CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“What do you mean? He wants me dead.”
“Probably. Do you remember the first phone call?”
“Not really, why?”
“I came into the room while you were on the phone, just before he screamed at you.”
“Screamed at me?”
“He yelled at you, and you dropped the phone.” Rebecca looked over at Alex. “I thought you knew this.”
“No, I only remember him telling me that the team was dead.” Alex gulped back the grief brought by her words.
“Yes. You were upset by that, but you didn’t start . . .”
“Ripping at myself?”
“Writhing, until he told you he wanted something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Some land . . . no, property. He wanted his property.”
“Really.”
“You became very agitated and ripped your stitches. Matthew and those big guys were trying to keep you still. They had to put you out.”
Alex looked at her ridiculous, superficial mother with new eyes. Maybe her mother wasn’t a complete idiot. Alex nodded.
“Thanks.”
“For what?” Rebecca said.
“I don’t remember the call. Mattie and the guys only remember how upset I was. That’s really good information, Mom.”
“You mean your mother isn’t a complete idiot?”
“Something like that.”
Rebecca laughed.
“Will you listen to me now?”
“Can we get more coffee first?” Alex raised her eyebrows, showing a true addict’s appreciation for her favorite drug.
Rebecca laughed. “We have to counterbalance those little bottles of alcohol.”
While Alex ordered more coffee and a couple of scones, Rebecca watched the people and cars moving on the street. She collected her thoughts like beach glass from a sandy shore. When Alex gave her another latte, she realized that she needed to tell this story as much as Alex needed to hear it. Rebecca was ready to begin.
“It’s a long story. Do you mind?”
“Let’s see. I was in the middle of running a load of laundry. Oh, that’s right, my house was blown up.”
“That was your house?” asked the man sitting behind them.
Alex looked at him and nodded.
“Oh my God,” he started. He opened his mouth to gossip and then noticed her “get out of my face” look. Shutting his paper, he stood. Mumbling, “I’m sorry for your loss,” he left the shop.
“Fucking paparazzi,” Alex said.
Rebecca laughed.
“Maybe this isn’t the best place to talk,” Rebecca said.
“He left,” Alex said. “Go ahead.”
“I think the story starts with my mother. She was a person who liked everything ‘just so.’ If anything was out of place, she was upset. My brothers had free reign, because they were boys. But she controlled every single thing that I did. Everything: what I wore, who I was friends with, the boys I dated, where I went to school, everything. I know that you think I am controlling, but she was . . .
“After having children of my own, I cannot imagine the amount of energy she spent managing the details of my life. As you know, my brothers left as soon as they could and never came back. I haven’t seen any of them in over thirty years. My father was like a ghost in the house. Then, he had the nerve to die when I was eighteen years old.
“After that, Mom and I lived in this Chicago mansion. We had help. ‘Servants.’ That’s what we called them in those days. And lots of money. I was incredibly dependent on my mother. My best friend in the whole entire world, since we were three or something, was Benjamin’s youngest brother Philippe. Philippe was funny, crazy, and always up for some wild adventure. He’d drag me along . . . Anyway, my mother thought I would marry Philippe, but he . . . Philippe was a homosexual.”
Rebecca stopped talking for a moment. She looked out the window, lost in thought. Alex touched her arm, and Rebecca turned back to Alex.
“He killed himself about six months after my father died. The priest wouldn’t give him Last Rites because he had killed himself.” Rebecca fell silent again. She lifted her shoulders and dropped them. “I miss him. He would have loved you and Max, understood you in a way that I . . . struggle. Patrick never met him, but . . . he arranged for Philippe to be re-buried with blessings in consecrated soil . . . here in Denver, so that I can go and visit him. Your father is a wonderful person.”
Alex was silent while her mother struggled for words. As she watched, a wave of emotion moved across her mother’s face. Alex waited.
“I didn’t really know Benjamin. He was older than Philippe and I, by four, maybe five, years. I knew about him, but I never really spent time with him until Philippe died. Benjamin came home from who-knows-where to attend to his parents and take care of Philippe’s funeral. He’s the oldest in his family and very responsible.
“Philippe was my only friend. We were inseparable, like you and Max. When he died . . . I had no one. Benjamin was destroyed over his brother, and so was I. We dated. I should say that he took me out. I was really a girl, very naïve. He was world-traveled, very experienced, and so suave with his cigarettes and French accent. He could order dinner in at least four languages. That was very sexy for a simple girl like me.”
“I bet,” Alex said.
“He left about six months later, and I was alone trying to please my iceberg mother. He . . . Benjamin . . . reminded me last month that I used to say that my mother was evil. She was evil. Alexandra, she was nasty, and, when she wasn’t nasty? She was vicious. I did every single thing to please her until I met your father . . . Patrick.
“I guess, well, my mother thought I would marry Benjamin,” Rebecca turned to look at Alex. Rebecca smiled. “She also thought he was a lawyer.”
“He’s ‘the lawyer from a good family’ your mother wanted you to marry?”
Rebecca nodded.
Alex laughed. She knew that Ben was recruited to work for the CIA right out of college. He must have been a field agent when he dated Rebecca.
“Are you bored yet?” Rebecca asked.
“No. But the whole mandatory individualization thing makes a little more sense,” Alex said.
“How? What an awful thing. Forcing you into the Army two days after you graduated from high school is the meanest thing I have ever done. You were not to have any contact with Max or the family for four years. God. I am my mother.”
Alex put her hand on her mother’s arm. “We survived.”
“Max would not leave your room all summer. When he left for college, he wouldn’t speak to me. It was like a death. Everyone grieved the loss of you. Patrick walked around the house like a zombie. But the therapist said that you had to individuate.”
“He was a quack and a jerk and,” Alex shook her head, “unimportant. What I’m trying to say is that you didn’t want Max and me to end up like you were when Philippe died.”
Rebecca’s hazel eyes shifted to look into Alex’s fake blue eyes. Rebecca felt a surge of relief as the wall of guilt and remorse melted in the warmth of her daughter’s understanding.
“I’ve never thought of that. Maybe. I was trying to do what I thought was best for you. But it wasn’t best for me or anyone in the family. And you were gone for almost thirteen years. You were married for ten of those years, and I had no idea. You’re only sitting here because you were injured.”
“What does this have to do with you cheating on Patrick and getting sperminated by Ben?”
“You are so crude!” Rebecca’s hazel eyes were wide with shock. “I sent you to finishing school so you would not be so crude.”
“Talk about a waste of the old inheritance.”
“You know the story of Patrick and me?” Rebecca asked.
“You were walking down the stairs of your mother’s home and saw him standing in the dining-room. He had attended a charity function at your mother�
�s house in place of his General. His baby blues caught your eyes, and it was love at first sight. You were married three days later.”
“I was dating Benjamin at the time. My mother was planning on marrying me off to Benjamin within the year. I just . . . I’d never been with a man. I’d never slept even a night away from the house. I did every single thing my mother wanted me to do. Until I saw Patrick. And that was that. She . . . Would you mind if we walked for a while?”
“Let’s go to the park.”
Alex picked up her heat register. They walked a couple of blocks down Colfax Avenue to avoid the hole that had replaced Alex’s home. Turning down a side street, they walked toward the park.
The day was warm, and they walked in silence, each caught up in her own thoughts. Alex smiled, remembering John the night before. He was amazing. He drank champagne around the diamond in her belly button, fed her chocolate strawberries, and rubbed her feet. He touched, bit, pulled at, pressed on, and loved every piece of her flesh as if he were an explorer on a new continent. Alex shivered, remembering his touch.
“This is such a beautiful park,” Rebecca said. They walked across Seventeenth Street to enter City Park, Denver’s three hundred acre park in the middle of the city.
“We’ve talked about getting a dog, but . . .” Alex sighed. “I guess it depends on where we end up living.”
“Will you rebuild?”
“I . . .” Alex shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “We don’t know. Max is in Paris. We’ll decide when he gets back.”
They walked along the flagstone path. In the shade of the tall trees, they passed large grass soccer fields where children were playing soccer. While Alex’s eyes watched the laughing children, her thoughts returned to the brick-and-mortar hole that had been her home, her life.
“My mother disowned me,” Rebecca said.
Alex was so lost in her own world that she gasped when Rebecca spoke.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s all right. Please go on.”
“She didn’t approve of Patrick. He was too old for me, or so she said. I think she was angry that she didn’t hand pick him. And she was furious. I’d never seen her that angry. She threw us out of her house. I thought she would come around but . . . I guess she was so angry that she had a small stroke. I heard through my grandmother that she wasn’t doing well. But I didn’t really care. I was angry, too . . . and distracted. Patrick and I lived in this bubble of love. We were completely obsessed with each other. When Patrick was promoted, we moved to North Carolina. We had this tiny house. I’d never cooked a meal or cleaned a toilet. Patrick taught me how to do everything. We . . .”
Rebecca smiled softly, remembering.
“I got pregnant right away, which was probably a mistake. I see how much fun you and John have without children and wonder what it would have been like. But I do love babies. Anyway, you’ve heard me gush over babies before.”
“I have,” Alex said. She touched her mother’s arm, and they turned onto a path through the deep shade cast by a grove of trees.
“A couple of hours after Sami was born, I called my aunt, hoping that she would tell mother about Sami and that everything would be all right. My aunt told me that mother was dying. Cancer. She only had a few months to live, and she did not want to see me or Samantha.
“I . . . just lost it.” Rebecca looked over at Alex. Alex’s face was blank as she listened intently to what her mother was saying. Rebecca continued her story.
“Your father thought that I was complete now that I had the baby. He kind of retreated into work to give me space to enjoy the baby. He’ll tell you that we were inseparable and so happy. And we were deliciously happy. Sami is a beautiful woman. She was a gorgeous baby. I would sit and watch her for hours. Mother died when Samantha was seven months old . . . to the day. Then, bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece, everything fell apart for me. Was it like that for you? Your depression?”
“No. It’s like walking into a fog or under a waterfall. We can talk about it later. What happened?”
“They call it post-partum depression these days. I left the house one day to go to the grocery store. Samantha was napping. The next-door neighbor also had a little girl, and she agreed to watch Sami while I did both of our grocery shopping. I came to myself outside of West Virginia. I was driving home.”
“Wow,” Alex said. She couldn’t remember a time that her mother had done anything irresponsible or, for that matter, on the spur of the moment. “You must have been crazy.”
“Thank you for that,” Rebecca said. “I was crazy . . . and very young. I was twenty-four years old going on twelve years old. I stopped at a gas station and called your father. He begged me to return, but I had to go home. I just had to do it.
“I stayed with my grandmother. She was kind, but she had no idea what to do with me. I spent every day at my mother’s home, the home I grew up in, going through my mother’s things. My brothers appeared for the lawyer’s appointment and disappeared as soon as they learned that mother had no money in her own right. Everything reverted to grandmother.”
“That must have been a shock,” Alex said, wryly. Unbeknownst to Rebecca, Alex had firsthand experience with her scumbag uncles.
“They were furious. My grandfather had given mother the house as a wedding present. So she owned the house. My brothers wanted to throw mother’s things in the trash and sell the house. I couldn’t do it. I had to go through everything. I was under constant pressure from my brothers and . . .”
Rebecca fell silent.
“And?”
“I was very depressed. I ached for Patrick and Samantha . . . but I couldn’t make myself go back. It’s funny, too. Patrick would never let me do something like that alone now. No matter what was going on in his work or in the world, he would insist on helping. When my grandmother died and left us all that money, he was by my side every step of the way. He dealt with my brothers, the lawyers, the probate, the trusts, everything.
“But when my mother died? He didn’t know to insist, and I didn’t know I could even ask for his help. We had no idea how to have a relationship then.”
They stopped at the edge of a large grass field to watch a man play with his Border Collie. The man threw a Frisbee, and the dog would wait until the Frisbee had almost landed before he took off to catch it. Then, proud of his catch, the black-and-white dog raced back to his owner. Alex touched Rebecca’s arm, and they continued walking.
“Please go on,” Alex said.
“My grandmother arranged a little dinner party for my twenty-fifth birthday,” Rebecca sighed. “Benjamin was there. I didn’t make it through dinner. When I started crying at the dinner table, he offered to take me out. It was the first time I’d been out in the world in almost two years.
“Charming, sophisticated Benjamin and I went out on the town. We laughed, listened to music, and drank. I felt like I was eighteen again—my father was still alive, Philippe was by my side, and my whole life was in front of me. I was certain—utterly certain—that Patrick was with . . .well, any number of women who hung on him all the time. He wasn’t.”
“Of course.”
“Benjamin and I . . . we had a wonderful—absolutely wonderful—time. It was one of those nights, I’m sure you’ve had them, where the stars line up, and every single thing is memorable. The food was wonderful. The wine was superb. We saw, if you can believe it, Miles Davis in this tiny jazz bar.” Rebecca smiled. “I’ve never had a night like it—before or since. Certainly there are moments in time that stand out, but there was something about that night that was special, star struck almost. He took me back to his apartment. We hadn’t intended to . . . but one thing led to another. I mean, it was the 1970s, and everyone was sleeping with everyone.”
Rebecca smiled at the wry look on Alex’s face.
“I guess that’s an excuse. The truth is that it was all wrong—for me and for him. I th
ink we noticed how wrong it was because everything else that night was so perfect. I ached for Patrick, and he wasn’t Patrick. He wanted . . . well, probably Claire. Of course, she was six years old or something then. Anyway, we were good-enough friends that it wasn’t weird. Like I said, it was free love everywhere. We got dressed, and he took me to another bar, where we saw another amazing jazz act.” Rebecca smiled. “We saw another trumpet player. Benjamin loves trumpet players. He became really famous, uh, Marsalis? Something like that.”
“You saw Wynton Marsalis?”
“He was just a kid,” Rebecca nodded. “See what I mean? It was a very special night. We stayed out all night going from one club to the next. And the sex in the middle? If I wasn’t married? If I didn’t get pregnant? Nothing against Ben, but I don’t know if I would have remembered it.”
Rebecca stopped walking to look at her daughter. She smiled. Of course, it was a special night. It was the night that brought her Alex and Max, her male-female identical twins. Alex smiled at Rebecca.
“The very next day, I put mother’s house on the market and went home,” Rebecca said. “I was probably gone . . . I don’t know—three weeks, maybe a month total.”
Rebecca fell silent as they walked. Turning the corner, they walked along the Park Hill Golf Course. The shade was deepening as the fall day retreated into afternoon.
“That sounds very hard,” Alex said.
“Going home? It was hard,” Rebecca continued. “Patrick wasn’t as mad as he was heartbroken. He’d never loved anyone before me, and I broke his heart. We talked about getting a divorce and slept in separate bedrooms. Then, I realized I was pregnant. He was furious, absolutely furious. He felt trapped by the baby. He’d never leave me while I was pregnant, but he did not want to be with me or my ill-begotten child. Then the baby was twins—you and Max. Well, we expected boys. But you know that.
“I went into labor after a little more than seven months. He took me to the hospital and then went back to work. He was mad, and I deserved it. When they called him to tell him you had been born, he felt obligated to see you . . . you know, to put on the show.” Rebecca chuckled a little and shook her head. “He took one look at you guys, and that was that. You’ll have to ask him about it.
“We’ve told you this part. The hospital separated you. You would not eat or sleep. You just cried. After three days, Max began to fail . . . probably that hole in his heart they found when he was five years old. We didn’t expect him to last the night. I was hysterical. I’d lost my husband, and, now, I was losing my babies. They sedated me.”
Rebecca pressed her hand to her heart, where the intense feelings still lingered.
“You were lying on Patrick’s lap. You opened your eyes and growled at him. Growled! You made this gesture with your hand. I’ve seen you make the same gesture when you’re coming out of anesthesia. You reached for him, for Max. Patrick says that he heard you say, clear as day, ‘I want Max.’”
Rebecca smiled.
“You and your father shared this connection from the very start of your life.”
Alex smiled, not sure of what to say. How could they share a connection when they weren’t flesh and blood?
“Anyway, he jumped up, put you on his shoulder, and started arguing with the nurse, the doctor, and the hospital administrator. They were firm. You might fail like Max was failing. When they left the room, he put you in the incubator with Max.
“You were tiny . . .a little more than five pounds . . . and you reached for him. Max knew you were there the moment you were together. He opened his eyes—the first time he had—and took your hand. You made that face that you make when you greet each other. Suddenly, he was better. He was hungry! You were hungry! Patrick made the nurse bring me back to the nursery. I held you, and Patrick held Max. You both ate, a little bit, then slept, wrapped up in each other.
“I don’t know what happened or how it happened, but we started talking while you slept. For the first time in our relationship, we just talked. You would wake up, eat, then sleep, and we talked . . . for weeks. Months really. Samantha never left our side. We played and laughed with her. And we talked.
“I had loved Patrick,” Rebecca paused, trying to put the experience into words, “but I didn’t know him very well. In those days and weeks, I learned a lot about him and loved him even more. Ben came to see the babies—you and Max. He and Patrick stayed up talking three or four nights in a row. They weren’t best friends before that, but somehow you guys brought everyone together. It was a miracle.
“So that’s it. That’s the story of how Ben is your father and Patrick is your father.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“You’ll tell Max.”
Alex nodded.
They cut across the grass to the rose garden near the Museum of Nature and Science. Alex stopped to smell one red rose and touch a pink flower. She moved to a sunflower bush covered with yellow blossoms. Alex laughed, reaching over her head to touch the flowers that grew at least six feet off the ground.
Rebecca watched her daughter mourning the loss of her own roses and sunflowers that once lived in her own yard outside her safe home.
“It’s going to be all right,” Rebecca said.
Alex’s head jerked to her mother. Her hand closed over a dark-red blossom while she hid her leaking eyes behind the hand holding the cast-iron heat register.
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