Lies and Lullabies

by Bowen, Sarina

  “Okay. You have to catch me,” she said. “I don’t like to put my face in.”

  “You mean, like this?” I asked. I turned casually around, and without breaking my movement, dove straight in. The icy temperature shocked me back to the surface. “Oh shit, that’s cold!” I said, wiping the water from my eyes.

  “You said a bad word.” Vivi peered down at me from the end of the dock.

  Damn! The cursing was going to be a problem. “You’re right. Sorry.” I swam out a few feet, then held out my arms. “Your turn.”

  “Closer.” She frowned.

  “Okay.” I laughed, coming nearer.

  “Closer,” she said again.

  There wasn’t any more room. “Jump, little sweetness. I’ll catch you.”

  She pinched her nose between two fingers and jumped so quickly that it took me by surprise. But I reached for her automatically, catching her squat torso as she plunged into the lake. And then I was holding my little girl in my arms.

  “Shit, that’s cold,” she said.

  “Vivi!” Kira shrieked.

  I laughed, but my throat felt hot, and my eyes burned. I shifted Vivi onto one of my hips, because that felt right. I swam an awkward sidestroke into shallower water, until my feet touched the sludgy bottom.

  “I wanna do it again,” she said.

  “Just one more,” Kira said. “Your lips are purple.”

  “I like purple,” Vivi argued.

  “You’re going to freeze, and so is your fa—” Kira caught herself, a look of horror crossing her sweet face.

  I couldn’t help but give her a smirk as I hoisted Vivi onto the side of the dock. I received one of her heels in my eye socket for my trouble. “You were saying?” I asked Kira.

  She ignored me. I dove under, swimming towards the end of the dock again to catch Vivi. Again, the cold water was a shock. But there were good shocks and bad ones. Sometimes they were impossible to tell apart.

  * * *

  On the short walk back, I caught Vivi’s hand. “What else do you like besides swimming?”

  “I like school. I like Blumes. Do you like Blumes?”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “You add water to the pot. The dolly grows out of it.”

  “That sounds…” Terrifying. “Fascinating. I’ve never heard of that.”

  Kira snorted.

  “Well, what do you play with?” Vivi asked.

  “My guitar, mostly.”

  “Guitars are neat. My daddy played a guitar,” Vivi said. Then she dropped my hand and scampered to the side of the road to pluck a dandelion that grew there.

  I turned a raised eyebrow in Kira’s direction.

  She looked away.

  * * *

  When we reached the house, I followed Kira and Vivi through the screen door and onto the porch, where Adam was reading the New York Times with a beer in his hand. I wasn’t leaving until Kira threw me out. I pulled my T-shirt over my mostly dry torso and wondered what would happen next.

  “You know, Vivi, it’s nap time,” Kira said.

  “No! I’m not tired.”

  “Come on, sweetie.”

  Kira picked her up, but there was some thrashing. “Uncle Adam didn’t kiss me yet.”

  With a sigh, Kira let Vivi slide down her body. She climbed up onto Adam, crunching his newspaper. He held his beer out of the way and let her scale him. “If you have a good nap, I’ll take you out in the rowboat before dinner,” he promised, planting a kiss on her forehead.

  “Can I row?” she asked.

  “Certainly. Now scoot.” He gave her a mock spanking, and then Kira scooped her up again, heading for the dark interior of the house.

  I watched every second of it. In their own way, Adam, Kira, and Vivi were the perfect little family. A much warmer one than I’d grown up in.

  “Dude, I think you need one of these.” Adam offered me a bottle of Dos Equis and a church key.

  “I think you’re right. Thanks.” I threw Vivi’s towel onto the seat of the rocker beside Kira’s brother, and lowered myself onto it. I popped the top off the beer and took a swig, hoping Adam wouldn’t think I was a lush. But the beer was cold and bracing, and I was happy to have it. “She takes naps?” I asked. I didn’t know a thing about little kids. There was no point in pretending otherwise.

  “Most days,” he said, abandoning his newspaper. “She’s a good sleeper, actually. The first year, Kira and I thought we would die of exhaustion.” He chuckled into his bottle. “But now she’s a champ.”

  “They’ve lived with you the whole time?” I had a million questions. At least.

  But Adam looked suddenly guarded. “Yeah,” he said quietly.

  I watched his face carefully. “That makes me feel a little better, knowing she had somebody helping her.”

  Adam’s expression did something confusing then, morphing from surprise, to warmth, and then back to cautious again. “Maybe it’s weird, but it works for us.”

  “I can see that.” The conversation lapsed into a minute or two of silence. Glancing through the screen, I spotted a familiar figure walking down the road, swinging a picnic basket. I stood up and went to the door, swinging it open. “Ethan! Are you looking for me?”

  The big man turned his big head. “Jojo! What’s the deal with you today? You didn’t eat your lunch.” He strode up and entered the porch, taking in me and Adam and our bottles of Mexican beer.

  I plopped myself back into the chair. “Yeah. About that… Adam, this is Ethan. He’s my tour manager. But he thinks he’s my mother.”

  Ethan put down the basket. “And you’re an ingrate.”

  “Beer?” Adam asked.

  Ethan tilted his head to the side, considering Adam. “Love one,” he said, after a beat.

  Adam handed Ethan a beer, and Ethan sat down, fitting his big frame carefully onto another wooden rocker, the one opposite me. Then he kicked the picnic basket toward me. “Have a deviled egg and tell Mama why you’re such a train wreck.”

  I dug into the basket for the dish of deviled eggs and popped one into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to speak. I passed the dish to Adam, who helped himself. “I’m sorry about the radio thing,” I said eventually.

  Ethan shook his head. “It’s okay. It was early enough in the day that Nixon was still coherent. I passed the phone to him. He made up some shit about the two of you writing the song. It was fine.”

  “All right.” And now I was going to have to tell Ethan the very thing I was trying to process. “There’s a couple of things I need your help with. People are going to give you a hard time because it’s a holiday weekend, but this can’t wait.”

  Ethan frowned. “Okay. Hit me.”

  I propped my feet up on his giant knee. “Call Ben and tell him not to book anything in Europe or Asia until he talks to me personally.”

  “All right.” Ethan’s frown deepened at the mention of his boss—our business manager. “But Ben already nailed down a few dates. He said something about that festival in Munich.”

  “He needs to hold off on any more. Tell him that I’ll talk to him, and we’ll go over everything on Tuesday or Wednesday.”

  “What else?”

  “I need to get Peters on the phone. Tonight.” Peters was my lawyer.

  Ethan pulled a face. “On the Saturday night of a holiday weekend. Are you insane? He’s probably on a golf course in Maui.”

  “I never ask him for anything. Tell him it’s important.”

  “Should I assume you’re talking about your lawyer?” Adam asked, his voice wary.

  I raked a hand through my hair. “Yeah, but… It’s not… I don’t want to panic Kira,” I said. “I’m not going to be an asshole about this. But I don’t even have a will. And of course I want to pay child support.”

  Ethan choked on his beer. “What…?” He coughed violently into the crook of his arm, knocking my feet to the floor. With watering eyes, Ethan stared at me.

  “I have a four-year-old daught
er,” I said. The words sounded entirely foreign on my tongue. “Kira is her mother, and Adam is her uncle. This is not a drill.”

  Beside him, Adam took a long pull of his beer. “You don’t have to yank your lawyer off the golf course. There’s nothing you can do or file until you get a paternity test. And that takes a week to come back, at least.”

  “I don’t need a paternity test,” I said. “Kira could never be wrong about this.”

  Adam’s eyes got huge.

  “What?”

  Adam shook his head. “I’m just surprised you understand that. Kira said it was only a one night thing between you two.”

  “She did?” I’d been starting to feel calmer, but hearing that I’d been dismissed as a one-night-stand made my gut ache again. I couldn’t sit still anymore. I stood and strode out the front door.

  “Jonas,” I heard Ethan say, his voice gentle.

  I needed a minute to collect myself. No, I needed more than a minute. I stood under a big old elm in the yard. A squirrel snickered at me from overhead.

  I’d come to Maine for a two-day break, to soak up a quick dose of happy memories. Instead, I was reeling.

  I stood there a long time, staring at the dirt road and an oblique slice of Mrs. Wetzle’s house. From Kira’s yard, only a narrow strip of clapboards and white trim was visible. I had sat inside that back room at the foot of the bed, my guitar in my arms. I’d been patient with myself and the music. I’d learned a lot. And when it was over, I’d thought I’d come away a better man.

  But now the script had been rewritten. I’d gotten a twenty-year-old girl pregnant, and then I’d blown her off when she tried to show me love. It was yet another fucked-up lesson in humility.

  Kira appeared beside me on the lawn. When I turned to look at her, my heart contracted. Even though I was still angry and confused, I knew I wouldn’t stay mad at her. Being so close to her did a number on me. In her khaki skirt and tank top, she looked just as fresh and lovely as I’d always remembered her. While I felt about a hundred years old.

  “I’m not going away, you know,” I said suddenly.

  “Of course you are.” Her voice was soft. “You’re on tour for ten weeks.”

  Fuck. It was true. Summer touring was our bread and butter. “How do you know that, anyway?”

  “Hush Note dot-com.”

  I gave her a bitter chuckle. “If you were as easy to track as I am, I might have known I had a daughter about to turn four.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You said that already.” I looked away from her, because it pained me to look into her pretty face. She’d let me down so badly today that I almost couldn’t breathe. But that didn’t mean I wanted to hit back.

  “Jonas, I’m sorry to say that you can’t be here when my father comes home from the store.”

  “Why? Am I starring in a Spaghetti Western? Is he going to get out the shotgun?” I could see the storm I was causing in her face, and I wasn’t proud of it. I had to get a grip. “Kira, I can take whatever your dad throws at me. Hiding from him isn’t something I’d do.” And she should know that already. Fuck.

  But her frown only deepened. “You need to go, okay? Not because of what he’ll say to you. Because of what he’ll say to me. I don’t have it in me to go ten rounds with him tonight. This is hard enough as it is.”

  Oh, hell. I wish I could just scoop her up, along with Vivi, and take them somewhere quiet for as long as it took for the shock to wear off, and for the pounding in my head to stop.

  But reality didn’t give a fuck about what I wanted. It never had. “All right. I’ll go. But only if you promise me you won’t leave town before we talk again.”

  Her eyes widened. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  I bit back the obvious retort. Why should I believe you? “Okay,” I said instead. “Do you have a cell phone?”

  She nodded.

  “Can I have it, please?”

  She pulled it out of her pocket and handed it to me, and I got to work. First, I called my phone with hers and then added a couple things to her Contacts list. “I’m adding Ethan’s phone number as well as mine. He’s my emergency contact, okay?” I saved her number and one more to my phone. “I’m taking Adam’s number, too.”

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  When I was finished, I handed her phone back. “Call me, Kira,” I said, my voice low. “Any hour of the day. We’re leaving tomorrow at eleven. I need to see you before that.”

  She nodded solemnly. Her troubled eyes broke my heart.

  I took one step forward and pressed my lips to her forehead. I kissed her gently, inhaling the citrus scent of her shampoo. Feeling an unwelcome sting behind my eyes, I backed away. “Hey. Don’t worry, okay? I’m sorry I was a dick earlier.”

  “You weren’t,” she whispered. “I had it coming.”

  The bike I’d ridden here was still lying in the grass. I stood it up. “Call me.”

  “I will,” she said.

  There was no more left to say for the moment, and I was beat. Just utterly spent. So I mounted the bike and rode away.

  The half-mile ride was a blur. In front of the lodge, I ditched the bike. I ducked inside and threw myself at my unmade bed. Five minutes later, the weight of the day was too much, and I fell into a long and dreamless sleep.

  Eight

  Jonas

  Several hours passed before I felt the side of the bed compress under someone’s considerable bulk.

  “Wakey, wakey,” Ethan’s voice prodded.

  I yawned, still unwilling to open my eyes. But something smelled good, and the smell was getting stronger. When I finally peeked, Ethan was waving a bowl of chili under my face. His amazing, chunky, homemade chili, with sour cream and shaved cheddar cheese melting on top. My stomach growled at the savory scent.

  “Sit up.”

  I didn’t fight him on this. I pulled myself up and leaned back against the headboard.

  Ethan put a tray on my lap, then stuck a spoon in my hand. “Eat this. Every bite.”

  He didn’t leave after making his delivery. He sat there on the bed until the food started going in at a satisfactory rate. Ethan’s last act of mercy was to open the beer he’d put on the tray and press it into my free hand. Then he left the room.

  I hadn’t spoken a word to him, but that was okay. Several hours ago—though it felt like several weeks—I had tried to explain to Kira that everyone who cared for me was on my payroll. When I’d said it, I was feeling sorry for myself. But tonight the payroll was seriously pulling its weight.

  After eating, I left the tray on the mattress and carried the beer into the lodge’s shared bathroom. The shower was already occupied, so I bent over one of the sinks and splashed water on my face. Since Quinn’s toiletry bag was sitting there, I helped myself to some kind of fancy soap. Then I nabbed her brush, raking it through my hair.

  I tossed it back into place as Quinn stepped out of the shower wrapped in a towel. When our eyes met in the mirror, she got straight to the point. “Wow, Jonas, is it true? You really have a kid?”

  “Looks that way.” My voice was rough from disuse.

  “You’re not sure?” Her eyes got wider.

  “No, I’m sure.”

  “Oh honey. How come you’re just finding out now?” Quinn picked up the brush I’d abandoned and began teasing the tangles from her long hair. “Five years later? Who does that? What a bitch.”

  “Don’t call her that,” I growled.

  Quinn snorted. “Okay. Sure. But that isn’t normal behavior, Jonas. What the hell was she thinking? You’d have to be a stone-cold bitch to keep that from a guy. Or else…” She flinched.

  “Or else what? Just say it already.”

  “Damaged,” she said quietly. “Either way, it’s not good news for you.”

  I bristled, even though Quinn always had my best interests at heart. Most days her bluntness didn’t bother me much, because I was pretty sure she was a little damaged, too.

&nbs
p; Maybe we all were. I was still mad at Kira, of course. But I was just as mad at myself.

  “Either way,” Quinn chirped, “be careful. The media is going to eat this up. And the label will love it. They’ll exploit this all summer long if it means ‘Sweetness’ rides the Billboard charts. I’m surprised your phone isn’t already ringing with an offer to put the whole fam-damily on the cover of People.”

  Jesus. I felt sick just picturing that. Without another glance at Quinn, I left the bathroom.

  The idea of paparazzi photographing Vivi made my skin crawl. Not only would Kira hate it, but what four-year-old could understand strangers jumping out of the lilac hedge with a camera?

  I was accustomed to that kind of bullshit and understood my millions of dollars in the bank were fed by the media machine. But I’d made that choice myself. Kira and Vivi hadn’t.

  Fuck.

  Back in my room, I dropped to the braided rug on the floor and began banging out pushups. It always helped me think.

  Quinn could have been nicer about it, but she’d made a good point. Given half a chance, the media would eat up this story. I’d seen these things unfold. Even if everyone on the tour bus kept their traps shut, all it would take would be for some paralegal at my lawyer’s office to leak the story. I might be a thousand miles away singing in some stadium in Virginia while some asshole bore down on Kira and Vivi outside their Boston apartment building with a video camera.

  Shit. For the first time, Kira’s decision not to tell me about Vivi seemed almost reasonable.

  And the new single made it all worse, right? It wasn’t a huge leap to lay the inspiration for “Sweetness” at Kira’s feet.

  It had taken me five years to write that song, because it had taken me that long to figure out what I was trying to say. Even now the song was far from perfect, but I’d gotten impatient with myself and recorded it anyway.

  If I was honest with myself, I’d hoped that Kira would hear it. I’d gone so far as to picture her in a car somewhere, listening to a Spotify playlist and tapping her thumbs on the steering wheel. In my daydream, she’d googled the song later and figured out that I was that guy from five years ago. She’d realize I’d written it just for her.