by J Santiago
Willa shook her head, trying to make that statement not true.
“Willa, I love you dearly. But you love hard. It’s all or nothing with you. You think that if you’re with Pete you’ll be giving up part of you. I think my history has tainted your view of things. You wanted to make sure that he would love you as much. It was your way of pushing him away before you let him in. I get it. And I think Pete gets it. But you were wrong. And you need to forgive him, because he’s the only person in the world that gets you like you need to be understood.”
Willa looked at her little sister for the first time in a long time and thought, Holy shit, my girl is all grown up. “You think you’re so damn smart!” she said without any rancor.
“So my IQ says,” Lu responded with flair as she got up and started toward her room.
“Lu,” Willa called out to her. When Lu turned around she said, “I love you.”
Lu shrugged with a smile. “I know,” she said.
23
Pete unlocked Lex’s door and jumped in surprise when he found Lex standing on the other side of it.
“Shit! What are you doing here?”
“Last I checked, I lived here,” Lex said drolly.
“I know, but you weren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I came straight home.”
Pete followed him into the kitchen. Feeling uncomfortable about where he had been, he blurted out, “I just came from Lu’s.”
If Lex was surprised or angry, he didn’t show it. “Nina will be here tomorrow. You didn’t have to go see her,” he said, explaining his lack of a response.
“Well, I wanted to see Lu too.”
“Yeah,” Lex replied, waving him off. “So how was the night?”
Pete felt trapped. He’d completely avoided any discussion of Lu whenever he talked with Lex. He’d tried for months to get Lex to talk to him and had finally thrown in the towel when he noticed Lex calling less frequently, trying to avoid any unpleasant discussions. “It was interesting. Nina’s amazing.”
Lex smiled that trademark smile. “Yes, she is.”
“How’s it going with you two?”
He ran his hands through his longer hair. “Slow.” He walked over to a bar stool and sat down. “We have fun together, but I don’t necessarily feel like her father. I mean, I don’t know what to say all the time, and I feel like she sees me as a fun uncle rather than her dad. Which should be lots of fun when we get to the teenage years.”
Pete studied his brother. “Gotta be the first time in your life that you’ve been unsure of how to act around a female.”
Lex chuckled. “Yeah. Most important one. Go figure.”
Pete let that thought linger between them. It dawned on him that he was worried about Lex. He just didn’t seem to be himself. Even when he watched his brother play soccer, he seemed to be lacking that luster that had made him so much fun to follow. “You OK?” Pete asked.
Lex didn’t say anything at first. He scrubbed his hands over his face again. He sat for such a long time without responding that Pete thought he wouldn’t.
Finally, he said, “I’m not really sure.” No longer able to sit, he got up. This was familiar to Pete, more like the Lex he knew, with the frenetic energy and the need to move constantly.
“Everything feels off. There have been so many changes that I don’t know what to blame it on. Is it Dad dying? Is it suddenly having a child? I can’t pinpoint it. But it’s starting to affect my play. For the first time in my life, soccer is not helping me find my balance.”
Pete wanted to respond, but he didn’t know what to say.
“I thought having Nina close by would be a good thing, but I can’t seem to find my footing with her. She hasn’t done anything to warrant it yet, but what happens when she does something and I need to discipline her? I don’t feel like I have the right. It’s totally frustrating. Or what if something happens at school? I have no idea if Lu would include me in the discussion. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just too late.”
“You really think that? That it’s too late to be a father to her?”
“Yeah, most of the time I do.” He looked at Pete then and said, “And you know what happens when I think about that? I get mad at Lu all over again.” Frustrated, he walked to the window, leaning his hands on the ledge. “So how’s that for some shit?”
“That’s some shit,” Pete agreed, having no idea how to help his brother work through all this. But he had a small opening and so he tried to push the advantage. “Maybe if you and Lu could talk. Maybe then you could work through this together.”
Lex turned slowly to face his brother, incredulity written all over his face. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Look, I have no idea how to even think about what you must be going through, but I think Lu could help. I know you are angry at her, but if you were able to forgive her, maybe it would be easier to see yourself as Nina’s father.” Pete knew he was treading on sacred ground, but he also knew that Lex needed help. It was the only way he could think of to help him get his equilibrium back. But as he watched Lex take it in, he knew he’d made a mistake. Lex moved like lightning and got right in Pete’s face.
“I can’t fucking believe you can stand in my house and take her side. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you defending her after what she did?”
Pete, suddenly fearful of the damage he might be doing to his relationship with Lex, wanted to change direction, but it was too late. So he plunged forward.
“I’m not defending her. I just think that if you are ever going to be a father to Nina, you are going to have to learn to parent with Lu.”
“You don’t know shit about being a parent, so you should stop while you’re ahead.”
“You don’t know either,” Pete said before he could stop himself. Before he could react, Lex slammed him up against the wall.
“Don’t fucking mention her name to me. Don’t try to fix this with your thoughtful logic. I’m well past logic on this.” Rage was making Lex shake, and Pete could feel the anger vibrating through him. He’d never been afraid of his brother, but now, he was afraid of the person in front of him. “If you want to have a relationship with me, you are going to have to make a choice. Do you understand me?”
“There’s no choice to be made, Lex. You’re my brother.”
Lex released him, turned away, and left Pete standing there.
Pissed at his brother and himself, Lex needed to get out of his apartment. He slid his feet into his running shoes and slammed his way out the door. The leftover adrenaline from the fight with Pete had his hands shaking. He’d never raised his hand to his brother. Even as kids, he couldn’t ever remember fighting with him. Their differences had made them the best of friends.
He started running at a grueling pace, hoping to chase away all of demons that had been haunting him over the last couple of months, that had disguised themselves in questions of what ifs and hopes of if only. This anger that beat at him constantly was such an odd emotion for him that it constantly threw him off kilter. His mother had once asked him why he didn’t get mad at another player on the field who had targeted him. He’d said to his mother, “It’s a wasted emotion. Why be angry when I can just beat him down the field next time? Being mad throws me off my game.”
So this torrential anger that dug its claws into him, that pulled him around like the dizzy bat game and left him unfocused and unsure, felt wrong. But no matter what he did to try to combat it, something would kick up the dirt again. In the end it all came down to Lu. It was the conclusion he drew every morning when he woke up and every night before he went to bed. If he could let it go, or figure out a way to not be mad at her, he felt he could somehow get his control back.
Smiling in irony over the discussion he’d just had with his brother, he allowed himself the leeway to forget that he’d just physically harmed his brother for saying the same thing. The problem, though, came down to how he could try to talk to her. Just the
thought of seeing her made his blood boil. He broke into a sweat when he thought of being in the same room with her. And since he was being so honest with himself, he had to admit that it was more than just keeping Nina away from him. Although that was enough to convict her in and of itself, it wasn’t enough to keep the flame of his anger from extinguishing itself. Because when he thought about those decisions made so long ago, he knew she didn’t have the wherewithal to fight their combined sets of parents without him. And he’d left, even though he knew she was pregnant. For that, he could probably find it in his heart to exonerate her.
Her claim to have held them all hostage if they told him about Nina—he knew that was bullshit. She’d been convincing and, at the time, he wanted to believe that. But he knew she wouldn’t do that. They had all made a decision to protect the secret because they didn’t know how to tell him. They all withheld the knowledge of his daughter to protect themselves. He thought it sucked, but he got it. When is there a good time to tell someone he has a child who’s been concealed from him?
So why was he really mad at her?
It was the sex. How did she open herself up to him when she kept the most important thing in her life from him? How did she let him inside her body while blocking off her heart? Was it just his ego that was hurt? Could he be that much of a dickhead? The Lu he thought he knew was genuine and sweet. So who had he been with six months ago?
24
The excitement and uncertainty of Willa’s visit had begun to fade and life began to retreat into a normal pattern. School seemed to agree with Nina although, much like her father, her constant need to move had resulted in a few phone calls to Lu. Here she balked. How did she include Lex? She found no answers in her super brain and also found that she had no one to talk to about the situation. Everyone in her life was too involved and too jaded. It seemed as if suddenly the issue of Nina had divided their two families. She still spoke to everyone, reluctant to let Nina’s relationships with them waver. But when looking for direction on how to include a parent who had been deliberately excluded for nine years, she found herself whipping in the wind. This was the only negative in her new life.
The approach of Christmas found Lu preparing for her transatlantic trip home to receive her degree. She had to finish packing Nina so that she could begin on her stuff. The mindless task allowed her thoughts to wander. With all that had been happening, it seemed inconsequential to go back for her graduation, but she knew that she’d worked hard and should enjoy the sense of accomplishment. Her PhD at twenty-seven seemed to say that she had lived up to the promises of her youth. Even her teenage pregnancy hadn’t held her back from potentially achieving greatness. There was part of her—and if she was honest, she would admit it was a large part of her—that wanted to take her diploma and rub it in her mother’s face. But the parent side of her recognized the immaturity of that sentiment.
After a long, arduous discussion with Lex’s lawyers, an agreement was worked out for Christmas. Lex wanted to take Nina on one of his trips so she could see some of England and watch him play. Lex’s nanny would chaperone her during practice and games. It made Lu nervous, but she didn’t think she could hold him back from taking her. He’d patiently waited for her to have a break from school. It had come time for him to have her for an extended period. With their very separate lives, Lu still felt as though she were parenting alone. She envisioned a time in the near future when she would have to discuss it with Lex—not his lawyers—but she continued to give him the space he desired. On her return from the States, Nina would begin a two-week stint with him.
There were times when Lu questioned her own cooperative attitude. She found herself wanting to demand more, but she would work herself up for it and all the bluster would fade away. So much for that doctorate in psychology, she thought. She knew she felt guilty for keeping Nina from Lex and for not avoiding intimacy with him. But at some point, being a parent had to outweigh being a woman, right? That’s what she was banking on—for this primal maternal feeling to kick in so that she could kick some English attorney ass. It almost made her laugh that she could continue to be pissed at her mom but couldn’t work up the energy to fight Lex. Perhaps because she wasn’t sure what she’d be fighting for.
Finished with Nina’s bag, Lu moved into her room to get her things together. As she dragged her suitcase off the top shelf in her closet, her phone rang. She raced for it because in the middle of the day, the possibility of a call from Nina’s school loomed large. Skidding to a halt in front of her desk, she picked it up but didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello,” she answered.
“May I speak with Dr. Knight?” said the voice on the other end of the phone.
“Either you’re looking for my mother or you are a week early.”
“Ah, a week early?” he paused. “I was hoping to speak with Louisa Knight.”
She laughed, “This is Louisa Knight.”
“Good. Louisa, I am calling from the EPL.”
Lu paused. “EPL?” she questioned.
“The English Premier League.”
“Oh,” Lu answered. She should have known those initials. “How can I help you?”
“I should probably introduce myself. My name is Malcolm Helms. I happen to know Michael Ziegler,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Ah,” Lu responded. “He told me that he’d passed my name along to a couple of people. He just didn’t tell me who.”
“He pointed me in your direction and after reading some of your papers, I’m interested in your work. I was hoping that we could meet so that I can discuss it with you.”
“Mr. Helms, I’m flattered, but if you are familiar with my work then you know that it is specific to football,” Lu explained patiently, “American football.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. But I had assumed that you would want to continue your work. And there is no American football here in England,” he pointed out.
Lu paused, suddenly struck by that statement. Was this how Dorothy felt? She wasn’t in Kansas anymore. How long was she going to be here? She hadn’t even thought about that. Did Lex think that they would stay here forever? It was at that precise moment that she finally felt all of the indignation that Willa had expected of her six months ago. She had uprooted her entire life without so much as a peep. It was fucking amazing what good sex could do to your brain.
“Miss Knight?” Mr. Helms said, bringing her out of her stupor.
“Yes. Um, I am headed to the States on Friday for my graduation. Why don’t we plan on lunch sometime next week?”
“You’ll be back so quickly?”
“Yes, sir. We’ll be back on Monday evening.”
“Let’s say Tuesday, then, shall we?”
“Perfect. Where would you like for me to meet you?” Her phone beeped, indicating she had another call. Pulling it away from her face, she saw the number for Nina’s school. “Hold on one moment, please. I have a call coming in.” But as she went to make her pick between her three iPhone options, she hit the wrong one and ended up hanging up on the school.
“Mr. Helms, I apologize, but I have to go. Can you email me the arrangements and I will make sure that I am there.”
“Yes, that works well. What is your email?”
“It’s [email protected].”
“I will get that to you promptly.”
“Thank you,” Lu said before disconnecting. She wasn’t sure if it was the accent, but it all seemed so proper to her. Who used the word promptly in everyday conversation?
Quickly dialing the school, Lu waited to be able to talk to someone, her stomach in knots. Immediately, she was put on hold. Finally, after waiting for five minutes, her call was answered.
“This is Louisa Knight,” she said. She’d long ago learned that in any nonsocial situation, her full name got her places that her nickname just couldn’t reach.
“Oh, Miss Knight, please hold. Our headmaster has been trying to contact you.”
Aga
in she waited, but this time, her nerves made her rusty mother’s intuition sharpen. In her mind, her daughter had been seriously injured. She’d never had the headmaster call her.
“Miss Knight, this is Mr. Seddon. Nina is fine.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, she responded, “Hello, Mr. Seddon.”
“I’m afraid I am going to need you to come in and collect her from school today.”
“I thought you said she was fine,” Lu said, confused.
“She is physically fine. Are you able to come now?” he asked, his tone rather short.
“Yes, sir. I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“Wonderful. Mr. Pellitteri said the same.”
“Ah, Mr. Pellitteri?” she asked apprehensively.
“Yes. When I was unable to reach you, I called her emergency contact. So I’ll see you shortly?”
“Yes, sir. Thanks so much.” Lu disconnected the phone and fell heavily into her desk chair. Without realizing it, she took inventory of what she was wearing and tried to remember if she’d put on any makeup or done her hair. Realizing the foolishness of the sentiment, she stood up, gathered her coat and purse, and headed out the door. The rolling that had started in her stomach the moment the school called churned up so that she could almost feel the acid sneak its way into her throat. Her newfound hostility chose that moment to lodge itself, right alongside her worry over Nina. Aside from her daughter having to be picked up in the middle of the day, she was about to see Lex for the first time in seven months.
Lex had just finished showering after practice when his phone rang. He’d never received a phone call from Nina’s school, but he had long ago programmed the number into his phone. Glancing at the name lighting up the screen, he answered without hesitation.