Chapter Six
Mr. Reynolds, it’s my understanding that this altercation took place on the street, in front of a bar, after you’d been drinking.”
I say nothing. I don’t even nod.
Judge Williams peers over her glasses at me. I know she knows who I am, that I’m her colleague’s little brother, but it feels as though instead of my being related to a Los Angeles County judge being a benefit to me, it may actually make this whole thing a lot worse.
“Your Honor, the police report fails to state that Mr. Reynolds came to the aid of a woman that had just been assaulted by her former fiancé.” Cassidy glances toward the seats behind us and toward Tara. “She’s here today to show her support for Mr. Reynolds.”
The heat of Tara’s gaze is on my back. I feel her presence as though it were her skin against mine.
“Mr. Reynolds, you’re willing to take the offer presented by the City Attorney?”
“I am.”
Judge Williams glances from me to my attorney, and then to the prosecutor standing behind her desk in the courtroom.
“Very well.” She reads through a spate of legal mumbo jumbo, which my attorney has spent nearly an hour explaining to me before my court date.
“Your sentence will be deferred pending completion of your community service hours, as well as restitution and medical expenses.” Judge Williams leans forward. “It would seem he lost a tooth.”
I’m surprised it was only one. I don’t say it, but I think it. McDouche-nugget got the benefit of my rage that night in front of Taggerts after he grabbed Tara and then knocked her to the ground. Douche-wad is a no-show today. Coward.
“Mr. Reynolds, I’m also adding on anger management therapy.”
“What the fu—”
Cassidy grabs my upper arm. Her grasp is tight.
“Of course your honor, Mr. Reynolds will comply with all the court’s orders.”
“Therapist of his choosing to be approved by the court and paid for by Mr. Reynolds.” She glances at the papers in front of her. “It would seem he has every financial advantage.”
She’s right. I do. I’ve worked for it, but I do have every advantage. I’m irritated and pissed at myself for losing my cool enough to end up in a courtroom in downtown LA. But after watching people in orange jumpsuits being led in and out of this courtroom for an hour this morning, I realize that the existence I lead is pretty fucking privileged.
I may have earned my money, but I didn’t earn my privilege. That came for free. No way is justice blind or fair after what I saw in this courtroom today.
“Thank you, your honor,” Cassidy says.
“Thank you, Judge Williams,” I say, and I mean it. She could have thrown my ass in jail with the damage I did to Douche-muffin’s face.
“Nothing, Mr. Reynolds. Nothing, for the next two years, are we clear?”
I nod. “Yes your honor.”
I follow Cassidy through the gate toward the back of the courtroom. Tara isn’t sitting in the cheap seats any longer. I’m good with that. I didn’t ask her to come here, and really, I don’t want to see her. Not now. Not here. Not as Jake. Not anymore.
“Find a therapist this week, send me the name and address. I’ll get it to the court. Pay the money. Probation will contact you about your community service hours.”
I nod.
I walk out of the courtroom and turn the corner.
Tara.
Still, even after fucking on multiple occasions, I haven’t resolved my anger, her anger, our combined rage. My eyes glance over her body, the only place I can find solace anymore.
She’s not alone.
Douchenozzle did show up today after all.
My jaw muscle twitches. They’re talking. He’s smiling. She smiles back. Now she’s touching her hair in that very female ‘I’m flirting with you’ way that is completely un-Tara. What the actual fuck? Is she flirting with Sir Douche-a-lot?
How could that be?
She’s smarter than that.
Isn’t she?
What the actual hell?
Heat threads through my chest like an electrified wire hanger. I’m having a hard time believing what I’m seeing. That Tara is actually being friendly to the guy she caught banging his colleague on his desk.
Fuck.
Was the entire thing bullshit….from the beginning?
Her smile.
Her eyes.
The way she touches her hair.
Did she set me up from the first moment in the hall…did she know? Has she known since before that…
Sure the break up might have been real, but was anything else?
I turn. I walk. I don’t look back.
Fuck or fight. Unfortunately for me, today, without Tara and because of Douchey, I can’t do either one.
***
“I can’t remember, did you dye your hair or was this the actual color when you were in high school?”
Rachel stands beside me and tilts a faded picture in a frame toward me. Baseball circa 1999. Me with twelve other guys all in Pali High uniforms.
“Where’d you find that?” I reach for the photo and run through the faces of these guys. We were out getting high, drunk, and laid, when we absolutely should’ve been home locked in our rooms.
“Were we ever that young?”
“There’s evidence that you were. So far I can’t find any pictures of me while in high school.” Rachel sighs. “Do you think she burned them? This one of you was in the time capsule that is Dad’s office.” She nods toward the far end of the downstairs where Dad’s office is located.
“Seriously, it still smells like him. You know that Old Spice meets bourbon scent?”
I nod. I do know. I remember. Dad’s sacred space. We didn’t enter that room unless we were summoned, and the only time we were summoned was when we were in trouble.
“You know how we never went in there? Well it seems neither did anyone else. Even after he died.”
I’m willing to continue in the garage if Rachel will go through Dad’s study.
“Anything…” My words trail off because I don’t want to ask but I have to.
“Incriminating?”
I nod.
“Not yet, but I haven’t gotten to the locked drawers.”
Deep breath. Who knows, we could have siblings in Sacramento. Not kidding. Not in the least.
“Speaking of incriminating, how did your court date go?”
Rachel uses the big sister voice she reserves for when she feels morally superior and I’m the younger brother fuck up. Like now.
“Okay.” I stop there. My form of torture. I’m guessing that her buddy Judge Williams filled her in, off the record of course, on what happened in court, but now Big Sis wants to hear it from me and assess whether I’m repentant or on my way toward another fall.
“That’s it?”
“You already know. Restitution. Fine. Community Service.”
I pull out a garbage bag form the box and shake it open.
“And…”
I look over my shoulder.
“And a therapist of my choosing. Okay? Happy? A therapist. You’ve been angling for that for going on five years.”
Rachel presses her lips together, which tells me that she knew about the therapist before I told her.
“Did you ask her to order therapy?”
“That would be completely inappropriate.”
Great lawyer. Awesome judge. Again, bad fucking liar. I say nothing. I don’t want to have this argument. Rachel has hounded me about going to therapy since Susie died.
“Let me know if you need a referral,” she says, and walks toward the door between the house and the garage.
“Thanks.” I open up the third giant box that’s shoved into the half of the garage that doesn’t house a car. So far I’ve found nothing but old newspapers, car parts, and tools. All of which now lie in their respective piles on the table I set up near the garage door.
“You only have a week, right? To find a therapist?”
“Thought you didn’t discuss it.”
She’s incriminated herself.
“Did you see…” Rachel’s words drift away. Great. Now there are two names she’s uncertain she should say in front of me. Not doing so great with the women I choose to fall in love with.
“Tara? You can say her name. I know we argued about her, but I’m over it.”
“Did you see her? In court?”
“We didn’t speak, but yeah, she was there. And so was Mr. Douche.”
“I’m guessing Mr. Douche is her ex-fiancé?”
“The guy I beat the shit out of because he knocked her on her ass? Yeah, he was there, and they were acting like long lost buds.”
Rachel bites her bottom lip. Her face is tight as though debating whether to remain silent or tell me something that she thinks I don’t want to know.
“Spill it.”
Rachel sighs and glances toward the ceiling. “Look, I know you don’t want me talking to Tara—”
“I don’t care,” I say, sounding more like a fourteen-year-old boy than a grown man. But ladies, no surprise. There are similarities. We are eternal man-children. “I’m over it.”
“Not true. You lost your shit about me hanging out with Tara.”
“Are you going to tell me or not?”
“She called me, okay, just so we’re clear. We chatted. It would seem she’s been talking to Greg.”
“You mean Douchey? She’s been talking to Douchey?”
Rachel nods.
“Is she a fucking idiot?”
“No, she’s not an idiot. She’s a woman who was in love with a man who made a mistake.”
“Sticking your cock in another woman’s vagina isn’t a mistake. That’s pretty intentional. A mistake is adding two plus two and getting five, which is actually more likely a mistake than fucking a woman other than your fiancé.”
Rachel sighs. “While I agree with you 100 percent, I do understand what’s going on in her mind. Okay. There were about two-and-a-half minutes when I talked to Dalton.”
“You talked to Dalton? As in getting back together talked?”
“It was when Lily was hospitalized, for that fever? Right after he left and he had to come back and well…”
“You slept with him?”
My sister turns a shade of red reserved for fire engines and tomatoes.
“Are you kidding me?”
“I’m not proud of it, okay? But we were still married. I felt abandoned and Lily was in the damn hospital. Emotions were on high, okay? It was a rough time. So yes, we did. We slept together.” Rachel takes a deep breath. “Then his girlfriend called from South America and I realized that he was a dumbass and I couldn’t be married to a dumbass.”
“Okay, I get it. You were still married. You’d been together for years, Lily was sick. Fine. But what’s Tara’s excuse?” I say it like I’m indifferent, but on the inside I am fucking enraged. Is she fucking him? Is she seeing him? What the fuck is going on? “They don’t have a kid together, no one is in the hospital, and there’s no reason she should be talking to him.”
Rachel lifts an eyebrow and gives me ‘the look’, the one she’s reserved for me, her little brother, since the beginning of time. The look that says not only are you stupid but you simply don’t understand the female mind, which I don’t…really, no man does.
“What? Why the look? What?”
“Okay, yes, you’re right. They don’t have children and no one is in the hospital, buuut, she did love him and they were engaged. The wedding was only six weeks away when she caught him and then she fell for this other guy who she found out has a bit of a problem with commitment….”
I say nothing. My sister knows less than half of what went down between me and Tara.
“Then she writes this amazeballs story about another guy who is perhaps the sexiest man in the universe.”
I cringe. If Rachel knew who Wonderfuck was she definitely wouldn’t think he was sexy.
“Then Greg calls her to tell her he misses her and he’s gone to therapy, and that they should talk.”
“Therapy? What the fuck is it with you women and therapy? As though therapy can erase every fucking sin?” I shake the trash bag and throw shit into it, disgusted by this entire conversation
“We believe in the power of change and redemption. We love a good redemption story. You know the bad boy who sees the error of his ways then goes through the long dark night of the soul, and because of the woman of his dreams, comes out the other side a better man able to love and care for the one woman he always loved.”
Rachel stands with her hand clasped in front of her chest and her eyes wide.
“You read too many romance novels. You realize that we have dicks and if we’re assholes who stick our dicks into other women when we’re in a committed relationship that shit rarely changes…especially if it’s a woman we’ve cheated on before.”
“Whatever. We want to believe men can change. We change. We want to believe that you can too.”
“We’re a bunch of fourteen-year-old boys in grown up bodies. You really need to take the fucking keys to the world away from us.”
“The future is female, brother.”
“I’m down with that shit. Smash the patriarchy, sister. I am A-Okay with female overlords.”
Rachel smiles and shakes her head. “You’re a smart man. One of the reasons I still love you.”
I can’t help but smile. Rachel is smart and amazing and has always loved our family with a ferocious loyalty, even when our family was fucking nutbag crazy. Plus, she’s bailed my ass out of jail on more than one occasion, which is really more than any person should ever ask of their big sister.
“Okay fine…I get it. But it doesn’t mean I like it. Even if we’re not going to be together, it doesn’t mean she should be with Douchebucket.”
“Then tell her.”
I look away from Rachel. I don’t want to have to tell Tara anything. I can barely talk to her. Of course she’s the only woman I’m sleeping with, but we’re really not talking. Not about anything important. I’m still too pissed about her article.
“Rachel?” The voice calls from inside the house.
“Oh my god, did Mom just say my name?” Mom hasn’t used either of our names in nearly three weeks, plus she’s stopped calling me Richard. We were both worried that the part of Mom’s brain that remembers us was finished. We turn toward the door leading into the house.
“Mom?” Rachel scurries inside and I follow. Mom stands in the center of the living room in a white gown…is that…does she have on…
“Can you believe this still fits?”
Rachel’s jaw drops open and her hand presses to her cheek. “Mom, is that…is that your wedding gown?”
“It was on the top shelf in my closest where I’ve always kept it, but then it was on the twin bed in the spare bedroom and I thought someone must have gotten it down. I don’t know why I put it on. Guess I wanted to see if I could still get it on.”
How the fuck is this my life? My sixty-seven-year-old mother stands in the middle of her living room wearing her wedding dress and for the first time in three weeks she remembers Rachel’s name?
“Richard, do you remember this day?”
Oh fuck. Yep, she remembers Rachel but thinks I’m dear old Dad. When Mom thinks I’m Dad, I have this overwhelming need to not break Mom’s heart. To at least say the things that she’d want Dad to say.
“You look as beautiful now as you did then.”
Her smile could light up Los Angeles. Those are words that any woman would want to hear from their husband of forty-five years.
“Mom, let’s go take this off and pack it up so it doesn’t get ripped,” Rachel says and walks toward mom. Mom pulls her gaze from me and gives Rachel a sharp look.
“Don’t touch me, I don’t even know who you are.”
My sister’s gaze shifts, and the corner of her mouth slips down. She recovers and pastes a smile onto her face. We’ve been through this before, this emotional whiplash that Mom causes because of this bullshit disease that shatters our hearts every time she’s here. And then she’s gone.
“No problem,” Rachel says, her voice patient and filled with love. “I just wondered if I could help you with your dress.”
Mom marches past Rachel toward the stairs. Her chin at a familiar angle, a slant we’d seen directed toward our father on many late nights when he returned home smelling of perfume, wearing lipstick on his collar that was a different shade than Mom’s.
Rachel follows Mom up the stairs. She holds the train of the white gown, tinged yelIow with age, my heart unsure it will ever recover from all the bullshit in my life.