The Family Tabor

by Cherise Wolas

  “Yes, of course I will attend, thank you so much for this honor,” he says, and Odaman provides him with the highlights about the first-class airline tickets and the five-star accommodations, the ten-day schedule of programs and seminars and social events, telling Simon all will be set forth in a comprehensive email, and then Odaman rings off.

  When he turns, Elena is behind him, tousled from sleep, her skin tawny gold, her high cheekbones flushed, her lips again full, and her smile is shot through with such love and intimacy that he doubts his sleeplessness, as if this year of sleeplessness has been itself a bad dream, doubts his concern that there’s a slackening of their prior closeness, doubts himself for debating the strength of her love.

  “You’re not running this morning?” she asks, and when he shakes his head, she says, “Great. Lucy’s already in the pool. Why don’t you pack. I had your tuxedo pressed, it’s in the closet. In a little while, I’ll make birds in the nest for everyone.”

  “I …” Simon says.

  How does he express to Elena the enormity of the high honor he has just received from the president of the ILA, that it is even more meaningful than making partner in February? How does he implore her to accompany him, to carefully suggest it is time to leave the children behind, as they have not been left since their births? How does he convince her that they’ll figure out who will care for them in their absence, but going to Medellín, Colombia, is vital, not just for his career, although absolutely his attendance at this conference will thrust him forward exponentially, but so that the two of them can temporarily escape the tough daily grind, be alone together as they have not been in five years, recover themselves as the couple they once were. Ten days far away from their precious children, who are adorable pixies and love bugs, whose hugs and kisses are indescribable, as are their plaintive, plangent demands that their needs be swiftly met. Ten days far away to remember who they are: Simon Tabor and Elena Abascal, a couple happily married and in love.

  “The ILA called, didn’t they?” And Elena’s look is that special intimate look he hasn’t seen in a while, and there is a gentleness to her voice he wouldn’t have predicted, and he is so surprised by both, by his awareness of how long they have been absent, that he must forcibly drag air into his lungs, recognizing with a jolt that his morning hollowness is gone. Whatever evaporates during these nights has resurfaced, reshaping his insides much earlier than usual.

  Elena steps closer and closer until the tips of her breasts touch his bare chest. Sparks light up his body; if he looked down, surely he would see fireflies encircling the two of them. Her pink tongue flicks across his mouth, and in a heartbeat she’s tugging at his lower lip, pressing down with increasing force, imprisoning his lip with her incisors, until he tastes blood. She steps back, grips his wide-awake cock, squeezes once, then leaves him there.

  He hears the door to Isabel’s room opening, and finds himself speculating, not about why ravens were trying to devour him this morning, or if Elena still loves him, or if he can induce her back into bed—it’s been so long he can’t recall the last time—or what implications the conference will have on his career, but whether, against all the odds, Colombia might be the place where his sleep is restored.

  SEVEN

  PHOEBE TABOR REPRESENTS MAJOR Los Angeles–based novelists, screenwriters, and playwrights, sculptors, painters, and video artists, musicians, bands, and composers. It’s her still-minor clients, those beginning to climb the vines of recognition and success, that she worries about most, because their expectations are consistently unrealistic. They walk into her office presuming fantastic offers are on the table, and she must return them to reality. And it’s always tough, because they have written the meaningful novel, the great script, the deep play, have created the phenomenal sculpture, the suite of inspired paintings, and it’s her obligation to tell them no one is biting, or the bite isn’t as big as they’d hoped, or the film director has rejected the neophyte composer’s score, or the gallery has rescinded its offer to mount the young artist’s new show. The facts are nearly as hard to deliver as to hear, but by the time Phoebe’s clients hug her, they understand where they are, yet still have faith in their futures, because she is a truth teller. Honesty is the pillar upon which she has built her law practice. Inside, past the heavy door with its stylish engraved nameplate, Phoebe Tabor, Esq., she commands a large retinue of lawyers, paralegals, and assistants, and insists that in all their firm activities, they heed her honest manner of transparently conducting business.

  And yet recently, in her personal life, she has veered in the opposite direction, adopting subterfuge as her modus operandi, although calling it subterfuge is finely glossing the state of things.

  At eight fifteen this Saturday morning, Phoebe, dressed in a black sundress and Grecian sandals, all of her limbs lightly tanned, stands at her closet mirror and arranges the hair her mother calls chestnut into a loose sexy braid. She assesses her image. Yes, she looks the part, will be viewed by her family as a woman in love.

  She leans in close, fragmenting her pupils, and in those fragments she sees the unjustified complications she’s brought into her life. She pulls back from the mirror and her pupils reassemble, black surrounded by irises of darkest brown, eyes so falsely guileless she has to turn away from herself.

  She rustles through closets and drawers, delving through sedimentary layers of acquisitions, flinging out her choices, and packing them into her small rolling bag—used for all her loverly weekends away: an old one-piece bathing suit for the laps she always forgets to swim, a new bikini for chaise sprawling and oiling up next to the big pool alongside her sister and sister-in-law, another summery dress purchased to wear with a man a few years back who pursued her hard for a date and when she at last gave in stood her up, tennis shoes and shorts and a tank top from her youth for taking a walk in the heat with one or some or all of her family members, a college-era tennis skirt and shirt in case her father wants to play, silky pajamas that hold memories of an enjoyable four-week romp during law school, and the totteringly high silver heels purchased last week for the gala tonight, along with the ice-blue gown, already in its hanging bag. In go the miniature bottles of shampoo and conditioner and body lotion swiped from hotelsuite bathrooms these last six and a half months. Her lip-shaped cosmetics bag stowed inside the mesh netting.

  She zips up the suitcase, sets it down on the floor. The tick-tick of the wheels on the wood puts Benny on notice. Until a moment ago, he was lounging on the unmade bed, but now lets out a quivering meow. He is her sweet affectionate thing, velvety fur hiding a small, solidly compact body. At night, he stretches out on top of her, his paws clinging to her neck, his purrs soothing her lonely heart.

  Poor Benny. Her subterfuge has meant she’s deserted him for many three-day weekends since February, consigned to the care of her brother. Simon is responsible, showing up morning and night, filling Benny’s bowls, keeping his heating pad on the bed on high and cold water trickling from the bathroom sink faucet, playing with Benny for a few minutes before he heads to his own home, to his wife and children. When she returns from her weekends away, Benny is churlish, his outsized paws thumping when he lands on the kitchen counter, the dining room table, following Phoebe around, baying his disapproval at his most recent abandonment. When she is again in the bed that they share, Benny lets her know he’s forgiven her by arranging himself on her head, lashing her cheek with his sandpaper tongue. But Simon and family will be in Palm Springs, too, and Phoebe reluctantly asked a neighbor to care for Benny.

  Raquel was thrilled when Phoebe knocked on Wednesday night. “I want a cat sososo much, but I haven’t pulled the trig. So how coolio. Yours. Def. No prob.”

  Raquel is twenty-five to Phoebe’s thirty-eight, a secretarial temp slash aspiring actress slash aspiring model who might emote as well as the best but seems to Phoebe too short and curvy to model. And it irks Phoebe enormously that Raquel seems intent on believing they are nearly identical peas in a pod. Thi
s specious view of Raquel’s, and the fact that Raquel annoys her, has compelled Phoebe to ward off the young woman’s obvious desire to be friends. In her own defense, Phoebe would say that a friendship with any neighbor can too easily become an uncomfortable burden, and after an eventful workday, she’d rather not be accosted by anyone waving a bottle, saying, “Thought we might share this.” Only twice has Phoebe relented, and both times, watching Raquel swaying back to her own front door, Phoebe assessed the avenues of employment that would afford Raquel the ability to purchase such expensive wine. Ashamed by her assumptions, she has kept her distance from Raquel the last few months.

  But Raquel was her easiest choice for cat-sitting Benny, and thinking about the young woman being alone in her house unescorted, peeking into her life, Phoebe is opening and closing cabinets, sizing her things up, determining what they say about her, if she needs to find hiding places.

  She scoops out of her nightstand the few books of erotica, the vibrator, the hopeful, unopened box of condoms, and in the bathroom, the nearly full container of Percocet from her wisdom teeth removal last year, and stashes the loot at the bottom of her hamper, throws in the damp towel hanging over the shower door to be safe.

  In her study, she slips folders containing client information into the desk drawer, along with her personal bills and checkbooks and bank and money management statements, and locks it with the key hidden beneath.

  In the living room her brother calls empty and she calls minimalistic and replete with architectural details—rounded columns leading to the dining room, pristine nonworking fireplace with a mantel holding a single blue vase filled with bright orange gerbera daisies, massive window overlooking the street—she inspects, but aside from the suede sofa and chairs the color of tangerines, the three huge paintings on the white walls she accepted as payment for legal bills owed by painter clients, bookshelves categorically organized, high-tech sound system, and her objects of art displayed in the whitewashed nooks and crannies, there is nothing revealing.

  As the coffee brews, she pulls out Benny’s dry cat food and cans of wet and places them on the kitchen counter. She wants to make it easy for Raquel, to keep her curtained in the kitchen, then a path straight out the front door.

  She pours herself a first cup, hears her doorbell chime, and reluctantly pulls down a second cup.

  “HI, FEEBS, REPORTING FOR duty,” is what Raquel says when she steps in. “I’m sososo jelly, where are you going? Tell me the deets.”

  Phoebe hates that nickname to which she never responds, hates the way Raquel insists on shortening most everything. How much extra time does it take to say Phoebe, to say jealous, to say details? Is Raquel’s life so jam-packed she can’t waste a second, cares not a whit about being fully understood?

  Phoebe gives her a big smile. “Come into the kitchen. I’ll give you some coffee, show you what you need to do.”

  “Great, but first I want to hear about your hot and heavy weekends!”

  What, Phoebe thinks, is Raquel is talking about?

  “Please, please, spill the beans! I keep running into your gorgeous brother when he comes to feed Benny and he mentioned—Well, I got him to tell me why I’ve seen him so much. Because you have a new man in your life! Taking you away to cool places. Is he scrumptious?”

  Oh. Raquel is talking about Aaron Green.

  “Totally scrumptious,” Phoebe instantly says.

  “So where to this weekend?”

  “Home for a family celebration.”

  “OMG, how exciting! Are you nervous? I’d be so nervous introducing my new man to family!”

  Phoebe could correct Raquel’s mistaken impression, but says, instead, “No, I’m not nervous at all.”

  “That’s when you know the love is real!” Raquel squeals.

  And Phoebe, who doesn’t agree that’s the way you know, pours coffee into the cup on the counter, and points to the sugar bowl, and wishes seeing herself through Raquel’s eyes weren’t so inviting.

  Phoebe would never confess to Raquel that the scrumptious man spiriting her away to cool places for long weekends, and whom she has just confirmed she’s taking home to Palm Springs, is fictitious.

  She would never admit to Raquel that she created Aaron Green at midnight in late January, just home from the opening of a client’s new art exhibition, her family’s messages on her voicemail pissing her off, words throaty with exhausted hope that there might have been a man there who was “worth another look,” said Roma, Harry calling out, “Love is good, honey.” “Someone I would like,” Simon had said in his message, with Elena adding, “Just so he knows your true value,” and from Camille, “I hope he’s fuckable, because that’s always the point. No, I take that back, I don’t know what the point is,” and Phoebe, who had just hung up her short bronze dress and placed her high bronzed sandals in their box in the closet, stood nude in her bedroom.

  She was tired of slicing open wedding invitations. From those she employs, selecting her dinner choices with angry checkmarks, writing the identical sweet comment on the RSVP cards about her excitement in participating in the joyful couple’s bountiful happiness, and from friends whose first marriages cratered—weddings she also attended—but their luck had held and allowed them to expunge past erroneous choices and move forward into another future: Please join us in an intimate celebration of our finding absolute true love—

  From her mid- to late twenties, Phoebe was first in her seat at the monthly brunch with her band of girls, Sunday afternoons of sangria and silly talk about what their futures might hold. One by one, those girls turned into women when they became wives and mothers, delighted their lives had come together so effortlessly.

  “You’re gorgeous and brilliant and your turn’s coming,” they said to her, and when Phoebe’s turn never did come, they peppered her with questions: Did she really want to marry, have a child, make room in her industrious life for others?

  Disbelieving when she said, “Professional success isn’t the sum total of me, it’s not all that I want, but I don’t seem to be having any luck.”

  Her friends, her friends, would say, “Well, if you really want it, as you say you do, then—,” that then so forbidding, undefinable, completely elusive, as if they held the secret and were unwilling to share, as if their attainment of the marital, the maternal, the pronoun replacements—from I to we and then to us—resulted in their crowning, their elevation, while she remained on the ground, assumed to be lacking the requisite nurturing abilities that would give rise to love and marriage and motherhood.

  All day, every day, Phoebe nurtures everyone, her clients, her associates, her support staff, attending their opening nights, their launches, their engagement parties and weddings, and when dancing is required, she dances as if delighted to be there—what better proof is there that she possesses the necessary talents for success in her personal life? And yet she hasn’t attained love, marriage, motherhood, the poles of the true shelter she seeks, with her wished-for family, a solid place against inclement weather, toasty inside, living each day together, making plans for the future.

  As full as she has made her life, as large as it often is, that she might never again feel crazy in love, never feel her child growing inside, that she might spend the rest of her years alone—it is incalculable sadness, bottomless grief, wide and swollen rivers of self-pity. What is she supposed to do with the pulsing love in her heart, the love she has to give, if husband and baby never appear?

  Raquel is still chattering, and Phoebe hears her say, “Really, that’s how it works, you only introduce a real love to the family. Right?”

  “Right,” Phoebe immediately says.

  The art opening had happened; the client was real, an ageless sprite named Zabi, with her magenta lipstick and Turkish slippers, her enormous fired-metal pieces hanging off the walls, like devices to protect the soft innards of some forgotten race of people less strong than sun-fried Los Angelenos. Zabi introduced Phoebe as her lawyerly god, and Phoe
be had smiled, feeling her white teeth perfectly strung in her mouth, and all the time she was scanning the crowd, wishing for just one man who might make her laugh, who would know instinctively how to metaphorically strip her to her core. But there had been nobody. Or rather, there had been many, including attractive men who smiled at her, but none had taken even a half step in her direction.

  Driving home, she’d thought about how she insists her clients identify their professional aims, and the personal problems that might hamper their achievement, and she took stock of herself. She was beautiful—an acknowledgment, rather than an assertion of vanity; she had an excellent brain, and a big heart, so why couldn’t she achieve her personal aims? What was missing?

  It took a quarter of an hour before she realized what was missing was luck.

  When it came to love, she’d once had an abundance of compelling luck. Second grade loves that lasted an hour or a day; sixth grade boys who handed over their pencils when hers broke; high school boys with crushes she turned into boyfriends. College and law school admirers had lined up, relationships in which she determined when they started and ended. Then, well, him, and her luck held for a while, then sputtered and died.

  It was luck she needed to rebirth, but how did one rebirth luck?

  And what she thought was love begets love. There was a particular energy one exuded when in love. She’d experienced it herself long ago, the way she became a magnet for even more love, love she couldn’t then use because she was already happily in love.

  How could she again draw the energy of love directly to her?

  That steamy, decidedly unwintery January night, Phoebe deleted her family’s messages, then walked naked, as she never did, into the living room, and searched the spines of her novels, flipping through their pages, finding a name to bestow upon the man she was inventing, a love story as balm, trips to places ripened by dreams.