I squat down to Jane’s height. “Sadie isn’t here.”
Jane puts her finger to my lips. “Uh-uh. Sadie is coming back!”
I collect her hand. “Not anytime soon, honey.” I don’t understand her loss. I can’t comprehend it, no matter how hard I try or how many ways I explain to her logically why Sadie can’t return. My cat nearly scratched Jane’s face, too unpredictable and aggressive. What if she scratched her eye?
I won’t take that risk.
I raised Sadie as a kitten, but my attachment to her is severely less than my attachment to these people in this very room. Call me callous. Call me unfeeling. Call me inhuman, but I raised her to be independent, to survive on her own. And I’ve given her a home with my therapist—this shouldn’t even be an argument anymore.
Jane refuses to hear me. “She’s coming back. That’s her seat.” She jabs her little finger at the seat. She even goes further to place her Kitty Cats coloring book on top, so I can’t sit there. I hear her mutter, she’s coming back once more.
I stand and wonder when a toddler will forget about a cat. If she ever will. I look to Rose, and her eyes have significantly softened. She mouths, play along.
I nod in agreement. We’re still hoping she’ll drop all talk about Sadie.
Jane tugs the heavy chair, trying to pull mine out. I help her and then sit down. All six chairs are now occupied, so I ask Jane, “Where are you sitting?”
“Imsevin!” she slurs together. I take it to mean I’m serving. She picks up her teapot and pours milk to the very brim of my teacup.
I don’t feel silly or awkward. I never have.
I’m entertained by my daughter’s delight.
When she finishes pouring, I say, “Merci.” Thank you. I take a sip. “Mmmm. Délicieux.” Delicious.
She smiles wider, understanding French since Rose and I make an effort to use it around our children. Then she serves her brothers. We both study Jane. We wait for her to be immersed in something else, and then—at perfect, equal timing—we train our gazes to one another.
Rose scoots her chair closer to the table, nearer to me, before whispering, “Sadie was her first friend.”
I try to empathize, but I’m empty. “Who was your first friend? Besides your sisters.”
Rose pretends to sip tea from an empty cup. “In preschool,” she whispers, “I had a friend named Amy. She moved to Maryland just before first grade. I was devastated.” She emphasizes the word, as though losing a friend at six is synonymous with an Armageddon.
“Hmm,” I muse.
“Hmm?” Rose snaps. “What is hmm?”
“It’s an onomatopoeia.”
Rose sets her teacup down so hard, it nearly cracks.
“Careful, darling.”
“No one invited your smartass comments to the tea party. And hmm isn’t an onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeias have to symbolize something. Like oink is referencing a cow. Hmm means nothing.”
“If it annoys you this much, it clearly means something.”
Rose growls. “You’re infuriating.”
“Because I’m right, and you hate when I’m right.”
Leaning even further forward, she whispers heatedly, “Because you twist things until you’re right, which is not so much a gift as it is a character ink blot.” She flicks invisible dust particles at me.
I adore Rose, so much so that I lean nearer too. “I think the word you’re looking for is stain.”
Jane gasps, and our heads quickly turn to our daughter. She fumbles with her teapot. Rose, sitting closer, catches the lid before it thuds to the carpet.
“Gently,” Rose coaches. Her tone is still icy, but Jane doesn’t regard her mother as intimidating or harsh.
Most mornings, Jane will crawl onto Rose’s lap and rest her head against her mother’s collar. Rose will stroke Jane’s hair, and they’ll flip through a Vogue magazine together. Jane likes picking out her favorite editorial pictures, and Rose will later cut them out and paste them in a scrapbook.
When Rose focuses back on me, I say quietly, “She should be over Sadie by now.”
Rose narrows her eyes. “Have you ever lost something you’ve loved?”
I’ve lost my mother, but I didn’t love Katarina Cobalt the conventional way that a son loves a mother. I’ve never loved anything as a child except my own successes. I was told not to. Rose knows this.
All I say is, “We can’t bring back Sadie because a toddler demands it.”
“I know,” Rose agrees, “but we can’t be callous about it either.”
I tilt my head. “What you call callous I call realistic.”
“Children aren’t realistic.”
“I was.”
Rose asks pointedly, “And how did that work out for you?”
I set my elbow on the table. “Seeing as how I’m smarter than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population, I’d say it went well.”
Rose raises her hand at my face. “Sideline your ego, Richard.” Her gaze flits to our sons and then Jane, all three distracted by the tea party. Jane mutters softly while serving her stuffed lion. She pats his head.
“You don’t sideline the most valuable player, Rose.”
“You do when they award themselves the title of MVP.”
“It’s not my fault I’m the most adept at determining who should be awarded what.” Before she starts referencing guillotines again, I add, “You could’ve been saved from feeling devastated. It wasn’t necessary, and it only hurt you.”
Rose eyes me head-to-waist since I’m partially blocked by the table. “What’s the tradeoff, Connor? Not having a friend?”
“You still could’ve had Amy as a friend. What I’m saying is that there wasn’t a need to be that invested in someone who you knew might leave.”
“I was a child. I thought she’d stay around forever.”
“Then that was your first mistake.” I pick up my empty teacup and pretend to take a sip.
She pretends to take another one out of hers, eyes drilling into me. Rose presses her lips together like she’s smoothing out her lipstick, and then she says, “You can’t bubble wrap her emotions, Connor.”
I’m not advocating to strip away their childhood the way that my mother did to me. They can fantasize about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I’m even willing to play tea party with an imaginary cat and a stuffed animal.
“It’s not bubble wrap,” I reply. “It’s just self-appreciation to the highest degree. To feel so important that no one comes before you, not a friendship, not a thing, nothing that could make you feel pity, rejection, remorse or devastation.”
“No.” Rose places her elbows on the table, combating me. “She will feel those things because she will love more than just herself. And she’ll be better than you were.”
I was well off, but Rose values love above all else. I never did until I fell in love with her. I know why I want to save Jane from this.
Selfishly, I don’t want to see our daughter dig through these emotions, not ones that I could’ve helped her avoid. “You want me to watch a trainwreck?” I ask Rose.
“Multiple trainwrecks,” Rose says strongly. “And when she needs you to pull her out of the wreckage—”
“I’ll be there.” Remember love? I have to remind myself of this feeling that overcomes me, swelling my entire chest. I watch Jane kiss her lion on the cheek.
I have to remind myself that they need love as much as I do.
Remember love.
Charlie accidentally smacks his saucer of Cheerios, flipping it over. The cereal scatters the rug, and Charlie bursts into tears, crying at the top of his lungs.
Rose and I are about to stand to console our son, but we stop almost instantly. Beckett has dropped off his chair to help collect the dry cereal. And Jane sets down her teapot in haste.
“Charlie?” Her face is full of worry. “Don’t cry, Charlie.” She wipes her brother’s tears with her hand and then joins Beckett in picking up the Cheerios.
/>
Rose and I pull our gazes off our young children and onto each other, face-to-face, across the tiny table. I extend my hand and tenderly clasp hers, my thumb skimming her knuckles back-and-forth. I see their love for one another, and I wouldn’t want anything less.
She nods to me, reading my gaze well enough, and then she drifts into deep thought. I wish I could hear the chatter inside her head.
After a long moment, I whisper, “What are you thinking?”
“That I’d love to have another little monster with you.” She rolls her eyes at herself, but my chest has already risen. “I’m insane for wanting more stress.”
“More happiness,” I amend.
“More children screaming.”
“More children laughing.”
She thinks for another second. “How can I love it all equally?” she wonders. “The vomit and the dirty diapers and the ridiculous things they do that end up being endearing and cute.” She watches Charlie wipe away his tears with a tiny fist while Beckett and Jane fill his saucer with cereal. “I don’t even think I’d want only the good moments without the horrible ones. I’d ask for it all again.” Rose says again like pregnancy is tantamount to torture.
If she truly believed this—if she truly felt this—I’d never want her to go through it again. Rose’s health and happiness might as well be mine.
“You love it all equally because you’re entirely and unequivocally in love with them. Love isn’t a weakness,” I say with complete certainty.
She smiles a very rare smile, but it lasts shorter than I’d like. “It’s not just about wanting a sister for Jane. Though I want another girl…sooner or later.” She glows at the word later like she hopes for that outcome.
Once she has another girl, we’ve agreed to stop having children. And she clearly wants more.
“Do you have any reservations?” I ask, my hand tightening around hers. I haven’t broached the topic of having more children. I never do after Rose gives birth. It’s her body, her physical timeline, and I’ll always be respectful of her wants and needs.
“It’s been almost a year since the twins,” she says. “I could probably wait another year, but I’ve recovered better than I thought…” Her gaze drifts to Jane who wiggles in her teal tutu, her cat headband sliding back. “Are you holding your bladder?”
Jane shakes her head and tries to fix her headband. I spot her guilt and the fib in her eyes.
So does her mother. Rose points at the bathroom. “Go now.”
“I can’t leave, Mommy!” she whines. “I’m hosing.” She means hosting.
My grin broadens.
Rose rotates more to face Jane. “Hostesses are allowed to excuse themselves to use the toilet, just like every other person. If anyone—including Mr. Lion—gives you heat about it, Mommy will disembowel them.”
“What’s disem-em…” Jane loses track of her thoughts, clutching her tutu, wiggling more.
“Go.” Rose motions to the nearby door, right beside a white bookshelf.
Jane hurries off and closes the door behind her.
Rose captivates me to the point where she has all of my attention. My eyes, my mind, my heart.
She catches me staring and snaps, “What?” Her cheeks flush. “Stop looking at me like that, Richard.”
“Je t’aime.” I love you. I stand, walk around the table, and near my wife. Towering above her, I run my hand across the base of her neck, up to her hair.
A shallow breath expels from her lips, her head near my crotch and eyes at my belt. She strains her neck to look up at me. “I still want to continue working during every pregnancy,” Rose reminds me.
I expected no less. We both enjoy our current schedule, and it won’t shift.
Mondays: I’m at the Cobalt Inc. offices in Philadelphia. Rose works at home and watches our children.
Tuesdays: Rose is at the Hale Co. offices or her boutique in downtown Philadelphia. I work at home and watch our children.
Wednesdays: we both work at home together.
Thursdays: a repeat of Monday
Fridays: a repeat of Tuesday.
Eventually we’ll need at least one more set of trusting hands when we both can’t be home. We’re both in agreement on hiring a nanny in the future.
Beckett and Charlie babble to one another, filling the silence, and my thumb skims Rose’s bottom lip.
I’d take her in the next five minutes, if I could. I’d push her up against our bed and tie her hands behind her back. Spread her legs open. Fit my cock deep inside my wife, fuck her hard until she dizzied.
I wear my desire in my eyes.
She crosses her legs now. “When you were a teenager, did you ever fantasize about me?” Her neck reddens, not in embarrassment but longing.
“Sexually?” I ask.
She nods.
Just as I’m about to answer, the toilet flushes and Jane calls, “Daddy, I can’t reach the sink!”
Rose swats my hand away from her face, about to rise to find the missing stepstool.
“I’ll take care of her.” I can just lift Jane up to the sink. Rose stays seated while I walk to the bathroom. Hand on the knob, I pause and look to Rose. “We’ll continue this later, darling.”
She nods tersely, but I’m not sure if she’ll ask that same question again. I can’t promise that I’ll bring it up soon, but we have years. Many, many years together.
{ 5 }
August 2018
The Golf Club
South Hampton, New York
LOREN HALE
By the time we reach the seventh hole at the charity golf tournament, Maximoff is done. Boredom in his forest-green eyes, he rests his cheek against the golf cart seat, nearly slumped over.
“Same,” I tell him, picking out a club from my bag, my enthusiasm worn-out.
It’s not like I had much at the start. Not like Connor, who wagered a bet with my older brother before teeing off the first hole. Not like Ryke who curses beneath his breath with each stroke, pointing his titanium driver at Connor every time our friend outperforms him.
Which is 7 times out of 10.
But no one should confuse my lack of enthusiasm for apathy.
I know it’d be easy to—because in my early twenties, my angst could fill a goddamn ocean and float a shitty fleet of naval ships—but now, things are different.
I’m different. For better or for worse.
And one look at my three-year-old son—his soft cheek on the white seat, wearing tiny orange Vans, his dark brown hair combed neatly, his little legs hanging pitifully and lips puckered in a childlike pout—it’s all enough.
Regardless of what else follows.
I lean my shoulder on the golf cart and nudge his foot with my driver. Moffy lifts his head up to me.
I gape, widening my eyes. “He’s alive. Jesus Christ.”
His big woeful eyes might as well say, I’m miserable, Daddy. I thought only a sad Lily could crush my black heart, but seeing my son upset and downcast nearly obliterates it.
I try to remember that he’s a three-year-old. Lily and I put cooked carrots in front of him, and he acted like we served him pig intestines. One boring day isn’t the end of the world, but there’s this part of me—this place belonging to my childhood with Lily—that screams to give this kid better than boring, better than unhappy. Better than lonely.
Better than what we had.
I take a seat beside him. He doesn’t stir, but I hear his heavy sigh. I prop my foot on the golf cart dash and extend my arm across the back of the seat. “Golf isn’t my favorite thing either.”
Moffy mumbles, “Then why are we here?”
He asks a lot of questions, and I never thought I’d have to explain the world to anyone. Especially a toddler who digests my words like they’re Holy Scripture. And he has no comprehension of sarcasm.
Through the windshield, I watch Ryke tee off first. He concentrates on his swing, and Connor stands nearby just to give him a hard time. Ryke flips him off
, but most of the other teams are too far ahead of us to see. Only event photographers straggle behind, and Ryke couldn’t care less if they capture him giving Connor the middle finger.
It’s not like he hasn’t done it before.
Gathering my thoughts, I focus back on Moffy. “We’re here because we’re really lucky—you, me, your mommy, your aunts and uncles—we all have a lot of toys and nice things, and we take time to give back.” We could just write a check and not come, but showing up to an event promotes the charity too, so we do both. “Do you want to help kids who might be sick or who don’t have as many toys as you?”
Moffy nods almost instantly, faster than I would have as a kid. He straightens up, the steering wheel too high and far away from his small body. He fiddles with his shoelaces. “Is-is that…why the bug people follow us? Because we have lots of toys?”
Bug people.
My stomach knots.
Bug people—it’s what Jane and Moffy have started calling paparazzi, who hide behind cameras. They see the fat lenses and blinding flashes as an appendage like a nose or a mouth, unable to spot an actual face.
Connor said it was ironic. They dehumanize us, and our children are beginning to dehumanize them.
Moffy waits for my answer.
I’m stumped for a second. I’ve never considered myself good with kids. I never aspired to be a father—I never aspired to be much of anything. But I’ve tried.
I’ve tried damned hard to be a decent dad. No. A great dad. Because my kid deserves nothing less than that.
I can’t tell a toddler the truth: hey, little man, we’re famous because Mommy is an heiress to a soda empire and someone told the press about her sex addiction. And it gets worse. That “someone” happens to be your uncle’s mother. Surprise.
I drop my arm onto his shoulders. “You know why they follow us?” My voice is edged like usual. I can’t help that, but he listens intently, waiting. And I say, “Because they love you and they love your cousins and your mommy.” Every goddamn word hurts.
The paparazzi tormented Daisy, caused Lily to fear leaving her house, and profited off of more false stories than true ones. But I can’t have my kid soulfully, gut-wrenchingly hating something that I know will always be there. If he believes they do what they do out of love, then maybe he won’t grow up bitter and resentful.
Some Kind of Perfect (Calloway Sisters #4.5) Page 5