The Queen of Cool (18 page)

Mutt nodded. He waved to her as she pulled
out. She saw him take the stairs to have breakfast with Yazmin. She
hoped she’d done the right thing and turned onto Harrison. She was
driving through the light, Saturday early-morning traffic down
Interstate 30 when her mind drifted to her memory of the only time
she and Don had talked about Mutt.

“
Why are you friends with
that man?” Lo asked as she came out into their backyard.

Don was feeding the Koi. The heat of the
fall day had retreated, leaving cool shade. Mandy was at a
cheerleading practice and Alisha, at college. They had a few
precious hours alone. He looked up to accept the glass of iced tea
she held out to him. He took a drink and smiled at her.

“
God, you’re beautiful,”
Don said.

Lo laughed.

“
Don’t laugh, Shug. You’re
the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”

“
You always do that,” Lo
said. “I bring up Mutt and you get all soft. Next thing I know
you’ll want to go in.”

“
Great idea,” Don got
up.

“
Don,” Lo gave him a stern
look. “This is his third time in rehab.”

Don nodded.

“
You’re not friends; you’re
best friends,” Lo said.

“
I know you think this is
some secret about Mutt, but it’s really a secret about me. I don’t
want…”

He shrugged
and turned his attention to the Koi pond. Carp are capable of
recognizing one person from the next and these fish loved Don. They
always put on a show when he was around. He’d complained the most
about putting this Koi pond in
his
grass. In the end,
the fish and the pond belonged solely to Don.

“
You can trust me,” Lo
said.

He sighed and looked up at her. His eyes
traced the lines of her face. His hand cupped her chin and his
thumb traced her lips. She smiled at him. He gave her a slight
nod.

“
I think you can guess that
I had no friends growing up,” Don said.

“
You weren’t ever here,” Lo
said.

“
I had nannies after my
mother died,” Don grimaced in the way he always did when his mother
came up. She touched his leg to steady him. “I went away once it
was time to go to school.”

“
Mutt’s father was the
groundskeeper for the golf course,” Don continued. “I don’t know
why, but Dad hired a Romani nanny right after my mom died. She was
probably cheap. Anyway, her cousin was Mutt’s father. They lived in
this little house on the other side of the course. It was really a
shack, not more than a shed, especially for ten kids. But to me? It
was heaven.”

Don smiled at her.

“
Mutt’s mother was like a
goddess,” he continued. “She made the most amazing food out of
nothing. And they had very little which they shared with
everyone.”

“
Is that why we have a
Romani cook?” Lo asked.

“
They’re the best. Don’t
you think?”

“
She’s an amazing cook. And
she’s been brilliant at making good-tasting things for my diet,” Lo
said. “Will you tell me the rest?”

“
The nanny would bring me
over to her cousin’s house in the afternoon,” Don said. “I think
she knew I was lonely. For all of the kids and cousins and dogs and
chaos, Mutt’s house was the most loving place I’d ever been. Kids
were treated with equal doses of love and discipline.”

“
Like our girls,” Lo
said.

“
I learned from them,” Don
said. “Mutt and I were in diapers together. When Dad found out, I
was shuffled off to boarding school. But I was home every summer.
Mutt never forgot me. He’d wait under the tree across the street
until I showed up in the summer.

“
We spent every second of
every day I could get away together. We had such adventures! We
found frogs, went fishing, ran through the sprinklers, discovered
girls together… I’d wake up every morning, do my chores, wait for
Dad to go to work, and off I’d go. Mutt’s dad was a drinker, and in
those days no one talked about alcoholism or anything. We never
talked about our fathers’ habits. They drank; we
played.”

Don smiled at the memories. Lo couldn’t help
but smile at his joy.

“
As long as I was home
before Dad,” Don said. “I was golden. And I was always home, of
course. Mutt knew what went on with Dad, but…”

Don sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“
Honestly, when I was
little, Dad was more terrifying than dangerous,” Don said. “He
became more dangerous the older I got. I don’t know whether he felt
threatened by my size – I’m quite a bit bigger than he was – or if
he just deteriorated.”

Don’s shoulder’s lifted in a shrug, but the
weight of his abuse was too heavy. His shoulders dropped and his
chest collapsed.

“
I was just home from
school,” Don said. “I was maybe twelve. I’m not sure. Dad caught me
coming across the park. Mutt and I had been swimming in the pond
that day. We had a blast but we were late. Dad was held up in
Washington, so I thought I was safe. I wasn’t so lucky. The
housekeeper had shuffled me into the shower when he found me. He
was drunk and…”

As if battered by the story, Don collapsed
down so that his elbows pressed into his knees to hold him up.

“
He was going to town on me
when someone came to the house,” Don said. “A woman? A drinking
buddy? I don’t know.”

“
What did he do?” Lo’s
voice reflected her sorrow and horror at his story.

Hearing her emotion, Don looked up.

“
I love you, Lo,” Don said.
“You have no idea what it means to me that you’re upset by this
story.”

“
Horrified,” Lo said.
“Upset? I’m mad as hell. I want to piss on Henry’s
grave.”

He kissed her. Leaning his head against her
forehead, he tried to breathe in her courage and strength.

“
To answer your question,
Dad did what he always did,” Don said. “He straightened his tie,
washed his hands and went to meet his guest. He told the
housekeeper to ‘make me presentable.’ I don’t think he knew how
badly he’d hurt me. I really needed a doctor or the hospital. But
the house was filling with guests.

“
He came in to ask the
housekeeper to get together some dinner and saw how messed up I
was. He was furious. He told me I was trying to humiliate him in
front of his important friends. I think he’d intended to lock me in
my room, but he was drunk and there were broads downstairs. He
pushed the terrified housekeeper out of my room and locked the
door. He forgot the windows. I slipped out the window and took the
tree to the ground. I was in really bad shape. I don’t know how I
managed it, but I went to Mutt’s house.

“
Vera’s grandmother is
Mutt’s mother’s cousin,” Don said. “They called her to treat me.
Mutt’s dad was working, but Mutt insisted on getting him. When his
Dad saw what my father had done, he was like a caged animal. ‘You
don’t treat a child like that,’ he’d say and stomp around that tiny
shack. I’d never heard an adult say anything like that – not a
police officer, a sheriff, doctor, hospital nurse – no one;
ever.

“
But Mutt’s dad was furious
at what Dad had done. To me! And he could tell by the way I was
acting that this beating wasn’t the worst I’d seen. Oh, he was
pissed. Mutt begged him to help, to do something, but he didn’t
need Mutt’s encouragement. He waited until he knew I would survive,
then went to the house to talk to my father.”

Lo wanted to cheer out loud, but she knew if
she said a word Don would stop talking.

“
You have to understand,”
Don looked at Lo. “He was the first and only person who ever stood
up for me. Everyone else would say ‘Now Henry…’ or would ask me
what I’d done to make my reasonable and important father so angry.
But Mutt’s dad? He went to the house and confronted my father in
front of all of his guests. Mutt’s father didn’t care who heard or
saw.

“
The housekeeper told me
later that when my father tried to defend himself, Mutt’s dad would
say ‘No child should be treated like that.’ My father started
threatening him with everything you can imagine. When he threatened
Mutt, Mutt’s dad pointed his finger at my father and said, ‘You
know what you’re doing is wrong and refuse to change your ways. I
have no choice. I curse you now and forever. Only repentance will
save you from hell on this plane and every other.’ My father
laughed at him and called the police. They arrested Mutt’s dad.
And…”

Don sat up a little straighter. He held out
his hand to her and she took it with both hands.

“
You must know the Romani
take care of their own problems,” Don said. “That’s why Mutt’s dad
came to the house. It never occurred to him not to. It didn’t
matter that my father was rich. It didn’t matter that he went to
jail. It didn’t matter that my father was powerful or that there
were powerful guests in the house. My father was behaving badly to
someone his son loved, and he was going to take care of it
himself.

“
But a curse? That’s not
like ‘Curse you Red Baron’ or whatever. A curse is done as a last
resort when there are no other options. To curse someone is bad –
really, really bad. And Dad knew it.

“
Dad tried to get Mutt’s
dad fired; he failed. He tried to ruin them financially; failed,”
Don said. “He even tried to exact revenge on Mutt’s sisters;
failed. Not only did he fail, but every action he took against Mutt
and his family came back on him five-fold.”

Don smiled.

“
From that day forward, he
never introduced a bill into congress that passed,” Don said. “He
lost a fortune in the stock market every time he invested. Women
stopped falling for him. The only way he could get laid was to pay
for it. No matter how much he exercised and dieted, a paunch
appeared. His hair fell out and the hair transplants didn’t take.
Everything he attempted failed. I don’t know if it was Mutt’s
father’s curse or not, but I’ll tell you. Henry Downs believed he
was cursed.”

“
Of course, it didn’t stop
him from beating me,” Don said. “But I had a place to go, a family
that cared about me, that loved me. I had Mutt, his sisters, his
mother and all the rest of them. No matter what Henry did to me
after that, he couldn’t take that away. It infuriated
him.

“
And every time he beat me?
Something horrible happened to him. After he hit my testicles with
the tennis racket? He was in a head-on that sent his passenger, a
seventeen-year-old girl no less, to the ICU. He had a horribly
disfiguring scar down his face that no amount of plastic surgery
would fix. There was a Senate investigation into the crash. He
spent years and a lot of money trying to get it sorted out. And you
know what happened after he beat me the last time?”

“
He was struck down walking
across the street in downtown,” Lo said.

“
The cancer
threw a clot to an artery in the area of his brain for speech,” Don
said. “He spent the last year of his life in incredible pain and
unable to speak. He would have lingered on but
I
couldn’t
stand his suffering anymore. I arranged for him to pass away
quietly. When he died, Mutt’s father told me he would live in hell
until he repented.”

“
From the moment Mutt’s
father took up for me, I’ve wanted to be a man like that,” Don
shrugged. “He wasn’t perfect. They’d call him an alcoholic now, and
he was more than a little crazy…”

“
Like Mutt,” Lo
said.

“
Like Mutt,” Don said.
“He’d never have confronted Henry or come to the house or cursed
him or anything if Mutt hadn’t asked him to. Mutt was the rock that
stabilized me. I wouldn’t have survived without him. I know it’s a
lot, Lo. I know it is. But I’m going to be Mutt’s rock for the rest
of his life. No matter what happens, I will show up, stand up and
put up with Mutt. No matter what.”

“
I’ll do the same,” Lo
said.

Surprised, his head jerked to look at
her.

“
Lo, I don’t expect you
to…” Don said.

“
Mutt and his family kept
you alive long enough for me to meet you,” Lo said. “I owe them my
life. He will have it. Thank you for telling me.”

He scooped her up into a tight hug. They
held each other close for a moment.

“
What was that you were
saying about going inside?” he asked.

“
What’s wrong with right
here?” Lo asked.

“
It’s not me that minds the
neighbors watching my bare backside, my love,” Don pulled off his
shirt.

Laughing, Lo ran into the house. He
followed.

Q

Saturday morning—11:05 a.m.

Plano, Texas

Days: 41

Waiting for her favorite nurse, Lo lay back
on the examination table. Don had chosen this fertility clinic
because it was one of the best in the state and it was far away
from the prying eyes of Dallas-Fort Worth. When she’d called
yesterday, they reminded her that Don had paid in advance for an
entire year of visits and checkups. She could come in as often as
she wanted.

They’d been sure to tell her they had
“plenty” of Don’s sperm from the last time they were there. If she
wanted to try in-vitro or insemination, she would just have to pay
the extra fee. Lo agreed to come in and see her options. One way or
the other, they assured her, Lo was going to leave this clinic with
a chance of being pregnant.