Choosing Sophie

by Leslie Carroll

  Which is where I began, but not until the morning light seeped past the drawn shades. Not until after we’d made love, such gentle and exhilarating love, that I never wanted to stop.

  Tom’s mouth went dry when I sprung the news. He leaped out of bed for a glass of water. “Well…” he said, and then he said nothing at all.

  “Well what?” I asked quietly. “Where’s your head at?”

  “Sure you can take a few weeks with Sophie. Bring her out here, too, if you want. There’s plenty of room and I’d love to get to know her. After all, she’ll be family.” He sat on the bed, cross-legged, with the covers pulled protectively around him, south of the waistline.

  “What about that ‘circle’ line?”

  “My gut reaction is that your dad wanted to reconnect with you; to end the family cold war. But since it’s too late to do that now, unless you hire an equally woo-wooey person to conduct a séance, you’re off the hook.”

  “But then I don’t get the Cheers.”

  Tom looked at me earnestly. Lovingly. Do you want the Cheers?”

  It was too much to think of right now. “The truth?”

  Tom nodded. “Always. For better or worse.”

  “I don’t know,” I sighed wearily. “I honestly don’t know. And yet it’s what old Augie wanted for me. Though, come to think of it, I’ve spent a lifetime rebelling against what Augie wanted for me.”

  “What do you want for yourself?” Tom asked me, drawing me close for a cuddle.

  “You.”

  “You got me.” He held me for what felt like several minutes, long enough for our breathing to find a unison that brought a smile to my lips. Neither of us said a word.

  “I—I want to get to know Sophie. I’ve been given an astounding opportunity. I never expected her to find me—or even imagined that she’d want to. Thing is…I don’t know how much time I need. It’s not exactly a thing you can put a limit on—to catch up on two lifetimes of experiences and then poof, disappear again.”

  Tom stared down at the sheets. “And where do I fit into all this? Where do we—you and I—fit in?”

  I scooted beside him and slid my arm around his shoulder. “You could come east with me and we’ll live in the duplex for a while. I know you want to get married out here, but we haven’t set a wedding date yet, anyway. Lots of couples are engaged for a year or longer—sometimes lots longer—before they finally do the deed.”

  Tom frowned. “‘Do the deed?’ You make it sound sort of nasty. Something dirty-ish.”

  “Oh, c’mon.” I kissed his cheek. “It’s a figure of speech. I didn’t mean anything by it. Not anything ‘dirty-ish,’ certainly.”

  “But what about the baseball team?” Tom asked. “First of all, though I’m no lawyer, that wacko clause in your father’s will may not be ironclad. It’s probably vague enough to be contestable by anyone with a mind to—especially anyone who wants the Cheers a whole lot more than you do—and is willing to litigate.”

  “Augie’s lawyer cautioned everyone against contesting the will.”

  Tom rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. I know you’re not remotely naïve. A lawyer’s warning doesn’t mean beans, my love. If someone wants to sue you, no matter how frivolous it seems—and in your case they might actually have a case—they’ll slap you with a summons. Hey, a competitor once dragged my dad into court over a stripe down the center of one of the Elliott snowboard designs. He claimed he thought of it first.”

  “That’s nuts! You can’t copyright a stripe!”

  My fiancé chuckled ruefully. “But he tried. And it cost my dad a lot of time and money to defend the lawsuit.” His fingers brushed an errant lock of hair off my brow. “But supposing you do decode the clause and ‘close the circle.’ Then you own the Bronx Cheers. Minor League ball is played all summer.”

  “Fall weddings are lovely,” I said hopefully.

  “So what’s in your head, Ollie? To split your time between there and here? The Cheers are a New York team. Owning it will require you to spend more time out East than you think. It won’t just be summers that will demand your participation. There’s spring training…there’s…” Tom buried his face in his hands as I knelt beside him on the mattress, cradling him in my arms. “This isn’t what I signed on for. I can’t take off an entire year to live in New York with you. Even if I loved it out there, my business is here and it’s not something I can run from a desk across the country, or telecommute to. What we do and how we do it—it’s manufacturing, design and research, product testing and development. It’s hands-on. I’m the CEO. That’s not something I can—or want to—hand back to Dad or down to Luke.” He could scarcely look me in the eye. “Ollie, I consider myself a pretty evolved man, but I don’t want a part-time wife.”

  “I thought you loved me,” I said, feeling foolish even as I said the words.

  “Of course I do. And I don’t doubt for a minute that you love me, too. But sometimes the rest of life rears its ugly head, and you have to deal with it, instead of lopping off that head and sticking it in the sand.”

  My gut seized up. I wasn’t liking where this was going. “So what are you saying, sweetheart?” I reached for his hand.

  “I guess I’m saying…maybe…maybe we should…oh, rats.”

  “What?” I asked, terrified to hear the answer.

  “Maybe…I don’t know…put things on hold for a while.”

  “I thought you don’t want to put things on hold. I thought that’s what this discussion is all about.” My voice barely rose above a whisper. It was the hardest conversation of my life so far. I felt as though everything I’d ever wanted had turned to sand and was slipping through my fingers onto the sheets. One quick whoosh of the comforter, and my dreams would be gone for good.

  “I don’t want to wait…and I don’t want not to wait, either,” Tom murmured.

  “Huh? You’re losing me.”

  He looked up, his eyes wet with tears. “Maybe I am,” he said, taking the phrase literally. “None of the solutions seem to work for me. They’re all compromises I just don’t want to live with.” He sighed into his cupped hands. “This wasn’t what I signed on for.”

  “But sometimes shit happens,” I said.

  “Stuff happens. I know it does. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.” He glanced over at me, and with the most painful reluctance admitted, “Ollie, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me…and at the same time, I guess we’re not a good fit. Not right now, anyway.”

  “What about later?” Silent, hopeful tears coursed down my cheeks.

  “We each have too much going on right now in other parts of our lives, things we can’t give up, or put aside—and don’t want to, or aren’t in a position to. Just because two people want to get married, it isn’t—poof!—always so easy. Life gets in the way of love sometimes.”

  Through my tears I looked down at my engagement ring. It seemed to wink at me from a rheumy haze, as though it was sitting just underwater. A sob caught in my throat as I wriggled it off my finger. “I think what you’re saying is that it doesn’t make sense to think about planning a life together right now. So I don’t feel right about keeping this, since I don’t expect you’ll want me to keep wearing it.”

  “No, I guess I don’t,” he murmured, looking away from me so I wouldn’t see him cry. “You’re right.”

  “I’ll pack up all my stuff and try to get a flight back to New York today. What I can’t carry, I’ll just ship.” I felt sick, numb, heartbroken. Augie’s demise hadn’t hit me nearly as hard. This—this was a death.

  At the airport, Tom left me at the curbside check-in. “I really want to keep in touch,” I told him.

  His hands remained at ten and two on the wheel, as if he were gripping his emotions for dear life. “I do, too,” he agreed.

  I wondered if we really would.

  “Sue my own cousin?” Marty deMarley was intrigued. “I’ve been looking for a way to sock it to Livy ever since I was nine y
ears old,” he said, the thought of revenge as sweet as the fistful of M&M’s he’d just popped into his mouth. “Aw, shit, I forgot to wish on the green ones. Anyway, you heard Uncle Augie’s lawyer. In his own WASPy way he basically said ‘fuhgeddahboutit.’”

  Linda deMarley threw her hands up in disgust. “Get real, Marty. Gaines said that to scare everyone. In my experience, there’s no such word as no.” After three glasses of champagne, her nightly cocktail of choice, the alcohol had begun to slur her speech. She tipped the bottle into her glass again. “You know what I like about all thiss?” she asked, gulping down the champagne.

  “No, Linda, what do you like?”

  “The quesstion was rhetorical, Marty.” Noticing a chip in her manicure, she frowned, as if to blame her index finger. “What I like is that the language in Augie’s will iss so vague that a lawsuit is sustainable. I’m going to call my brother-in-law. Maybe Sherman can file a proceeding in Surrogate’s Court, to declare the will invalid. So, we forfeit a hideous oil painting we never wanted to own anyway. When a partner from Wachtel Lipton slaps Ms. Va-Va-Venuss with a summonss, Casper Gaines will be outgunned and outmanned.” Linda clapped her hands. “It’s deliciouss. Gaines’ll be paperworked to death with interrogatories demanding Augie’s medical records, mental health reports.” Her eyes grew moist with vengeance.

  “Come here, pookie.” Marty motioned to Linda to sit on his lap as he reclined in his mitt-shaped leather lounger. “Ooh—ohh, watch the knees. You know I have weak knees.”

  “As long as it’s not your resolve.” She nuzzled his neck and darted her tongue in and out of his slightly fuzzy ear, a gesture that repulsed her, but never failed to turn her husband into malleable mush.

  Marty moaned as his gaze met Linda’s. “Ohh, Linda, I love it that you want to nail Venus’s ass to the wall as much as I do. You’re such a supportive wife. And she’s not even your blood cousin; you don’t even have a reason to despise her.”

  “Oh, Marty,” Linda murmured, gazing longingly at the coffee table, where she had left her half-full glass of champagne. “If you only knew.”

  So what do you think? Can my repulsive cousin Marty or any of the sleazy misogynists in the Cheers’ front office challenge old Augie’s will?” I asked my friend Tessa. Tessa is my former college roommate, and she had just completed her freshman term in Congress. We were killing a bottle of wine in my apartment while her husband, Jamie Doyle, was taking a turn behind the bar at the Irish pub that bears his name.

  Tessa laughed. “How should I know? I was a speechwriter, not a lawyer, V.” She refreshed her glass and rested on her elbow. For some reason, whenever we visit each other’s homes we always wind up sitting on the floor, probably a twenty-year holdover from the days when the carpet was more comfy than the saggy-seated sofa in our suite.

  I gazed gloomily into my wineglass.

  “Hey, where’d you go, V?” Tessa waved her hand in front of my face. “You spaced out on me for a moment. Apart from the will-related stuff and Sophie—which is a big enough deal in and of itself—is everything okay?” She rearranged her limbs and sat beside me, our backs against the couch, our knees pulled up toward our chests. “How is Tom taking all this?”

  I hadn’t told Tessa. “Not as well as I would have hoped,” I began. “Not too well at all, in fact.” Teardrops splashed into my wineglass as I shared the ugly details of our breakup. “About seventeen times a day I ask myself whether I haven’t gone and done the stupidest thing in my present life by choosing to stay here indefinitely and get to know Sophie. I had everything I’d always wanted, always dreamed of, only to agree to slam on the brakes and call the whole damn thing a day. I keep telling myself I should have fought harder. On the other hand, he said the whole Sophie-Cheers situation wasn’t what he’d bargained for, so unless I opted out of all that, what good would fighting to have held onto Tom have done, anyway?” I swirled the wine in my glass and stared at it. “I’ll miss Tom’s family as much as I’ll miss him. How many women can say that about their potential in-laws? I was so fucking lucky—and I chucked it and let him go. What do you think of old Augie’s directive from the Great Beyond? Do you think I know how to run a minor league baseball team?” I asked glumly.

  “As opposed to a major league team?” Tessa playfully jabbed me in the ribs. “I’m just kidding. C’mon, I’ve never known someone so capable and determined. I know you can do anything you turn your mind to.”

  “Sports?”

  “If need be.”

  “Need be.”

  We laughed.

  “Your dad didn’t say you were supposed to manage the team, just own most of it. Make sound economic decisions; be sure you’ve hired the right people to get the job done. You just have to know about running a business, managing myriad male egos—”

  “Maybe more like massaging myriad male egos. They’re deceptively fragile items, you know.”

  “V, you’ve already devoted almost half your life to the care and feeding of male egos. Dancing, and running those strip clubs in Vegas—”

  I tossed a peanut at her. “You always say that!” I wasn’t a stripper—I’ve been a showgirl and I’ve been a burlesque dancer. I ran nightclubs, not strip joints.” I launched into my distinction litany, exasperated to have to explain it to my best friend, of all people.

  Tessa threw up her hands. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry if I insulted you. My point was just that you know how to handle the testosterone-fueled male of the species. C’mon?! If I were a betting man—”

  I burst out laughing. “Neither of which you are.”

  “But if I were a gambler and I were a man, I would lay odds that you’d do such an alarmingly swell job that you’d knock their sweat socks off. Hey, pal…in the twenty-two years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you look disheartened. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think of you as being vulnerable.”

  “Hah!”

  “You always seem so together.”

  “The operative word in that sentence is seem. And, as I said a minute ago—sports? Tess, I never in a zillion years thought I’d be in a position to run Dad’s precious Bronx Cheers.”

  “So? I never in a zillion years thought I’d be appointed to the Congressional Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack. Go with the flow, girlfriend. Chin up! Maybe Tom will be smart enough to want you back, and agree to put the wedding plans on hold until you’ve both got everything sorted out.”

  I took a swig of wine. “That kind of thing happens in fairy tales and movies of the week, T.”

  Tessa refused to admit I was probably right. She leaned over and gave me a hug. “V, you’re going to knock the ball right out of the park!”

  Top of the Second

  I was out at my yoga class when Sophie called a few days later. She left an excited message on my voice mail saying she’d like me to come up to Larchmont for Sunday brunch…to meet the Ashes.

  Oh God. I wasn’t sure I was ready for this. Part of me had been dying to see the people who raised my daughter. But she was their daughter, too. Even more so. They were her real parents. I’d only been the womb. So far, anyway. I’d brought her into the world and bought her a glass of tea. Big whoop, compared to sheltering, feeding, clothing, educating, and loving her for the first twenty years of her life. What would they think of me?

  I was in an absolute tizzy. Over the phone, Tessa counseled me to calm down. I know she realized this was impossible, but someone had to try to keep me sane. “Look, V, you can’t be who you’re not. Don’t even try. Did I ever tell you how amusing I find it that inside that glamazon body of yours is a pea-sized kernel of self-esteem?”

  “Very amusing. Ha-ha,” I said sarcastically. “And with a father like mine, ever wonder why? It’s the biggest crock of horseshit that attractive people are never insecure. I read an article once where Michelle Pfeiffer—who in my humble opinion is one of the most beautiful women in the world—said she thinks she looks like a duck. Well, there are plen
ty of mornings when I look in the mirror and see a giraffe that swallowed a dromedary.”

  “I think you mean a camel. Dromedaries only have one hump. And in the immortal words of Cher—who I think is one of the most beautiful women in the world, massive plastic surgery aside—‘Snap out of it!’”

  “Oh, T, I wish you could script me something,” I groaned, only half kidding, “so I don’t make an utter fool of myself in front of the Ashes. Dancers are accustomed to communicating with their bodies, not with words.”

  “I’m not going to tell you you’re blowing this all out of proportion, because meeting Sophie’s real parents is undeniably huge,” Tessa said pragmatically. “But I know you’ll be fine, even if you don’t believe me.”

  Just then the doorman buzzed my intercom. “Oops—I’d better get that; I’m expecting a grocery delivery, and I need both hands to unpack the boxes. Will you be home later, T? I may need another pep talk.”

  “Sure. What do I have to do for the rest of the day but read a five-hundred-and-seventy-six-page bill to protect the Blue Point oyster?” Tessa said sardonically. “Just kidding. Not about the bill, though. The proposed legislation is real. But you know I’m always here for you!”

  I hung up the phone and lifted the receiver on the intercom.

  “Are you expecting someone?” Larry asked.

  “Yes—I am,” I told the doorman. “Send them up.”

  A few minutes later my bell rang. I opened the door and saw a slender, well-groomed man who looked as though he might be some sort of performer. The kind you see around my Chelsea neighborhood all the time.

  “Are you Olivia deMarley?” he asked me.

  “Ye-es,” I said, hesitatingly. “But you’re not Fresh Direct.”

  “’Fraid not,” he replied. “But I do have a delivery for you.” He opened his canvas messenger bag and removed a thick tri-folded document, which he then stuffed into my hand. Before I could get a good look at the papers, he’d scampered for the fire stairs. I had a sinking feeling I’d just been ambushed. Still standing, stunned, in my doorway, I unfolded the document, and as I flipped through the pages I felt my gut plummeting to the parquet. Cousin Marty and Linda were suing me—to contest my father’s will.