Family Affair (3 page)

"How was your day?" Gitana asked, as she scratched first Annie's ears and then Jane's.

"Well spent and yours?"

"Profitable."

That was Gitana's keyword for she sold a lot of orchids or she got a wicked deal on a shipment of orchids. She looked radiant. Had her pregnancy already given her that glow people always talk about?

"Are you still willing to have that chat with Stella?"

Gitana smiled. "No time like the present."

She said it without cringing. Chase was impressed. "We'll feed the dogs and then pop over during her cocktail hour."

"Is she more amiable then?"

Chase nodded. "More like less argumentative. Her combat skills are slightly impaired." She bounced a tennis ball for Jane who caught it in midair.

"At least that's in our favor," Gitana said, as she opened the kitchen door.

Chase followed her in. The dogs came in behind them. Gitana set her bag on the counter and retrieved two biscuits from the treat jar. She indicated down with her hand and both dogs sat. She gave them their biscuits and patted their heads.

"Let's get it over with," Chase said, filling the dog bowls with kibble and trying to look cheerful.

Chapter Three

Stella Banter lived in an enormous house in Four Hills. The silos of the missiles that were part of Kirkland Air Force Base were ostensibly in her backyard. She liked it that her property was protected in the finest manner. It went well with the rest of her well-deserved privileged life. Every time Chase pulled up in the circular driveway with its automatic black wrought iron gates—the letter "B" prominently displayed—she wondered about all this privilege and how much of it was truly deserved. Not that Chase had not benefited from the money—but she saw it as fortuitous, not a right. Novels of the horrors of the poor often popped into her head: Jude the Obscure, The Grapes of Wrath and Sinclair's The Jungle. She was simply a member of the Lucky Sperm Club and guilt welled up.

"Her gardens always look so beautiful," Gitana said, as they passed through the poplar trees that lined the drive. Behind them lay manicured lawns and flower beds. There was a pond and a stone wall section lined with topiaries.

"Yeah, and it takes two full-time gardeners and a lot of water." She parked in front of the house—a brick colonial something like Martha Stewart's Turkey Hill. They'd driven Chase's car, a steel gray Volkswagen Passat. The car irritated her mother because it wasn't flashy. It was 'the People's car,' Chase had informed her.

"People without means, kind of car," was her mother's retort.

She didn't want her mother to think that just because she was going to be a grandmother that their mother-daughter feud had come to an end. Driving the Land Rover might have signified that.

Rosarita answered the door. "What a surprise!" She hugged both Chase and Gitana, her brown face beaming with delight. "She said nothing about you coming."

"We wanted it that way," Chase said.

"She's in the living room having her medicine." She ushered them through.

Chase gazed at Rosarita with affection. She was from El Salvador. She saw Stella as her glorious benefactor. Stella could do no wrong. Her mother, quite out of character, was amazingly kind and generous to Rosarita, who in turn excused any of Stella's bad behavior. Subsequently, the evening cocktails were referred to as "medicine" versus a problem with the bottle.

They walked down the statue-lined marble hallway to the living room. Rosarita offered to bring iced tea. "Is that good?"

"Perfect," Chase said, as they entered the completely white living room decorated in what Chase referred to as overdone heaven.

"To what do I owe this honor?" Stella said, waving a hand. Lithe with aristocratic facial features and bobbed platinum hair, Stella was still beautiful at fifty-seven.

"We have some news," Chase said, taking a seat next to Gitana on the white leather couch.

"Oh, yes. I wondered when you were going to tell me. You know, Gitana, we will have to sue." Legs crossed, Stella sipped her martini and studied them from where she sat on the barstool before the white vinyl wet bar.

"Lacey told you. I'm going to kill her," Chase said. "She couldn't be here, so she beat me to the punch. That little bitch."

"You'll do no such tiling. She couldn't help herself. When she first found out she was afraid you'd be mean and keep it to yourself as some sort of punishment." Stella narrowed her eyes, as if to test her theory.

"Now, why would I do that? We're here aren't we? I told her we'd come tonight," Chase said.

Rosarita brought in a tray with the pitcher of iced tea and two glasses. She gave Chase that warning look she always did when beverages other than vodka were being served in the white room. Chase nodded. "We'll be careful."

Rosarita withdrew from the room. Chase poured them both a glass and squeezed in lemon from the little silver bowl on the tray. Rosarita thought of everything.

"We didn't intend to leave you out," Gitana said. She sipped her tea and was silent. They'd decided that this was Chase's gig and that she should handle it.

"We had some things to sort out. It wasn't exactly like Gitana chose motherhood," Chase said, getting irritated. She got up and grabbed three of her mother's favorite Faberge eggs from the sofa table. She juggled them. Stella pretended not to notice. Over the years full of arguments, Chase had become adept at juggling.

"Motherhood is never chosen," Stella replied.

"Gag me," Chase said.

"We're still going to sue," Stella said, calmly sipping her drink.

"They offered to pay all medical expenses," Gitana said.

"Poppycock. Raising a child is an expensive endeavor. Don't I know." She pointedly stared at Chase who scowled back.

"I don't remember you working at Circle K trying to make ends meet," Chase said.

Stella waved her off. "We're going to sue for damages and enough money for a well-financed trust fund. That child will be going to Harvard when I'm done."

"I don't think that's necessary," Gitana said, running her hand through her hair.

Stella ignored her. "I'll take care of everything. I called Owen."

Owen was their nasty, slimy, family lawyer. Chase loathed him.

"And your fucked-up years are over," Stella said, pointing at Chase.

"Excuse me? Please, not in front of the child," Chase reprobated.

"Child?"

"The shrimp in Gitana's uterus. She'll have eyes and ears any day. She could have them now for all we know." Chase threw the Faberge eggs higher. Long-distance juggling required more skill. If she ever quit writing she could join the circus.

"How do you know the baby is a she? And as a matter of biology, he or she doesn't have ears yet," Stella said.

"But he or she will, so we all have to watch our language," Gitana said, looking at Chase who had the filthiest mouth of them all.

Stella got off the barstool and slid the ottoman over, propping up Gitana's feet and fluffing a pillow to put behind her back. Chase, who had never seen her mother give a flying fuck about anyone, was astonished. Although Gitana did look a bit like a rag doll her mother was playing with, Gitana smiled, did not speak and sipped her iced tea. She has the class of the ages, Chase thought. She studied her mother carefully.

"As I was saying," Stella said. She put one hand on her hip, jutted one foot forward and clutched her martini. "Your fucked up years are over. You're going to be a father. It's time you behave and live up to your responsibilities."

Chase stopped juggling in shock at this revelation. She managed to catch two of the Faberge eggs. They all watched the third one go sailing off. Gitana stuck out her hand, and like the lucky spectator at a baseball game, caught the egg. Chase placed the other two eggs in their stands. The gravity of being a parent hit her full force. Her mother was right.

"Can I have a martini?"

"Ha! I knew you'd come around." Stella set her martini down and went to sit by Gitana. "Together, we can reform her. More tea?"

Gitana nodded.

Chase refilled her glass and mixed herself a martini. The drink was vile, but it did straighten up her nerves.

"Supposing my fucked-up years are over what are these next years going to be?" She went back to the white vinyl bar and swung around on the stool.

"These will be the butter years. I've always likened the growing periods of a person's life to bread. First, there is the yeast rising, kneading and rolling—the form your choices make as to the course of your life. Then there's die baking, your life actions brought to fruition. As your life choices bring success there's buttering the bread."

"And then you're toast," Chase said, unimpressed by the lengthy metaphor.

"Where do the fuck-up years come in?" Gitana said.

"Improper kneading," Stella said, pointing at Chase.

"I think it's a bad batch of yeast. That stuff does expire, you know." She grimaced as she sipped her martini, it was awful stuff.

"The center falls in and the loaf is misshapen."

"More like incorrect oven temperature—the cook's fault," Chase retorted.

"Subsequendy, a work gone awry." Stella pursed her lips.

"In Binky Land." Chase said, referring to the imaginary world her mother had created. She felt sure this would put an end to the banal metaphors about stupid bread.

Stella smiled. Chase, having thought she'd gotten the best of the debate, was perplexed.

"You remember Binky Land?" Stella inquired of Chase.

"I plan on continuing the tradition." She snagged a cocktail olive and went to sit by Gitana.

"What's Binky Land?" Gitana said.

Stella got up and poured herself another martini. She looked at Chase. If Stella was quiet it meant the floor was relinquished to the next speaker.

"My odious cousin, Cliff, used to visit in the summer. He thought Peter Pan was a fag, so Stella came up with Binky Land to keep him quiet. It was a magical place where good and evil battle—like an amalgamation of Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia with a little of Kipling's The Jungle Book thrown in. It was really quite amazing."

"Maybe you should've been a writer," Gitana said. She was notorious for trying to find a career for Stella. She was always telling Chase that a woman of her mother's intelligence needed an outlet.