19
BROOKE
Reid is seriously pissing me off, but what else is new? He’s only been doing that for-f*cking-ever. I get that he might be busy – Reid-world busy – which could mean anything from starting a new film project to banging a new girl, but he’s had plenty of time to get the paternity test results and sign that freaking relinquishment form.
I texted him mid-week and he didn’t answer. I called him last night and he didn’t answer. I left him a voicemail he didn’t return.
This is the sort of avoidance that makes me think something problematic is going on. I’ve worked too hard to get all my ducks swimming in a row, as Kathryn would say. I even called Daddy, which I’d been putting off doing. After that delightful meeting with my mother, I figured I didn’t have anything to lose. So I gave him the shortest version possible of what I was doing, and he was silent for half a minute or so.
‘Brooke, you’re still so young – and there’s more to being a parent than you know,’ he began, clearly about to launch into couldn’t-be-less-welcome life advice.
‘You think?’ I snapped, and he shut up right quick. ‘Look. I’m not asking your opinion or guidance any more than I wanted Sharla’s. This is an FYI call only. And if you want to tell the adoption caseworker what a horrible mother I’ll be, then just go ahead.’
He had the nerve to sound taken aback. ‘Brooke, I would never do that. I know I wasn’t the best father –’
‘Oh, my God – really? Because you keep having more children, which makes it seem like you think you’re great at it.’ I wanted to rip the gear shift out and beat myself with it after saying that. I’d just tacked a bull’s-eye right over my most emotionally susceptible spot. Idiot.
‘The opposite, actually. I kept thinking I could start over again and get it right.’
Holy shit, I thought. How deluded could he be? ‘Well, that’s just stupid. You’re screwing around with people’s lives and breaking people’s hearts. I can’t imagine why you left Kathryn for Sharla.’ I couldn’t stop sneering my mother’s given name like I was spitting out something poisonous. ‘Or why Kelley and Kylie weren’t enough for you.’ Or why I wasn’t enough for you.
‘The problem, Brooke, is that with Sharla came you. With Vivian came Rory and Evan. The marriages may look like colossal mistakes from this distance, but I don’t regret any of you kids. So I guess I can understand your motivation to get your boy back … and maybe you’re doing it right. Getting the child without the dysfunctional relationship.’
‘You say you don’t regret me, but you left me. You didn’t just leave a bad marriage. You didn’t just leave my mother, Daddy – you left me.’ I bit back tears.
‘I’m … sorry.’
‘Yeah, well.’ I steeled my jaw. ‘Try calling Rory before he turns into a teenager who hates you. Try taking Evan to the zoo or something. Go to their soccer games, or school plays, or birthday parties, instead of just sending them money.’
I realized by the time I was fifteen that my father never slacked on his financial support of me. He paid his child support payments on time. He sent birthday cards and an escalating amount of cash every year. But I was jealous of the kids whose dads showed up for their lives.
‘Do you hate me, Brooke?’
I sighed, too tired to hate more than one parent at a time with any real conviction. ‘I don’t know.’
He sighed in return. ‘You always were brutally honest.’
I huffed an indignant laugh. ‘Mom just told me I was always a bitch.’
‘What? That’s absurd. I think the whole state of Texas knows who the bitch is, sugar.’ He hadn’t called me sugar since I was ten. The age I was when he left. My jaw clenched up again.
‘I’m not kidding, Daddy. Call Rory and Evan. I’ll … keep you posted on River.’
‘His name is River? Brooke and River.’ He chuckled. ‘I like it. I’d like to meet him –’
‘Not if you’re going to disappear on him,’ I countered.
‘I … understand. Keep me posted. And don’t worry about Sharla. She’ll come around.’
‘No, she won’t – but I don’t care. You know as well as anyone – some things just don’t work out.’
Me: WHY aren’t you calling me back? Have you signed the form???
Reid: Give me five minutes. I’ll call you.
‘Have you signed it?’ I answer in place of hello, trying to keep the panic out of my voice, but there’s something going on, and I know it. Something he’s not telling me. I can feel it the way you feel certain storms out here in the hill country, right before they roll across the horizon. Like the air is charged. Electric. The invisible hairs on your body all standing up for it. Waiting.
‘I haven’t, and I’m not going to –’
‘What? What? What the f*ck, Reid –’
‘Will you give me a minute, please? We need to talk about –’
‘Reid, if you don’t sign that form –’
‘Don’t threaten me, Brooke.’ His voice is solid, authoritative in a way it’s never been, and I’m shot through with fear, because he has the upper hand, and he clearly knows it. ‘Please shut up and listen.’
I say nothing.
‘I can’t sign the form because … I don’t want to relinquish my rights to him.’
My whole body begins to shake uncontrollably, like it did the time I popped an amphetamine at a party – which scared me so badly I never tried it again. I yank on my boots, which look ridiculous at the end of my flannel pyjama bottoms, but I don’t care. Phone pressed to my ear, I tromp down the hallway and into the kitchen, where Kathryn and Glenn are making brunch together – a Sunday morning ritual. Jazz flows lightly from the sound system and the smell of waffles and bacon permeates the room.
‘I’m walking down to the creek,’ I tell them, yanking a sweater from the coat rack and sliding the back door open.
Kathryn turns, spatula in hand, her smile fading as she takes in the phone and my freaked-out expression. ‘Everything okay, honey?’ Her head angles and she takes a step towards me.
‘Fine. Everything’s fine.’ My smile feels like elastic play putty. There’s nothing of me in it. ‘I’ll be back up in a few minutes.’
‘I want to join your adoption application,’ Reid says as I pull the glass door shut behind me.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I’m trembling so hard that I’m afraid I’ll drop the phone. Pulling the sweater’s hood over my head as though the chill in the air is responsible for my body’s reaction to Reid’s words, I stomp in the direction of the creek. ‘Why?’
‘I talked to my dad –’
‘So this is a legal move? You’re covering your ass or some shit while I’m trying to give him a home –’
‘No. No, that’s not it.’
I realize then that he’s speaking quietly. Almost whispering.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in San Fran. With Dori. Her birthday is tomorrow, so we’re here for the weekend. That’s why I didn’t call you back right away. That … and I knew how you’d react to this.’
In the short amount of time I’ve been here, I’ve already begun to re-flatten a path from the house to the creek. ‘Let me guess. You still haven’t told her.’
‘No.’
‘But you told your dad.’
‘Yes. And I plan to tell Dori. Today. I just wanted to wait …’ He sighs. ‘I wish there was some way I didn’t have to tell her. I don’t know how she’s going to react.’
‘You’re at a hotel? It’s like 8 a.m. there – are you in the room?’
‘Our room has a private terrace. I’m outside.’ He laughs softly. ‘With a blanket. Jesus Christ it’s colder here than LA.’
‘I don’t want to talk about the weather, Reid.’
I reach the creek, and my favourite rock, the flat surface of which is freezing cold. The slow trickle of the current is soothing, even so. I tuck the sweater under my butt and pull my knees to my chest, shivering and exhaling quick-fading clouds of warm breath.
‘Okay. Yeah. I know.’ He sighs. ‘Dad thinks the best thing would be if we join the application you’ve already started.’
‘I don’t understand why you’re doing this, Reid. You’ve never expressed any interest in him –’
‘I didn’t think he was mine, Brooke. I got that conviction in my head years ago, and I just never let it go – not until we talked a couple of months ago. Not fully, to tell you the truth, until you sent me that photo. And now – the fact that you haven’t once asked about the test results, well, obviously, you didn’t need to ask. You knew what they’d be.’
I close my eyes. Feel the speckled rays of sun touch my face through the trees. Listen to the creek babble. And forgive him, finally. ‘I did.’
‘Shit. I’m just so – sorry –’
‘We were kids, Reid – I know that. We were too young to be in love or anything. We were just kids.’ These are hollow words, of course. I loved Reid, once upon a time. For too long, I’ve held on to a silly little-girl belief that I didn’t misread him completely. That some part of him loved me too. It’s time I got over that … and yet, I don’t need or want to hear the blunt truth.
‘Brooke …’
‘Reid, don’t.’ My words are barely audible.
‘I just – I don’t want you to get the wrong impression –’
‘Okay, then let’s just drop it?’ I press my forehead to my knees, wrapping the sweater all the way around myself like a blanket. I can’t deal with this right now.
‘Brooke, I worshipped you. And what I thought you’d done, with those other guys – I could have handled it a million different, better ways. I know you hate me for deserting you and I deserve that. I’d talked myself into the belief that he wasn’t mine, and I let that colour everything else. But I did love you.’
Tears well up in my eyes and soak into the thin flannel covering my knees.
‘Um. I need to go,’ he says. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?’
‘Sure. Okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’
I hang up and realize two things. One, Reid has just told me that he once loved me. And two, I still don’t really know why he wants to adopt our son.
DORI
When I woke up, the bedside clock read barely past 8:00 in the morning. Reid wasn’t in bed next to me, and his impression wasn’t warm against my palm. I got up and pulled on the robe, which never left its peg last night. Flushing from the memory of Reid’s follow-through on his pre-dinner promise, I stepped through our shoes, my lingerie, his shirt and tie, dozens of hair pins and his slacks. I’d insisted on folding the dress over the desk chair.
He wasn’t anywhere. I frowned, wondering if he’d left the suite to get something when I caught sight of him on the terrace, in his robe. Despite the sun’s rays on the patio cushions, the air here is still quite cool this early, and our room is at the top of the hotel – even chillier.
And Reid was outside. On his phone.
I could have gone to take a shower. Or ordered coffee and breakfast. Or picked up the bits of clothing and undergarments strewn from the suite door to the king-sized bed, in anticipation of the fact that we need to pack up and check out in a few hours.
Instead, I went to the door and opened it slowly. My body ached at the sound of his gruff morning voice – kept low, only a few words made their way to me: Worshipped. Million. Better. Mine. Love you.
I must have made a sound, because he turned and looked right at me, still talking. To her. I knew he was talking to her. He told her he has to go, that they’ll talk tomorrow. He hung up as I backed into the room and he followed me inside, closing the door behind him.
I didn’t know it would come this soon.
Tossing the phone on to a low table, he reaches me in four long strides and grabs my shoulders, stopping me before I back into a wall. ‘Dori, we need to talk.’ He swallows, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look this apprehensive. ‘I’ll call for breakfast – unless you already have?’
I shake my head, no.
He leads me to the sofa and seats me in a corner before opening the room service menu and calling in a breakfast order. On this call, his voice is full of his usual self-confidence, but it vanishes as soon as he sits next to me, the dark blue of his eyes flicking away and searching the room as though he’ll find the words he needs to say somewhere outside himself.
‘Okay. Do you know who Brooke Cameron is?’
I nod. ‘Yes.’
He exhales a long breath, one hand at the back of his neck. ‘Well, we used to go out.’ His eyes watch mine closely, reading and measuring. I don’t know if I want to hide my thoughts or open them all to him. ‘A long time ago – five years.’
Most people dismiss relationships that take place at fourteen or fifteen. Puppy love. Infatuation. A crush. But I know all too well how serious fifteen can be.
‘It didn’t end well.’ He runs a hand through his hair, unable to stop fidgeting. ‘It was pretty ugly, actually. I thought she’d cheated on me. So I broke up with her without even really ending it. A couple of months later, she called and told me she was pregnant.’
Pregnant?
My brain calls up Colin, and what I would do or say if I ran into him now. He’d discarded me for no reason that I knew of, although Deb suggested the fact that he’d turned eighteen and I was fifteen was incentive enough. I never told him I was pregnant. I knew he wouldn’t care.
‘Dori?’ Reid says, his hand on my face. I look back into his worried eyes. ‘Where’d you go? Talk to me.’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t understand. Why is she calling you now?’ As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know the answer. No. No. No.
His jaw flexes and his throat works. ‘She gave him up for adoption.’
I bite the inside of my cheek and my hands grip each other in my lap.
He cups his hands over mine. ‘God, your hands are freezing. We can talk about this later –’
‘No.’ My voice is the only solid thing left of me, and he flinches. ‘Finish. Please finish.’
He closes his eyes briefly before answering. ‘He was mine, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t talk to anyone about it, Dori. My parents didn’t know. I’ve never even told John.’
‘How do you know he’s yours?’
‘We just did a paternity test.’
Just. As in recently.
I’m missing something, and I don’t know what it is. When children are adopted, their biological parentage is no longer an issue. ‘But – you said she gave him up … Why –?’
‘A couple of months ago, she hired a private investigator to look for him. She was having nightmares about him and just wanted to make sure he was okay. The PI found out that he’d been removed from his adoptive home months ago due to drugs and gross neglect. He’s in foster care now. So she’s … she’s applying to adopt him. And … so am I.’
The hands that he thought were cold moments ago flash like ice and then go numb. I can’t feel anything. And then, suddenly, I feel everything. Waves of chills run from the back of my neck to my toes, millions of tiny pinpricks like sharp, agonizing barbs. As though some outside source grips my throat, my airway narrows and expands, over and over, and with it, my vision.
‘I told you about … everything that happened to me – with Colin,’ I gasp. ‘And you never said – you never told me –’
‘Dori, I didn’t – I didn’t know. I thought Brooke had cheated on me. I swear, I didn’t think he was mine. We were both so young and stupid and stubborn – we didn’t talk like you and I talk –’
‘Like you and I talk? Like when you told me you had a child with someone?’
He drops his head in his hands. ‘I didn’t think he was mine, and I had nothing to do with her decision.’
‘So you left her to make that choice – alone? And now you get a second chance at doing the right thing because she made a different choice than I made?’ I shift away from him, but he reaches out and grabs my wrists.
‘Goddammit, Dori – no. It’s not like that –’
‘You said you’re both adopting him. So you’re … you’re getting back together?’
‘No. No. Jesus. This isn’t about me and Brooke – it’s only about River.’
His child has a name. Of course he does. ‘River?’
‘He’s four and a half. I have a picture –’ He lets go of me, stands to grab his phone from the table and clicks through it. When he offers it, I reach to take it, thinking, I don’t know him.
But I see him in his child’s face. And if anyone needs saving, it’s this little boy. His sadness is unmistakable, mirroring so many small faces from East LA to Quito – children shouldering the weight of the world. A world they didn’t create, or ask to be abandoned to.
‘Dad is telling Mom this weekend. He’s talking with contacts in LA County Family Court tomorrow, and we’re going to Austin on Tuesday to speak with Brooke’s attorney, and possibly the caseworker and judge. Last, but not least – I’m not sure when this is going to break publicly, but once it does, it’ll be a circus.’ He takes the phone from my hand and tips my chin, looks into my eyes. ‘Dori, say something.’
The brusque rap on the door startles us both.
He sighs. ‘That’s breakfast, I guess.’
While he rises to let the attendant in, I stare out of the window at the boats in the bay. From this distance, they look like models, or radio-powered toys. I imagine the holders of the remote controls are bored demi-gods occupying rooms like this on the top floors of tall buildings.
I feel his eyes sweep over me, neither of us speaking while our breakfast table is set up.
He is not the self-centred, arrogant boy who showed up at Habitat last summer, calling me a hypocrite for dismissing him and then proving to me that he was worth saving. Not the boy who urged me to be reckless with him last fall, because he was safe. Not the boy who showed up on the other side of my parents’ screen door weeks ago, telling me he was all in before carrying me up the stairs and making love to me in my childhood bed.
This is Reid Alexander – the stuff of fantasy for ordinary girls. And in a few hours, this fantasy will be over. I’ll return to my life, and he’ll return to his.