Monsters (20 page)

“You know, Tommy, the last thing I want to be right now is the subject of a ‘Tommy DeMarco seen with unknown woman' story.”

It looked very intimate,
an eyewitness will say. The last thing I want to be right now is one more in a string of those stories.

He frowns. “Stace, look. I know you're mad . . .” He stretches his arm farther, and I put my hands in my lap.

“Why would I be?” I smile as nicely as I can. “I'm leaving tomorrow, so I get that you have to start making plans for next week.”

“Look at you, honey,” he says, sitting up straight and reaching for his glass. “You're so understanding.”

A
LMOST THE MINUTE
I got home, I was packing the boys up to spend Christmas at my parents'. It was already hard enough driving home at night to the only house on the block with no lights up. And then it was January, the longest, coldest month of the year, and Phillip called me a couple of times, and we went for coffee twice, and lunch, but it's all the way into February before we can find a date that works for dinner. Maybe I was stalling.

I drop the boys at my sister's for the night and head back home to get ready, try on everything in my closet, and finally settle on black jeans, a silk turquoise tank, and a fitted jacket. I have a pair of black stilettos in the back of my closet that I haven't worn in years, but I'm worried they're too much for a guy like Phillip. I can't remember how tall he is. I mean, I remember him as tall, but I also remember him as standing beside Craig, so I can't be sure. Lately, I don't feel sure of anything. The phone rings while I'm doing my eyes. No photo, just the little green robot and the number buzzing in. Tommy. We still talk all the time. I thumb it to answer and hit the speaker key.

“Sadie wants me to meet this kid,” he says.

I'm pulling my eyelid, trying to make a straight line. “No way. Bad idea.”

“Yeah, well, she's bringing him over. She's on her way.”

“Tommy, you can't.”

“What do you want me to do, call her? Tell her not to come?”

I look at the clock. Phillip will be here any minute. I don't have time for this shit.

“I don't know, Tommy. I think you're screwed.” I've moved on to lipstick, but I think it's too red. I don't know. I don't know how to do any of this. “She won't believe you if you act like you like him, but you can't act like a dick either.” I hear him grunt, and I say, “I'm serious, if you come down on this kid, Sadie's going to want him even more. She'll be like, ‘My dad's such an asshole. He doesn't know what love is. Blah, blah, blah.' You're gonna have to play this really cool, really straight.”

“Yeah, that'll be easy.”

“You're the actor. She wants to see what'll happen when she puts you two together, and you've got to give her nothing. You've got to be dull as shit.”

He laughs. “I don't really do dull.”

“Yeah well, tonight you do.” I slip the shoes back on and look in the mirror. My hair is too big, and I think I have too much eye shadow on, and I just feel too old for this. “Look, I've got to go,” I say. “I have a date.”

“A what?”

“A date.”

“Like a date date?” He sounds incredulous. Like he's made any effort to see me in the past eight weeks. I wonder how long he expected me to wait.

“Jesus. Yes. A date.”

He's quiet for a second. “I don't know how I feel about that.”

Exactly,
I think.
That's the whole fucking problem, isn't it?
Though I obviously can't say that.

“You don't get to feel anything about it, Tommy. It has nothing to do with you.”

Then the doorbell rings, and the dog is barking, and my hair really is too big, and I say, “I've got to go.” I hit
end call
, and I rush down the stairs to the front door and shove Bear out of the way with my knee. When I open the door, there's Phillip, and he has a bottle of wine from the auction, and when he steps in the house, he is tall enough and he looks totally, totally sweet.

•   •   •

He takes me for sushi, which is perfect. I have a seaweed salad, this vegetarian roll with sweet potato and olive oil, not exactly authentic, but whatever, and besides I think the whole chopsticks thing is sexy. And there's sake, lots of it, and it's totally warming me up. Halfway through, I slip the jacket off and swing it over the back of my chair, and when I turn back around, Phillip's eyes are all over me, and I think,
Oh, I've got this,
and from then on I feel absolutely fine.

I wait until dinner's over to check my phone. I've been really good, completely attentive, totally there, but the text from Tommy just reads,
Fucking nightmare,
and I feel like I want to call him right away.

“We could walk up the street, grab another drink?” Phillip suggests as we stand up. He holds my jacket and slips it up over my arms.

“Yeah, yes, I would love to,” I say, but I hold my phone up apologetically. “I just have to make a quick call about this. Kids.” I didn't technically say my kids, so I feel good about not lying.

“Sure. Of course. I'll just wait.” He indicates the doorway like he's going to stand out in the entryway, and I say, “Great, I'll just be a minute,” and walk back to the hallway by the bathrooms.

“What happened?” I say when Tommy picks up. He sounds a little drunk.

“This kid is an asshole, a total piece of shit.”

“Tommy, what did you do? Jesus, you didn't hit him?”

“I didn't hit him.” He sighs. “I threw him out of the house.”

“Goddamn it.” I lean against the wall, push the toe of my shoe against the baseboard, try to focus on that and not the sound of Tommy's voice.

“He's eighteen, Stacey. He's way older than she is. I mean, this is statutory rape, isn't it? I should press charges.”

“Tommy, come on, you can't press charges. This is her boyfriend. She'll hate you.”

“She hates me already to do this shit to me.” He pauses. I can hear him drinking. Even over the phone he sounds sloppy. “Fucking punk-ass piece of shit. You should have seen it. He's got his hands on her the whole time, and not like he's being sweet with her. It's like he owns her. In my goddamn house.” He's starting to yell, and I have to hold the phone away from my ear. “This little piece of shit comes in my house and puts his fucking hands on my daughter.”

I let the side of my head rest for a second against the wall, but then I remember where I am, and it just seems kind of disgusting.

“So I told him to get out.”

“What did Sadie do?”

“She was crying, and he said, ‘Sadie, we're going,' and I said, ‘Fuck you, she's not going anywhere, and if you talk to my daughter that way
again, if you come in my house and talk to her like that, if you fucking touch her, I'll cut off your dick.'”

“Jesus, Tommy.”

“And then I threw him out.”

And here I am standing in a restroom hallway with the light above me flickering, and my feet hurt, and Phillip is out front waiting for me, and I don't know how to end the call. I don't know how to let go, so I just say, “God, Tommy, I don't know what to say, but I know it's not good.”

•   •   •

“Everything okay?” Phillip asks as we walk out to the sidewalk.

“Yeah, just, you know.” I shrug.

He smiles. “Well, should we go?” He nods in the direction of the bar up the street. He doesn't take my arm, but he walks next to me, and with the heels we're almost shoulder to shoulder. With the heels, I wish he would offer his arm like Michael used to. Michael always paid attention to my shoes.

•   •   •

When Phillip drops me home, I ask him in for a drink. He says, “I've probably had too much already.” I think,
Jesus, are you that out of practice?
but I just say, “Coffee, then?” And he says, “Yeah, coffee would be great.”

I start the pot and then turn around to face him, lean my hands back against the counter. The granite feels cold beneath my palms.

He smiles. He says, “You look really beautiful.”

I think,
Finally,
and I say “Yeah?” I raise my chin a little. I kind of chew on my bottom lip, but he just stands there, all the way across the room, waiting. I hold his eyes for a long time and still nothing. I mean,
there's only so much I'm going to do. The coffeemaker beeps, and I pour him a cup. “Cream? Sugar?” I say.

“Both.”

And then he stands there and drinks the fucking coffee, like just drinks it, and I think if I had known that was what he wanted, I would not have invited him in.

When I walk him to the door, he hugs me, wrapping his arms around me in this awkward, safe mid-arm range. We're elbow to elbow. And then he kisses me good night in this really chaste, dry-lipped way, and he says, “I don't want to go too fast for you.”

I'm thinking,
Really? This is fast?
so I lean my weight into him, pushing him back against the door, and I pull his lips open with mine. I flick his tongue with my tongue.

I lean back onto my heels and wipe my lipstick off his lips, and I say, “I think I'm fine. Really. I think I'm pretty good.”

•   •   •

The boys are watching cartoons when I show up to get them in the morning. Stevie's lying on his stomach, propped up on his elbows. “Hi, Mom,” he calls. He always notices when I come in.

“Morning, babies,” I say. I squat down and they give me distracted hugs. They're both looking over my shoulder at the TV.

I walk into the kitchen, and Jenny pours me a cup of coffee. “I'm making pancakes,” she says. “With chocolate chips. You want one?”

“I've already eaten.” I lean against the counter to watch her.

“Bullshit.”

“No, I have. I ate a cup of yogurt.” Or half a cup. Whatever, it's not like I measured.

She turns around and ladles scoops of batter onto her griddle.
It's blackened, well-seasoned. She uses it a lot. “How was your date?” she asks.

I shrug. “Eh. He's a little slow.”

She turns to look at me. “Like in the head?”

“Jenny, he's a doctor. He's not slow in the head. He's just a little, you know, not aggressive.”

“Oh,” she says, drawing it out like she's made a discovery, “like slow in bed?”

“Who knows? Maybe he's really quick in bed.” I take a sip of the coffee. “But definitely slow to get there.”

“Ugh.” She makes a face. “I hate that.” She turns back to flip the pancakes. They are perfect, golden, except where the chocolate's melted out. They smell like burnt cocoa.

“Anyway, he's nice,” I say.

She waves me off. “Who cares about nice? Nice is overrated.”

“No, nice is underrated. Hence Tommy, international sex god.”

“Tommy?” she says. She sounds surprised. “You're not thinking about sleeping with him?”

“No! It's just, you know, the whole sexiest-man-alive thing. People seem to like that type.”

“I always assume that type doesn't try very hard. Like you should just be so grateful . . .”

I laugh into my coffee. “Oh my god, Jenny, can we not? I mean, gross.”

“Gross?” She leans back against the counter, folds her arms, the spatula still in one hand. “You brought it up. And I've seen you flirting and texting, so don't try to feed me this ‘gross' line. It would be a stupid thing to follow through on, but you don't think he's gross.”

“No, I mean, yeah, he's not . . .” I shake my head. “I meant ‘Gross,
we're friends.' Jesus, Jenny.” I set my mug down. “And anyway, I thought we were going to talk about my date.”

“You said you didn't like him. Too slow.”

“I like him very much. That's why I was disappointed by the slowness.”

She points behind me. “Hand me those plates.”

She has a stack of little colored plates, so they know whose is whose by favorite color. She knows my kids' favorite everything. She's like Mary Poppins.

“Did he kiss you good night?”

“Yeah.” I shrug. “I mean, it took a while, but he finally did.”

“Was it weird?” she says.

And I realize that if we don't count Tommy, and of course we aren't, Michael was the last person I kissed.

“Yes,” I say. “It was weird.”

•   •   •

I get a text from Sadie in the afternoon. It says,
My dad is an asshole. I don't know what to do.
I think about calling her, but I'm in the middle of filling out papers for the boys' school. We've switched doctors and now no one can find their vaccination schedule. I've been getting calls from the school nurse.

I text back,
I agree. He is an asshole, but he really loves you. Cut him some slack.

I think she must be waiting by the phone because she replies immediately. I imagine her sitting in her reading chair, twisting the loose threads in her fingers, hiding her eyes with her hair.
He says I'm grounded, and my mom's in Europe and I have to live with him for the whole month and if he won't let me see Matt I'm going to scream. I'm going to kill
myself.
I don't take this threat seriously. She's not the type to do anything quick. She'll sit and starve herself, but she's not going to pull a razor across her wrists. Well maybe, but not deep enough to matter.

Still, I reply,
Don't say that. Why doesn't he like Matt?
and then I text Tommy,
Sadie is freaking out. Why is she grounded?