Closer

by Aria Hawthorne

  “Well, at least you have a date tonight,” Nana finally offered. “That should cheer you up.”

  Inez pretended to enjoy the idea until she remembered the details. Her grandmother had set her up with Eddie, the choral director from the church.

  “Apparently, he can play all of Bon Jovi’s greatest hits on the organ,” Nana informed her, trying to make him sound more macho and less effeminate.

  “I think I would prefer Sasha, the janitor. And so would Eddie.”

  Nana paused, considering it. “Well, he says he’s got tickets to some fancy show that he thought you might like. What was it again?”

  “Jesus Christ Superstar, the musical.”

  Nana nodded. “See…there you go. A man who loves musicals is a sure bet.”

  Inez didn’t challenge her. She had lost her appetite for challenging anything in her life. These days, she simply accepted whatever came her way—whether she wanted it or not. She was tired of fighting because it never affected the outcome anyway. It never made a difference. It was always the same—a monumental disappointment.

  “Alright, enough already of this sulking…” Nana proclaimed in annoyance. “Tell me…if he showed up here today, at the doorstep. What would you do?”

  “Who? Eddie, the choral director?”

  “No, the metrosexual blind billionaire.”

  “I’d tell him to go to hell.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “I’d slam the door in his face.”

  “Yep. Then what?”

  “I’d probably cry and eat the entire carton of chocolate ice cream and surf the TV for some more sappy melodramatic Meryl Streep movies.”

  “Yep. See?” Nana replied. “That’s my point. You’re in love with him.”

  “Nana, I hardly think so. I knew him for like…what? Four days?”

  “I knew your grandfather for four hours, and that was enough to feel the pinch in my heart,” Nana confessed. Then, after a reflective beat, she added, “and in my pants.”

  Inez covered her ears and stood up from the table, “Ohmygod, Nana… really? Can we just stop talking about it?” Her hands trembled as she unhooked the tray from Luna’s high chair. “I’ve moved on. He’s moved on. It was no big deal, just another mistake in my love life. One of many. But I’ve promised myself to make it my absolute last.”

  Like a sappy melodramatic Meryl Streep movie, the front doorbell rang. Inez and Nana simultaneously glanced down the hallway towards the front door.

  “Ding dong,” Nana repeated, her voice as low and foreboding as the deep sonorous toll of the doorbell reverberating through the house’s foundation.

  With Luna in her arms, Inez scurried to the living room window and peered out through the sheer curtains. All she could make out was a tall dark figure.

  “Someone’s at the door,” she whispered back to Nana.

  “Duh,” Nana scoffed. “It’s not the neighborhood ghost playing ding door ditch.”

  “You answer it,” Inez insisted.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Nana mumbled under her breath as she pushed back her chair and rose from her seat, scuffling down the corridor towards the foyer. “Totally not in love with him.”

  With her heart racing in anticipation, Inez paused and waited. She gazed down at herself—her favorite flannel pajama set, shapeless and stained with puréed baby food. Luna toyed with a long curl of her hair, which Inez realized she hadn’t washed in days. And she was fairly certain she had forgotten to brush her teeth last night—possibly even all of yesterday.

  She heard Nana pull the door open as the bell rang a second time.

  “Okay, okay, enough already,” she protested. “I’m blind, not deaf.”

  “Sorry about that ma’am,” an unfamiliar voice replied. “A delivery for a Miss Inez Sanchez?”

  Inez closed her eyes and cradled Luna to her chest, sighing with a mixture of relief and inexplicable regret. What exactly had she expected? Without knowing the answer, she crept down the corridor and peeked into the foyer for a better look.

  “A delivery?” Nana repeated, almost disappointed. “Is it a metrosexual hiding in an oversized stripper cake?”

  The delivery man floundered, uncertain how to reply. “No ma’am. Just this...”

  He hoisted up the large flat package, wrapped in ordinary brown delivery paper.

  “Here, I’ll sign for it.” Inez interjected, quickly completing the task before grabbing the package from the delivery man and placing it onto the floor.

  “So…what is it?” Nana asked, closing the door.

  “Something I requested a while ago,” she whispered, tearing away the paper and already knowing the answer—the intimate portrait of her arousal that Sven had bought from Enzo. She settled her eyes on the note, written in perfect penmanship on simple white paper.

  When I returned from Shanghai, I realized this no longer belongs to me. Our agreement was for me to destroy it, but I have failed in keeping that promise. I promise not to fail you again. ~Sven.

  “What? Like an electric foot massage machine?” Nana insisted, peering over Inez’s shoulder as if she thought she might able to see after years of blindness.

  “No, just something...” Inez’s voice trailed off as she paused, biting her lip to hide the emotion in her voice. “Just something frivolous and impulsive that I can’t afford to indulge in. I’ll probably just return it. Or maybe throw it away. It doesn’t suit me anymore.”

  Consumed by the bitter memories, Inez abandoned the canvas against the hall tree and turned away with Luna towards the kitchen.

  “Well, that sounds like a shame,” Nana called after her. “We could certainly use a few good vibrations around here. Even if they’re just mechanical ones!”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along…merrily we roll along…o’er the deep blue sea.”

  Inside the gymnasium, Inez sat on the colorful parachute with Luna in her lap. All the other mothers and nannies lined its perimeter, each one singing and swaying with their babies to the nursery rhyme songs led by Debbie, the overly-enthusiastic leader of circle time.

  Debbie’s own baby, Abby, was a chubby blonde eight-month old with chick fluff hair and sterling blue eyes, who was an exact image of her mother, just miniature.

  “Okay, ladies, one more time…let’s make it a good one!”

  Debbie led the group in another hearty chorus of “Merrily We Roll Along” like it was the first time any of them had ever sung it before. The truth was, Inez and Luna had been there every afternoon that week. Where else could you take a baby during the frigid month of December in Chicago? Certainly not the park. It was something she hadn’t considered when she dreamed about all the time she was going to spend with Luna. Being a single mom without a job was a lot more monotonous than she had expected, but at least she wasn’t struggling to find work. She had enough money to support Nana and Luna through Christmas, which meant she didn’t need a job until after that. And she was thankful for it—even if it meant singing the same nursery rhymes over and over almost every day of the week.

  “Okay, Ladies…everybody up on your feet for ‘The Hokey Pokey!’ ” Debbie cried out with a tweet of her plastic whistle.

  All the women rose enthusiastically from the surface of the parachute.

  “Hurray, ‘The Hokey Pokey,’ ” Inez cheered, feigning excitement. It would be the umpteenth time she had put her right foot in and taken her right foot out that week.

  She looked down at Luna, who had just started sitting on her own, balancing her weight on her cushy diaper. She rocked forward, then backwards, gauging whether or not she could launch herself into a full-on crawl. At the final moment, she pulled back onto her bottom and lifted her hands up to her mother. No, not today. But soon…soon, Inez thought.

  “You put your right hand in, you put your right hand out. You put your right hand in, and you shake it all about. You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around. That’s what
it’s all about!”

  She watched Debbie bounce her daughter’s chubby baby hands in and out of the circle like a toy doll in her arms. Abby flapped her hands like a baby bird, ready to take flight. It was a ridiculous song, true, Inez considered. But sometimes it felt great being ridiculous.

  Succumbing to a sudden and sincere desire to perform “The Hokey Pokey” dance, Inez lifted Luna into her arms and sang along. No matter how cynical she was feeling about her life and all the challenges she had endured along the way, she only had to look at Luna and know it was all worth it.

  “You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out, you put your left hand in, and you shake it all about…”

  “Well, hello there,” Debbie suddenly called out across the gym with a gleeful shake of her left foot. “The workout room is down the hall to the left.”

  “Thank you, but I’m actually looking for someone…” the male voice trailed off when he met Inez’s gaze.

  All the women glanced at the doorway, noting the interruption as the tall, attractive man with golden hair strode along an invisible line directly towards Inez and Luna as if he belonged there.

  He absolutely did not belong there, Inez fumed, shooting Sven her best death stare to halt him in his tracks. It worked. He gazed at her. She glared back at him. What was he doing here? He belonged in a skyscraper in Shanghai with all of his asshole friends, not there—in a baby gym witnessing her performance of the “Hokey Pokey.”

  “Well, in that case. Join right in.” Debbie waved him forward. “We’re finishing up the Hokey Pokey and then we’ll move right into ‘The Wheels on the Bus.’ ”

  “That sounds…invigorating,” he said, locking eyes with Inez.

  He braved her obvious anger with his charming smile and endearing dimples. His eyepatch was gone and the intensity of his gaze made her perspire beneath her sweatshirt. God, how she hated him. And she especially hated the way the sunlight streaming in from the windows reflected off the symmetrical angles of his freshly-shaven face. He looked happy and relaxed, she thought, in his spandex athletic shirt and matching grey jogging pants. Bastard.

  All the women shifted around the parachute to make room directly next to Inez. Sven nodded in appreciation and squeezed himself between Inez and an elated nanny balancing twins on each hip.

  “You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, you put your right foot in, and you shake it all about. You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about!

  Losing all her mojo to hokey pokey, Inez turned her back on Sven. How dare he show up here and pretend like it was no big deal? She shifted Luna’s weight to her opposite side and considered all her options. She could just walk out and abandon him there, but he would probably follow her. And she couldn’t escape him by going home. He had obviously already started there and received instructions from Nana about where to find her.

  Debbie abruptly blew her plastic whistle. “Okay, gang! Now, it’s time for my favorite! Pick up an edge of the parachute and everyone walk toward your left!” She tweeted her whistle again before starting up an overzealous rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus.” The whole group rotated the parachute in a circle.

  “It requires coordinated pantomime,” Inez muttered to Sven under her breath. “I think it might be above your skill level.”

  He smirked, as if he enjoyed her sarcasm. “I think I can manage pantomime. I’m fairly good with my hands.”

  “The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round, the wheels on the bus go round and round, all through the town. The horn on the bus goes beep, beep, beep…”

  “Is he your husband?” the nanny next to Inez asked while smiling at Sven who flaunted his ability to mimic a car horn.

  “No,” Inez seethed.

  “Oh,” the nanny replied, uncertain. “The father of your baby?”

  “No.”

  “No?” The nanny arched her brow. “Your boyfriend?”

  “Ex-boyfriend.”

  “Ohhh.” The nanny frowned and nodded empathetically.

  “And ex-boss,” Inez added, glaring over at him.

  The nanny gasped before whispering the gossip to the woman next to her, who relayed it to the mother next to her, until it traveled around the entire parachute like a game of Telephone. The women hushed themselves and watched Sven following Inez and Luna around the rotating parachute.

  “The babies on the bus go waa, waaa, waa, waa, waa, waa, waa, waa, waa…the babies on the bus go waa, waa, waa…all through the town.”

  “Luna’s much bigger than I remembered,” Sven finally said, an obvious attempt to make idle small talk.

  “Things change. Babies grow.”

  “And what about their mothers?”

  “They end up at the baby gym being harassed by selfish egotistical billionaires.”

  He nodded, enduring her spiteful words. “That’s true. Billionaires are often selfish and egotistical. Maybe they would benefit by hanging out more at baby gyms.”

  Inez stopped and stared at him, resenting his invasion into her personal world, and the way he treated it like mere entertainment. Yes, she resented him, especially every time he sang aloud the chorus of “The Wheels on the Bus” like a baby gym rock star. Because it was all just a game to him.

  “Look, are you here for something—specific?” she announced, attempting to control her anger. Epic fail.

  Enthralled, the women on each side of Inez slowed their pace. Even Debbie slowed her gleeful tempo, noting their conflict from the corner of her eye.

  “The people on the bus go up and down, up and down, up and down…”

  “Yes,” he answered, attempting to carry the tune while lifting his arms and hands, up and down. “I realized how much I missed you and Luna while I was away in Shanghai.”

  “Aww,” A nanny sighed from across the parachute, then quickly covered her mouth.

  The other mothers and nannies quickly hushed her, watching Inez’s reaction in anticipation. Even Debbie fell silent, as she joined the other women in watching the unfolding drama.

  “Well, you’re about two months too late, Sven.”

  He peered into her eyes. “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” he challenged her.

  “Because I’ve moved on…we’ve moved on.”

  “Really? With who? Eddie, the choral director?” His green eyes twinkled and a sly smile of victory spread across his face.

  Inez narrowed her eyes onto his playful expression and chiseled face. She hated him. And she wanted him to know it. “So, apparently bribing my ex-boyfriend out of our lives wasn’t enough? You also had to turn my grandmother into a traitor, too?”

  “Okay, grab an edge of the parachute, ladies!” Debbie cried out, diverting everyone’s attention from the brewing storm. “It’s time to go under!” Her loud voice ricocheted off the linoleum floors of the gym, encouraging the women to sweep up the parachute into the air and duck beneath it, forming an inflated dome.

  “Not exactly,” Sven countered, taking advantage of the moment of privacy around them. “I didn’t have to bribe her. She told me willingly where you and Luna were. And she also told me about your date with Eddie, so she’s more of a matchmaker than a traitor.”

  “Well, that’s true,” Inez confirmed, seizing the opportunity to make him jealous without knowing why she wanted to. “She’s the one who set us up. He plays the church organ and he’s taking me to a musical tonight.”

  “Hmm,” he mused, not nearly as jealous as she would have liked. “I suppose that means I have competition. Except I’m fairly certain your grandmother said something about you still being in love with me.”

  He flashed her a cocky smile.

  Asshole.

  Seeking to escape from him, Inez ducked under the parachute with Luna and sat down.

  “Okay, now…let’s practice saying the colors of the rainbow in English and Spanish to our little ones,” Debbie i
nstructed everyone. “Ready? Red, rojo…green, verde…blue, azul…”

  Uncertain about the nylon shell above her, Luna fussed in Inez’s arms. Sven appeared next to them and drew Luna into his own lap. Bouncing her on his knees, he held out her hands like she was flying and provoked her toothless grin.

  “It looks like she remembers me.”

  Doubtful, Inez intended to snark back, except it almost seemed true. Luna sat quietly in his lap, toying with the shoelaces of Sven’s new tennis shoes. Fluorescent white, Inez sneered, skeptically checking their soles for wear and tear. Faker.

  “You know, it’s a shame you’ve moved on with Eddie, the choral director,” Sven said, lifting up Luna to the concave ceiling of the domed parachute, allowing her to touch the flexing fabric. “Especially since I just bought you this.”

  Lowering Luna back into his lap, he pulled something out of his pocket and slipped it onto Inez’s finger before she had a chance to even refuse it.

  “Sven…did you just put a two dollar plastic Hello Kitty ring on my finger?”

  He shrugged, nonchalantly. “One dollar. And you don’t like Hello Kitty anymore?”

  Inez stared at his earnestness. “Are you seriously trying to woo me back with a Hello Kitty ring?”

  “Inez…I’m in a gym with a dozen women and babies beneath a rainbow-colored parachute. I don’t know what I’m doing. The only thing I know is that I’m not leaving here without you and Luna.”

  She peered into his face, fancifully patterned with kaleidoscope colors. The conviction behind his eyes silenced her soul. She glanced around the interior of the parachute. Debbie and all the mothers and nannies were staring back at them.

  “Okay, enough of the parachute,” Debbie abruptly declared, signaling the end of their eavesdropping. “Bubble time!”

  The parachute drew off of Inez and Sven, interrupting their intimacy. Debbie’s farewell song boomed off the rafters. “Good-bye Marcy, good-bye Johnny, good-bye Katie, it’s time to say good-bye…wave your hands and stomp your feet, wave your hands and stomp your feet, wave your hands and stomp your feet, it’s time for us to say good-bye. Good-bye Josie, good-bye, Mikie, good-bye Luna, it’s time to say good-bye…”