Chapter Twenty: Lolita
I had no idea how much little fun kids could be. I’d seen some real brats in my day, especially waitressing at Applebee’s on the weekends, where parents dragged in their snot-nosed kids and strapped them into high chairs and tried to pacify them with crackers while they screamed like banshees and threw shit on the carpet. I swear, you should see the carpet after those little shit heads leave. There are crumbs and crap everywhere, like the bottom of a fucking guinea pig’s cage or something.
But Cody was different, probably because I was falling hard for his daddy. That’s right, it had only been a couple of days, but Ryder and I had developed a bond that ran deeper than just great sex. They say when you meet your soulmate, you just know it. Well, I think I knew it, though I wasn’t sure how he felt. I wasn’t going to say anything, of course. When you’re a younger woman involved with an older man, you had to be very careful how quickly you let yourself fall. Your emotions could be blamed on your lack of experience and immaturity. Fuck that. I knew what I was feeling and I knew that it was real. Still, I wouldn’t say anything unless Ryder did, but I knew in my heart, I was falling fast.
Oh, back to Cody…
He was just the sweetest little boy. When I walked in and Ryder introduced me as his nanny, Cody gave me a hard look, then squealed and threw his little arms around my neck and gave me a tight squeeze when I told him I liked Legos and Barney, even though I had no idea who Barney was. We hit it off immediately. He called me “Lolo” and patted my cheeks between his hands and give me a slobbery peck on the nose.
This morning, I showed up at Ryder’s house just after eight. It would have been so much easier if I had just woken up there, but we knew we had to take things slowly for Cody’s sake. The poor little thing had just lost his mommy and I wasn’t trying to replace her in his life, though maybe someday he wouldn’t mind me sleeping over now and then. I hoped that day would come, but for now, this was perfectly fine with me.
Ryder had a breakfast meeting with his boss and was going to deal with Bethany’s car. I didn’t envy his task. I could only imagine the state the car was in. And to stand there knowing it was the car someone you once loved died in would be a lot to handle. I’d bawl like a baby, but Ryder was a rock. He would probably be bummed when he got home. It would be my job to make him feel better. Luckily, it was a job I was well-qualified to do.
* * *
Cody was in the pool with inflatable floaties around his upper arms. He didn’t know how to swim and was hesitant to get in the pool at first, but once I got him in the water and he realized that he wasn’t going to drown, he started having a ball. I was sitting on the edge of the pool with my feet in the water, watching him paddle around, squealing, laughing. I looked up at the sky. The sun was hidden behind thick, gray clouds, but the air was still hot and humid. A perfect day to hit the pool without worrying too much about a sunburn. I’d slathered Cody in sunscreen anyway, as any good nanny would do. Then, out of the blue, my mother appeared at the kitchen door.
“What are you doing home?” I asked, shielding my eyes with a hand to peer at her like a sailor spotting the shore. “What time is it?”
“It’s lunch time,” she snapped. “And I came home to make sure you weren’t fucking up your life!”
“Excuse me?” I nodded at Cody. “I’m working. Watch your language. What are you talking about?”
“I know what you’re doing, Lolita,” she said, walking toward me with her hands on her hips and a fiery look in her eye. She forced a playful smile and waved at Cody, then sat in the deck chair near me and lowered her voice. “What the fuck are you thinking? Are you crazy? Fucking the guy next door?”
I put on a defensive air and tried to act innocent, something I’d never been good at doing. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said. “I know what you’ve been doing. He’s lucky I don’t call the police on him!”
“Mother, what the fuck are you talking about?”
She narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “Kevin told me what happened. So, did Mrs. Crown. What the hell are you thinking?”
“Kevin?” I rolled my eyes. “What did he tell you? And when have you ever believed anything old Mrs. Crown had to say?”
“When Kevin calls me at work and tells me that my nineteen-year-old daughter is fucking the older guy next door, you bet your ass I’m going to listen.” She said it, then waited for me to respond. I could tell by the look in her eyes that no amount of lying was going to put her off, so I tried a diversionary tactic.
“Mom, Kevin showed up here Friday night high as a kite and tried to force his way into the house with a knife,” I said, louder than I should have because Cody stopped paddling his arms and gave me a frightened look. His eyes grew wide and his bottom lip quivered. I slid into the water and took his hands and started pulling him around the shallow end. He made motorboat sounds with his lips, like his daddy does when he’s blowing on my nipples.
“Mrs. Crown called and told me she saw that man come into our house Friday morning and he didn’t leave until it was almost time for me to come home from work. And she said you were in and out of his house all weekend.” She tried to put a sing-song lilt in her voice to keep Cody from freaking out. “I guess she was lying, too?”
“Mrs. Crown and Kevin need to mind their own business,” I said, smiling at Cody, pulling him in a circle. “I can’t believe you’d take their word over mine.”
Mom looked at me for a moment, sitting on the edge of the deck chair with her elbows on her knees, sweating through her silk blouse in the noonday sun. I glanced at her. She didn’t look angry. Christ, what did she have to be angry about? I got to him before she did. What was the big deal. No, she looked… frightened. It was a look I’d never seen on my mother’s face before. I won’t lie. It scared me a little bit.
“Lolita, I know you think you’re grown…”
“I am grown, mother,” I shot back.
“Your body might be, but your heart and your mind…”
“Mom, are you seriously going to lecture me about having sex?” I rolled my eyes and made Cody laugh. “You? Of all people?”
I immediately regretted saying it. A look of deep hurt washed over her pretty face. Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” she said quietly. “But I know how it is when you’re a young girl attracted to an older man. You can get hurt so easily, honey. Please, you have to stop this before it goes any further.”
I gave Cody a floating duck and he occupied himself with motorboating it around the shallow end of the pool, the floaties on his arms keeping him buoyant as he kicked his feet. I went to the side of the pool near my mother and watched her wipe tears away with her fingertips.
“How do you know about older men?” I asked. When she didn’t answer, I knew why. “It was my father, wasn’t it? You told me you didn’t know who my father was, but that was a lie. He was an older man, wasn’t he?”
She blinked at me a few times and rubbed a knuckle under her nose. She said, “Yes. Your father was an older man.”
“Who was he?”
She bit her bottom lip and set her eyes on Cody, who was slapping the water and giggling when it splashed in his face. She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “His name was Percy Hall,” she said quietly. “He was my high school English teacher.”
“Holy shit, mom,” I said, my heart wrenching in my chest. “Mr. Hall was my English teacher in the tenth grade. Everybody called him Pervy Hall because of the way he stared at the girls. Oh, my god… He’s so…”
“Old and creepy?” she said, nodding. “Twenty years ago, he was young and handsome. And I wasn’t the only girl he slept with. For all I know you may have brothers and sisters all over town.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this?” I asked, anger slowly replacing my concern for her. My voice became a loud whisper. Pervy Hall was my father? Pervy Hall, the creepy teacher who wore stained, short-sleeve, white shirts and twenty-year-old neckties, and wrinkled khakis that everyone made fun of. I honestly didn’t know what to do with that knowledge other than wish it wasn’t true, though I could tell by the look on her face that it was.
I asked, “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me who my dad was?”
“Because he was a piece of shit that slept with teenage girls,” she said, her voice cracking. Cody wasn’t paying attention. He was fixated on the rubber duck. “I told him I was pregnant and he said I should get an abortion. He offered to pay for it, but I refused. I wanted you. Christ, I wanted him. I thought if I had you, he would marry me and we’d live happily ever after. It took me a long time to realize that I was not the only girl he was having sex with. I would never want him to have anything to do with you. Never ever.”
“Ryder’s not like that,” I said quietly.
She huffed a laugh. “Oh, it’s Ryder, is it. That’s what you call him?”
“That’s his name, mom,” I said defensively. “He cares for me and I care for him.”
“Jesus Christ, Lolita, you don’t even know the man,” she said, struggling to maintain her calm. “You just met him. And you slept with him on Friday… oh my god… you were with him all weekend, weren’t you? You told me you were looking after Cody for him, but that was a lie. You were in his house all weekend fucking him, weren’t you?”
“It’s not like you were here,” I said, snorting at her. “You were out fucking Otto or whatever the fuck his name is. What do you care what I do?”
“Because I’m your mother,” she said. I laughed at the words.
“So, it’s okay for me to fuck Kevin and any guy from school or work, but I sleep with Ryder and it’s not okay.”
“Honey, he is so much older than you,” she said. “He should know better. And Jesus, his wife just died, Lo. You’re fucking a guy in his dead wife’s bed. That is just wrong on so many levels!”
“You won’t feel that way after you meet him,” I said, shaking my head firmly. “Ryder is a wonderful man. You don’t know anything about their life. She was divorcing him and was pregnant with another dude’s baby when she died.”
“Oh, my god,” mom said, putting a hand to her lips. “That’s awful.”
“I know, right? Their marriage was over. All he had to do when he returned from Iraq was sign the papers. She was seeing another guy.” I took a deep breath and lowered my voice. “Ryder is a wonderful man, mom. You’re gonna love him. Just wait and see.”
“No, I’m not,” she said, pushing herself out of the chair. Her face glistened with sweat. The white silk blouse stuck to her skin. “I’m going to change and go back to work. This conversation is not finished. And you keep your ass out of his house until we settle this. Do you understand?”
Mom had a way of making me feel like a little girl. She glared at me until my head started bobbing on its own. She glanced at Cody and shook her head. I knew exactly what she was thinking. An older man knocked her up when she was sixteen and forever changed her life. Now, here I was, sleeping with an older man at nineteen, taking care of his four-year-old son.
She always wanted the best for me.
She prayed that I would not repeat her mistakes, yet here I was.
I didn’t give birth to a child and the man I was sleeping with wasn’t my douchebag teacher, but the similarities were enough to make me stop and think.
What if she was right…