Love Sold Separately

by Ellen Meister

  18

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love her nephew. She did—with all her heart. But Dana had a hard time imagining any place she would less rather be on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in early May than a birthday party filled with screaming four-year-olds, judgmental suburban moms and a certain retired neurosurgeon she shared DNA with. And so she succumbed to an impulse to make the day less disagreeable. She invited Lorenzo and his daughter. To her delight, he said yes.

  Lorenzo had a car—a ten-year-old Honda—so the three of them headed out to Long Island, with the grown-ups in the front and Sophia strapped into her car seat in the back. As they crossed the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, the skyline behind them, Dana opened her window to the breeze off the East River. It came in valiant puffs, as if fighting to scrub the air of car exhaust. She tried to relax, settling into the notion that the party might not be so bad.

  When she called, Lorenzo had insisted he wasn’t thinking about the urine test. “Whatever happens, happens,” he had said, as if he was at peace with it. She knew that couldn’t be true. He had to be roiling with turmoil over the possibility that he could wind up back in jail. But he seemed to be someone who could cram all his anxiety into a neat little compartment while he went about his life in brisk, tense motions. It seemed to work for him, so she wasn’t going to rock his precarious lifeboat. She would simply follow his lead.

  Sophia was a darling child, with a head full of frizzy caramel curls and a pair of pink eyeglasses bridged on a wide little nose. Lorenzo’s competence with the mechanics of fatherhood touched Dana, and her heart ached as she watched him help his tiny girl into the car seat, patient but firm, securing the straps with expertise. He handed her a juice box from a navy canvas shoulder bag, then gave her sneakered foot an affectionate squeeze before shutting the car door.

  Dana blinked against her burning eyes. The drug test simply had to come back negative. This man needed to be with his daughter.

  “You okay back there?” Dana asked the little girl.

  “I’m hungry,” she said.

  Dana looked at Lorenzo. “Cheerios,” he said, nodding toward the bag at Dana’s feet. “In a green container.”

  Dana took off the lid and passed it to Sophia, trading it for the half-empty juice box. The girl grasped it happily and went to work picking up the tiny circles with practiced dexterity.

  “Mind if I get the Mets score?” Lorenzo asked, reaching for the radio.

  She didn’t, and so they rode for a while listening to the game. When the team was down by three runs, he shut it off.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “No mood for a bloodbath.”

  She took a breath. “I guess this would be a bad time to tell you my father’s going to be at the party.”

  “Does he have a mean fast ball?”

  “He has a mean everything.”

  Lorenzo glanced in his rearview mirror and changed lanes. “As long as he’s unarmed, I’m good.”

  Dana turned to look into the back seat and saw that Sophia was fast asleep, her little fingers still inside the Cheerios container.

  Relaxing into a slump, Dana pushed her knees up against the dashboard. “You can tell him to go fuck himself, for all I care,” she said, softly enough to keep her voice from traveling to the back seat.

  He laughed. “I think you’d like that.”

  “I’d pay cash money for it.” She looked out the window, imagining her father’s chagrin at the sight of her with a tattooed ex-con and his out-of-wedlock child. And with his new girlfriend there, he’d be especially dismayed. It warmed Dana—this thought of bedeviling her father and his narrow-minded expectations.

  She gave Lorenzo directions to the house, and when they turned the last corner it was clear the party was already under way, as a line of luxury SUVs beaded the length of the winding block. Lorenzo parked behind a Lincoln Navigator just as a stylishly dressed couple emerged with a squirmy boy in tow. While the wife held on to the child, the husband pulled a massive, professionally wrapped gift from the trunk—complete with a cellophane overlay on which someone had expertly painted Wesley’s name in circus-y capital letters. Yes, it was going to be one of those parties.

  Lorenzo turned off the ignition and the three of them exited the Honda with their own small gift—a set of puzzles Dana thought Wesley would love—and headed for the backyard. Dana opened the gate on the white PVC fence and was barely three steps inside the plush green yard when she was nearly tackled by a small child who wrapped her legs in a hug. Dana laughed and knelt down until her face was on eye level with Wesley’s. She gave him a kiss.

  “It’s my birthday,” he said.

  “Yes,” she responded, “it’s all over CNN.”

  “But my real birthday’s tomorrow.”

  “And you’re turning what? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?”

  “Four.” He focused hard on the fingers he held up.

  She introduced him to Lorenzo and Sophia. The girl responded by pulling on her father’s pants leg and pointing to an inflated bouncy castle in the far corner of the lawn. “Can I go there?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said, and Wesley and Sophia ran off together.

  Dana surveyed the backyard. The lush landscape had been divided into sections—grown-ups on the right, kids on the left. In addition to the bouncy castle, the children’s area had face-painting, a minicarousel and a guy on stilts making balloon animals. A woman in some kind of action hero costume led a group of earnest kids in the chicken dance. The children’s tables had blue covers and in the center of each was a large plastic action figure that served as the anchor for a bouquet of red, green and yellow helium balloons.

  The other side of the yard was more sophisticated, but almost as colorful. Mexican serapes served as table runners, and cacti in varying shapes and sizes served as centerpieces. Dana realized, with a heart-heavy feeling, that the theme for the adult side of this very white suburban party was Cinco de Mayo.

  She spotted a table for the gifts, and deposited Wesley’s present before taking Lorenzo’s hand and scanning the crowd for her sister or brother-in-law.

  “Just to be clear,” Lorenzo said, ogling the scene, “this is a four-year-old’s birthday party?”

  “Welcome to Long Island,” she said.

  He gave her hand a squeeze. “Olé.”

  She heard her name called and turned to see her father sitting under an umbrella at one of the serape tables. Next to him was a thin, fortysomething woman with thick, chemically straightened brown hair and a nose job. She could have been one of Chelsea’s friends or neighbors, but Dana decided it had to be Dr. Jennifer Lafferty. They had drinks in front of them. Margaritas, Dana surmised.

  “I saw you walk in with the little girl,” Dana’s father said as she bent to give him a half embrace. “You looked like part of the crowd.”

  She stared at him a moment until his expression registered. It was...approving. She glanced around at the other partygoers and understood. She had dressed up for the occasion in black skinny jeans and a stylish spring top, while Lorenzo had sacrificed his denim jacket for a loose plaid shirt, rolled up at the sleeves. Dana hadn’t realized it, but they actually blended in. Even the tattoos didn’t make Lorenzo stand out. She could see at least two other men with inked forearms, and one well-toned woman with a barbed wire tatt around her biceps. Entering the backyard, her trio looked like just another suburban family trying not to look like just another suburban family.

  Here she was, trying to piss off her father, and she had done the exact opposite—showed up looking like the perfect daughter he had always wanted her to be. She hated that this actually made him happy. If he couldn’t love her for who she really was, he could take his approval and stick it where the perfectly manicured grass didn’t grow.

  “Dad, this is Lorenzo,” Dana said. “Lorenzo, this is my fa
ther, Kenneth.”

  Her father hated being introduced by his first name, and gave her a reproving look. “This is Dr. Lafferty,” he said, putting a hand on his girlfriend’s back.

  “Jennifer, please,” the woman corrected, extending her hand. “I’ve heard such nice things about you, Dana.”

  “You must be confusing me with my sister,” Dana said with enough of a smile to show she was, more or less, kidding.

  “She met Chelsea earlier,” her father said.

  Dana sighed. He never got her jokes. Ever.

  “Congrats on the new job,” Jennifer said. “I hear you’re a star on the Shopping Channel.”

  Dana looked from Jennifer to her father, and wondered if he had actually used that word—star. Not possible, she decided. Still, if he had told this woman about Dana’s new job with any kind of pride...well, that was something.

  “I’ve only been there a week,” Dana said, smiling graciously, “so certainly not a star. But thank you.”

  “And what a way to start, right?” Jennifer said, her face concerned. “I saw that murder covered on the news. Must have been shocking.”

  Dana and Lorenzo shared a look.

  Jennifer leaned forward. “Were you there?”

  Lorenzo cleared his throat. “Unfortunately,” he said.

  “Kind of a front row seat,” Dana added. “We...discovered the body.”

  Jennifer’s mouth opened. “Did you know this?” she said to Kenneth.

  “She never told me,” he said.

  “Yeah, well. It must have slipped my mind during one of our lengthy heart-to-hearts,” Dana said.

  Jennifer seemed to register the sarcasm, but she kept the conversation on track. “You poor things,” she said. “That must have been traumatic.”

  Dana wasn’t eager to open up about the horror of what they had witnessed, and was saved from the necessity of responding by her sister, who approached with a squeal.

  “There you are!” she said, wrapping Dana in a hug.

  “Just got here,” Dana said.

  “What do you think?” Chelsea asked, indicating the entirety of the party with a flourish.

  Dana focused on the adult tables. “When does the mariachi band arrive?”

  “Too much?” Chelsea said. “Is it the serapes?”

  “It might be the upside down sombreros as cactus planters,” Dana said.

  “I was going for festive. You think it’s culturally insensitive?”

  “I don’t know,” Dana said. “Why don’t you ask one of your Mexican friends, like, um...” She pretended to look around.

  “Don’t be funny.”

  “Sorry. I know you hate it when I’m sarcástico.”

  “And to think I was just bragging to Jennifer about my wonderful baby sister the superstar.”

  Of course, Dana thought. It had been Chelsea and not her father who had been talking her up. That made more sense.

  She introduced her sister to Lorenzo and they shook hands.

  “Where’s Brandon?” Dana asked, referring to Chelsea’s husband.

  “He’s back there,” she said, pointing. “Supervising that bouncy thing.”

  Dana turned to Lorenzo. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll introduce you.”

  Kenneth stopped them. “Not so fast,” he said to Dana. “I didn’t even get a chance to talk to you and your young man.”

  “You want to talk to us?” Dana asked, wondering if this was his way of convincing his girlfriend that he actually did have heart-to-hearts with his youngest daughter. Dana wanted to tell him she was pretty sure Jennifer was too smart to buy it.

  Kenneth folded his arms. “I’m sure he’d like to tell me what he does for a living.”

  Oh God, Dana thought. Here it comes. The Kenneth Barry scrutiny.

  “I’m an audio engineer,” Lorenzo replied, and Dana almost wished he had said “sound guy,” which would have rankled her father enough to show his true colors.

  “That’s what my nephew does,” Jennifer said, smiling. She turned to Kenneth. “I understand it’s a very competitive field.”

  “Is that right?” Kenneth said, as if he didn’t quite believe it.

  “Highly skilled,” Jennifer explained, and he took it in with a nod as they shared a look. To Dana, it was clear he respected his girlfriend’s opinion, and now that Lorenzo’s profession had Dr. Lafferty’s seal of approval, Dr. Barry could accept it.

  Dana studied Jennifer. The woman wasn’t as awkward as she had expected. In fact, she was socially adept, and Dana wondered what she saw in her father.

  “I’d like to check on Sophia,” Lorenzo said.

  Dana nodded at him and turned back to the table. “See you later.”

  “Can’t you sit down for a minute?” Kenneth asked. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.” He paused. “It’s important.”

  Dana wished she could dismiss the request, but something about her father’s expression told her he was serious. She sighed and turned to Lorenzo. “Okay if I catch up with you in a bit?”

  He gave her arm an encouraging squeeze and set off. Dana pulled out a chair and sat.

  “I made a decision about something,” her father began. “And I think you’ll be glad to hear it.”

  “Decision?” She wondered if it was something major. Was he getting married? Moving to Arizona? Getting Dr. Jennifer Lafferty to transplant a real human heart into his chest?

  “I’m going to pay off your college loans.”

  “Huh?”

  “I did it for Chelsea and now I’m going to do it for you.”

  He sat back, beneficent and satisfied, and Dana felt the heat rising in her face. She thought of all those months when she was so strapped for cash she sweated when she swiped her ATM card at the bodega, worried her balance had run too low for groceries. Normally, she didn’t resent the sacrifices. After all, it was her choice to pursue such an unstable career. Except when she thought about the fact that her father was trying to teach her a lesson by paying back her wealthy sister’s student loans and not hers. Then she resented it like hell.

  “I’m making good money now, Dad,” she said through her teeth.

  “Yes, I know. I want to reward you for that.”

  “Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to make those payments every month?”

  “I think so.”

  “And you enjoyed the fact that I was suffering for my choices.”

  “It was good for you. It built character.”

  “Newsflash,” she said. “My character didn’t need that much building.” She thought back to the humiliation of telling a cashier at the supermarket that she didn’t want the tampons when she realized that her coupon had been for a different brand. The weird look she got from a casting director when he noticed that the scuff marks on her shoes had been colored over with marker. The embarrassment of getting caught stuffing rolls into her purse on a date. She also thought about the time she had been so desperate she almost stole a hundred dollars from an old man on Forty-Seventh Street.

  “Didn’t do you any harm,” he said. “Look where you are now.”

  “Seriously? You’re taking credit for my success?”

  “You might want to keep the attitude in check. I’m offering you thousands of dollars.”

  Dana considered that for a moment. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “What if Lorenzo wasn’t an audio engineer? What if he was the guy who swept the floors?”

  Kenneth tented his fingers. “I’m pleased that he’s not.”

  “But if he was,” she pressed, “would you still be offering me the money?”

  Kenneth and Jennifer shared another look. “Moot point,” he said.

  “It isn’t to me.”

  “Dana, don’t be a child.”

  “An
d what if I was dating an ex-con?” she asked.

  “But you’re not,” he said.

  She let out a breath. There was no sense in telling her father the truth. For all she cared, he could believe whatever he wanted. “Just to be crystal clear,” she said. “You’re agreeing to pay off my student loans because I’m involved with a man you approve of?”

  “That’s only part of it,” he said.

  She stood up. “Thanks, anyway, Dad.”

  “You’re not seriously turning down my offer.”

  “Why don’t you give the money to charity? That is, if you can find one that benefits privileged children.” She pushed in her chair. “I’m going to find Lorenzo.”

  “You know,” her father said, “when I saw you walk in with him, I thought maybe you were growing up. I guess that was wishful thinking.”

  “Lorenzo will be thrilled he has your approval.”

  “Don’t be so dismissive. The man seems like a solid citizen. That’s important, Dana. You should make a real effort this time.”

  Like you did with Mom? she wanted to ask, but held back for Jennifer’s sake. The woman didn’t deserve to get caught in their hail of old grievances.

  But her father deserved that and more for insinuating that all Dana’s failed relationships were her fault. She took some comfort that her father had called Lorenzo a “solid citizen,” because if he knew the truth it would shatter him. She glared at her father, deciding whether to tell him about Lorenzo’s past.

  “Can’t change my stripes, Dad,” she said. “But thanks for the relationship advice.”

  She turned to walk away, and Kenneth called after her, “What will you do when he leaves you?”

  Dana stopped. She knew she could let it go, keep moving. So what if her father believed Lorenzo was a good catch and that she barely deserved him?

  But she could feel his judgmental eyes burning into her, and couldn’t take it. She turned back to him. “Don’t worry, Dad, Lorenzo can’t go that far.” Dana paused for effect. “At least, not without reporting to his parole officer.”

  19

  “I have a message from Lorenzo DeSantis,” Ollie said to Dana on Monday morning.