Words Unsaid

by KG MacGregor

  “No problem, love. We’ll leave here in a few minutes. See you at home.”

  Outside her office, rapid footsteps on the tile floor drew closer until Jeremy appeared in her doorway, wringing his hands and looking distressed. “Anna…”

  “Let me guess. Sawyer Clarke wrecked his car driving it off the lot.”

  “Not Sawyer.” He winced. “Andy.”

  She bolted down the stairs and out the side door where a small crowd of salespeople had gathered. A brand new Z4 convertible, San Francisco Red Metallic, sported a cracked windshield and a pronounced dent on the hood. Andy stood off to one side looking sheepish, his head down and his hands in his pockets. To Anna’s relief, Sawyer Clarke’s i8 was nowhere to be seen.

  “What happened here?”

  Jeremy answered, “He bumped into a stack of tires outside the service entrance and they fell over. Looks like a couple of them landed on the hood.”

  “It was my fault,” Holly said quickly. “I was talking with Andy about what we ought to put in the showroom and we agreed on the Z. I asked him to go get the key. He must have thought I said go get the Z.”

  Anna didn’t believe Holly would be so careless. Even if she were, Andy knew better than to get behind the wheel of one of their vehicles without her express permission.

  “Andy, get your things and meet me at the car.”

  Sulking, he trudged into the media room for his backpack and jacket.

  Holly continued, “I’ll price the repairs and put in a claim.”

  “Never mind the insurance. They won’t cover an unlicensed driver. This is coming out of Andy’s pocket.”

  Guarding her temper in front of her staff, she turned on her heel and started back upstairs to collect her belongings from her office. Already dreading the ride home, she turned out the lights and took a moment to calm herself.

  “Anna?” It was Holly again, her face grim with what Anna guessed was even more bad news. “Can we talk a minute before you go?”

  * * *

  Thirty days was forever to a mother separated from her kids. Lily knew that from the time the twins had spent in the neonatal unit after a car accident had caused them to be born two months premature. It was five weeks before Eleanor came home, and another two for Georgie. She remembered that feeling every time she ruled from the bench to separate a child from its mother.

  Crawling in the traffic along Wilshire Boulevard, she was haunted by the sobs of Selena Cortes, a mother of two who’d lost custody of her two daughters sixty days ago after child services responded to a complaint and found drugs in the home. Police later determined the drugs belonged to the woman’s brother, who was living there at the time. Lily was set to return the girls today, but the caseworker reported that Ms. Cortes had allowed her brother to stay at her home for two nights, violating the terms Lily had set down for getting her children back. Child services had asked for sixty more days. Lily gave them thirty but left the door open for thirty more.

  Skirting the campus of UCLA, she turned into the parking lot at St. Agnes Lutheran Church to find a cluster of cars near a door leading to the community room in the basement. This Monday night meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous was the Over 40s, a group that usually included university faculty and staff, and other professionals like herself.

  She was mildly surprised to recognize a couple of faces, given that she’d been to only one meeting since picking up her thirteen-year chip last spring. Dan was still the group’s leader. He’d set a dozen chairs in a circle, an arrangement that usually encouraged participation.

  Lily typically kept to herself and listened to others tell their stories of how they’d fallen out of control before they finally hit bottom and admitted their lives had become unmanageable. She honestly believed alcohol was no longer a problem for her—she hardly thought about it—but the specter of how it once had gripped her was always there. Indeed, it had nearly cost her everything she held dear. These days, however, the temptation to drink was merely philosophical, a pondering of what catastrophic events could possibly lure her back to the bottle. Yesterday’s reflections over losing loved ones—of losing Anna—had scared her enough to come to the meeting and share her feelings.

  “Lily, would you like to say something to the group?”

  “Actually, I would,” she said, staring into her lap as she twirled a paperclip she’d found in the pocket of her suit jacket. “I’ve been doing well. Most days I feel determined to stay the course. I don’t get anxious about going to social events or feeling alone. Heck, I’ve got three kids. I’ve forgotten what being alone is like.”

  That drew a chuckle from Diana, an African-American woman Lily vaguely recognized as a social worker she’d encountered in court during her days with the legal aid clinic. Social workers knew very well what a hectic family life was like.

  “Right, so I don’t worry about it much. But every now and then it hits me that I could be just one disappointment away, one disaster, one loss…and those old habits could come roaring back and make me lose control again. It actually kind of helps to know how vulnerable I am. Like the saying goes, just one drink away from being a drunk. That never changes.”

  “Amen, sister.”

  Lily finally looked up from her lap and smiled at the faces around her. “I know I don’t come very often, but I’m really glad you’re here for when I get bogged down worrying about stuff. This program feels like my suit of armor.”

  She left the meeting newly fortified, as though she’d plugged the hole where her willpower might trickle out unnoticed. Everyone faced hardship at one time or another, but she felt certain she could face hers without that old crutch.

  * * *

  Four hours had helped to calm Anna’s anger about the accident, but her frustration over Andy’s lack of candor was another matter. After a quick chat with Lily in their bedroom, they’d agreed on a plan to turn this into a tough lesson about taking responsibility for one’s actions.

  “It was like Holly said. She asked me to bring the key, but I thought she said bring the Z,” Andy explained earnestly. “I figured it was cool as long as I had her permission.”

  The twins were upstairs in bed already, leaving Anna, Lily and Andy to hash out the day’s events around the kitchen table. Lily looked tired from what she’d described as an emotionally trying day.

  Anna wasn’t having her son’s casual nonchalance. “You’re sticking with that story?”

  “It’s not just my story. It’s Holly’s too.”

  “See, here’s the problem. Holly came up to my office before we left and admitted that she only told that story to help you save face in front of the others. But she wanted me to know the truth.”

  “It is the truth!”

  “Excuse me, are you now calling Holly a liar? Because she told me she asked Jeremy to bring the Z into the showroom when he finished the paperwork on Sawyer Clarke. And that you were standing right there beside him, and she very clearly asked you to get the keys for him. How could you have misunderstood words as plain as that?”

  His face was turning redder by the second. “I must’ve heard her wrong.”

  “Just stop it. You need to own this, Andy—right now.” She punctuated her words by jabbing the table. “Because lying about what happened only makes it worse.”

  Lily jumped in, her voice calm, her tone reasonable. “Andy, even if it happened the way you said—”

  “Which it didn’t,” Anna snapped.

  After a sideward glance, Lily continued, “I think you know there was a better way to handle that situation. What you should have done was remind Holly that you didn’t have your license, and that your mom never allows you to drive cars on the lot. Am I right?” Getting no answer, she continued, “I happen to agree with her on this. It’s very disappointing that you’re refusing to come clean about it.”

  “Let’s not lose sight of this, pal—you caused a couple thousand dollars damage to a brand new car. So the best thing you can do for yourself now is acce
pt responsibility for this mess so we can move on.”

  “Move on to what?”

  She exchanged nods with Lily, who answered, “This is serious, so you deserve to face some consequences.”

  “Great, so I’m grounded till I’m like, thirty. Whatever.”

  Anna slapped the table sharply. “You need to start taking this seriously, young man. What you did showed very poor judgment. Clearly you aren’t ready for the responsibility that comes with a driver’s license. So we’re going to put your driving on hold till summer, and only if you can prove to us by then that you’re capable of making better decisions.”

  “Wha—” he sputtered, looking ready to explode. “You treat me like a little kid. All the guys at school got their license as soon as they turned sixteen. I’m almost sixteen and a half and you keep making excuses for me not to get mine.”

  Lily reached for his hand but he jerked it away. “Andy, this is a reason, not an excuse. Just like your report card was a reason.”

  “I don’t care what you call it…you always come up with something.” He was fighting back angry tears. “I’ll pay for the damage myself. Just take it out of my trust.”

  Lily shook her head. “A trust doesn’t work that way. You can’t touch it till you turn eighteen.” The trust was worth two hundred thousand dollars, a settlement from the city of San Francisco as compensation for the police shooting that had accidentally killed his biological mother, the half-sister Lily hadn’t known she had. “Besides, this isn’t about the money. It’s about you learning to be more responsible.”

  “No, it’s about punishing me. That’s all you really care about. You both sit around thinking up ways you can punish me so it hurts. I can go a thousand days without messing up, but you jump on me the one day when I do, and that’s what you judge me on. I can’t be perfect every day.” He crossed his arms defiantly and slumped back from the table, clearly fuming.

  “Pout all you want, Andy,” Anna said, her patience dried up. “The more you pretend this is our fault, the further you are from getting behind the wheel. You’re already at June. Want to try for August?”

  He growled under his breath and stormed out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Moments later his bedroom door slammed.

  “That went well,” Anna deadpanned.

  Lily flashed a look of annoyance before shoving her chair back and following him upstairs without a word.

  * * *

  Lily slammed drawers and stalked around their bedroom, angrier at Anna than at Andy. Parenting was hard enough without one of them undermining the other. What was the point of talking things over in private if not to present a united front?

  Anna entered the room and closed the door. “I made sure Georgie and Eleanor were tucked in. And I said goodnight to Andy through his door but he didn’t answer.”

  “I’m not surprised. I doubt he’ll speak to either of us in the near future.”

  “That’s up to him.”

  “And us too. I couldn’t believe you going off script like that. We agreed on a month. Now you’re telling him he can’t drive till June…or even August. That’s forever for a kid his age.”

  “Yeah, well…a month would have been plenty if he hadn’t sat there and lied to our faces. And not one word of apology either. In my book, that’s a nonstarter.”

  Lily followed her into the bathroom and pointedly said, “Your book. That’s the problem right there, Anna. It’s supposed to be our book. If you changed your mind, you should have waited and talked it over with me in private, and we’d have come up with another plan together. Instead, you just issued your draconian edict from on high and that was that.”

  “My edict from on high…that’s nice. Tell me how you really feel.”

  “How I feel is disrespected. It so happens I had a different opinion, which I would have shared if you’d bothered to ask.”

  “And now you’re being a drama queen,” Anna said flippantly as she shrugged out of her clothes and tossed them in the hamper. “We agreed on a month because we expected him to own up to it and show a little remorse. The fact that he didn’t do either obviously means he deserved more.”

  “Do you not hear how arrogant that sounds? As long as it’s obvious to you, who cares what other people think?” She shuffled between Anna and the doorway to command her attention. “Did it occur to you that I literally make decisions like this for a living? I have the power to be a hard-ass bitch, slapping fines on people and sending them to jail for looking at me sideways. But that’s not me. Instead I try to find the path that gets people where they need to be. We could have done that with Andy if you hadn’t dropped the hammer on him.”

  “Great, so I’m a shitty mother too. Anything else on your checklist?”

  Lily was surprised by the intensity of their bickering, but now she blamed herself for the sarcastic tone. Her edict on high remark had been over the top. Anna had no way of knowing that her guilt over keeping Selena Cortes from her daughters was behind her heightened sensitivity to questions about fairness.

  Even so… it didn’t change the fact that Anna had come down too hard on Andy. Still fuming, she climbed into bed and rolled over to face the wall.

  Clearly Anna was angry too. Upon coming to bed, she turned out the light without even a goodnight.

  Lily rolled onto her back and tried to calm her emotions. This wasn’t the way they treated one another, this tension crackling as they lay side by side. Not speaking, not touching. Somehow, they always found their way to a peaceful stasis before sleep, whether by resolution or truce.

  One of them would have to breach the divide. An apology, a concession. She was choosing her conciliatory words when Anna’s cool finger brushed hers beneath the blanket. A pinkie, deliberately teasing hers until they hooked. Lily answered with an open, upturned palm before rolling into Anna’s arms.

  “I’m sorry, babe,” Anna said softly. “I should have talked to you first.”

  “I’m sorry I was being so self-righteous. Turns out being a judge gives you a god complex.”

  Anna kissed her forehead and climbed out of bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To tell Andy that we’ll talk it over again tomorrow when we’ve all calmed down.”

  Chapter Five

  Lily watched the action on the court from a folding lawn chair, huddled in a wool sweater with her back to the morning sun. She and Anna alternated weekends at the Pacific Palisades tennis complex, which was set aside each Saturday for youth match play. Georgie, who preferred George when his peers were present, had reached the top level for the US Tennis Association’s 10 and Under Group (10U) and was focused now on making the jump to Junior Team Tennis when he turned eleven.

  Up two games to one in a four-game short set, he tossed the ball high above his head, arched his back, and whacked a slicing serve that spun out of his opponent’s reach. An ace, his third of the match.

  “Thirty-love,” the chair umpire announced.

  Lily clapped enthusiastically. “Nice one, George.”

  “Looked wide to me,” a man in front snarled over his shoulder. The infamous Kurt Lockhart, easily the most obnoxious parent on the 10U circuit.

  Spread along the sidelines were a dozen others, families of players awaiting their turn to take the court. Some days Lily sat with them and chatted about their kids, but Georgie had asked her to watch today’s match closely in case of a flare-up. All the parents were wary of Kurt, who had a reputation for arguing line calls and harassing his son Brandon’s opponents. Most of his ire today had been directed at Brandon. A shame, because the kid was pretty good for a ten-year-old.

  Unfortunately for Brandon, Georgie was really on his game today. It was amazing to remember this was the same child who’d spent his first seven weeks fighting for life in the neonatal unit. Now he was the picture of grace on the court, a trait he might have inherited from his father, the anonymous sperm donor. They’d chosen a Latino donor for the twins based on the social worker’
s report that Andy’s late father had been from El Salvador. The twins had brown eyes but their similarities ended there. Georgie had Lily’s blond hair and athletic physique, while Eleanor was tall and slim with Anna’s fair complexion. Only Andy, with the bronze skin of his father’s ancestors, was distinctively Latino.

  On the court, Brandon chased down a lob and went for the overhead smash, only to hit it into the net. Another unforced error.

  “Forty-love.”

  “You gotta be kidding! He served it up on a silver platter, Brandon. Pull your head out of your rear end.” Kurt shook his head and muttered, “All that money wasted on private lessons…I might as well have flushed it down the crapper.”

  Lily wanted badly to call this man on his bullshit, but the way he treated his son gave her pause. She knew too well the potential danger for kids whose fathers came home in a rage. Her two cents wasn’t worth the risk of making it worse for Brandon at home. That wouldn’t stop her from putting a bug in Sandy Henke’s ear to look into reports from his teachers. It wouldn’t surprise her at all if others had raised concerns about Kurt’s obvious mean streak.

  The next point was a decent rally that ended with Brandon scooping a half-volley cross-court that caught Georgie on the wrong foot. All the parents, including Lily, clapped loudly and cheered, “Great point!” Probably the only positive feedback Brandon would get all day.

  Georgie finished off the game with another spinning serve that Brandon returned into the net.

  Kurt jumped to his feet. “That was a mile wide!” he yelled, his wrath now aimed at the chair umpire. “Are you blind or just ready to go home?”

  Lily again bit her tongue, but one of the fathers behind her had reached his limit. “Come on, Kurt. It’s not Wimbledon. Let the kids play.”

  As Kurt left his chair to confront the other man, the boys passed beneath the umpire’s chair for the changeover. Georgie waggled his empty sports drink bottle and Lily met him at the fence with her cooler bag.

  “You got any extra, Mom? Brandon doesn’t have any.”

  “Here you go.” She squeezed two bottles through the fence. “You’re playing great, honey. And tell Brandon he’s made some killer shots too. All the parents think so.”