Debt, page 19
Neither of us answers.
“Have I misread things? Etiquette states that if you accept the drink you should accept the ensuing conversation as well.” Vera’s lip twitches up slightly.
The fire returns quickly to her eyes.
There’s a long moment before I see the decision appear on her face.
She scoots over. “C’mon, cowboy,” she says, making space for him. “Momma needs some company.”
Wall Street Man sits next to her and I can see Vera starting to smile wistfully.
“Where you ladies from?” he asks.
Ahhh, the good, safe question before we get down to business.
Vera answers him, and then answers on my behalf. It’s not long before his expression tells me that Vera’s hand is at least on his leg under the table, at least.
I smile at my best friend. “Meet you at the motel?” I say to her. Wall Street Man seems to get excited about my statement, maybe hoping he’ll get a threesome.
Vera grins at me. “Don’t wait up.”
I step out into the suburban street and wonder if the quietness I feel is because no one’s here, or if it’s my soul that’s quiet.
Logan has been on my mind the entire day, all week. Gut feel, or irrational fear from the past?
Matt and I never came to this particular bar, but we hit a few others in Suffolk. Matt liked the city, and often we’d drive out to Manhattan and he’d take me to something stylish like I was some princess. He knew all the moves. He was the guy I was Supposed To Be With and I can’t even remember if there had ever been any spark there between us. He was from a wealthy background, I was from a wealthy background. He was popular. We hooked up.
My feelings for him snuck up on me, but I see now that they were only there because he was the first one to take me to bed. Sex complicates things, especially when it’s your first time.
I pull out my phone, look at the messages again. Nothing.
Logan told me that if I never messaged him and told him it was over, he’d still have hope.
Maybe the woman he was with was just a friend. “Damn it,” I say aloud. I need to stop thinking of him, and I need to stop rationalizing what I know I saw. It was obvious, and she was dressed to get laid. I’m not going to make a bigger fool of myself by chasing him.
I jump into my car and head back to the motel, realizing it’s ridiculous that I don’t even feel comfortable sleeping in the house I grew up in only a few miles away, and that I’m not surprised my dad didn’t ask me to stay there even though I’m in town.
It’s just the way it’s always been.
-3-
This time the text I send is not a drunken one. I send the text because I’m desperate, because I’m alone in this motel and Vera’s out having a good time and I have nothing but the thoughts of me and Logan in a dark room, our bodies hot, and my emotions at a soar.
I feel like an idiot for doing it. I promised myself after Matt that I’d never let a guy hurt me again. But even the fact that I’m remembering these promises to myself must be progress, right?
I had buried that pain. And, before that, buried the pain of whatever happened to my mother.
Besides, I fucking miss him, damn it. I miss Logan. And I could sit here and be the jilted lover like I was with Matt, or I could at least give him a piece of my mind.
No, the text is not drunken. It’s lucid. And I’m pissed when I send it: You promised. I saw you with her in Denver. I think a long time before writing the final part, but I do. It’s over.
There, now it’s official.
I wait in vain for a response. But there’s nothing. And two hours later, still nothing. My eyes are locked on the phone’s screen until the early hours of the morning. Every now and then my eyes close, but not for long.
I plug the phone in to charge.
Still no message. Why would there be?
Vera walks in at about seven. I’m half-asleep, half-awake. She has a bright grin on her face. The I Got Laid Last Night by a God look. “Good night?” I say.
She falls back against the door and sighs. “Oh. My. God.” And then she inhales deeply. “I think I’m in love.”
~Twenty~
Kyla
-1-
Driving up to the mansion I grew up in sends needles through my stomach. I type in the eight-digit code at the gate and stick my thumb against the sensor. The tall gates start opening, jerking. It’s a bright day without a cloud in the sky and the house looks so goddamn perfect, which I think is what makes me hate it so much. How can so much sadness exist in something so beautiful?
Fortunately, the first person to see me isn’t my dad or Big Boobed Clarissa, it’s Amelia, and she’s smiling in such a heartfelt manner that a lump forms in my throat when I see her.
She runs down the stone steps and extends her arms to me, wrapping me in her tiny embrace. “Oh, Kyla, I am so happy to see you. Come! Come! I have prepared brunch for you. Your fahhder is running late. Oh, dis must be Vera. Hello, Vera!” Amelia lets me go and hobbles over to Vera whose face shows exactly what I’m feeling. Vera, this is the person who acted as my mom all my life. Amelia grabs Vera’s hand and pulls her to the steps. “Come. Come. I want to know all about your trip and who you met and....” She stops and looks at us conspiratorially. “...and all da gentlemen you met along da way.” Her brown eyes sparkle with excitement.
The brunch is a feast, spread out on a table outside by the pool. Amelia joins us and gets straight to the point. “So, tell me all of it.”
Vera smiles, looks over at me as if asking if Amelia’s cool to give all the dope to. I nod, my mood already lightening.
And then Vera begins...at the beginning. A guy called...she doesn’t remember...down in Georgia, our first overnight stop that had any fun in it. She hedges on a few details and Amelia snatches her wrist. “Honey, I am a fifty-seven year old widow and da only excitement I get is from da telenovelas. Now are you going to tell me what really happened or should I call Mr. Hensley to come and bore you to death?”
I chuckle.
Vera looks over at me again, uncertain of herself. “Hey, don’t look at me,” I say.
So then Vera really tells her, she tells her everything, and Amelia is locked on to every word, every lewd story (skipping the bedroom parts in detail, she doesn’t want to hear those), but she wants to know about the romance and the love and before I know it...Vera brings up Logan. And then she goes silent.
Amelia picks up on it straight away. Immediately.
She looks over at me, and I’m looking down at my plate of grapes and watermelon. “Ah,” she says softly. “Well, Kyla, if he is da one, he will come back to you. No worry.”
I don’t say anything, but the mood has changed, and Amelia notices again. “Well, my girls, I leave you two to have some fun in da sun. I insist dat you both stay for dinner, of course. I won’t take no for an answer. I can’t promise dat Mr. Hensley will be here, but dat only means I get to hear more about da rich country singer and da jewelry.”
Amelia grabs some plates despite my protests. She slaps my hand away and tells me it’s her job, and if she didn’t do it she’d die of boredom. “And I don’t plan on dying until you make me a grandmother,” she says to me. Then she looks at Vera. “And you!”
“Wow,” Vera says after Amelia is gone. “She’s awesome.”
“I know.”
“Man, I wish my mom was like that.”
The grape stops at my lips, then I force it in.
“Sorry,” Vera says.
“It’s cool. She kept me sane, for sure. So are you over Jake now?”
Vera’s eyes drift over to the pool. She doesn’t say anything, which means she’s not over him.
“I texted him,” I say. “I wanted to know what his intentions were with you.”
“And?”
“He didn’t answer.”
For a second, I think Vera might break into tears, but she doesn’t. “Asshole.”
“Maybe he hasn’t seen it yet.”
“When did you text him?”
“Before Derby.”
She rolls her eyes. “He definitely saw it. Dude has his phone on him all the time.”
I look at my plate, not sure what to say.
“Don’t worry about me,” Vera says.
“I do.”
“I know you do. But you don’t need to.”
But I do. “And Wall Street Man?”
Vera’s face brightens up, and then she starts telling me all about it.
My dad arrives about an hour later. Three PM. Five hours late. He strolls out into the pool area in a suit, undoes his tie and glares down at me. “You’re still here,” is the first thing he says to me. “Well...” He loosens his tie some more, looks out over the pool. “C’mon. Let’s get this over with.” He turns, and disappears into the house.
Never mind that he didn’t even acknowledge Vera.
Never mind that he didn’t even say hi, or how are you doing?, or nice to see you.
But I’m used to it.
I’m just glad Big Boobed Clarissa isn’t here, because I feel like hitting someone.
-2-
Dad sits back in his leather chair inside his pool-facing office. I hate this office. It’s his I’m Doing Business Now office, and I’m filled with memories of when I was still young, running in here enthusiastically only to be blasted and told I was disturbing him.
Then I would cry in Amelia’s arms.
He’s got a pen in his hand and smacks the desk a few times with it.
Dad’s a big man with white-speckled hair. He has that look which says Don’t Fuck With Me Or I’ll Eat You Alive. That’s the only look of his that I know. I wish he had an I’m Your Dad And I Love You look.
I feel nervous standing at the door of the big office. Dad has never struck me physically, and yet he instills the fear of God into me. I’ve never understood it.
I felt so brave when I sent that text. And now... And now... I’m a puddle, and all my resolve is gone.
“Well, are you just gonna stand there or are you going to extract this so-important information from me?” He taps his pen.
I wait at the door, fingers clasped in front of me. I have no idea how to say this, which probably means I should just say it. By now, I’m certain I’m not going to get the answers I need, so I might as well go all out. I’ll probably end up crying. Dad will probably end up shouting or throwing something.
What have I got to lose?
“I remembered something,” I say. “Something about...mom.”
His pen stops tapping for a moment, a long moment, and then it starts up again. “And?”
I swallow. “That she... I think she.... I remembered something about...drowning, dad. Something...”
The pen stops.
Something changes in dad’s face. He looks almost pale. The change in his demeanor is so violent, so sudden, that my knees start to feel weak.
Dad’s eyes flick down to the desk. His jaw tightens.
“Dad?”
He drops the pen, turns his chair so that its back is now facing me and he’s looking out the window.
“Dad?”
He says nothing, and I feel my body moving forward, unwilled by any conscious effort of mine, one foot moving in front of the other. “Dad, are you OK?”
“Honey,” he croaks. “Honey...just...give me a minute. Please.”
Honey. When did he ever call me honey?
I’m at his desk now, and I put my hand on the other chair, not willing to sit, but unable to fully support myself standing.
Dad’s head bows just slightly. He clears his throat. “What...what exactly...did you...remember?” He’s still looking out the window, the back of his chair still toward me.
I tell him. I tell him I remembered blood and there was a woman in the water and she was looking up at me and we were at a lakehouse and then I screamed and he picked me up...
I stop when I’m certain that the sound I hear from my father is a sob. Suppressed, yes. But a sob nonetheless.
Dad and I don’t have a hugging kind of relationship, and even now I’m fixed to my position, hand on the chair, his massive desk between us like some goliath. Still unsure if I’m welcome or not. So I don’t go over and hug him.
After a long while, he says, “What do you want to know from me.” It doesn’t sound like a question.
My hand grips the leather of the chair underneath it. “I want to know...if it’s true, dad.”
He lifts his head sharply, flips his seat around to face me. His eyes are red, but his face is hard again. He would never let me see it soft.
“No.”
“What?”
“Your mother didn’t drown in that lake.”
“But I...”
“It wasn’t your mother.”
So someone did drown. “But I was there.”
His eyes narrow, but I sense that if I don’t antagonize him, if I make him feel safe, if I don’t play the Bitch Card, I might actually get the answers I came here for. “Yes,” he finally says. “Y...” And then his lips tremble. He flips his chair again and clears his throat a few more times.
I don’t ask him who it was.
“Her name was Claudine,” he says. “Claudine Gosse. And she was my lover. And your mother’s best friend.”
-3-
He turns to face me, and by this time I’ve maneuvered myself into the other chair. I had been too stunned by his statement to stay standing anymore.
“She was your mother’s best friend. And I had an affair with her. And then she died. And your mother left us.”
He stares at me. No details. Nothing. Nothing at all.
I wait for more, but it doesn’t come. “Is that all?” I ask.
“It’s more than you need to know, Kyla. She was no concern of yours. She was...” He composes himself again. “I loved her. Honestly, I loved her more than the woman who gave birth to you. In the end, I ended up losing them both.”
I grip the sides of the chair tight because the room is spinning so violently I think I might fall. “What—what happened?”
He waits a bit, pondering, thinking, wondering if he should answer. “We don’t know. No one knows. You were with her. The only one who can answer that is you.”
Is that why you hate me so much? Because I can’t tell you how your lover died? Or is it because you think I could have saved her?
I look down at my lap.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says, as if convincing himself.
“Of course it wasn’t my damn fault. I was three or four.”
“Three,” he says. “Three and a half. You were in hysterics. But there was no blood. So maybe it will take time for the memories to return to you more accurately. But you were there, and you blocked it from your mind. I never told you about your mother because...because I was afraid it might jolt something inside you that you weren’t ready to face.
“And as the years went by... Well...
“There was no water in Claudine’s lungs. She died of heart failure. There were no drugs. No signs of struggle. Cardiac arrest, it seems. For a woman that young? The doctors were stumped. Maybe...” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter, Kyla. It’s in the past. It happened. It’s over. And we survived.”
“Where was mom?” I ask, perhaps too quickly, but my mind is reeling, spinning.
Dad looks away. “In France,” he says. “Visiting her family. Claudine was here. We went up to Maine for a weekend. And, well... Maribelle returned quickly after she heard the news. She was down about it, but I was inconsolable. She had always known about us two, it’s impossible for her not to have known. Nonetheless, she made a big show of tearing it out of me, of getting me to confess to her. And then...” His eyes flick down.
“She left,” I finish for him.
“Yes.” Dad’s voice is a whisper.
“She left...me,” I think out loud.
His eyes flick up to me. “Us.”
“Do you blame me?” Again, not thinking, just talking. Too much to take in, too much for me to remain quiet.
Dad doesn’t answer right away. Then he shakes his head. “No one is to blame, Kyla.”
“You do blame me, don’t you?”
He grinds his jaw, looks over at the bar on his right. “You were three,” he says. “You were probably playing with a ladybug or something. I just...” He stands, moves over to the bar. “Never mind.”
What can I say? He hopes I had called someone. He hopes I had heard a goddamn splash or something. He hopes...his lover would still be alive if I had, I don’t know, jumped in and freaking saved the woman...at three years old.
I have no defense for that, none at all.
I stand, and I’m about to leave, but then dad does something he’s never done before, ever. And it’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to him telling me he loves me, but I’m OK with that.
He offers me a drink.
“Here,” he says, hand outstretched, crystal glass in hand, half-full with whiskey. Half-full.
The gesture is too kind for me not to feel emotional about it, and as I grab the glass, I’m looking at the floor, trying to will my chin to stop moving because my father has never so much as given me an embrace worth anything, but here he’s offering me a drink, an adult’s drink, and the gesture says this: Stay. Don’t go yet.
I down it all in one shot, just to take the edge off, just to stop feeling so shaky.
Dad does the same, pours himself another. He nods at my glass, asking if I want more.
Hell yeah. My eyes are wanting to burst with tears so bad that my glands are starting to hurt.
He fills my glass, we touch glasses, and we down them both again. Stand there. Wait. “I know I’ve been a shitty father,” he says.
Oh, shit, now I’m really gonna cry.
“I know I have. And...” He bows his head. “There’s nothing I can do to fix that. I fucked up. I fucked up, Kyla. And then the fuck-ups grew and grew and grew until eventually I didn’t even know why I hated you. Truth is, I never hated you, I hated myself for thinking you could have done a single goddamn thing about that tragedy. But it became a pattern, treating you badly. And then I reached a point where it became irreparable, which only made it worse.” He bows his head, pours another drink. “I never loved your mother,” he says. “Factually, I don’t think she loved me, either. She was young. She was...” He looks over at me. “She was younger than you are now when I met her. Nineteen. Fickle. And she and her friend...” He turns so his full body is facing me. And his eyes dart over to the old leather couches at the end of the office.
