come home, we eat dinner, we watch TV, we go to bed. We have sex—occasionally—but I’m not sure why we’re bothering, to tell you the truth.” His eyes lift to mine, dark with hurt and confusion. “I’m scared for her, El, that she’s gonna fall apart again, like she did that one time in high school. I’m not stupid, I know something’s bothering her. But why won’t she talk to me?”
In silence, I finish off the éclair, wishing there were about six more. Both because I need something to keep my mouth occupied and because my mood’s just swung dangerously close to self-destructive. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m tired, or my hormones are being punks, or what, but once again, my reaction surprises me.
It’s not that I don’t feel for him, or Tina, because I do. My closest friends are both hurting, for godssake. Who else are they gonna come to if not me? Because that’s the way it’s always been. Except for one time, when I found out I was pregnant with Starr, I’ve always been the one the other two turned to to fix things between them. And up until this moment, I was fine with that, maybe because their needing me made me feel a real part of something. But now…
Now I realize just how long I’ve actually only been on the outside looking in, living vicariously through somebody else’s relationship.
How screwed up is that?
So now, even as my mouth performs its appointed task as Duenna to the Deluded, my brain is desperately trying to scratch out of the kennel I’ve kept it in for the past twenty-something years. While I’ve been doing all this repair work for their lives, my own has fallen to rack and ruin.
What the hell does any of this have to do with me? I want to scream.
But I keep all this under wraps because Luke looks so miserable.
“No comment?” he says.
Great. If I plead the Fifth, he’ll take that as a confirmation of his suspicions. If I reassure him Tina never said anything about their marriage being on the rocks, either he’ll think I’m lying or he’ll start wondering what she did want to talk to me about. Talk about your no-win situation. While all this is rumbling around in my head, however, Luke says, “I just wish I knew what was going on, if she’s afraid to talk to me because of what she went through as a kid, if she can’t stand the thought of the marriage failing…”
He yanks out a chair and drops into it, apparently out of steam. But I can tell, it’s not Tina who’s afraid of the marriage failing. I get a flash of their wedding day, both of them grinning like idiots, Tina as pretty as I’ve ever seen her in a dress I knocked off from a picture of some six-thousand-dollar number in Modern Bride. With the exception of two or three brief separations, they’d been going together for nearly nine years by that point. They were so comfortable together, finishing each other’s sentences like an old married couple. Like Luke, I don’t get it.
“Hey,” I say lamely. “Everybody goes through rough patches.”
His expression breaks my heart, because he knows this is more than a rough patch. Then he suddenly glances over my shoulder, the worry etched in his brow evaporating in an instant. “Hey, Twink! Your mom said you were asleep.”
My daughter’s already in his lap, her skinny arms wrapped around his neck. Next to Leo and me, Luke’s her favorite person in the world. And I think I often slip to second place. Maybe third. Not that she doesn’t have positive male role models coming out of her ears—my grandfather, the legion of Scardinare males. Even Mickey Gomez, one of the tenants, who’s been teaching her Spanish. But her relationship with Luke has always been special, a relationship that’s worked both ways. Oh, yeah, Luke’s taken his “uncle” duties very seriously, even from before Starr was born.
I let her have her éclair, which I cut into bite-size pieces so most of the chocolate and custard lands in her mouth instead of on her face, thinking saccharine thoughts about not being able to imagine my life without her. Trust me, I don’t always feel this way, so I’m going with the moment because it makes me feel good about myself. Like I deserve her.
Luke listens carefully as she prattles on about her day, her yawns getting bigger and bigger as her eyelids droop lower and lower. Finally, chuckling, he stands, Starr clinging to him like a little sedated monkey, and carries her upstairs to put her back to bed. I don’t follow, because I know seeing him with her is only going to get my thoughts churning again about his being denied the one thing he really wants.
But you know, nobody forced him to marry Tina. And she’s right: he did know going in she didn’t want kids.
His decision, I tell myself. His consequences to deal with.
“Man, she’s getting so big,” he says when he comes back downstairs.
“Yep. Give ’em food and water and damned if they don’t grow.”
He smiles, a sad tilt of his lips. “It’s late,” he says, lifting his jacket from the back of the chair. “I should go.”
This time, I don’t stop him. We walk out to the front door; Leo’s gone up to his room, so no eagle ears are listening (I assume) as we stand in the foyer.
“I saw your mother earlier,” I say. “Pete and Heather are finally getting married, huh?”
Another smile, this time a weary one. “Yeah. At least there’s some good news, right?”
I grab his arms, my impetuousness clearly surprising him. Not to mention me. I get another whiff of his scent, and something inside me goes, Huh?
“You and Tina need to talk. Tonight,” I add, ignoring both his scent and the Huh?-ing. “You gotta get all this out in the open, tell her exactly what you’ve told me.” It’s a long shot, but maybe if Luke opens up, Tina will too, absolving me of a responsibility I realize I do not want. “I’m not a marriage counselor, a shrink or a priest, and I’m tired of getting caught in the middle.”
He gives me a hard look and says softly, “Then maybe you shouldn’t’ve put yourself there,” and walks out the door.
What the hell…?
My cell rings, faintly. It takes me five rings to locate it, still in my purse on the kitchen counter.
“Hi,” Tina says in a voice I haven’t heard her use since she was about six.
“Uh…hi?”
I hear a whoosh of cigarette smoke. “Luke’s there, isn’t he?”
“Not anymore. And no, I didn’t say anything.”
“What? Oh…I didn’t think you would.” Surprise peers out from between her words, as though it never crossed her mind that I might. I can’t decide if I’m touched or ticked.
“Teen—you two have got to hash this out. By yourselves.” I give her a second or two to absorb this. “And I think you know that.”
When she next speaks, I can barely hear her. “God, Ellie…I’m so scared.”
“I know you are, sweetie,” I say, as gently as I know how. “Which is why you have to talk to Luke. Trust him, okay? You know he loves you.”
I do not like the silence that greets this observation. So I prod her for the answer I want. “Right?”
