One Last Lie (21 page)

“I definitely need a vacation,” he muttered, trying to cast off the feeling of dread. His mind was now on one thing: getting home and hugging Jonathan, the one solid thing in his life. He shook his head as he hurried toward the elevator… the light would be yet another secret to claw at his gut.

16

“Holy shit, Angie, what the hell happened to you?”

Tommy dropped his suitcase next to the mud-stained welcome mat and closed the door behind him. He followed Angela to the sofa, sidestepping to avoid an empty pizza box, and watched her fall onto the grimy cushions.

If he wasn’t so bewildered by the sight of her, he would’ve laughed at the paisley housedress she was wearing — almost identical to the one his obese Gramma wore every single day. Angela moved painstakingly slow, the sofa pillows giving in to her every move, apparently making it impossible for her to get comfortable. He caught glimpses of the huge limbs beneath her dress; folds of skin dangling like a sack of potatoes, heavy with cellulite that looked as painful as it did hideous. Her once slender legs were now thick and mapped with veins that traveled all the way down to the powdery-blue ankle socks covering her swollen feet. Tommy felt sick to his stomach.

She leaned over to grab the television remote, heaving a short grunt with each movement. He hesitated before looking into the short sleeves of her housedress, taking in the sight of the dangling skin beneath her arms, miniature versions of the potato sacks he’d observed swinging below her thighs. He covered his eyes with his hand, using his thumb and forefinger to rub his eyebrows and hoping that when he reopened them, the old, beautiful Angela would be sitting beside him, her slim legs crossed, her perky breasts awaiting his searching hands. But when his eyes parted, a younger version of his Gramma seemed to drape herself over the entire sofa. Once again, his heart dropped like a weight.

He glanced at the door, planning his escape, but his eyes caught Angela’s and he saw a vague reflection of the woman he’d fallen in love with; the Angela who always made his heart skip a beat and his groin burn with desire; the woman who could literally drive him away at times, then draw him back with a sensual gaze. Her eyes were as deep and mysterious as they’d always been and for a few seconds her face changed; the jowls gone, the dark circles under her eyes lightening like magic. He fell back into the sofa and wrapped his hand around her foot.

“Angie, what the fuck? What happened?”

She hit the Mute button and threw the remote onto the table. “For God’s sake, Tommy, I didn’t invite you out here to give me the third degree. I need help.” She grabbed an open bag of Ruffles lying on the table, stuffed a few into her mouth, and jammed them down with a swig of Diet Coke. “Can you do that for me? Can you help?”

Tommy squeezed her foot. He wasn’t going to be strong-armed by her without a fight. “Yeah, Angie, I can help. I can help you with anything. But I’m not doing a God damn thing until you tell me what happened and why you look like this. If I’m going to help you get your shit together and lose all this weight, I gotta know where it came from… why you let yourself go like this.”

She tossed her head back and laughed, clapping her hands as though he’d just told her the funniest joke she’d ever heard. Tears rolled down her round cheeks as she stamped her feet against his thigh and tried to catch her breath.

“Lose weight?” Angela wiped her arm across her eyes to help dry her tears of laughter. “Are you kidding me?” She grabbed both sides of the housedress and pulled down to show Tommy her swollen stomach. “There’s more than fat here, Tommy.”

Tommy sat motionless, his head spinning.

“You’re not…” he started.

“I am.” She rubbed her stomach like a genie’s lamp. “About five months. Due in July.” She continued to massage her belly.

Tommy jumped up and took a deep breath, leaning against the wall and banging the back of his head against it a few times. Strands of hair fell in front of his eyes. “Whose is it?” His tone was vapid, lifeless. She tried to shift around on the cushions and held out her hand.

“Tommy, let’s not get into that right now. The thing I need your help with is that…”

“Fuck you!” The force of his voice made her jump back, the words hanging between the two of them like a rabid dog that both of them were too afraid to approach. He swung his arm through the air at nothing. He gathered air into the pit of his stomach so he could increase the force of his voice. “You don’t let me visit you for all this time, and then out of nowhere you call me up and ask me to visit.” He pointed his open hand to her stomach. “And then you tell me this?”

“Tommy, you have to let me…”

“Holy shit, Angela. I actually thought you were ready to have me live with you… to start a life together like you always said we would. And now you’re pregnant with someone else’s kid.” He held his head with both hands and rattled it back and forth as though he could shake up the pieces inside and make some sense out of them. Tommy knelt beside the sofa, his face only inches from hers. “Whose is it Angela? Who did you fuck to get pregnant?”

“I didn’t fuck anyone, Tommy. I swear.”

Hearing a tremble in her voice, the knot in his stomach loosened a bit. Maybe he finally had the upper hand with her.

“So now you’re Mother Teresa! God got you pregnant?”

Angela closed her eyes and winced. “First of all, it’s Mary, not Mother Teresa,”

“I don’t care if it’s the freakin’ Queen of England.” He grabbed her by the arm. “Tell me who got you pregnant.”

Angela tried to pull away, but he held on tighter. She huffed and fell back.

“I was artificially inseminated.”

“By who, Angela?”

“Jonathan,” she said under her breath.

He threw her arm onto her stomach and leapt up, almost tripping backward over the coffee table. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Angela. I’m sitting forty five minutes away in New York waiting for an invitation, while you’re getting knocked up by a God damn fag? None of this makes sense. I don’t get it.”

As though ice water had been injected into his veins, Tommy’s entire body went cold. Here it was again — the irrepressible anger and anxiety that showed up every time he was in an unmanageable situation — overpowering his thoughts and creating bedlam inside his head. With his eyes on fire and his muscles starting to twitch, he ran to his suitcase, unzipped the side compartment, and pulled out his Xanax bottle. He tossed two pills onto his tongue and let them slide to the back of his throat. .

Seeing Angela open her mouth, Tommy held up his hand.

“Don’t!” His voice quivered, but was strong enough to keep Angela quiet.

Kneeling on the floor beside her, he started banging his palms against the side of his temples, trying to get the cruel thoughts out of his head. This is
Angela. Angela. Angela.

“Tommy! Stop it! Now!”

From what seemed like a far distance away, he heard the old Angela yelling to him, telling him to stop hitting himself. So he did, letting his fingers crawl down the side of his face and onto his knees. The Xanax started to kick in, bringing warmth back to his veins. He crawled over to Angela, leaned over the sofa, and gently kissed her on the lips. She kissed him back the way she used to, her tongue gliding over his, her hand reaching down the front of his jeans. He pulled himself onto the sofa and slid up against her, her hugeness so new to him he opened his eyes, unsure what to do with his hands.

“It’s still me, Tommy,” said Angela, pulling him closer.

But it wasn’t.
He closed his eyes again and laid his face on her chest. The flannel of her housedress rubbed against his cheek, pulling an unvisited part of his mind back to a place he’d been long ago; a time when this same long-familiar sense of comfort had enveloped and given him peace. At first, his memory wouldn’t offer up the exact time and place, but the sensation was enough to bring tears to his eyes; the comfort and pain of the surfacing thought at odds with one another. For a brief moment he let go, waiting to see which one would win.

Tommy lightly scratched the lint pills on the arms of the housedress, listening to Gramma’s voice as she stroked his hair and twirled his curls around her plump fingers.

“That father of yours will never beat you again,” she said softly. “God saw to that by crashing his drunken ass into that tree.”

Tommy put his thumb in his mouth, hooking it onto the back of his front teeth. He wanted to respond to Gramma, but couldn’t find the words or the energy. It had only been a few hours since the police had pounded on his front door sweeping him into a semi-conscious whirlwind of activity. Still in a sleep-induced fog, he’d followed the sound of incessant knocking, glancing in to his father’s room and noticing the night table lamp still burning, the bed unmade. When Tommy opened the door, a woman police officer bent down to greet him.

“Hi dear, is your mother home?” She pulled off her hat and a few strands of auburn hair fell in front of her eyes. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but Tommy saw her beauty right away, as he did any woman who took the time to show him kindness.

Her complexion was as smooth as glass. The lights from behind him gave her cheeks a glow that almost lulled him back to sleep. Through the strings of hair bunched atop her head he could see blue and red lights flashing from the police cars. On the other side of the street stood people he’d known for years, families dressed in bathrobes and pajamas watching the scene play out like a television drama.

“Is your mommy here?” the policewoman repeated. “We need to speak with her.” Tommy shook his head, his hands by his sides as he still waited for some sort of news. “Where’s my dad?”

The woman shot a look to the balding officer standing by her side and turned back to Tommy. “That’s what we need to speak to your mom about, son. Where is she?”

Tommy looked down to his bare feet and curled his toes. “She’s dead,” he said. “Gone.” He returned his gaze to the policewoman. “Where’s daddy?”

The officer stood up, tucked her hat under her arm, and led Tommy inside with her hand on top of his head. “You’re the only one home?” she asked.

He nodded.

She walked with Tommy into the living room, taking in the sights: beer cans littering the floor, a half-empty bottle of generic vodka sitting atop the television, a chocolate brown carpet discolored by grease, bleach and what looked like dried blood. She gestured for him to sit down on the lumpy sofa and then sat down beside him.

“What’s your name?” Her voice was softer now, and she offered Tommy a friendly smile that helped settle his nerves.

“Tommy,” he whispered.

“Tommy, my name is Maria. Your father’s been in an accident. Is there anyone else in your family we can call? We’d like to speak with them and have them come pick you up so you won’t be alone.”

“Gramma,” he whispered. “But she lives in Queens. She’s probably not up, because she sleeps a lot. And she doesn’t come here. She’s too big.”

“That’s okay. We’ll give her a call,” Maria glanced around the room. “Do you know Gramma’s telephone number?”

“On the frigerator.”

The bald officer headed toward the kitchen. Maria grabbed Tommy under his arms to lift him up. “Let’s go get you dressed. I don’t think Gramma would want you traveling all the way from Brooklyn to Queens in your pajamas.”

“Why do I have to go? What happened to my dad? Where is he?” Tommy was on the verge of crying, a sense of reality finally penetrating the fog of sleep; this wasn’t a dream after all.

“He’s with your mom,” Maria said. “Now let’s get you dressed.”

Tommy grabbed Maria’s hand and followed her upstairs to his room. A tear fell down his face and he wiped it with his forearm. “I don’t think Mommy’s gonna like that,” he said to no one in particular.

*

It was early morning, maybe five thirty or six, when Tommy rested his head on Gramma’s chest as she rocked them both in the giant rocking chair that took up most of her TV room. With his thumb in his mouth and his eyes half open, he gazed through the dirty apartment window, above the roofs of the other apartment buildings, out into the lightening sky, now a grayish-blue from the mixture of morning sun and city smog.

“That father of yours will never beat you again. God saw to that by crashing his drunken ass into that tree.” She took a deep breath and Tommy swore he could hear her lungs creak. “And now we’ll take care of each other. I’ll take care of you and you’ll take care of me.” She pulled his chin up so he could see her face. “Open your eyes, Tommy.”

His eyelids, laden with hundred pound weights, felt numb, but he forced them open so Gramma wouldn’t start yelling.

“You hear me? You’ll take care of Gramma, won’t you?”

Tommy nodded and closed his eyes.

“You promise?” she pulled the thumb from his mouth, causing saliva to drip down his chin and onto her housedress.

“Promise,” he said, the sensation of comfort and peace dissipating with each breath Gramma took. He had a feeling the deal he just made was going to be one-sided.

*

Tommy turned away from Angela and stared at the ceiling.

“I’m gonna help you get back to normal, Angie, I swear I will.” He felt her hand on the back of his head, tangling his hair within her fingers. “I just don’t understand… why would you have a baby with
them
instead of me? It was Philip, right?” He turned his head around. The anger started to boil in his abdomen again and he clenched his teeth. “He made you do this, didn’t he? Two fags can’t have a baby so they make
you
do it for them? That’s it, isn’t it?”

Still lying on the sofa, Angela wriggled onto her side and continued playing with his hair. “Don’t worry about that, Tommy. It’s really not anyone’s fault.”

“Why are you sticking up for them?” he shouted. “They’re using you like a freakin’ oven for their kid. . What are
you
getting out of this piece of shit situation?”

“More than you think. And in a few days, a lot more than that.”