Chapter Twenty-one
The silence after losing Tara is deafening.
Before, with Susie, there was chaos after her death. Chaos and tragedy and family and friends, and a funeral. Out of that chaos came a need for silence, which was granted to me. Losing Tara, saying goodbye to the relationship we tried to build, despite the lies and omissions, was not externally chaotic. It wasn’t loud, but it was deafening in its silence.
I walk into Mom’s new residential facility. The air is cool and slams against my face. I pull off my sunglasses and my gaze sweeps the front entrance, which is determined to look like the front room of a home.
“Hey, I’m Mrs. Reynold’s son,” I say.
The man sitting at the front desk nods and pushes a button so I can enter the home. The lock is a precaution so that the residents don’t wander away, and after Mom went missing a few months ago. I understand the precaution, but my heart hates that my mother is in a locked facility.
I walk through the living room, past the dining room and kitchen toward the hallway. Three doors down on the left I stop and knock. The place is small and each resident’s room is a mini-suite with a front room, bedroom, and bathroom.
“Come in,” Mom calls.
I open the door.
“Uncle Jake!”
Lily runs toward me. Daisy bounds after her. I bend down and hug Lily and give Daisy a pat on the head. Lily wraps her arms around me.
“I miss you Uncle Jake. When are you coming over to see me?”
I glance at Rachel. Her lips form a severe line and the muscle in her jaw flinches. Her gaze darts from me and Lily back to Mom.
“We were just going,” Rachel says. Her tone icy. She bends down and kisses Mom on the cheek.
“Thank you for watching Rachel,” Mom says. “I should be feeling better soon.”
Rachel presses her hand to Mom’s shoulder and squeezes. “No problem.” Big sis fights back tears.
“Hi Mom.” I set a box of See’s truffles on the table by the front door and walk to her.
“Richard, how do you get handsomer every time I see you?”
I smile and kiss her cheek. I look at Rachel. “Don’t go on my account.”
She pulls at the collar of her shirt. “We’re not, Lily has a music lesson tonight.”
“No I don’t,” Lily yells from the far corner.
“Yes you do,” Rachel snaps.
“You can’t avoid me forever,” I say quietly, so only Rachel can hear.
“Why not? Weren’t you going to keep this a secret forever?”
“That’s different.”
“Right about that,” Rachel says. “One is good for my mental health and Lily’s, the other puts my entire career in jeopardy.” She leans forward. “And makes me question your mental stability.”
Rachel’s eyes flash with anger and concern.
“We need to discuss this,” I say. “I think that you’ll understand if I can just explain what I was doing and why I—”
“No. I don’t want to know.” Rachel holds up her hand. “The less I know the better.” She turns toward the front of Mom’s room where Mom and Lily are playing with Daisy. “I need you to get anything you want out of Mom’s house. I’m putting it on the market.”
“No you’re not,” I say.
Her gaze cuts me like a hot knife through butter. “Yes, I am. I don’t want that place. I don’t want the memories of the past, especially since our future is going to be so different.”
The words she says, combined with her tone, shock me.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that if you have that much disregard for me and my job, and potentially even Lily’s safety, then I don’t know you at all and I have no intention of letting a person that selfish and…and….wanton be a part of my life.”
“I’m sorry,” I say
“For what?” Rachel shoots back. “For fucking that many women, or for putting me in charge?” Rachel’s gaze glances from me to Mom. Her bottom lip quivers and she fights back tears.
“Rachel you three are the only things I have in my life. Can’t we…can’t we get together tomorrow to discuss this? Please, let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you why—”
“I can’t jeopardize my career and Lily’s future while you get your shit show in order, OK? So no, we can’t get together tomorrow, and to be fair, it may be a long while before I feel differently.”
A knot the size of a melon forms in my throat. These are the women I love. These three are my life and I’ve disappointed the one woman that our entire family looks to for love and guidance. Rachel is our touchstone, our matriarch, the foundation of our family ever since Mom’s mind fled the jurisdiction. I’ve disappointed her and the idea that I might be banished from the warmth of this family saddens me.
My chest tightens. I fight the tears that press into my eyes.
I walk to Lily. I scoop her into my arms and press my face into her curls. I love her. I love Lily with the kind of love that is amazing and pure and heals me in more ways than I ever could have imagined. She saved my life when she was born. She saved our family. I will not cry. I will not give her a bad memory because she doesn’t know…she doesn’t know that I’ve fucked up in what could be an unforgiveable fashion, and that quite possibly, her mother, my sister, may not let me see her again for a very long time.
I look at Rachel and Mom and Daisy and Lily, who plants a kiss on my face, smiles, and wiggles out of my arms so that she can play with Daisy. I pet Daisy and look into Lily’s eyes.
“Call me whenever you want and if Mommy says it’s okay. Bye, Lily.” I force myself not to cry. “I’ll see you and Daisy soon.”
The tears are about to win and I don’t want that. I turn to the door because an exit is the only way. My niece will never know how badly my heart is breaking.
***
“You’ve broken up with Tara, the only woman you can sleep with?”
I nod.
“You aren’t speaking with your sister or seeing your niece?”
I nod again.
“Your mother was just put in an assisted living facility.”
“Residential care.”
Vida raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me, residential care.”
“Yes.”
She taps her pen onto her pad of paper. “How long before your head explodes?”
“That’s why I come to you.”
“Right, but Jake, you have to work with me a little. I mean, these are all some major changes.”
“I don’t know how to fix any of them or if I want to fix the thing with Tara.”
I do. I desperately want to fix the thing with Tara.
“Are you being honest with yourself?”
“Honest with myself? Yes. With you? No. Look, here’s the thing, I want Tara. I love Tara, I know that. But I can’t trust Tara. I know that too.”
Vida nods and scribbles a note on her pad of paper. Looks up at me.
“Okay, but then how were you able to trust Susie?”
I sigh.
“I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t? Maybe I couldn’t trust her either, but I was just so fucking obsessed with getting what I wanted that I was willing to be with her no matter what she did. Maybe I thought eventually I could love her through it, maybe I thought….” The light clicks on in my head. “Maybe I thought I could save her.”
Vida’s gaze is locked onto me as though she’s willing a child to take his first step.
“And Tara doesn’t need to be saved.”
“That sounds plausible,” Vida says.
“Still doesn’t solve my problem because I absolutely do not trust her and I don’t know if I ever will.” I shift on the couch. “Or if I can.”
“Is that a fair assessment?”
“She lied about writing the article and stole the numbers from my phone.”
“They are egregious offenses,” Vida says. “What about your side of this? Are your hands clean?”
I lean back against the couch. Are they? No, not really. I slept with Tara, ditched her, didn’t tell her that she’d slept with a man who slept with hundreds of women as his vocation, then invited to be one of those women, left her crying on a couch….
I lean forward and put my elbows on my knees. “I…I can’t see a way to bridge that gap.”
“Okay, what about Rachel and Lily?”
My heart yanks and twists.
“She won’t speak to me.”
“She feels betrayed.”
“By the person she trusted.”
Vida nods.
“You may need to give Rachel time. She loves you and you love her, which is obvious based on the relationship you’ve built. She simply may need time to work through her feelings.”
“Right. Patience isn’t my strong suite.”
“And yet often, patience and time are the only things that can get us to where we need to be both emotionally and in our inter-personal relationships.”
Vida’s words resonate with me but still don’t fix the fucking pain traveling through my chest. All I have left is Mom. And reports from Fletcher, the dog trainer once every couple of days on how Lily is doing with Daisy. Yes, Rachel lets me Facetime with Lily and Daisy, but she doesn’t invite me over, nor does she talk to me.
And Tara.
My heart twists tighter. Tara seems to have disappeared again. That is her MO when things aren’t working between us. This time I won’t chase her. This time I won’t go to Malibu and look for her, nor will I go to Warren and tell him not to transfer her. This time she can go. In fact, maybe that would be the best thing that could happen. Maybe I should tell Warren that Tara needs to go and work in the San Francisco office.
“Our time is up today. You know your six months is up today,” Vida says.
“What are you talking about?” I stand and turn to Vida.
“The court only requires six months of anger-management therapy. You’ve completed that requirement.”
A tiny smile pulls over my face. “So I’m well. Like mentally, one hundred percent?” I ask in a teasing voice.
“You’ve done good work here. I’m not sure any human is ever ‘well’ when it comes to mental health because I don’t know that we’re ever broken. I can say you’ve confronted a number of problems and the requirement is complete.”
She smiles and she pushes a strand of silver-gray hair behind her ear.
“I’ll see you next week,” I say, and turn toward the door. “I’ve still got a whole lot of stuff to work through.”
“No problem,” Vida says. “Next week then.”
I walk through the door, confident that there is at least one woman in my life that thinks I’m making progress, still speaking to me, and that I’m not completely insane.