Finding Their Son

by Debra Salonen

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ELI STAYED IN THE SHOWER longer than he had in his entire life. For several minutes, he stood directly under the powerful stream of hot water without moving. Maybe if he stood here long enough, the blood in his brain would start flowing again and he could come up with some kind of plan. He hoped.

  When the heat started to diminish, he grabbed a bottle of shampoo and lathered up. The scent was crisp and clean, faintly antiseptic. He didn’t recognize the brand, but he knew it wasn’t one Bobbi ever bought. For as long as he could remember he’d been using fruity-smelling girly products.

  He never complained, but honestly, didn’t anyone question his needs? If he happened to use the basement shower near his son’s room, he found manly scented products. How come E.J. rated, he silently grumbled, and I didn’t?

  He now knew the answer, but he didn’t want to think about it. Instead he redirected his ire toward the woman he’d been married to for almost twenty years. She did the shopping. Were her purchasing habits one more way to emasculate the man of the house?

  He rinsed his hair and turned off the water. Thinking about Bobbi left a bitter taste in his mouth. He hated being angry all the time. Maybe that as much as anything had been his motivation behind falling for his uncle’s vision quest baloney. He wanted to start moving forward. If that meant he needed to fill in a few gaps in his past…well, who could have known the gaps involved other human beings?

  He used the big, fluffy, chocolate-colored towel that was hanging beside the shower to dry off, then he wiped the condensation from the mirror and looked at himself. Haggard. Worn down. Defeated. The way his father had looked the entire time Eli had known him.

  With his hands pressed flat against the countertop on either side of the sink, he leaned heavily on his arms. For the past six months his life had been spiraling downward like a jet plane in free fall. He’d fueled the propulsion with anger and self-pity.

  “Enough,” he said, looking himself in the eye. “Enough.”

  He shaved and brushed his teeth using the disposable razor and new toothbrush Char had provided. A thick, white terry-cloth robe—the kind you could pick up at fancy hotels—was hanging from a hook behind the door. He put it on and knotted the belt at his waist.

  He ran his fingers over the insignia on the breast pocket but he didn’t recognize the chain. No surprise there. Other than Disney World and a few family-friendly motels between Lower Brule and Enid, Oklahoma, Eli didn’t have a lot hotel experience.

  Was Char a world traveler, he wondered, stuffing his hands in the side pockets?

  Char. A virtual stranger with a secret connection to him he still wasn’t certain he believed. And he’d kissed her. For no logical reason. Was he hoping to prompt some clear memory? Or was his action plain old lust?

  Lord knew he hadn’t been with a woman for months. He couldn’t remember the last time he and Bobbi had made love. In hindsight, he wondered if she’d suspected what the results of E.J.’s DNA test would reveal. Maybe she’d been preparing herself—and him—by squeezing him out of her life.

  He closed the lid of the toilet and sat, stalling. If what Charlene wrote was true, his life was about to change in ways he probably couldn’t imagine. Another kid? A hidden child he’d never heard about? A boy child, he gathered. His real kid. Maybe. Unless Char was as gifted a liar as Bobbi.

  He closed his eyes and rested his chin on the heel of his hand. His lips twitched as he pictured himself assuming the pose of that famous sculpture—The Thinker. He wasn’t. Obviously. If he’d thought more and screwed around less, maybe he wouldn’t be in this situation. Either of these situations.

  No, Bobbi was the thinker in the family. Her animal totem was the fox, and all the standard appellations applied. She’d cleverly plotted and manipulated and got her way from that spring day their senior year of high school when she broke the news that she was pregnant.

  Eli had known for a long time that she wanted him to marry her, but he’d had other plans. And even though he’d been the one to insist on always using a condom when they fooled around, she’d wound up pregnant.

  “Rubbers aren’t perfect, Eli,” she’d told him, sobbing in a way that reminded him of his mother at the end of her life when the pain was so bad. Bobbi had even backed up the claim with some statistics she’d gotten from the health teacher.

  He’d accepted what she told him at face value. Why wouldn’t he? He wasn’t the most egotistical guy around, but he knew girls liked him. More than a few had thrown themselves at him over the years. It never once crossed his mind that Bobbi might have been screwing some other guy at the same time. Especially Eli’s cousin—and best friend—Robert.

  That old infidelity might have hurt but it wouldn’t have been enough to cause Eli’s whole life to implode, if it hadn’t been for the DNA test E.J. had asked him to take. Eli had never really understood the reason behind the test. All he knew was the end result. “We share a bunch of the same genetic markers, Dad, but there’s a ninety-five percent probability you’re not my father,” E.J. told him.

  The printout was like a W.M.D.—it blew the roof off their fairly happy home and sent the survivors spinning off in every direction. Bobbi took the girls to her parents’. E.J. moved in with a friend. Eli spent every waking hour somewhere else, unable to walk through the empty rooms without feeling consumed by anger.

  He squared his shoulders. He wasn’t proud of the way he handled things. Too much self-righteousness and not enough forgiveness, his grandmother would have said. Bobbi had accepted her guilt. “Yes, I slept with Robert when I was seeing you, but I was sure you were E.J.’s father. I wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t think so.”

  Eli didn’t know if he believed her or not. He was pretty sure he could never trust her again. A moot point because Bobbi had decided that their marriage had become stagnant and unfulfilling. “All we do is work and dash around to the kids’ activities,” she’d told him as she packed their daughters’ things. “The passion between us has been gone for years, Eli. Maybe you choose not to see that, but I can’t pretend anymore.”

  Pretense. A word he hated like no other. His father had accused him of pretending to want a college career. On her deathbed, his mother admitted that she’d pretended to love his father as a way of escaping her brutal father. And his wife, who slept with another man while dating him, accused him of faking his commitment to his family.

  He’d lost it. The guy who rarely argued, let alone lost his temper, blew up. His daughters were so scared they called 9–1-1. The cops who raced to his house were friends, coworkers, but they’d looked at Eli as if he were a stranger.

  Bobbi and the girls moved in with her folks in Reliance. His captain ordered Eli to take six weeks of personal leave. The first two weeks, Eli spent in an alcohol-induced fog of self-pity. Then, out of the blue, Uncle Joseph showed up.

  Given a little time and distance, Eli was certain he could rebuild a relationship with his daughters. Even E.J. might come around eventually. Unless some new dynamic added a fatal blow to his already tenuous hold on his family.

  What Char was suggesting might be the last straw, but could he ignore the possibility? If it was true.

  That was the question, wasn’t it? he thought, pushing to his feet. Did I really screw Char Jones and conveniently forgot about it for seventeen years?

  He looked in the mirror again, pulling down the skin under one eye to examine the red web of veins. He’d cleaned up his act years ago, thank God. Joining the Marines had provided a serious wake-up call. He’d coughed up green phlegm the first three days of boot camp—the result of too much senior partying after basketball season ended.

  He’d kicked the habit. He didn’t drink or smoke. He couldn’t say the same for his extended family. Bobbi was still a bit of a party girl. Eli’s father had been a full-fledged alcoholic right up to the day he died. Joseph seemed half-looped most of the time, but he still managed to drive around the state to attend ceremonies and powwo
ws.

  A light knock sounded on the door. “Eli?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you like a quesadilla with your soup?”

  The immensity of his earlier hunger returned. “Sure.”

  “I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re ready. I’m setting a pair of moccasins beside the door.”

  “Moccasins?” he said, opening the door. “How could you have a pair my si—”

  She was gone, but a shoebox answered his question. Her shop. She’d run next door and picked out a pair for him—probably using his hiking boots to determine the correct size.

  Crap. He scowled at his image in the mirror one last time. He didn’t deserve this kind of hospitality. And he had no idea when he’d be in a position to repay it.

  He picked up the box and started to walk in the direction she’d pointed out when they first entered the home. While the hallway wasn’t that chilly, gooseflesh appeared on his bare legs. Sleeping outdoors the night before had introduced a permanent chill in his bones.

  He quickly returned to the bathroom and opened the box. The moccasins were a work of art. Fleece lined, the dark hide exterior was adorned with intricate beading by a truly skilled artisan. He felt guilty about knocking her store as a repository for cheap crap made in China.

  He put them on and stood. Oddly they made him feel more like himself. The old Eli. The person he no longer recognized when he looked in the mirror.

  But he didn’t take a chance on checking his reflection to see who might be standing there. Ex-Marine? Underpaid cop whose job was hanging by a thread? Soon-to-be divorced father of three? Or four?

  He walked to the kitchen quietly. The way he and Robert had practiced when they were kids. Char apparently hadn’t heard his approach. She was standing over a pan, frowning at it intently.

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you a watched pot never boils?”

  She spun around too fast and accidentally knocked the pan’s handle. To Eli’s surprise, his reflexes actually responded quickly enough to keep it from falling. Some of the liquid sloshed over his hand. Hot, but not as bad as he feared.

  “Oh, man.” She groaned. “I’m such a klutz in the kitchen. If I didn’t have friends who cook, I’d be in bad shape.”

  They were close enough that Eli had an unrestricted view of her shape. Aside from the odd-colored hair, she looked great. She’d lost the deep purple wool jacket. Her sweater—the same one she’d had on when he first stepped into her shop—was an eye-catching orange. The color was vivid, like her hairdo. He wondered why she no longer looked as strange as he’d first thought.

  He hoped his change of heart wasn’t influenced by their kiss. He might be a hardship case, but he wasn’t dumb enough to get involved with someone who claimed to share a place in his history. He stepped back to put more room between them.

  “Smells good,” he said, licking the drop that rested on his wrist.

  “I can’t take credit for it,” Char said, turning back to the stove. “But I am glad the canned soup industry got smart and started making stuff that’s semigood for you. Still more salt than you need,” she added matter-of-factly, “especially if you add crackers, but better than the crap my mother made for me.”

  Her complaint held only a small hint of bitterness. He tried to remember what he knew about her family. Lots had been said about the Jones sisters, but whether or not any was factual he couldn’t say. Eli vaguely recalled his dad pointing out Char’s grandfather at a corner table of a local watering hole one day. The only reason the memory stuck was that the old man had been chomping on a fat cigar and had a huge pile of chips in front of him. “Some assholes have all the luck,” Dad had whispered. “But that doesn’t make ’em a winner.”

  “Your grandpa was a gambler, wasn’t he?”

  Char shrugged. “Could be. I only knew him as the mean voice behind a curtain. Like in The Wizard of Oz, only grumpier.”

  His daughters had loved that movie when they were younger. Had he ever taken the time to watch it with them? He didn’t think so. The realization made his stomach ache. It made a loud grouchy noise of its own.

  “I’m hurrying,” she said, directing her comment toward his middle. The fact that her gaze lingered a moment and even seemed to travel lower set off another reaction—less noisy, but more noticeable.

  Worried that he might embarrass himself further, he moved to a chair at the round oak table and sat. He crossed his legs and parked his elbow on his knee. “You don’t need my help, do you?”

  “No. I’m not Martha Stewart, but I can heat soup without poisoning my guests.” She took a hunk of pepper cheese out of the refrigerator and started grating it onto a plate. “Having you out of the way is better, in fact. I’m used to having the place to myself.”

  “No significant other?”

  “What’s that mean?” she asked, looking up from what she was doing. Her tone was noticeably testy.

  “Um…I wondered whether or not to expect some guy with a ‘Remember the Little Big Horn’ patch on his cap to come charging through the door to protect his territory.”

  She relaxed visibly. “Oh.” She gave the soup one more stir, then held her hand flat, an inch or so above the large skillet that was heating on the stove. “I thought you were making an allusion to my aunt’s situation.”

  “Which aunt? Didn’t you have two? The nurse and—”

  “Aunt Pam was a nurse-practitioner. My aunt Marilyn was married to a holy roller who ran that little church in Fort Pierre. They eventually moved to Montana.”

  “More Indians to convert?”

  “Less opportunity for Marilyn to escape her creep-oid husband,” she said, more to herself than to him. She startled guiltily when she glanced sideways and made eye contact with him. “There are so many skeletons in the Jones’s family closet we barely have room for coats.”

  Her wit surprised him. He didn’t know why. “Yeah, well, it’s a new world. Being gay isn’t one of those black hole kind of secrets. Just ask my stepbrother.”

  “Seriously? You knew about my aunt?”

  Everyone in Pierre had speculated about her aunt’s sexual proclivity. “The nurse or the preacher’s wife?”

  Her grin told him she knew he was kidding. “The nurse.”

  “Does she still live in Pierre?”

  “No. Hasn’t for years. She lives in San Francisco with her longtime partner. A surgeon.”

  He was glad to hear it. “Good. She helped a lot of people through some pretty tough situations. I give her credit for that.”

  Char didn’t reply. She seemed intent on flipping the tortilla, but it could be that he’d said something wrong. When she carried the bowl of steaming, fragrant soup to the table and placed it before him, he stopped her—one hand lightly touching her wrist. “You don’t agree?”

  She shook her head, the multicolored strands catching the light in an interesting way. “I’ve never had a problem with Pam’s sexual orientation. She provided some stability when my mom was strung out or too in love to remember she was a mother. But she could be very opinionated, and she expected people to do what she said without argument—especially members of her family.”

  The last proviso seemed to hold significance. Eli watched her dash back to the stove. A minute or so later, she delivered a plate with a golden browned tortilla that she’d cut into eight triangular pieces.

  She returned to the counter for a pair of ceramic salt and pepper shakers shaped like turkeys. She set them on the table near his bowl. “When Pam found out about me, she immediately made a plan. Well…um…after she gave me a physical and determined it was too late for me to safely—or legally—have an abortion.” She stumbled over the word. Eli bet it constantly tripped her, even after all these years.

  He had a lot of questions, but the aroma of the soup was making his mouth water too badly to get a word out. He picked up the spoon she’d already set on top of a pretty green and black linen napkin and dug in.

  She scuttled back to t
he counter and returned a second later with a glass of milk. Milk. Something his mother would have done. Bobbi, who was lactose intolerant, only bought milk for the children. She yelled at him if she ever saw him take a swig.

  “I’ll let you eat in peace. Your clothes are probably ready to go into the dryer.”

  Good, he thought, tearing off a hunk of cheese and tortilla to dunk in the bowl. Hell, the last time he tried to cook for himself, he’d nearly burned down the place. Bobbi had won blue ribbons for her pies and breads at various fairs, but her menu planning changed dramatically when she took a job at the casino three years earlier.

  The money had come in handy—E.J. needed braces, Micah was asthmatic and Juline was a clotheshorse. Looking back, Eli wondered exactly when he went from daddy to Daddy Warbucks.

  Lately it seemed as though he was the guy who said no all the time.

  I sucked as a parent.

  “Really? I figured you’d be a great dad.”

  He nearly choked on the swallow of soup that was halfway down his throat. He hadn’t realized he’d voiced the thought out loud.

  “What are you—a mind reader? Do those funny streaks of color hide your antennae?”

  She laughed and wiggled her index fingers upward through her hair. “Like in My Favorite Martian? I used to watch reruns on Friday night. While you were making the All-State Boys’ Basketball team.”

  “For all the good it did me,” he muttered under his breath. He knew she was close enough to hear, so he quickly asked, “How come you weren’t at the games?”

  “I was. Sometimes. If Mom was seeing somebody halfway decent. But when she was alone…well, weekends were tricky. Sobriety-wise, Fridays were the worst day of the week.”

  He didn’t need her to explain. His father had only remained sober during basketball season because he had such high hopes for Eli. Once those hopes were squashed, Dad went back to his usual pattern: work, drink, tear down everything you spent the week building, pass out, promise to do better, work, drink…et cetera, et cetera.

  Neither spoke for a few minutes, then Char straightened and folded her hands on the table in front of her. He studied her hands. Short nails. No polish. Three, handcrafted rings—two with stones, one plain. All pretty and delicate on her strong, resourceful-looking fingers.