Belong to Me

by Marisa de los Santos

  “Uh-oh.” His eyes grew serious. “Tell me.”

  “I love you. I’m not afraid of losing you, and I’m not going anywhere. But I’m still sad. I wanted this baby to be your first child. And now Penny’s only your first child with me.”

  “Only? Only has zero to do with us and Penny. My first child with you. You and me with a baby?” Teo graced me with the loveliest, most can’t-believe-my-luck smile I had ever beheld. “It’s everything. You know that.” He pulled my face toward his and kissed me again. “I’m sad, too. None of this is what I’d expected to happen, either. But can I tell you one thing I’ve figured out?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t pull away, all right?”

  “I won’t.”

  “If you think: Lake and Teo have a child together, it’s hard. I can’t tell you how hard it is for me. But instead of thinking about it that way, think this: Dev.”

  I absorbed what Teo said, and then, nervously, slowly, I took the first unsteady steps toward letting in what I’d been trying so desperately to block out: Dev talking about poetry, raking mulch, saying, “How cool. To be someone’s there.” Dev’s sudden smile. Thoughts shooting like meteors across his blue eyes. The longing in his voice when he talked about family, about Penny being born into all that waiting love.

  But there stood Lake, a shadow in the background.

  All of my life, love had trumped sadness and anger. It had been that kind of a life. Let it continue, I prayed. Let me do the right thing.

  To Teo, I said, “I promise you I’ll try.”

  NINETEEN

  What knocked the wind out of Piper was not the guilt or the panic or the worry about what people would say if they knew. It was not even the shame she felt on the days (rarer and rarer) when Elizabeth was everywhere, in the drooping branches of her favorite lilac bush, in the four black slots of the toaster, staring out from the faces of Emma and Peter, punctuating the very air of Tom’s house in now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t gleams, like fireflies or phosphorus. Instead, it was how all of that, even the shame, even Elizabeth’s face, could fade into the background, leaving Piper with the stark truth of just how good it felt to want someone again.

  And she did want him. It was impossible not to acknowledge this. She could have no sooner denied being hot in the sun (hot in the sun in Africa) or being thirsty or feeling pain when she banged her shin on something sharp. His body, the presence of his body, cut a path through hers like a roaring tornado. Not always, of course, not every single second. God, no. There would be no living with that, and she was busy, after all, cooking and feeding, tidying and organizing, and when they were all six together, she was nearly always being clung to, climbed up, kissed, needed and needed and needed, always by people other than Tom. But then she would slide an egg onto his plate, he would pour her a cup of coffee or reach for the remote control or loosen his tie (Oh God, that sideways tug), and she would find herself swept up, engulfed, possessed, stampeded by desire.

  Even when Piper was not deliberately being true to herself, she knew that she wanted him. When she was being true to herself, when she sat alone and tried to answer the question “What do you really, really, really feel?” which took painstaking effort, still, effort, focus, and some cross between courage and recklessness, what she knew was that as exhilarating as it was to want him, to want anyone after so many years, ordinary lust was the least of it. Call it extraordinary lust, she thought. On the occasions when she stripped away everything except the truth of her feelings, she called it love.

  She wanted to tell Cornelia. When Cornelia knocked on Tom’s kitchen door that morning, Piper’s first thought was that she would tell Cornelia how, just two hours ago, in that very kitchen, Piper had experienced a kind of envy she had forgotten existed, envy of his wrists for being attached to his hands, of his hands for being his, of his shirt for containing his chest, and his cell phone for being slipped into the pocket of his pants. After he had left for work, she had leaned against the refrigerator and thought, rapturously, miserably, Jesus God, I have lost my mind.

  But Piper didn’t tell Cornelia this because Cornelia needed to talk, to tell a story so bizarre, so unsettling, so juicy that the old Piper would have been nearly swooning with delight at the thought of passing it on. The old Piper would have already been formulating the words that she would use, the order of telling, the insertion of asides or details or pregnant (so to speak—ha!) pauses. As Piper listened to Cornelia, she was aware of an odd sensation, a kind of tender incredulity at not wanting to do any of these things, at wanting to do nothing that would give this pretty, weary-eyed woman with her exposed, vulnerable neck and her delicate hands clasped on the table more pain.

  They talked and talked.

  Finally, Piper said, viciously, “Snake. You must want to rip her hair out.”

  “I did. I still do, sometimes.” Cornelia gave a tired smile. “She’s got a lot of hair.”

  “It’s insane, the amount of hair that woman has,” said Piper.

  “She called me.”

  “Well, I certainly hope you didn’t talk to her.”

  “She’s going to be in our lives, Piper,” sighed Cornelia. “At least it looks that way. I couldn’t not talk to her.”

  “Did she apologize at least?”

  “A little, but I think she wants understanding more than she wants forgiveness.”

  “Typical.”

  “And the thing is that I do understand, some of it anyway. She got more than she bargained for by moving here, although I’m not sure what she bargained for. I don’t think she’s sure; I don’t think she thought it all the way through. She wanted to be in control of everything, though. She wanted to scope Teo out, decide whether or not to tell him about Dev, decide what to take from Teo, decide whether to go or stay. But nothing worked out the way she thought it would. She came here in a blind panic, bearing the full weight of Dev’s unhappiness in school, of what she saw as her own failure as a mother. But then the unexpected happened.”

  “Dev found out that his mother is a lying sack of shit.”

  Cornelia smiled again. “Well, I guess that was unexpected, but that’s not what I mean. I mean they got happy. Without Teo, their lives got better. Dev fell in love with school; he has friends here; his teachers love him. And Lake fell in love with Rafferty. She said that lately she would have given anything if they could have just lived here forever without telling us about Dev, but she’d trapped herself, painted herself into a corner.”

  “Because she made friends with you, and you’re Teo’s wife.”

  “Yes. And she tangled up Dev’s lives with ours. And with Clare’s. It was just a matter of time before she and Teo ended up in the same place and it all came tumbling out.”

  “Even if she didn’t know you, that would have happened eventually. It’s a very small town.” Piper grimaced. “As I have reason to know.”

  Cornelia unclasped her hands, rested them on Piper’s arm for a few seconds, then clasped them again.

  “So she was in a bind. She couldn’t stay and she couldn’t stand the thought of leaving.”

  “Cry me a river.”

  Cornelia dropped her eyes. “So here’s what I asked her.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I don’t know why I wanted to know. Maybe because I felt my anger at her fading and I wanted to stay mad.”

  “Damn right.”

  “I asked her if she came here with the idea of taking him, not just for Dev, but for herself.”

  Piper snorted. “Duh.”

  Cornelia blinked.

  “Have you seen your husband?”

  “Oh,” said Cornelia, dismissively, “you mean the looks thing.”

  “No. I mean generosity, kindness, humor, blah blah blah. Financial stability. And looks. Of course. You don’t forget a face like that, even fifteen years later. Not to mention the body.”

  Cornelia widened her big eyes and grinned. “Why, Piper Truitt!”

  Piper shrug
ged. “If you like tall and lean. And green eyes.”

  Cornelia leaned toward Piper. “I’m guessing you prefer blue.”

  Even though this could have meant anything, Piper understood immediately what it did mean.

  Piper did not blush or smooth her hair or panic or deny. In this instant, she was more than not ashamed. How strange, she thought, to feel proud, as though just being in love with a man—not having him or getting him to fall in love with her—were an accomplishment all by itself, something to dignify her life. She had never loved a man like this and hadn’t known that it was possible. With a start, she realized that it was how she loved her kids.

  “We’ll save that for another time,” said Piper, finally. “So what did she say? Snake.”

  “She got huffy, at first. She said that she could’ve told him she was pregnant, all those years ago. He was so nice, she said, that he might have tried to be with her, even though he obviously didn’t want to. Which is why she didn’t tell him.” Cornelia paused, lost in thought, her face tensing, then said, “But then she admitted that it had crossed her mind, when she came out here to find him. Not a plan, really. Just a little bit of—hope. That they’d meet again and something would spring up between them.”

  “Happily ever after,” said Piper, acidly. “What stopped her from trying?”

  “If you can believe her,” Cornelia said, quietly, two coins of red appearing on her cheeks, “I did.”

  “The fact that Teo had a wife?”

  “No. She assumed he’d have a wife. But Lake got more than she bargained for with me, too. She liked me, she says, against her better judgment.”

  “Oh, that’s such bullshit,” said Piper. “She liked you? Please.”

  “I don’t know, Piper. Stranger things have happened.” Cornelia’s eyes twinkled. “Like you liking me.”

  “You’re right. That is strange,” Piper said.

  Cornelia smiled, then her eyes grew thoughtful. “You know what I keep thinking? It doesn’t make sense, but I keep thinking that none of this can be happening because Teo and I have always been together. How could he have a child with another woman when he and I have been together all our lives?”

  Piper’s first impulse was to correct Cornelia, to point out that of course they hadn’t always been together. They had gone to different colleges, lived in different cities. Sure, they’d kept in touch, probably seen each other now and then. Still, there was a lot of unaccounted-for time drifting around out there. But because she realized that Cornelia actually knew these facts, Piper thought past her first impulse and tried to understand what Cornelia really meant.

  “You mean that’s how it feels.”

  “Yes. It’s easy to feel like real life has only happened when we’ve been together, but then this happens, and I see that it’s all real. I’m just one part of Teo’s story.” Cornelia shivered.

  “An important part. And anyway, that’s not such a bad thing, is it? You wouldn’t want to be some second-cousin bumpkin couple on some mountaintop who spent every second together and then got married when you were fourteen, would you?”

  The sparkle came back to Cornelia’s face, and Piper felt a little thrill of victory. “No, I guess not.”

  “What happens next? What will you and Teo do about Dev?”

  Cornelia drew a deep breath and tapped her fingertips noiselessly on the table. “We decided to take our cues from Dev. Try to do whatever he needs us to do. We called him, but he was staying at Aidan’s house. He’s home now, Lake says. But he hasn’t called us back, yet.”

  “Letting him call the shots is a good way to begin, anyway. But remember that he’s a kid. He might not know what’s good for him.”

  Simultaneously, Cornelia squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands together as though she were praying. “I wish I were sure that I could do this.” When she opened them, her eyes were wet.

  “You can.”

  “Oh, I can love Dev. I know that. And I will do whatever needs doing. I’m talking about happiness. I don’t know if I can be happy with Dev in our lives as Teo’s son.” She lifted her hands to her face and wiped her eyes. “It’s just that I had a vision of how my life would be. I’ve had visions before that never came to pass, and I was better off for getting thrown for a loop. But this. It’s hard to let go of my idea of family, just Teo and me and our little baby.”

  Piper felt her heart opening, felt affection flowing out of her toward Cornelia, so she made her voice brisk and businesslike. “Of course, you can be happy. Look at me. I had my picture-perfect life, and my husband left me for a red-haired, weak-chinned nurse; I’m practically living with my dead friend’s family; no one in town speaks to me, with the exception of Kate and you, but I’m fine. My life is real for the first time in ages. If you’d told me a year ago that all those things would happen and I’d still be fine, I would have told you you were crazy.” Piper felt her throat tightening, but she drew her lips into a thin line and said, tersely, “And a lot of why I’m fine has to do with you, knowing you. So don’t be ridiculous.”

  A few minutes later, as Cornelia was leaving, she rested her hand briefly against Piper’s cheek. The way she touched people, marveled Piper, like touching was easy.

  “You look great, you know,” said Cornelia.

  “Oh, well, when it comes to being pretty, I run circles around every woman in that old crowd of mine, always have. Not that that’s hard to do.”

  Cornelia laughed. “Beauty is the best revenge. But I meant that you look happy. Whatever is happening with—him, it suits you.”

  “Nothing’s happening. Not happening-happening. I just feel—” She stopped.

  “Well, that’s something happening,” observed Cornelia.

  That night was the second night of the Hanro nightgown, which would not in itself have been significant necessarily, but it was also the first night following the first morning of the Hanro nightgown, and that was very significant indeed. Not that Piper was blaming the nightgown itself. It wasn’t even that sexy, being ankle length, cotton, and snow white to boot. But it had vermicelli-thin straps and, in particular spots, it clung to her body like rain. Still, no one in her right mind could blame a nightgown for anything, and only in her lowest moments was Piper blaming anything or anyone at all. She had spotted it in the Garnet Hill catalog, in the section she usually blew past without a glance, and, without weighing the pros and cons, she had picked up the phone and ordered it, even springing for, in a last-second, unanalyzed burst of urgency, overnight shipping.

  It wasn’t like anyone would see it, anyway, she had told herself. When she spent the night at Tom’s house, her habit was to remain in her clothes until just before she got into bed and then to change out of her pajamas before going downstairs for breakfast, and even on the two occasions when she and Tom had seen each other after lights-out (once Tom’s car alarm had gone off; another time, Peter had walked out into the hallway and vomited, uproariously), her pajamas had been no great shakes, a baggy T-shirt, a pair of baggy shorts.

  But the first morning after the first night that she had worn the Hanro nightgown, Piper had gotten up as usual, chosen her clothes for the day, and then had simply failed to put them on. What’s the big deal, she had chided herself, but then, biting her bottom lip, she had reached into the closet and slipped on a thin blue cardigan, which hadn’t covered up much of anything but which had reassured her anyway. When Tom came downstairs, Piper was already in the kitchen, slicing strawberries into the kids’ cereal bowls. “Morning, Pipe,” he’d said, in his regular morning voice, but Piper knew that he’d noticed the nightgown because of how thoroughly he appeared not to notice. Despite the children screaming with delight at the sight of her “dressed up,” Tom never said a word.

  After he left for work, Piper stood at the kitchen window, looking at the two empty chairs in which she and Tom had sat the evening before, drinking gin and tonics, with the insects whirring in the trees and the kids hurtling through the lazy fan of th
e sprinkler. They had talked, as they always talked, and now Piper wondered if what they had said to each other, and what had passed between them in the intervals of not speaking, had been part of her decision to come downstairs in the nightgown.

  With Cornelia’s permission, Piper had told him about Cornelia and Teo, and they had been discussing whether or not Dev would be able to forgive his mother or at least to understand why she had done what she’d done.

  Piper had run the lime around the edge of her glass and said, “I think I’m starting to understand why my mom did what she did.”

  “You mean running away with the guy from the farmers’ market.”

  “And before that. Wearing bikinis, smoking, dancing around the living room like a teenager with her friend Marybeth. I hated her for all of it.”

  “Maybe you sensed that she would leave.”

  “Maybe. And, don’t get me wrong, I still think she handled things badly. She didn’t just leave my dad, she left us. What mother leaves her children?”

  “She did try to make amends, though, right? Later?”

  “I guess, but it was too little, too late. Even now, she calls me twice, three times a year? But I think I understand her reasons for doing what she did. She decided to choose happiness, a real life, even though it meant breaking all the rules she’d ever lived by.”

  With vehemence and a blue, unvarnished look, one that blurred the yard around them into a single emerald streak, muffled the buzzing, chiming music of the insects and children’s squeals almost into silence, and made Piper lose her breath, Tom had said, “Good for her.”

  That night, Piper and Tom walked upstairs together, as they often did, and said an ordinary “good night,” but then Piper didn’t enter the guest room, turn on the light, and shut the door behind her. Feeling fully awake, but moving like someone in a trance, Piper glided through the guest room in the dark, headed straight to the bathroom, took off her clothes, brushed her teeth (brushed her teeth naked, her breasts falling softly forward as she leaned over the sink), then lifted the nightgown from the hook on the back of the door and slipped it over her head.