“Very nice to meet you,” Roz said. Then she looked down at the youngest one. “And who is the little one right here? Shane, I’ll bet.”
He was standing in front of Gloria. Gloria had her hands on his shoulder. “This is Shane,” she said. “Our baby brother.”
“He’s not our biological brother,” Adrian pointed out. “But Dad supports him. So we treat him as if he’s one of us. Dad considers him his son.”
Roz knelt down to Shane. Of all five children, he seemed the saddest to her. “Nice to meet you, Shane,” she said, extending her hand.
But Shane didn’t shake it. He, in fact, turned away from her and buried his face against Gloria.
“He’s shy,” Gloria said, and Roz smiled too and stood up. But she knew better than that. Shyness was one thing. Sadness was something else.
Mick watched intensely as Roz turned to the final child: the teenager. She extended her hand. “Hi, I’m Roz,” she said.
“Hi, I’m not,” he said with bite in his voice.
Roz removed her extended hand, but she didn’t let him remove her smile.
“Just tell the lady your name, Joey,” Teddy said. “Don’t be such a prick!”
“Fuck you, Teddy. I’ll be whatever I wanna be. You don’t tell me what to do!”
Another distressed child. Didn’t Mick realize what condition these children were in? “Anyway, everybody sit back down,” she insisted, and they all did. “Do you want something to drink before dinner?”
“Dad’s butler already offered,” Teddy said. “We’re fine.”
Teddy didn’t appear to be the oldest, but he was definitely the leader. Mick through and through, she thought, as she sat down on the second sofa in the living room. “I’m glad all of you could make it on such short notice.”
“Are you kidding?” Adrian asked. “We’re just happy Dad invited us at all. We would have dropped everything and came even if his secretary called us with a two minute notice.”
Roz didn’t understand. “His secretary?”
“Yeah,” Adrian said. “She’s the one who calls us whenever Dad wants to see us.”
Roz found that extraordinary. Mick didn’t call them himself? She knew he was busy, but these were his children! “I see,” she said.
“It’s been so long since we got the call,” Ted said, “that we were shocked when it came.”
“It’s been that long?” Roz asked.
They all nodded their heads.
“How long?”
Teddy, Adrian, and Gloria looked at each other. “Two years?” Gloria looked at her brothers for confirmation.
Teddy nodded. “Yeah, I think you’re right, Glo. It’s been about that. It’s been about two years since we got together like this.”
Roz was astounded. So astounded that Mick finally gave up his perch upstairs and began heading down. When he arrived, and his children saw him coming, they all stood quickly. And nervously, Roz noticed.
“Well hello everybody!” Mick spoke jovially as he came toward his children. He had a smile on his face that Roz had never seen before. Not that it was completely void of warmth and affection, but it was certainly lacking something.
They all literally got in line, as they waited to be hugged by Mick. And Mick hugged each one, from his two oldest sons, to his daughter whom he also kissed, to the two younger ones. Although those two didn’t want to have anything to do with Roz, they seemed thrilled to be hugged by Mick. In fact, Roz noticed something remarkable. All five of Mick’s children kept their hands on him, even after their hug, as if they wanted just a touch of him. They continued to surround him as if they were surrounding a prized possession.
And even after he lifted little Shane into his arms and told them to have a seat, they all followed him as if they were attached to him. He sat in the middle of the sofa, with Shane on his lap, but to Roz’s shock all of his other children also piled onto that same couch. Gloria sat on one side of Mick, Joey sat on the other side of Mick, and Teddy and Adrian rode shotgun on the ends. Seemingly starved for their father’s attention. It was as beautiful to Roz as it was tragic.
To the untrained eye, Mick would appear as if he was completely comfortable with his five children. He was asking them how they were doing, they were all telling him how great they were doing, and it seemed picture perfect. But Roz had a trained eye on Mick. And she saw the stress and strain. She even saw the pain. It was as if they were six people on a couch, pretending to be a family.