by C. C. Piper
She’d witnessed how distant my parents had been with me, how little they cared. The business had always outranked their son in every way that mattered. It still did. There was nothing like knowing that the two people you’re supposed to be able to count on most would uproot you at the drop of a hat, and all for the sake of the company’s bottom line.
Sometimes, I hated money.
If I could give up every penny of it just to have the girl I loved back, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Especially now that all that cold hard cash had corrupted her against me.
As my driver drove me home, I peered out at the city. Night had fallen, and certain structures like the blue Superdome, Gallier Hall and St. Louis Cathedral had been lit. New Orleans was significantly smaller than London. My hometown had less traffic, fewer skyscrapers and a wholly different kind of urbane sensibility.
After spending four and a half years blaming my loneliness and depression on the fact that I’d been forced away from my country of origin, it was tremendously disillusioning to find out that I felt just as lonely and depressed here as I did there.
The only relief I’d found there had been in the form of the occasional one-night stand while scoping out this underground club I’d discovered. It catered to people like me, people with similar sexual appetites. But I hadn’t indulged in that for several months before my departure. It never satisfied me on the most fundamental of levels. The only thing that ever had was sex with Roxy. Probably because it had been more than sex.
Or, it had been for me, anyway.
My driver parked in the attached garage, opened my door, then headed for the house to unlock the deadbolt. I followed behind him, my mind replaying every recent moment I’d shared with Roxy over the past couple of weeks, the good, the bad and the ugly. But then I veered off. Waving at him in dismissal, I wandered around the grounds, terraces, and interconnected patios taking in the surroundings.
When a pair of fuzzy black ears emerged from some shrubbery, I knelt down in an attempt to pet the feline. He let me, which gave me some encouragement. “You’re a good kitty, aren’t you, boy? What do you think of me calling you Midnight, huh?” Recalling that I’d left a bowl full of tuna near my front door, I carried him toward it. “You hungry? You want more to eat?”
I reached for my keys to go inside when I saw the piece of paper flutter to the ground. I knelt over to retrieve it, expecting it to be a reminder to vote in the local election, an invitation to a church, or maybe some junk mail. I was wrong on all counts, though.
The paper wound up being a note written in the heartbreakingly familiar script of Roxanne Miller. It’d been folded into quarters with my name on the outside. Memories of happier times accosted me, and for a moment, I simply held it, not wanting the present to tarnish what had been. Then, note in one hand and cat in the other, I stepped inside. Letting out a breath, I unfolded the paper to read:
Jax,
While I understand that finding out about Callie must be shocking for you after all this time, I swear to you that it is also the truth. Once you see her with your own eyes, any doubts you may have will be erased, I promise. I didn’t tell you this to make your life more difficult, I told you because every little girl needs her father, and I thought you should know about the beautiful child we created together.
Call me at 504-555-2223 and we’ll make an appointment for you to meet her. Our address is 111 Bayou Road, apartment D.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Roxy
I read the note at least ten times, memorizing every word. Seeing that piece of paper took me back to simpler times, times when as long as I could be with Roxy, all was right with the world.
Midnight squirmed in my grasp, and I put him down to explore. I stared unfocused into space, surprised that Roxy felt willing to take things so far. Still, I could admit to being intrigued. Didn’t she realize that I would test her? That I’d check the veracity of her claim but only on my own timetable? I glanced at my watch and absorbed how late it was. Too late for a visit. But I would go as soon as it would be feasible.
I headed up the stairs, deciding to drop by her apartment tomorrow, if for no other reason than to put an end to this charade. I’d be ready for her, for any misdirections or sleight of hand. This could be the last time I ever stood face to face with Roxy. Everything between us would likely be over after this. And even though nothing had happened yet, I felt this sense of grief washing over me.
Whatever transpired over on Bayou Road, I hoped I’d at least have some closure.
This next morning, I texted Roxy and asked her if I could stop in. Since she stated that she was available for the next two hours, I had my driver take me by her apartment. The complex looked to be middle-class, clean and nice but without the trappings of wealth I was so familiar with. I didn’t know what I would encounter today, but I’d been antsy and unable to sleep all night.
Could that be a bad omen?
I had the driver pull into a space in the lot that wasn’t right in front of 111-D. I spent a few moments observing the environs first. When nothing seemed visibly off, I unlatched my seatbelt to get out, then halted in my tracks.
The door to the apartment had opened and a child in a purple dress and metallic tennis shoes had bolted outside, pigtails flying. Her hair was dark and her frame slight. I froze as I scrutinized her, struck by a memory of a photo I’d seen of myself at the same age. It was like looking at a female version of my childhood self, nearly identical.
One moment I was in the car staring out the window and the next I’d traversed the parking lot and was halfway across the grassy area where the little girl skipped along in front of her mother. I had no memory of getting out or moving at all, and I couldn’t have taken my eyes off that child if I wanted to. Only once I was within ten feet of her did she speak.
“Hello,” she said in a high-pitched kid’s voice, then her mouth curved upward in a perfect replica of Roxy’s smile.
I fell to my knees before her, struck speechless. She had my eyes exactly. My eyes, my hair, the shape of my face, even her hands were smaller, more feminine versions of my own. Her nose was Roxy’s and so were those bow-shaped lips, which left me with some unavoidable conclusions. Either my parents had procreated again recently or Roxy had been telling me the truth from the get-go.
This child belonged to me.
“This is the friend Mommy told you about,” Roxy said, kneeling on the girl’s other side. “His name is Jax.”
“Jaxxx,” the child said, drawing out the consonant sound at the end.
“Jax, this is Calliope Jacqueline Miller.”
“I go by Callie for short,” she volunteered, blinking up at me. I could barely breathe.
“H-hi,” I stuttered out, having difficulty making my mouth work. Hell, nothing seemed to work. I was having an out of body experience. “Hi, Callie.”
“Wanna play?” she asked me.
“Um, maybe later. You go ahead, okay?”
Seemingly unaffected, Callie crossed to a small plastic tub that looked like a green turtle.
“You got it?” Roxy asked her, just as the girl shoved the lid free. Roxy’s next words were directed at me even though her eyes never left her daughter. “She’s getting so big. She’s never been able to take the cover off all by herself ’til now.”
“Jesus Christ, Roxy,” my voice hitched, and I had to pause a second before I could go on. “I…” I trailed off, my gaze following every move my daughter made.
My daughter.
Our daughter.
The thought made my chest constrict again. Callie plopped down into the sand, unearthing a miniature plastic shovel from its depths before digging a hole.
“She’s incredible, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. Yeah, she really is,” I agreed.
Callie began to sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and my vision blurred. I blinked, then flinched back a bit when Roxy drew a finger under my eye, removing a drop of moisture. Then, for the first time
since I’d arrived, I met the eye of the mother of my child. “I’m so so sorry, Roxy.”
But instead of shooting daggers in my direction, she offered me a wistful grin. “I’m sorry that you’re just now meeting her.”
“I’m confused. When did she… How did this…” I sputtered, not making any sense. I was so goddamned overwhelmed.
“Shhhh. I’m more than happy to tell you, you know.” Roxy took a deep breath. “When you disappeared, I was six weeks along but didn’t realize it.”
“But we always used condoms,” I said, knowing it didn’t matter now but needing to make sense of the sequence of events.
“I know. But condoms aren’t one hundred percent. They’re ninety-eight percent effective when used properly, so either we didn’t use them properly every time or we’re part of that lucky fraction that gets pregnant anyway.” Her line of sight dropped to the ground where we sat, her fingers weaving through a patch of clover as if hunting for a shamrock. “I called your cell phone over and over, you know. Then, I called your parents’ phone, too.”
“They confiscated my cell before my flight to London, though I don’t know why my parents wouldn’t answer their landline. Especially considering the importance of the news you were sharing.” I felt a flash of anger toward my mom and dad. They’d never made a secret out of the fact that they didn’t like my girlfriend. But ignoring her messages was going too far.
“I never said what was wrong in the message. Not specifically. I wanted you to know before anyone else. Then, my mom met a guy and shipped me off to my aunt Beverly’s house over in Baton Rouge so she could go off with him. I stayed with my aunt through the course of the pregnancy. Then, I had some trouble and delivered early. Callie weighed a little under five pounds when she was born. She was a month and a half early. She had some breathing problems and had to be in the NICU for a few weeks, but thankfully, she pulled through.”
Staggered by all this, I scrubbed a hand through my hair. Roxy had been forced to cope with what sounded like endless amounts of trauma without me.
“I’ll definitely be addressing this issue with my mom,” I told her. “Because of her and my dad, they have a grandchild they haven’t met. Now Dad’ll never get to meet her. But I swear on my life that everything I told you about attempting to contact you is true, too. As soon as I could, I called your cell phone number. I had it memorized. Hell, I still do.” I recited it back to her just to check.
She nodded her confirmation, looking both bemused and relieved. “That’s it. And I kept that number for several months, too. But I didn’t receive those calls, Jax. I didn’t receive your letters, either.”
“You believe me now, though, right? That I wrote you? That I called you?”
“I believe you,” she whispered, her voice sounding raspy as she nodded again.
“If I’d had any idea about this, I wouldn’t have let my dad drag me to London. I would’ve physically fought him first.” I’d considered it, even then.
Her eyes were wet, too. “I don’t know what happened with the phones or the mail, but I was heartbroken. I thought you didn’t want me anymore.”
“I did. I so did. You were everything to me, Rox. My entire universe.” My thumb brushed at her tears, which now fell hard and fast. Touching her face like this, and having her touch mine, made the ten-foot thick wall around my heart crack open for the first time in years. It took me a second to speak, but I had to prompt her. I needed to know the rest of the story. “So you had the baby while at your aunt’s, and Callie was too tiny to leave the hospital?”
“Yes. She was underweight. And she stayed sickly after that, too. Callie had a lot of lung infections, respiratory stuff like bronchitis and once, pneumonia. Her pediatrician says that’s common for preemies. She’s done better over this past year, though. She may always be at risk, but she’s holding her own.”
The thought occurred to me that Callie could’ve died, and I might not have ever known anything about it. Guilt descended over me. “I shouldn’t have quit trying to reach you. I should’ve kept going. The only reason I didn’t was because I thought you wanted to make some sort of clean break.”
But she didn’t. Roxy and Callie had both been suffering, struggling. And if I’d known, I could have been there. Our story could have turned out so much better. I was astonished to see Roxy smile through her tears.
“So, what you’re telling me is I thought you were cutting me out of your life, and you thought I was doing the same to you,” she surmised.
“That about covers it, sounds like.” What a complete travesty. “What went down after you left your aunt’s? How long have you been back here?”
“Couple of years now. My mom appeared from out of nowhere in Baton Rouge one day – without the dude she left with – and said it was time to come back with her. You know how she is.”
I did. She’d done this before, gone off with no warning in the company of some random guy. Once, when Roxy and I were seniors in high school, she did it for two months straight, leaving her to fend for herself. I’d liked it at the time because it meant we could have nonstop sex without fear of interruption. Now, as I looked back at it from a more adult perspective, I registered just how irresponsible her mother’s abandonment truly was.
“You been raising Callie here ever since. Right?”
“Yes.”
I’d already broached this subject and knew it to be sensitive. But I had to bring it up again. “That’s why you became a…an escort, isn’t it? To support Callie.”
“Mostly, yes. But I’m just an escort, Jax. I go on dates, but it’s with these little old geezers, some of whom have dementia.” She lowered her voice enough that our daughter couldn’t make it out. “I honestly don’t think they could get it up if they tried.”
“But-”
She interrupted me, “But nothing. I’ve done what I’ve had to for Callie’s sake, and I don’t regret any of it. Being a good mother to her is the only thing that matters, even if it did mean I’d have to have sex with strangers. So you can wipe that look off your face. You don’t get to judge me either way.”
I clenched my jaw, but I couldn’t give in to my temper. Too much was at stake. And as much as I hated to admit it, Roxy was right. She was a grown woman with a child, and we’d been apart for nearly five years. Despite the link that Callie represented between us, I held no sway over Roxy herself. Even if imagining her sleeping with men for money – geezers or not – made me nauseous.
“But let me say this again. I don’t exchange sex for money, Jax. I never have and never will. I’m sure some of the Wish Maker’s escorts do, but I choose not to. I told her I would work for her only under the condition that there would be absolutely no sexual contact. I’m a mom, and I didn’t want to go off and gallivant around the French Quarter as a whore.”
Part of me was relieved. I believed her. Maybe I’d been freaking out about something that wasn’t even happening. It didn’t mean she’d been celibate over all these years, but then, I hadn’t been, either. I still didn’t like the idea of her being an escort but picturing her going on sexless dates was a lot easier to stomach than the alternative. A whole lot easier.
Granted, everything I’d learned today made me feel like someone had thrown me down about fifty flights of stairs, rocketed me up into space and then slammed me back to Earth again. I might have looked the same on the outside, but inwardly, everything about my existence had shifted.
Dramatically.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked her, knowing this was the most pertinent question. So much of my future hinged on her answer.
“Forward.”
11
Roxanne
The day that Jax saw Callie for the first time changed everything. What had felt so difficult or even impossible between us, became eclipsed by the fact that we had this child together. Our old wounds might have still been there but acknowledging that neither of us had been responsible for inflicting them altered the way we saw o
ne another.
Other than the fact that his parents didn’t like me, and that my mother was about as constant as the Louisiana weather, we didn’t know the full extent of the circumstances that had pushed us apart. But right now, those circumstances didn’t matter. What mattered was that Jax and I needed to get along well enough so that we could both be parents to Callie.
Not that I had any plans for us to rekindle what we’d lost. That ship had sailed long ago. But if we could become friends, it’d make our daughter’s upbringing easier. All I wanted was for her to be as content as possible and to know she was supported. And I’d do anything to make that happen.
The weeks passed, and before I knew it, Halloween had come and gone. New Orleans loved that season, loved the ghosts and ghouls, loved its ties to voodooism and the occult. Jax and I had taken Callie trick or treating together. When I asked her what she wanted to be this year, we’d been in Target looking through their costumes. I’d expected her to choose one like she had for the past two years, but this time, she didn’t.
“I want to be a spooky flutterby,” she declared.
“Do you mean butterfly?”
“Yes, a flutterby.”
Okie dokie. One problem, though. I didn’t see any spooky butterfly costumes. I’d shared this concern with her father.
“Can one be made?” Jax asked me, as we watched her play on the living room floor with her two favorite dolls. She changed their diapers, burped them and cradled them, rocking them simultaneously in her skinny arms.
“I don’t have very good seamstress skills.”
“We could always hire it done.”
Unfortunately, this was Jax’s answer all too often. Something’s wrong? Let’s buy a solution. It felt like some weird game show. Would you like to buy a vowel and solve the puzzle? Why yes, yes I would. It frustrated me to no end and had led to frequent arguments between the two of us. Mainly because I didn’t have the funds to produce that kind of result.