.
“So, she hasn’t told you.”
“Told me what?”
Anthony looked around. “You’ll keep this to yourself?”
“What gives?”
Anthony took another sip. He was stalling, or maybe he was nervous. It was hard to imagine that Anthony could feel that way. “This wine is from France. You should try to go to France someday. The Loire Valley is beautiful. The garden at Villandry—”
“I don’t want to talk about France.”
“This is a very delicate matter.” Anthony was so intense that it was hard for Michael to look him in the eye. He gave Michael that feeling you get when you meet a street dog for the first time. It might act like it wants you to pet it, but as soon as you do, it bites your hand off.
“First, Michael, I want to tell you a story.”
“I don’t want to hear your story. I really don’t.” Michael hated it when adults started conversations like this. He’d heard plenty of inspiring life stories from teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, ministers. Anthony wasn’t there because he wanted to shoot the shit. He wanted something. But what?
“Just indulge me for a moment, would you? Maureen…” Anthony said. He cleared his throat. “You like her?”
“Sure,” Michael said. He did like Maureen. He liked her very much. He could picture her in her tennis dress, offering him cookies, asking if he needed something to drink.
“Maureen is not my first wife.”
“So? What’s your room number? I should get Ann. We should go home.”
“Stay right there.” Anthony’s tone was forceful, threatening. He practically pinned Michael to his chair with his black eyes.
“See, I’m like you. I grew up with nothing. We actually have a lot in common. We’re scrappy. Scrappy is good, it means we’ve got fight. I see fight in you. Or I should say, I recognize it.” He pointed two of his fingers at himself, then at Michael and back at himself for emphasis. “There’s a difference, you know, between seeing something and recognizing that it’s there.”
“I have no idea what you are saying.”
“Someday you will. Straight out of high school I got a job at the mine where my dad worked.”
Michael stood up. “I said I want to see Ann.”
“Would you calm down?” Anthony grabbed Michael’s arm and yanked it so he fell back into his seat. “See, I barely had hair on my chest and already I had a ring on my finger. Jackie, she wouldn’t let me sleep with her unless we were good in the eyes of God, and what can I say? I was a red-blooded teenage boy, like you are now. You know how it is. Besides, in my shitty little town, I figured I’d have the same shitty kind of life everyone else had so I made the same shitty decisions. It was OK at first. I was making a paycheck, getting drunk with my friends and getting laid every night, but you know what? It wasn’t enough for me. I had this feeling, you know? That someone could live and die and not know about me or my town or the mine or Jackie, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. Real life happened somewhere else, that’s what I thought. Everyone else I knew seemed OK with staying put, but me? I knew I was different. I knew I was meant to have a better life. A bigger life. I wanted what I did to matter.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this,” Michael said. “It has nothing to do with me.”
“I’m telling you this story for your own benefit. You might not realize it yet, but you’re different from other people in the same way I’m different from other people. We know we can choose between a shitty life and a big life. People like us…”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Sure I do. I’ve watched you cut my grass. You did a good job. Perfect diamond pattern. I was impressed. You showed up on time, did the job right, took on more than I asked you to. You’re responsible, reliable. Ann says the same thing. She thinks the world of you.”
“Ann talked about me with you?”
“We talk about everything. Almost every day, sometimes twice a day.”
Michael couldn’t believe it. He wanted to start the day over. Was this even real?
“I’m not a bad guy, Michael. You think I am, but I’m just older than you are, and I’ve got more than you’ve ever had. More stuff, but also more problems. And right now, I’ve got a hell of a problem on my hands. So does Ann.”
“What’s going on?”
“That’s why I asked you here.”
“You didn’t give me much choice.”
“See—” But before Anthony could say anything, a big family sat down at the table next to them, a mother and father and three kids, all dressed up for their big holiday outing. The mother ordered Shirley Temples, and she made a big point of telling the waitress that they were going to The Nutcracker at the Pabst Theater that night, a big family tradition. The waitress couldn’t have cared less, Michael could tell. He paid attention to people in the service industry; they were more like him than jerks like Anthony. He wished this were any old day, and that he and the waitress could take a break together and complain about guys like Anthony who made a big show of smelling their wine, and families like The Perfects over there. The mother and her daughter wore matching headbands made of plaid silk.
Anthony watched them, too, although he was probably thinking about how poorly the wife had aged, how she was probably hot back in the day. He probably wondered how much money the husband made, or if he was, as Connie would say about some of the fancy houses on the Cape, “mortgaged to the hilt.”
Once the family were talking among themselves, Anthony cleared his throat and snapped back to attention. “Where was I?”
“I don’t care where you were. Look, why am I here? What do you want?”
“My story. So I started taking college classes at night. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. When I finished, I wanted to find a job in a big city. Jackie—now my wife—she didn’t want to go. Her mom and dad were in West Finley, and her sisters, and her friends, all the people she’d ever cared about. Jackie was a great girl. We had chemistry, we did. Maybe she was the love of my life, but that didn’t matter—I couldn’t let shit like that matter. I realized something hard, but true, and this is why I’m telling you this tale: sometimes you have to hurt people to get what you need. Sometimes you have to do what you need to do to get where you want to go.”
Anthony leaned back in his chair, flagged down the waitress, and ordered another glass of wine. Bead
s of sweat formed on his upper lip, and his face was flushed red. “Your question: What does any of this have to do with you, right?”
The father at the table next to them pushed his son’s arm and said, “Elbows off!”
“Ann has a rather large problem, Michael. A large problem that requires a complex solution.”
“I don’t know what this has to do with me.”
“She’s pregnant.”
Pregnant? This felt like a body blow. She couldn’t be. No, no, no. Not Ann. Pregnant? Why was this asshole making up stories about her?
Michael never drank, just sometimes with Jason at the end of the day. He took a drink at that moment, some wine to wash down what Anthony just said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s too far along to take care of it. And, well, here’s the thing: she wants to have this baby because she loves me.”
“She does not.”
“I was as shocked as you are by this news. Not that she loves me. She’s told me that a hundred times. But about this baby. I care about her, I care deeply, but I’m afraid I’m not in a position to—”
“She doesn’t love you.” The bustling of waiters and clinking of silverware and twinkling of lights became a confused blur. Michael looked at Anthony and felt an anger rise up in him that he hadn’t felt for a long time. “You got her pregnant?”
Anthony wiped his mouth with his napkin, leaving a red streak from the wine that had stained his lip.
This prick slept with Ann? Michael wanted to reach out and slam Anthony’s smug face to the table. He must have inherited his father’s fighting spirit. He wanted to pulverize him, reduce him to nothing, make him his sand-filled punching bag.
“I know this is a shock,” Anthony said. Michael swore he saw a smile tug at the corner of Anthony’s disgusting mouth, a mouth he’d pressed against Ann’s mouth—no! Michael banged his fists on his thighs, jiggled his leg like a coke addict.
“You’re making this up.”
“Do you think I’d make up a story like this?”
“What about college? She’s getting scholarship offers. She’s smart.” Connie and Ed would be so disappointed. Academics were everything. Both of their houses were stuffed with books. Connie had just put a bumper sticker on her car that said KILL YOUR TELEVISION. “You ruined her future.”
“It was her own future she compromised. She told me she was on the pill.”
“She was your babysitter!”
The woman at the table next to them looked at Anthony with disapproval, and shifted her body to block Anthony’s view of her daughter.
“She was more than that. You know how special she is. Let’s just say we’d grown close.” That word “we” was what bothered Michael the most: we grew close. Ann wasn’t even there and he felt he was being ganged up on. “It’s hard to control your emotions when you’re physically intimate with someone again and again. You think you can, but it’s easy to get carried away. I’m afraid this is especially true for Ann.”
Michael balled up his fists, and Anthony stared at them.
“We need to talk about this like men. Grown men. You don’t want to punch me like you’re some kid on the playground. Let’s have an adult conversation about it, shall we? This is hard enough without all the tough guy bullshit.”
The lobby seemed to go still. Michael looked around, trying to think about something, anything else. He focused on an old lady with her granddaughter, the doll the girl was holding, their waitress’s black shoes, the busboy’s big tray. He listened for the tinny Christmas music playing in the background. Ann was pregnant, Anthony was the father. I am a poor boy too pa rum pa pum pum.
“I’ve got nothing to say to you.” Michael reached for his coat. “You’re sick. A sick pervert.” Michael pushed his heavy chair back and stood up.
“If you walk away right now, Michael, you’ll be responsible for Ann getting nothing.”
“You’d do that to her? She doesn’t need you or your money. She’ll be fine.”
“That’s not what she thinks. Give her some credit. She’s smart enough to know she’ll need financial support, and I want to help, I do, but I can only do so in the most discreet manner. Come on, Michael. Have a heart. You were raised by a single mother. You know she’ll need all the help she can get.”
“Her parents will be there for her.”
“She’s not at all convinced that will be the case. And even if they are, I’m guessing there’s not a lot of money to go around.”
Michael thought of Connie’s coupon file, organized neatly by grocery aisle. He remembered the small arguments he’d overheard between Connie and Ed about spending, the way Ed had to sneak the expense of their fishing trips. How Connie had suggested that maybe they sell the Cape house to help pay for Ann’s college, and Ed said no, never. The Wellfleet house had to stay in the family, it was for the kids and their kids and their kids’ kids.
“Strange as it may sound, Ann’s well-being is in your hands. If you really care about her, you’ll sit back down and talk to me.”
“What are you trying to say? You won’t help Ann if I won’t listen to you?”
“Sit.” Anthony looked at Michael’s empty chair.
Michael thought about leaving, but he wanted to talk to Ann. Thing was, Ann was upstairs. In Anthony’s room. Resting. Pregnant. No wonder she’d been so distracted. She really loved this guy?
“I told you that story about myself because I’ve made sacrifices to get what I want. To be perfectly honest, I don’t look back with regret. I’ve done what I had to do, and you are the type of person who can do the same. I told you that story because I want you to think about the kind of sacrifices you might also make, for others, sure, but also for yourself. See, Ann and I, we’ve been talking.” God, it made Michael physically sick to imagine Ann talking to this guy, even sicker to think about what else they’d done together. “We’ve come up with a plan of sorts. Actually, it was Ann who came up with this. I need to give her credit. She’s incredibly strategic in a time of crisis.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Please. Hear me out. I need—we need—well, now this is a hard thing to say: we need you to say you’re the father.”
“Me? No way. No fucking way. Are you kidding?”
The mother at the table next to them shot a severe look at Michael when she heard him swear near her children, like he was the bad guy instead of Anthony. “I don’t want to be part of your plan. I won’t lie about that. Are you nuts? Why would I do that? Her parents would kill me.”
Anthony put his finger over his lips. “Keep it down,” he said. “Please.”
Michael noticed a vein bulge on the bony ridge of Anthony’s big, Neanderthal forehead. His face was red and strained like he was in the middle of a bench press.
“Poor Ann, she was so certain you’d be willing to step up for her.”
“Ann came up with this?”
“Just listen. I want to keep my family together, Michael. I slipped up, every man does, but I’m a family guy, you’ve seen that. I should have had more control, should have been a better man. But I screwed up and I’m sorry. The chemistry was too much. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”
“Bullshit. This is bullshit.”
“I know you don’t think much of me, and you shouldn’t, but all I’m asking you to do—and all Ann is asking you to do—is to tell a little lie.”
“That’s not a little lie! That’s like the biggest fucking lie I could ever tell.”
Anthony didn’t respond right away. He eyed Michael, assessing the situation, developing his strategy. He drank some wine. “Are you forgetting that Ann did you a big favor? She gave you a place to stay when you had no place to go; she gave you a family when you had nobody. You would have been a foster kid. You’re fine now, Michael, just look at you. How about returning Ann’s favor? Everyone knows you’re in love with her. I could tell myself, the minute I saw you lay eyes on her. And my boys told u
s they saw you surprise her with an unwelcome kiss. Maureen was so concerned she called your parents to discuss it with them.”
Anthony paused to let that sink in—and embarrass him further. So that night Ed found Ann in his bed—that was after Maureen had told them? No wonder he didn’t seem to believe Ann and Michael when they insisted nothing had gone on between them.
“Ann told me how awkward she’s felt around you, with you mooning all over her.”
Michael wanted to die. He could hear Ann’s voice in his head as if through a megaphone: You love me, don’t you?
“So you have a thing for her, big deal. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, she’s the whole package. I’ve fallen for plenty of women I can’t have. But she thinks of you as a, well, as a brother. Hell, man, she made you her brother. That’s how it works sometimes. You’ll learn that, like with me and Ann, there’s this, this snap of electricity, this heat, this sizzle. Someday you’ll know what I’m talking about. But whatever, she’s your friend, your sister. And she needs you to help her out now.”
“By lying?”
“Yes.”
“But all she’d need to do is take one of those tests. It’ll prove I’m not the dad.”
This seemed to get under Anthony’s skin. It seemed as if he’d anticipated every argument, the way a candidate prepares for a debate. “And if she takes that test, know what happens? My marriage is over. Let me put the pieces together for you: If my marriage is over, Michael, I won’t have any money. And if I have no money, I can’t support Ann. Ann knows this.” Anthony took another big sip, so big you’d think he’d mistaken his wineglass for water. “Connecting the dots?”
Michael was connecting the dots—one horrible dot at a time.
The Second Home Page 13