But that late Saturday morning on a little street in Pasadena, lined incongruously with both non-native oaks and palm trees, Keane got out of his rental Porsche and walked straight up to him.
“Bro!” Keane said fondly, clasping the guy’s hand and pulling him in for a shoulder clap. “How the fuck are you?”
Stone shrugged, face cold and unemotional as always. “Pretty good. Some real estate mogul just gifted me with an all-expenses paid trip to California out the blue.”
Stone spoke with very little intonation. But his thick Jersey accent made his sentences sound so wise guy, Keane wouldn’t have been surprised if a casting director scouted him for one of those Mafia Thug #1 roles straight off the street.
“Lucky you.” Keane started them walking past a bunch of low rise apartment buildings and bungalows toward their point of destination. “You going to the beach after you’re done taking care of business?”
“Nanh, didn’t bring a swimsuit. But I was reading on Yelp about this place called Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles.”
“Oh yeah? Maybe we’ll swing by after we pay this guy a visit. That all set up?”
“Yep. His assistant’s on his lunch hour and I gave the janitor a Frankie not to visit that floor for a while.”
“How about the cameras?”
“Rock’s got somebody taking care of that. Told me to let you know you owe him a favor.”
Rock was Stone’s twin brother. They were identical, and dressed and shaved their heads the part. But they were different as night and day. Rock seemed to have come out the womb with all the light and Stone with all the dark.
They were both good friends with his old Beaumont Academy roommate Rashid, but for some reason, Keane always ended up talking mostly to Stone whenever all four of them were in the same room. Maybe because the brothers’ dynamic reminded him of his own with Bono.
Also for certain situations, the evil twin came in way, way more handy, Keane thought to himself as they took the stairs all the way up to a lab on the sixth floor.
“You ready for this?” he asked putting on his gloves.
Stone answered with a bored shrug. Like busting into labs was just another day that ended with y.
Without any pomp whatsoever, he simply pushed through a door marked with a red “CRITICAL LAB WORK IN PROGRESS. DO NOT ENTER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.”
Inside a dimly lit lab, they found a single man, sitting on a stool, his thin back hunched over a microscope.
“Good, you’ve returned,” he said, his faintly accented voice testy. “It took you long enough. Set my lunch down on the table and start working on the rest of those lab reports.”
“’Fraid the only thing you’re going to be eating today is my fist,” Keane answered.
“What…?”
Before Rohan could finish asking that question, Keane answered by pulling the guy off his lab stool and cracking his fist across his face.
Lena’s ex went flying backwards, scattering all sorts of shiny instruments and test tubes.
“What are you doing?” he yelled through his bloodied mouth. His words sounded garbled. Like Keane might have knocked out a couple of teeth with that punch. Good. If Rohan did what he thought he had to Max, this conversation wasn’t going to end with this bastard being able to talk at all.
“These experiments I’m running are very important!” he said, his eyes taking in all the scattered and broken equipment, like they were his babies.
“Yeah, kind of doubt that, considering how easy it was to break into your lab, asshole,” Stone said, casting a disparaging look around the dark room.
“Good one,” Keane said, grabbing Rohan by the front of his collared shirt and raising his fist to hit him again.
Rohan’s lifted his hands with what seemed to be an automatic coward impulse to protect himself. “Are you from BioPath? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just don’t hit me again.”
“Well, aren’t you the employee of the fuckin’ year.” Keane curled his lip in disgust, and made a note to himself to make sure this ass tool got fired before the summer was done. But… “I’m not here to talk about your shitty little experiments. I’ve got questions about the boy you used to claim as your son.”
“What son?” Rohan asked, still cowering behind his raised arms. “I don’t have a son!”
Keane exchanged a look with Stone. “Seems this ass clown’s memory’s slipping.”
“Start breaking fingers,” Stone suggested, tone bored, like they were filling out paperwork. “Usually helps bitches remember.”
“No! No, don’t!” Rohan screamed like a little girl. “I swear to you. I don’t have a son. I never had a son. I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
Keane shook his head, disgust making him want to do more permanent damage than breaking fingers. The fact that this ass clown couldn’t bring himself to appreciate a great kid like Max, just because he didn’t want to follow in his footsteps, burned him up worse than the mafia father who refused to come to any of his ’little skatey games.’
“Hey, from what I understand you made Lena a promise when you suckered her into marrying you. Just because you’re divorced now doesn’t mean you get to act like you never even heard of Max. Especially if you hurt him.”
“Wait, you’re talking about Max.” Rohan lowered his hands a little, confusion replacing fear. “Are you…are you Max’s real father then? The one Lena would never talk about. Is that why you’re here?”
“Yeah, I’m his real father,” Keane took a menacing step closer. “And you’re the guy who’s going to tell me why he’s got PTSD about showers or whatever. And why he’s acting like having a real father is the worst thing in the world.”
Rohan lowered his hands a little bit more. “No, I kept my promise to Lena. I was a doting father, especially after we found out that I would not be able to father children of my own, I treated Max exactly as I would have my own child, but…” He shook his head. “Did they really not tell you? Why Lena and I divorced? How Max shamed me?”
“Shamed you? You were so pissed about him wanting to play hockey, that you decided you couldn’t keep your promise to Lena?” Stone’s breaking fingers suggestion was starting to sound more appealing by the second.
“No, it was not just the hockey. It was Max. The baby I claimed as mine at the hospital was a little girl! A little girl we named Maxine after Lena’s mother.”
“A little girl…” Keane twisted his head…at first not understanding. Until all of sudden he did.
I’m always going to be that child’s uncle, no matter who her father is.
Vihaan’s fierce words came rushing back to Keane as his brain filled with white noise. At the time, he’d assumed the man, who’d grown up to be much more courageous than his older brother was just being…well, gay. Applying “her” to whoever he wanted.
But now…
Now as Rohan babbled on about Max insisting on being called a boy when she began kindergarten and even showing up to some work Christmas party in a suit…Keane got it.
The son he’d taken such fierce pride in, hadn’t in fact, been born a boy.
Chapter Twenty-Five
He knew. Oh God, he knew.
Lena got off the phone with her ex-husband, who’d called to tell her about Keane’s visit just as she was walking down the stairs to go pick Max up. Nearly an entire twenty-four hours after he broke the news to Keane and “some other thug” that Max had not been born a boy. He’d spent much of his Saturday, cleaning up his lab, arranging for emergency dental surgery, and trying to decide if his ex-wife deserved a heads up, he’d complained before getting to the point.
“Really, Lena. I am beginning to believe you are as crazy as Maxine. I cannot believe you let her go this far with that hoax!”
This was the real point of the call, Lena knew. Rohan loved to say, “I told you so.” He once crowed for hours about eviscerating a colleague’s initially promising diagnosis work at a meeting. Then looked at
her blankly when she suggested that if he knew exactly what his poor colleague had gotten wrong, maybe he could help him make it right if the correct diagnosis would keep someone from dying.
But in this case, Lena had to give small thanks for Rohan’s need to crow. If not for this repeating narcissistic trait, she might not have even gotten this much of a warning before she was due to pick Max up.
She thanked Rohan quietly, then immediately ran the rest of the way down the stairs, her mind once again focused on Max and only Max.
Lena had divorced her stable husband. She’d switched tracks in her Psy.D program from Health Psychology to Child in order to understand what Max was going through. She’d shielded Max. She’d protected him as best she could from the pain of other’s responses to his decision to honor his gender dysphoria, and she’d tried to give him this one summer. This one summer where he could be a boy, some place where only a few people knew he’d been born a girl. Even when he went off plan, and decided to join an all-boys hockey program instead of going to day camp at the Institute for Better Boys, she’d tried her best.
But Keane had disappeared without a word on Saturday morning. Keane who’d not only grown up in a notoriously close-minded neighborhood, but also had a penchant for saying things in the most insulting way possible.
Crap! She knew it had been a mistake to let Max get so close to a man who didn’t have the emotional or philosophical bandwidth to handle a son who didn’t identify with his original gender. But that first month, Max had been so happy to have a hockey god like Keane, pay so much attention to him and she hadn’t been able to figure out a way to keep them apart. Especially after Keane had turned out to be a much better father than she ever would have expected.
Why had she dared to hope, even for a minute that Keane might actually grow to like Max so much, that he’d eventually with some coaching, learn to accept Max unconditionally?
Ha! He hadn’t even passed the first test of waiting for Max to trust him with his secret. In fact, he’d gone straight to the test’s ex-teacher assistant and punched all the answers out of him. And Lena could easily imagine what Keane’s response had been to finding out, since he hadn’t sent her so much as one text, since disappearing.
No, he hadn’t passed the test and now, he was going to do exactly what Max knew he would as soon as Keane announced their DNA match. Keane might be his real father, but now that he knew, he’d reject his son outright, just as Rohan had. Maybe even hurl crude, ugly words at him.
No one knew better than her, how cruel Keane could get.
Keane’s car wasn’t in its usual spot when she reached the house’s back lot. Hopefully that meant he hadn’t returned from California yet. Good. That would give her some time to talk to Max first. Shore him up for another possibly hurtful confrontation. With another dad.
Oh God…she’d never felt as much like a parental failure as she did speeding toward the hockey center to pick her son up.
She barely made it there on time, and she found a parking space, just as the bus was pulling into the center’s lot. But unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one who’d shown up to greet the bus.
As she climbed out of the car, she spotted Keane, unmistakable even with his back to her. He stood apart from the rest of the day camp track parents with his hands on his waist. Like a villain. Or a superhero. Take your pick.
Either way, the bus had stopped right in front of him, as if he mattered way more than the other parents. Then the doors opened on Con coming down the stairs, followed closely by the rest of the team, looking glummer than usual. Max had texted her and just her last night. They’d made it all the way to the finals again, only to lose the big game.
But that lost would pale in comparison to Keane finding out the hockey phenom son he’d been so proud of had actually been born a girl.
Lena rushed as fast as she could in flip flops across the parking lot. But it felt like she was running in slow motion.
All too soon, Max came down the bus steps, laughing about something with Pavel, the only other hockey player who looked like him on the team.
But Max’s smile disappeared when he saw Keane at the bottom of the steps.
Keane said something she couldn’t hear to Con, then simply grabbed Max by the arm and took him away. Not toward the rest of the parking lot, though. In the opposite direction. Before Lena had even made it ten more rushed steps, they disappeared around the building.
Where was he taking Max? Lena’s mind nearly shut down with panic as she raced around the side of the building after them.
She found the two of them standing beside Keane’s Range Rover, parked in a space with his name written across a standing sign. Max with his head lowered, Keane laying in to him. “…you should have told me. I had to find out from that ass tool you used to call a dad!”
“Keane!” she said, running over to them. “You can’t—”
“No, you keep staying out of this, Lena. This is between me and Max!” he roared, his voice harsh with fury. “And you didn’t tell me either.”
No, she hadn’t told him, and she opened her mouth to tell him that this was why. Because he was a bully, who wouldn’t hesitate to yell at a child who’d already gone through enough with the man he’d thought was his father over the past couple of years.
But before she could answer, Keane bent down and got right up in Max’s face. “You think I’m like that prick? You think I give a shit what’s between your legs? You’re my kid. My kid. No matter what fucking team you skate for!”
Both Max and Lena stared at him wide-eyed, barely able to believe the extremely adamant words that had just come out of Keane’s mouth.
Max was the first to recover his voice. “R-really?” he asked, his expression transforming from one of fear to one of hope.
“No, not really,” Keane answered, screwing up his face. “Obviously if you ever start skating for the Montreal Snow Owls, you’re fucking dead to me. Like, cut off. Not getting another dime of my money in the will unless you come to your senses…don’t laugh, kid. I’m 100% fucking serious about that shit—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish that threat. Max threw himself at Keane, his arms wrapping tight around his neck.
Then he began sobbing when Keane did something Rohan hadn’t since he showed up to that work Christmas party dressed in a tux.
Hugged his little boy back.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“So…I was just reading on Wikipedia that the Hawks’ rivalry with the Montreal Snow Owls goes all the way back to the 1950s,” Lena said when she slipped into Keane’s second floor office, wearing a robe.
She’d just put their son to bed about an hour earlier than usual. Max had been both physically and emotionally exhausted after a day spent pouring his heart out to Keane. And Lena did mean pouring. She’d given them as much space as possible, throwing together some sandwiches for lunch and pre-making dinner, then closing herself up in her room to begin writing her DBT group therapy proposal for her practice back home. But when she’d come down to dinner Max was telling Keane about his decision to attend an all-boys hockey camp, with way more details than she ever provided to Lena.
Maybe because Keane was a different kind of listener from his mother. While she validated and offered emotional resources for this difficult journey Max was on, Keane jumped in with resolutions and compliments, Lena wouldn’t have known to offer.
“If that’s the kind of speed you get from starting out in figure skating classes, I’m going to tell Con to make it a requirement for our Tykes program,” he’d said over dinner. “But you’re going to have to start weight training if you want to keep up with the boys in Bantam,” he warned. “And I’m not going to lie, kid, you’re taller than most for a nine-year-old. But I’m worried about puberty.”
Which was how they got onto to the subject of the pros and cons of puberty blockers as it pertained to Max’s future hockey aspirations.
For the first time, she had been left out of a
discussion about her child’s gender dysphoria. And it had been hard for Lena not to cry. Not because she was upset, but because she felt so relieved to no longer be her son’s only defender in all of this.
She had been so wrong about Keane. So, so wrong. And it had made her heart ache as she watched them together. Because if she had been so wrong about how he’d respond to Max’s secret, what else had she been wrong about?
What if…she thought for the first time since returning to Boston…what if the bully she’d assumed him to be at his core was the façade, and the boy she’d met that summer, the crude but weirdly sweet guy whom she’d fallen for, was the real Keane?
She was thankful to Keane. Thankful for providing their son with a father figure even better than anything Max could have dreamed of on his own. She’d be more than happy to work out a reasonable custody agreement with him now. And that’s what she’d planned to say when she put on a silk robe, and sought Keane out in his office with that Wikipedia opener.
But instead of going into a foul-language froth over the Snow Owls, Keane just looked at her, his expression not nearly as open as it had been with their son at dinner.
“You should have told me,” he bit out. “You should have told me from the start.”
There were so many answers she could have given to defend her actions, both psychology-based and philosophical. But…
“I don’t care,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t care that our parental philosophies are really different. When it counted, when it really counted, you were such a great dad. And Max is so, so lucky to have you.”
His head jerked in surprise. She could tell he’d been expecting another fight from her. Especially when he quickly pasted over his confusion with a hard look, and said, “I’m serious. If you ever try to keep anything secret from me about my kid again—”
“How about this,” she said coming around to his side of the desk. She swiveled his chair around to face her and then let her robe fall open, revealing a particularly nasty piece of lingerie he’d bought her to wear for the last “beg” weekend. It looked like a lace swimsuit with two empty holes where the bra cups should be. “Since I’m on my period, I’ll give you a blowjob, and we’ll call it even.”
Keane: Her Ruthless Ex: 50 Loving States, Massachusetts Page 18