Family Love

by Liz Crowe

  Chapter Three

  New York City

  Three Years Later

  I blinked up at the strange ceiling, confused and fuzzy-headed … until I remembered how I ended up here. The person next to me groaned and rolled over, engulfing me in a gagging fog of old booze and stale pot.

  I sat up, rubbing my face, pondering the looming summer. After three years of slogging through classes and trying to impress unimpressible instructors and other prima donnas at the performing arts college, I was sick to death of it. It was all a stupid racket. Only the rich bitch east coast girls ever got the good roles, the connections, the leads in the really great shows.

  So I’d dropped out, kind of unofficially. Not going to class had freed up an awful lot of time to find a real dance job.

  I disentangled myself from the various arms and legs and stood up, stretching my legs and hips. I was sore as hell from the off-off Broadway modern piece of crap I’d managed to scrounge up. These guys wanted contortionists, not dancers. But I wasn’t exactly in a great negotiating position, so I signed on, desperate to avoid having to go home for even a few weeks of Love family-inflicted torture.

  I stumbled across the room and found the bathroom, which, of course, stank of shit and mold, with streamers of old, rotting paint hanging down the wall in huge strips. I wiped off the toilet seat with paper towels I found among the empty wine bottles, and after taking care of that business, I washed my hands, then sniffed my skin. I reeked of pot and stage makeup, and honestly couldn’t recall how many guys I’d let fuck me the night before.

  After eyeballing the dismal state of the shower, I rooted through a cardboard box under the sink for anything resembling cleaning supplies. After a few swipes at the shower’s disgusting, mildew-encrusted interior with ancient cleanser and a hopefully clean washcloth, plus the hottest water I could conjure, I climbed under the anemic shower trickle.

  I cleaned myself, using all of what remained of a bottle of hand soap, keeping my body parts close so I wouldn’t touch the fiberglass walls. I got out, cursing and drying off with the few remaining paper towels, although most of them stuck to my skin in damp little splotches.

  “Yo,”a new-to-me guy said, wandering in and pissing into the toilet without a single glance in my direction.

  “Hey,” I protested, trying to cover myself and giving up. He grunted, finished, flushed, turned, and wandered out, buck naked, and sporting the most amazing physique I’d seen in a while. Which was saying a lot, since I’d screwed my way through most of my male classmates at the high-level dance school and moved on to a few females out of boredom.

  I sighed, disgusted with myself for coming here, drunk and high as a kite after the Sunday matinee and evening combination. I hated the assholes running the show. But got along great with the other dancers. I bit my lip and followed Mr. Hot Ass and his super-compelling rear view into the big room. It had two mattresses, a table covered with empty bottles, pizza boxes and salad bowls, an enormous flat screen TV, and a few rugs.

  It smelled like the inside of a whorehouse in August, but I’d gotten used to that. I kept following the man into the tiny kitchen with equally filthy surfaces and an overflowing garbage can. “How can you live in this?” I asked, sliding up behind him and molding my naked front against his delicious butt. His dick was long and rock-hard by the time I gripped it, tweaking his nipples with my other hand while my body revved up.

  “I don’t live here,” he said, turning and pushing me until my butt hit a table. “God damn, you’re hot.” He breathed into my ear, setting me on the table and draping one of my sore legs over his shoulder. “Wanna fuck you, baby,” he said, his eyes glassy from whatever we’d taken the night before.

  “Wrap it up, mister,” I said. “No raincoat. No ride.”

  He sighed and let my leg drop, then rummaged through some drawers until he found a foil-wrapped condom packet. I watched him slide it down his length, then grip himself. He grinned, and kept grinning, while we knocked a few dirty bottles and god knows what else to the floor from our brief exertions.

  After I dressed, when I was trying to locate my bag from the night before, poking among the sleeping men and women and detritus, a hand grabbed my ankle. “Hey,” a female voice said from under a pile of arms and legs. “You going? Wanna share a cab?”

  I frowned, wanting to leave now, not wait for some chick to get her crap together. “Hurry,” I said, dropping into a large rattan chair with a batik fabric cushion to wait, trying to re-focus, and grateful when I remembered I had a two-day break between the long Sunday double show and a Wednesday night performance.

  A phone was buzzing somewhere. That’s what finally burned through the X and booze to wake me up. It was my ringtone, and it kept going and going, as if whoever was trying to reach me was damn well not gonna stop.

  Just before I got up, the ringing stopped. Then started up again. I followed the relentless noise until I located it under a pile of jeans and T-shirts. I pulled my hair off my face and fastened it with the band I always kept around my wrist, staring at the number that had, indeed, been calling me for the better part of an hour. I went ice cold all over at the sight of it.

  When it buzzed and rang again, echoing in the now mostly-empty room, I put it to my ear. “Hello? Aiden? What’s wrong? Why the hell are you …?”

  I thought my youngest brother was at a writing school out west. I hadn’t talked to him in months. Of course I hadn’t bothered to go home at Christmas, either, having landed a gig on a Disney cruise as a dancing princess. I got to be the ethnic one from Aladdin, thanks to my bronzed skin and long dark hair. It had been a crazy three weeks. Those Disney people sure knew how to party. But more important, it had been utterly devoid of Love family BS, which had been my goal.

  “It’s Mama,” my brother said, his voice crackly, either from a bad connection or worse. I dragged my fingers through my ponytail. “She’s sick, Angel. Cancer. The doctors told me to say you need to …”

  I hung up on him, clutched the phone to my chest, and sank to the floor.

  Chapter Four

  A few hours later, having made it to my apartment without any further distractions or detours from my new pack of friends, I took a real shower in my miniscule but clean bathroom. Wrapped up in a robe, I popped some vitamins and a prophylactic dose of antibiotics I kept handy.

  My roommate had gone to work, thank God, because I was not in a chatty mood. My head was all echo-y and strange. My nasal passages felt clogged up, and my throat hurt.

  I sipped from a hot cup of cinnamon spice tea—a treat courtesy of my mother. Her care packages came at regular intervals, sans any messages other than the stuff in the box—all of which were my favorite things although I ignored some of them on principal. After a few minutes of stalling, I dialed the Love family home number, figuring one of them would answer. After six rings, the old-fashioned answering machine clicked in. I listened to my mother’s brisk message, then hung up.

  I tried Antony’s number first, not really wanting to hear it from him, but reverting to a reliance on my eldest brother for this bit of information. I really wanted to get hold of Kieran, my second oldest, much calmer, and most favorite brother. When Antony didn’t answer, I started to panic. Scrolling through my calls from the past few months, I found a Florida-based number I thought might be Kieran’s since he’d returned home after the disaster of his brief NBA career.

  “Hey, Angel?” His voice sent a bolt of relief across my twanging nerve endings. “That you?”

  “Yeah. Hey. So … uh what’s going on?”

  “She’s real sick, honey. You need to come home.” I covered my face and listened to the phrases stage four and breast cancer, already concocting excuses in my head, piling them up like stones in a fortress wall. “Daddy needs you here, Angelique. You’re the only one who can calm him down.”

  “I’m … I can’t.”

  “Get your ass home, baby sister,” my easygoing sweetheart of a brother demanded in a way th
at made me sit up and take notice. “This is the real thing. And it’s real bad. Do you need money for a ticket or gas or … whatever?”

  “No, I can get myself home, Kieran. How did this just happen all of a sudden?”

  “It didn’t. She’s kept it to herself, but Daddy got us all together and … just come on home. Please?”

  “Fine,” I said, trying to come up with a way to wiggle out of it even as I pulled out my wallet so I could book a flight.

  “Aiden’s here,” he said, his usually steady voice a little shaky, which pulled me even further into the surreal freak-out I was experiencing.

  “I know,” I said, trying to be the calm one for a change. “He called me first. Where’s Dominic? He around these days?”

  “Guess you’ll find out once you get here. Let me know when and where to pick you up.” He hung up, shocking me, and giving me my first taste of real terror at the potential reality of a universe where Lindsay Halloran Love might no longer exist.

  Four hours later I’d quit the lame show, collected a half month’s pay, and caught a plane, once I figured out that was only about twenty-five bucks more than a bus ticket. I sent Kieran a text before I boarded, smiling at his response.

  KL: Sorry I was a dick earlier. It’s kind of stressful right now.

  Me: No worries Red.

  KL: C u soon. I’ll pick u up.

  Me: Bringing the future Mrs. Redhead?

  KL: No

  I frowned at that. Antony had told me in an email Kieran was engaged and he was ga-ga over her. So his one-word answer to my leading question seemed odd. I shrugged, settled into my seat, and slept the entire two and a half hours it took to deposit me smack in the midst of Love family chaos. I deplaned and found the single suitcase I’d packed, figuring I’d be returning in a few weeks, once whatever was going to happen happened. Then I walked out into the warm Kentucky summer evening and almost burst into tears at all the familiar sensations bombarding me from every direction.

  “Angel!”

  The sound of my brother Kieran’s voice did it. I turned and ran straight for him, pressing my nose into his chest and clutching the back of his polo shirt. He let me sob it out, stroking my hair and grabbing my suitcase before it toppled over. After a few minutes, I looked up into his distinctive Halloran family features. “Sorry. Thanks for coming to get me.”

  He grinned and let go. “All better?”

  I sniffled and pulled my carry-on strap over my shoulders. “Yeah. How is she?”

  “Well, apparently we are having a big old family dinner meeting tonight. My guess is that’s when we’ll get the lowdown.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and frowned at whatever he saw on the screen.

  “So who is she, this future sister-in-law I have yet to approve?”

  Kieran threw his arm across my shoulders and we headed for his car. He tossed my stuff in the trunk, hit a button to open the ragtop, and then opened my door, avoiding my question. Once we were out of the moderate Louisville airport traffic, I stuck a cigarette between my lips and went fishing in my bag for a lighter.

  “Not in this car.” Kieran snagged it out of my mouth and let go of it overhead, sending it sailing out into the universe.

  “Jerk,” I said, smiling at him and running my fingers through his shock of deep red hair. “Come on Francis, spill it. Who is she? How did you meet her? When’s the big day?” I used his middle name, in the way we sometimes did within our sibling pack. His was the only one that seemed to suit him, so it got used more often than anyone else’s.

  He shot me a quick, odd look, then focused on the windshield. “Her name’s Melinda, she’s a lawyer. We met online. For now, that last one’s a little up in the air, but it is technically set for next summer.”

  “Technically, huh?” I said, studying his profile and sensing my protective hackles rise in relation to his obvious unhappiness. “I think I don’t care for her already.”

  He snorted and floored it to pass a truck before making the exit onto interstate 64. “Better take a number.”

  “Oh?” I wanted a cigarette right then so bad I almost tried to light another one.

  “She’s not a Love family favorite.”

  “Well, shit, Francis, Mama hated Crystal, too, but Antony didn’t care. She’ll get over it.” I closed my eyes and let the wind whip my hair every which way, nervous and anxious at the thought of seeing her again—my mother, whom I had managed to avoid for the better part of three years now.

  Kieran made a noise, so I looked over at him in time to catch him wincing while he adjusted his super-long legs in preparation for the forty-five minute drive ahead. Kieran had played basketball on scholarship at the University of Kentucky, or “Basketball Mecca,” as it’s known in my family. After a few years playing overseas once he graduated, he managed to land a spot on an NBA team in Florida.

  I was with Mama and Daddy watching him play, reluctantly, and only half caring about it, when he broke his leg and shattered his knee in a freakish accident. I thought Daddy was gonna have a heart attack while we watched the drama unfold, live, on television. Mama had been her usual steady self at first, but Kieran told me when she first saw him in the hospital bed in Miami she’d totally lost it.

  I patted his leg. “Hurts still?” He nodded.

  “Going to therapy regular now. Went this morning, and I always hurt way more afterwards. Oh, get this, guess who my physical therapist is?”

  “No clue,” I said, taking a deep breath when the urge to upload nicotine hit me hard again.

  “Cara.”

  “Cooper?” I studied his profile, knowing that having the girl he’d loved for so long, and who dumped him their second year at college, turn up again—as his physical therapist, no less—would not be an easy thing. “Why’s she here?”

  “Working. Oh, and being engaged to some rich guy, it would seem.” His voice stayed neutral, but I heard the underlying unhappiness, which hit me hard. Kieran was the single one of my pack of brothers not completely focused on his own needs. I forgot sometimes how much the loss of the one thing he’d loved, and had worked so hard to achieve, would be for him. And now, this?

  “Well, whaddaya know, Little Miss Cara Cooper back in Lucasville.”

  “Not for long. Her fiancé is moving them over to Oldham County soon.” He named the rich community near Louisville that had once been nothing but farm country.

  “Well. Good for her, then.”

  He nodded but didn’t elaborate. I sighed. Love family drama never ceased. While I hadn’t missed it, per se, I took a bit of comfort in its familiar contours.

  “I think Antony is finally getting real with Rosie,” Kieran said about ten minutes later.

  “Rosie Norris? I didn’t even know they were … never mind. Good for her and for him. They both deserve a little happiness. God knows Antony’s been flagellating himself way too long.”

  “Yeah. It’s good. Mama loves her to pieces of course.”

  His distinct emphasis on the pronoun made me suppress a giggle. My brothers—oldest and stoic Antony, sweetheart peacemaker Kieran, over-the-top troublemaker Dominic, and bookworm brainiac baby Aiden—never ever stopped competing with each other, no matter what they claimed.

  I smiled, admitting to myself that I wanted to see them, that I’d missed them all, for four completely different reasons.

  “How’s Daddy?”

  Kieran sighed and stretched his right arm out across the seat, draping it there and driving with two fingers of his left hand—a distinctive posture I’d seen with every one of my brothers and my father. “He needs you. And I don’t know for how long.”

  I frowned. “Well, I can’t promise I’ll—” The thought of an indefinite stay in my old room in the house where I’d spent so many miserable years trying to please my mother, and failing time and again, made my stomach churn.

  “Don’t make any decisions now. Let’s see how this dinner goes—what we find out about the treatment and all that, Okay? Promise?�
� He glanced at me, his green eyes narrowed.

  “I’ll make that promise to you, Francis, and I’ll give Daddy whatever support he needs.”

  He nodded and returned his attention to the gray strip of interstate. I had nothing more to say. I knew how frustrating it must be to my brothers, knowing I had such a different sort of relationship with my mother. But they got her full attention, her total self, her complete, unconditional love. What I got from her was something else entirely, and I’d already spent too many years trying to figure out what I’d done wrong.

  Chapter Five

  I’ll admit that the moment I saw her, I burst into tears.

  Probably because she was ensconced in the one room I associated with her fully, her kingdom, the kitchen.

  When Kieran carried my suitcase in and set it by the front door, I held a finger to my lips, indicating he should stay quiet. I don’t know why. My mother and I certainly didn’t have a “surprise! I’m here!” relationship. The house felt so sickeningly familiar yet comforting at the same time, I needed a minute to absorb it.

  I stood, watching her, standing shoulder to upper arm with my favorite brother, tears burning. She looked so very old, so drawn. Still bossy as ever, but her boyish figure was even thinner than I remembered. At that moment the concept of a world without my mother in it truly made me physically ill.

  As if sensing my presence, she turned.

  “Well, isn’t this a nice surprise,” she said. “What a crying shame I had to go and catch cancer to get you to come home for a visit.”

  “Mama,” Kieran replied, his voice a low warning I recognized from all the years I’d spent letting my brothers and my father run interference for me. My anger eased some of my sadness, followed quickly by a kind of relief at resumption of the status quo. Before I could walk closer, to hug or to slap her—I wasn’t a hundred percent sure which—a commotion from the upper hall distracted us both.