Seems Like Old Times (35 page)

Her knees seemed to give out. She reached for a chair and
almost fell into it. She dropped her eyes, unable to look at the pain in his.
"That was long ago."

He closed his eyes a moment, his head tilted back. Then he
looked at her again, scowling fiercely. "I tried to forget about it, Lisa,
I really did. Seeing you again, I tried to enjoy each moment with you and
ignore the past. But it won't go away. It's with me whenever I look at you. I
relive those last days and nights we spent together as kids, and wonder what
happened."

"We grew up," she said softly.

"There's more to it than that. I've always
wondered...were you really so ashamed, Lisa?
Of what we
started the night of the prom?
Did I really make you feel
so...soiled?"

The raw pain of his words slashed through her.
"God, Tony, no!
You couldn’t have thought that."

"Couldn't I? You were Lisa Marie, everybody's golden
girl, and I was just a Mexican kid with dreams of baseball."

He turned away.

She bowed her head against his pain; against her own.

They sat alone in his big Bonneville after the prom. Her
hands ran up and down his back, knowing that tonight the kind of petting they
used to do in this car wasn’t going to be enough. They had done so much
together, had grown up, and had fallen in love. But there was still one thing
left, and she knew her first lover had to be Tony.

"I never lied about the way I felt about you,"
she whispered.

His flesh was like fire against hers, and she sought his
lips as a remedy for the heat, only to find the fire that raged between them
growing worse.

Her hand rubbed against the zipper of his trousers,
feeling the swollen hardness beneath. "Don’t, Lisa." He took her hand
away. "It’ll be too hard to stop. It may be too hard already."

"I don’t want to stop. I want you to show me that
you love me. Show me."

"I’ve always..." He claimed her mouth again, sending
shooting sensations stabbing through her. She would make him realize that there
would never be anyone else for him. Not ever.

"That summer...after I left for baseball camp,"
he said, "you decided to leave early for college, and then that was it. It
was over."

Sudden lightheadedness rocked her, her breath coming in
short gasps, as the agony of how he'd felt, how completely he’d misunderstood
all these years, hit her.

He sat in
silence,
his lips
pressed firmly together, his face rigid.

Unshed tears pressed hard against her eyes. The time had
come to tell him, but she wondered how she'd find the words. "I can't
believe, thinking back, how very innocent we were," she began.
"And, for supposedly bright kids, how very stupid.
Remember how I took a bus into San Francisco and went to Planned Parenthood for
birth control pills
afterward?
And how we even made love to celebrate my
getting them?"

He stared at her, a dawning unease in his eyes as he
slowly nodded.

She drew in her breath, held it, then let breath and words
out in a mad rush. "After you left Miwok, I was an emotional basket case.
I’ll admit it. Foolishly, perhaps, I took a pregnancy test—one of those I
bought at a drug store. It was positive. I was happy about it, Tony. I wanted
the baby. I believed that somehow, even with us both having big plans and
wanting careers, it would all work out. I was going to tell you when you
returned from camp..."

Judith burst into Lisa’s bedroom. “The test is positive,
isn’t it?”

“How did you know?” Lisa asked, shocked that her mother
had been spying on her.

"Get rid of it, damn it!" Judith screamed.
"I won't have you ruining your life. I've done all I can to make sure you
make something of yourself."

"I will. With Tony--"

"You stupid little fool!
That's what I once thought--that even with a kid I could get ahead, become
somebody. But I couldn't. You held me back. You! And now, that damn Mexican's
brat will do the same thing to you. Get rid of it!"

"I won't!" Lisa tried to run from her bedroom.
Judith grabbed her arm.

"Don't you run from me," Judith ordered.
"I was talking to you."

"I don't want to hear it. Leave me alone!"
Lisa tried to pull free, but Judith’s grip was strong.

"What don't you want to hear?
The
truth?
Isn't it about time I told you? I never wanted you! Not one
little bit."

"Do you really think I didn't already know
that?" Lisa cried, tears streaming. "Go away. Just go away from me.
I'll keep my
baby,
I'll take care of it!"

“You've been nothing but one disappointment after the
other. And this is the worst."

"Get out of here!" Lisa shrieked.

"You've never lived up to my expectations, not
once. You're truly your father's daughter."

Lisa moved towards the stairs, practically dragging
Judith with her in her struggle to get away from her. But Judith pressed her face
so close Lisa could feel her breath, see the alcohol-crazed fury in her eyes.
"You're just as worthless as he was. I've always known it. How long before
your 'boyfriend' learns it, too? Before you disappoint him the way you've
disappointed everyone else in your life, with your cheap, disgusting--"

"Shut up!" Lisa shoved Judith hard, needing to
get out of that house.

Judith let go of her cane and grabbed Lisa’s hair.
"Damn you! Don't you dare push your
mother!
"

"You're no mother! You never have been." Lisa
tried to pull free, but Judith's fingers were like talons, gripping her. She
twisted toward the stairs, toward freedom, half-dragging Judith with her.

"You ruined my life." Judith spat out the
words. "You and your father both, and now you want to ruin my plans, my
dreams."

They reached the top of the stairs.

"Why didn't you die instead of my
father!
" Lisa cried, still struggling. "I hate
you."

"You evil child!"
All
of a sudden, either Judith let go, or Lisa somehow pulled herself free. She
couldn’t tell, but she saw Judith's look of triumph only moments before she
felt herself falling, screaming as she banged against the parade of childhood
pictures that hung along the staircase....

"Judith and I fought, and she said terrible things...words
that made me doubt everything about who and what I thought I was." She
took a deep breath. "I fell down the stairs. All I remember is waking up
lying on the sofa, a cold compress on my head, and Judith looking scared. I was
in a lot of pain, but Judith insisted I didn’t need a doctor. All I know is the
next time I took a pregnancy test, it came up negative.” She shut her eyes a
moment. “In retrospect, I believe the first test was a false positive. I was a
teenager with my emotions going every which way. In later years, I asked my
gynecologist if it looked like I ever miscarried, and she saw no signs—although
she said that wasn’t conclusive. Back then, though, I feared I lost the baby. I
was devastated. I couldn’t bear to stay in Judith’s house. I left it and went
to live with Miriam. Miriam helped me through it, through all of it."

He sat across the table from her, shocked, scarcely able
to believe what he was hearing. When he spoke, his voice was husky.
"My God, Lisa.
I never imagined."

"I know," she murmured, then shook her head,
unable to tell him what she believed Judith had done.

"Why didn't you come to me? At least tell me?"

"And say what?" Her voice was too sharp, too
curt. "I was young and hurting. I just wanted to forget all of it...Miwok,
my mother...even you. I was just a few weeks along, Tony. It was as if none of
it was real to me, that if I didn’t talk about it, I could more easily forget
how much it hurt, how much I grieved. I know now that I was wrong, but I felt…I
felt like…everything Judith said to me was true."

He waited, as if knowing there was more she wasn't telling
him, but she remained silent. "Whenever I called you from camp, Judith
would only say you were out and hang up. Cheryl didn't know what had happened
either. It wasn't until I came back that I found you in San Diego. Remember
when I called you? You sounded like a stranger."

"I was...even to myself." She slowly rubbed her
hands, trying to find a way to explain those days. "I'd convinced myself
there was no room in our ambitions and careers, at our age, for a baby. I
didn't want you to know what had happened. What would that have solved?
Besides, you were being scouted, you had a future in baseball, and I had
college....That was why I said we needed to go our own ways, to think about our
futures. I needed, at that time, to forget the past."

"It wouldn't have been a matter of 'solving'
anything. It had to do with feelings and caring about each other." He
shook his head as if disgusted by her explanation.

Lee tightly clasped her hands. "A few months
afterward, when I had the distance and perspective to cope with telling you, I
did try to reach you, but I learned you were in Florida playing ball, and that
your prospects were good. You'd gotten on with your life. And so, I resolved to
do the same with mine. I didn't want to write you a letter about all that had
happened, and I didn't want to do anything that might disrupt your life, so I
decided I'd wait, and one day, tell you face-to-face."

He felt as if she’d stabbed him through the heart. "I
just don't get it. We were in love, we shared everything..."

"And suddenly, my world went to hell, while yours was
getting better. We were only eighteen, and I was angry and hurt and grieving. I
convinced myself that a high school romance was immature, my memories colored
and surreal. I wanted to forget."

He didn't respond, but averted his eyes to the wall as he
shook his head, his jaw tight,
his
face cold and
twisted.

"A few years after college," she continued,
"I was offered the job in New York City. Before I went so far away, I
returned to Miwok, to settle things here in my mind...and my heart. I knew I
owed you an explanation, and I finally thought that since we were both older,
wiser, I could somehow reconcile my past.

"The visit was a failure. My mother was even more
hateful, and I learned that you had married. I finally put you out of my mind,
and went to New York. I kept going forward and never looked back...until four
months ago when I came home."

He stared hard at her, as if seeing her, really seeing
her, for the first time. "I'm sorry, Lisa," he said, his voice low
and icier than she'd ever heard it. "Sorry about the past...sorry that you
didn't see fit to tell me what was happening and let me try to help you through
it. Sorry that you still haven't told me all of it, probably because you're
trying to hide some ugliness involving your miserable drunk of a mother who
wasn't worth your time of day...And more than anything else, I'm sorry that
you're still fooling yourself."

She replayed his words, sure she had misheard.
"Fooling myself?" she repeated, confused.

He got to his feet and poured himself another shot of
bourbon, drinking it down in one gulp. He stared at a wall a moment, then ever
so slowly turned and faced her. His eyes were flat, his shoulders sagged, and
his expression was one of utter defeat. "You were raised well: to be
ambitious, to do what was needed to get ahead. You seem to want to remember our
relationship back then as all rosy and light, but it wasn't that way. Not one
goddamned bit. You were determined to get ahead--I was a piker compared to you
and I was the most ambitious guy I knew. You pushed and stepped on people like
hell to be the best and brightest in high school, and I knew it."

"No--" she protested, but he cut her off.

"I watched you go after Steve Peters, I watched you
go after Ken Walters, and a few guys in between. You always came back right
away, and I was so damned crazy about you I put up with it. You said they were
the type of guy your mother expected you to be with, but they were the type
you
expected yourself to be with."

She stared at him, the shock of his words crippling.

"You know what's funny, Lisa? When you talked about
your future, you never bothered to factor me in. I assumed you meant I'd be
with you, and maybe on some level you did, but deep down, can you see the
elegant Lee Reynolds with some Texas-born Mexican baseball player? I can’t. It
doesn’t fit her image--and she’s got an image, Lisa. One you’ve carefully
created."

He leaned closer. "Each action you took--starting
with running away after your miscarriage and not"--his voice suddenly
broke--"and not telling
me,
or even your closest
friend about your pregnancy, all of it was a means to an end, to your carefully
conceived plans and ambition. You can blame your mother for teaching you well,
if you want. But, Lisa, you were a star pupil."

She wanted to scream that he was wrong, but she couldn’t
speak, couldn’t do a thing but ache from the pain of his accusation.

So she said nothing, breaking inside for him, for the
foolish girl she once was, for all the might-have-
beens
between them. The woman she was now told her it was time to leave. Wobbly, she
rose from the chair. Scarcely breathing, she somehow made it to the door. With
her hand on the knob, she turned and faced him, her voice calm.

"You're a wonderful man, and a wonderful father.
You'll get Ben back. It might take time, but you will." She pulled the
door open. "I made a lot of mistakes, Tony. But I love you. The hell of it
is
,
I always have."

She didn’t hear from Tony on Saturday, and Sunday she
returned to New York.

The day after, she went to Bruce’s apartment. He opened
the door immediately to her knock. Color drained from his face as he looked at
her.