Among the Ducklings

by Marsh Brooks

  “Don't worry, Isabel. I'll be there for the dinner too and on time, unlike some people I know.”

  “Wait a minute,” Isabel protested. But Lucy had already hung up. What Isabel loved about Lucy was that Lucy was very unconventional. She marched to the beat of her own drum. But sometimes, like right now, Lucy's unpredictability drove her crazy.

  ##

  “Rebecca, are you there?” Isabel asked, knocking on Rebecca's bedroom door.

  “Come in.” Rebecca was sitting on her bed watching a DVD when Isabel entered.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Not good, lately,” Rebecca answered. “I think my belly is starting to show.”

  “Do you want me to get you something, like a cup of tea?” Isabel asked.

  “No,” Rebecca answered. “I slept and feel a little better now.”

  “Good. I wanted to talk to you. We are having guests tomorrow evening,” Isabel said.

  “Who is coming?”

  “I met someone at the Center. I invited him and his friend to have dinner at 6:30 tomorrow evening.”

  Rebecca looked horrified. “You're dating one of Tia Marcia's patients, while Richard is away?”

  “It's not like that. His name is Phil. I just wanted him to meet you,” Isabel said.

  “What do you want me to say? You are now doing what I would never believe someone like you would do. You're betraying Richard's trust for someone you just met,” Rebecca said.

  Isabel was offended and hurt, but didn't show it. “All I'm asking is for you to be there and to meet him. You don't have to like him but I hope you do.”

  “In the meantime, what are you going to tell Richard? He has been leaving messages for you, you know?” Rebecca said.

  “I'll deal with the situation when Richard gets back,” Isabel said. “Rebecca, I am in love with Phil and I hope you understand that.”

  “Isabel,” Rebecca said, “you know how much I love you. I am saying this for your own good. You are making a big mistake. Richard has not done anything to you and has always treated us well.”

  “This is not about Richard, Rebecca. All I am asking is for you to be nice to them when they come here tomorrow,” Isabel said.

  “I'll be nice to them. I just think what you're doing is wrong,” she argued.

  “Thanks,” Isabel said as she exited Rebecca's room. The discussion was over. She wasn't asking Rebecca's permission, just her help for tomorrow evening.

  Rebecca's strong reaction surprised Isabel. She expected her to voice her disapproval with the whole situation. Even Isabel herself disapproved of her own situation. But Isabel didn't expect her to argue so vehemently before giving Phil a chance. Now she felt bad for bringing Rebecca into this.

  She was going to have dinner with the man that she loved, with a sister who disapproved, while her fiancé was away. What a mess she had created, she thought.

  ##

  Rebecca could not understand why Isabel was doing this. Isabel had been the only mother she really knew. She was young when her mother died. If it wasn't for seeing her mother's pictures in the house, Rebecca would never have remembered what her mother looked like, as her memories of her had faded over time. Rebecca loved Isabel and she decided that she was not going to sit by and let her make this mistake and throw her life with Richard away. Maybe now was the time for Rebecca to be the big sister that Isabel never had, the big sister who would protect Isabel before Isabel hurt herself. Isabel might not understand now, but she would thank her later. Rebecca then got up, changed her clothes, picked up her purse and her car keys. She needed to go out to make a call. She could not call from the house because she didn't want Isabel to hear her talking to Richard.

  ##

  Richard was on his way from the store to a house in an exclusive Orlando neighborhood when one of his cell phones rang. It was the Miami cell phone. In Orlando, the Miami cell phone was on only when he was alone in his car. Otherwise, it was off, and in his glove compartment. He slowed the car down to the shoulder of the road and picked up the phone.

  “Richard?”

  “Rebecca. You sound worried. Are you and Isabel OK?” Richard asked.

  “I am. But it's Isabel that I am worried about.”

  “What is it?” Richard asked, in a hurried tone.

  “She invited a man to have dinner with her. I mean with us tomorrow night at the house.”

  “Why?”

  “I think she is dating him.”

  “Are you sure?” Richard asked.

  “Well, yes. I talked to her about it and told her that I disagreed with it,” Rebecca said.

  “Who is he?” Richard asked.

  “His name is Phil. He is one of Tia Marcia's patients.”

  Richard was shocked. He didn't expect this. He remembered meeting Phil. During all of his years with Isabel, he would never have believed something like this could happen. But again, life is ironic. Sooner or later, he had to pay for what he had done to Isabel, and he felt that Isabel was slipping away. He loved Isabel and knew that he would never give her up without a fight.

  “I have met him,” Richard said. “Does Isabel know that you are calling me?”

  “No. I think she is making a mistake and I don't want her to throw her life away. I know that you love her.”

  “I do,” Richard said. He now knew why Isabel had been avoiding returning his calls.

  “I won't be able to come back until early next week. But don’t worry, I will take care of it.”

  “Don't tell her that I called you,” Rebecca implored. “Isabel would be really upset.”

  “Don't worry. Isabel won't know. Thanks for telling me about this, Rebecca. Isabel and I are grateful to have you in our lives.”

  “I've got to go now. I don't want her to suspect that I called you. I'm just worried,” Rebecca said.

  “Everything will be fine. Isabel is going through a tough time right now and that Phil guy is trying to take advantage of her,” Richard said.

  “Come back soon. Don't let everything drag too long, OK?”

  “OK, I promise,” Richard said to Rebecca before hanging up the Miami cell phone.

  ##

  Rebecca's phone call made Richard think of the saying “What goes around, comes around.” He didn't mean to hide things from Isabel, but it was just that he didn't have a choice. He grew up in Orlando, the son of a police officer and a high school English teacher. While in high school, he was a very popular football player. All of the cheerleaders wanted to date him, including Kristin, the only daughter of a prominent wealthy condominium developer. The two became the hottest item in town, and the day after their high school graduation, they eloped to Las Vegas, infuriating both families.

  “My father always wished he had a son to pass his construction business on to him,” Kristin would tell Richard. Kristin was strong willed and would not bend to her father's wishes.

  “Father wants me to go to the University of Florida in Gainesville to study engineering. He thinks he can make me forget you. I won't go anywhere. I love you,” Kristin would tell Richard.

  After their wedding, Kristin's father ultimately gave up trying to keep them apart. He bought them a house and hired and taught Richard the construction business. When Richard's parents later decided to move to Arizona due to a job offer that Richard's father received from another police force, Richard stayed with Kristin in Orlando, and got his contractor's license. Richard was so busy overseeing his father-in-law's construction projects that he was almost never home, causing his marriage to fall apart, several years later.

  “We are like two strangers in the same house,” he had said to Kristin one day.

  “You are not trying hard to make the marriage work,” Kristin had replied. “I still love you and I want our marriage to work.”

  “We don't have any marriage anymore, Kristin,” Richard had said. A few weeks later, he moved out of their house, bought a condo for himself to stay in and eventually filed for divorce. Soon after
ward, Richard opened his own construction business. However, he couldn't get the big construction contracts because no one wanted to betray Kristin's father, who was angry at Richard for leaving the family. It was during his separation that he met Isabel. He never told Isabel that he was married because Isabel would have never gone out with him, and to him, it didn't matter because he would soon be divorced.

  Richard then learned the hard way how difficult and laborious it was to divorce the daughter of a powerful man. Kristin's father would hire powerful attorneys and use his connections to ensure that Richard didn't earn a living, which infuriated Richard, causing Richard to have his attorney make all kinds of monetary demands against Kristin in response.

  When Richard proposed to Isabel, he was hoping that his divorce would be final in a couple of weeks. However, a few days after his engagement, he received a call from Kristin who was crying uncontrollably.

  “What is it, Kristin?” he asked.

  “It's my parents. They have been shot.”

  “By whom?”

  “There was a robbery at the house.”

  “Are they OK?”

  “No. I just left the hospital. They didn't make it,” Kristin said. Richard dropped everything and flew immediately to Orlando to help Kristin arrange for the funerals. He canceled the divorce proceedings, which would have been unconscionable at a time like that. Kristin's father had left everything to Kristin in his will. However, most of the money Kristin would receive could only be disbursed three years after her parents' deaths. In essence, Kristin was a wealthy woman in waiting.

  If Richard waited with Kristin, Richard could become a wealthy man as well. It was then that he realized that it would be a mistake to divorce Kristin. He decided to stay and help Kristin manage the construction business. It was during that time that Richard and Kristin started sleeping with each other again. Kristin out of love for Richard, Richard, on the other hand, felt sorry for Kristin and wanted to help Kristin overcome her grief. One day, he had just left Isabel when his phone rang. It was Kristin telling him that she was pregnant.

  Now as Richard looked back, he was not sure what he could have done differently. In six months, Kristin would receive her father's inheritance and had promised to give Richard a large share, which would allow Richard to bolster his construction business, and pay off his company’s numerous debts. Once his own business recovered, Richard would no longer be dependent on Kristin's money and would be able to get a divorce and marry Isabel. However, he was here in Orlando this week because Kristin was in the hospital having their baby, a girl named Paris. Richard knew that he would have to eventually come clean with Isabel. He could not do it now, while they were still engaged. It would be easier for Isabel to forgive him if they were married to each other. He loved Isabel. He couldn't wait to make her his wife. He couldn't wait to confront Phil.

  Chapter Ten

  The following morning when Phil got up, it was already close to 10:00 am. He went to the kitchen and found a note on the refrigerator from Jeremy. Jeremy was going to be out in meetings and would be back to the house in the early afternoon. Thinking about the evening, Phil was ecstatic. He couldn't wait to see Isabel again.

  When he called the Center to cancel his therapy session for the afternoon, he learned from Marcia that Isabel had done hers in the morning and would not be there in the afternoon. Last night, he did wonder how Isabel was going to have time to do her afternoon therapy sessions and get everything ready for dinner. Knowing that Isabel had gone in the morning, he wished he had done the same instead of missing his therapy session at the Center altogether. He felt guilty for not doing his exercises and so he spent the next two hours on the floor of his living room trying to exercise his ankle. When Phil got to the office, it was already past 1:00 pm.

  “Hi boss,” Myra said as he entered.

  “Hi Myra, anything urgent?”

  “Not really. I sent out the reports that were due this morning to the attorneys.”

  “Thanks,” Phil said.

  “How is your ankle?”

  “It's getting better. How is your work going with Stacy?” Phil asked, hoping to learn what Stacy was up to.

  “Ok, I guess,” Myra answered.

  “What do you do for her?”

  “Nothing in particular. I spent most of my time returning calls to actors and helping her to choose gifts for her friends back in LA.”

  “It sounds like interesting work,” Phil said.

  “Yes, it is and we spent a lot of time talking about you too.”

  “Me?” Phil asked, surprised.

  “Yes,” Myra answered. “When Stacy left, everyone in the office knew and blamed her because she never came back here anymore and there were all of these stories in the paper about her. Now that she is here, and knowing what she went through after the miscarriage, it puts everything in perspective.”

  “What miscarriage?”

  “If you talk to her, don't tell her I told you. She told me not to tell you,” Myra said.

  “I promise. What is it?”

  “When she left,” Myra said, “she was pregnant with your baby. She fell in one of her photo shoots and miscarried. That’s why she could not return. She could not face you. She loved you and she said she was depressed for months.” Phil couldn't believe it. Stacy was carrying his child. He knew Stacy would not make up a story like that. But he asked, “What happened to the actor she married?”

  “Stacy talked about that too. She met him at one of her therapy sessions for the depression. She was alone by herself and he was helping her when they got married. As soon that she got better, she divorced him because she said she never stopped loving you. Phil felt his legs trembling. He now felt guilty for his own selfishness. When he didn't hear from Stacy, and Stacy would not return his calls, he was upset and hurt and saw Stacy as just another actress who went in and out of relationships like a person changed clothes. Except he was not a pair of jeans or a blouse. He had feelings that had been discarded. Now that he knew what happened, he regretted that he hadn't been there for Stacy. Maybe if he had traveled to the photo shoots, she would not have fallen and he would have had a son or a daughter today. He now felt foolish for avoiding Stacy. Maybe Stacy's new extravagance was masking a very deep pain. He felt that he owed it to the son or daughter that they almost had, to talk to Stacy and help her deal with the pain that she was going through now with the loss.

  ##

  Stacy was in a good mood. She was by the pool, lying down in a yellow bikini. Yellow was her favorite color. Bright and impossible to ignore. She was counting down the hours until she would go to the Center to talk to Isabel. She looked stunning and she knew it. She ignored all the rich men salivating over her. She had waited and planned well for this trip. She was not going to make any mistakes. She was going to get the man she loved. No matter what, she was going to get Phil. She had passed the morning looking at scripts dealing with miscarriages and wondered what was the best way to show the pain of miscarriage on her face when she met Phil. She was sure that by now, Myra must have told Phil the story that Stacy had asked Myra not to tell. To make the story believable when she saw Phil, she had to get the acting right. Good thing she was a great actress.

  ##

  Isabel was grateful to Rebecca, who helped prepare the dinner. She could tell that Rebecca wasn't enjoying it. Since Rebecca didn't complain, however, Isabel didn't say anything. She needed Rebecca's help for the dinner. Rebecca was a much better cook than she was. In the morning, Rebecca had asked her what kind of dish Isabel wanted to prepare.

  “Some kind of pasta,” Isabel had replied.

  “Are you kidding me? Don't you want people to know about our culture, about Cuban food?” Rebecca had asked.

  “I guess you're right,” Isabel had said. “But what if he doesn't like Cuban food?”

  “Well that would be a problem, wouldn't it? Because that's what we eat most days,” Rebecca had replied.

  “I wouldn't see it that wa
y,” Isabel had said, realizing that she needed to learn more about Phil.

  “What about meat?” he's not a vegetarian, is he?” Rebecca had asked.

  “I don't think so,” Isabel was looking silly. She also felt that Rebecca was trying to reinforce the fact that she didn't know much about Phil.”

  “Let's cook chicken. Everyone loves chicken,” Rebecca had decided. “But if he is a vegetarian, you have a problem.”

  Isabel had not replied to the slight, but simply had said, "Chicken would be good.”

  Isabel and Rebecca spent the whole afternoon, preparing the dishes. Real or imagined, Isabel had the sense that each question that Rebecca asked had a double meaning.

  She was trying to show Isabel how wrong Isabel was about Phil. As a result, she only tried to ask questions that Isabel didn't have any answers for.

  Rebecca would ask, “I would like to prepare for appetizers, some plantains topped with ground beef. Does he eat beef?”

  “That sounds good,” Isabel would reply, wishing that she was a better cook than Rebecca.

  “What about pechuga de pollo a la plancha for dinner, with moros and yuca? Do you know if he will like it?” The entree dish Rebecca was suggesting was simply grilled chicken breast with onions, with rice and beans and a root vegetable.

  “That's fine,” Isabel would answer.

  “The flan that we are making for dessert has milk. Do you know if he eats dairy?”

  “That's fine. Why don't we just cook and not worry about what Phil likes?” an exasperated Isabel finally said, regretting that they didn't prepare pasta instead.

  When Isabel was in high school, she used to joke with friends whose parents were Italian-Americans and used to say that Italians were not innovative when it came to food.

  “How so?” the friends would ask.

  “Well, you take dough and make a hole in it and you call it macaroni. If you remove the hole and make it thinner, then you call it spaghetti, if you make it smaller you call it linguine or fettuccine, if it's very thin, then you call it vermicelli. You stuff it to call it ravioli, you flatten it into large layers and you call it lasagna,” Isabel would say laughing. Now Isabel wished they had settled for Italian food. She had never met someone who didn't like Italian food.