He looked bleak. “I don’t know. You really don’t have it? I’m asking for a loan, not a gift,” he explained. I shook my head again. I knew all about “loans” to Ty, as did everyone else in his circle of family and friends. Over the years, all of us had kissed our money goodbye as we gave him “loans.” “You don’t know anyone who you could get it from, all these rich people you hang with now?” he asked me.
I gulped, because I did know people who could give me money, but the answer was still no. “I’m not going to beg for you,” I told him instead of answering directly. “You see where I live, how I live. We’re just getting by, and I save for Nola’s future. I want more for her than what we had, Ty. Nola’s amazing. She can do anything she wants with her life.”
Just for a moment, I saw his face change. “She’s smart like you, I bet. Smart and pretty like her mother.”
I almost laughed. “Even if you bullshit me—”
His face got very serious. “It’s not bullshit. You’ve always been something, JoJo. You always got me going. I couldn’t keep my hands off you.”
No. No! Jolie, don’t fall for this. “You managed to leave me, though. Me and our baby. Remember?”
He ignored that. “Even when you were a chubby little freshman in high school, you were the smartest one there, and you always had that pretty face. Once you lost the weight everyone could see it.” His eyes perused me. “You’re looking really, really good.”
I squirmed. “Thanks, I guess, except for the chubby remark.”
“The little girl’s asleep, right?”
“No. No! I’m not going to screw you. Jesus! How hard up do you think I am?” I followed his eyes around my apartment. “Don’t answer that! You need to leave.”
“Come on, JoJo.” Ty stood and got close to me. “For old time’s sake.”
“No. Absolutely not.” But I let him run a hand up my arm.
He fingered the hem of my t-shirt. “Let’s just get naked and see where it goes. Damn, you still do it for me.” The grey cotton fabric started to rise as he tugged on it. “Harvard University?” he asked, reading the lettering across my chest. It was Luca’s shirt, which I hadn’t returned since Nola had slept in it. My mind flew to him.
“If you know someone who went to a fancy school like that, then you probably know someone who could spare some change for me,” Ty said. Now his hands went under the shirt. “Help a guy out.” He bent down, bringing his face closer, and I could smell beer and weed. He didn’t have any money, except to buy beer and smoke up?
“No. No!” I slapped his hands and stepped back. What in the hell was wrong with me? “Absolutely not! Never again, never, no way. No.”
He stood up and away from me and got very businesslike. “Then can you give me a ride somewhere?”
I was tugging him toward the door. “No, I can’t give you a ride and leave our sick child here alone. Think a little bit about someone besides yourself! There’s a big transit stop in downtown San Rafael where you can catch a bus to the city, but you’ll have to walk to it. How did you get here, anyway?”
“A ride.” He appraised me. “From a woman I know.”
He was trying to make me jealous. “Then call her,” I suggested. Something occurred to me and I stopped trying to pull him. “Wait a minute. How did you know where I lived?”
“I talked to your stepdad a while ago. I talked to your mom, too. What’s wrong with her? Still that brain thing? She sounded weird.” By now he had totally lost the flirty, sultry tone and was speaking in his normal voice.
“My mom is fine!” I had to call them again. “Get out.” I pushed on his chest with my shoulder.
“Stop pushing me, I’m going. By the way,” he mentioned, and dug in his pocket, “I almost fell on my ass with your shit lying around.” He handed me a fistful of marbles and as he did, gripped my fingers. “JoJo, I miss you,” he told me, giving the sexy voice one more try.
“Get out!”
I locked the door behind him and leaned against it with my back. Fuck Ty. Fuck him! How dare he?
I crushed the marbles together so that they bit into my palm. And by the way, fuck me too, for being such an idiot. When he had started on that speech about me being smart and pretty, I had almost fallen for it.
Fuck me.
∞
“Don’t do it,” I advised. “Stay strong.”
He sighed heavily. “Jolie, you should have heard her. It’s her birthday, she’s alone in a strange country where she doesn’t know anyone…”
“Luca! Do not call her back. You are not responsible for her in any way. You’re certainly not responsible for making a big deal commemorating the day nine months after her parents had sex. Your former fiancée’s birthday means nothing to you now.”
He was laughing. “I never thought of a birthday like that. I’ll never be able to celebrate mine in the same way anymore.”
“Wasn’t she the one who decided to move here, to the strange country where she’s now alone? She made the choice to do that that, you didn’t ask her to. Do not give in to emotional blackmail!” Jesus, it was so easy to give advice; so hard to live it. “Vesa knows you freak out when she cries, so that’s why you’re getting these messages.” She had been calling him repeatedly, sobbing so hard she could barely talk.
“She said she’s spent the past year since I left in tears.”
I snorted. “It’s definitely a bluff. There’s no way she could have been crying like this for a year! She would have ended up in the hospital for dehydration.”
“All right, thanks for the moral support. I wasn’t really going to call her back.”
“Sure you weren’t. Softie.”
“I know,” he sighed. “She knows it too. I’m an idiot.”
The problem was that he had a big heart, I thought. And this bitch was playing him like a violin. “Join the Idiot Club with me! We had a motto, but we all forgot what it was and everyone got lost on the way to the meeting, anyway.”
Luca laughed more. “Have you heard from Ty again?”
I hadn’t felt the need to mention that Ty had stopped by, and that I had almost caved into him. “I haven’t stopped hearing from him. About fifty messages today alone.” Nola was better, fever gone, throat no longer red. But I had sworn with a blood oath to the nursery school that I wouldn’t bring my child in until 24 hours had passed after a fever, so we had both taken the day off from school. That meant I had spent two days trying to keep Nola entertained, fielding messages from my ex, and listening to the bongo drums from upstairs. I was close to losing it. “Ty’s trying to soften me up with compliments, the liar.”
“He’s a grown man, not a child. Don’t give him any money.”
“No, I definitely won’t,” I agreed. “But, I mean, if someone is after him…”
“Jolie. What are you going to do? Take away from Nola to give to him?”
“Of course not! But I don’t want him to be hurt…”
“Is any of it true? You don’t even know if he’s being honest with you at all,” Luca reminded me.
No, I didn’t, and it certainly wouldn’t have been the first time he had lied and I had fallen for it. I was thinking of a particular woman named Dessa who had been “just a friend” until I found her thong in the back pocket of Ty’s jeans. But this current situation did seem different to me—Ty seemed different. He had never, for example, gone miles out of his way to see me, not even for money.
“Just out of curiosity, what is he saying to you?” Luca asked. “The compliments he’s giving, what are they?”
“That I’m so pretty, that I’m so smart. He misses me, he made a mistake when he dropped me like he’d grabbed the hot end of the flat iron. Same old, same old.”
“You don’t believe him?”
I shrugged as I spoke. “I mean, I was so pretty and smart that he forgot to call me for two years until he owed money to scary people? I know exactly what his words are worth.” I sighed.
“I think he mean
s those things. But I also think he’s an idiot.”
“Well, then maybe we can invite him to join our club. His initiation will be having to finally say the words, ‘I’m sorry.’ Ty has never put together that particular phrase in his whole life…hang on for one second.” Nola was gesturing to me from the bedroom where she had been playing.
“Mama, look.” She was feeling much better. At the moment, in fact, she was constructing a fort on our bed with every pillow, sheet, towel, and blanket we owned. We were both getting a little stir crazy after the whole Sunday at home, and both of us missing school today.
“Very nice,” I told her, trying not to think of the mess I would be cleaning up later. “It’s your biggest one yet. I’m on the phone right now with Luca, but I’ll be off in a minute.”
“Luca? I have to tell him something,” Nola said. Yep, she was feeling back up to speed. “Luca?” she confirmed as she took the phone. “My mommy can’t find my princess dress to wear at your mommy’s house.”
I tiptoed out of the room, trying to look innocent. The dress was a thing of the past since I had finally thrown it out, but I hadn’t meant it to coincide with the loss of her bike. I cleaned the kitchen while the two of them chatted for a while, then Nola ran in and handed the phone back to me. “Luca says his mommy never wears a princess dress,” she told me, and ran, thumping, back into the bedroom.
Luca was laughing as I held the phone to my ear. “Nola thought my mom was royalty, like you did. She suggested I wear a crown, too,” he told me.
“I never, never should have let her watch all those princess movies,” I lamented. But I had to agree with her assessment: I could totally see Luca as Prince Charming. The looks, for sure, but more than that, I could understand how some gorgeous princess would fall for him. One probably would, someday. “How is your mom doing? Did she have fun getting out while you stayed in?”
“She said she did. She was in a good mood all day on Sunday. It should happen more often,” he said, anger creeping into his voice a little.
“How are things with your dad? Is he doing better?”
There was a short silence. “I’m going to say something, but only to you. Ok?”
“Luca, who am I going to tell? Nola, so she can spread it around the preschool? Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”
He hesitated and then said, “I don’t know if I believe all this. With my father.”
I froze, a little shocked. “You mean, you don’t believe that your dad is really sick?”
“No, I know he is. I was at the hospital when they came back with all his diagnoses. But now, right now, I’m not sure I believe him. Every time my mother wants to do something, he has a setback. Like her going to the opera, which she had planned for so long. He didn’t want her to go and then boom, he’s feeling terrible, he needs her. Every time he’s angry at me about something, and there’s always something, I’ve made him worse. He tells my mother how I’ve upset him and how ill I’ve made him.”
Nola started covering a Brenda Lee song from inside her fort on the bed, singing an apology over and over at the top of her little voice. “Is that why you’re so mad at your father? You think he’s malingering?” I asked.
“Who says I’m mad at him?” he asked, even angrier than before. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No, you—”
“I have to go, I have a call soon. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be back at work tomorrow,” I said. “And I have a faculty meeting that will run late. And, oh shit, I have to go on a run, too.” I had managed to make myself forget it. “I told this guy at work that I’d go with him.”
“What guy?” he asked quickly.
“Another teacher at Starhurst, in the middle school. He’s the track coach, and I’m the assistant…don’t ask me about that.” I was dreading my run with Chad so, so much. But judging by what the scale had shown me that morning, I needed it.
“You don’t like him?”
“He’s fine, I guess. I mean, he’s a nice guy.” Kind of a Mickey Rooney/Andy Hardy type.
“But you don’t like ‘nice.’ You go for jerks, like Ty and Rocky,” Luca said.
“What the hell, Luca?” I said, then glanced at the bedroom, but Nola was singing too loudly to hear me. “No, I don’t go for jerks,” I told him, extremely annoyed. “Just those two jerks! It’s not like I have this vast boyfriend experience to draw on, anyway. Ty was it. From when I was fourteen years old, Ty was it. And then, yeah, Stoney. Which was a non-event, if you’ll remember.”
Silence. “Seriously? No one else?”
“When would I have had the time?” I demanded, even more annoyed. “I got pregnant when I was with Ty. Then I had Nola. And, you will be shocked to hear this, but men aren’t exactly throwing themselves at a single mother with money problems and thigh issues! Not that I want them, because also, men suck donkey balls. They suck, suck, suck!” I had been on a roll, but I pulled myself back. “I mean, except you, of course,” I said.
“Of course, except me.” He sounded just as pissy as I had been.
“I mean, you don’t count!”
“Sure, I’m not really a man.”
“Luca!”
I heard a phone ring, his desk phone. “Have fun on your run with the nice teacher,” he told me.
“I will! Goodbye.” And we both hung up. It was just so unsatisfying that I couldn’t slam down the receiver like I’d been able to when I got mad at Ty in high school, fighting with him over our ancient rotary phone in the apartment where I grew up. I smacked my hand on the couch cushion but it wasn’t as good at all.
I heard something crash in the bedroom, and then Nola’s little voice said, “Oops!” Time to get us out of the house. Both of us needed it—so nothing else broke, and because I just had to get some air. What in the hell was wrong with Luca? Never mind Prince Charming, he was a dickweed!
“Look!” Nola bent as we got to the top of the stairs and picked up a clear marble. “It’s a magic pebble like in the book about the donkey.”
“You can have it,” I told her. “Put it in your pocket so you can hold the handrail.” The little terror in 3-E who Eva didn’t want to babysit was always leaving his crap around the building. I held Nola’s hand and guided her quickly past our storage area next to the parking lot, where the remains of the bike were still piled behind the door that I had slammed shut on the problem. I had written to the management company in San Francisco about what had happened but hadn’t heard back yet, and doubted I ever would. They had never answered me about the puddle in the laundry room or the guy throwing clean clothes into it, either.
We took a walk around the neighborhood under gathering clouds. By sunset, the rain started to come back down, blowing against our windows. Even though Nola had slept a lot for the past few days, she still dropped right off after we read books at her bedtime. I went out to the living room to take on re-folding all our linens.
As I did, the notifications started up again. “Come on, JoJo!” my phone implored. Ty had taken a break in the afternoon, but he was back at it, coming on strong. He tried a different tack tonight, saying that he wanted to see Nola. That it was important for her to know him. How she was missing out by not having two parents.
That one pissed me off enough that I answered: “Whose fault is that, fuckhead?? Leave us alone.”
Then he sent one that put a chill in my heart: “I have the legal right to see her. A father has rights.”
I stared at my phone, swallowing. I would kill him before I let him take Nola from me. I blocked his number. “Just try it, Ty. I’ll fucking murder you,” I told my phone. It vibrated again in my hand.
“Are you home?” it asked me. Luca. Relief replaced the anger.
“I’m here,” I wrote back, and a soft knock sounded on my door. I walked cautiously to it, because if it was Ty again, I was going to kick him in his donkey balls. “Yes?”
“I have a delivery, for a Julie Fraser?�
�� a deep voice asked.
I opened the door. “Jolie. I’m Jolie Fraser.”
Luca smiled. “I think I promised you personal service, right?” My filthy mind went one place and one place only, but he held up a soft-sided cooler to show what he meant. “Your lunches for the rest of the week.”
I reached and took it from him. “Thank you. You didn’t have to drive all the way up here to give it to me.” I stepped aside so he could come in.
“Well, it’s funny, I felt a little like I had something to prove. I was talking to a woman on the phone earlier who informed me of how much all men suck, and then implied that I actually may not be a man.”
“Wow. Sounds like she was making a sweeping generalization out of anger and then mistakenly insulted you. Or she’s just a real bitch.”
“No, she isn’t. Not all the time,” he assured me.
“I didn’t mean you, Luca. I’m really, really mad at Ty.”
“I didn’t mean to get upset with you, either. I’m really, really mad at my father.”
I pulled his arm. “Come on in and show me the healthy food I’ll be consuming and tell me what’s the matter with your dickweed dad.”
If I was any judge, Luca’s company was going to be wildly successful, just based on the packaging. “This is so cute! Everything comes in little animal containers?” I popped one open to divulge the nutritious contents and sniffed them. “It smells kind of weird, though.”
Luca closed the bear-shaped box. “The packaging is just a prototype for the younger kids. You like it? It’s microwavable and compostable. You’re going to like the food too, I promise.” He stacked everything in my refrigerator while reading the various reminders I had stuck on the door. “Glitter pens, googly eyes. Stickers. Call re cable. Lunch??” he read aloud. “Well, we can get rid of the lunch note.” He rejoined me on the couch. “Your refrigerator is practically empty. What did you and Nola have for dinner?” he asked.
“Well, she had pasta with chicken and some veggies on the side. I had some, too.” He waited. “Ok, after Nola went to bed, I had the rest of a box of cookies I had to buy from our neighbor’s kid for a fundraiser. They ambushed me and blocked me from getting into my car until I forked over the cash. Those cookies were expensive but I have to give it to them, they were also delicious.”
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