How had she failed to realize how empty her life would be when the kids were gone? Why hadn’t she done something to prepare herself?
She recorked the wine and started to put it back in the refrigerator, then decided to take it with her into the family room.
The blinds were drawn, which meant Sam had been watching television. She put the glass and bottle on coasters and opened the blinds, stopping to run her finger along several slats, checking for dust.
This was her favorite room, the one she’d designed the rest of the house around and decorated in tans and greens and burgundy. It was large because she’d wanted lots of room for the kids and their friends, and the ceiling had to be tall to accommodate the Christmas tree that never looked as big in the lot as it did when they brought it home. There was a fireplace to hang stockings—putting it in the corner and adding a raised hearth was an afterthought that had doubled the cost and lost them their original mason.
A wall of windows faced the pool that they’d put in four years after the house was built, an addition Elizabeth hadn’t agreed to until Stephanie was five and swimming on her own. A doorway led to the kitchen, another to a hall and the downstairs bathroom.
As she watched her children grow she imagined the day the house would be filled with yet another generation. What she hadn’t taken into consideration was the possibility her grandchildren would live hundreds, even thousands of miles away. She was too young to live the rest of her life waiting for holidays and vacations that might or might not bring the family together again and too old to change who she was and what she’d become. She wasn’t ready for the life she’d known to be over, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.
Seeking an escape from happy memories turned melancholy, Elizabeth took her glass and the bottle of wine outside. She settled into the Adirondack chair Sam had given her for her forty-fifth birthday and drank a toast to all the Saturdays that had gone before when she had not been there alone.
Elizabeth looked up from her book when she heard the garage door open. It was only ten-thirty. She hadn’t expected Sam home before midnight and had gone to bed without him. She adjusted the pillow at her back and called, “In here.”
He appeared in the doorway. “Not feeling well?”
She closed the book and put it on the nightstand. She’d been on the road over ten hours that day and felt like it had been twenty. “Just tired.”
He slid across the bed and put his head in her lap, his hand cupping her thigh. He stayed still as Elizabeth gently ran her fingernails over his shoulders and down his back, then he reached for her hand and turned over to face her. “You ready to talk?”
“About?”
“Your father.”
“Is that why you came home early?”
He grinned. “Would you believe me if I said yes?”
“Maybe.”
Now he laughed. “No you wouldn’t.”
“So, why did you come home?”
Serious again, he brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her palm. “I thought you might need some company.”
After twenty-seven years he could still surprise her. She traced his lower lip with her fingertip. “I owe you an apology. I know I’ve been a bit of a bitch lately, and that you’ve taken the brunt of it, but things are going to get better. I did some thinking tonight and decided it’s time I made some changes.”
“In me?”
She was tempted to say yes, to give him a list of things she wanted him to do, just to tease him. But he might think she was still teasing when she finally told him the truth, and she wanted him to know she was serious. “Stop worrying. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Before you say anything, if you’re thinking you need to change because of me, don’t. I love you just the way you are. And I don’t care if that does sound like a song title. It’s true.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, giving herself time to think about what she was going to say. Saying out loud what she had planned made it official. Until then she could change her mind a hundred times without guilt or explanation. “I’m going to go back to school. And I’m going to get a degree in something useful this time. I don’t want a job, I want a career.”
“Whoa—where did that come from?” Sam rolled over and sat up.
“I think the idea has been floating around in my mind for a long time now. I just didn’t recognize it for what it was.”
He shook his head like a fighter after a hard blow. “And I thought you were going to tell me something about your father.”
“He’s part of it—in a way. I told you that if he left me in his will I wasn’t going to take his money. Now I am. I figure since he didn’t pay for my wedding, he can damn well pay for my education.”
“So, he does have money?”
“Yes—or at least that’s the way it looks. Of course, whatever is left is going to be split several ways, so it might not be much in the end.”
“I don’t understand.”
Finally, she told him about her day. When she was finished, Sam didn’t say anything for several seconds.
“Are you sure you did the right thing by not seeing him?”
“What do you mean by right?”
“Don’t get defensive. All I’m saying is that this was your chance to tell him all the things you’ve had bottled up all these years. Once he’s gone, so is the opportunity.”
“It doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t care.”
“How do you know?”
The pain was too fresh to keep from her voice. “I was one of four, Sam. If I really mattered to him, he would have wanted to see me by myself.”
Sam brought her to him in an awkward embrace. She let him hold her until the need to cry had passed. “I’m all right.”
“You’re not—but you will be. You’re the strongest person I know.”
She smiled. “Wow, two compliments in one night.”
He returned the smile. “Make it three—you look sexy as hell in that nightgown.”
She couldn’t remember what she was wearing and looked down at her nightshirt, the one with the faded picture of the Grand Canyon that she couldn’t bring herself to throw away because it had survived enough washings to be the softest and most comfortable one she owned. She put her hand on his thigh. “You want to fool around a little?”
“Nah—” He came forward again and kissed the hollow at the base of her throat. “I want to fool around a lot.”
She moved to accommodate him, sliding down from her sitting position and opening the covers.
Their lovemaking was familiar and comfortable. There was little they hadn’t tried through the years, keeping what worked and discarding what didn’t. By mutual, unspoken consent, they generally saved the more athletic positions and marathon sessions for romantic getaway weekends or times when one of them felt a need for something more.
Sam was the first and only man she’d ever made love with. She’d looked at other men in a curious, speculative way but never with desire. Instead of turning her on, just thinking about another man’s hand on her breast made her shudder. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand when her girlfriends salivated over Johnny Depp or Hugh Jackman or Colin Firth, just not how they incorporated them into their sexual fantasies.
At times Elizabeth had felt so out of step with her mental monogamy that she’d wondered if she was a sexual eccentric. But then Sam’s hands would cup her breasts the way they were now and his thumbs would sweep across her nipples, leaving them hard and extended, and she would give herself over to feeling instead of thinking. Soon she would become aware of a familiar warmth stealing through her belly, and then a throbbing would start between her legs. At that moment, even if it were within her power to summon a thought about sexual eccentricities, it was beyond her to care.
Chapter Thirteen
Christina
The taxi turned the corner onto Christina’s street, the driver swearing as he slamm
ed on his brakes to keep from hitting an oncoming truck navigating through the carelessly parked cars that lined both sides of the narrow road. “Looks like someone’s having quite a party,” he said.
The throbbing bass of rap music spilled through the open doors and windows of her house. So much for a quiet night and a shoulder to cry on. “Yeah, it looks that way.”
Cars were parked three-deep in the driveway, forcing the driver to stop in the middle of the street. He put his arm across the seat and turned to look at her. “Twenty-two fifty.”
She handed him a twenty and a five and tried not to let him see that it was all she had in her wallet. A stupid point of pride, something she could have easily pulled off if she weren’t so tired, if she just weren’t so worn down with being poor. She’d humiliated herself by asking the clerk at the Hyatt for a refund when she’d decided to come home early. Not only had he pointed out that the room had been paid for by credit card, he’d questioned whether the card was hers.
At least the airline let her change her ticket without too much of a hassle, adding the fee to the credit card on file. First-class was full and she’d had to fly coach, a center seat in a row next to the galley kitchen. A nonfunctioning kitchen, her rumbling stomach reminded her.
Flying to Sacramento first-class had been a mistake. Buying generic brands at the grocery store, secondhand clothes at the thrift shop, and gasoline by the dollar instead of the tank, and stealing flowers from her neighbor’s yards when she wanted to make the table look pretty, had lost its charm.
She liked the respect she’d been given in first-class, liked having a limo waiting when she arrived in Sacramento, and most of all, she liked having people look at her with a mixture of curiosity and awe because they were convinced the treatment made her someone special.
Opening the door and getting out, she flung her backpack over her shoulder. “Keep the change.”
The cloyingly sweet scent of pot swirled around her when she stepped onto the front porch. Instantly furious, she reached for the screen door and flung it open. She’d told Randy a dozen times she didn’t want his friends doing drugs at their house. There was a hard-ass cop with the nose of a bloodhound who patrolled the neighborhood on weekends. He loved busting parties and hauling people off, claiming he was doing it for the old folks who’d been there forever and couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.
She strode inside where smoke hung over the living room like a layered brown fog. Half-empty, grease-stained pizza boxes littered the tables and floor. Someone had started a pyramid of beer cans between the kitchen and dining room; another six-pack and it would reach the ceiling. Music throbbed from the oversize speakers that Randy had picked up at a garage sale and that doubled as end tables. The few people still sober enough to carry on a conversation shouted at each other to be heard.
Flinging her backpack behind the sofa, Christina went looking for Randy. She found him in the kitchen with Doug, the sound man for Illegal Alien. Randy had an open script in one hand and was waving the other, conducting the rhythm of the discussion. Neither looked as if he’d been partying. Instead, they were high on something more intoxicating to them both—the movie.
Unnoticed, Christina leaned against the wall and watched, picking up bits and pieces of the conversation, enough to let her know they were talking about her and her father’s money.
The song ended. For that brief time before another began, Randy’s words were all that filled the silence. “Now watch the bastard get a second wind.”
Doug laughed and lowered his voice. “Maybe you could get Christina to slip him something.”
Randy tapped him on the chest. “Don’t go there.”
Doug shoved Randy’s hand away. “Shit, man, I wasn’t serious.”
“I don’t care.”
Christina felt a peculiar mix of gratitude and affection for Randy. She started toward him to tell him so but came to an abrupt halt when she heard what came next.
“If she hears that kind of trash talk I’m sunk. As it is, I figure I’m going to have to marry the bitch to get anything out of this.”
Doug’s jaw dropped. “You’re going to marry her? Jesus—there’s got to be another way.”
The speakers crackled a half-second warning before shooting a staccato bass that rattled the windows and ricocheted off the walls. Randy’s reply was lost in the echo, but not the laughter or the high-five that followed.
Love was never as easy or straightforward as Christina wanted it to be. Too often its line was capriciously drawn, the heart pulled one way, the mind another. But not this time. She might, given enough time, be able to forgive a man who abandoned her, but never one who betrayed her.
Christina pulled the plug on the CD player, went to the light switch, and flipped it several times. “Party’s over. Get out—and take your shit with you. What I find gets flushed.”
“Hey, not so fast.” Randy came at her from behind and grabbed her around the waist. To the others he said, “Give us a minute. It’s cool.”
“Let me go,” Christina said.
Instead he pulled her closer, nestling his chin into her neck. “Hey, Doug, take care of things in here. Christina and I need to talk.”
She brought her heel down on his foot.
“Fuck—what’d you do that for?”
“I said I want everyone out,” she shouted. She turned to Doug. “That means you, too, you son of a bitch.” Picking up a purse from the end of the sofa, she flung it toward the door, looked for another, and did the same thing. No one challenged her, no one even looked at her. “And don’t come back,” she shouted. “I never want to see any of you again.”
“Fine by me, bitch,” a girl’s voice answered.
“Fuck you,” a guy said, starting a chorus of fuck you’s.
Christina stood in the middle of the room and watched them go. When she turned to look at Randy, he was glaring at her.
“Are you nuts?” he asked, his anger palpable.
“You, too, Randy. Get out.”
“You can’t throw me out of my own house.”
“It’s not your house. If you recall, it’s my name on the lease and my paycheck paying the rent.”
He grabbed her arm and when she tried to pull away, squeezed until she cried out and stopped struggling. “What the fuck is going on with you? You leave all happy and come back a flaming psycho.”
Instead of answering, she launched an offensive. “What’s with the party, Randy? You said it wouldn’t happen again. As a matter of fact, you promised.”
He let her go and sat on the sofa arm. “I was celebrating. What’s wrong with that?”
“Why were you celebrating? Did something happen that I don’t know about?”
He reached for her. She slapped his hands away. “The movie, baby,” he said. “What else?”
“The movie or the money?”
“Right now it’s pretty much the same thing.”
“There isn’t any money,” she said. “That’s what my father wanted to tell me.”
Randy’s expression went from confusion to disbelief to anger. He started to run his hands through his hair, stopped, and held the sides of his head. After several seconds he walked toward the kitchen, then turned and came back. “He’s lying. We’ll get a lawyer. We’ll sue. He can’t cut you off—you’re his daughter, his own flesh and blood.”
“It won’t do any good—there isn’t any money.”
“Oh yeah? Then how did he pay for that first-class ticket?”
She surprised herself with how quickly she came up with an answer. “He’s running up his charge cards. He says it’s a return on the twenty-two percent interest they’ve been collecting from him all these years.”
Randy groaned. “That fucker. I was counting on him.”
“He’s going to feel awful when he finds out what he did to you.”
“Don’t push me, Christina.”
“And I suppose this means you’re not going to dedicate the film to him or g
ive him producer credit?”
“I’m tired of your smart-ass mouth.” He glared at her. “And I’m tired of you.”
“Go ahead, break my heart.”
“I’m leaving—but not because you want me to.”
She laughed. “Whatever it takes.”
She remembered too late that Randy could handle just about anything—but not someone laughing at him. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him double his fist. He’d never hit her, so her mind stumbled over the warning. Too late she brought her hands up to defend herself. His knuckles connected with her jaw in a head-snapping blow. Shards of pain shot through her cheek, across her eye, and into her scalp. Her world went from blinding white to red to black. She struggled to stay upright, reaching for something to hold on to but finding only air. Her foot caught on the worn sisal rug and she went down.
Randy crouched beside her. “It’s over between us, Christina. But not because you say so. I only stayed for the movie.” He cupped her jaw and squeezed. She cried out in pain. “Report this or come after me in any way, and I’ll make your life hell. I’ll tie you up so tight in the Tucson courts that you’ll never get to L.A.”
She tried to answer, tried to tell him she wasn’t scared and that he could go to hell, but her mouth wouldn’t work. Pain washed over her in crimson waves. She fought closing her eyes, knowing she needed help and that she was on her own to find it.
Chapter Fourteen
Jessie
Jessie turned the micro recorder over in his hand, flipping it between his fingers the way he would a silver dollar. It was May 1, a day the newspapers used to carry a picture of kids dancing around a May pole, the girls with ribbons in their hair, the boys in short pants. Now it was Cinco de Mayo, the fifth of May, that was celebrated. The kids in the picture were Mexican, the girls in brightly colored dresses, the boys wearing sombreros as big as umbrellas.
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