The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Twelve

I DON’T KNOW IF IT WAS THE WINE OR THE FACT THAT I WAS an even bigger na?ve idiot than I’d thought myself to be, but when I saw Mimi’s name on my cell, my stupid heart lifted, believing she might be calling to say she missed me or to see how I was doing.
Her first words, however, were, “I don’t care what’s going on between you and Bobby, but you have no right to interfere in his relationship with his daughter.”
I let out breath as if she’d punched me. The possessive pronoun rankled in particular.
“Gabriella should’ve been at her father’s party! You had no right to keep her away.”
I recovered enough to speak. “Gabby did go to the birthday party. I thought—”
“Don’t you tell a goddamn lie to my face. When I called her to find out where she was, Gabriella told me you wouldn’t let her come.”
The room seemed to slant. Helen watched me, eyes wide, ready to spring into action. “B-but she would never say that,” I said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I . . . I wonder—”
“Well, of course she didn’t say it outright. But I could read between the lines. You made her feel guilty for wanting to go. Your marriage problems have nothing to do with them.”
“That’s exactly what I told her. She left the house hours ago and I thought, until you called, that she was at the party with you. Oh, God. Where is she?”
When Mimi was silent, I thought she might be worrying like me, wondering if Gabriella had been in an accident or was with her boyfriend doing God knew what, but then she said, “That’s pretty low, calling your daughter the liar when it’s plain as day you’re just trying to punish Bobby. You need to get off your high horse about whatever it is you think he’s done—”
I hung up on her.
How dare she speak to me that way! I fought to catch my breath.
Forget Mimi. I didn’t care about Mimi. Gabby. Gabby. Gabby. Where was she? I’d never known her to lie to me so blatantly. My hands shook as I filled in Helen. “Shit,” I said, shaking my wine-fuzzy head. “Shit. I hope she’s okay.” I opened the phone I was still holding and called her. When the call went to voice mail, I hung up. Damn it. Damn it. “I don’t know whether to be pissed or terrified.” I took a deep breath. “I’m calling Tyler.”
Helen snorted. “Don’t expect him to pick up if Gabby didn’t.”
But, to my surprise, he did.
His “Hello?” was cautious.
“I need to speak to Gabby.”
“Oh—I thought . . . I . . . she . . . she’s not here, Dr. Anderson.”
“Tyler, this is an emergency. Put her on.” My hard, icy voice surprised me.
“She’s not here. For real. I’m sorry.”
My head whirled. “Where is she?”
“I . . . I don’t know, Dr. Ander—”
“Tyler. I’m not kidding. This is urgent.”
“Honest to God. I don’t know. She won’t even talk to me.”
I froze, but inside my brain I scrambled for a toehold.
“She broke up with me.”
The room slanted again. I shut my eyes. Nope—that was worse. I opened them and took a deep breath. “I didn’t know that,” I said, willing my voice to soften. “I’m sorry. Why?”
He didn’t hesitate. My question opened the floodgates. The poor kid was dying to tell. “She wouldn’t even give me a reason. She just kept saying she had to. She said she was breaking up with me because she loved me, but if you really love someone, then how—”
“Is she pregnant?”
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Had I said that out loud? Why? Why?
Helen stood, her face horrified.
“Uh,” Tyler said, making the word last several seconds. “I, uh. I . . . uh, no. I don’t think . . .”
Tyler was smart, but I’d thrown him too much to say the simple no. His answer told me what I’d long suspected, but at least I knew now that what I’d witnessed at the clinic was not her telling him she was pregnant. Now I knew I’d probably witnessed the actual breakup.
Max leaped up and scratched at the door as car lights flashed across the room.
Helen went to the window. “She’s back,” she said.
Thank God, thank God. “Tyler, I’m sorry,” I said. “You know it’s been stressful here. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I need to go now. I’m sorry I called so—”
“Is she okay? Do you want me to help look for her?” His voice was so hopeful, so worried.
“Actually, she just pulled up the drive. So, I should go, but I’ll—”
“Do you want me to quit?” he asked. “At the clinic?”
“What? No! God, no!” I couldn’t lose him and Zayna. I wanted to beg, Please don’t quit, but then I thought how awful it might be for them to work alongside each other every day.
Poor kid. I wanted to hug him. “I’m so sorry, Tyler. Breakups are . . . breakups suck. I don’t want you to quit, but I’d understand if you needed to.”
I heard the car door. Max began to spin his greeting circle.
“I love my job,” Tyler said.
“Then it’s yours as long as you want it.”
I wish I knew the right words to comfort him. His voice about broke my heart. I managed a good-bye and hung up the phone just as Gabby walked in.
Helen busied herself with cleaning up our food mess.
I wasn’t sure how I’d play this. I wanted to corner her and force a confession out of her, but getting this right was too important. I needed to gather my thoughts. I didn’t want to scream at her. I didn’t want her on the defensive, like I’d been with Mimi. The issue was too fragile. If she hadn’t been at the party and she hadn’t been with Tyler, then where had she been?
I hugged her. “How was it?” I asked, feeling like a bitch for trapping her.
She shrugged, her eyes glittering. “Awful.”
Helen squeezed Gabriella’s shoulder, then passed us to enter the kitchen and give us privacy.
“You wanna talk about it?”
She shook her head and went upstairs. She didn’t slam her door, but when she closed it, the sound echoed through the quiet house.
Helen appeared in the kitchen doorway. “I’m gonna go,” she said. So much for our slumber party, but she knew what I needed to do. “But I’ll be back in the morning to soak Satan.”
“Thank you.”
She stepped close and whispered, “You don’t really think she’s pregnant, do you?”
I shook my head. “I misinterpreted something, I think.”
Helen exhaled. “Thank God.” She hugged me and said, “Good luck.”
I was going to need it.
MAX LED ME TO GABRIELLA’S ROOM. I KNOCKED. WHEN she didn’t answer, I opened her door. She was lying on her back in bed, surrounded by books and papers. She had her iPod on, so I flicked the lights to get her attention. She pulled the buds out of her ears.
“Hey, babe, I need you to talk to me.”
She sat up, stretching, and said, “Sure. I was just thinking I could use something to eat.”
I could be devious and ask, Didn’t you have enough at the party? Binardi gatherings were feasts. But I couldn’t stand the deception between us for one more second.
“First, talk.” I moved a pile of the papers off the bed and sat down beside her.
She narrowed her eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me you broke up with Tyler?”
She sighed, then rolled her eyes. “When did he tell you?”
“I called him earlier to find out where you were.”
She stopped breathing a moment, wheels turning behind her eyes.
“I need you to tell me why you lied to me, babe.”
She didn’t protest. She didn’t say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She knew.
“I’ve always counted on our honesty.” I didn’t sound angry, and I made sure not to have that horrible I’m-so-disappointed-in-you tone. “So, I’m really thrown by this. Mimi called and accused me of not letting you go to your dad’s party.”
Her head snapped up. “I never said that!”
“I didn’t figure you did. But the bottom line is that you didn’t go to the party. What’s worse is that when you came back and I asked you about it directly, you lied to me.”
“I’m sorry.” Her words were swollen with heartfelt regret.
“I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry all this crap is going on and causing all this upheaval in your life, but, babe—we have to be honest with each other or we’ll never survive this. Where’ve you been all this time?”
“I just drove around. I was pretty upset. I ended up walking along the river downtown.”
Oh my God, not exactly the safest choice, but I let that go for now.
Gingersnap jumped on the bed and curled up in Gabby’s lap. Gabby idly stroked her.
“Did you go to your dad’s apartment?”
She nodded. I saw the corner of her mouth twitch.
“Did you two fight or something?”
“No . . .” More twitches in her face as she struggled not to cry. “Zayna lives with him, Mom. I went to his apartment and he acted like everything was fine. Like he’d always lived there and it was no big deal that I had to stop by to see him. I went to the bathroom and there was girl stuff everywhere. Makeup, shampoo, a pink razor in the shower, birth control pills. She lives there! It’s a one-bedroom apartment!”
Gabby’s reaction surprised me. She’d been there at the Thai restaurant, after all. Tears hung on her lower eyelashes. Her voice climbed high. “I tried to talk to him, but while we were sitting there, she came in. She has a key. She just let herself in, she didn’t knock or anything. And she said, ‘Hey, sweetie,’ before she saw me! He left us for Zayna!”
My poor daughter. That she had to see this, that it had to unfold in just this way. The tears spilled over and she gave in to them. “C’mere.” I put an arm around her and pulled her close. She cried into my shoulder. It hurt my arm, but I wasn’t about to suggest we change positions.
“Oh!” she said, jerking away from me, as if she’d just remembered something, “Oh! He had the nerve—before Zayna came back—he had the nerve to ask me if I was pregnant!”
She actually got off the bed, leaving Gingersnap looking miffed, and paced the length of her room. “Can you believe that? Where did that come from?”
My cheeks warmed. So he couldn’t give me any credit to my face, but he’d listened to me.
Gabby’s face was murderous. “I told him I wasn’t the one running around like a whore!”
I choked. “You did not!”
I almost got a smile. “No,” she admitted. “But I thought it. And it’s true. I did say it took a lot of nerve to ask me that right then, and that I thought he was changing the subject. It seemed like awfully weird timing to suddenly want to have the sex talk with me!”
When she was furious like this, she seemed like herself, but as I watched, the energy of the anger left her and she shrank before my eyes. She looked so . . . defeated. She sat back down on the bed and spoke to her own knees. “They have a dog, Mom. They bought a dog together!”
That was a stab to the belly. I actually flinched.
“They bought a puppy! A boxer puppy. It’s their dog, not hers. That’s how Zayna introduced it—‘our puppy,’ she said.”
A puppy. That was a commitment. That was a shared undertaking. It hurt. It . . . it hurt almost worse than knowing Bobby was sleeping with Zayna.
“I looked at Dad, and he shrugged. He shrugged. Zayna looked all embarrassed and took the puppy into the bedroom, and Dad leaned across and took my hands”—her voice was a snarl now—“and he said, ‘If I hadn’t done this, Gabby, I’d be dead.’ ”
I gasped, the pain as sharp as Moonshot’s teeth clamping on my arm.
“Dead?!” Gabby shrieked. Gingersnap fled from the room. “Living with us was killing him? What the f*ck does that mean?” The profanity washed over me, inconsequential at this moment. “‘If I hadn’t done this, I’d be dead,’ ” she repeated. “I got up and walked out. I just left.”
I hugged her tighter. I whispered into her hair, “I’m so sorry.”
I held her while she sobbed, back heaving. I wanted to muster some fury, but I felt flattened.
Soon she was able to speak again. “But, Mom, he didn’t do anything. He didn’t follow me, he didn’t try to explain. He just let me walk out and he stayed in there with Zayna.” She spat Zayna’s name as if it tasted bad. “I had to wait, like, five minutes for the damn elevator, and he never even opened the apartment door to look down the hall! And he went to his birthday party! I sat in the parking lot and followed him to Tanti Baci. I mean, does he even care about me?”
After a few staccato breaths, she said, “I . . . I’m sorry I lied. I just . . . I didn’t want you to know . . . you know, about Zayna.”
“But, sweetie, I saw him with her at the restaurant. She quit at the clinic. I already knew.”
“I know, but . . .” She burst into tears again.
“What, baby?” I had to hold her a good long while. My injured arm grew numb, my fingers cold, but I would have stayed this way all night.
She sniffed, her anger making her words hard. “It was one thing to think he was having some stupid, disgusting affair. But he left us. He left us to live with her in some tiny little apartment. He left Max and Biscuit and Gingersnap to buy a new puppy. From a pet store,” she added, saying it the way someone might say pedophile. “He chose that over us.”
“Not us,” I whispered. “Not you. This is just between me and him.”
“He’s not here, is he?” she yelled.
I absorbed that. I ran my fingers through her hair and she let me. I idly braided and unbraided her hair. “I’m so sorry you’re stuck in this mess your parents made.”
She jerked away from me. “God, Mom! How did you make this mess? He left. He left us for a girl practically my age. Listen to yourself!” Disdain glittered, feverlike, in her eyes.
Gerald wandered into the room, exploring the perimeter in his jerky, marionette-like gait.
“You don’t really want to break up with Tyler, do you?” I asked, as gently as I could.
“That’s none of your business, Mom,” she said, but it was halfhearted.
“Your happiness is always my business.”
I tried to stroke her hair again, but she pulled away.
She got off the bed and shuffled some papers from one stack to another. I watched her, amazed when Gerald jumped up on the bed and butted his head under my hand for me to pet him. I cautiously scratched his ears.
“I’m never going to be where you are,” she said, her back to me. “No man is ever going to wreck me. I won’t let him.”
She may as well have swung the lamp at my head—I was about as prepared for that action as I was for those cutting words. She thought I was wrecked?
I stuttered, trying to form a coherent response. Before I could find any traction, though, she swiveled to face me. “You know I blew my debate yesterday.”
I blinked. “You think I’m wrecked?”
“I sucked,” she said, ignoring me. “I blew it.”
Was she going to pretend she hadn’t just said that?
“I blew it,” she said. “We were using gay marriage again for our affirmative rounds, should’ve been a shoo-in. I went totally off topic, ranting about how marriage is a worthless, archaic institution that obviously doesn’t work, and how instead of granting gays the right to marry we ought to institute a complete marriage ban not allowing anyone to do anything so damaging.”
For years I’d gritted my teeth as she prattled on about marrying Tyler. And now . . . I wanted nearly the opposite. If she didn’t want to get married I wanted it to be her choice, not an escape tactic, not a knee-jerk reaction to the cruelty she perceived.
I wanted to go back to that “I’m never going to be where you are” but was suddenly mortified. My daughter thought I was wrecked? “That’s not hard, working with Tyler now?” I asked.
She said, “No,” but her eyes told a different story. It hurt, I could see it. “We have another one tomorrow, you know. He’s picking me up, so we can review some of the argument on the way to Cincinnati.” She surprised me by laughing and covering her face. “Oh, my God. A marriage ban. I actually said that. You should have seen their faces!”
It seemed like I was supposed to offer her something here. Something of hope, something of reassurance. But I had no idea what it was. I found myself defenseless, idly scratching Gerald’s ears until he reached up and snagged the skin of my wrist with the claws of his one front paw.