“What do I have to lie about?”
“You tell me.”
She pulled her lips in. “Ken. Cruelty only breeds cruelty. Don’t be cruel, not right now.”
“Go answer the Russian.”
I went back to the living room. Margaux stood up, nervous.
Still in awe, she said, “That was Rachel Redman.”
“She stops by to wear my shirts every now and then.”
“The first joke about her answering the door was better.”
“What’s going on? I guess you came to tell me off or collect money. Which is it?”
“I was angry.”
“So was the guy who knocked you up.”
“I’ve been angry with you a long time. He knows that. When you feel that way and tell someone who loves you, knows you, that you feel that way, when they have heard the negativity, nothing but the bad things, they tend to become overly empathetic, if not simpatico, and without having all the information in the matter, they take your side, adopt the same feelings.”
“Why? What have I ever done to piss you off?”
“I felt abandoned by you. He’s heard me talk about that for years.”
“For years?”
“We met when I was in high school.”
“He’s been your boyfriend since then?”
“Not since then. But he’s loved me since then.”
“Since before the guy you went to meet at the Grove? Who was that guy?”
“He was . . . my first boyfriend.”
“Your first love.”
“Yeah. My first love.”
“You know which one you’re pregnant by?”
“I know.”
“This money you need have anything to do with that?”
“Yes and no.”
“Thanks for clearing this issue up.”
“It’s hard to talk about.”
“Why?”
“I feel stupid. It’s embarrassing.”
“Who knows the truth?”
“Me. My boyfriend. And my ex.”
“And the girl who was with your ex yesterday.”
She looked surprised. “A girl was with him?”
I described her.
She said, “That was his new girlfriend.”
“What does she have to do with this?”
“Nothing that I am aware of.”
We sat in silence.
I said, “You see me as a stranger.”
“You were never there.”
“I was there, until your mother and her family took you away. A lot happened when I met your mother, a lot of ugly things. But to keep it short, I’ll take the blame for everything bad.”
“All I know is what my grandparents told me. They never said anything good about you.”
“That’s like listening to your president talk and expecting to hear the truth.”
“My mother never defended you.”
“What did she say about me?”
“Nothing. She never mentioned you. I asked her to tell me things, but she would get angry or walk away. She was angry because she never got a chance to go to Harvard.”
“You grew up on lies. Grew up listening to a story about a fairy tale gone bad.”
“I don’t know what the truth is.”
“You don’t. No, you don’t. And to be honest, maybe I don’t either.”
She put her hand on her belly. “I’m sorry that my boyfriend came here to fight.”
“He said you’re engaged.”
“Sort of.”
“I don’t see a ring.”
“Well, we had to sell my ring.”
“Why?”
“Needed the money.”
“No ring.”
“Not at the moment.”
“Then he’s your boyfriend.”
“Until we get another ring.”
She rocked and I saw the fear loosening, but she still wouldn’t say what was going on.
I didn’t push the issue but didn’t let it go. “Scared?”
“You’re trying to add this up. I see you taking in everything I say, and you’re trying to figure out what is going on. You want to know why I contacted you and asked for money.”
“You’re scared.”
“A little.”
“A little?”
“I’m scared to tell you what I’m mixed up in.”
“But your boyfriend knows.”
“He knows all about it. He’s trying to help me any way he can.”
“You love him?”
“Yeah. I think so. Yeah.”
“Love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.”
“I love him. I love Kevin.”
“Not because you’re pregnant.”
“I loved him before I was pregnant.”
“I hope he writes better than he fights.”
“He’s a great writer. He studied under screenwriter James Thicke.”
I shrugged. Had no idea who that was. And didn’t give a shit.
Silence. Awkwardness.
She said, “I’m pregnant. My hormones are out of whack.”
“Your mother was the same way.”
“Was she?”
“She was. After you were born, she was depressed a long time.”
“She was? I didn’t read that part of her journals. Not yet anyway.”
Silence.
I said, “You have to stop delaying and tell me.”
“First off, I came at you the wrong way yesterday.” She swallowed. “I re-explained what happened and Kevin said I should apologize for being such a . . . brat.”
“No need to. What’s done is done and we can move on.”
“We should apologize.”
“I should too.”
“My complexion surprised you.”
“It did.”
Silence.
“People treat me better.”
“I believe you.”
Silence.
Then I nodded. “I’ve been up all night. Running on fumes.”
She motioned like she was getting up. “We can do this another time.”
“No, stay.”
“You sure?”
“Would hate for ten more years to go by before I saw you again.”
“Sorry I threw my snot rag in your food yesterday.”
“I’m sorry too. But it probably gave it more flavor.”
“My mom came here?”
I nodded. “She went back and got her PhD.”
“She did.”
“Good for her.”
“Did you ever go back to UCLA?”
“No. Not yet.”
She nodded. “I told her I had gotten in contact with you.”
I nodded. “She came to get in line with everyone else to tell me off.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So, you have a little brother.”
She nodded. “Yohanes is his father.”
I shook that off. “Tell me why you’re scared. Anything to do with your stepfather?”
“No. He’s never been very nice to me, but he’s never been mean to me either.”
“Stop procrastinating. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about that. I really didn’t.”
“I know you ain’t here to talk about the lack of recursion in sixteenth-century Germanic poetry.”
Arms folded, body language closed like a petulant child, she said, “I came to apologize.”
“This early?”
“I was up all night. Yesterday was the worst day of my life.”
“You need a lot of money.”
She looked at my apartm
ent, at how I was living. “You don’t have a lot of money.”
“You said you’re charging me seventy to keep your mouth shut.”
“I just need the fifty. That’s all I need.”
“Tell me why you need it.”
“Does it matter? If you don’t have it, then it’s pointless talking about it.”
“You’re my daughter.”
“It’s my problem.”
“It matters.”
“Not yours.”
“You matter.”
She shook and cried. “Can we start over?”
“After you tell me the truth about this money you need.”
Saliva and angst glued her lips together. “I’m scared to say why.”
“Why? You’re not scared to ask for that much money.”
“You’ll see me differently.”
“You have to say.”
She pulled a tissue from the pocket of her hoodie, blew her nose. Then she went on, leg bounced as she picked at her cuticles. “Yesterday, you scared me because I guess I rambled, said too much, and you got part of it right.”
“Which part?”
“The gambling. You picked up on that real quick. So fast it scared me.”
“So, this is a gambling debt.”
“Part of it. Money was spent betting on a long shot. I lost. I prayed on it. Googled it. Read about long-shot Super Bowl bets that could cost a Las Vegas sports bookie big money. And all I needed was one long shot to come through. I lost the USC bet. And me and my boyfriend took a chance. Kevin and I prayed on it. Last month we had put our last three thousand on another team that was going at a hundred-to-one. Three grand would have gotten me and my fiancé three hundred thousand.”
“That was a foolish bet.”
“It was a long shot, yes, but if I had won, then I would have been a genius.”
“Your Hail Mary was yesterday when you gambled against USC and lost.”
“I had to try one more long shot.”
“Why?”
“Because the other part was true too.”
“Which other part?”
“I’m being blackmailed. I had to gamble to try and pay the blackmailer.”
“For the fifty grand.”
“He’s up to about that much now.”
“Is this a group, an organization, or an individual you owe?”
“A person.”
“Who is this person?”
Tears fell harder. The dam was loosening, soon to burst and flood the room with truth. She cried and cried and cried and I didn’t reach out to her to comfort or coddle her. I couldn’t be her father right now. I had to be that other guy, the one who worked for San Bernardino.
I said, “Talk. Did this blackmail thing just start?”
“No. It’s been going on for a while.”
“What’s a while?”
“Almost a year now.”
“And now they are asking for more money.”
“One person. Just one. You saw him. At the Grove. He ran away when he saw you.”
“What does that guy in the red BMW have on you?”
“You saw his car? How? You were with me. I didn’t see his car.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m dumb. Talk to me like you know I know the truth.”
“I can’t say.”
“You will say. Or I will find out on my own.”
“How did you find me yesterday?”
“Not your business. Just know I can find you if I need to find you.”
“Then why haven’t you looked for me all these years?”
“Maybe I did and just didn’t recognize your new face.”
She moved like she was insulted, wanted to stand up.
I said, “Sit down, Tsigereda. If you leave, I can find you. You can’t hide from me.”
She did as she was told. Crying. Pulled more tissues from her hoodie.
I asked, “Where is that boy from?”
“Kevin?”
“The one in the red car.”
“He’s from Morocco. Well, his parents are. He’s first gen here, like me.”
“What does he have on you?”
Again silence. My frustration mounted; I was exhausted, ready to throw her in the streets.
“Ken?” That was Rachel, coming back into the room. “Do you mind?”
She was fresh out of the shower. We had talked long enough for her to clean up and put on lotion that made her smell good. She wore leggings and a top, both by Nike, had her braids pulled back. That was how she usually dressed during the day, like she was about to hit the gym.
Rachel said, “Margaux?”
“Yeah?”
“Your daddy is trying to help you.”
“I know.”
“He just wants to help you. Forget what you’ve heard. He’s a good man.”
Margaux nodded. She trusted the kind words of a stranger more than she did me.
Rachel tenderly asked, “Have you had to pay more money each time?”
“It started off being about five hundred.”
“Was he supposed to sell or give you something to make this end?”
“Something like that.”
“Or delete it?”
She didn’t answer, but her body language told us Rachel had touched a nerve.
Rachel asked, “Is it a video?”
It took a second. “I didn’t know about it until after we broke up.”
Rachel asked, “To be clear, is this an illegal activity, like a political scandal, a video of you stealing something? Did you run over someone in your car? Is it a Kardashian number?”
My daughter trembled. “I wish it was political. I wish it were a hit-and-run.”
“It won’t be the end of the world.”
“It feels that way to me. I have disappointed so many people in so many ways.”
Rachel said, “Margaux, you have to say. No need to be embarrassed.”
“It’s a Kardashian number. Please, don’t make me say any more than that.”
“That you didn’t know about.”
She nodded. Eyes on the floor, crying. “He secretly recorded us. I can’t let my mother . . . can’t let my grandfather and grandmother . . . my sibling . . . my stepfather . . . friends at my job . . . and he has threatened to tell them all. It would destroy me. He knows that would destroy my family.”
Rachel said, “And now your first love wants fifty thousand dollars.”
“We have paid him month after month. That’s why we’re broke. My fiancé has sold camera equipment. We’ve been late on rent. First month he wanted five hundred. But two weeks later he wanted twice that again. After that it’s been between one and three thousand a month. I gave him over twenty thousand last year. I’ve used my savings. So now he’s up to over forty thousand, and I need money to pay back rent and other bills. And I don’t know what else to do.”
“Does he want you back? Is that what this is all about?”
“I don’t know. I don’t love him.”
“I need you to be sure.”
“Who could love a man who would do such a thing to them?”
I said, “So you got to the end of the road, let him bleed you dry, tried to be a gambler, failed at gambling, let desperation take over, and you came after me.”
“I read Mom’s journals. There were hidden. I found them and I read them to know her better. And then I read things about you. I read things that I knew couldn’t be true, but they were.”
“You read about Florida in one of her journals.”
“It was written in Amharic. She said you were a bad man and always had a lot of money.”
“You said that man’s name.”
“And then you reacted. I knew what I had r
ead in my momma’s journal was true.”
“Then, no games.”
“No games.”
“Do you have any idea who Balthazar Walkowiak was?”
“I just know he went missing. And my mother’s notes said she thinks you killed him. She wrote about it in a different way. From the other stuff. When she wrote about that day, she was terrified. She cared about you but knew she couldn’t stay with you, not even for my sake.”
“Her notes. She wrote about what happened in Florida. In Amharic.”
“And there was a newspaper clipping. Old and faded, about that businessman.”
“What else her notes say?”
“The Postman. She called someone the Postman, but that part made no sense.”
I had called myself that once or twice back in the day.
I asked, “How did you think it would go when you came at me with that?”
“I hoped you’d give me the money and go away.”
“How long did you sit on that idea?”
“I came up with it ten minutes before I called you.”
“Ten minutes? That’s all?”
“Ten minutes before I called you, my ex called me with his new demand.”
“For the fifty thousand.”
That was when my phone chimed.
I nodded at Rachel. She nodded in return, then left us, let an estranged father have a moment with his wayward daughter, went to the bedroom to answer my phone.
I stood facing my daughter. She reached in her pocket, handed me a tissue.
I wiped my eyes.
She said, “All we need now is some soup.”
“Soup can’t fix everything.”
“No, it can’t.”
“You saw this sex tape?”
“Parts of it. Saw enough of it. He showed it to me on his phone. It’s on the cloud.”
“Is it worth fifty thousand dollars?”
“It’d ruin my career at JPL. That one moment would follow me to my grave. It would follow me to grad school and beyond. My friends. My family. I can’t have them see me like that. I can’t have people just Google my name and see me in a way . . . like that. I can’t allow that to happen.”
“This ex, what is he worth to you?”
“Not a goddamn thing.”
“And you’re pregnant.”
“Yes.” She used the last of her tissues. “Between my money and my fiancé’s money, I’ve given my ex over twenty thousand. I’ve gone days with no food over this. I’ve had to act like everything is fine. I had to pull away from my mother so she wouldn’t be able to tell I was in trouble. I can’t have my mother over and see I have no food. Can’t let her see I’ve no furniture left and we’re sleeping on the floor because I’ve sold piece after piece on Craigslist. I have this lease with my landlord that we’re keeping up in order to save face, and I can’t afford to keep that up. I gambled and won a little, won a thousand dollars, and that put food on the table, and I thought I could keep doing that. Then I lost three games in a row. I can’t do shit right now. Nothing is right in my life. We have a movie we can’t sell to make money. When will it end?”
Bad Men and Wicked Women Page 32