Sociopath? (41 page)

“I know you don’t believe, Rafe, but are you
still technically considered a Catholic?”

“I suppose so, Ree. I was baptized in the
church and as far as I know, I don’t think there’s any way to
actually renounce your membership.”

“Have you always belonged to St James’? Has
it always been the Vincennes pew?”

“One of my greats donated most of the money
to build the church, Ree, so yes, we’ve been a part of St James
since the beginning.”

“I talked to your mom about it, Rafe. I think
when I go back home, I’m going to start taking instruction to
become a Catholic. What would you think about raising our children
in the church?”

“I think if you believe doing that gives you
comfort, Ree, then it’s what you ought to do. Just don’t become
some maniacal convert and start sermonizing to me about it because
I think it’s all bullshit.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Rafe.”

“It wouldn’t do you any good if you did.”

*

Thanksgiving came, and even though it wasn’t
as inviolate as the Vincennes family Christmas, there were still 19
of them there for turkey and ham and mashed potates and sweet
potatoes and pumpkin pie and more other side dishes and desserts
than she could remember. She looked around the long cherry table,
seeing them all beautifully dressed and confident, laughing and
telling jokes on each other and reminiscing about all their fun
times at school and together, on boats and at dances and at
barbeques. She saw their healthy, happy, gorgeous children running
through the house. She saw how Renny led them all with a kind of
quiet authority and how much affection they had for Magdelene.

She couldn’t help comparing it to Blister
Springs where she didn’t ever remember having a Thanksgiving dinner
and if they had, it would have been venison stew, because food had
to be stretched to its breaking point to feed them all. Even if
there had been such a novel concept as Thanksgiving in the Mosier
family (what did any Mosier ever have to give thanks about?), no
one who didn’t have to be there would have ever come. Anyone who
managed to escape the old West fucking Virginia homestead never had
the slightest desire to return. She remembered how grubby they all
were. She was the third daughter so most of her clothes were faded
and patched by the time they ever got to her. She didn’t ever
remember getting a single new piece of clothing in her whole
childhood. She never knew there was such a thing as deodorant until
she got to California or God knows, soap that actually smelled
good. There was no shower in their old house, just a scummy, dirty
tub that didn’t make you feel much cleaner after you’d been in it
and besides, when you were a girl, you bathed as quickly as
possible, hoping none of the boys came in through the unlockable
door to bother you.

Mentally, she stood her father and mother,
the esteemed Mr and Mrs Frank and May Mosier, beside Renny and
Magdelene. She finally had to wipe away the image. It just didn’t
even compute.

*

Rafe mostly just stood back and watched
quietly. His view of his family wasn’t quite so reverent as hers
but if she needed to believe in the portrait she’d painted in her
head, he couldn’t see any harm in it. Mostly he’d be glad when the
babies were born. He didn’t think he’d ever want to spend so much
time with a pregnant woman again. For one thing, she was right
about the hormones. She wore her heart on her sleeve these days.
High emotion and drama had always made him want to back up and head
the other direction. For another, sexually, he didn’t find the end
stages of pregnancy appealing. And, lastly, he liked to keep his
life compartmentalized. It was one thing for Ree to visit Heron
Point for a week or so but two months was too long. It was wearing
on him. It wasn’t where she belonged.

*

The timing had worked out perfectly although
they hadn’t planned it that way. The Busch series’ last race of the
season was in November, then he was off until February so he’d had
this time to spend with her during the last of her pregnancy and to
be with her and the babies for a while after they were born before
he had to go back to the constant travel demanded by NASCAR. He’d
been named Rookie of the Year in his first full year. That was
pretty exciting to Chester and Jeri, his team and sponsors and the
fan club but to his family, that was a minor achievement compared
to producing two new Vincennes (and incidently, two new little
Catholics).

He took her to the hospital early in the
morning. They induced labor and shortly after noon, the twins were
born. First, Cameron Pierce Vincennes, 5 lbs and 5 oz, with a faint
layer of blond hair and misty gray eyes. Then Ciara Renee, 5 lbs
exactly, dark eyes and a head full of inky hair. A blonde boy and a
dark girl. Leave it to Rafe to be the opposite of everyone else. It
was an easy delivery and within three days, they were home. And he
didn’t mind the baby stuff at all. They laughed because he was
better and faster at changing a diaper than she was. And when they
cried in the night and wouldn’t quiet down for her, he could always
take them and they’d snuggle right into his arms and go to
sleep.

“God, Rafe, how do you do that?”

“I’ve always had a way with kids and
animals,” he said.

Finally, she said she thought it was time for
her to go back to California. The new live-in nurse was already
staying at the house. The new nursery was waiting to take up its
duties. They made reservations to fly out on December 14. He
accompanied her and stayed until a few days before Christmas, until
she and the twins were settled in.

“I’ve booked my reservation back to Maryland,
Ree. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m not coming back for Christmas. Are
you okay with that?”

She put her arms around him and hugged him
tight.

“Yes, I’m fine. I was grateful to be at Heron
Point these last few weeks but I know I over-stayed my welcome and
pushed you past your limit of coping with familial
responsibility.”

“You know I love you, Honey, and I love Cam
and CeeCee too but….”

“Shhh, I know, Baby. You don’t have to
explain. Just come back and see us when you’re ready. We’ll be here
waiting whenever that is. You can come when you like and go when
you like.”

“Do you wish I was different, Ree?”

“No, Rafe, I wouldn’t trade you for anyone
else in the world, even for a man who came home right after work
every night.

*

He got home on the 22nd and Lane came in on
the 23rd. The cradles were back in the nursery. It was just him and
her in bed together.

“God, Rafe,” she panted, “you act like you
haven’t had sex in a month! Not that I’m complaining.”

“I almost haven’t had sex in a month,
Lane.”

“Poor Baby,” she mocked, taking hold of him,
“was it awful for you?”

He grinned, “awful enough.” He could feel
himself getting hard again. “Are you going to try to make it up to
me, Sweetie?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.

~ ~ ~

And so it went. Chet’s faith in him was
confirmed. He moved to the Cup side of NASCAR the following year
and was again, Rookie of the Year, with 3 wins and 10 top tens. He
won the Championship in his third year. The fan club was still
going strong, including now both racing fans and movie fans. Of
course, only the inner circle was aware of the sex part, and Jeri
was pretty selective about adding anyone new. Still, it happened
often enough to keep his need for variety satisfied, along with
what he found on his own, of course.

He made one more movie with Rhiannon in which
they played a pair of glamorous assassins. Like No Winners, the new
one, Deuces Wild, set a record for ticket sales. Once again, he had
to endure the media frenzy he hated so much but he felt like he
owed her for how generously she loved him without expecting more
from him than he was able to give.

She brought Cam and CeeCee to stay a couple
weeks at Heron Point two or three times a year, always leaving
before she sensed that he was getting restless. He thought he was
good at being both a lover and a father, he just wasn’t good at it
for very long at a time.

He tried to go to California at least once a
month. Whenever he arrived, she was happy to see him and his kids
wrapped their arms around his legs, yelling, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy’s
home!” He’d scoop them up in his arms and enjoy the feel of their
little faces snuggled against his neck. He’d kiss them good night
and it did make him feel great to hear them say, “I love you,
Daddy” in their sweet little voices and he’d rub his bristly cheek
against their soft ones and tell them he loved them too. Then he’d
take her to bed and by now, he’d overcome all her reservations, so
there was no holding back.

For her and the kids, it was like a huge,
vibrantly colored rainbow arched across their sky when he was
there. They reveled in his presence. She loved having him next to
her in the night and sitting at the kitchen table with her in the
morning. She took a picture of him watching football in his
recliner with a sleeping toddler cuddled in each arm. Like everyone
else in Rafe’s life, his family never got as much of him as they
wanted and it made them crave his attention all the more.

But it wasn’t like life turned miserable when
he left, anymore than life becomes miserable when a rainbow fades.
It’s what you expect to happen, knowing rainbows come and go.

She still had her work. Everyone was telling
her, she was bound to be nominated for an Academy Award for her
latest role. The Benchmark p.r. team tried to drum up a little
publicity for the movie by pushing a rumor that she was having an
affair with her co-star, Cooley Shepherd, but it never went
anywhere. Even the gossip-loving industry media was pretty well
convinced that her heart was with Rafe and her babies. The truth
was, she’d never felt the slightest attraction for any other
man.

Ree had made good on her promise to join the
church and Rafe flew to California to be present at the his twins’
christenings at St Alban’s, a little bemused that Pearl Ann Mosier
was turning out to be a more dedicated Vincennes than he himself
had ever been.

Cam and CeeCee attended the most exclusive
and expensive pre-school in Beverly Hills. Rafe had watched both
children closely for any sign that they’d inherited his, okay, call
it anti-social personality, but they both seemed like typically
adorable, happy, smiling babies. They both giggled when you tickled
their tummies or wiggled their toes. They both raised their little
arms when he leaned over their beds, begging, “hold me, Daddy,”
something he didn’t think he’d ever done (actually, he didn’t
remember anyone ever leaning over his bed but surely, they must
have).

Their oppositeness grew more noticeable as
they got older. Cam was taller and slender and fair, with flaxen
hair as straight as Rafe’s and gray eyes, clearer and lighter than
Ree’s smoky ones. CeeCee’s black hair fell in curls around her
mother’s heart-shaped face. Her tiny, dainty body was the color of
the purest honey and her eyes were dark like her father’s but there
was no sense of that closed-offness Rafe knew his own eyes
contained.

*

Laney graduated from Skidmore with her degree
in library science and, irony of ironies, ended up working at the
library at Princeton. He thought she’d always want to be some place
where she’d be surrounded by crowds of people. They got together a
few times during the year, always in February for sure. She had a
steady boyfriend and Rafe was glad. Mike, a professor of Economics,
was a super good guy and treated Laney like a queen. She’d even
discussed the possibility of getting married and Rafe encouraged
her. He thought she was the kind of woman who would flourish in the
everyday security of a having a loving man at home.

“But what about you and me, Rafe?”

“What about you and me? I’ll always be around
so you can use me for what you need me for.”

“God, you make it sound so mercenary.”

“I can give you that and not much else,
Lane,” he said, moving his mouth down her belly. “He can give you
everything but that. We both play our part. What’s so wrong with
that?”

She sighed. “For you, Rafe, probably
nothing.”

*

By the time everyone was done, Renny and
Magdelene had seventeen grandchildren. Even Gabe, a late bloomer in
the marriage sweepstakes, finally married (not an Oriental or a
Muslim as Rafe had once suggested, but Rachel was Jewish so he did
add to the family diversity) and had three daughters. Laney was so
beautiful and so warm and caring, no one could understand why she
was the only one still single and childless.

*

Chas and Vic retired, spending their winters
in New Jersey and their summers in Provincetown. He visited them at
least twice a year and they travelled to wherever he was racing two
or three times a season too. Life was strange, he thought. What Ree
thought she’d found with his family, he himself had actually found
with Vic and Chas. He still carried the little gold bar everywhere
he went. (His parents had never been to any of his races and so far
as he knew, hadn’t seen either of his movies).

*

Linda Dee became even more obsessed with him
than she already was. She had her computer set up so that Google
alerted her at any new mention of his name on the world wide web.
Between the movie media and the race media, that was a lot of
alerts. She read about Rhiannon and the twins and about Deuces Wild
becoming a runaway hit and about being number one in NASCAR. She
kept waiting for him to have to pay some penalty for being the evil
person she thought he was but he just kept on being awarded the
brass ring every time he went around.

*

Rhonda Fisher paid attention too and although
she wouldn’t have told her friend, she was thrilled at each new
achievement. Ex-professor Barnes noticed (she and Kaddie owned
three fitness centers in Florida now) and grimaced bitterly each
time she saw his name. If she still had hard feelings though,
Kaddie didn’t. She thought happily of her times in bed with Rafe.
He got a fan letter from Bobby Kelly, forgiving him for what he did
and asking if they couldn’t have a drink together sometime, seeing
as they were old school pals and all. He would have chuckled if
he’d read it but, of course, he never did read his fan mail. And
there were lots of women with whom he’d been involved at one time
or another, all of them feeling pretty much like Kaddie, treasuring
that moment, brief though it might have been.