Cake at Midnight

by Jessie L. Star

  ‘Figures you’ve found someone as prudish as you,’ Lena announced, rolling her eyes at her brother as I struggled not to reveal that I was both a prude and a lightweight in front of them all.

  ‘A porn star would be considered prudish in this family,’ Theo remarked before, thankfully, changing the subject in a way that removed my nakedness from the agenda. ‘I thought you’d be at the venue by now, Lena. Don’t you have interviews to give?’ As he spoke, he walked over to me, gently taking the glass out of my hand and replacing it with the one he held.

  Taking a more tentative sip of his drink, I tasted the crisp flavours of orange and grapefruit with only a buzzing hum of alcohol underneath. I smiled at him in thanks and then sank down onto one of the couches. Theo remaining standing by my side.

  Lena sighed as if Theo was being deliberately obtuse. ‘Not giving interviews is the best way to make sure they keep asking for them. Besides, it’s tradition for the family to have drinks before we go to an unveiling of my work. You’d know that if you ever turned up.’

  At this point I noticed that Lena’s fluoro yellow nail polish was chipped and wondered whether this was an affectation, a way to make her appear cool and disinterested in her appearance.

  Affectation certainly seemed to be the buzzword of the evening if the next half-hour or so was anything to go by. The conversation mostly consisted of more back and forth between the siblings with a few additions from Philomena; the Leventis women were apparently in some sort of competition to be the most ostentatious in their opinions, while Theo deftly deflected their efforts to draw him into their grandiosity. Harvey remained conspicuously absent from the conversation, although his intense gaze never left his son.

  Eventually, however, without even waiting for a pause in the conversation, he spoke up.

  ‘So, Theodore, I take it you’re still content to make your living off the sweat of other’s backs?’

  Lena, who’d been midway through pontificating on the importance of the exclusive guest list for that evening, broke off and turned eagerly to see her brother’s response.

  ‘Fairly content, yes.’ Theo sounded blasé, but from my position beside him I could see that he’d stiffened. ‘I take it you’re still content to live off your inherited wealth?’

  ‘Theo!’

  I thought it was a bit rich that Philomena saw fit to admonish her son for being rude but not her husband, who’d started it. Harvey, however, just acted as if he hadn’t heard the second part of Theo’s response.

  ‘It doesn’t bother you that the work you do specifically targets the most vulnerable people in a company, firing them so that the rich get richer and the people who really need the jobs are left unable to support themselves and their families?’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were such an expert on workplace consultancy,’ Theo said coolly, before adding, ‘Of course workforce cuts are a part of what I do, but it’s naïve to suggest that’s all it is. Many organisations I work with run a consultancy each year to ensure they’re remaining viable so they can continue to support their employees.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for a recitation of the brochure,’ Harvey said.

  ‘So what were you asking?’

  Harvey gave Theo another long, piercing look and then leant back, his posture languid even if his next words certainly weren’t. ‘You really are McKillop’s son, aren’t you?’

  As the implications of Harvey’s words dawned on me, I looked quickly up at Theo, wanting to check I wasn’t jumping to conclusions again. The set to his jaw told me I wasn’t. He clearly hadn’t just picked a last name at random when he’d changed it on his eighteenth birthday, he’d changed it to . . .

  ‘Oh dear,’ Lena laughed. ‘I don’t think Mystery Girl had figured it out yet.’

  ‘Lena,’ Theo sighed.

  ‘What?’ she asked, although she didn’t even try to sound as if she didn’t know ‘what’. ‘It’s a reasonable assumption that she’d work out that you’re a genetic outlier – you don’t look anything like the rest of us.’

  And, of course, this was true. The Leventises were primarily a family of dark hair and eyes, although while Philomena and Helena shared the Mediterranean skin tone from Philomena’s Greek heritage, Harvey was so pale his blue bloodline was clearly visible at his wrists. Theo, however, was golden haired and pale eyed. Not that genetics were always as simple as that, but now that it’d been pointed out to me, he did seem to live up to his ‘Three Bags’ moniker in more ways than one.

  ‘As is well known in most circles, Theo is the by-product of an old affair,’ Philomena informed me in the tones of one smoothing over an awkward moment, even though, from where I was sitting, it was her words that made it all the more awkward. I looked at Theo again to see how I should react to such a pronouncement and he smiled, thinly.

  ‘“By-product” was one of my first words,’ he said dryly.

  ‘His biological father is one of those men who long to be more interesting than they actually are, but he offered asylum during a particularly difficult time in my life.’ Philomena took a sip of her drink. ‘I was the mother of a fractious two-year-old and my husband was in the midst of conducting a particularly public affair with one of my older cousins, so it was hardly surprising I sought adoration elsewhere.’

  I twisted my hands awkwardly in my lap, not sure where to look. The Leventises were certainly living up to their lively reputation. I might have found it entertaining if it hadn’t all seemed to be at Theo’s expense.

  As if to confirm this, Theo set his drink down on a small table abutting one of the couches with a sharp click.

  ‘Maybe we could try not to throw all our family’s dirty laundry in my guest’s face at once,’ he remarked, but he sounded resigned.

  ‘Harvey and I worked through our feelings on infidelity so we’re comfortable with the diversity of our sexual needs,’ Philomena ploughed on, heedless of her son’s request. ‘And Theodore has always known it was McKillop who impregnated me with him; secrets are the destroyer of worlds.’

  The destroyer of worlds? Yikes.

  ‘Which is not to say that we weren’t disappointed by his decision to change his name.’ Philomena eyed her son, but more with bemusement than disappointment, it seemed to me. ‘He’d renounced McKillop all his life, so to then, just at the moment he entered society’s designated point of adulthood, take his name came as something of a shock.’

  ‘Except that I’d been telling you that that’s what I was going to do for about five years before I did it.’

  As per her wont, Philomena ignored her son and instead turned her tragic eyes to me. ‘He was trying to distance himself from Turbulence, from all of us, but he should’ve known it wouldn’t work.’

  Theo shifted, tucking his hands behind his back in a posture reminiscent of the ‘at ease’ position soldiers utilised; in other words, into a position that didn’t look like he was at ease at all. His mother had obviously struck a nerve.

  ‘It might have,’ he said lowly, ‘if you hadn’t, the same week I started university, published an essay exposing my new name and declaring that my adoption of it was a rejection of the concept of the mother.’

  ‘It was a rejection!’ Harvey said loudly. ‘A rejection and a way for you to ingratiate yourself with McKillop right at the point you knew his connections would be useful to you.’ He’d dropped the third person perspective Philomena had been so partial to and it made his words seem a hundred times more personal. I assumed that was why Theo’s fingers tightened behind his back and his voice came as close to a snap as I’d ever heard from him.

  ‘Well, nepotism is the ultimate family business.’

  And this – this? – after all the niggling and needling, finally seemed to cause offence in a way that made each member of the Leventis family recoil.

  *

  Nepotism. It was the foulest word you could use in Theo’s family; the word at the centre of the breakdown of his relationship with Vanessa and of just about every
argument he’d had with his family since he was old enough to know what it meant.

  He shouldn’t have said it and he really shouldn’t have said it with Giovanna in the room.

  ‘Really?’ Typically, Lena went from zero to one hundred in the time it took most people to blink. ‘I tell you all’s forgiven and beg you to come see us and you can hardly wait three seconds to throw that back in our faces? You want to insult me with that, today of all days?’

  It was pointless, but he tried to placate her anyway. ‘I’m not trying to insult you.’

  ‘Yes, you are, don’t try to backtrack now.’ Turning her attention to Giovanna, who was sitting small and silent beside him, Lena explained, ‘Three Bags thinks that I only got my four-part commission from the city because I’m a Leventis, and that Dad’s photos are only famous because he’s an Apperston, which, frankly, considering what McKillop–’

  ‘I never said “only”,’ Theo said, but he didn’t bother contradicting her further than that because to suggest that name and reputation weren’t a factor in their success, in all their successes, was obtuse to the point of offensiveness.

  Lena’s eyes trembled with a sudden sheen of angry tears and he felt his stomach sink, wishing he had kept his mouth shut. ‘I worked so hard on my Family series,’ she said crossly, ‘and you only have no idea how hard because you’ve been too busy sulking about the subject matter.’

  ‘Me,’ he said, guilt at the truth of her words adding to, rather than dampening, the temper he’d been trying so hard to keep a lid on since his mother had first opened the door. ‘The subject matter was me. I have spent my entire life trying to get through your head, through all of your heads, that I don’t want to be a part of all this and then you turn around and use me as an inspiration for a permanent bloody installation!’

  She sniffed. ‘Most people would be flattered.’

  ‘Flattered?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘You used it to say that greed made me unstable.’

  Lena shrugged. ‘Well, I think it has. What am I supposed to do? Lie about it?’

  There were just too many layers as to how incomprehensible he found his sister’s actions, and it was pointless to try to pick through them all right at that moment. Still, he couldn’t help retorting, ‘It would occur to no-one but you that the only course of action other than lying is to build a statue about it.’

  ‘Sculpture,’ his mother corrected him and he let out a strangled laugh at how much that was decidedly not the point.

  ‘And yet, here you are,’ Harvey interjected. ‘Despite your apparent distaste for your sister’s achievements.’

  It galled him that his stepfather could still make him feel like a child, despite the fact that Theo’d always been the only grown-up among them. As early as seven, he’d been the one keeping track of the bills that needed paying, or the commissions that were due for completion. He’d been the one who’d told his biological father to stop calling and he’d been the one to mediate Philomena and Harvey’s frequent and public disputes.

  He didn’t want to bring all that up in front of a clearly already shell-shocked Giovanna, however, so he contented himself with just stiffly saying, ‘I’m pleased Lena’s done well.’

  ‘You’ve got a crap way of showing it.’ His sister glared at him and, in a show of solidarity they all knew was done deliberately to exclude Theo rather than comfort Lena, Harvey stood and put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder.

  ‘So you’re coming to the unveiling?’ he asked sceptically and Theo nodded.

  ‘I am.’ The correct response should’ve been ‘we are’ but he didn’t want to bring Giovanna back onto his stepfather’s radar, not after the way he’d looked at her earlier. He’d been so selfish bringing her, it hadn’t been fair to put her in this position. But there wasn’t much he could do about it now other than to get her through it in as pain-free a manner as possible.

  Harvey raised his thick eyebrows. ‘Really? You’re not concerned your alias will be blown?’ He was being sarcastic, but Theo answered him seriously, knowing how much he hated it when he did that.

  ‘Lena and I have an agreement.’

  The older Leventises looked at his sister, who nodded reluctantly. ‘He’s just going to be in the crowd,’ she said sullenly. ‘We’re not allowed to look at him or mention him or acknowledge his existence in any way. Basically, we have to treat him like he treats us.’

  ‘How absurd!’ Philomena laughed. ‘Honestly, darling, and you accuse us of intrigues.’

  Theo rolled his eyes, not sure where his mother got off calling him absurd when she was the one who seemed to have borrowed her personality for the evening from a 1950s noir film.

  ‘I want to be there to support Lena, but go home without ending up in the papers,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s all this is about.’

  ‘And impressing your little friend there,’ Harvey added, too refined to leer at Giovanna, but not far off it. ‘I can’t help but notice you’re back to being a Leventis when you think it’ll help your chances with a woman.’

  Theo felt his pulse tic in his jaw.

  All things considered, Harvey hadn’t been a bad stepfather. He’d mostly left Theo to his own devices, too busy with his photography and affairs to pay much attention to his solemn stepson. Once Theo had reached adolescence, however, Harvey’s attitude had changed. One form of Theo’s teenage rebellion had been to take up every sport his school offered, knowing how much his family detested physical exertion and the way the arts always played second fiddle to sweaty teams, primarily of men, running around in circles after a ball. By sixteen, broadened, strengthened and tanned by all the training he was doing, Theo had been taller than Harvey, masculine in a way his stepfather would never be. The day Theo had come home from training and found Harvey flirting with Theo’s then girlfriend, something had forever shifted between them. His stepfather had built his entire persona on his sex appeal, on being the most enthralling man in the room and pathetically, grossly, he’d started to see his stepson as a threat to that.

  Neither of them had ever said anything about it, but he didn’t think Harvey had missed that that was the last time Theo had left him alone with a woman, whether she was his girlfriend, colleague or friend.

  ‘I’m already impressed.’

  The four of them looked around in surprise at Giovanna as she spoke and, predictably, a blush glowed up her throat and into her cheeks.

  ‘Not sexually or anything,’ she inexplicably felt the need to clarify, before hurrying to add, ‘we haven’t had sex so I wouldn’t know if he’s impressive in relation to–’ She broke off again and he wanted to grin and hug her and get her the hell away from his ridiculous family all at the same time. She was too good for all of them; too honest and sweet.

  ‘The point I’m trying to make,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘is that Theo is impressive. The first night I properly met him he showed that he was principled and kind and I didn’t need to know his original surname to understand that.’

  Had he thought he could hug her? He’d meant kiss her. Pull her up to him, turn her back to his family and kiss her over and over . . .

  There was a beat of silence after Giovanna’s pronouncement and then Harvey exclaimed, ‘Principled?’ at the same moment Lena burst out laughing.

  ‘Is she for real?’ she asked. ‘Oh, Three Bags, where did you find her? On her way to visit her sick grandmother? Caring for a gaggle of rough but lovable orphans?’

  ‘You’re very sweet,’ Philomena said to Giovanna, her tone making it clear that by ‘sweet’ she meant ‘simple’, ‘but be careful not to put any man on a pedestal.’

  ‘We’re leaving.’

  Still recovering from the almost visceral image of kissing Giovanna, it took Theo longer than he liked to step in for her. He reached for her coat and held it up for her, making it clear that family time was over. ‘We want to get a good position for the unveiling,’ he added in a half-hearted attempt to soften the abrupt departure.

/>   ‘Sure you do,’ Lena said sarcastically, the slant to her mouth making it clear she hadn’t forgiven him for the nepotism comment. Not one bit.

  ‘Thanks for having me over,’ Giovanna said politely, setting her drink down and sliding her arms into her coat with obvious relief.

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ Harvey murmured, leaning forward to brush his mouth against her cheek. ‘If you change your mind about that portrait . . .’

  She took a step back, practically colliding with Theo, and he smoothly manoeuvred her around him and out of Harvey’s reach. He then allowed his mother to air-kiss him more times than seemed necessary, forced himself to shake Harvey’s hand again, and gave his sister a quick hug, before ushering Giovanna into the foyer.

  For about the millionth time in his life, he silently cursed the electronic door opener that took so long to swing the glass open but then they were finally on the gravel and in the fresh night air.

  The waiting car had never been so welcome and he could tell Giovanna was just as eager for the sanctuary as he was. Getting her settled, he moved to the driver side and shut himself in with a sigh of relief, inserting his key into the ignition, but pausing before he fired the engine.

  ‘Well,’ Giovanna broke the almost dazed silence. ‘Your family seem . . . nice.’

  He let out a burst of laughter, the noise and feeling of it an immense release after holding himself in so tightly for so long. ‘You seem like a bad judge of character.’

  She laughed as well, a welcome and easy sound after the spikiness of the past hour and her almost perpetual silence through it.

  ‘So.’ He turned in his seat to face her and she lifted her large, somewhat stunned eyes up to him. ‘Do we go to the unveiling, or do we go home and pretend this whole evening never happened?’

  She grinned and shook her head, her curls bouncing. ‘The latter option is tempting,’ she said with her usual honesty. ‘But you know we have to go to the unveiling. Lena would hunt us down if we didn’t.’