Chapter Eighteen
I pull to a stop in front of Tara’s parents’ home. Not on my list of things I want to do. How the hell will I get through tonight? Maybe Tara’s mom doesn’t remember me. Perhaps she’s forgotten about our night together? We met once, three years ago, if memory serves.
I don’t want that memory.
I press thoughts of Tara’s mother to the back of my mind and follow Tara up the steps of her parent’s Bel Air home. The entrance is gigantic and is an attempt at a statement.
“Mom? Dad?” Tara’s voice echoes off the marble floor.
“Back here,” her father calls out.
We walk down a long hallway and into the TV room where her father lounges in one of a dozen recliners. He watches a baseball game on a projection TV. The announcer blares out the latest score.
“Jake, good to see you again.”
He stands and shakes my hand. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Beer?”
He walks toward the bar at the far side of the room and I follow. On top of the marble cabinet is a silver bucket with ice and beers. I pull out a Stella and he opens the bottle. He watches the game while he talks.
‘”Sorry, have some bucks riding on this game. You a baseball fan?”
“I like the Dodgers.”
“Daddy grew up in Chicago,” Tara says. “He loves his Cubs.”
A player hits a grounder toward first for an easy out.
“One more inning to go,” Dennis says, and slaps me on the back. “See you found Tara.” He winks as though we’ve got our own private joke because of the night I came to Malibu looking for Tara and stumbled across her parents.
Yeah, that’s not the only thing we’ve shared.
“Where’s Mom?”
“Upstairs. Getting dressed. She’s having a helluva time deciding what to wear.”
“Aren’t we eating here?”
“We are.” Dennis tilts his watch and looks at the time. “And hopefully soon. I have a meeting at nine.”
“Tonight, Daddy?” Tara glances past her father toward me. “Couldn’t you have waited until tomorrow?”
“Sweetie, money never sleeps. Who do you think pays for this place?”
Tara’s face crumples. Right. I’ve met more Dennis’s than I can count. He’s correct that money never sleeps, but what he forgets is time marches on, and while you can always make more money you can’t create more time. After losing Dad and Susie, and Mom losing her memory, I know that time with family is more precious than any of the dollars Dennis might make at his meeting tonight. But I’m the guest in this house, and I’m dating his daughter. I don’t say anything to Dennis about his business meeting.
If business is really what his meeting is about.
Because if memory serves, according to Tara’s mom, Dennis has a penchant for sex clubs and twenty-somethings.
“Tara tells me you make loads of money,” Dennis says.
His crass words rattle me. They rattle Tara, too. The color drains from her cheeks and she pulls a beer from the bucket. I lift the corner of my mouth and shoot her a glance, which is my attempt to tell her that I understand this is the only language her father speaks. According to Dennis, every person’s value is determined by the money they make.
“Wish our girl did the same,” Dennis continues. “Has the best education money can buy and what does she want to do? Write. Ha! Won’t make a living on that, will she?” He smiles while he says the words, as though they’re a joke, but they’re not a joke to Tara. She flushes red and takes a long drink of her beer.
“She seems to do pretty well.”
“Right, if you call middle-class well. Damn waste if you ask me. To take those fancy degrees she has and not make some real money. Why be poor when you can be rich?”
To Dennis, wealth only comes in the shade of green. Tara stands beside me and I grasp her hand and squeeze. Money is great, makes life easier, but what about love, and family, and children? Tara’s face is a shade of gray. This isn’t the first time her father has derided her for her job and her income. Even though he’s Tara’s dad, he’s an asshole who has no idea who his daughter is or how accomplished or respected in her field she’s become. I want to say all these things but I don’t. I say nothing, because no matter what I say, this man will only see her value based on how big her salary is.
“Hello.” Tara’s mom breezes into the room, her black hair falling in loose curls around her face. She wears a bright blue dress and heels.
“Jake, it’s good to see you again.” She reaches for my hand and pulls me in and places a peck on my cheek.
She remembers me.
Her lips remain on my skin just a little too long, and she grasps my upper arm and squeezes. Our eyes meet and in them I see a plea. Is she as worried as I am? Does she wish, like I do, that this wasn’t happening, that we simply had the awkwardness of her accidentally walking in on me and Tara and not the embarrassment of actually having sex with each other?
“Dennis. Did you offer Tara and Jake drinks?”
“Don’t they have them in their hands?” Dennis barks. He slides his gaze away from the game and toward his wife. There is no love in his look, no compassion, no joy over seeing his wife enter the room. He doesn’t love her. It’s obvious in his words, his tone, his stance. This man does not love this woman.
The crowd on the giant TV cheers.
“Could you turn that off and we’ll go into the living room and chat with Tara and Jake until dinner is ready?” Lorraine asks.
“You three go,” Dennis says. “I want to finish watching the game. What time is dinner? I have to leave in an hour.”
The muscle in Lorraine’s jaw twitches, but her expression doesn’t change. Her smile, a tight false smile, remains on her face. “Let me go ask.” She looks at Tara and then me. “Why don’t we head to the dining room and I’ll ask chef when dinner will be served. Dennis?”
“What the hell, Lorraine? I told you I’m going to finish watching this game. There’s one inning left. It’s my damn house and my damn cook and my damn food. I’ll be in when I’m damn well ready.”
Tara ducks her head as though each word is a smack. I squeeze her hand. She swallows and I see she’s holding back tears. She’s sad for her family. Her parents are completely unhappy with each other and it’s obvious. I know from experience that the things you ignore as a family become apparent when there’s someone new in the room. Fresh eyes make it impossible to ignore what we often choose not to see.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“Don’t be.” I walk with her out of the TV room and down another long hallway. “You’ve met my family, right? You know we’re nuts.”
She smiles. I stop and look at her. I press my fingers beneath her chin and tilt her head toward mine. We kiss, and this kiss is meant to reassure her and make her feel loved and cherished. I want to give her the love she needs, the attention she craves, and the reassurance that I will never judge her simply on the amount of money she makes. She steps away and I glance past her.
Lorraine watches us again, this time from a doorway at the end of the hall.
“Come into the dining room,. Chef says dinner is ready. I’ve let Dennis know.”
The table is long and imposing and meant to be just that way. The three of us sit at one end, leaving the head of the table open for whenever Dennis cars to dine.
“I’m sure your father will join us when he can.”
Dennis doesn’t join us. An hour later we are completing our meal when he pops into the dining room to tell us the baseball game has ended and he’s heading out to his meeting.
“Good to see you again, John. Don’t get up.”
“Daddy, it’s Jake,” Tara says softly.
I stand and shake his hand.
“I’m sure we’ll see you again. You know, as long as our girl doesn’t walk in on you banging your assistant against your office wall.”
He slaps me on the shoulder as though he’s just told the best joke, but he hasn’t. He’s just told the story of the worst thing that has ever happened to his daughter and used it like a punch line to a pathetic joke.
“Thank you for dinner.” I sit down, because in this moment those words are the only polite thing I can think to say. What I really want to do is tell this guy that he’s a complete and utter asshole and that he’s done nothing but embarrass his wife and daughter since I arrived. I don’t say any of that because I’m Tara’s guest and I don’t want to rock the world that she and, more so, her mother, inhabit.
I flash Tara a look. I want her to know that I see her, that I love her, and that I know what a jerk her father is. That her father’s inability to be polite, kind, or loving, doesn’t impact my feelings for her. If anything, Dennis’s behavior makes me more protective of Tara.
“Bye, peaches.” Dennis bends down and plants a kiss on Tara’s cheek. She forces a smile to her face and pushes her chicken around her plate.
“Bye, Daddy.”
In that moment, I see the little girl Tara was once upon a time. The child that was ignored by her father as he dashed off to his business ‘meetings’. How he never noticed her growing, or praised her for anything. How he pointed out her flaws over and over and over again. I see that little girl and I understand why Tara fights for the truth and to be heard and why she needs to be seen. I also suddenly understand why she dated McDouchey for so fucking long.
“I’ll be back late.” Dennis’s spits these words toward Lorraine. No good bye, no term of endearment, no kiss on the cheek. Just a quick bark and a fast exit.
Tara’s mom doesn’t cover her emotions quite so easily this time. Pain lives in her eyes.
A memory floods my mind. The story of her and her marriage. Why three years ago she met with me. She’d not slept with her husband in nearly a decade. They shared a giant home, a daughter, and nothing more. She didn’t leave him. She still loves him. While that love may be weathered, and bitter, and filled with a recalcitrant rage, it’s still there on her face, in her eyes, as she watches her husband leave for what could be the millionth time in her life.
“Coffee?” she asks, and being the perfect hostess covers her sadness with a smile.
I nod, as does Tara.
“Excellent, let’s have it in the blue room.”
***
“You never lived here.”
Tara shakes her head. “We had a much smaller place in Calabasas when I was growing up, but then one of Daddy’s deals took off and he wanted this as an investment.” We walk down a third hallway toward the blue living room, this one more intimate, according to Tara’s mom.
“The house seems so big.”
“It is. Mom hates it. Dad travels all the time.”
“It would seem so—”
“Lonely?”
I nod.
“I asked Mom about that once. Right after they moved in.”
“And what’d she say?”
“She asked me if I wanted to get a mani-pedi.” Tara smiles. “Our family isn’t big on discussing emotional issues.”
“Maybe that’s why you need to.”
“I’m certain that’s why I need to discuss things and find the truth,” she says. “They’ve taught me a lot about what it means to have a good marriage and a good relationship by showing me what I don’t want to have. I thought I’d learned all that, but then with Greg?” She shakes her head and sighs. “He taught me that I don’t know nearly as much as I think I do, and that I need to always listen to my little voice. When it feels like something is off, it usually is.” Her brilliant blue eyes stare into mine. “I can’t pretend everything is okay when it isn’t.”
Her words hold so much meaning not just for her, but for me, and for us.
“They both seem so…so sad.” Her voice is soft.
“You can’t fix them.”
A tiny smile curves over her lips. “Your fancy therapist tell you that?”
I return Tara’s gentle smile with my own. “Just one of the things my fancy therapist has told me.”
We enter the blue living room. And while it may be more intimate than the yellow living room, I wouldn’t say it’s cozy. Plaid. Lots and lots of plaid, with dark wood and paintings of people on horses, with hounds and red jackets.
“I don’t think I’ve actually ever sat in this room,” Tara says, sitting on the couch.
A tray with coffee and cups is already on the table in front of the couch.
“We don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. We can go back to my place and eat ice cream out of the carton. I’ll even make you coffee.”
Tara smiles at my suggestion and whispers in my ear. “As different as I want my life to be from this one and as different as I am from my mom, and as much as I don’t understand, she’s still my mom. I want her to be happy. I wish she’d just take the leap and leave. I think she’d be much happier on her own.”
I can’t tell Tara that Lorraine thinks that too, and that she stays simply because she’s scared that Tara won’t love her if she leaves.
Tara’s phone buzzes and she slips it from her pocket. “I’ll be right back.” She jumps up, presses her phone to her ear, and darts out of the room.
“You find my life pathetic?”
I turn to my left and Lorraine stands by my side.
“No, I…I think Tara worries about you.”
Her eyes narrow. “I worry about her.”
She sits on the couch beside me and pours herself a cup of coffee.
“She told me you had no idea about the article, that you didn’t participate.”
“She told you it was me?”
“No, but I know you, so I knew who she was writing about before she did.” She lifts an eyebrow. “Don’t worry, I didn’t say a word. I can’t really, now can I?”
Relief floods through me, but I can’t keep this secret forever, can I?
“You can’t tell her,” Lorraine says. “It would ruin my relationship with her and that’s all I have left in my life. My marriage—” she glances into her cup of coffee, pauses and her gaze darts back up to me—“well, you’ve seen what my marriage is like.”
She leans closer to me, and her gaze locks to mine. “You’ve given up your Wonderfuck ways?”
Her eyes penetrate me and I’m not certain she’s asking for herself or for Tara’s well-being. “Or could you be convinced, that Wonderfucking is something you should resume?”
My stomach lurches. The thought of Lorraine, now, as Tara’s mother. My teeth grind together.
“I…no……no, that isn’t a part of my life any longer.”
“That’s good to know.” She sips her coffee. “Although I did enjoy our time together.”
“Jake, are you ready to go?” Tara stands near the doorway.
“Tara, come have some coffee before you leave,” Lorraine says.
“Can’t. Just got a call from work. Warren needs me for a story.”
Lorraine rises and walks to Tara. She pulls her into a hug. I stand on the other side and watch. Her mother shoots me a look, one that seems to say, ‘don’t make me tell her the truth.’
“I love you, Mom. Thank you for dinner.”
We walk to the front door. Lorraine pulls me into a hug. “Be good to my girl,” she whispers into my ear.
I glance at Tara, who is on the far side of the entryway pulling on her jacket. She hitches her purse over her shoulder.
“Thank you for dinner,” I say.
I open the door for Tara and suck in the night time air. We walk down the stairs holding hands, finally free from her parent’s unhappy home.