Текст книги "Family Love"
Автор книги: Liz Crowe
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 20 страниц)
Chapter Ten
Lucasville, Kentucky
One year later
“You can not be serious,” Kathy stared at her from the messy kitchen table. She had baby Antony on her knee, entertaining him with a set of rubber rings he kept gnawing on before tossing them to the floor with squeals of delight. Lindsay poured them both a glass of iced tea.
“You are serious.”
“As a heart attack,” Lindsay said, pressing the cold glass to her temple.
“Oh, honey,” her friend said, handing the baby his toys once more. “This one is such a handful, and you have all … this.” Her gesture encompassed the kitchen of the quad level house that required, among other things, a new air conditioning system. “Plus that brewery.”
Lindsay observed her oldest friend from her fresh perspective. She had, indeed married Anton, about two weeks after that first encounter in the storm, concocting a lie about her being pregnant. Which, ironically, turned out not to be a lie. It had been a somber affair, but one her father insisted on, wedding dress, mostly empty church and all.
She’d been ecstatic, not least because she was making her mother perfectly miserable.
Anton’s parents had been there, of course. His side of the room had overflowed with family. Her mother had barely spoken to any of them, leaving immediately after the ceremony, Lindsay’s morose father in tow. Her brothers had warmed up to the Loves at the small reception they’d hosted at their modest home on the other side of Lexington. Lindsay knew Anton’s mother did not approve of her, felt she was too big for her britches, and completely unable to function outside the protective circle of mansion, servants, and money.
“And the hips,” she’d tsk-tsked the first time Anton had taken her home to meet the family. “Not good for the babies.”
But Lindsay had been bound and determined to prove her wrong on every count. They’d been forced to spend the bulk of her pregnancy as tenants in her mother-in-law’s basement. Luckily, they had hours and hours to explore each other’s bodies, coming up with more ways to have sex than Lindsay ever dreamed possible. She learned she was insatiable when it came to Anton. His ardor matched hers.
So, after days spent sitting and staring out the basement windows and sharing stilted conversation and lunch with her in-laws and whatever cousins happened to have joined them, she’d greet Anton when he got home, bringing their dinner down to their miniscule space that held a bed, a shower, toilet, and sink, with just enough room left over for a large, overstuffed chair. And they would fuck each other silly until they fell into sweaty heaps and would feed each other the now-cold pasta or steak or whatever else his mother had prepared.
Lindsay had been operating in a fog, more or less on autopilot, since their strange farce of a wedding. She barely registered her humble, slightly damp, surroundings. The fact that Anton’s mother couldn’t seem to find a truly nice thing to say to her didn’t make much of an impression. She even attended their Catholic church in Lexington, but drew the line at conversion and setting a christening date for their baby. The ritualistic nature of their weekly services did soothe her, and she appreciated the young priest who always had a kind word for her in his soft Irish brogue.
But when the days stretched to weeks, the weeks to months, and she got bigger and more unwieldy, things took on a much less rosy hue. One late-spring, humid night near the end of the pregnancy, when it felt as though breathing the air in the dank basement apartment would finally suffocate her, she started crying and couldn’t stop.
Anton was summoned home, smelling of brewery and smoke, frantic, thinking the baby was coming.
Once she’d convinced him that wasn’t it, that she was miserable and wanted to go home, he’d knelt beside her, taken her hands in his and said, “My love, my Lindsay, we are home.” She’d stared at him, sniveling and hiccupping and swollen all over, and burst out with a string of curses.
He’d helped her to her feet, then up the rickety steps to the overheated kitchen. Anton’s mother was always cooking it seemed, and the house was always full of neighbors, cousins, and the one grandchild from Anton’s oldest brother Leo and his wife.
Nodding and smiling to everyone as they passed, Anton kept pulling her out of the house. Once he had her installed in his truck, he drove all the way to Lucasville while she continued to sob hysterically.
On the southwest end of town, he turned down a dark road, then into the driveway of a house she could barely see. He got out and helped her down, then led her up a few steps to a plain white front door with a small window at the top. “Where are we, Anton? I’m tired. I need to lie down.”
“Shhh,” he said, opening the door with a key and flipping on the lights in the foyer. He’d been grinning from ear to ear. She sniffled and looked around, taking in the up or down staircase choice. Going up, she walked into a large, shabby kitchen, then through to a good-sized eating area attached to a living room. Up a few more steps were four bedrooms and one bathroom.
Anton stayed put in the living room and let her roam. She found a wood-paneled lower level that had a sliding door out onto a small concrete patio. Another even lower level boasted a used washer and dryer set and a lot of empty space. She turned and plodded up the steps, hand to her back.
“What is this place?” she asked, letting him take her into his arms and press his knuckles into the small of her back where it hurt the most.
“Your home, my love.”
She leaned away to look him in the eyes. “What’s the rent?” She knew what they could afford, and it was, in short, not much.
He grinned and kissed her, running a hand under the curve of her stomach then up to cup her full breast. “No rent,” he said. “I bought it.”
“You bought this? With what?”
“With a loan from my rich uncle. We’ll have to take whatever furniture my parents will spare.”
“No, I won’t take a damn thing from them.”
He sighed and draped an arm across her shoulders. Lindsay studied the place. There were water stains on the ceiling, and it smelled faintly of dog, but it wasn’t Anton’s mother’s basement, so she was happy with it.
“Thank you.” She leaned her head on his shoulder, content for the moment and eager for the challenge of setting up her new home. A pain grabbed her then, making her grunt and bend over. A gush of fluid hit the floor between her legs.
Anton looked at her, then down at the floor. “Oh shit,” he said.
She nodded, gripping his arm. “You got that right.”
And now, almost six months to the day from that first glimpse of their quad-level money pit of a house, she’d realized she must be pregnant again. The symptoms were too obvious. She rested her palm on her stomach that had not returned to its flat state since giving birth to Antony Ian Love less than a year before. Kathy sighed and put Antony in his playpen. She gave Lindsay a quick squeeze, promised to come by again real soon, and left. Lindsay watched her go, figuring she’d not see her again.
She picked up the phone and called the brewery, telling Lorenzo to tell his brother he needed to come home.
Kieran Francesco was born eight months later, a squalling little mite with a cap of light red hair, the polar opposite of his dark-haired brother. Lindsay let herself relax, easing into life with, essentially, a set of twin boys, believing that the Lord had blessed her, most days. At least on days when she’d managed more than a few hours’ sleep.
Chapter Eleven
Lucasville
Three years later
“I can’t, honey. I have got to get to the brewery.”
Lindsay glared at her husband while he inhaled the breakfast she’d made—an actual one for a change, with eggs and bacon and toast. Antony was whamming on his high chair tray with a toy car, his new favorite activity. Kieran was fussing in the playpen, gripping the rails and gnawing on them, his new favorite activity, and one that had Lindsay frantic about germs.
“Anton,” she said, using every ounce of her self-control to keep from joining Kieran and chewing on a nearby object in frustration. “This house needs your undivided attention. Not to mention your sons.”
She noted the deepening ridge between his dark eyes when he frowned. He finished his coffee, got up without a word to her and plucked Antony from his seat, making him squeal in delight. After settling the boy on his shoulders with warnings to “sit still,” he picked Kieran up and kissed his flushed red cheek. “My boys,” he said, making Lindsay’s heart beat a little faster.
He took them both into the living room, where almost every available surface was festooned with toys, blankets, sippy cups and other random detritus. She leaned in the kitchen doorway and watched him ease fluidly to the floor, Antony still gripping his hair and hollering “Da! Da! Da!” over and over. Kieran, always a much quieter child, sat across from him mirroring his cross-legged pose.
“Quiet, boy,” he said to Antony, tugging him down and setting him next to his brother. They looked at each other, confused by this direct paternal attention. Their experience of their “Da” was mostly limited to quick kisses goodbye in the morning and occasionally a little face time while they bathed at night.
Mostly, thanks to the quality of the beer and food at the brewery and newly opened Love Pub, Anton was never home. She understood it on a certain level. The brewery was their only real source of income, now it was actually producing income. They’d lived on Anton’s rich, drunk uncle’s largesse for the better part of three years. Frank and JR had tried to help out, to slide them money from their father, but Anton had flatly refused to consider it.
“Play cars!” Antony yelped—at ear-splitting levels, as usual. “Da, let’s play cars!” He got up and dashed about the room, collecting his precious plastic and metal toys on wheels while Kieran sat and watched with his thumb in his mouth. She worried a little about Antony’s lack of volume control, and wanted to have his hearing checked. The nursery lady at church had clucked at her more than once about it, mentioning that it could account for his vocabulary, which she said was limited for a three and a half-year-old. But there was no money for ear doctors unless it was an emergency.
Figuring the boys were content for now, she returned to the kitchen with a sigh. The place was an absolute wreck, which made her insane most days. She’d learned how to can vegetables from a neighbor lady, who found her one day weeping at the kitchen table with one baby at her breast and the other one squalling in the playpen with a diaper full of shit. That day had been the first in her recent memory that anyone had taken an interest in her well-being beyond asking “how were the boys?”
The woman had come right in the door after knocking and hearing all the noise. She’d changed Antony and put him down for a nap, then taken Kieran, burping and changing him, while she encouraged Lindsay to go take a shower.
When Lindsay emerged from her first shot at personal hygiene in almost a week, the woman—Marianne—had put the kitchen in order and was making a fresh pot of coffee. Lindsay hadn’t had the time or serious inclination to make friends with neighbors, or anyone much beyond the few young mothers she knew from the Episcopalian church located a ways out from town that had been their religious compromise after Antony was born.
“Cop a squat, hon. I brought cookies.” Marianne had poured them each a cup of the most delicious coffee Lindsay had ever tasted, and encouraged her to eat a couple of her homemade snickerdoodles. “You look done in.”
Lindsay had nodded, embarrassed by the tears that formed. “It’s all right,” Marianne said. “I only have the one, my sweet little Rosalee, and she’s off at her grandma’s for a week at the lake.”
Marianne had stayed awhile that day, and returned the next with vegetables from her garden. Lindsay had stared at all the fresh bounty—green beans, tomatoes, zucchini—in utter dismay. “We can’t eat all this before it goes bad.”
“I know. I’m gonna teach you how to put ‘em up.” She’d given Lindsay her first canning lesson, promising that once she had her own garden going, she’d be glad of it come winter when she could pull her own vegetables from the basement to make for Sunday dinner. Lindsay had reserved comment on “her own garden.” She could barely manage “her own house” at this point.
But last year Anton and his brothers had put in a small kitchen garden, near where they planned to build a pole barn. She’d even managed to put up a few of her own things, and did enjoy the fresh cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes. It had been a bumper crop this year. There were vegetables coming out her ears, but she was bound and determined to eat every last one of them, well into the fall and winter months … which meant she was canning and freezing every single day just to keep up. She ached all over, between lifting the boys and the heavy steamer off the stove. And the kitchen was a complete disaster.
A loud bang and a shriek of pain from her youngest brought her back to the present with a jolt, and sent her scurrying to the living room. Anton had Antony by the arms while Kieran toddled over to her, holding his forehead and wailing. She picked him up. “What happened?”
“This one,” Anton said, his jaw clenched, “thought it was a good idea to throw a car at his baby brother.”
“Anton, calm down. They’re boys. They’re rough.”
But she was worried about the huge goose egg on Kieran’s forehead. He jammed his thumb into his mouth and buried his face in her neck. It was blistering hot already. She tried not to run the leaky AC much, since it made the electric bill almost too high to pay during the summer. But at that moment, she was so sweaty, her back hurt so badly, and her son was sticking to her, sliming her neck with tears and snot, she didn’t care about the next month’s electric bill.
“God damn it,” she muttered, stomping over to the thermostat.
“God damn it,” Antony parroted, clear as day. She froze and turned. Anton looked up at her, his lips twitching in amusement. “God damn it! God damn it!” Antony sang out, sensing he might have broken the tension in the room.
“Hush your mouth,” his father said before giving him a harmless light whack on his butt and setting him down. The little boy’s dark eyes widened. “I swan, Lindsay, this boy is a mirror image of Lorenzo. All the way down to his attitude.” He raised a dark eyebrow at her. “You sure I’m the only Love brother you—”
“Anton Dominic Love, if you even finish that sentence in your fool head, I will come across this room and snatch you baldheaded.” Kieran was hiccupping now. His arms nearly choked her. She sighed and dropped into a chair, landing on several squeaky toys in the process. Antony glared at all of them before running up the few steps to the bedroom hall and into his room.
Anton’s shoulders slumped as he took in the chaos.
She kept patting Kieran, making soothing noises. He finally peeled himself off her. “Down, Mama,” he said, letting her kiss his boo-boo before hitting the floor and running off after the brother who’d whacked him, calling “Ant-ny! Ant-ny!”
Exhaustion, heat, frustration all hit her hard. She let herself drift, the familiar sound of the wonky ceiling fan that needed balancing and the loud dishwasher that needed replacing filling her ears.
“They gonna be all right in there?” Anton asked, making her startle.
“Who? The boys? Of course. They’re inseparable. But Antony gets jealous if you pay Kieran too much mind.”
He pulled off his Kentucky Wildcats ball cap and ran a hand over his hair. Lindsay watched him, wishing she had the energy to get up and go to him. They hadn’t had sex in weeks, not since … She blinked, counted on her fingers, and then slapped a hand over her mouth.
“What is it?” Anton glanced at his watch. “I really need to get to …”
“Lord have mercy, Anton. I am pregnant again.” She was sprawled on the couch wearing a pair of jeans that could probably walk on their own and an old Halloran Farms T-shirt. For some reason, she glanced at her toenails. She hadn’t painted them a pretty color in more than four years now, not since the boring days spent in her mother-in-law’s basement waiting for Anton to get home so they could screw some more. Her hair was too long, and in need of a professional thinning out. But there was no money for that.
There was no money for much at all beyond the small amount Anton insisted on paying his uncle for their house loan, plus groceries, gas, and insurance for the second-hand truck she now drove, the utilities, and the one luxury she allowed herself, daily delivery of the Lexington Herald newspaper. She’d finally paid the last installment to the hospital for Kieran’s birth only the week before.
She burst into tears. Anton stood, staring at her, mouth hanging open, probably doing a similar calculation of impossibility in his head. “We can’t,” she said, covering her face. “I can’t do this anymore.” She got up, fury replacing frustration. “I am no more than a glorified maid and cook, and … and … baby factory.” She smacked her stomach, then began stalking through the room, snatching up toys and blankets, cursing under her breath. “I’m not. I won’t do it.”
Anton grabbed her arm and turned her. His handsome face, the one she had come to adore—even though she’d admitted to herself she married the man in a fit of pique, hoping for the very dismay it caused her parents—was smooth and calm.
He took the junk from her and tossed it all on the floor before folding her into an embrace. She closed her eyes, sucking in deep breaths of him, the man who’d given her exactly what she wanted—escape.
“Shhh …” he said when she started sobbing again. “It’s all right. It will be all right. I promise. The brewery’s doing great. We should expand, but are gonna wait it out a couple of years and just keep cranking on what we’ve got.”
“I don’t want to hear about that goddamn place,” she muttered into his chest. A ridiculous statement. The brewery was all they had besides this falling-down-around-her-ears house. “I hate it.” An even sillier thing to say.
But Anton simply held onto her, the way he always did, riding out the temper and the tears, allowing her to get to the other side of the moment, her pride only a bit tattered.
When he pulled away, his eyes were dark and serious. She let him kiss her softly, then more intensely, as the messy room, the loud boys, the upside-down kitchen all faded from her consciousness. He always could do that, shut out the real world and its late bills, boiling hot house, squabbling kids.
“Lindsay, I love you so much,” he said, reaching down to grab her ass. “Was it the night of the storm?”
She sighed and let him reach under her shirt for her bra-less boobs, amazed that her poor body could even respond, but it did. “Yeah, I’m guessing. I mean, I think that was the last time we did it.” The night of the storm had been epic, a post-fight, midnight encounter after she’d spent an hour fuming in the other room and then crawled into bed and pounced, needing the physical connection so badly it had been painful.
And somehow, right then, she was all right with the concept of a third child. A baby, she calculated when Antony would be four, Kieran three. Manageable, she figured, now that she had a few friends who could help.
But as soon as she fumbled for Anton’s zipper and he was tugging her up toward the kitchen for a modicum of privacy, she heard another bang and a screech of anger, then a cry of pain.
“Shit,” Anton muttered, putting his clothes together and running for the steps. “Please, dear Lord, let it be a girl this time.”
Lindsay watched him run down the hall and throw open the door. Deciding to let him deal with the boys for a change, she tugged her shirt down and rebuttoned her jeans, smiling at the thought of a baby girl … a daughter, which she would treasure. They’d be friends, like sisters, but with a stronger bond. She determined right then and there that she would be the best mother to her little girl. Still smiling, she patted her stomach, making a mental note to call the doctor on Monday to have him confirm what she already knew in her soul.
As she was passing by it, the wall-mounted phone rang, startling her out of her perfect mother-daughter relationship musings. She grabbed her cooling cup of coffee and took a sip before answering, figuring it was Marianne, hoping she might come over and bring Rosie. The bossy little girl distracted her boys nicely. She was already thinking how she’d invite Tanya Norris, another young mother she’d met at church, and ask her to bring her son, Paul, who was almost the exact same age as Antony.
“Hello?” She sat, only half listening, half pondering the pretty, pink nursery she’d make out of the fourth bedroom.
“Lindsay?”
“Oh, hi, Frank. What’s going on?”
“Um, honey, it’s Mama. She’s … well, she’s dyin’, and she’s askin’ for you.”
Lindsay froze, not even hearing when Anton came in, carrying one son in each arm, both of them sobbing. She glanced up and noted blood running down Antony’s cheek. Without a word, she hung up, took the boy and cleaned the wound. She plunked him in the living room amidst his cars then took Kieran from Anton. He quieted within a few seconds.
“I have to go see Mama,” she said in a small voice.
Anton frowned. “I’ll take the boys. Or do you want me to come with you?”
She shook her head and turned from him, her mind blank and her chest aching with emotions she didn’t care to identify. “Come on, darlings,” she said, taking Antony by the hand. “Let’s put on our Sunday clothes.”
Antony pulled away from her. She gripped him hard and leaned down to look into his Love family eyes. “Young man, you will come with me, and you will do what I say. Mama is not in the mood for your nonsense.”
He blinked, glanced over at his father, then at her. “Okay.”
“You mean, ‘yes ma’am,’” she said, still holding his hand tight.
“Yes ma’am.” His small voice nearly broke her heart. But she had to establish control over this now, because, no matter how many fantasies of baby girls in fluffy pink dresses she might conjure, she was certain there’d be another Love brother added to this fold in a few months.
“Yes ma’am,” Kieran parroted around his thumb.
“Take your finger out of your mouth, Kieran Francesco.”
He did. Antony took his brother’s hand and they went carefully up the steps to the bedrooms.
“Let me know if you need me, or anything,” Anton said from the kitchen. “I love you, Lindsay.”
She pulled her heavy hair up off her neck but didn’t turn to face him. “I know you do,” she said, following her boys upstairs to change into a decent outfit so she could introduce them to their dying grandmother.
By the time she realized that her response had been somewhat less enthusiastic than it should have been, Anton had left.
She found a half-decent dress and slapped on a bit of makeup, then picked up the kitchen phone, determined to put it right—to assure Anton that she did love him, more than she knew how to express some days.
She tapped her fingers on the cracked Formica, her mind whirling at the scene she anticipated at her estranged mother’s deathbed as she waited for someone to locate her husband and put him on the phone. “What is it?” Anton said, his voice neutral in a way she understood, and which made her glad she’d paused to do this before heading to the hospital. “Lindsay? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, honey. I just wanted to tell you I love you … too.” She gnawed her fingernail, nervous for some reason at his silence.
“I know you do, Linds,” he said.
She opened her mouth to respond, but he’d already hung up.
