by Olivia Janae
Vivian didn’t seem to know how to answer right away. “My mother, overall, tends to be very disapproving of me.” She softly smoothed the collar of Kate’s shirt. “Let’s just say that.”
Max and Charlie reappeared. The kid was finally dressed adequately, his usually unruly hair flattened and wet.
“Okay,” Kate sighed. “Are we ready?”
“Oh, just a second.” Vivian went to the bed and pulled out a large box. “Before we venture out into that cold, I wanted to give you this.”
“Uh …”
Vivian handed her the large white box with a grin, and Kate felt her stomach drop.
“For me?” she asked, weakly.
“For you,” Vivian signed with a twinkle in her eye, taking a seat on the bed to watch.
“Okay. Um, Max, why don’t you get your coat on and then bring me mine, please,” she asked, trying to minimize the number of eyes on her.
She sat on the bed as well and carefully pulled off the top. Inside, nestled in the tissue paper, was a thick, black peacoat.
She didn’t know what to say.
“I noticed that your jacket, while very sexy, is somewhat thin.”
“Uh …”
“Also, have I told you how very much I enjoy a woman in a good peacoat?” Vivian asked, leaning in for a kiss.
Kate didn’t lean forward to meet her.
“What’s wrong?”
Kate did her best to click on a small smile, which seemed to please Vivian.
“Try it on.”
Kate stood, knowing she should probably be handling this better but at a loss as to how she could. A little sick, she pulled the thigh-length jacket from the box. She was about to swing it on when she caught sight of the label. She vaguely knew the name but had never seen it in stores. That alone was an admittance of the cost. Actually, now that she thought of it, hadn’t she seen a store with that name on the expensive side of Michigan Avenue? Yes, she was sure of that.
“Burberry, Vivian?”
Vivian beamed. “Oh, it’s so warm. You’re going to love it, and before you worry, I got it half off.”
“Wait, you knew I wasn’t going to like the cost, but you bought it for me anyway?”
“Well,” Vivian said, gently encouraging her to put her arm through the sleeve. “I just thought that you might look nice in it. And you really do.” Vivian bit her lip, her hands lingering on Kate’s chest, hinting at suggestion.
Kate’s cheek twitched, but the smile did not follow. Instead her stomach whirred, and the nervous nausea she was already feeling doubled. “This is really nice of you, really, but I can’t accept this.”
“What do you mean?” Vivian’s look suddenly grew sharp.
“Are you crazy? Vivian, I know this was expensive. It’s a very sweet thought, but it’s too much.” Her cheeks were flaming. Vivian must have noticed the fact that Kate couldn’t exactly… right now… afford a new jacket for herself. She would have given anything not to know that Vivian had noticed.
“It wasn’t.”
“Vivian, I don’t need you to buy me a coat.”
The corner of Vivian’s lips pulled down. “I never said you did.”
Kate tightened her ponytail with an agitated yank. “I don’t like people spending money on me.”
Vivian chuckled, which ground against Kate’s nerves. Vivian did not seem to realize that Kate was truly upset. “Well, tough,” she said with a wink. “You look wonderful.”
“Vivian,” Kate groaned, barely holding her anxiety back, but Vivian was brushing invisible lint from her shoulders and did not see.
“I love Burberry coats, they’re so warm, and they last forever. Charlie has had the one I bought her for years now.”
“So, you like to spend obscene amounts of money on all of your friends then.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly! Vivian! Come on! I know that the check I wrote for the makeup artist was never cashed, kind of like someone paid her and told her not to keep mine, and you paid for the sitter, and you pay for everything when we go out! You pay for everything, always! I’ve tried to be really good about it and not make it a thing, okay, but I can’t take this coat! Please, don’t make me take this coat.”
“Kate.” Vivian tightened the coat, beginning to button her into it. “I promise, you’re reading too much into this.”
Stomping feet on the stairs let her know that Charlie and Max were back.
“Ooh, nice coat, K!” Charlie grinned. “Welcome to the Burberry club. Vivian is their number-one fan.”
“Too much, Viv,” Kate could hear the warning in her own voice, but unfortunately Vivian couldn’t.
“I promise, it wasn’t. It wasn’t even extravagant,” Vivian said with a small kiss. “I’m very happy to know that you will be warm.”
“Come on, dude.” Charlie gave her a wink. “You really complaining about having a sugar mama?”
“Oh my god!” she groaned, rubbing her hands down her face to hide her flush.
“You look wonderful, darling,” Vivian promised. Before Kate could protest again, Vivian cleared her throat. “Now. Shall we go?”
Kate hesitated, anger keeping her firmly in place. She didn’t like this. She was ashamed and humiliated. She watched the group start down the stairs, heading for the front door. The unfair thing was that she couldn’t really argue, not right now, not before they headed off toward Vivian’s mother. Everyone was already stressed enough. If she put her own tattered jacket on, then Vivian would call her on it and they would be late and possibly stuck in the middle of a huge fight.
Cornered, she tightened the coat around herself and, with a plastic smile, followed everyone downstairs, her stress level suddenly triple what it had been before.
Kate wasn’t sure if she was surprised when Vivian, a little guiltily, drove them straight to the suburb of Evanston, where they had taken Max trick-or-treating.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say the house you made us skip was your mother’s,” Kate said, still a bit grumpy. Charlie was kind enough to sign to Vivian in the rearview mirror.
Vivian sighed deeply and said, “My mother doesn’t give candy out on Halloween anyway. She isn’t that kind.”
“You could have told us,” Kate grumbled.
“Oh, you guys came out here for trick-or-treating?” Charlie asked, tickling Max’s leg. “Max, I bet you got a lot of candy. We used to get so much every year!”
Vivian laughed coldly. “Yes, and then my mother would make us donate all of it to ‘the poor.’”
Kate shifted in her seat, feeling the looming gap between herself and the other women widen. Perhaps sitting there in the pricy Burberry coat was making the feeling worse, but she knew she was scowling behind her sunglasses. Growing up, she had spent most Halloweens getting shoved off on the local foster organizations, where, if she was lucky, she would be given a small bag of donated Halloween candy. She thought she might just keep that to herself for now.
Everyone fell silent as they pulled into the front gates of the huge Georgian mansion and parked at the top of the U-shaped driveway. Kate glanced back at Max, and together they stared out of the windows, intimidated by the huge house.
“It will be fine – fun, even,” Kate promised, swallowing her bitter mood for the moment and kissing Vivian’s forehead as they all stumbled out of the car. Vivian gave her half a smile and, knocking on the front door, exchanged a loaded look with Charlie.
“Okay, what am I missing?”
Before Vivian or Charlie could respond, the door opened. Vivian’s back straightened and Charlie’s face dropped into her own professional mask, a blank slate ready to be written on as she turned a little so she was facing Vivian.
“You made it,” Jacqueline said. Charlie’s hands flew, the smile she implanted into Jacqueline’s words as she signed was far kinder and brighter than anything Vivian’s mother had yet offered.
“Of course we did, Mother.” Vivian kiss
ed her cheek. “How are you?”
“I am very well, dear, thank you. Katelyn.” The kind affection Jacqueline used when she spoke her name was baffling.
“Mrs. Kensington. It’s good to see you again.” Kate shook her hand. “This is my son, Max.”
“Max!” Jacqueline smiled down at him. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
Kate’s eyes flicked from Vivian to Charlie to Jacqueline, wondering yet again why Jacqueline didn’t sign.
Max blushed and habitually signed as he spoke, so much more advanced in his study of the language than his mom. “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”
Jacqueline ushered them in with the barest of nods to Charlie. They followed her into a huge sitting room with a larger-than-seemed-safe fireplace roaring aggressively along one wall.
Max ran to it, stretching out in the chair before it, looking as if he had found heaven.
“Max! Manners!” Kate snapped under her breath, but Jacqueline chuckled as she watched him. “I’m sorry, he’s excited.”
Jacqueline just held her palm up to silence her. “It’s nice to have a child in the house again.” She threw Vivian an accusatory look.
“Yes. Thank you for that reminder, Mother.” She bit right back. “I might have forgotten about my unmarried and childless state had you not reminded me.”
“Can I get you something to drink?” Jacqueline ignored Vivian. “Coffee?” There were small nods from the group. “Max, would you like a glass of juice? Water? Milk?”
“Juice, please,” he said in a small voice.
“Leigh!” Jacqueline called. A woman stepped around the door immediately, as if she had been silently waiting there. Jacqueline gave her an expectant look, and the woman nodded and headed out of the room.
Kate shot a questioning look at Vivian, noting her tightly pressed lips and clasped hands.
“Leigh is my mother’s assistant – who also gets drinks, cleans the house, and on the rare occasion that the cook is off, cooks.”
“CooK,” Jacqueline said, putting heavy emphasis on the K, clipping the end tightly. “Sometimes I don’t know if those speech therapy sessions really did anything at all for you, dear. You want to be understood, don’t you? CooK. CooK.” Her hand came down like a conductor, emphasizing her point.
Vivian flushed hard, a childlike mortification blanketing her as she whispered, at her knees, “Cook,” capturing the K clearly.
Jacqueline beamed and patted her knee. “Good job, Vivi.”
Kate was stunned. Jacqueline had a way of saying and doing things that left Kate confused about whether she should be offended for Vivian’s sake or pleased at the motherly, albeit cold, concern that Jacqueline showed. Like that… Had it been a misguided effort to help or was she just a terrible person?
“Yes,” Jacqueline continued, as if nothing had happened, “Leigh is a great comfort to me now that my husband, the late Nicolás Pérez, is gone. May he rest in peace.”
Kate and Charlie exchanged a quick look, but no one spoke about what had just happened.
They fell into a light conversation as a group, Jacqueline asking questions for Kate and Max to answer, Vivian and Charlie perhaps uncharacteristically quiet until lunch was served.
“So, Maxwell,” Jacqueline smiled at the boy halfway through the meal, “what do you play?”
He looked to his mother, confused.
“Oh, he doesn’t play anything yet,” Kate sighed. “I thought he should start on piano at five. I should do that soon.”
Jacqueline nodded but disapproval was clear on her face. “I started violin at three. We started Vivian at two. He should really be a year into his studies by now.”
“My mother was sure that if she could only train my ear, she would also be able to force them to cooperate and function properly,” Vivian explained in a loud and obvious whisper.
“It was a school of thought at the time, Vivi,” Jacqueline said in a light and airy tone.
Kate wasn’t sure how to respond so she shrugged noncommittally and changed the subject. “You play the harp, right?”
Max’s eyes boggled. “You play the harp?”
Jacqueline nodded, her grin glittering brightly.
“Can I see?” he asked scooting from his chair.
“Yes, after lunch, sir,” Jacqueline said strictly, but with a small wink for the boy before turning back to his mother. “Katelyn, do you think you will be ready for that audition?”
Kate laughed and held up her bandaged fingers. “Uh, please call me Kate, and my calluses are getting calluses, so I guess so.”
Jacqueline nodded approvingly. “Wrap your fingers in Tiger Balm and gauze at night. That should help the cuts heal quickly. Are you wearing wrist guards while you practice?”
Kate frowned. “Um, no?”
“Do you want tendonitis, dear?”
“Mother knows every trick of the trade,” Vivian snipped.
Kate faltered, not sure if that meant that she should listen or take her for a busybody. “I’ll have to look into that.”
Jacqueline gave a great sigh and lit herself a cigarette. “It’s so nice to have another musician in the family,” she breathed out in a puff of smoke.
Kate’s impression of a goldfish just then was spot on. She glanced at Vivian, who had deliberately turned to look out the window while Charlie sat and glared hotly at Jacqueline.
“What is your practicing routine, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Jacqueline questioned her for what felt like hours, and by the time coffee was set one thing was blatantly clear: while Jacqueline spared few words for her daughter and none for her daughter’s interpreter, she was absolutely taken with Kate and smitten with Max. This should have been a good thing, a win for the new girlfriend, but instead Kate felt as if she were being unwillingly drafted to the wrong side.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Kensington?” Max asked, his little hands flying at a speed that still shocked Kate.
“Yes, dear?”
“Will you show me your harp now, please?”
Kate beamed with pride. She wanted to say that it was because of her that her son was so polite, but she thought there was a good chance that he had just come from the factory this way.
Jacqueline watched Max, making him cower ever so slightly before she called him over to her. She took his little hands in her own and kissed the knuckles. Kate looked around at the other women. Charlie wasn’t looking, whereas Vivian’s eyes were sharp, watching every little breath. “Max,” Jacqueline started, “I want to tell you something.”
Max shifted a little. “Okay.”
“When you’re in my house, you don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?”
Kate felt more than heard Vivian’s sharp intake of breath.
“With your hands. In this house, we don’t do that.”
“You mean sign?” Max asked, perplexed, looking at his hands for the offending matter.
Kate watched in something adjacent to horror as Jacqueline nodded.
“But then Viv’n won’t hear us! She won’t know what we’re saying. You’re always uh-s’posed to sign when someone deaf is in the room. It’s deaf eddecetts.” His face scrunched, trying to get the word “etiquette” right.
“Oh, sure she will.” She tucked Max into her side, facing Vivian. “See, Vivian doesn’t need to be coddled. She’s a strong woman. Do you know what it means to be coddled?”
“Nope.”
“It means we don’t have to do things like use Sign Language with her, because we made sure she could get along just fine without it. Right, dear?”
Vivian’s face was blank as she answered. “Right, Mother.”
Fury rippled through Kate. “Jacqueline, please don’t tell my son not to use Sign Language around Vivian! That is not—”
“Katelyn, please do not give into my daughter’s more dramatic tendencies; it only encourages her.”
“Are you serious?” Kate cried, mortified for Vivian’s sake. “That�
��s ridic—”
Jacqueline looked up at Kate, her look plainly stating she would not win if Kate challenged her on this in her own house. She felt Vivian’s hand close in warning on her knee, clamping down to the point of pain. She looked up sharply, but Vivian just gave a tiny headshake.
Max stood, still tucked into Jacqueline, his brow furrowed deeply, as if she had given him a math problem a doctoral student couldn’t solve.
Jacqueline nodded, satisfied with Vivian’s response, and took his hand, leading him from the room, presumably to her harp.
As soon as they cleared the door, Kate whirled around to Vivian and Charlie, both of whom were wearing unhappy looks. “Someone want to let me in on what the fuck is going on, please? Why did she just do that? Why isn’t she signing?”
Charlie opened her mouth and made a few uncomfortable hand gestures, but then stopped, so Kate turned to Vivian.
Her beautiful girlfriend shrugged a little, finishing her glass of wine in one swallow, and stared dejectedly out of the window again.
Kate scowled, feeling lost in a sea of family secrets without a life jacket.
The drive back to Vivian’s apartment was completely silent. Max was still confused about his reprimand for speaking the language that he was required to speak at home and Kate was confused about… everything. She understood that Jacqueline was a terrible mother, that much was clear, she just didn’t understand why no one would talk to her about it, why no one would answer any of her questions.
“Nap time?” Max asked quietly as soon as they entered the loft.
Kate nodded, ruffling his hair. “You okay, kid?” He shuffled in place for a minute, so Kate dropped to her knees and hugged him, giving him a kiss. “We’ll talk after nap time. Okay? Love you.”
He disappeared into the room almost gratefully, and Kate turned to Vivian and Charlie. Like this wasn’t the first time, they had both turned to the kitchen island, Vivian grabbing a bottle of wine as Charlie grabbed glasses. At that moment, Kate could see their years together; the years of struggle, of fighting the same fight. No words were spoken between them, yet they clearly understood whatever was happening in the other’s mind.
