by Emily Bishop
“All he really needs is an uncle, right?” I said, giving him a soft smile.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Quintin said, shrugging. “And I know you’re not, either.” He eased across the bar and busied himself with an approaching customer, an older man, with a crisp head of white hair.
I turned back to the computer, plugging my headphones into my ears so I could focus. The familiar script snuck through the speakers, coming to life. My mouth tugged up at the corners. It was real. Despite the horrible way Wesley and I had treated one another, despite the fact that, with each breath, I felt riddled with anger and resentment, this baby contract was the only reason I had been able to film my screenplay.
Editing would take the better part of two months, I was sure—especially given that I didn’t have the cash flow to pay a professional. I was learning, reading up on tips of the trade and giving myself space for do-overs. As I spun through the first hour, then the next, my mind trickled to thoughts of the “after.” When the movie was finished, it would be a complete edit that rolled seamlessly through all ninety minutes. How would I submit it?
Would I have to find an agent?
I paused for a moment, thinking back to Tyler, my ex-fiancé. Again, the previous evening, he’d texted me, burning to see me again. “I feel like we still have so much to say to one another,” he’d said. “So much to do together. You’re so talented. I’m ridiculous for ever saying you weren’t. Face it, Rem. We’re adults. We make mistakes. But I want you back.”
My heart jolted at the thought of the message. Wesley hadn’t sent me anything so romantic, so passionate—not in the months since his return, or ever. Sure, with Wes, our bodies buzzed with passion for one another. When we made love, it felt as though the world spun only for us. Our sweat stirred together, creating a sexual scent that was purely our own. Just the thought of it now made my eyes close tight.
I touched myself to the thought of Wesley far more often than I liked to admit to myself. My legs wide on my bed and the silky smooth wetness of myself between. I liked to imagine his face between my legs, his dark eyes peering up at me as he whispered, “Tell me you want it. Tell me you want it fast.”
Tyler offered several very different things, however. He offered stability. He offered a large home in Los Angeles, with easier reach to agents and the film industry. In general, as a PR rep, I felt sure he would have his finger on the pulse of where to go, who to speak with. Unlike Wes, he was a man of the world, a businessman, with a different tie for each type of meeting. This had irritated me about him.
Of course, I hadn’t loved him. Not even for a single day. I’d often looked at him, sleeping beside me—minutes before awakening and saying some sort of banal thing—and contrasted him to my burning memories of Wesley.
The bell jangled at the door, interrupting my reverie. Clacking heels marched across the floor, directly behind me. Shifting in my chair, I watched, side-eyed, as a blonde-haired woman wearing a cinched pink dress bobbed onto the stool beside me. With most of the entire bar empty, the chairs glossy and waiting to be filled, irritation made my throat clench. Why couldn’t she just leave me alone? It was clear I was busy, my fingers ticking against the keyboard.
“Hi!” she said then, her voice bright. Initially, I assumed she was speaking to Quintin. But Quintin had charged across the bar to speak with Marshall, the old drunk, leaving this strange woman’s eyes to blink at me brightly.
Finally, I turned my head toward her, tilting my head. “I’m sorry. Hello?”
The woman was strangely pretty, with a kind of emptiness behind the eyes. She swirled her fingers through her hair, eyeing the bar taps. “What’s good here?”
“Oh, um. I guess the IPA? It’s brewed downtown. Although I haven’t had a drink in a few months now,” I said, lending her a small smile and pressing my hand against my stomach.
“Right. Of course,” the woman said. “He mentioned something about that.”
He? What the hell? My smile faltered slightly, forcing my eyebrows lower over my eyes. “I’m sorry. Have we met before?”
The woman snaked her hand into the air between us, showing a bright, cheap-looking selection of rings sparkling on three fingers. I accepted her hand, shaking it with a soft tug.
“I’m so sorry. That’s so rude of me, isn’t it!” she tittered. “Honestly, it’s all been such a whirlwind. I told him—Wes, that is—that I’d just swing down here and try to find you, what with this being your brother’s bar and everything. He said you’re often over here. I have to say, this is quite the dive bar. Very Wes. Not as much you.” Her eyes scraped me up and down, analyzing my sundress, my sandals.
My smile was a twitching line across my face. I waited, my heart burning with memory of what Wes had said the previous night. That he just needed to speak with me. That he had something to say.
“Where did he drag you out of?” I asked, my voice gritty, low.
Again, Connie tittered, quaking slightly atop the stool. “Oh, darling. That isn’t how we speak to one another in Florida. We’ve got some manners that you California folk don’t have, I’d say. I’m trying to instill those manners in my daughter. Our daughter, I mean. Maria. God, she’s six years old now, and I’m painfully aware of the fact that she’s picking up almost every one of my habits as we go along. Ha, ha! You’ll have to think about that, too. What with your baby coming and all.”
I gaped at her, my head swirling. “I’m sorry. You said, our daughter?”
“Right!” Connie said, flashing her teeth. “Wes didn’t say you were a clever girl. But here you are. Wes knocked me up about six and a half years ago. I can’t believe he never told you about Maria. You should see the way she looks at him. And now that she’s got this inheritance coming from Wes’s new partnership, I’m going to have her in the top schools in all of the Bay Area. We’ve talked, of course, about getting back together for her. I mean, she loves him so much. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a little family together? But you know Wes. I thought at first he’d say no way. But would you believe it was his idea?”
I shuffled to my feet, and the stool rocked back and forth. My hands, my elbows, my thighs—they shook. I felt as if I were onboard a ship, cresting a large, dominant wave. Still, Connie beamed at me with the expression of someone who’d just bested me. In her, I saw the smile of every woman who’d ever taken a part from me, when I’d been acting back in Los Angeles. I saw every woman I’d ever imagined Wes with, when he’d been far away. I spun with resentment, with sadness. But most of all, I felt the dark, hollowness of truth.
Why would she come here and lie to me about this?
“Oh, would you like to see her? Might be good to see what your baby might look like,” Connie continued. She slid her hand into her large, bulbous purse and drew out a wallet. Inside was a photo of a little, blonde girl missing a front tooth. The girl grinned at me behind the plastic, showing these large blue eyes—so much like Hank’s. It was no mistaking that this girl was Wes’s daughter. I could feel him in her.
“Wow,” I said, my heart bursting in my rib cage. “So. A family. You’re going to try it.”
“He seems really ready,” Connie said, her eyelashes flicking up and down. “And his father, Maria’s grandfather. He seems so happy to have an heir, you know? I think he was really worried about that, what with Wes’s brother passing away.”
I slammed my laptop closed, stuttering. I couldn’t get my thoughts to wrap around this new reality. I slipped the laptop into my bag and tilted my head toward the door. Quintin still hadn’t noticed my conversation and was leaning against the bar, speaking conspiratorially with one of the regulars. The world spun, smeared. My eyes couldn’t take any one image in fast enough.
“Well, I’m certainly very happy for you,” I said, my voice taut, like a string.
I had no reason to scream at this woman. To tell her she was taking my place. Rather, Wes had made his position in my life incredibly clear. I was to be the birth mother, the woman
to push a son into the world. And now, it seemed that he didn’t even need that son. This daughter had arrived, safely back into his arms. A complete and total family, with a bright-toothed and leggy blonde.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I whispered, drawing my hands through my brown hair—so smooth, so curled, something to hold onto as the world rocked forward. “I actually have to be on my way.”
Without waiting for her answer, I sped toward the door, nearly tripping on the welcome mat. My toes smashed against the plastic tip of it, making it whirl to the side. Out on the street, I inhaled deeply, questions rushing to the surface. What was going to happen to my son? To this baby that Wes had wanted so deeply? Was he still owed his money? Or were Wes and his father perfectly content with this heir to the tech company—this gorgeous little girl named Maria?
Something within me broke. I felt certain I didn’t want my baby to grow up into this world of money, of contractual obligations, of Wes’s laissez-faire mentality about love and friendship and memories. I folded myself into the front seat of my car and typed a message into my phone—burning with zealous energy, wanting to craft a new world.
“Tyler. I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring your messages,” I typed. Tears swarmed down my cheeks, racing past my lips. “I actually have brilliant news! I was finally able to make my movie. I’m in the editing process now. I’m making my way back to Los Angeles this afternoon, and would love to meet up with you tomorrow to discuss my next steps. I heard you’re the PR guy to know in the industry.” I typed out a smiley face, my fingers still shaking, and sent the message into the ether.
But before driving back to Los Angeles, I found my hands guiding the car toward Wesley’s cabin—the same one in which we’d created our baby. Our son. Parking the car a bit away from the shadow of the cabin, I peeked through tree limbs to find Wesley out back, a little blonde girl scampering around him. His face broke open wildly, offering a large, goofy smile. I could hear her squeals, echoing through the trees. “Papa, too fast!” she cried, when Wes lifted her into the air, tossing her. “Papa, no!”
In response, Wes held onto her, placing his large hand on her head. Within me, I felt the baby stir. My heart pattered with a single, pure emotion, one of total love. Of total acceptance. This man, this person I’d spent fifteen years loving, upholding, had chosen a different path. I couldn’t drag him away from his daughter. And perhaps I could craft something better for my son, elsewhere.
I hopped back into the car, cranked the engine, and blared the indie radio station, hammering my fists against the steering wheel. I sped away from Wes’s cabin, darting south, toward Los Angeles. I never should have returned to San Francisco. But it had been a lesson, a path. Within me, a world had opened up. And I would make each and every decision for my son now. He deserved nothing less.
24
Wesley
I leaned down to the little bright-eyed wonder, picking a dandelion from the grass near the sand. She lifted it into the air, tilting her head and marveling at the tiny, fingernail-thick petals.
“Yellow is my favorite color,” she sighed, verbalizing this to me for the sixteenth time that day. Everything she did, she did totally, without hesitation. She loved with her entire heart.
“I know, squirt. I know,” I told her, bringing my hands beneath her armpits and lifting her. She squealed before tossing her arms around my neck. We’d spent the past four hours together, after Connie had said she needed to run errands that day, and I’d marveled at the way time had passed. It was racing, feeling like water through my fingers. I wondered if this was every day as a parent. If suddenly you looked up and they were gone.
Having Maria had at least kept my mind occupied from thoughts of Remy and our son. I’d tried to call her that morning, but she’d either ignored it or hadn’t seen it—choosing, surely, to block me out for another day after our massive fight. I felt close to groveling, wondering at the perfect way to describe to her my feelings, while dropping in this large shift in our dynamic. Maria wasn’t going anywhere. And, probably, neither was Connie.
Just after six, I eased Maria back into the Chevrolet. We’d planned to meet her mother for dinner in the Mission after her errands. “It ain’t Florida food, but it’ll do,” had been the refrain of Connie the past several days. “Don’t y’all have any good fried chicken places? Can you really live on Mexican food all the time?”
I hardly remembered the fare in Florida, mostly thinking of it as grease-laden, heart-attack-inducing. Already, Maria had picked up on favorite Mexican dishes, falling into a hankering for shrimp tacos and pico de gallo. I’d beamed at her when she said “gracias” to a server, her tongue hitting the notes perfectly. I imagined teaching her Spanish, French—hell, even German—a language I hadn’t yet picked up on the road.
Maria mumbled and sang to herself in the backseat as I snaked the car through the Mission, near to Station to Station. Quintin’s familiar motorbike glinted with sunlight. At the stop, I paused at glanced back at it, at a familiar form beside it—her head tossing back and her blonde hair curling wildly through the air.
Jesus. Connie stood outside Station to Station, cozying close to some tattooed stranger. I swung the car into the lot just beside the bar and cut the engine, watching them for a long moment. Connie brought her hand along the stranger’s bicep, squeezing it and cackling at him. Sliding the window down just a notch, I could hear her chaotic voice.
“Oh, you should see my fiancé’s biceps,” she said. “You know what? We’ve been together six years, and he’s always been able to lift me clear over his head. Don’t suppose you can do that?”
The man shrugged, muttering something I couldn’t quite hear. Connie continued on, unperturbed.
“You know, he’s partner of the Adams tech company. One of the richest men in the world, he is. And that means all that money is mine. I’m a proper San Francisco princess. Wouldn’t you say, Josh?” She beamed up at him, leaning her tits closer to him.
My heart burned with anger. What the hell was she doing, wandering around the Mission spewing lies to strangers, smearing my name? Sliding another of the windows down just a crack, I whirled my head toward Maria, my nostrils flared. “I’ll be just outside the car, OK?”
“Is that Mommy?” Maria asked, her eyes widening.
As she asked, as if on cue, Connie stumbled into the brick wall beside her, drunken and sloppy. She laughed once more, a horrendous, almost evil sound that echoed out across the Mission. People on the sidewalk paused and stared at her, this stick-thin woman with a whipping laugh, drunk out of her mind at six-thirty in the evening.
“She’s just not feeling that well,” I told Maria, trying to make my voice sound solid, something she could hold onto. “I’ll just go help her, OK?”
“OK,” Maria said, nodding, sounding sure. “She’s sick a lot.”
Once outside the car, I stared at her, bringing my massive arms across my chest and leaning heavily against the wall. The guy she was chatting up pointed at me, his face growing slack. Connie swirled toward me, again losing balance. Her heels clicked from side to side as she tried to scamper toward me.
“There he is! There’s my man!” she cried, bringing her hand against the brick.
As she approached, Quintin ducked out from the bar, staring at us. He gaped. “What the hell is going on, Wes?” he asked me. “Do you know this woman? I’m getting insane complaints from everyone about her. And earlier she was here, talking to Rem.”
My eyes turned from Quintin to Connie and back. With Quintin’s report, Connie’s mouth curved into an almost evil smile. She nodded firmly, shrugging. “Oh that little pregnant girl? She was just so cute, wasn’t she? Thinking that the two of you were going to be in love. When it was just a stupid contract. Don’t worry. I put her in her place, Wes. I’ll always be there to clean up your messes.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. My head felt pressurized, near popping. I gaped at her.
Connie tittered. Behin
d her, the man she’d been speaking to slid a cigarette between his lips and leered at us. A strange show. Quintin pointed a finger at Connie, then at me, his dark eyes wide. His black hair swept backward with an onslaught of San Francisco wind. It seemed suddenly like the sky was going to storm on all of us.
“All I know is, this woman was speaking with Remy, and then Remy disappeared without saying goodbye. And I haven’t been able to get ahold of her,” Quintin said to me.
“What did you tell her?” I demanded to Connie, growing taller. “What did you say to my Remy?”
Connie’s smile began to falter. My voice, strong and powerful over hers, made her confidence shift. “I just told her, you know. About Maria. About us. About the world we’re going to build together, Wes. You don’t have to have any sort of bullshit contract with her, when you have us.”
“Connie!” I cried, realizing the rift she’d created. “I told you last night, I didn’t know how to tell her—”
“Wait. Who is Maria?” Quintin asked, his eyes flitting toward the car behind me. Connie and I followed his gaze to the little girl in the back seat. The image of her bobbing her head back and forth, still twirling in the dandelion, made my stomach clench.
This girl. I couldn’t allow her to grow up like Connie.
“Connie and Maria showed up a bit less than a week ago,” I said to Quintin, my eyes heavy. “She’s my daughter, man.”
“And shouldn’t fathers and mothers be together?” Connie asked, her words growing slurred. “I don’t see why you wouldn’t just try. For Maria’s sake!”
“Connie, no!” I said, my voice growing grisly. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. I love Remy. I’m going to have a baby with Remy. I’ll do whatever I need to do for you, to keep Maria here. I want her to be a part of my life, which I know means having you, as well. And that’s fine. That’s fine.”
