by Delia Rosen
“Gwen,” she said rather than asked.
“Hi,” I said.
We looked at each other—just looked. I couldn’t read what she was thinking. I was aware of my heart beating a little faster, driven by uncertainty and a little fear. I was about to say something, anything—I had no idea what would come out—when she put her arms around me and hugged me tighter than I could ever remember being held. It was a grip of desperation. Not self-pity. She didn’t cry, didn’t clutch. She just held. As though cementing, in tangible form, the unspoken thing we shared.
Her ear was near mine. “Had lunch yet?” I asked.
“Why? Do you know a place?”
That made me laugh. She laughed. She stepped back, looked in my face, and we both laughed a little, then cried, then hugged again like long-lost sisters.
“Shit,” she said.
It wasn’t much, but it said a lot.
She said she’d be right back and ran into the day-care center. I peeked. I saw Sammi nod. I didn’t want this to be traumatic for Stacie and get her fired. She came back out, took my arm, and said through a big smile, “So where’s this place?”
Actually, it was a dark tavern down the street called the Bar Bar. It said only Bar, but it was written on a musical bar. It was pretty much a nightspot, but it was open for lunch. We took a booth in the back. We both ordered an iced tea.
“Not too weird,” she said in a strong, sweetly accented voice.
“This, or the fact that we both ordered the same drink?”
“Both, I guess,” she said. Then added another “Shit” for good measure.
“Yeah, I know.”
What do you say to a sibling you’ve never met, who you didn’t even know existed until a few days before?
“So . . . how’s life?” I asked.
She laughed again, I laughed again, but this time she stopped short of crying. Our drinks arrived, and we didn’t bother looking at the menu. She ordered a lunch salad. I ordered a hamburger.
“Not big on healthy eatin’?” she asked.
“Tough to do where I work.”
“I eat a lot of salads ’cause that’s what Thomasina fed me growin’ up.”
“Eat your greens,” I said. “Her own kids told me she said that to them all the time.”
“Would it get her in trouble if I told you I see her now and then?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I don’t blame you.”
Stacie laughed. “She still tells me to eat greens, and she still makes me pray. Did you ever pray with her?”
“Not willingly,” I said.
“You should. It helps.”
I still couldn’t believe Thom had kept this from me. But the kind of love she gave to this girl made it impossible to be upset.
Stacie’s mood sobered. “My mother came to see you.”
“Yes.”
“Scott too.”
“Scott too.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I reached across the table and took her hand. “Don’t be. They brought me to you.”
She smiled tightly.
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
She sighed and absently stirred her iced tea with a straw. “I wish I knew.” The tears returned, just a few. It was sadness, not histrionics. “I’m angry at Mom. You know about the adoption?”
“Yes.”
“I know I shouldn’t blame her, she said she only wanted what was best for me, but it’s no fun to find out your mother wanted to sell you.”
“People do things when they’re confused,” I said. “Sometimes not the smartest things.”
She laughed humorlessly. “That’s almost what Scott said to me last night.”
“Why?”
“He knows I’ve been seeing this guy. . . . It’s a stupid thing, doesn’t really mean anything, but he’s real generous.”
“He gives you money?”
She nodded.
“Why?”
“’Cause he knows I need it,” she said.
“Do you—”
“Have sex with him? Yeah. But it’s not like it sounds. I was doin’ that before he started givin’ me a hundred here and there.”
“You said it doesn’t really mean anything—”
“That’s true. When I’m with him, in his big ole house, in a bed with silk sheets, I feel good about myself. The money is just somethin’ extra. I keep it in a box in the bank. And when it’s done one day, when one of us is tired of the other, then it’s done. At least I’ll have had that feelin’ of bein’ a queen.”
“What about Scott?”
She looked off, as though she were seeing his face in the distance. “Scott . . . is like a whole other world. He’s the guy I watch Jason Statham with. He’s the guy who brings home pakoras and naan. You ever feel that way about a guy, that he’s mostly a good buddy?”
“Sort of,” I told her. “I’ve got a little of that going on right now.”
“It’s not a bad thing, is it? A friend you have sex with.”
“Not bad,” I agreed. “Though it’d be nicer if I loved the guy.”
“Oh, I guess I love Scott. But Stephen is like this king. I don’t love him, but he’s handsome and he sure rocks my chair. You ever have that?”
“I did, and frankly, I would argue against it.”
“Against a man boy toy?”
“No, against . . . God, I’m not even sure what to call it.”
“What happened?”
“When I was your age, I was dating a professor who was way older than me. I felt special when I was with him, like I was smart enough for this genius PhD to hang around with. Even if it was just for sex.”
“And then you’d go back to your real world, right?”
“Right.”
“Like the other one didn’t truly exist.”
“Pretty much.”
“Which is what I do,” Stacie said.
“Except what happened after that ended was I kept trying to find it again. I kept failing. I tried to go cold turkey by marrying someone my own age. He was a jerk. When that ended, I realized I hadn’t really dealt with the issues that made me want the professor in the first place.”
“What issues?”
“Not feeling good about myself, not feeling smart enough.”
“But you went to college!”
“Where I worked my ass off. I became an accountant. And do you want to know what I learned in the time I’ve been down here, running a restaurant? That I could’ve been anything. Anything! I picked this up easily. I’ll bet if it had been a baseball team or a movie studio, I could’ve kicked that ass, too! That’s what I needed to feel good and smart enough.”
Stacie was thoughtful as our food arrived. My mouth was dry and my throat was raw from all the talking and yelling I’d done. I drank half my iced tea.
“You’re lucky you had those experiences,” she said. “You got that knowledge.”
“Stacie, the knowledge I got was that I didn’t know anything about myself.” I waited. “And then there were the other issues that sent me looking for a professor in the first place. The father issues.”
Stacie’s pensive mood went black again.
“We don’t have to talk about that,” I said.
“No, I want to,” she told me. “I think we probably got a lot of the same scars.”
“I’m sure. The question is, do I let them heal and forget about them, or do we keep staring at them and picking at them?”
“You just said we’ve gotta understand things. I don’t see how you can do that without thinkin’ about ’em.”
“It depends on how we think about them. I’m mad about what Dad did to our mothers.” It sounded strange to say “Dad” in the collective, probably as strange as it was for her to hear it. But it was also nice. “The man was selfish, and that brings out our righteous indignation as women.”
She laughed, but I wasn’t sure she understood that.
“What I mean is, I loved
him, but even when he was alive, I was angry about how he lived his life. And I’m coming to realize that what I’ve been doing is beating up the men around me because I’m mad at our old man.”
“Don’t men ever do things that deserve a beatin’ on their own?”
“Yes, they do.” I laughed.
“Scott sure does.”
“I’m talking about the anger and disappointment that’s inside me. I haven’t learned to let that go, though I’m trying. I don’t want to see you hold on to it for another ten years. It takes a lot of energy and brainpower.”
Stacie considered that. “It all makes some sense, but I still like satin sheets, and I know that Scott is never going to be able to provide them.”
“Then provide them for yourself,” I said. “Find a way.”
I was starving and took a bite of my hamburger. Stacie forked a tomato into her mouth. She was thinking hard, she was hurting, and I just wanted to protect her from the world and all the misery it had to offer.
“So what do I do?” she said. “I truly do not know.”
“Right now? I’d suggest you stop keeping things inside. Talk about them.”
“Everything?”
“Every last thing, yes.”
She looked at her watch, ate some cucumber, shook her head. “Scott won’t like that, my mother will hate it, and Stephen will throw me out.”
“You’ll always have a place to go,” I told her.
She gave me a look that morphed from frustration to one of the most profound thanksgiving I had ever seen. Whatever happened in my life going forward, it would be tough to top that.
“Do you know what I’m going to do?”
“No. What?” I said.
“As soon as I get back to work, I am going to call Thomasina and thank her. I’m going to thank her and tell her that she was right.”
“About . . . ?”
“Prayer. It really does work.”
I thought it would be tough to top what she’d said before, but obviously, it wasn’t impossible.
Stacie just did it.
Chapter 19
My voice was shot, but my day wasn’t done.
I went back to the deli to do some work, at least, spotting Thom after the lunch rush so she could get a break. Whatever the murder had done to me personally—and also to Joe—it had drawn customers. The staff was either energized or dragging, depending on who it was. Dani seemed to have recovered from her hangover: she was one of the perky ones. So was Luke. So was A.J. Two. Raylene, Newt on the grill, and Thom were shot.
I didn’t tell Thom where I’d been. Maybe she’d guessed. She had a beatific look about her, as if she’d been praying between money changing, offering silent words to God for my safe conduct. Or hers, depending on how she thought I might react.
How had I reacted? It wasn’t like a symphony of emotions. It was more like grand opera, complete with intermissions, curtain calls, and themes, most of which I couldn’t recall. But I remembered the big one: my half sister needed me, and I had offered to help her.
After I’d paid for our lunch, I’d walked her back to Blinn’s, where she gave me a full body hug that was all warmth this time. Warmth and gratitude. I wished there was someone I could tell, with whom I could share what I felt. It was then I realized that what I had said was true: it was not enough to have a lover or a buddy. You needed both.
The afternoon was slow until about three o’clock, when a small entourage arrived. They were three men and a woman, all well dressed, clearly not tourists, though I didn’t recognize a single one of them. I looked at Thom, who was handing them menus; she shrugged.
Dani waited on the table. One of the men kept looking at me. He was about forty, with slicked-back black hair, smoldering eyes, and a square jaw. His suit was not off the rack at Marshalls.
I didn’t really pay them any attention until they were leaving. The man who had noticed me paid the bill. He was a big man, six-three, with the kind of confidence that made women look over their shoulders and men insecure.
“Would you be Gwen Katz?” he asked. His voice had the slight sound of Appalachia: the natural slur from genetically passed-down moonshine combined with the informality of the mountain folk. He sounded like a hillbilly Dean Martin.
“I am she,” I said.
I realized who he was a moment before he said it. “I am Stephen Hatfield.”
He didn’t make me swoon; he made me frightened. The man didn’t look like a gangster; he looked like a successful businessman who fancied himself a fashion model. Yet there was something about him that made me uneasy. The shoulders? There was something about those shoulders that reminded me of a puma on its haunches, not that I’d ever seen a puma.
“Hello,” I replied. I had intended to add his name to the greeting, but it stuck in my gullet.
“Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
“About?”
He repeated the question with his insistent silence. I looked around the nearly empty dining room. “How about the corner table?”
He rotated his shoulders in that direction; his stiff neck took his head with it. “That’s fine.”
“Thom!” I said, motioning her over.
The other three members of the party had gone outside. They were waiting by a black limousine. If I’d seen that first, I might have figured out who he was and what was probably coming.
I asked A.J. Two to bring me a Diet Coke as we made our way to the table. I went to sit. He held my chair for me. A gentleman mountain lion, thought I.
He sat after I had, sweeping his knee-length black coat under him. He checked his cell phone messages while A.J. Two brought my drink. She gave me a worried little look. My look back told her it was okay. I hoped it was.
He looked around. “So this is where Joe Silvio met his maker.”
“Well, not in here, exactly.”
“He was a decent man,” Hatfield said. “Not a proper way for a man to die.”
That surprised me. I didn’t expect him to spit on the man’s grave, when he had one, but he was still kin to the McCoys.
Hatfield set the Sprint Evo in front of me. “Read this, if you please.”
I looked at the cell phone screen. There was a text from Stacie. It was dated today, sent a few minutes after I’d left her.
I wld like 2 talk 2 u 2night abt us. I think I need 2 end it. I saw my new sister today. I have 2 chng my life. xo
You are, I believe, Stacie’s new sister,” Hatfield said.
“We each just discovered we exist, if that’s what you mean.”
“That is exactly what I mean. May I ask what you told her?”
“Isn’t that between me and Stacie?” I asked, sounding bolder than I felt.
“It would be, and I would respect that, if it did not involve me,” he said. “I will make this simple. Did you tell her not to see me anymore?”
“I did not,” I assured him. “What I told her was that whether it was you or Scott or her mother, she should say what’s on her mind.”
“Speak up for herself, you mean.”
“Exactly.”
“Be an independent woman.”
“That would misrepresent my advice,” I said. Misrepresent my advice? Who am I? Mr. Spock?
“Perhaps you can clarify it for me,” Hatfield said with a smile. He was now a puma who had spotted a hare. “Please,” he added insincerely, a bone throw to my obvious reluctance.
“I told her not to keep things inside. I told her to trust the people close to her. If they cared about her, they would listen.”
He nodded. “I go along with that. After all, it’s how I conduct myself.”
I had felt a moment of relief followed by apprehension. If I were parsing those sentences, I’d have said, “Good start. Now duck.”
“The problem I have with that, as it pertains to Stacie, is she’s a spectacular lay,” Hatfield said. “Best I ever had. And way too fine for that busboy jerk she’s engaged to.” He said that
last part loud enough for everyone to hear. “So here’s my honest, from-the-heart question to you, new sister. Who’s going to take her place?”
He lost me at spectacular lay and made me angrier with every new word he said. He could have been Michael Corleone at that moment, and it wouldn’t have mattered.
“I’m sure you can find some suitable piece of ass,” I said. “Might have to pay a little more, but what’s a couple hundred bucks to Stephen Hatfield?”
I expected him to slap me. I didn’t expect him to laugh and slap the table.
“That’s rich!” he said. “I’ll tell you what, Gwen Katz. I’m going to continue to take your advice and speak my heart.” The laughter stopped. “I do not pay for sex. I do not lie with prostitutes. I bring a girl into my home and treat her like no one has ever treated her or ever will. That is part of what makes them so good in bed. Their gratitude.” He looked around at the staff, who were standing behind the counter, like it was standing room at a hit show. “That one over there,” he said. “The one with the nose and lip rings.”
Dani was standing at the end of the counter, Luke to her right. They switched places like she’d been castled.
“You want to be my new girlfriend?” he asked. “Spend nights with me in my mansion, drink fine wine instead of Manischewitz?”
Dammit, was it me, or was everyone down here a closet anti-Semite?
Hatfield regarded me suddenly, as though my thoughts had penetrated his thick skull. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a comment about quality, not any kind of ethnic disrespect.”
“I’m comforted, considering all the bullshit you just said about women.”
“Is it bullshit, Gwen? I’ve been with Stacie about six months. Never forced her to come. Never threatened her. Before that I was with Sammi Blinn for a year.”
He could not miss my surprise.
“Does that shock you? Proper, child-loving Sammi holing up with me for sex?”
“It’s none of my business,” I said.
He touched his nose. “Bull’s-eye, Gwen Katz! That’s none of your business. Just like this is none of your business. Just like if I decide to invite that little blonde behind the counter up to my place for Iranian caviar, that, too, is none of your business!”