by Star Jones
Rain had grown frustrated and angry with Dara’s fears about going public with their relationship. It was becoming a frequent source of conflict between them. Dara wasn’t ashamed at all to be gay. She now considered it an elemental part of what she was, like being Latin or being Christian. But Dara had two primary fears—her parents and her career. Dara’s parents were about as traditional as Puerto Rican Catholics could get. Mass at least twice a week, baptism, confirmation, and holy communion for the kids, big quinceañera bash for the girls, weekly servings of cuchifritos and arroz con pollo. The father ran the household—or at least was led to believe he did—and boys only married girls and girls only married boys. Any other combination was unthinkable. Dara couldn’t remember her parents ever stating a position against homosexuality—it was so out of the question on the streets of Spanish Harlem when she was growing up that the subject never came up. Dara wasn’t sure what they would do if she ever came out to them. She shuddered at the thought. And her fears about coming out publicly were tied to her desire not to embarrass her parents and her uncertainties about what it would mean to her image to be known as a lesbian. Would she become a tabloid caricature, the Puerto Rican “carpet muncher”? She couldn’t stomach the idea of her father standing in the checkout line at the supermarket, picking up a celebrity-obsessed tabloid and possibly reading something like that. Dara had enough challenges in trying to fight Latina stereotypes; now she would be expected to pick up the lesbian mantle too?
“Did you see that poll on gay marriage?” Rain asked as they sat down at the dining room table and began eating. She picked up an asparagus spear with her fingers and popped it in her mouth.
Dara shook her head. She really didn’t want to talk about this. “No, I didn’t,” she said, sliding a piece of the broiled salmon in her mouth. “What did it say?”
“It said that for the first time in this country, more people say they support gay marriage than oppose it,” Rain said. “It’s almost like a twenty percent jump in the number of people who support it from just like five years ago.”
Dara nodded. She wanted to be as political as Rain on this issue, but it was still too personal and scary for her right now to even think about the politics. However, she knew that Rain would get mad if she didn’t show enough enthusiasm. She tried to add a smile, but it was too late.
“You know, when the state is knocking at our door, telling us we don’t have the right to be together, then you think maybe you might want to care about this issue?” Rain said, her green eyes flashing. “I mean, you all sit there on that fuckin’ show and argue all day about every damn bit of stupid minutiae that parades as news, but you don’t have an opinion on this, something that affects you so directly?”
Dara sighed. This was exactly why she hadn’t brought up Missy’s book. Rain was such a gay-rights militant that you could never win going down this road with her. She was a half step from picking up an automatic weapon and taking out the state legislature. Until Dara was willing to march down on city hall or the capitol building in Albany next to Rain, holding up a picket sign—“Would you fear me if I were your daughter?!” was Rain’s favorite—as they tongue kissed before the cameras, she knew she would continue to disappoint Rain.
“Rain, you know that’s not fair,” she said. “Of course I care deeply about this issue. I just don’t want to talk about it right now, okay?”
“But you never want to talk about it!” Rain said. “That’s the fuckin’ problem. If I was an insecure person, I might think it was me. Like you were afraid to tell the world I was your lover.”
“Oh my God, Rain, you’re going there again?” Dara bolted up from the table. She started into the kitchen, to retrieve the dessert. “You know I love you, baby,” she said over her shoulder. “And you know I’m incredibly proud of you. Just give me a little more time, okay?”
She came back to the table carrying one of her specialties, budín de pan, Puerto Rican bread pudding. Her mother had taught her to make it before she went away to college and Dara had perfected it over the years to the point where she thought hers might be better than her mother’s, though she’d never dare say that anywhere in the vicinity of East 123rd Street.
“Would I have made you this budín, your favorite dessert, with my own loving hands, if I didn’t think you were the most special person in the whole world?” Dara said. She set the dish on the table and ran her right hand softly across Rain’s cheek. She saw Rain soften instantly at her touch. Dara chuckled to herself. It worked every time.
“That’s not fighting fair!” Rain said, grinning and grabbing a spoon. “You know I’m a weak, greedy bitch!”
“Who said anything about a fight?” Dara said, scooping up a big juicy chunk and putting it on a plate for Rain. “Fighting’s not in my plans at all. As a matter of fact, when we’re done here, I’m going to open up a bottle of that Santa Margherita pinot that you swear by, get you good and drunk, then take advantage of your body.”
Rain reached out and pulled Dara to her. Dara sat down on her lap. As their lips met in a deep kiss, Rain reached down with her left hand and slipped it inside Dara’s sweatpants, pleased to discover that Dara wasn’t wearing any panties.
“Fuck that,” Rain said, her voice growing heavy. “I don’t need no stinkin’ wine to take advantage of your body.” They got up from the table and headed over to the couch, the budín all but forgotten.
ERIC HARLINGTON PACED FROM the living room to the kitchen and back to the living room, checking his watch every fifteen seconds. Where the hell was Whitney? It was well past dinnertime and his wife was nowhere to be found. She also wasn’t answering her cell phone. This last was no surprise—Whitney rarely answered her cell, particularly when he was desperate to find her. Though they still lived in the same house, Eric and Whitney behaved more like barely cordial roommates than like husband and wife. Eric wasn’t exactly sure what had happened between them, but he was far too distracted by other concerns to try to figure it out. At this point, Whitney’s disinterest in his affairs just made things easier for him. But right now he needed her to come home so that he could leave their Upper West Side town house and go to their summer home in Nantucket. He had important matters to attend to in Nantucket, things that he needed to do to prepare for his European trip the following week.
“Dad, where’s Mom?”
It was his daughter Ashley, the twin most likely to pry into everyone else’s business. She was the family drama queen and social butterfly, always in search of a party or ready to plan her own. Her sister, Bailey, was more of a loner, content to stay in her room for hours with the door locked. Eric used to wonder what she did in there all that time, but he had given up worrying about that.
“Why do you care where Mom is?” Bailey said, smirking at her sister from the other side of the kitchen table. “You haven’t even spoken to her in like two weeks.”
“I think you need to mind your business,” Ashley said, slurping a big forkful of pasta into her mouth. “Go back to your little cave and let the humans talk.”
“Daddy! Did you hear what she said to me!” Bailey said, looking at Eric as if she expected him to step into their spat. She turned back to her sister. “Anyway, that’s why I heard that Peter Richmond called you a hogwart.”
“What?! Who told you that? Did he really say that?” Ashley’s brow furrowed in worry. “What does that even mean, anyway? What’s a hogwart?”
“It’s from Harry Potter, stupid!”
“I know it’s from Harry Potter, Bailey! It’s the name of their stupid school. But what is it; what’s a hogwart?”
Bailey shrugged. “I don’t know, Ashley. But I can tell you this—I don’t think it’s a compliment.”
With that, Bailey burst into laughter. She could see her sister getting increasingly upset, but she didn’t care.
Ashley pursed her lips, which is what she did when she was mad. Suddenly her face brightened. “Well, Bailey, I wasn’t even going to tell you about this.
But if you insist. You’ll never guess what Jeb Friedman called you!”
Bailey watched her sister, her face full of distrust. “What?” she asked warily.
“He said we all should start calling you Dotty!” As soon as she said it, Ashley burst into laughter of her own.
Bailey frowned. “I don’t get it. Dotty?”
Ashley smirked at her sister. Then she raised her right index finger and slowly started pointing to imaginary spots on her smooth, clear face. “Get it? Dotty.”
Bailey’s face instantly flushed and her hands instinctively lifted to finger the profoundly bad acne on her cheeks and forehead. Both girls were strikingly pretty, but Ashley’s completely smooth face unfortunately dramatized the many bumps on Bailey’s, as if the teenage gods had decided that instead of spreading out the acne evenly between the two of them, Bailey would get all of the bumps and Ashley none of them.
Eric looked up and saw one of his daughters crying while the other one was trying to stop herself from laughing. What in the world was going on? For about the thousandth time, Eric wondered why he couldn’t have been blessed with the kind of twins who read each other’s thoughts and finished each other’s sentences. Instead, what he got in his house was a daily reenactment of a World Wrestling Entertainment battle-to-the-death steel cage match. Their constant bickering—no, bickering was too mild; their constant warring—could quickly drive him crazy. Ironically, his twins got along better with Whitney’s sons, their half brothers, than they did with each other. The older boy, Todd, was a senior at Tufts in Massachusetts. Eric used to check in on him sometimes when he went up to Nantucket, but he rarely bothered anymore. The younger son, Ron, was a sophomore at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Over the past two years, Whitney and the twins had frequently made the short drive through New Jersey to Easton, Pennsylvania, to spend time with Ron, particularly during football season. Eric had joined them in November to visit the campus for the annual Lafayette-Lehigh game. It was cold, but they all had a ball. It was the last time he could remember them having fun as a family. Even he and Whitney enjoyed their time together that day.
Where the hell was Whitney? Eric checked his watch again. What he wanted to do was leave the twins in the house by themselves while he took off for Nantucket. But Whitney, much to his chagrin, didn’t think the girls were old enough at fourteen to be left at home by themselves. “Maybe sixteen, but definitely not fourteen,” she’d said. It didn’t matter that he disagreed with her; he couldn’t act on his disagreement without drawing her considerable wrath. He saw no benefit in antagonizing his wife to that degree. It was better for him if he didn’t draw that type of attention from her. So he just waited, pacing the floor of their well-appointed town house, praying that he would soon hear the key in the lock, trying his best to ignore his daughters’ fighting. He couldn’t even remember what excuse Whitney had given him for her absence. She was out of the house so much these days that he didn’t even try to keep track of her schedule. Though she had pretty much left journalism behind for The Lunch Club, she seemed to be much busier as a talking head on a couch than she had ever been when she was doing major investigations for the network news. But Eric couldn’t complain because he had been spending more time out of the house too. They were a long way from their loving days when they first got married sixteen years earlier. Whitney conceived when she was forty because she was so desperate to have a child with Eric, whom she called the love of her life. He wasn’t even sure what had happened. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. About five years earlier, after their tenth wedding anniversary, Eric began to lose interest in Whitney sexually. His sexual predilections had moved in another direction, one that he couldn’t control.
Just then they heard the front door opening and the click-clack of Whitney’s heels on the hardwood floor. Whitney walked into the kitchen to see one of her daughters in tears and the other one looking guilty but pleased with herself. Apparently, things were normal in her house. She looked over at her husband and could see the frustration and impatience on his face. As usual, Eric was in a hurry to get out of the house. Whitney scowled to herself. Even though she had been doing naughty things with Riley and had stayed out far longer than she intended, Eric could still manage to incite her wifely outrage when he acted as if his affairs were more important than hers. Okay, well, maybe “affairs” was a poor word choice.
She didn’t want to get into a verbal tussle with him, so she ignored the look on his face that made her skin crawl. When had he become such a bastard?
“BUT I DON’T WANT to go to bed yet, Mommy!”
Josh could hear Megan pleading with Callie for more time. Callie’s daughter was a cute, charming little pixie and Josh did enjoy playing with her, but he hadn’t come over to Callie’s for playtime with a three-year-old. He could have gone back home to Connecticut if he wanted to play with kids. His own. No, he had only one thing on his mind: Callie’s luscious body. In other words, this was a booty call, not a rendezvous to watch Barney. But, truth be told, he could see the effect it had on Callie when he played with Megan. She would watch them with a look on her face of pure glee. Josh knew that if he put in enough time with the little tyke, Callie would practically jump him after Megan went to bed. So playtime in this instance almost served as foreplay. But by the fourth game of Candy Land he thought he might take a flying leap from the apartment’s fourth-floor window if he couldn’t stop soon. But he didn’t want to let Callie know that, so he bravely soldiered on. When Megan ducked into her room and came back lugging the Barrel of Monkeys game, Josh silently moaned. But Callie came to his rescue.
“No, Megan, that’s enough,” she said. She looked at Josh and gave him a sexy wink. That was his signal. It was on. As she dragged a braying Megan out of the living room, he popped up from the floor and went into the kitchen to look for a couple of white-wineglasses.
Ten minutes later, after it was explained to her that her protests weren’t going to work, Megan was back, in her pajamas, hiding shyly behind her mother’s leg.
“Say good-bye to Josh,” Callie said.
Megan peeked out from behind Callie. “Bye-bye,” she said.
“Come give me a good night kiss,” Josh said, holding out his arms. Megan ran to him, wrapping her little arms around his neck and giving him a squeeze. He buried his face in her neck and hair, smelling the sweet goodness of a three-year-old. He glanced at Callie; she looked like she was on the verge of melting. Ahh, Josh thought. The sex was going to be good tonight. In fact, Callie was noting once again how much Megan looked like Josh—and wondering why Josh had never noticed this himself. Josh smiled at Callie. He calculated that he would have her naked in no more than thirty minutes. As she led Megan by the hand to her bedroom to tuck her in, Josh poured himself a glass of the Chateau Ste. Michelle Eroica Riesling. No harm in getting a head start. Savoring the wine, Josh chuckled to himself, remembering how he’d discovered the Eroica by accident. He’d seen it on the shelf and misread the label, thinking it said “erotica,” and, of course, that reminded him of Callie, which of course gave him an erection. Now it was all they drank.
He caught a glimpse of Callie through the open bedroom door at the beginning of the hall. She was bending over Megan’s bed, tucking in the covers. He could see her breasts swinging under the loose-fitting blouse. He had noticed earlier that she had taken off her bra. Josh was a real big fan of Callie’s breasts. They were round, firm, and juicy before she had gotten pregnant with Megan, but her breasts after Megan were spectacular. Josh had been astounded by the improvement. They were much bigger now, fuller, with that glorious, slightly upturned tilt as they curved down to the nipples. He could sit and stare at them all day. In his experience with his wife, Barbara, pregnancy did horrible, unsightly things to a woman’s breasts. After their first pregnancy, his wife’s had gone from below average—a little saggy without much shape—to downright unpleasant, with stretch marks and inverted nipples. Josh was an inveterate breast man, a damn connoisseur, and he
had almost wept when he got a good look at them after she had stopped breast-feeding their daughter, Caitlyn. After she had Brian they got worse. And then came little Keith, who was now eight. That last time Josh had almost been afraid to see how the breasts would emerge from breast-feeding. It wasn’t pretty. He was almost tempted to ask her to keep her bra on when they made love now every Friday. Like clockwork, they met in their bed every Friday night, usually between the first ten minutes of the evening news—that was the only part worth watching, Josh would say every week—and Letterman twenty-five minutes later. Josh still loved Barbara and didn’t want to disappoint her, so he made sure she still had at least one orgasm. But he had given up on bringing his A game into bed with her. It’s not that she wouldn’t appreciate it; he had just grown bored. They had gotten married much too soon, the year after they had graduated together from the University of Nebraska. Josh had been bored now for at least a decade. Sometimes when he walked the streets of New York, he almost couldn’t control himself with all the startling varieties of incredibly sexy, beautiful women whizzing by him every moment. Once he had gained some power and found that many of these beautiful women were willing to give him access to their bodies in exchange for the possibility that they would get something in return, he went crazy with it. Over the years, he had been given little reason to stop. And Barbara didn’t say a word. He sometimes got the impression that as long as he paid the bills, didn’t blanch at the credit card statements, and kept her country club membership current so she could play tennis three times a week, she didn’t really care too much what he was up to when he stayed in the city.
As Callie swept back into the living room, Josh handed her a glass of wine. She took a sip and snuggled next to him on the couch. These were Callie’s favorite moments with Josh, when he held her close, when she felt familiar and intimate with him, like they were a loving, married couple. It was at these times when her ache was the strongest. She desperately wanted to tell Josh the truth—that he, not some anonymous sperm donor, was Megan’s father. But she was too scared to do it, knowing how spooked Josh would be by the admission. She thought there was too much of a risk that she’d lose him altogether. But with this Missy Adams book looming on the horizon, there was a chance that it would all come out anyway, except in the worst way imaginable. Callie needed to find out what was in that book, to know whether she had to tell Josh about Megan before Missy told the world.