Magdalene

by Moriah Jovan

  “I’ll do it,” I said abruptly.

  When I got to work the next morning, I found a slip of paper tucked into my purse, with a good baker’s dozen names on it.

  * * * * *

  The Nuclear Family Unit

  February 25, 2011

  I knew this dinner would be a nightmare, with two sets of adult children who’d come from completely different backgrounds and had completely different worldviews. Even the imminent apostate Trevor was taken aback by Clarissa’s snobbery about his family’s lifestyle.

  Gordon’s Super Dad personality had kicked in the minute he met Mitch’s daughters, and he set about casting the same magic spell over Lisette and Geneviève that he had over his own daughters. They hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

  It had seemed so easy when it was just me and Mitch.

  I wanted to grab his hand and run away from here, out of his house, to Las Vegas or, or, or anywhere we could get married alone and I could fall in bed with him and...cry.

  Nigel glanced at me and raised one eyebrow, an order for me to curb Clarissa’s tongue, but I looked away, unable to do anything. I was humiliated to the bottom of my soul, embarrassed for her, and Gordon and me, for rearing such a not-very-nice person.

  Mitch seemed to take it in stride (surprising me), but then Clarissa didn’t dare direct anything at him. I was surprised she’d be so rude within his hearing, but on reflection, I could see that having her sisters present made her more daring.

  “Our husbands couldn’t come,” a pregnant Lisette explained in the middle of the chaos of meeting. “Mine is helping his dad with some projects, and Geneviève’s is working all weekend.”

  Once all the introductions had been made, we stood around a bit awkwardly. Lisette gave me a little glance, then led the way to the kitchen. What she saw, I didn’t know, but it was enough for her to step into the role of hostess—

  Oh. My role.

  I was supposed to have done that.

  Mitch and I were the last in the processional. “Cassandra,” he murmured. “Look at me.” I did. Oh, that magnificent face, serene, slightly amused. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

  “You can’t make a promise like that,” I whispered.

  His mouth twitched. “Direct revelation.”

  I smiled against my will and lightly slapped his chest.

  By the time we all settled around the kitchen table to eat the chili and cornbread—

  “Poor people food,” Clarissa murmured. “Well. I guess I know who made dinner.”

  Geneviève sucked in a breath. Olivia would have snickered but caught Paige’s glare. Nigel’s jaw clenched and Trevor stared down at his bowl, holding his spoon in a death grip. Lisette and Gordon, neither of whom had heard, continued to trade wisecracks. Helene bit her lip. Mitch dropped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to his side.

  “We need to bless the food,” Trevor said suddenly, his head popping up.

  I thought my heart would plop out into my bowl.

  “Trevor,” Mitch drawled, a warning in his voice at whatever prank the kid had decided to pull.

  “Sure, I’ll do it, Dad, no problem. Thanks for asking.”

  Mitch and his family bowed their heads, as did I. From my periphery, I noticed Nigel do the same and elbow Gordon to follow suit. After some hesitation, Helene did, too. Paige had bowed her head without hesitation when Mitch did, then nudged Olivia, who would take up her twin’s cause—or at least not attempt to sabotage it—far more readily than she would Clarissa’s.

  Trevor prayed for a long, long time, incorporating every possible thanks for home, hearth, and health, asking for every possible blessing upon “Cassie’s family” and the missionaries and the soldiers and the homeless and “on the food we’re about to receive into our bodies that Cassie so lovingly prepared,” asking that the Hollander family could be an example to those who might need a light for their path—

  —every phrase accompanied by Clarissa’s sighs of impatience or sniggering or whispers to herself.

  “We say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”

  Mitch and his daughters said “amen,” so Paige did, but Clarissa stared at Trevor speculatively, and I tensed. “How old are you?” she asked abruptly.

  “Seventeen,” Trevor replied amiably, as if he couldn’t see Clarissa’s talons.

  “And you believe all that bullshit you just said?”

  He blinked. “Uh...”

  “Oh, my God, you do!” she squealed and began to laugh.

  “Please don’t curse,” he pleaded. “Or take the Lord’s name in vain. My dad’s pretty tolerant, but I really don’t like it.”

  “So you don’t swear? Ever?” Clarissa asked, dumbfounded.

  “Oh, no,” Trevor answered with a naïve sincerity even I almost bought. “It’s against God’s law.”

  “Well, fuck,” she said. Trevor flinched, looked away and down at the floor. That sent her and Olivia into gales of laughter, but Olivia flinched with a well-placed kick from Paige. “I bet you’re a virgin, too.”

  “Of course!” he said, thoroughly affronted. “I would never fornicate.”

  “He’s very good,” Mitch drawled and I smiled at him, my gratitude evident in my expression, I was sure.

  Trevor threw everything he had into his performance as wide-eyed virginal Mormon boy, clearly enjoying himself once he’d confirmed Clarissa and Olivia had fallen for every word. Paige knew something was off-kilter, but didn’t know enough not to believe what Trevor said. I watched this in silence, cringing in abject mortification. Mitch suppressed a chuckle and squeezed my hand under the table.

  Mitch’s girls watched, more curious than offended. Nigel said nothing, but kept glancing at me to see if I would step in as he wanted me to.

  Helene did not seem amused, nor did she seem inclined to stop her sister’s taunts, and for the first time I saw her distance from me for what it was: confusion. She knew something was wrong; she’d known since she was a child. She simply didn’t know what to believe and she didn’t have enough information to figure out the truths of the situation.

  However, as I watched her watch Trevor play Clarissa and Olivia like a concert pianist, once or twice I thought I saw a hint of a smile.

  “You really work in a steel mill?” Olivia asked with a slight sneer.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why,” said Clarissa, her tone deliberately flat to let Trevor know she thought he was an idiot for doing so. “Don’t you have a trust fund?”

  “No.”

  Helene coughed into her hand, releasing something that sounded like “bullshit.” Lisette and Geneviève exchanged significant glances. Nigel sat back to watch, now interested in where Trevor was going to take this. Gordon glanced at me, uneasy, and all three of my other girls sat stunned.

  “Do you want to work—in a factory—for the rest of your life?” Clarissa asked, horrified.

  “Why not?” Trevor asked innocently. “It’s a good job. I get union wage,” he added proudly. “It’s enough to support a couple of wives on, if not three.”

  Their mouths dropped open. Geneviève and Lisette had given up any semblance of detachment and had busied themselves with dropping utensils and picking them back up again, their shoulders quaking. Helene bit her lip and looked away. Mitch had stuck his tongue in his cheek and wrapped his fingers through mine. I didn’t know what to do, what to think.

  He pointed to Clarissa with his fork. “You’re pretty. I think I could be persuaded to give you the honor of being my first wife.”

  “What!”

  Trevor’s face fell into hurt confusion. “You don’t want to?”

  “Absolutely not. That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”

  “Well, you’d have help once I got you a sister-wife. Then there’d be two of you and you could share all the housework and take turns mowing the yard, unless you want to get a sheep or something. You’d have to take turns being pregnant, too. I wouldn’t all
ow both of my wives to be pregnant at the same time.”

  Nigel grimaced. Gordon tensed. Helene coughed again. And again. Mitch’s body trembled and I didn’t know which one of them would burst first.

  “You’re a pig,” Olivia whispered, horrified.

  Trevor looked at her blankly. “Pig? Me? Naw. I love women. The more the better and I intend to sleep with all my wives in the same bed every night. You know, like cowboys and their three-dog nights.”

  Geneviève lost it first, then Lisette. Nigel snickered, and then the glares that Clarissa and Olivia leveled at them made Helene start laughing, then Mitch. Paige looked around, then began to smile. Gordon tried to chuckle.

  Trevor kept his face perfectly straight, perfectly serious.

  I didn’t find much funny about it at all.

  Clarissa and Olivia looked around, confused, then back at Trevor. “You know what they say about people who assume,” he drawled, and sat back in his chair with a smirk. They sucked in breaths and looked at each other, unable to decide whether to be angry, embarrassed, or both and in what mixture. “Now,” he continued. “You all can play Little Miss Junior League somewhere else if you can’t act like civilized human beings. I cannot believe someone as awesome as Cassie gave birth to bitches like you.”

  Both girls choked. Paige chortled.

  “Trevor!” Mitch barked. “You apologize right now.”

  “No, Mr. Hollander, he’s right,” Helene interrupted, sliding a glance at her sisters, who now seemed to shrink with uncertainty. “You came here to embarrass Mom in front of her soon-to-be new family and it got turned back on you. How’d it feel?”

  Clarissa glared at Helene. “They’re Mormon,” she said, as if it were all that needed to be said.

  “Oh, I see. Your tolerance level doesn’t extend to people of faith, right? Just to your special-interest downtroddens.”

  “They hate homosexuals.”

  Trevor rolled his eyes and heaved a great sigh while Lisette and Geneviève looked at each other, no longer amused.

  “Uh, Clarissa...” Gordon began uncertainly. “Mitch and Nigel are friends, and everyone’s been very accepting of us.”

  “Yeah, right now.”

  I gulped, and squeezed Mitch’s hand tighter and tighter, while he let it play out.

  “Girls,” I said quietly. “That’s enough. Let’s start over, okay?”

  “No, I want to talk about this,” Helene said, “and I think Mr. Hollander probably agrees with me.”

  Mitch inclined his head a bit and I knew at that moment that the two of them were allies, that they understood each other. I didn’t know how; perhaps I didn’t know Helene very well at all—

  —or perhaps she was tired of her solitary task of trying to unravel the knot of deceit that had started before she was born, and wanted to get to the end.

  “Paige,” she said, “how do you feel about Mom marrying Mr. Hollander?”

  “She’s thrilled,” Clarissa sneered, glaring at her youngest sister. “He went to one recital, clapped and cheered, and now she’s all about the guy.”

  “What do you do that he could clap and cheer for?” Paige snapped back. She’d always had Clarissa’s number.

  Clarissa flushed, but Helene had moved on. “Olivia? Problem with the Hollanders?”

  She waved a hand toward Trevor. “He made fun of us,” she grumbled.

  “So? You started it. Here, in their own home, even. Insulted his family and you were mean to Mom, whom he obviously loves to bits.”

  Oh. That stinging behind the bridge of my nose started up again and my grip on Mitch’s hand tightened.

  “Well, yeah,” she agreed. “He loves her, but she’s not his mom.”

  “Olivia,” Helene said, “did it occur to you that since he doesn’t have a mother, he might be happy about getting one?”

  Trevor snorted. “And it wasn’t like you were snuggling up to her. Somebody had to.”

  “Trevor,” Geneviève snapped. “Shut your mouth. You had your fun.”

  His mouth tightened, but he obeyed.

  “But he’s got a point, Geneviève,” Helene said, still looking at Olivia. “He won’t take her for granted. Maybe it’s time you—we—learned how life would be without Mom around all the time.”

  Olivia flushed. I gulped.

  “Now do you have an issue with it?”

  “No,” she lied, and turned to Paige for comfort.

  “Good. Clarissa?”

  Clarissa cast a calculating glare at me, then stared at Trevor. “Did you know,” she began slowly, deliberately, and my body tingled as if bracing for the impact of a speeding freight train. I knew what was coming, but it was time to get it out in the open, in front of Mitch’s children.

  “Don’t,” Helene said warningly, but Clarissa didn’t give any indication she heard her.

  “My mother,” she spat, “fucked people—men and women—for money for ten years.”

  “And what did she do with that money?” Trevor shot back, as if he had known exactly what she was going to say. I looked helplessly at Mitch and he shrugged. My chest felt like it had been kicked in; Trevor had known...all along. And he still thought I was “awesome.”

  And, just like her mother, Clarissa had no comeback for an unexpected Hollander reaction. “Uh, I— I—” Her nostrils flared. “What’s that got to do with anything? I just told you she was a whore. Because she was bored.”

  I looked to Lisette and Geneviève, but they seemed more interested in watching Clarissa lose her cool.

  “That’s true,” I said. “I did that, and that’s why I did it.”

  Mitch’s girls glanced at me as if I were incidental to this process, then back at Clarissa. I looked at Mitch again and he shook his head. No, they hadn’t known, but I assumed that once their curiosity passed, I’d get hit with the censure.

  Trevor was still gritting his teeth at Clarissa. Gordon stared blankly at something over my head, and Nigel glared between the two of us.

  “You know,” Trevor drawled. “I can think of a lot less honorable ways to make money than by getting paid to fuck people.” Clarissa gaped. “You’re how old? Twenty-four? Shouldn’t you have graduated two years ago? But you live with your mommy and sponge off her so you can stay a perpetual student. I think that’s a kind of prostitution, don’t you? Only not so honest.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath.

  “I work in a steel mill thirty hours a week,” Trevor continued. “I get nasty dirty filthy. I drive a shitty truck because that was what I could afford to buy to get me to work and school and back. I have a bank account that’s almost half the size of your trust fund and I earned every cent of it by either working or investing. I live here, yeah, but I don’t ask my dad for money because I don’t have to, and I haven’t even graduated from high school yet. I can pay my way through any college in the world I want to go to, but I won’t have to because I got scholarships and none of them are athletic ones.”

  Clarissa’s color dropped completely.

  “I had a step up on the world, that’s true, and I don’t have that many bills to pay, but you’ve got the same ride, and you’re doing...what again? Oh, right, going to school on somebody else’s dime and not working at all. You live in a townhouse on the Upper East Side and have a car service. I bet you don’t even know how to drive. Oh, what’s that? You say you go skiing up in Vermont every weekend in the winter? Summers in The Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard? So answer the question. Where did that money go?”

  Mitch squeezed my hand again. Trevor knew that, too. How? I doubted Mitch would have told Trevor any of my history, but Trevor had learned how to invest from the best and either Sebastian had told him or Knox had shown him how to follow the money.

  “I don’t— I don’t know,” Clarissa whispered, her gaze locked on Trevor as if he were a snake and he had hypnotized her. Then she gathered herself and spat, “It didn’t go to us, that’s for damn sure. Daddy pays for everything and he can’t even l
ive in his own house— The house she stole from him, just like she stole his whole life.”

  Gordon choked.

  I sighed.

  “Enough!” Nigel roared, slamming his hand down on the table. The only person who didn’t jump was Mitch. Clarissa gaped at him, as if she’d never seen him before and indeed, she had never seen this Nigel Tracey. She only knew charmingly arrogant Nigel Tracey, the stepfather who treated her like an overenthusiastic puppy and made her like it. Nigel turned to Gordon. “You take care of this,” he growled. My ex-husband withered under his disapproval. “This is your fault. You fix it. Fifteen years, Gord, and I’m goddamn tired of cleaning up the pieces of the mess you made of her life.”

  I stared at Nigel, my jaw slack. Cleaning up? My life? In pieces?

  “Now, wait a minute—”

  “Shut up,” he snarled at me. “I’m goddamn sick of your martyrdom, too.”

  The kitchen was silent, but Mitch’s thumb caressed the back of my hand. I didn’t dare look at him, so I looked at my daughters, who gaped at Nigel, shocked. Mitch’s children looked more curious than anything else, but were too polite to reveal just how morbid their curiosity might be.

  “Now,” Nigel said, taking a bite of his chili before relaxing into his seat, as if he hadn’t just kicked the planet off its axis. “I figure this is as good a time as any to get it all out on the table. Mitch?”

  “I agree,” he murmured, a hint of amusement in his voice making me glance at him, but no. His face was as poker as it ever was.

  He was far too calm about this. Had been all evening, letting Clarissa run her mouth like she had, bearing the entire conversation with equanimity as if he had known how it would unfold, so nothing surprised him.

  “You two planned this,” I said tightly, looking between Mitch and Nigel.

  “Well,” Mitch drawled, fiddling with his utensils, “I wouldn’t use the word ‘plan.’”

  “You and he—” I waved a hand across the table at my traitorous best friend. “—decided to put all the ingredients together and turn up the heat to see what it’d do.”