The Last Maharajan (Romantic Thriller/Women's Fiction) (12 page)

“About what, dear.” She dabbed her nose with her napkin.

“About when you all were younger. Silly things. Irresponsible things.”

“Well, we were kids too, you know. We made mistakes.”

Euly stopped talking and ate a couple more bites before getting her nerve. “You and dad were close.”

“He was an angel. We were best friends, Eu.”

“You dated before mother and he were married, isn’t that right?”

“Ancient history. It was only for about a year.

Then he met your mother and that was that.”

“I thought you broke it off after you met Uncle Teddy.”

“It all happened around the same time, honey. One left, the next showed up. It was a long time ago.”

“Mother mentioned there might’ve been a little, oh god, how do I say this. Lag time between you and dad.”

“Lag time? What do you mean?”

“You know, that it wasn’t all the way over when mother came into the picture.”

“That’s not how I remember it. But, we were always close. We knew each other when we were kids grew up together. We moved down the block from your grandparent’s house and Ray and his brothers were always around. You know, just kid stuff, until we got older, that is.”

“Why would mother think there was something else?”

“Honey, how should I know? But, I don’t remember anything else. I don’t think I do. It all happened within a matter of months, as I recall. Belle showed up. Teddy showed up. I’m not sure who came first now that you mention it.”

“It’s kind of important to me, auntie.”

“For your memoir, you mean?”

“No, well, yes that but also it’s important to our family.” Euly was fighting the urge to blurt out the question but was losing the battle.

“It’s important to our family who came first – your mother or Uncle Teddy?”

“Well, no, not when you put it like that.”

“Honey, what’s troubling you?” Her aunt saw her frustration and Euly wondered if she were frowning. “Just ask me.”

“Just ask you, huh?”

“Yes. What’s so hard about that?” She set down her baba and leaned in.

“It’s not like we were ever related, right? Not biologically, right?”

“No but we were as good as.”

Euly leaned back in her chair and put her fork down. She grabbed her Arak and slugged it back.

“Euly. What is it?” Aunt Moon forced.

“Mother said that you and dad were not quite over with when you and Uncle Teddy got together and Uncle Teddy married you because you were pregnant. There.” She breathed out relief.

“What! Why would your mother say something like that!

“She said that Micaiah was my biological brother, my half-brother and that she wanted me to know that I had a brother before she died.”

“Good God.”

“So, what does that mean? Is it true or not?”

“It’s most certainly not true.”

“She said you would say that too.”

“Oh, my God. Do you believe her?”

“She is my mother, auntie.”

“She’s lying.”

“She said you might say that too, auntie and that you had the birth records to prove it.”

Aunt Moon sat unmoving and stunned. Euly went on.

“She said that I should ask you to see Micaiah’s birth record.”

“There’s nothing on his record that proves your father is Micaiah’s father.”

“So it’s your word against my mother’s.”

“I suppose it is.”

“Can I at least see the birth record?”

“If I can’t prove the matter one way or the other then what’s the point?”

“I just thought it would help me somehow.”

“Help you how?”

“I don’t know maybe I could be able to tell one way or the other.”

“How about this, my dear, how about you request an exhuming, dig up my poor dead son’s body, do one of those, uh, uh, DNA tests and find the truth out that way!” She stood. “You’ve more than worn out your welcome, young lady. You’d better go.”

“Auntie. I’m sorry but if I could just see his birth certificate, I know I could tell.”

“Now!” She lifted her arm and pointed to the door. “You have to leave. You come here and insult me like this after everything. I won’t have it. Now, leave. This instant.”

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

“She made me leave.”

“It couldn’t be your winning personality, could it?”

“What does that mean,” It wasn’t a question but a demand.

They were in the arms of an argument and she wasn’t about to back down.

“Look, Euly. All I know is you have a way about you. That’s all I’m going to say.”

“A way.”

“Yes. A way. And you never let up.”

“You have no idea what even happened and you’re telling me it’s my fault.”

“I can only imagine.”

“You know, Geoff, if you could imagine you’d understand why I’m here and you’re there. Goodbye.” Officially, saying ‘goodbye’ meant she hadn’t hung up on him. Geoff hated people hanging up on him, especially Euly. She remembered once when she had. He called back immediately and told her never to do it again. He added emphasis by telling her to pull her head out of her ass. At the time, it was funny. Now, however, it felt sickening. At dark crevice in the back of her mind, she couldn’t believe she was married.

She felt as though they couldn’t talk to each other anymore. Their conversation got off to a rough start and tumbled into a battle. She’d only intended to ask why he hadn’t answered the phone but her question sounded contrived. His retort felt like an accusation. She ended the conversation wondering why she called at all. What she really wanted was to tell him she missed him, tell him about what happened with her aunt. She tried but he baited her.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The sun was warm through the hotel window where she dunked her tea bag into the steeping water. She was lounging and felt ill-prepared to start another day. She awoke with a sense of being unconnected. Her dreams were so out of line with her life. In this one, she was getting married to a younger man and had to break it off with her previous husband. These two people painted their walls creating a new environment meant to be creative and all about art. Janie, Euly’s hairstylist, sat her in the chair, tipped her back in a freakish massage position meant to relax her before the cut. She sputtered whispers into Euly’s ear as she leaned her backwards almost into a lying position. That’s when Euly awoke feeling disoriented and in a bad mood.

It felt wrong. Meeting Clive had felt wrong.

Not because he’d made a pass at her although that was enough to make Euly not want to return but, something else. She couldn’t put it together. She’d been preoccupied by his style and didn’t always hear what he was saying, only how he was saying it. Damn. She was trying to remember his words. She cursed herself for having forgotten the recorder.

She knew she needed to talk to him once more and she dreaded it. He would take it as a come-on to his advances. They had history. Nothing serious but their history was enough to make him think her visit might be something more.

It was in college. He wanted to meet for cocktails.

“Just to talk.” He laughed at the suggestion. To Euly, it meant more. He wanted to sleep with her. It was a time when sex was what you did on a date there was no feeling around under a blouse in fumbling for the clasp of a bra, bras were optional. By then, she had a place of her own. His place was with Sandy but only months before they divorced and a year before she killed herself.

“We can meet at Houston’s and after that, I don’t know. We could go to your place.” After say 'yes,' Euly stood him up.

It was too weird even for her, even at that time in her life when she was a wild one. The late

70s were making a turn into the 80s. By then, she’d found herself fully imbued in the culture- free love and drugs.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

An absent moon made the night even darker.
Wild Thing
played on the radio. It was long ago, around the age of seventeen.

Euly put a hand over her eyes just thinking about it. She’d had sex with two boys at once. They tangled together, one boy below her hips and she at the other boy’s groin. Every point of the business muddled into a mix of arms and legs, breasts and genitalia. No one spoke. They simply continued the process to its natural end.

It was during this interlude a thought struck her: life might not continue simply as it once had.

Her mind wandered. What made her do it – the act itself?

At this stage of her life, she couldn’t remember the events leading up to it. It was so long ago. Still, through it all many things came to mind.

One foremost thought, was of the complicated human-animal urge.

That urge we succumb to in the latest hour, the darkest of places, through exhaustion or illumination – that urge.

The urge when you ask yourself, “why not?”

The urge that makes men leave their families for a sampling of something new. The visceral pang we cannot control, don’t want to control.

That urge.

Another thing crossed Euly's mind, the notion of polygamy and how readily Christians reject the precept and remembering a Mormon girlfriend back then. She wondered, as the three fluxed in constant motion, in the throes of passion, if polygamy mightn’t be a better choice.

However, after bodily fluids dried up and the glow had died away, Euly's feelings changed in distinct steps – feelings from the act itself, that glorious interlude to an eventual thank you and two goodbye kisses, to embarrassment and, then, to downright shame.

It made her think of a joke. The one about a doe that bounds out of the woods and breathlessly vows, “I’ll never do that for two bucks again!”

She began to ponder the bible and Adam and Eve. The writings say that in the Garden of Eden after the consumption of the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam tells God, “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself”.

Yet, before eating the forbidden fruit, Eve and Adam bounded happily about, stark raving naked, unaware of their form. But then they did—upon the advent of their sin, when Eve handed sin over and Adam ate the apple. It was only then they felt sin strip them. It was then they sewed fig leaves into clothing to cover their bodies.