“You're right, I've been a controlling shit.” She stared at the floor.
“You're damned straight you have!”
Neither of us said anything for a while. It was a strange moment, me all jacked up with a bad ankle and she nauseated from an unplanned pregnancy. “We're a pair,” I said finally. When she didn't reply, I added, “I suppose you've come for your car keys. Did you have to take a cab again? I can give you the money for it.”
She shook her head. “No. The car's at my house, remember? And I have a second set of keys. Did you get an estimate on your truck yet?”
I laughed mirthlessly. “No. It was towed. I haven't even called around to see where it is. I consider it my ex truck.”
Faye continued to stare at the floor. “Well, you keep the Porsche. You'll be driving again before I will. I mean, unless ⦔
“Is that the deal? You haven't been driving because of the nausea?”
She squirmed in the chair. “Yeah. That, and ⦠well, right now I don't really trust myself. It seems too dangerous to get behind a wheel.”
About then, I finally figured it out. “Ohhh ⦠I get it: You've lost your self-confidence. Here you're the big hot pilot, all in control, and you can't even control what's happening in your own body.”
She didn't argue.
Trying to make it sound lighter than it felt, I said, “So you're scared even to drive a car, let alone fly an airplane, but why not distract yourself by controlling Em's life? Go ahead, everyone else seems to do it, and she never complains.”
“Hardly ever. That's why you're in so deep with Ray's family.”
I let that sink in awhile. “Ouch,” I said.
“You should have made a stink a long time ago,” Faye suggested. “Probably before you moved here. Not that I'd prefer you hadn't come.”
“Want some tea?” I asked desperately.
“Nah, even herb tea makes me puke these days.”
“That's the pits,” I said, glad to have the topic off of me.
“Oh well,” Faye said, letting out a long, shaky breath, “I know a cure.”
Her words hit like a bolt of lightning. “Wait a minute! You're not talking about getting an abortion? I thought you said you wanted this baby!”
“I want a baby. Not necessarily
this
baby.”
“Damn it, Faye, you don't get to pick and choose. Next thing, you're going to be one of those assholes who's injecting genes so you'll get Einstein on a football scholarship.”
“But she's got to play piano like Rachmaninoff,” Faye parried.
I reached out and swatted her knee. “So that's not it. What is it? Ohhhhh, I get it: Tom doesn't want the baby. Oh, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have made fun.”
Faye shook her head. “No, that's not it, either.”
I reeled in my hand and closed my eyes. “Faye? Dear friend?
I'm trying to be understanding here, and, like, figure this out, but help me a little, okay?”
In a tiny voice, Faye said, “Tom hasn't said anything because I still haven't told Tom.”
“What?”
“IâI can't. I keep opening my mouth, but nothing comes out.”
“Well, why not?”
“I don't know! Oh hell, I know exactly. I'm afraid he's going to be upset. I'm afraid he doesn't want the child. I'm afraid he doesn't want to be a father. I'm afraidâ”
“You think he'll leave you?”
She looked up. “Why would that be a problem? No, in fact, you may have struck on something here.”
“Faye, you're not making sense.”
“I'm being droll. I ⦠um, love Tom, but it would not be the end of the world if he left.”
“Are you serious?”
“Well, it would simplify things. I could just raise the kid and make a life out of that, and that would be okay, right?”
“You tell me. No, that sounds like selfish bullshit. Think of the kid, and all that. So that's not it. So you tell me why you want him to leave.”
Faye began to shake. “Because I don't want to raise a kid with a daddy who might get killed any minute, that's why!”
I reached out and grabbed her arm. “Faye, listen. He could take early retirement. God knows, he's old enough.”
“Thanks a lot!” she said hotly. “I'm not getting any younger, myself!”
“So now you're arguing the other side of the issue, saying you need to have this child because you hear the clock ticking down. No way, Faye. I'm not telling you that you should have kept your knees together until Mr. Perfect came along, but didn't you
at least think about this before you and Tom went to bed?”
“Well ⦠sort of. In an abstract sort of way. A ⦠a long time ago.”
“Like maybe when you were eighteen, and a freshman in college, and thinking you'd like to go to bed with the first guy you fell for, and in your eighteen-year-old wisdom you decided that come what may, you could deal with it. And, as you haven't been caught until now, there seemed little reason to revisit that decision.”
“You're lethal, Em.”
“No, I just have a pretty good memory of what adolescence was like myself. But hey, now we're almost twice eighteen. Life seems a bit more precious now, doesn't it?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
She sighed. “So what am I supposed to do?”
“Tell him.”
“I can't.”
“He already knows.”
“I know.”
“He hasn't left yet.”
“That's what scares me.”
“Let him love you.”
Faye looked up. “What are you talking about? Of course he loves me!”
I shook my head. “Define love. He feels strong, warm, happy feelings toward you, yes. He's made love to you. Now let him make love an active verb. I hear it's what all couples have to face if they stay together long enough. It's a lot of work to love someone. It's a choice. A devotion. You have to give up your pride, and your privacy. Be willing to give in. Compromise. Hey, think of the word's roots: âpromise together.' You're the one who took all that Latin.”
Faye thought about this for a long time. “But I'd also be doing all that for the child.”
“Same but different. One relationship is adult to adult, the other parent to child.”
“It was simpler when it was just me, the house, the Porsche, and the plane.”
“I know.” I didn't point out that it was in fact her, the house, the Porsche, the plane, and the trust fund. That seemed too harsh.
“But what about Tom?” She asked. “Do you think he's good for it?”
It was my turn to think. “I don't know. But it's his child, too. Half the responsibility is his.”
“Yes. But half the choice?”
“Now you're getting on marshier ground. I'm just suggesting you talk to him about it. Let him support you in this. Like he's already doing, I might point out.”
Â
Â
WE WERE INTERRUPTED by a knock at the door. Faye got up to answer it. I was just opening my mouth to say something witty about being in Grand Central Station, when she pulled the door open and I realized that it was Ray.
He was standing there in his uniform, hands jammed deep into his pockets. His radio squawked. His patrol partner stood behind him, looking acutely embarrassed, and behind him, peering around his shoulder, stood Mrs. Pierce, looking snippy.
Ray caught sight of my bandaged ankle. “What happened?” he asked, his face shifting confusedly from imminent thunder to partly cloudy.
Completely startled to see him there, I said, stupidly, “Nothing.”
Faye said, “Well, hi there, Ray. I was just going.”
Ray turned bright red.
I groaned. “I think he wants you to stay, Faye.”
Ray squeezed his eyes shut.
Faye looked over Ray's shoulder out into the hall. “Don't worry, Mrs. Pierce, Officer what's-your-name, I'm here to chaperone these fully grown adults. You can go on back down to your apartment.” She pulled Ray into the room. “I'm going into the bathroom to run some niee loud water,” she told him, then added, “Better talk fast, Ray, we live in a desert.” As she moved to close the door, she leaned out through it and called, “I said no, Mrs. Pierce. Sideshow not open today!” Instead of stepping into the bathroom, she headed out into the hall and proceeded to usher Mrs. Pierce and the other policeman toward the stairs, closing the door behind her.
Ray shot a look as dark as eagle's breath at the door and then turned it on me.
“What?” I said indignantly.
“I don't appreciate being summoned by your landlady,” he said tightly. Then he looked at my ankle. “What happened?” he asked again. This time, it sounded almost like an accusation.
Furious, I jumped off the bed, landing hard on that foot. My leg buckled out from under me with the pain. Ray's expression again flip-flopped from rage to shock and sympathy as he stepped forward to catch me, but I grabbed the edge of the bed and waved him off. “No,” I said. “You stay right where you are.”
Now Ray looked confused and anxious.
“What,” I spat, “now I'm getting indignation? Try looking through the glass from my side. Mrs. Pierce calls you to tell you I've got men up in my room, and you have the gall to come over here and give me shit? Where did âEm's a grown woman, Mrs. Pierce, and there's no law against having guests' go?”
Ray blurted, “Did you have men here or not?”
I glared at him. Was he jealous?
He said, “And how do you think that looks?”
If I had been a rattlesnake, I would have been coiling by then,
ready to strike. “It looks like I sprained my ankle, Ray, and it looks like a couple of nice gentlemen helped me up to my apartment, made me a cup of tea, and bandaged me up. Just exactly what part of that justifies your anger or presumption or invasion of my privacy?”
Ray's normally ruddy skin turned white. “What happened to your ankle?”
“I fell down skiing,” I growled between clenched teeth.
Ray's face darkened again. “How is that
my
fault?” He threw his hands out in confusion, asking the four walls of the room to explain this to him.
I took in one mighty inhalation, ready to tell him, ready to blast him about skiing with another woman, ready to skin him alive for cooperating with his hideous sister, aboutâ
A funny little connection began to form in my head.
His sister. Enos. “Ray? Enos works in the family business, right?”
“Enos has nothing to do with this!”
“Oh? But what is the name of the family business?”
“Hayes Associates. Answer my question!”
My mouth opened again. “Your family's wealth comes from thatâ” Suddenly, the feeling I'd hadâthat I was unworthy of his familyâfell out of my heart, and a more impartialâand more separateâreality trickled in. My universe had shifted slightly, and I didn't feel like I had to be nice about his family anymore. By the same token, I noted that I didn't hate them as much, either. I took a breath. I heard myself say simply, “I fell down skiing. At Alta. I was not there because of you. But I fell because I heard your voice over the radio. You were talking into one just like it, which your sister Katie had set to match the frequency of mine. You saidâ”
Ray's dark indigo eyes grew wide with horror. “What in God's nameâ”
“You were thanking her for what a good time you were having. With ⦠Jenna, I think her name is.”
Ray's face went slack. I wondered if he might begin to flow, like rubber.
My thoughts wavered, swinging wildly between the roiling source of terrible hurt that stood before me and the itty-bitty cushion of abstraction that was beginning to formulate in my mind. As if someone else were speaking, I said, “Don't you get it, Ray? Katie's manipulating you.”
Ray peered at me like I was some strange insect he'd found on his salad. “You think ⦔ He left it hanging. “You take it easy on Katie, Em. She's been under a lot of stress!”
My mind whizzed back and forth, now observing Ray, now escaping from the horror of what was happening between us, now soaring up past feeling anything, hiding in my head, the perennial observer, never involved. Now piecing together something Pet Mercer had said. Something about ⦠Sidney Smeeth's funeral. About seeing Ray and his brother-in-law there.
Tom said to think this through.
Did “brother-in-law” mean Enos? So confusing, in a family so large. But why would they attend that funeral, and why together?