Lovechild

by Metsy Hingle

  How he wanted to believe her, wished that he could. He looked at the ugly marks on her wrists and knew it was a lie. “But the darkness is a part of me, too, Liza. I cannot escape it.”

  Liza’s heart pounded in her chest as he stood and went to retrieve his coat. “I will be leaving Chicago day after tomorrow.”

  “What about us? You asked me to live with you. Why does our having a son together change everything?”

  “I realize now I was only kidding myself. It would never have worked, Liza. Even if Jack did not exist. You want children, a family. I cannot give them to you.”

  “What about Jack? You have a son, Jacques. Whether you want him or not. He’s still your son.”

  “I am aware of that. I will send you money for him, but I do not wish him to know me as his father. I do not wish to be a part of his life.”

  “That’s it? You’re just going to walk out of here and pretend he doesn’t exist? That I no longer exist?”

  “It is better this way.”

  “For who?” Liza demanded.

  He slipped on his coat. He walked over to her, brushed the tears away from her cheeks. “For you and for Jack.”

  Liza wrenched away from him, hugged her arms around herself, trying to stop the pain. “You said you loved me. If you love me, Jacques, prove it. Stay. Make a life with me and our son. I need you. Our son needs you. He needs a father.”

  There was pain there, there was longing. She saw it in his face, in his eyes. But Liza was too caught up in her own agony to offer comfort.

  “You made the right decision years ago, Liza. Jack is better off with no father than to have me as one. You are better off without me, too. I love you. Too much to risk hurting you again because of the darkness in me. Enough to walk away and let you find someone else who will make you happy.”

  He opened the door, and a rush of cold air came in, setting the flames to dance in the fireplace. But Liza could feel no cold. All she could feel was the pain in her heart.

  “I once accused you of being a gigolo, Jacques, because of your aversion to commitment. I was wrong. Even a gigolo’s willing to take a chance on love. You’re not. You’re a coward, Jacques Gaston. You’re so afraid your father was right, that you’re not willing to take a chance—not even on my love for you or for our son. And you know what’s so ironic about all of this?”

  Wiping away the tears running down her cheeks, she continued, “What’s so ironic, is that by not taking that chance, you let your father win. He wins, Jacques. He wins because you’re going to end up just like him. Alone.”

  Eleven

  “Do you hear me, Jacques? He wins,” Liza sobbed. “Your father wins after all!”

  Jacques forced himself to turn away, forced himself to walk down the sidewalk toward his car. The snow continued to fall, harder now, the wind whipping it around him and into his eyes. It was cold. He knew it was cold. It had to be, given the strength of the wind. But he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel the bite of the wind or the sting of snow. He couldn’t feel anything except the deep, numbing ache inside him.

  “You’re a coward, Jacques Gaston. You’re a coward for letting him win.”

  He kept moving toward the car, afraid if he stopped or looked back for even a moment, he wouldn’t be able to leave. Opening the car door, he slipped behind the wheel and started the engine. He didn’t bother with the seat belt. He didn’t care about his own safety. He simply had to leave—quickly, before he lost the courage to walk away from her and his son, away from the only things in life that he wanted. The very things he could never have.

  Leave. Don’t look.

  He obeyed the voice in his head. Shoving the gearshift into reverse, he backed the car out of the driveway and set the tires spinning on the ice-packed driveway.

  Go quickly. Don’t look at her.

  He heard the voice in his head and knew he should listen, but as he braked the car, slowing on the downward slope of the driveway to the icy street, he couldn’t stop himself. He had to see her, to look at her one last time.

  She stood in the doorway, a vision in her dark green slacks and matching turtleneck with her chin hiked up proudly, defiantly, her hair a swirl of blond silk thrashing in the wind and snow. He saw her turn, crouch down and scoop Jack up as the boy ran into her arms.

  Then Jack waved to him. His son waved his little fingers. Pain ripped through him again, and Jacques wrenched his gaze away. His vision blurred. He could no longer see the road clearly, but he had to go...quickly. Before he could change his mind, he took his foot off the brake and, shifting the car into first gear, he hit the gas. The Mercedes sedan shot down the street into the blur of white snow. He pressed the heel of his hand to one eye, then to the other and somehow navigated his way along the winding road.

  But even as he followed the road signs directing him back to Chicago, he couldn’t shake the image of Liza and Jack standing in the doorway watching him leave.

  And an hour later as he exited the elevator and headed to the penthouse apartment, he could still hear Liza’s words ringing in his ears.

  “He wins, Jacques. Your father wins because you’re going to end up just like him.”

  She was wrong, Jacques told himself. He’d done the right thing—for Liza and their son. If he had stayed as she’d asked him to do, as he had wanted to do, then his father really would have won. Because by staying he would have exposed them to the darkness inside him. He thought of the way Liza had looked when he left her, her beautiful face all tear streaked, her eyes swollen from crying. The ugly marks on her wrists. Marks that he had made in anger.

  No, Jacques told himself once more. He had defeated Etienne Gaston. The cycle would end with him, just as he had vowed it would. Liza and Jack were free. They could make a new life without him, a life not touched by his darkness.

  Inserting his key into the lock of the apartment, Jacques stepped inside the living room. Silence greeted him. Silence and emptiness.

  Tossing his overcoat on a chair, he headed for the bar and poured himself a glass of bourbon. As he lifted the glass to his lips, Jacques caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the bar. His hair was damp with melted snow and looked as though he hadn’t combed it in days. A five o’clock shadow covered his chin and jaw, evidence that he hadn’t shaved since morning. But it was his eyes, so empty and old that startled him. With the glass in his hands, the opened bottle before him and those empty gold eyes, he saw his father again. It was his father staring back at him. Slowly Jacques put down the glass and scrubbed his hand over his face.

  Sleep. What he needed was sleep, Jacques told himself. Turning away from the bar, he headed for the bedroom. He didn’t bother with the lights, simply kicked of his shoes and threw his clothes on a chair before falling facedown on the bed.

  Gardenias.

  The smell surrounded him. Jacques groaned. He fisted his hands in the sheets. He was enveloped in the smell of gardenias and Liza. And with the scents came flashes of the previous night that he had spent here with Liza in his arms, her body wrapped around his.

  Flipping over onto his back, he brought his arm across his eyes. Dear God, how was he going to live without her, he wondered, as he tried to shut out the images of her. But as he drifted off into a fitful sleep, he could still see her face as she’d looked in the doorway, and he could still hear her words ringing over and over in his head.

  It was to the sound of Aimee Gallagher’s voice on the answering machine in the next room that he awoke the next morning. “Jacques? Jacques, it’s Aimee. If you’re there, please pick up.”

  Jacques squinted at the clock that read eleven-fifteen and realized that he’d slept through the night and most of the morning.

  “Jacques, are you there?”

  He scrambled for the portable phone on the bedside table, managing to knock it on the floor before grabbing the receiver. “Aimee. I am here, mon amie.”

  “Jacques, what in the world is going on?”

  “What do yo
u mean?”

  “I spoke with Liza this morning and she sounded awful. She said...I know she told you about Jack. But she said you’d left. That you...that you didn’t want them.”

  Jacques squeezed his eyes shut a moment. “Aimee, I know you mean well, and I appreciate it. But please, stay out of this. It is between Liza and me.”

  “Is it true then? Are you really just going to walk away from them? I thought you loved her, Jacques.”

  “I do love her.” And the pain of loving her and being forced to turn away from what he wanted hit him again like a blow.

  “Then how can you just walk away? I thought—”

  “Aimee, please. Leave it alone. I have to go. I need to pack.”

  “Wait, Jacques. Don’t hang up.”

  Jacques sighed. Getting up from the bed, he wandered to the studio he had been using to work in. “What do you want, Aimee?”

  “You said you had to pack.”

  “That is right. It is time that I leave. The gala is over, and my lecture series ended last week.”

  “But where are you going?”

  He wasn’t at all sure. He only knew that he had to get away. “I am thinking about taking a little vacation to someplace in the Caribbean.” He picked up one of the brochures lying on the table. He had gathered a handful from a travel agency the previous week. He’d known a week ago that he would need to get away after the gala was over in order to forget Liza. Then yesterday morning, after their passion-filled night together, he had decided to surprise Liza by sweeping her away for a trip. As it was he would be taking the trip after all—but without Liza. “After all of this snow, I find myself in the mood for some sun and sand.”

  “But what about Christmas?”

  “What about it?” Jacques asked.

  “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. Surely you’re not planning to spend Christmas on some island with a bunch of strangers,” Aimee replied, as though the idea of tropical breezes and warm sunshine were repugnant.

  “Aimee, mon amie, when have you ever known me to remain a stranger for long?”

  “Stop the charming-Frenchman act, Jacques,” she chided, obviously not buying his attempt to lighten the conversation and her worries. “Christmas is a time for families, and if you’re not going to spend it with Liza and your son, then you’re going to spend it with us.”

  “Aimee, I appreciate—”

  “I’m not taking no for an answer, Jacques Gaston. And neither will Peter. We’ll have tickets delivered to the apartment this evening, so you have time to finish anything you have to do there. Tomorrow you’ll come to New Orleans and spend the holiday with us.”

  And before he could argue further, the line went dead. Jacques stared at the phone in his hands for long seconds. Maybe New Orleans wouldn’t be such a bad place to spend Christmas, after all, Jacques decided. Right now anyplace was better than being trapped in this city and apartment with so many memories of Liza and knowing that she was so near, but forever beyond his reach.

  But as he packed his clothes and his art equipment, Jacques found no peace in his decision to leave. When he started to pack the finished bust he had done of Aimee and Peter’s daughter, to take to them as a Christmas gift, he kept seeing the image of Jack.

  Jack would make a great subject, he thought, and was shocked at how strong his desire was to do a similar bust of his son. His son. Jacques swallowed the lump in his throat. He would never have the opportunity to sketch the little boy’s face, capture that twinkle in his eye on canvas, recreate that baby smile in clay.

  Jacques squeezed his eyes shut to turn off the images of Jack demanding to be picked up, of Jack laughing, of tiny hands grabbing cookies. Behind his shuttered lids he saw a fistful of crayons sticking out of a little boy’s pockets, a refrigerator almost invisible beneath a child’s drawings, a small boy tucked in his mother’s arms at a doorway waving his little hand in goodbye.

  “He wins, Jacques. Your father wins because you’re going to end up just like him. Alone.”

  And he was alone, Jacques admitted. Just as his father had been in the end. But it had been his decision, Jacques told himself. He’d made the right choice for Liza and their son. He tried to dredge up memories of his father, of his cruelties, of his laughing smirk when he’d told Jacques that he was just like him. But all he could see was Liza’s face, hear Liza’s voice pleading with him to stay.

  “I love you, Jacques. Stay. Don’t go.”

  Jacques covered his ears with his hands, but he couldn’t escape her tearful voice.

  “We’re more than the composite of whose blood runs through our veins. Each of us is responsible for what we make of ourselves, for what we feel in our heart. So are you, Jacques. So are you.”

  Had Liza been right? By walking away, had he let his father win? His heart beat faster as Jacques thought about what was in his heart. In his heart there was love—for Liza and the child that they had created out of that love.

  He struggled to find the darkness inside him. But he couldn’t, not when he imagined Liza’s face, the way she had looked when she had offered him her body and told him she loved him. There was no darkness when he thought of her, so soft and loving as she held their son. And there was no darkness when he remembered Jack’s laughter or the feel of his arms circling his neck.

  No. There was no darkness in his heart now, not when he thought of Liza or their son. He was still Etienne Gaston’s son, Jacques admitted. It was still his father’s blood that ran through his veins. It was still his father’s face and vicious temper he possessed. But his heart, his heart was his own, and it was filled with love for Liza and their son.

  “Christmas is a time for families.”

  Aimee was right. Christmas was a time for families. And he had a family to spend this Christmas with—his own. But first, he had some shopping to do.

  “No, Mother. I’m sure. I really want Jack and me to spend Christmas in our own home. Yes. I promise. Jack and I will drive up the day after Christmas to see you and Dad. I love you, too. Goodbye,” Liza told her mother.

  She returned the telephone to its cradle and, pasting a smile on her lips, she turned to Jack. “Okay. Now I wonder who is going to help Mommy frost these cookies?”

  “I help,” Jack offered.

  Liza looked at her son, so like his father, and felt that fist squeezing her heart again. She scooped him up into her arms and hugged him to her. After all the crying she’d done the previous night, she had been sure she didn’t have another tear inside her to shed. She was wrong, Liza realized, as silent tears ran down her cheeks.

  Despite her own pain, she thought of the way Jacques had looked when he’d left her. So terribly, terribly alone. Poor Jacques. At least she had their son, Liza told herself, and she found her heart hurting for Jacques who had no one.

  Trying to pull herself together, Liza reminded herself that thanks to Aimee, Jacques wouldn’t be spending the Christmas holiday alone. Oh, Jacques. You should be here—with me and our son.

  Jack squirmed in her arms and Liza eased her hold. His little fingers touched the tears on her cheek. “Hurt?” he asked.

  “Yes, sweetie, it hurts,” Liza admitted. And it did hurt to know that Jacques loved her, but not enough.

  “I kiss. Make better.”

  And when he kissed her cheek, Liza hugged him closer and told herself it would be all right. After all, she still had her son. Pulling herself together, Liza swiped the tears from her cheeks. “Okay, let’s get these cookies frosted,” she told him.

  After setting Jack down in a chair, she placed a small tray of the sugar cookies that had been cut into Santa Claus faces and teddy bear shapes. Then she and Jack dipped their brushes into the bowls of red and white frosting. “Now which ones do you want us to leave out tonight for Santa Claus?”

  “Bear,” he told her and began to paint.

  As Liza oohed and ahhed over her son’s masterpieces, she found herself watching the clock and thinking of Jacques again. After her second
conversation with Aimee yesterday in which she learned that Jacques had accepted her invitation to spend Christmas in New Orleans, she’d been keenly aware of the day as it related to Jacques.

  At nine o‘clock that morning, she had imagined him packing his bags. At ten o’clock, she envisioned him turning in his rental car. When eleven-thirty arrived and she thought of him boarding the plane for New Orleans, Liza could feel the tears welling up inside her again.

  Suddenly she had to get out of the house, away from the clock and the mental images of Jacques’s leaving. “Sweetheart, how would you like to help Mommy build a snowman?” she asked her son.

  “Make ’noman.” He held out his arms.

  Liza hurriedly bundled Jack up in his coat, hat and mittens. Not bothering to take the time with a hat for herself, she threw on her coat and gloves and raced out of the door into the snow and sunshine.

  As she began helping Jack pack the snow into a small mound, she found herself glancing up at the sky. She was being ridiculous, Liza told herself. They were too far from the airport for her to see or hear the planes take off. Still, she found herself shielding her eyes from the sun and watching the sky as her mental itinerary of Jacques’s movements continued. She envisioned him getting on the plane, buckling his seat belt, smiling and making some lucky stewardess’s day when he flirted with her.

  She was so lost in her thoughts, that at first Liza didn’t see the familiar dark Mercedes turn the corner onto her street. Her pulse quickened when she saw the car, and for a moment she thought it was Jacques.

  He’s gone, Liza. Accept it and get on with your life. You still have Jack, she reminded herself. Chastising herself, she dusted the snow off her hands and walked over to her son. “Hey, tiger, what do you say we take a break for lunch?”

  “Make ’noman,” he told her and continued to pound the snow.

  “We can have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”