The Idea of Love (24 page)

“Blake.” He looked up to see his ex-wife walking toward him.

“Hi, Marilee,” he said, ignoring the coiffed boyfriend, whose name he really did keep forgetting.

They sat next to Blake and tried to chat. Nice day. Good game. Wicked coach. Blake nodded when appropriate and stared at the field until his cell phone buzzed. His agent. He excused himself and walked toward the tree line at the edge of the field. Marilee's voice followed him. “Just typical,” she said.

But he was in too good a mood to let it bother him.

“Blake, man, got the call. Reese is in. The studio is putting out the press release this afternoon. You ready for the buzz?”

“Nothing has ever happened this fast.” Blake stared out at the field, at his little girl running the length of it.

“Nothing you've written has been this good.”

Hollywood moves so slowly, except when it doesn't, so let the chaos begin. The casting and the budget. The funding and the fighting. But it had started and that's what mattered. It had started.

He returned to the bench and watched the end of the game. Everything was brightly lit, outlined in a way it hadn't been before. He even smiled at his ex-wife. She looked at him, a crusty smile and asked, “What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I'm just happy.”

“A little Jack Daniel's maybe?”

“No, sweetie. Sober as a judge.”

“Even your judge isn't sober,” she said, turning away.

He was weary of her anger. He leaned down and spoke. “I promise you've made me as miserable as you can. We've hit our limit, I'm sure. Can we stop fighting now? The day is gorgeous. Our daughter is kicking butt out there. And you look beautiful, just like the day we met in the Palisades. Maybe even better.”

She looked like she was going to cry. “Why do you have to be so charming? Can't you just let me hate you for a while?”

“I've let you hate me long enough. Can't you just let me be done now?”

“I don't know.” She turned around and he saw her wipe at her eyes and then leave to join her boyfriend, the nameless guy, at the edge of the field.

*   *   *

In-N-Out Burger had a line out the door, but it was where Amelia wanted to go for her postgame burger. If they won, it was a celebration burger but if they lost, it was a consolation burger, which is what it was that afternoon. The customers were such an eclectic mix: a hip-hop guy in sagging jeans; two young girls so blond they looked like mannequins; a family with two small red-haired boys, obviously twins, pushing at each other in fun.

Amelia leaned down to the boys, laughing. “It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye,” she said.

They looked up at her, all wide-eyed with small little noses that looked like clay globs on their freckled faces. “What?” one of them asked. He looked six or maybe seven, Blake could never tell ages.

Amelia pointed to Blake. “That's what my dad always used to say to me and my friends when we were goofing off. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.”

“Did anyone ever lose an eye?” one of the boys asked.

“Never.” Amelia wrapped her arm around her father's waist and gave him a little squeeze.

The boys looked at each other with the silent language of twins, then started in again. “Boys,” their mother said, “please stop pushing!”

“Did I really used to say that?”

“All the time.”

“How do you remember things like that?”

Amelia shrugged. “There's a lot I don't remember, but my friends and I still say it sometimes for fun, you know, when someone's doing something stupid.”

“It's a great line. Wish I remember saying it.” He tried to recall those long ago days when she was small enough to wrestle with her friends or pop her thumb in her mouth. It was yesterday and yet it never happened. He should have been more present. He should have been more attentive. He should have been …

They grabbed their food and sat at an outside table. Regret. It sucked. He took a long swallow of his chocolate milk shake to wash out the bad taste. How many things he would have done differently. He tried Ella's advice. He sat quietly, watching his daughter eating French fries. “You're awful quiet,” she said.

“Yes, I guess I am. What a great game you had today. I'm so proud of you.”

“Well, thanks, Dad. I think you'd say you were proud of me if I shot the ball into my own team's goal.” She punched the side of his arm.

He'd described Amelia to Ella one time, but now that he sat with his daughter, looking at her across the sticky picnic table at In-N-Out Burger, the table where a thousand other people drank their milk shakes and dripped ketchup and rubbed the greasy side of the burger wrapper onto the metal, he saw what he didn't describe. The way her eyes changed color in the sunlight, becoming almost green. How her hair formed a widow's peak in the middle of her forehead. He hadn't told Ella how his daughter's nose was the slightest bit crooked to the left after getting hit in a kickball game in second grade, how she'd never wanted a nose job to fix it because “everyone will think I just wanted a better nose, and I don't.” Her cheeks, they were fuller than her mom's but the same rounded shape, like two tiny plums sitting on top of the bones.

“You know you're beautiful,” Blake said.

“Wow, Dad. You sure are sappy lately. What's gotten into you? Are you in love or something?”

He didn't laugh. It was a legitimate question, he guessed. He smiled at his daughter. “I am,” he said.

“Oh, you are?”

He knew she didn't want that answer, not really, because who wants their dad in love with anyone but their mom? “With my new script.”

“Ah!” She lifted her milk shake to him and tapped the edges of his paper cup. “A new script?”

“Yup. Reese Witherspoon wants the lead.”

“Oh, Dad. You've gotta introduce me. She's like totally one of my favorites.”

“It's not a done deal, sweetie.”

“Gross, don't call me ‘sweetie.' That's what Jake calls Mom. It makes me feel scaly.”

“Deal.”

The sunlight filtered through the awning above them, fell in stripes along the table. Amelia twirled her straw for a minute. “Monica is in rehab,” she said.

“Your friend from ballet?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry. What happened?”

His daughter started talking to him as if she'd never stopped. She told him about the guy she was dating, and the school play she'd tried out for. She told him about her friends who were in trouble and those who weren't. And at the end, when dusk had approached and they were still at the picnic table, she told him that she missed him. It might not be everything in the world, but it sure was everything to Blake.

*   *   *

Ella stood in the kitchen, cooking spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce. A salad with fresh local vegetables sat on the side of the counter and she sipped on a chilled glass of ros
é
. Mimi sat at the kitchen table, sipping bourbon.

“You sure about this, dear?” Mimi asked again, glancing around the room.

“Yes,” Ella said, and lifted her glass to Mimi. “I'm staying. If he wants to leave, he can, but I'm here.”

“What if he calls the cops?” she asked.

Ella had told Mimi everything, as though she were a living journal. “If he does, well, I guess that answers how he really feels. If he's only pretending to want to get back together, then let's get the show on the road,” Ella said.

Mimi laughed. “Who is this new girl, all strong and ready to fight?”

Ella turned the sauce to low and sat at the table with Mimi. “Hunter told me that he had a dog that barked like Bruiser and couldn't stop, and they found out that he was allergic to his medicine. Have you thought of that?”

Mimi shook her head. “No, that hasn't once been mentioned. I wonder.”

“I wonder, too. I can take you to the vet tomorrow if you want.”

“Oh, no, I can't make you do that.”

“Let me,” Ella said. “I'd like to.”

“That would be great,” Mimi said. “I sure am glad you came into my life.”

“Me, too, you.” Ella hugged Mimi before standing up to stir the sauce.

Music rested between them until they both turned to the sound of the front door opening. “Well, now you get to meet Sims,” Ella said.

“God, something smells great,” a voice said, a female voice—a loud, grating female voice.

“Shit,” Sims said as he and Betsy appeared in the kitchen.

What is there to say in moments like this? Surely there was something perfect to say, a witty comment, a smart-ass retort. It was Betsy who opened her mouth first, but the noise that came out wasn't really a sentence, it was more of a whine that contained a few words like “why” and “her” and “ridiculous.”

“Ella?” Sims said in a quiet voice. He was afraid, she knew, that the crazy would return.

“Yes, Sims?”

“Why are you here?”

“Didn't you get my message?” She stirred the sauce, sipped her wine. “Oh, and this is my friend Mimi. I wanted her to meet you.”

“What is going on?” Betsy asked in that voice.

Sims pulled out his phone and looked at his messages and then at Ella. “But we agreed.”

“Looks like I changed my mind.” Ella heard her voice, strong and sure. But inside she was being thrashed around in a wave, an undertow.

“You can't change your mind,” he said. His voice sounded tremulous, uncertain.

“Why not? You did.” She pointed at Mimi. “Please don't be so rude.”

“Hello, Mimi.” Sims walked to the older woman and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Wowza,” Mimi said with a sip of bourbon. “I wish I could say the same to you.”

Betsy walked to Ella's side. “You need to leave. You know Sims can call the police.”

“He won't,” Ella said.

“Then I will,” Betsy said, and she walked toward the phone on the wall, picked it up.

Sims was at her side before she'd dialed. “Don't,” he said.

“What?” Betsy turned on him. She had tears in her eyes. “Are you telling me that you're going to let her stay here?”

“No, I'm not telling you that. But I'm not calling the police on my wife. Stop it.”

“That bitch…” Betsy almost hissed the words.

Mimi tilted her head and stared at Betsy. “Maybe now is a good time for
you
to leave,” she said.

“Me? No way.” Betsy pointed at Ella. “She needs to leave. He loves
me
. He's told her it's over.”

“Really?” Ella said.

“He didn't?” Betsy's voice started to slow like it was running out of gas, sputtering. She spun to Sims. “Tell me this is a bad dream. You haven't told her?”

“Told me what?” Ella asked.

“We're getting married.” Betsy kept her gaze on Sims, who folded into the chair next to Mimi.

“That's not it,” he said. “We were not planning to get married.” He looked at Betsy. “I did not say that.”

Ella felt her mouth go dry, a tingle at the edges of her tongue, a metallic taste in the back of her throat. God, please don't throw up here, she thought. “What happened to ‘I'm so confused' and ‘I love you so much' and ‘Let's talk this through'?”

“He said that to you?” Betsy asked Ella. “You're serious?”

“Yes,” Ella said.

“You son of a bitch,” Betsy said, and ran to her purse, dumped it upside down on the table, and drew out an envelope. She waved the white rectangle in the air, back and forth like a flag. “This was your wedding present. This was your surprise. This was for you…”

Sims stood up and took one step and then dropped back into the chair, exhausted. He drank Mimi's bourbon.

Betsy drew near, her face twisting, a hot wax version of herself. “Do you want to see it?”

“No,” Sims said. “I want to leave. We can talk about this outside.”

“Talk?” she asked with a weird laugh behind her question.

“I guess not.”

Betsy drew something out of the envelope and held it up to his face. “See this?”

Ella squinted to see it from the stove.
John Smoltz
. Betsy had John Smoltz. Hell, who would have thought it? Ella busted out laughing. “Are you kidding me?”

“Where did you find it?” Sims reached for the card, but his hand swiped at empty air as Betsy pulled back her hand.

“I went back to the Dumpster the next day and searched the street and curbs and the disgusting back alley. That's how much I love you. After we couldn't find it that night, I couldn't sleep thinking where it might be. I thought maybe one card might have missed the Dumpster.”

“My God,” Sims said, and stood, took a tentative step toward her. “Thank you so much, baby. So much.”

“You're thanking me?” She held the card high in the air.

Sims looked toward Ella and together they knew what Betsy was about to do, so together they screamed.

“Stop.”

“Don't.”

But she did. She brought her hands together. Sims lunged for her and Ella closed her eyes as Betsy ripped John Smoltz in half and tossed him into the spaghetti sauce. He sunk into the red sauce, the tip of his bat poking up, his baseball cap submerged. The other half floated and then dipped lower as if Smoltz's feet pulled him down to the bottom of the pot. They watched him sink in silence. Death by red sauce.

Sims sank to the chair again. “What is with you women and baseball cards? I don't get it.”

Betsy picked up her purse, but everywhere there were pieces of its innards: lipstick, keys, a checkbook, scattered change, some of it stuck together with gum, a pack of Trojans, a grocery list scribbled in pink pen, a ribbon left over from something, crumpled and ruined. Betsy sobbed as she picked up each item and threw it back into her purse. Ella couldn't stand it anymore. She started to help.