chapter Twenty-three
The slow-motion slide of her heart into her stomach made it impossible for Ellen to unbuckle her seat belt. Caleb had to do it for her.
Her baby was playing with his father in the sandbox, and Weasel Face crouched next to them, taking their picture.
Henry wasn’t in any danger. He was perfectly content, talking to himself and shoveling sand onto the back of his dump truck with the solemnity of the very young while Richard perched on the edge of the sandbox, performing parental attentiveness.
And yet Ellen’s hands shook so hard, she had trouble working the door latch.
Again, Caleb was there, helping her out of the car, and he said, “Let me handle this,” low and cautionary, but she could hardly hear him because there was a man, a strange man taking pictures of her son so he could put them in newspapers and on the Internet, where thousands of other strangers would see the soft, downy curve of Henry’s cheeks and his innocent blue eyes, clear as a mountain lake.
They weren’t his father’s blue eyes at all. They were Henry’s. Not Richard’s to sell. Henry’s.
And then, without realizing she’d crossed the drive, she had Henry in her arms. She’d plucked him so abruptly from the sand that it streamed off him, filtering into her sandals, and he went stiff and shoved against her with both hands as she pressed her face against his cheek. “Ma put you down,” he said. “Henry is working.”
But she couldn’t. She knew she was overreacting—Henry had been in candid shots before, and a picture now and again wouldn’t bring the world to an end—but still she couldn’t stop herself from burying her face in his hair and breathing in the little-boy smell of him, that sweet combination of baby shampoo and cheddar bunnies and dirt.
The camera whirred and clicked quietly, recording her reunion with her son.
The photographs weren’t the issue. It was the violation. Richard’s violation—but here was the vulture he’d hired, sticking his camera in her face and saying, “Smile.” Until the edges of her field of vision turned scarlet, she’d had no idea the expression “seeing red” was anything more than a figure of speech. It was real, probably the result of the blood pounding in her ears.
“Caleb?” she said, mildly surprised by how not-insane she sounded. “Could you please take Henry inside?” But Caleb wasn’t next to her, where she’d expected him to be. He was still over by the car, conferring with the other agent.
“I’ll do it.”
Maureen’s voice. Maureen was here, it seemed. Ellen hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t looked at anyone or anything but Henry and Richard and the camera and the rodent-faced prick who was holding it.
“Henry doesn’t want to go inside,” her son said as Maureen took him from her. Her hands were reluctant to let go of his dirty little jean-clad butt. “Henry stay here wif Mama.”
As he receded toward the house, his cries rose in pitch and lost intelligibility, until he was crying “No! Noooooo!” and Ellen felt like she’d been knifed in the chest.
He’ll be okay. Maureen will show him a movie and give him a cookie, and he’ll be just fine.
Ellen had other things to worry about. Richard. But before Richard, Weasel Face.
She advanced on the photographer. This man—this scrawny man with his digital SLR and his knees stained from crawling over the damp grass in pursuit of pictures of her son—he was all of her nightmares rolled into one. He was the dream she’d had about losing Henry at the mall and the one where Henry had been in a bus that sailed off the edge of a cliff. He was the stranger with candy and the cleric who liked little boys. He was the driver on his cell phone who hit her kid on a crosswalk because he wasn’t paying enough attention to the road.
He was a threat to her baby, and she was going to kill him.
“You sick, twisted, heartless shithead,” she said, stalking him until he was backpedaling down the driveway.
His mouth opened and closed, but if words were coming out, she couldn’t hear them over all the whooshing blood in her ears.
“You pinch-faced, gutless, slinking weasel of a man. How could you do it?” She poked him in the throat, and he made an outraged choking noise. “He’s a baby,” she said. “He’s just a baby.” She shoved his shoulder, and it felt good, so she raised her hand to do it again, but then the guy defended himself and gave her a shove in return.
That was when Caleb got between them, holding her back with his forearm as he pushed the photographer back so hard, he lost his balance and went down hard on his ass.
He said oof, just like in a comic book. She hadn’t known life could be so much like the comics. People said oof when you knocked them down. She wondered what they said when you kicked them.
Caleb didn’t let her find out. He wrapped his arms around her and held her, and it was only then that she realized she was crying, and that she had been for some time.
“Sean, get the camera.”
Caleb’s agent, a tough-looking blond guy, put his foot on the photographer’s wrist and held it down as he pulled the camera out of his grasp.
“Give me the card,” Caleb told him.
It was only a tiny piece of blue plastic. Caleb tucked it into the front pocket of her shorts with a murmured, “Keep this.” Then he dropped the camera on the ground.
“Oops.” He leaned over to pick it up. There was no trace of humor in his voice, and the brittle crack of his foot connecting with the camera housing was no mistake. “Damn. Clumsy today.”
Sean walked three steps toward the camera, bent down to get it, and crushed the lens under his heel. “Shit. Sorry, boss.”
He picked the wreckage of the camera up and tossed it to Caleb, who didn’t even pretend to try to catch it. When he took a step backward and ground what was left of the camera into the asphalt, Ellen shuddered as though he’d crushed a living thing.
“Oh, man,” he said, with a smile she could only classify as menacing. “Didn’t see it there.”
The photographer’s face had gone a deep pink. “This is outrageous,” he told Caleb, sweeping his finger to encompass all three of them. “You’ll be hearing from me.”
Caleb shrugged. “I doubt it. But if I do, I’ve got a great lawyer.”
A police car drove up, and the flashing lights threw Ellen into something like a fugue state. She watched, out of focus, as Caleb talked to the cops and Weasel Face got cuffed and loaded into the car. She heard the words “warrant” and “Plimpton” and “custody.” Richard hovered around, asking questions of the police and of Caleb. Making demands.
She knew she ought to be reacting, but she simply stood there, feeling her pulse throb in the palms of her hands. Her whole body janked up and confused.
When the black-and-white drove away, Ellen heard Henry laughing through the screen door that opened onto the kitchen of Maureen’s little bungalow, and the color washed back into the world. She put her back against the closest tree and sank to the ground, still trembling and shocky, but herself, at least. Present in the moment enough to wonder how Caleb had known to call the police and why nobody had asked her any questions. And to know she’d focused her anger on a stranger and skipped over the person who most deserved it.
“Where’s Richard?” she croaked.
“I’m right here.”
He sat off to the side of the small house in one of Maureen’s deck chairs, in full view. Ellen stared at him, expecting the rage to come back. Waiting for righteousness to flood through her and prepare her for battle.
Instead, she just wanted to cry again. He was such a lousy father.
“You’re in violation of our custody agreement,” she said, her voice drained and emotionless.
“No, I’m not. It’s Saturday.”
Was it? This was his idea of a visit, then. Just Henry and Daddy and the man with the camera.
It hadn’t been a coincidence when he and Weasel Face had shown up downtown the other day. They’d been together, probably meeting for coffee or something. Was that what all of his talk of amends and reconciliation had been about? An opportunity to get her and Henry in front of a camera so he could make some quick cash?
Appalled curiosity pushed her to her feet. Richard wasn’t a bad parent. He was an irredeemably lousy parent. A bad man. A bad person.
“Do you even have a soul?”
Richard stood up slowly, eyes hard. “It was going to be a tasteful article. I was planning to give you the money for his college savings.”
She couldn’t even think what to say to that. His defense belonged to some moral nationality so completely foreign to her own, she didn’t even speak the language.
“Stay away from him.”
“From Henry? Not a chance. He’s my son.”
“Not anymore. Let me try to make this clear to you. You are not the custodial parent. You don’t get to make decisions on Henry’s behalf. You don’t get to sign release forms for photographers or accept their filthy money. You don’t get to exploit your own son. The only thing you were allowed to do was visit him, under supervision, one day a week, and even that you f*cked up. You’re a despicable excuse for a father, Richard. You don’t deserve him.”
Ellen pointed down the driveway, noticing as she turned that Caleb was watching from a few feet away. “I want you to leave.”
Richard shook his head as if she were off her rocker. “You can’t tell me to go. This is my mother’s house.”
“If you ever want to see him again, you’ll leave right now, and you’ll stay away until I tell you to come back. If you don’t, I’m taking him home, and Monday morning I’ll file a request to get your visitation rights revoked.”
Richard stared at her slack-jawed. For once, he’d actually listened to her. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“Try me.”
“Why are you being such a bitch?”
“Watch your mouth, a*shole,” Caleb said, stepping closer.
“I’m being a bitch because nothing else works,” she told Richard. “When I’m nice to you, you walk all over me. You use me, and you use my son.”
“Screw you, Ellen.” Richard’s mouth twisted into an ugly sneer. Caleb closed the last steps between them and clamped one big hand onto Richard’s shoulder. Richard glared at him, twisting out from under his grasp. “Screw both of you.”
He clomped to his car in his motorcycle boots and drove away, leaving in search of a drink or somebody else to make miserable.
Ellen went inside. Henry was using cookie cutters to make stars and hearts with Play-Doh, and Maureen was weeping gently while loading the dishwasher.
She wiped her eyes when she saw Ellen.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know he was going to do that. I went out to the store to buy some diapers—Richard said we were out of diapers—and I guess we were, though I could’ve sworn . . .” Her face went slack for a moment, heavy and doughy. She looked older than her age. Older than Ellen had ever seen her.
When she spoke again, she sounded like exactly what she was: a mother whose son had broken her heart a hundred times. “And when I got back, that man was here, and Richard said he wanted everyone to see what a beautiful family he had.” She sniffled. Ellen handed her a tissue from the box on the counter. “He said he hoped that you—”
“Don’t,” Ellen said. She didn’t want to hear Richard’s justification. She didn’t really want to leave her son with Maureen right now, either, but what was she supposed to do? She could hardly take him home. There were hundreds of people crowding her cul-de-sac. Strangers getting handcuffed in the driveway. He’d be safer with his grandmother, provided Caleb’s agents stayed on site and Maureen located her good sense.
“You’re not supposed to leave him with Richard.”
“I know. I’ve never done it before. I hope you know that.”
“I thought I did. Just . . . just don’t let him do it again. Until I tell you different, Richard doesn’t see Henry at all.”
Maureen nodded. “I understand. I . . . It’s hard, you know?”
“Sure.” She didn’t know what Maureen meant, but she was willing to agree. Everything was hard.
“I want to be a good grandma to Henry. You know how much I love him. But I try to be a good mother to my son, too.” She gave a shaky sigh. “He doesn’t make it easy to do both.”
“No.”
“He’s not an easy man to love.” It clearly made her sad to say it.
“I know.” Ellen did know. She’d loved him. It was like throwing yourself at a rock. It f*cking hurt, and you never got anything back except whatever twisted sense of virtue came from glorifying your own abasement.
Back in Caleb’s car, she looked out the window as they drove by the neat houses of Camelot, each one distinct, tucked into its own wooded patch of property. She wondered if her life would ever be normal again. How much of the last few days’ craziness was temporary, and how much of it was simply new?
Surely it couldn’t go on like this indefinitely, with the press hounding Jamie and Richard hounding her. There wouldn’t always be an SUV parked outside.
She wouldn’t always have Caleb in her bed.
As a mother, she was used to saying goodbye to the old routines and scrambling to recognize and make peace with the new ones. Raising a kid was a chaotic process, change its only constant. But in the past few days, her life had transformed more rapidly than even she could handle. It would be one thing if she knew how it would all come out, but she didn’t. She couldn’t control it—couldn’t control anything.
She hated that.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asked as they passed the water tower that marked the end of Central Path.
“Sure,” she said, still gazing outside. She was okay enough. A more sophisticated mental inventory was well beyond her at the moment.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “It never should’ve happened.”
“It’s not your fault. That was all Richard.”
He inhaled deeply, and she glanced over at him. Caleb looked tired and tight and unhappy. Her fingers wanted to sink into the muscles at the back of his neck, an automatic reaction to the tension in his body. But wasn’t that exactly her problem, this impulse to rescue the men in her life? To help everybody else, when she barely had the energy to keep herself going?
She wasn’t any good at having flings. Two days into it, and already she’d lost track of the selfishness that was supposed to have protected her from caring too much about Caleb. Sustained objectification just wasn’t in her nature.
“I shouldn’t have let that happen. I should’ve given Sean clearer instructions, and—look, Ellen. I swear to you, nothing like that will happen again. I’ve asked Katie to send another guy over there. Just in case one of them comes back.”
One of them. The photographer . . . or Richard.
The news made her breathe easier, and then it made her feel guilty. She didn’t want to celebrate the prospect of Caleb protecting her son from his own father. She didn’t want any of this to be happening. “Thanks.”
They pulled up to the roadblock at the end of Burgess and waited as the officers moved it aside. Caleb rolled through and stopped to talk to one of the men on duty. Then he pulled over and parked by the side of the road.
“I’m gonna leave the car here. Let me walk you back.”
It was only half a block. She didn’t need an escort for half a block. She wanted one, though. She wanted him beside her.
He took her hand as they walked down the shady street. Took her hand and walked with her, and when they got near her house, he led her through the crowd, holding tight to her fingers and moving with such authority that the crush of bodies parted easily for him. Caleb guided her right up to her front door and held it open.
“Lock up, okay? Just for today.”
“Sure.”
He leaned in and kissed her lightly, the warm, dry touch of his lips almost a benediction.
“Be safe.”
And then he went to work to keep her that way.