Steps and Exes

by Laura Kalpakian

  Wade hasn’t seen Jennifer since she was three. She wasn’t even in school when he left.”

  “I’m not in school now, so what’s the difference?” Jennifer ambled back in, a sandwich in one hand, a Diet Coke in the other. She eased down in the chair and her clothes billowed out around her as if she’d sunk into a pool. “Don’t look at me like that,” she cautioned Bethie.

  “This wasn’t my idea. I didn’t want to come here. I think the whole thing sucks. I wanted to go live with my boyfriend, but no, Mommy dearest over there tells him if he lets me in the door, it’s statutory rape—slammer time for him. He’s twenty-one,” she added with some pride. Finishing her sandwich, she licked the mayo off her fingers and lit a cigarette, and then, still using her finger-lingo to thrust and underscore her anger, she burst into the whole catalog of Lynette’s cruelties, a torrent of perceived abuses. Lynette kept jumping in and telling her to shut up, shut up, shut up, but she wouldn’t. Jennifer raged and rattled and Lynette, the nonstop talker, fell finally into a grim silence. Jennifer told Bethie (and it was Bethie she was talking to) that ever since the clipping had arrived from Maggie, Jennifer’s life had not been the same. Statutory rape cooled off her romance pronto. All her friends got told by Mom that if they sold Jennifer so much as a tab of acid, she would give addresses to cops who would nail them. Very quickly, all doors were closed to Jennifer. Except the car door. They were going to Seattle. Five days in the Plymouth with Mom, six counting the clutch job. “God-awful.

  God-fucking-awful. But I didn’t have any choice. Mom said I could shoot tadpoles up my arms, but I had to do it on the way to Seattle.

  I had to do it on the road.”

  Bethie’s dry lips parted. “And have you…are you…?”

  Jennifer rubbed her inner elbow protectively and blew smoke through her nose rings.

  270

  STEPS AND EXES

  “Maybe you can interest Jennifer in ReDiscovery,” I offered.

  “Maybe Wade can help his own daughter to change her addictive behaviors.”

  “I’m not an addict, you phobe!” Jennifer snarled at me. “It’s fun now and then. It’s fun to get high, but I’m not a fucking addict.”

  “At least Wade could give her a T-shirt.”

  “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Bethie cried, jumping up so fast the blood drained from her face and she wove slightly on her feet. “Shut up, all of you!” Bethie wanted to fall apart, to go on one of her weeping jags, which were probably frequent and refreshing. No doubt as Wade’s vassal she’d made a habit of them. But she needed Wade present for it to work, Wade or Fran or some equally appreciative audience.

  I saw the little Pooh Bear lying beside the couch. I retrieved it, wound it up and its plaintive tune tinkled out. I gave it to Bethie.

  “Here. Didn’t Wade tell you this was a good way to become an adult?”

  Bethie burst into tears and flung the Pooh across the room. “Please.

  Go away. All of you.”

  Jennifer got up and went to the Pooh, dusting it off. “I always loved Pooh,” she said, brightening, and for a moment she looked like the fifteen-year-old girl that she was, anger fled from her face and her eyes alight with affection. “Remember, Mom, my Pooh?

  What happened to my own Pooh?”

  Lynette could not remember.

  “I had Pooh when I was a baby. But I guess it got lost. So when I was nine I shoplifted one,” she said dreamily, “and now, I always shoplift Poohs. You won’t believe this, but on the street, Pooh and Minnie Mouse sell the fastest. No one likes Donald. When I got caught at that last Disney Store, I had a dozen Poohs in my pants.”

  Jennifer loosed a genuine laugh. “Get it? Pooh in your pants.”

  “Pooh and a couple of joints,” her mother reminded her. “They wanted to do a full body search, if you remember, cavities and all, and I wouldn’t let them. They needed my permission.

  271

  Laura Kalpakian

  Now, if you were emancipated, Jennifer, they could do what they wanted.”

  Jennifer relaxed back into her customary sulk and asked if there were video games on the computer. Solitaire, said Bethie. Not interested, said Jennifer, holding Pooh Bear to her heart.

  Lynette excused herself to go to the bathroom and Bethie and I sat staring at one another. She’d shelved the crying jag, and her eyes had gone agate-hard and she breathed in short, sharp gusts through her nose. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Celia? You think it’s all very funny.”

  “I don’t think it’s funny at all. I think it’s tragic. But not for you.

  For them, for Lynette and for Jennifer, I think it’s tragic. For you, I think it’s just pathetic. This man is a liar. Lynette and Jennifer, they are not slips of his memory.”

  “Everyone has exes nowadays,” she protested. “Look at you.”

  “Ex-lovers, ex-husbands, ex-wives, fine, but not ex-children.

  Lynette has raised Jennifer single-handedly for twelve years.”

  “And bitched me out every day, too,” Jennifer interrupted. “Told me every day since I was six how she wished she’d put me up for adoption. How we’d both be better off. I’d be better off without her, that’s for sure. I could be living with rich people instead of her and old Dwayne. Night cook at Denny’s and she thinks he’s Prince Fucking Charming.”

  “Don’t you bad-mouth Dwayne.” Lynette bristled back into the living room. “Don’t you bad-mouth him at all. He is a good man.

  And for your information, Miss Unemployed Shoplifter, night cook at Denny’s is a good job.” She turned to Bethie and held out her ring with the pavé diamonds. “You’re not the only one with a fiancé.

  Dwayne and me are getting married. In fact, Dwayne’s meeting me in Reno when I drive down from here and we’re getting married in Reno.”

  Bethie was about to offer wan congratulations just as footsteps sounded outside and all of us—two mothers, two daughters—tensed and waited for the key to turn in the lock and for Wade Shumley to walk into his past.

  He set his briefcase down, offered some endearment to Bethie 272

  STEPS AND EXES

  and then saw me, came toward me, oozing beneficence. I watched him like a truck barreling down the road, like we would crash any minute because I knew if he tried to touch me, I’d have to scream, or run, but the explosion was averted by a word from Lynette, his name, Wade.

  At that, he turned to her, looked closely, peered at Jennifer clutching Pooh, and then—more swiftly than you could light a match—he staggered like a soldier mortally wounded, but still on his feet, he staggered like he might drop. He didn’t though. Explosion turned to implosion and he regained himself and Bethie flew into his arms. Then she went on her crying jag, saying how we’d all been mean to her, how we had abused her in her own home. He held her close, patted her back, murmuring, eyes closed. And when he had collected himself—which happened so quickly, I was amazed, astonished. What had I expected? I don’t know. Maybe that Wade should shout Great God in the morning! and run screaming from the apartment?—he soothed Bethie. Then he peeled her off his body. Peeled her off, left her standing with her tongue out. Wade went straight to Lynette, wrapped her in a huge hug and said how wonderful she looked and how happy he was to see her and how it had been a long time.

  And still burbling compliments, and bubbling joy, he went to his daughter and said, “This must be little Jennifer, my baby girl.” He hugged her. Big hug. Massive hug. Wiped his eyes and asked to be excused for crying, for being so moved to see them again. He beamed, fondling the rings punched in Jennifer’s eyebrow and patted her nose like she was a puppy and said she’d turned her body into a work of art. “You’ve met my beautiful Elizabeth, I see.”

  Bethie didn’t look so beautiful at that moment. No one did. Except maybe Wade. He had recovered himself in a flash. What a maestro.

  He listened with unfeigned gravity while Lynette dragged out her clipping and her story about Maggie and Arnie and t
he army buddy and he asked a lot of questions about his mother, tut-tutting to hear she was still with Arnie, a relationship he pronounced destructive, though Lynette said they had been

  273

  Laura Kalpakian

  together for almost thirty years and had left Long Beach for retirement in Hemet. Well, said Wade, that explains everything: now he knew why he hadn’t been able to get in touch with them to tell them about his engagement. Where was Hemet, he asked, and how was Maggie? And in the midst of all this long-lost-family-chat, Bethie, standing quite apart from Wade, asked how old he was.

  He grinned sheepishly. “I see you’ve found out my little vanity.

  Women think they’re the only vain ones, but they’re not. Men are allowed a little fib now and then, aren’t they? It would be sexist to deny us that.”

  “And what about Jennifer and Lynette?” I asked. “Are they also little fibs? A little vanity you neglected to mention?”

  Wade removed his sport coat. He was wearing a ReDiscovery Tshirt too. “I don’t think it’s your place to comment on my family, Celia.”

  Bethie burst into loud tears again, and wailed, “So it’s true. You have been married. You have children! You—”

  “One daughter,” he corrected her. “That’s not children.”

  “But you lied to me!” Her voice escalated into a great peal of pain.

  “You lied! I can’t believe you’d lie—you above all people, Wade!

  You wanted to know everything about me! I had to tell you everything. Everyone I’d ever slept with! All my family! You never even told me you’d been married!”

  Lynette rose and wedged herself between Bethie and Wade. “I can see this is going to be a long conversation, so I’ll say goodbye now. I’m in a hurry. Time on the meter, you know.”

  “You have to stay, Lynette. Have dinner with us,” Wade insisted,

  “spend the night. There’s so much to talk about. It’s been so long—”

  “That’s right, so long. I’m on my way to Reno to get married.”

  Wade blithered, asking after the lucky man, but Lynette pulled from her other pocket her much-folded tabulations. She held the paper up in front of his nose. “Twelve years, you bastard! Ten years since you called! And then, you wanted money! Well, now 274

  STEPS AND EXES

  I want money. See this? See? Eighteen thousand dollars, more or less, and that’s not counting what it cost me to get her wisdom teeth out. And braces! Show him your braces.” Jennifer bared a mouthful of metal, the tongue bolt notwithstanding. “Years of my life, buckets of my sweat are in those braces. My work. My time at six-fifty, seven-fifty an hour! I paid for a new pair of orthopedic shoes every six months for a year while we waited for her ankles to straighten out, and her spine.”

  “And she has beautiful posture,” Wade said.

  “And what about her abortion? Who do you think paid for that?

  And rehab, you bastard, who paid for that? Twice! She’s been in rehab twice! And she’s not yet sixteen!” Lynette was screaming now, all that suppressed fury she’d carried for twelve years and fifteen hundred miles came spewing out. She was like a hand grenade with the pin pulled. “Jennifer dropped out of school in the seventh grade.

  She can’t fucking multiply! She has a juvenile record long as your arm! She’s been a prostitute in the park for drug money! I work and work and work and do the best I can with this girl and where are you? Where were you ever? You bastard. It’s taken me twelve years to find you!”

  “I can feel your pain, Lynette,” he whispered, his entire body radiating compassion, “and I apologize. I am truly and profoundly sorry. But my life, let me tell you how I have lived all those years on drugs and after. I—”

  She cut him off with a short right jab to the gut. Instead of telling the tale that he had told to such effect to community groups all over the Northwest, the staple of ReDiscovery, Wade went Oof oof and his eyes bulged out of his head. He had not planned this one (like he had orchestrated Grant’s attack on him; I was sure of it) and he bent double, the wind knocked out of him, and fell back down on the couch, Bethie rushing to his side.

  “Sorry.” Lynette’s lips roiled in and out. It was a practiced shot, I thought, because tiny as she was, she’d walloped twelve years into that punch and he was some time recovering. “Do you have my eighteen thousand dollars, Wade?”

  “Lynette—” he gasped, “I will make this up to you. I know 275

  Laura Kalpakian

  I have created pain for you and Jennifer, but—all that unhealthy behavior—is behind me and—I’m committed to making some kind of—restitution, giving back to the world—if it’s money that you want from me—”

  “It’s what I wanted once. But it’s no good now.” Lynette walked over to Jennifer, and again, with a strength you would not have guessed at, she pulled that girl to her feet and flung her arms around her, weeping, crying out her name. Jennifer remained obdurate, angry, unmoved. I pitied them both.

  Lynette released her daughter, mopped the tears from her face and said grimly, “OK then, I’m off.”

  “Please, Lynette—” Wade reached out beseechingly. “Stay a while.

  At least give me the chance to know my own daughter—”

  “You got time, Wade. Three years. When she’s eighteen, she’s her own legal responsibility, but in the meantime she’s yours. I’m leaving here by myself. I’m driving to Reno and I’m meeting Dwayne and I’m getting married. I’m taking my own life back. For fifteen years I’ve given everything I had to this girl. I went to the first day of kindergarten, Wade. I went to back-to-school night. I went to back-to-juvenile-detention night. I held her hand after the abortion. I went to family rehab. But I can’t do any more. I’m finished. I failed. I admit it and now it’s your turn. I hope you do better than I did. But I tried.

  You got to admit that, Jennifer, I tried.”

  But Jennifer looked away, unwilling to admit anything.

  “OK. So long, honey. So long, Wade. And don’t you come to me for child support either, you bastard. If it’s any comfort to you, I wish I’d never met you too.”

  “You can’t leave her here!” Bethie protested. “She can’t live with us!”

  “I’m leaving her with her father. Where you live is up to you.”

  “You said you only wanted to talk to Wade—” Bethie babbled.

  “You never said—Wade! Do something! Stop this!—You never said you were going to leave this girl here!”

  “Well, I am.”

  276

  STEPS AND EXES

  “No, you can’t do this. You can’t just leave a girl here. Just drive off.”

  Taking her purse (and leaving both big bags), Lynette told Jennifer to write, to call now and then. But not for money. “I’ll see you when you’re eighteen.”

  “Not if I see you first,” mustered Jennifer.

  Then she was gone. Out the door.

  Bethie raced after her, shouting, “You come back here right now!

  You take this girl with you! You can’t just leave this girl!” She ran back into Jennifer, shooing her like an inconvenient pet. “Go on, you go with her. She’s your mother! Go on—you can’t stay here! You hear me! We don’t want you!”

  “Elizabeth,” Wade said, “don’t say that. Please.”

  “But we don’t! Get rid of her, Wade!”

  “I have to stay.” Jennifer melted back into the chair. “Mom won’t have me. Anyway she’s ruined everything down there for me. I hate Reseda. I hate Seattle. I hate everything. Everything sucks.

  Everything’s fucked.”

  “Close the door, Elizabeth.”

  “She can’t live here!”

  “Close the door. Of course she can. She must. She’s my daughter.

  I can help you, Jennifer. I can bring you back to life.”

  “Life sucks.”

  “Wade!” Bethie strung his name out, like a bell tolling.

  He opened his arms. “Now we can
be a real family, Elizabeth.

  You and me and Jennifer. We’re a family now. Before we were a couple. Now we’re a family.”

  “But I don’t want a family. I want you! Only you! I don’t want any children. Besides, she’s not a child, she’s a—delinquent!”

  “She’s my daughter, your stepdaughter. You’ve had lots of practice at this, Elizabeth,” he added reasonably. “You’ve had lots of stepbrothers and stepsisters. Now you have a stepdaughter. It’ll be easier for you than for most people. Knowing you, I would think you’d welcome this challenge. We can help bring Jennifer back to wholeness.” He gathered pace and conviction, while Bethie stared at the unpromising lump of adolescent flesh that was 277

  Laura Kalpakian

  Jennifer Shumley. Wade bathed, splashed in his sentiments, enjoying their beauty and promise. “Haven’t we vowed to share everything, Elizabeth? Aren’t we unconditionally accepting of each other’s pasts?

  Committed to a program of individual betterment within a community of empowerment? What is Jennifer but a victim? This girl needs our help. That she is my daughter only makes her more special.”

  I wanted to shake Bethie till her teeth rattled, but I didn’t have to.

  Bless God, I didn’t have to. She wasn’t so completely drowned in Wade’s tub of rhetoric. She brought it to his attention that he had lied, never said he’d had a child, that he had another wife.

  Wade pointed out his own generosity of spirit. “I don’t hold your past against you, Elizabeth.”

  Bethie blinked. “We’ve been together a year and you never mentioned you’d been married. You said I was the great love of your life.”

  “And you are, Elizabeth.”

  I knew right then what he would do: he’ll start to cry, I thought.

  Bethie had told me long ago how easily he was moved to tears, he could be moved by simple things, by the sadness of a few paltry items laid out at a garage sale. He cried even to tell people the story, Bethie said. Wade had a great, deep reservoir of emotion which he had learned to touch through suffering. And I knew—if Bethie didn’t—that experience had clearly taught Wade no woman can resist a weeping man. Everything in that woman’s body and her blood, her very chromosomes rushes out to make it All Better. To take the hurt on herself if need be.