Текст книги "Family Love"

Автор книги: Liz Crowe

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter Four

A few hours later, having made it to my apartment without any further distractions or detours from my new pack of friends, I took a real shower in my miniscule but clean bathroom. Wrapped up in a robe, I popped some vitamins and a prophylactic dose of antibiotics I kept handy.

My roommate had gone to work, thank God, because I was not in a chatty mood. My head was all echo-y and strange. My nasal passages felt clogged up, and my throat hurt.

I sipped from a hot cup of cinnamon spice tea—a treat courtesy of my mother. Her care packages came at regular intervals, sans any messages other than the stuff in the box—all of which were my favorite things although I ignored some of them on principal. After a few minutes of stalling, I dialed the Love family home number, figuring one of them would answer. After six rings, the old-fashioned answering machine clicked in. I listened to my mother’s brisk message, and then hung up.

I tried Antony’s number first, not really wanting to hear it from him, but reverting to a reliance on my eldest brother for this bit of information. I really wanted to get hold of Kieran, my second oldest, much calmer, and most favorite brother. When Antony didn’t answer, I started to panic. Scrolling through my calls from the past few months, I found a Florida-based number I thought might be Kieran’s since he’d returned home after the disaster of his brief NBA career.

“Hey, Angel?” His voice sent a bolt of relief across my twanging nerve endings. “That you?”

“Yeah. Hey. So … uh what’s going on?”

“She’s real sick, honey. You need to come home.” I covered my face and listened to the phrases stage four and breast cancer, already concocting excuses in my head, piling them up like stones in a fortress wall. “Daddy needs you here, Angelique. You’re the only one who can calm him down.”

“I’m … I can’t.”

“Get your ass home, baby sister,” my easygoing sweetheart of a brother demanded in a way that made me sit up and take notice. “This is the real thing. And it’s real bad. Do you need money for a ticket or gas or … whatever?”

“No, I can get myself home, Kieran. How did this just happen all of a sudden?”

“It didn’t. She’s kept it to herself, but Daddy got us all together and … just come on home. Please?”

“Fine,” I said, trying to come up with a way to wiggle out of it even as I pulled out my wallet so I could book a flight.

“Aiden’s here,” he said, his usually steady voice a little shaky, which pulled me even further into the surreal freak-out I was experiencing.

“I know,” I said, trying to be the calm one for a change. “Where’s Dominic? He around these days?”

“Guess you’ll find out once you get here. Let me know when and where to pick you up.” He hung up, shocking me, and giving me my first taste of real terror at the potential reality of a universe where Lindsay Halloran Love might no longer exist.

Four hours later I’d quit the lame show, collected a half month’s pay, and caught a plane, once I figured out that was only about twenty-five bucks more than a bus ticket. I sent Kieran a text before I boarded, smiling at his response.

KL: Sorry I was a dick earlier. It’s kind of stressful right now.

Me: No worries Red.

KL: C u soon. I’ll pick u up.

Me: Bringing the future Mrs. Redhead?

KL: No

I frowned at that. Antony had told me in an email Kieran was engaged and he was ga-ga over her. So his one-word answer to my leading question seemed odd. I shrugged, settled into my seat, and slept the entire two and a half hours it took to deposit me smack in the midst of Love family chaos. I deplaned and found the single suitcase I’d packed, figuring I’d be returning in a few weeks, once whatever was going to happen happened. Then I walked out into the warm Kentucky summer evening and almost burst into tears at all the familiar sensations bombarding me from every direction.

“Angel!”

The sound of my brother Kieran’s voice did it. I turned and ran straight for him, pressing my nose into his chest and clutching the back of his polo shirt. He let me sob it out, stroking my hair and grabbing my suitcase before it toppled over. After a few minutes, I looked up into his distinctive Halloran family features. “Sorry. Thanks for coming to get me.”

He grinned and let go. “All better?”

I sniffled and pulled my carry-on strap over my shoulders. “Yeah. How is she?”

“Well, apparently we are having a big old family dinner meeting tonight. My guess is that’s when we’ll get the lowdown.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and frowned at whatever he saw on the screen.

“So who is she, this future sister-in-law I have yet to approve?”

Kieran threw his arm across my shoulders and we headed for his car. He tossed my stuff in the trunk, hit a button to open the ragtop, and then opened my door, avoiding my question. Once we were out of the moderate Louisville airport traffic, I stuck a cigarette between my lips and went fishing in my bag for a lighter.

“Not in this car.” Kieran snagged it out of my mouth and let go of it overhead, sending it sailing out into the universe.

“Jerk,” I said, smiling at him and running my fingers through his shock of deep red hair. “Come on Francis, spill it. Who is she? How did you meet her? When’s the big day?” I used his middle name, in the way we sometimes did within our sibling pack. His was the only one that seemed to suit him, so it got used more often than anyone else’s.

He shot me a quick, odd look, then focused on the windshield. “Her name’s Melinda, she’s a lawyer. We met online. For now, that last one’s a little up in the air, but it is technically set for next summer.”

“Technically, huh?” I said as I studied his profile and sensed my protective hackles rise in relation to his obvious unhappiness. “I think I don’t care for her already.”

He snorted and floored it to pass a truck before making the exit onto interstate 64. “Better take a number.”

“Oh?” I wanted a cigarette right then so bad I almost tried to light another one.

“She’s not a Love family favorite.”

“Well, shit, Francis, Mama hated Crystal, too, but Antony didn’t care. She’ll get over it.” I closed my eyes and let the wind whip my hair every which way, nervous and anxious at the thought of seeing her again—my mother, whom I had managed to avoid for the better part of three years now.

Kieran made a noise, so I looked over at him in time to catch him wincing while he adjusted his super-long legs in preparation for the forty-five minute drive ahead. Kieran had played basketball on scholarship at the University of Kentucky, or “Basketball Mecca,” as it’s known in my family. After a few years playing overseas once he graduated, he managed to land a spot on an NBA team in Florida.

I was with Mama and Daddy watching him play, reluctantly, and only half caring about it, when he broke his leg and shattered his knee in a freakish accident. I thought Daddy was gonna have a heart attack while we watched the drama unfold, live, on television. Mama had been her usual steady self at first, but Kieran told me when she first saw him in the hospital bed in Miami she’d totally lost it.

I patted his leg. “Hurts still?” He nodded.

“Going to therapy regular now. Went this morning, and I always hurt way more afterwards. Oh, get this, guess who my physical therapist is?”

“No clue,” I said, taking a deep breath when the urge to upload nicotine hit me hard again.

“Cara.”

“Cooper?” I studied his profile, knowing that having the girl he’d loved for so long, and who dumped him their second year at college, turn up again—as his physical therapist, no less—would not be an easy thing. “Why’s she here?”

“Working. Oh, and being engaged to some rich guy, it would seem.” His voice stayed neutral, but I heard the underlying unhappiness, which hit me hard. Kieran was the single one of my pack of brothers not completely focused on his own needs. I forgot sometimes how much the loss of the one thing he’d loved, and had worked so hard to achieve, would be for him. And now, this?

“Well, whaddaya know, Little Miss Cara Cooper back in Lucasville.”

“Not for long. Her fiancé is moving them over to Oldham County soon.” He named the rich community near Louisville that had once been nothing but farm country.

“Well. Good for her, then.”

He nodded but didn’t elaborate. I sighed. Love family drama never ceased. While I hadn’t missed it, per se, I took a bit of comfort in its familiar contours.

“I think Antony is finally getting real with Rosie,” Kieran said about ten minutes later.

“Rosie Norris? I didn’t even know they were … never mind. Good for her and for him. They both deserve a little happiness. God knows Antony’s been flagellating himself way too long.”

“Yeah. It’s good. Mama loves her to pieces of course.”

His distinct emphasis on the pronoun made me suppress a giggle. My brothers—oldest and stoic Antony, sweetheart peacemaker Kieran, over-the-top troublemaker Dominic, and bookworm brainiac baby Aiden—never ever stopped competing with each other, no matter what they claimed.

I smiled, admitting to myself that I wanted to see them, that I’d missed them all, for four completely different reasons.

“How’s Daddy?”

Kieran sighed and stretched his right arm out across the seat, draping it there and driving with two fingers of his left hand—a distinctive posture I’d seen with every one of my brothers and my father. “He needs you. And I don’t know for how long.”

I frowned. “Well, I can’t promise I’ll—” The thought of an indefinite stay in my old room in the house where I’d spent so many miserable years trying to please my mother, and failing time and again, made my stomach churn.

“Don’t make any decisions now. Let’s see how this dinner goes—what we find out about the treatment and all that, Okay? Promise?” He glanced at me, his green eyes narrowed.

“I’ll make that promise to you, Francis. I’ll give Daddy whatever support he needs.”

He nodded and returned his attention to the gray strip of interstate. I had nothing more to say. I knew how frustrating it must be to my brothers, knowing I had such a strange sort of relationship with my mother. But they got her full attention, her total self, her complete, unconditional love. What I got from her was something else entirely, and I’d already spent too many years trying to figure out what I’d done wrong.

Chapter Five

I’ll admit that the moment I saw her, I burst into tears.

Probably because she was ensconced in the one room I associated with her fully, her kingdom, the kitchen.

When Kieran carried my suitcase in and set it by the front door, I held a finger to my lips, indicating he should stay quiet. I don’t know why. My mother and I certainly didn’t have a “surprise! I’m here!” relationship. The house felt so sickeningly familiar yet comforting at the same time, I needed a minute to absorb it.

I stood, watching her, standing shoulder to upper arm with my favorite brother, tears burning. She looked so very old, so drawn. Still bossy as ever, but her boyish figure was even thinner than I remembered. At that moment the concept of a world without my mother in it truly made me physically ill.

As if sensing my presence, she turned.

“Well, isn’t this a nice surprise,” she said. “What a crying shame I had to go and catch cancer to get you to come home for a visit.”

“Mama,” Kieran replied, his voice a low warning I recognized from all the years I’d spent letting my brothers and my father run interference for me. My anger eased some of my sadness, followed quickly by a kind of relief at resumption of the status quo. Before I could walk closer, to hug or to slap her—I wasn’t a hundred percent sure which—a commotion from the upper hall distracted us both.

“Look who’s here!”

I grinned and launched myself at my oldest brother Antony, reveling in his low laugh and strong arms. When he put me down, I noticed Rosie Norris standing near him. I gave her a quick hug, hoping my grumpy oldest sibling might actually find a bit of happiness and peace with quietly efficient, pretty widow. While I was talking to her, Aiden grabbed me from behind, threw me over his shoulder, ran out, and dumped me in the pool.

The dinner conference, or whatever the hell it was supposed to be, was a train wreck. In a strange way, it was nice to know nothing had really changed in the years since I’d absented myself from the Love Family Drama.

The only thing I felt sure of, that my father was utterly miserable about his wife’s medical prognosis, kept me at his side most of the night. My mother and I had yet to even truly greet one another, given all the various revelations and interruptions … up to and including her inviting a total stranger to eat and share in our current trauma.

Margot Hamilton was a therapist, I thought, whom Mama had befriended and decided in her usual “I’ve got this” fashion would be a positive addition to our family conversation. She was wrong, but I couldn’t help but notice the strange way Antony kept staring at her, and she at him.

It was the usual mess. And it reminded me why I’d avoided it whenever possible for the past three years. When I realized my niece AliceLynn, now a surly teenager, was to be a part of all this, I latched onto the poor girl, acknowledging her extreme misery at my father’s announcement that she would officially be moving home with her father. It was about time. But strange timing.

She and I sneaked off after the initial family fireworks and sat on the far side of the pole barn, passing a joint between us in silence.

“You home for a while?” she asked, once we’d induced the necessary buzz to recover from the earlier scene.

“Hope not,” I said, passing the thing to her. I looked up, pondering the sky I’d memorized from pretty much this same spot years ago.

“She’s bad off, Angel,” my sweet little niece, now a pot-smoking teenager, said to me. As if I hadn’t figured that out already.

“I know,” I said, not willing to let on how much I wanted to cry. “When’re your daddy and Rosie Norris getting married?

She sucked in a huge lungful of smoke and let it trail out her nostrils before passing the joint back to me. “My daddy doesn’t exactly confide that level of detail, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” I took the roach, depleted it, and extinguished the remaining spark under my shoe. “That therapy lady sure was fucking him with her eyes.”

“Oh, Lord,” AliceLynn said, smacking my leg. “That’s gross. He is still my daddy, after all.”

“Nice to see Aiden,” I said, by way of subject change.

“Yes. He’s comic relief, and he deflects Granddaddy’s attention a little.”

“I’ll bet he does.” I sighed. “We should go in.”

“We should,” she agreed, leaning her head on my shoulder.

By the time we made it to the patio, dinner was obviously over. I started clearing the plates, a bit frightened by the fact that my mother had left the table without doing it. When Margot the therapist re-emerged, claiming car trouble, and my oldest brother took off after her, I got a clear inkling of trouble of a different sort still to come.

But I had my own little mother-daughter reunion to consummate. Fortified by the pot, I spent a few minutes loading the dishwasher, wiping down all the surfaces as I’d been taught, and giving the kitchen a quick swipe with the broom, before deciding I’d stalled long enough.

“Oh, hey, honey. I wiped off the patio table.” Rosie Norris handed me a wet rag and tucked a lock of her curly hair behind her ear. “Whew. This is gonna be a tough go for your mama.”

“Yeah,” I said, rinsing out the cloth and draping it over the dish drainer that I’d emptied in my zeal to avoid actually talking to Lindsay. “I am so happy for you and Antony,” I said, leaning on the kitchen counter.

Aiden came in then, holding Rosie’s little boy, Jeffrey. Her husband Paul, Antony’s one-time best buddy in the world, had been killed in Iraq before the kid had been born. I caught what I knew damn well was a weird moment between them then … between Rosie and Aiden, not Rosie and the brother Kieran had led me to believe she’d been “with” for the past few years.

I shook my head, unwilling to even contemplate how badly that might go. “I should go see her,” I mumbled, shouldering past Aiden. As I walked up the four steps to the bedroom hallway, my heart pounded so hard it echoed in my skull. The door at the end of the hall was closed. I knocked.

“Come in,” my father said.

I opened it slowly, willing myself far away from this mess. “Angel,” he said, folding me into a huge hug. I held on tight, blinking hard, unwilling to cry. “She’s asleep,” he whispered.

“I declare, Anton Love, if you don’t quit babying me, I will snatch you baldheaded. I am not sleeping. It’s only eight-thirty at night, for heaven’s sake.” My mother’s distinctive drawl made me smile.

My father rolled his eyes.

“Hey, Mama,” I said, from the safe circle of my father’s arm.

She sniffed, tugged the quilt up under her arms and patted the bed beside her. “Come here and let me see you, Angelique. I didn’t get a minute to even breathe earlier. What do you think of Margot?”

Daddy gave me push when I didn’t move. I sat, staring at her, marveling at the strength in her voice and the extreme thinness of her hands and face. “I, um …”

“I think therapy will be just the ticket for Antony and AliceLynn,” she declared. Lindsay making her pronouncements was familiar territory. When she asked for your opinion, it was meant to reinforce her own, not as an actual request for yours.

“Mama, I …”

My mother tilted her head, studying me in a way that I vividly recalled. “You’ve been sick,” she said, taking my chin and turning my head left and right. “And you have hickeys, young lady.”

I slapped my palm over my neck, cursing her sharp eyes. “I haven’t been sick. Only … busy.”

“That school called me last month, but I haven’t had a chance to phone them, what with …” She waved up and down her prone form, dismissing the cancer with an “oh, this old thing” sort of gesture. I touched her leg—broomstick-thin under the quilt—pondering the delicious possibility of disappointing her yet again with my own news flash. But when she smiled at me, her eyes shimmered with tears. Startled by this in a way I couldn’t explain, I pulled my hand away.

“Hmm … well, anyway,” I said, trying to regain control of my voice. “Why don’t you rest?”

She swiped her eyes, even as they narrowed at me. She usually could slice straight through my bullshit way better than she ever could with her beloved boys. I’d seen a couple of them, Dominic most often, tell her such bald-faced lies I had to leave the room to keep from laughing at her naïveté. My favorite was when he wandered into the kitchen one Saturday morning—him about seventeen, me about eleven years old—with nothing on but his underwear. Our mother had noticed something was off within seconds.

“I don’t put your drawers away inside out, young man,” she’d said.

“Huh?” He’d glanced down, then over at me with a frown of “don’t you dare say anything.” Of course, I never did. “We went for a swim in the quarry, Mama. Had to get dressed in the dark.” He’d kissed her on the top of her head, accepted the plate of hot food in one hand, the other over the obvious hickey between his neck and shoulder. “I’ll, um, get my clothes on first,” he’d said, plunking his plate down next to mine.

She’d harrumphed around, muttering, “I’ll declare. That boy.” And, “Thinking he can sit nekkid at my kitchen table.” I continued eating my scrambled eggs, ignoring her.

Now she looked ready to say something. I tensed, prepping my own whopper of a lie, since I’d decided laying the I-dropped-out-last-year thing on her now would be a bit on the unfair side. She sighed and stayed quiet. I got up and kissed her papery cheek, my nose filling with the smells of her … the distinctive lilac-scented lotion she’d worn forever, bleach, starched cotton, and a hint of my father’s malty yeastiness lingering in her hair. “Love you,” I muttered, suddenly at a loss.

She looked up at me, her eyes sharp again. But instead of making a caustic remark, she patted my cheek. “Go sit with your Daddy, now. He’s been pining for you, I know.”