Chapter Three
Roman
Why in the hell am I doing this to myself again?
I stared out of the window of my plane as the ground started to come closer, the tiny pinpricks of illumination growing until they became distinct safety lights along the runway. I sighed and leaned my head back against the seat, swirling the drink in my hand as I went over every scenario of how this reunion was going to unfold in my head again. They had been tormenting virtually my every waking moment since I had agreed to go to the reunion and now I was experiencing the gnawing feeling in the upper part of my belly that I usually got when I thought about seeing my family. That was one of the delightful things that I had discovered when my age tipped over forty. Rather than just getting angry butterflies when I was nervous or dreading something, I got a raging case of indigestion. It felt like a reminder from the universe, as if because I didn’t feel like I was getting older I needed to have my ass smacked down a few pegs every now and then to remind me of the years that I had lived.
It had been several of those years since I had taken this trip back home to see my family. I wasn’t in a private plane then, and there were considerably fewer hotels and businesses with my name on them dotting the world, but even with all of that backing me up, I still felt nervous about walking into the reunion and seeing my family again. The truth was I probably wouldn’t have even considered attending the annual event if it hadn’t been for Nia. Still my “little cousin” in my mind even though I was aware that she was now a fully-grown woman, Nia had been one of the few members of the family who hadn’t totally turned their back on me, and the only one who I connected with on a regular basis. Though I had secured her a job in the biggest of my hotels in her area and occasionally encouraged a bonus or two on her paychecks to make sure that she was doing alright, I hadn’t seen her since the last time that I attended a family reunion. It was her, though, that told me that this reunion was also acting as an anniversary party for our great-grandparents. Considering they were both 101, I figured that now was probably the time to go visit and try to make amends.
As the plane slid down toward the ground, I started to question whether this was actually a good idea. I could have planned a visit to my great-grandparents without having to involve the rest of the expansive family. I felt like I was building myself up for disaster. I took a breath as I stood and slipped my jacket back on, buttoning it and smoothing it into place before the door to the cabin opened so I could walk down the steps onto the tarmac. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. It had been years. Maybe that had given all of them the opportunity to cool down and gain some perspective about my choices. It was possible that I could walk into the party and they would welcome me with open arms. Or at least look at me in vague anonymity. Even that would be better than the last few minutes of the reunion the last time that I saw them.
I accepted my bag from the attendant when I reached the tarmac and started toward the limo that was waiting for me. It would bring me to the hotel where I was staying and from there I would take my own car, one of a fleet that I kept stashed throughout the country to ensure that I was never without personal transportation when I was traveling. Hopefully not having a driver bring me should make me seem a little more approachable to the family who thought that money had somehow put me on another plane of existence than them – or at least that I thought that it did.
I arrived at the hotel and inquired at the front desk about Nia, wondering if she was working that day or if she had already taken off to go to the reunion. They told me that she wasn’t there and I started upstairs feeling a touch of disappointment.
Damn. My escape hatch plan thwarted.
Once in the penthouse of the hotel I changed into a pair of grey slacks and a sweater, gathered up the gift that I had ordered for my great-grandparents’ anniversary, and headed down to the parking garage. My car was waiting for me in its reserved spot just as it always was and I let out a breath as I climbed behind the wheel. It still had the fresh new car smell, something that was to be expected of a car that was so rarely used. In fact, I had myself only driven it twice. Those two times were the only two times that I had been back to the area, once when the hotel opened and once when I planned on surprising my mother with a visit, but found the home empty when I arrived. I later found out that I had skillfully planned my visit for the one time that the family took a vacation together, heading to the islands for a brief trip.
The car rumbled smoothly beneath me despite its age and I knew that it was being driven once a month like I requested.
I kept the radio off as I drove, my own thoughts distracting me enough as I made my way along the familiar route. I had followed it countless times during my childhood. So many that I probably could have done it with my eyes closed. The silence meant that I was able to hear the reunion in full swing before I even saw the house. Music blared and the voices of dozens of relatives spilled out into the street.
I’m sure the neighbors are just loving this. Considering virtually all of them are relatives and in attendance, though, that was actually probably accurate.
I parked behind an uneven row of vehicles from the relatives that didn’t live on the street and actually had to drive to the reunion, including Nia’s, which I recognized by the employee decal from the hotel on the back window and a bumper sticker I had sent her a couple of years back during one of my trips. I felt a smile come to my lips, remembering the two of us when we were younger. Though I had already been a young teenager when she was born, we were instantly bonded and it seemed that whenever the family got together, she was attached to my leg, going where I went, trying to do what I was doing. I didn’t mind. I enjoyed playing with her and as she got older, her sass and spark was enough to make even the tensest moments with my father bearable. The thought of my father made the burn in my chest worse and I had to grit my teeth to keep walking down the road. With any luck he wouldn’t even be here and I wouldn’t have to deal with him.
“Roman!”
I heard my name and looked toward the voice, seeing someone running toward me. It took a few seconds for me to realize that it was Nia. It had been so long since I had seen her and she had grown up in those years, going from the awkward, gangly teenager to a tall, confident-looking woman. I smiled and she opened her arms, jumping toward me to gather me in a tight hug.
“Nia!” I said. “It’s so good to see you.”
“I can’t believe you actually came.”
“I told you I was going to.”
“You’ve said that before,” she said, sliding down out of my arms and taking a step back to look at me. “I didn’t know if you were actually going to do it this time.”
“Well, people only celebrate their eighty-third wedding anniversary once,” I said.
Nia laughed.
“Or not at all.”
I nodded in agreement.
“It’s definitely not something that you see every day.”
“I can’t believe that they’ve been married for longer than a lot of people live.”
“I can’t believe that they’ve tolerated each other for that long.”
Nia tilted her head at me and gave me a disapproving glare.
“Well, that’s a depressing perspective.”
I knew most people would think that she was right, but I couldn’t help it. I had just never been able to wrap my head around the thought of sharing my life with one person. A night, sure. A weekend even. More than a month? It just wasn’t happening. I had no need to share my life with anyone. I had everything that I wanted, and the resources to get anything else that I might want. As much as I heard about the fulfillment that came with finding that one person and sharing your life with them, I honestly couldn’t think of any way that having someone I had to think about before I made any decisions, justify my every action to, and limit my activities because of, would be worth it. My life was mine. I had sacrificed enough for it, and I wasn’t going to give up any of it just for a woman.
“It happens, little cousin,” I said. “I’m just not the mate for life kind.”
“I think you could be,” she said. “You just haven’t found the right woman.”
“They haven’t made the right woman.”
I heard my grandmother calling everyone into the house for the lavish dinner that she prepared, the highlight of every family reunion. Nia grabbed my wrist as I started to walk away.
“I don’t want for this to be the last time that I see you for another decade or so,” she said. “I’m having a Halloween party tomorrow night at my house. I’ve invited some of the men from the hotel, so you won’t be the only upper crust crumb there. You’ll be the king of the crumbs, admittedly, but I’m sure you can blend in if you really try. Say you’ll come.”
The thought of a Halloween party with a bunch of people that I didn’t know was more appealing than this reunion, but I still wasn’t sure that it was something that I really wanted to do. I reached out and wrapped my arm around my cousin.
“Let’s see if I survive tonight first,” I said.
Seemingly assuaged by my even noncommittal answer, she wrapped her arm around my waist and we started for the house together. I felt myself relaxing, smiling at the relatives that I recognized and surprised at the number of young children who had sprung into the family tree in the time that I had been away. I was almost feeling happy about being there when I stepped into the house.
“Roman!”
My mother’s voice was the first thing that greeted me when I entered, quickly followed by the smell of my grandmother’s cooking, washing over me and carrying with it memories of my childhood. It was the food that I had been raised on, the flavors of generations passed, and things I hadn’t experienced since the last time that I stood in this place and promised myself that I wasn’t ever coming back. I turned toward my mother, smiling as she rushed across the entryway of the house toward me. Her eyes were wide and I could already see tears on her cheeks. I felt my breath catch slightly. She looked so much older than she had the last time I saw her and I felt a harsh breath of regret in my chest. I had never meant to leave her behind. She hadn’t been the one to push me away, but it had been her that had been hurt the most by my leaving.
I held my mother close to me, breathing in the smell of her that brought me back to being a child as much as the smell of the dinner now spread through three rooms in the back of the house. I was starting to say something to her, to apologize, to try to explain to her why I had stayed away, when I heard my name again. This time the word didn’t bring me the happiness that it had when I had heard it in the voice of my cousin and my mother. I felt my mother tense and take a step away from me. Steeling myself, I turned around to face my father.
“Hello,” I said.
He swaggered toward me, the wild look already starting to build in the corners of his eyes.
“John, please,” my mother said, her voice soft and frightened.
I took a step toward my father, putting myself between them.
“I hear you actually drove here,” my father said. “I’m sorry we didn’t clear enough space for you to land your helicopter.”
My muscles tightened and I felt my jaw twitch.
“John,” my mother said from behind me, “he just got here. We haven’t seen him in so long. Do you have to be this way to him already?”
His eyes shot toward her and I stepped to the side to further conceal her from him.
“He doesn’t know any other way to be to me,” I said.
All of the bitterness that had built up in me over the years burned in my throat and filled my mouth. Seeing him brought everything crashing back harder and more intensely than it had before, and part of me wished that I had never come. The other part of me, though, was tired of backing down, tired of letting him make me feel like a child even though I was now well beyond the point where I was a grown man. I saw in his face the cause of all the pain, fear, and disappointment as I grew up, all of the questions about myself that I had ever asked, and the cause of my break from my family.
“Is there any other way that I should treat you?” He laughed like he had made some sort of hilarious joke that all of us had missed. “Oh. I guess that you think that we should be throwing ourselves at your feet and worshipping you like everyone else does.”
“I don’t expect anyone to worship me.”
His face went dark.
“Of course, you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have turned your back on the family.”
“Turned my back on you?” I asked incredulously. “I’m not the one who said that I was no longer your son just because I wanted to pursue something else. Something that has brought me tremendous success, I might point out.”
“Success? Having money doesn’t make you successful. Just because you can throw around all the cash that you want to doesn’t mean that you’re successful. It means you sold yourself, and your family, out. Success comes from honor and hard work, two things that you know nothing about.”
I straightened, letting an angry breath stream out of my nostrils in an effort to keep myself from lashing out. My father might deserve to suffer my wrath, but my mother didn’t deserve to witness it. I forced myself to stay under control.
“I don’t know who you think you are talking to me about honor,” I said, keeping my voice low. “You were never there. You only cared about yourself. That,” I said, turning and pointing at my mother, “is my father. And my mother. She was everything to me. You never cared what we were going through when you were out chasing the next gig or running the next show. It didn’t matter to you how hard she was working or how much I wished that you were here for me the way that other people’s fathers were. The only times that you ever cared was when I did something that you didn’t like. The only attention I got from you was when you were punishing me.”
“Roman.”
I felt my mother take my arm, trying to pull me back away from my father, but I gently shook her off.
“No, Mama. He needs to hear this.” I took another step toward my father. “You don’t care that I’m not a part of the family. You only cared that I didn’t go into the business because you wanted to be able to take credit for anything that I did in it. You wanted to bask in my fame and take my money. It was never about honor. It was about you. And because of that, I lost everyone who ever meant anything to me. But you lost any chance of ever being able to take advantage of me again. I might not have the kind of success that you think that I should – but at least you don’t, either.”
I walked around my father, moving deeper into the house where my grandparents and great-grandparents waited. I knelt down in front of my great-grandparents and took their hands in mine. I kissed them and held them to my chest, apologizing for all the time that I had spent away from them. I could hear my father shouting in the front of the house and the slam of the front door, but I filtered it out. As long as my mother wasn’t with him, I didn’t care how he reacted.
By the end of the reunion, I felt like I had been gutted and filled with sand. Though I was relieved to have finally had this confrontation with my father, the stares and questions from my family and the years of pressure I had finally released pulled on me until I was exhausted. I kissed my mother goodbye and started out of the house, ready to go back to the hotel and sleep until I couldn’t keep my eyes closed any longer.
“Roman.”
I turned around and saw Nia coming toward me. She didn’t look as gleeful as she had when she first saw me and she came close to my side.
“Are you alright?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? Just because I just turned what is very likely the last anniversary celebration that my great-grandparents will have into a family smackdown? No. I’m great.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come to the party tomorrow?” she asked. “I promise it will be fun and we’ll be the only relatives there.”
I laughed softly.
“You know what? Sure. I’ll come. A little bit of time away from all the stress and focusing on having some fun will do me some good. You tell me when and where, and I’ll be there with bells on.”
“You better be there with costume on.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”