Antonia
Over the next few weeks, Antonia got used to living in what was essentially a mansion, complete with a hot tub in the back yard. The best part, though, was being with Daniel and Bobby all day. For the most part, Antonia didn’t see much of Cal, encountering him only briefly very early in the morning or very late at night, and only ever communicating in a very perfunctory, to-the-point way.
Cal would ask, “How’s Bobby?”
And then Antonia would say, “Fine. Look into a counselor yet?”
To which Cal would say, “Working on it.”
In a way, she felt like the house was hers—in a way. She definitely got more use out of it than Cal did. She wondered sometimes what he did with his days, why he had so much money. Maybe he’s in the mafia, she thought to herself with a grin while sipping a late-night glass of wine one evening after she’d put Daniel and Bobby both to bed. No, that can’t be right. He would have a family if he were a part of the mob.
Just then, the front door crashed open, and Cal stumbled through it, cursing under his breath. He was halfway to the staircase before he noticed Antonia sitting on the couch. “Oh. Why aren’t you asleep?” he asked. Before she could offer an answer, Antonia realized that he was clutching his arm to his side.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, immediately putting the glass of wine aside and getting to her feet to attend to her boss.
“No, no, I’m fine,” Cal said, protesting weakly when she tried to touch his arm. “It’s a little sore, that’s all.”
“Looks like more than just a little sore to me,” Antonia said. “Come on, sit down, let me look at it. I used to be in school for nursing, you know.”
“You were?” Mr. Amos asked.
“Yeah, don’t sound so shocked,” she said with a laugh, gently prying the jacket off Cal’s body so she could look at his arm. “Oi, cheese and crackers,” she exclaimed, wincing a little at the sight of Cal’s bruised, bloodied arm. “What the hell happened here?” she asked as she reached out to gingerly touch it, just to see if it was still bleeding. Mercifully, the blood flow had stopped, but the cut was clogged up with clots and mucus.
“Nothing, just a couple guys got on my nerves. Believe me, I got the better end of the deal tonight,” Cal said, gritting his teeth a little as her fingers made contact with his bloody skin.
“Yeah, yeah, we all know you’re the big macho man who wins fights, don’t worry,” Antonia said a little mockingly, rolling her eyes but offering him a teasing smile when he looked offended. “Sorry, just trying to make light of the situation. You get into bar fights often?”
Cal hesitated a little before answering the question. “Um, not really. Not so much recently.”
“But you’re getting back into the habit?” Antonia asked, raising her volume so her voice would carry as she got up to grab a first aid kit from the kitchen.
“I don’t know. It didn’t feel too bad, I’ll tell you that much,” Cal said with a half-smile as she returned with bandages and disinfectant for his wound.
“Really? Looks like somebody pulled a knife on you, man,” Antonia said as she attended to the gaping hole in his skin.
“Probably,” Cal said, waving his other arm dismissively as if a knife attack is nothing to be concerned about. “Why aren’t you a nurse instead of a nanny if you went to school for it?”
“Got knocked up,” Antonia said as she began to wind a bandage around Cal’s bicep. “Had to get a job doing data entry to pay for the kid, since his piece of shit father could never be depended on. No time for school.”
“Ever think about going back?” Cal asked.
Antonia shrugged. “I don’t really have what it takes.”
“Bullshit. What does it take, then?”
“Money,” Antonia said with a grin, highly amused with herself, even though she was just telling the truth. “That’s the crucial thing you need to be a success.”
“It definitely helps,” Cal admitted, flexing a little bit to get comfortable as she finished tying up the bandage on his arm. “Thanks,” he muttered, staring down at his lap rather than making eye contact with Antonia.
“No problem,” Antonia said. She reached over to grab her wine and took another few sips to reward herself. “Hey, do you want a drink, by the way? You look like you could definitely use one right about now.”
“Sure,” Cal said, getting to his feet. “I’ll get it, though. You’re not a waitress.”
“Used to be!” Antonia said with a laugh, going up with Cal and bringing her almost empty wine glass so she could get a second serving. “I had several jobs on my travels before I came here. Which reminds me…what do you do, exactly?”
Cal burst into laughter, right in the middle of pouring the wine, so that he spilled a little on the front of his shirt. “Ah, shit,” he groaned. “Oh, well. The red will go with the blood I got on it earlier,” he said with a smile. Antonia thought that she’d never seen him look this light, this free. Maybe fighting really was therapeutic for men.
“What was so funny, anyway?” Antonia asked, holding out her glass so Cal could pour her some wine as well.
“Oh, it’s just that you waited until you’ve been working here for almost a month before you asked me. I never figured you were the shy type.” He finished pouring Antonia’s drink, but before she could take another sip, he lightly tapped the side of her glass with his own. “Cheers, or something,” he muttered before tossing half of his glass down his throat in one gulp.
“Cheers,” Antonia repeated before taking a sip. “I’m not shy. It’s just…I don’t know, to be honest with you, before right this moment, I figured you didn’t want to talk to me for any reason unless it was absolutely necessary. You know, like you’re a very intense guy.”
“What? No, I’m not,” Cal protested, pouring himself some more wine and going to get another bottle for good measure. “I’m a very simple dude, really.”
“Oh yeah? Simple? That why you’re still dancing around telling me what you do for a living?” Antonia said, making a point to raise her eyebrows as high as they could go.
Cal lifted his hands in surrender, smiling and shaking his head at her. “You’re a real interesting woman, Antonia. Nothing gets past you.”
“I’m like a verbal goalkeeper,” Antonia said, laughing at her own lame joke before taking another sip of the sweet wine. “But anyway, I’m not going to let you get away without answering me directly.”
“I didn’t mean to be evasive, really,” Cal said.
“You’re still evading me! Spit it out, god damn it!” Antonia demanded, even though there was a broad smile splitting her face in half. She must have been feeling a little bit looser and freer as a result of the alcohol. It was also nice talking to another adult for a change.
“I’m a therapist!” Cal finally answered, laughing loudly after the words left his mouth. “Well, I’m a physical therapist. I help people recovering from accidents and injuries. I work with people to heal them. That’s what I do.”
“Wow, I would not have guessed that,” Antonia said, staring at Cal harder to try to figure out if he was lying or not. It seemed like the type of thing he would do, lie as a joke. Or maybe even lie just for the fun of doing it.
“Is that an insult?” Cal asked, narrowing his eyes a little suspiciously.
“Hey, you’re the doctor,” Antonia said, smiling so broadly her lips started to ache a little bit. “You should be able to figure that one out.”
Cal sarcastically clapped his hands together. “Wow, you’re so funny.”
“I’ll be here all week,” Antonia said, sipping some more wine even though her head was starting to feel a little woozy. She definitely did not have the tolerance that she used to back in her younger years. “Well, I’ll be here as long as Bobby is, anyway.”
Cal coughed a little awkwardly, tossing back more wine and looking uncomfortable, as if just bringing up the vague deadline he’d set for Bobby’s time here was too much for him to handle. Antonia took the hint and decided not to push the issue, at least for now while they weren’t already fighting each other. She decided to fall silent, focusing on the sweetness of her drink for several long peaceful minutes until Cal decided to speak up again.
“So you were married?” Cal asked.
“Yeah, for a couple years,” Antonia said. “It was…not the best experience of my life, I’ll put it that way,” she added with a laugh. Now she knew for sure that the alcohol was having an effect on her emotional state. She never used to like talking about Paul. In fact it often made her skin crawl whenever a coworker or neighbor or old friend or family member even mentioned him in passing. But for now, she was still comfortable, not raising her hackles in response to any question or comment about her failed marriage. She even…wanted to talk about him, for some reason. It was like she needed to get the words out of her system, releasing them out into the world regardless of their recipient. “He was a total fucking scumbag. Is, not was. He’s not dead, unfortunately.” Antonia sighed and playfully slapped herself on the side of her own face. “Bad girl. I shouldn’t say things like that. He’s my son’s father.”
“So?” Cal asked, scooting his chair a little closer to Antonia’s and dropping his voice, probably in case one of the boys was awake even though the chance of their conversation being heard from upstairs was slim. “Does it make him less of a scumbag, just because he donated some DNA at a crucial point in the kid’s lifeline?”
“I don’t know,” Antonia said with a sigh. “A lot of people in Paul’s life would probably say the same thing about me, and…you know, I’m not a perfect mother, but I try really hard. Maybe from Paul’s perspective, things are the same for him.” She shrugged, blowing out her breath as she thought of all the issues with her ex-husband.
“Well, that sounds like bullshit to me, but I can see you’re trying to be nice, so I’ll let it go,” Cal said, offering her a teasing smile that made her feel a little bit warmer inside even though her mood had fallen a little bit thinking about her ex. “So what’s the deal with him anyway? Deadbeat dad? Doesn’t have a job? What is it?”
“Sort of,” Antonia said. “He has a job, but he still tries not to pay child support even though he can afford it. He’s a cop. Well, a parole officer, actually.”
Cal paused, his cup suspended mid-air between the table and his mouth, like the new information surprised him for some reason. “Interesting,” he said, clearing his throat. “Go on. Tell me more about him. Why do you hate him?”
“I don’t hate him, I just…” Antonia trailed off, tired of repeating the same line to herself over and over again. “Okay, fine, I hate him. I just can’t say that in front of my kid, okay?”
“Understandable,” Cal said, nodding for her to continue.
“Well, he wasn’t the worst guy in the world. He was nice to me in the beginning, but after a while he just got mean. Maybe because he was frustrated at work, or maybe he just fell out of love with me. I don’t know. I guess that can happen sometimes, for no good reason. He just started being so cruel to me all the time, saying awful things about my weight and how I looked and stuff like that.”
“What? That’s terrible,” Cal said, some new emotion flashing from behind his eyes in response to Antonia’s last statement.
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t fun, that’s for sure,” Antonia said with a drawn-out sigh, reaching across the dining room table to pour herself some more wine. She had somehow stumbled into a makeshift therapy session with her boss, a guy she was pretty certain didn’t even like her that much, so she figured she needed more wine if she was going to survive this encounter with her whole mind and spirit intact. “Anyway, we’ve been broken up for a couple years now, but he keeps…causing problems.”
“Like what?” Cal asked, his brow furrowed in concentration. Antonia never would have guessed that he would be such a good listener, but then again he’d have to be, to be successful as a physical therapist which, from the looks of his lifestyle, he was.
“Well…” Antonia hesitated to tell the full story, aware that she sounded a little bit irrational. Ah, fuck it, she thought to herself. She’d been pretty brutally honest with Cal about his flaws as a father. It was only fair that she share her own flaws with him, too. “I’m pretty sure he got me fired. And evicted. I’m not sure what I did to piss him off this time, but I think he called in a complaint to my boss and then on the same day threatened my landlord. He gets…possessive.”
“You’re not together anymore, though,” Cal pointed out.
“Yeah,” Antonia agreed. “But logic doesn’t really appeal to him very much. I mean, if he wanted me so badly, you’d think he wouldn’t have cheated on me with some secretary down at the precinct. But he did, so…” She trailed off again, reaching for more wine to numb herself to the emotions that were being reawakened by this conversation.
“What a fucking loser,” Cal said, speaking with a sharp edge to his voice that Antonia had never heard before. It was like he was angry—furious, in fact—and holding it in behind a careful mask of objectivity. But Antonia could see through it, looking into Cal’s eyes. There was a fire that burned in his pupils. It made her squirm a little in her seat, unsure of what to do. A part of her wanted to thank him for feeling so angry on her behalf, but there was another, more frightened, more defensive part of her mind that felt naked, totally exposed under his gaze. I shouldn’t have told him anything about my private life. I can’t trust him. I’m being stupid. I’m drinking too much, she thought to herself even as she kept sipping on her wine.
She cleared her throat after swallowing, deciding to change the subject. “Anyway, the whole thing gave me Daniel. That makes it worth it.”
Cal shifted uncomfortably on his feet, tapping his fingers against the top of the table before returning his gaze to Antonia’s eyes, staring at her so intensely that Antonia almost flinched. Almost.
Finally, he broke the silence, asking in an uncharacteristically soft voice, “Do you really believe that? That it was meant to be? Like there’s a purpose for everything?”
“I don’t know,” Antonia said. “But I believe you have to make the best of whatever happens, no matter how shitty it is.” She was unsure what they were talking about, exactly, except that it wasn’t a typical therapy session. Somewhere, hiding underneath their words, they were talking about Cal’s issues, maybe even his issues with Bobby. But she didn’t need to know more than that. Nurses and nannies have their own way of treating people’s minds, she thought to herself proudly as she saw Cal crack a slightly hopeful smile.
“All right, well, I better head to bed. I’ve got an early day tomorrow,” Cal said.
“Again?” Antonia asked. “You’ve been working really hard. And you go to night appointments, too? I can’t imagine where you get the energy.”
Cal started to say something, opening his mouth a little, but then he shut it again, shaking his head instead. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Have as much wine as you want. Later.”
He disappeared up the stairs, heading to his bedroom and shutting the door loudly enough that Antonia could hear from downstairs in the kitchen. Ah, what the hell? Antonia thought to herself as she poured a final glass of wine to drink before going to bed.
Her body buzzed pleasantly, wrapped in some gentle comforting warmth that soothed her to the core, but somehow she thought that it wasn’t just the effect of all the alcohol. It was something else, something that only came about because she talked to Cal. She just knew it.
It’s different, living with a man this way, she thought to herself as she sipped at the wine. Maybe they can only open up to women if they aren’t fucking them. Maybe romance and sex and everything that comes attached to it messes up the communication pathways, and there’s no way to fix it once it’s broken.
One thing was clear to Antonia, above all else. This was so much better than living with Paul had been. She could get used to it, having a man in the house she could talk to, who would listen to her, who would help her bear her emotional burdens.
You’re being silly, she said to herself as she drained the dregs from her glass and walked to the sink to rinse it. This is just a temporary thing. Once he gets sick of Bobby, he’ll be done with you, and it’ll be back to abject poverty for both you and Daniel. Don’t get used to it.
Still, as she slipped off to sleep, she couldn’t help but feel like this was where she was meant to be, at least for the moment.