I Take You (18 page)

“It will be so interesting to see which of us has more credibility,” she says thoughtfully. “The decorated federal prosecutor, or the disgraced former attorney.”

“Okay, look. I know that you don’t approve of me, but—”

She cuts me off. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when Will called me and told me about you. ‘Mom,’ he said. ‘I’m in love. Lily is perfect. She’s smart, and ambitious, and she loves the law.’ I was overjoyed. But it happened so fast. You sounded too good to be true. So,” she shrugs, “I did a little digging.”

“Unbelievable.”

“My thoughts exactly!” she retorts. “Because there you were,” she waves a hand at the folders, “in all your glory. You can imagine my dismay. My horror. But do you know what I did? I did the right thing.”

I have to laugh at this. “In what possible way could you have done the right thing?”

“I gave you the benefit of the doubt,” she snaps. “I walked into that lunch on Monday with an open mind. I thought, I shouldn’t prejudge. Maybe she’s different now. Maybe she’s changed.”

“I am different,” I say, almost pleading with her. “I have changed.”

“I can see that.” She leans forward, practically spitting at me. “You’ve gotten
worse.
”

That’s not true. I know that’s not true, and it helps me pull myself together. I reach for my coffee, take a sip. I set my cup back down. I lean back in my chair and smile at her. “You know what I’m looking forward to? Christmases in Chicago!”

“You are going to call off this wedding,” she tells me. “You have absolutely no choice.”

“The person who doesn’t have a choice here, Mama Bear, is you. This is Will’s decision, and mine. Not yours.”

“Will doesn’t know who you really are!” she yelps. “My son is a wonderful man. He’s brilliant. He’s creative. He’s sensitive. He’s sweet and trusting. Far too trusting.”

“And he has a mom that’s
far
too into him.”

“He deserves someone who can take care of him, support him. Not someone whose obvious moral failings will threaten to undermine everything he’s worked so hard to accomplish.”

“Let’s not get too excited here, okay? Will is a great guy, but I haven’t seen him heal any lepers lately.”

I didn’t think her face could get any more red, but it does.

“Your wonderful son,” I continue, “is a man in his early thirties who’s managed to graduate from college and hold down a job. As a bonus, he knows how to feed and wipe himself. Congratulations, Anita.” I give her two thumbs-up. “You raised a winner!”

It is so satisfying to watch her struggle to control her temper. I can’t resist twisting the knife. So I lean forward and smile at her. “Actually, let me revise that. Will is also
amazing
in bed. Did you teach him that, too?”

That’s when she loses it. “How
dare
you?” she shrieks.

We now have the attention of the entire restaurant. I stand up. “Thanks for breakfast, Moms!”

“You have twenty-four hours,” she calls after me.

“Love you!” I give her the finger and walk out.

I leave the restaurant
and walk down to the marina behind one of the big new hotels. The thrill of combat quickly wears off, and I’m left feeling a little sick. What the hell happened back there? How did breakfast go from zero to crazy in two sips of coffee?

I sit on a bench and look up at an enormous cruise ship docked at the pier. The thing is four or five stories high—it’s as if a massive apartment building just sidled up to my hometown. I’m trying very hard to keep my mind a blank. It doesn’t work. Thoughts of Lee keep intruding. I’m usually good at blocking them. Even here, this week, Lee has barely surfaced. But my usual strategies aren’t working. So I give up and close my eyes, and there he is.

After a while I call Freddy.

“Do you think I should buy a t-shirt that says My Wiener Does Tricks?” she asks.

“No.”

“They’re two for ten bucks,” she says. “I haven’t bought you guys a wedding gift yet.”

“Can you come meet me?”

“What’s wrong?”

I lean back against the bench and close my eyes. “Everything.”

I wait for her at the entrance to the Hemingway museum. She appears around the corner and sees my face and throws her arms around me. I really don’t know what I’d do without her.

“Jesus, Lily. You look terrible.”

We buy tickets and walk into the main house, a square mansion of
creamy stone with tall yellow shutters. About a dozen people are assembled in the living room, waiting for the tour to begin. Freddy and I hang in the back.

A clock chimes, and a little old lady in a tropical shirt and Bermuda shorts bustles into the room. She has a faded bowl cut and eager eyes. “Welcome, welcome, everyone, to beautiful Key West, Florida, and to the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum!” she cries. “My name is Donna Kuntsmeister—”

“No way,” Freddy murmurs.

“—and I’ll be your guide as we go back in time, over
eighty years
, when the spot where we’re standing
right now
was the home of one of America’s most prolific, influential and
controversial
writers.” She looks around dramatically. “Ernest
Hemingway
.”

“Why are we here?” Freddy whispers.

“Hemingway lived in this house for over
ten years
with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, a journalist and heiress from
Parkersburg
, Iowa.” Donna beams at us. “Are there any Iowans with us today?”

“I needed to talk to somebody,” I whisper back.

“I’m all ears,” Freddy says. “Like that baby over there. Jesus, the poor thing.”

“—then let’s get started!” Donna cries. “If anyone has questions along the way, please don’t hesitate to pipe up.”

The group shuffles into the hallway after her. “I have a problem,” I tell Freddy.

“We are now standing in the Hemingways’ dining room,” Donna announces. “When they were in residence here in Key West, Ernest and Pauline
loved
to entertain.”

“Let me guess,” Freddy says. “You mouthed off, and Will’s mom flew into a rage.”

“That was definitely part of it.”

“Why do you always do that?” she sighs.

“Why do I always do everything that I always do?”

“Nineteen forty,” Donna says, answering a question. “But Pauline lived here until her death in 1951, which occurred after she learned that her son Gregory had been arrested for entering a ladies’ restroom dressed in his wife’s clothing.”

Freddy blinks. “That is so not where I was expecting her to go with that.”

“This is a sea chest made of Circassian walnut,” Donna is saying. “Pauline used it as a writing desk.”

A woman asks, “What’s Circassian walnut?”

“Some type of wood,” Donna replies.

“Sounds like something out of
Star Wars,
” I say.

The woman nods. “Yeah.”

“It’s not from
Star Wars
,” says Donna.

“Maybe it’s what the Millennium Falcon was made out of,” I say. “Circassian walnut.”

Donna shakes her head. “It wasn’t.”

“I heard it was supposed to be called the Circassian Falcon,” I say. “But George Lucas has a lisp, so he couldn’t pronounce it. And he’s the boss, so …”

The woman says, “George Lucas has a lisp?”

A man says, “What does this have to do with Hemingway?”

Donna says, “Let’s move on, shall we?”

We all follow her into the library. Freddy nudges me. “Are you going to tell me what’s on your mind, or are we here so that you can heckle the docent?”

“She threatened me,” I whisper.

“Donna?”

“Will’s mom! She’s trying to blackmail me.”

“Pauline bought this chandelier in
Paris
,” Donna says. “She had it sent all the way
here.
By
boat.
”

“That’s impossible,” Freddy says. “You must have misunderstood her.”

“Trust me. I heard her loud and clear.”

“—in Los Angeles, where Pauline stayed with her sister Jinny and her lover, the violinist and film producer Laura Archera. Laura and Jinny would later have a polyamorous relationship with Aldous Huxley.”

“Are we on drugs right now?” Freddy asks. “Is this whole tour a hallucination?”

“Welcome to Key West,” I say.

“No,” Donna says, “I’m afraid I don’t know where that lamp is from.”

“Unless I call off the wedding, she’s going to tell Will about something that happened when I was a kid.”

“Something bad?”

I nod.

“Gregory met his fourth wife in the ladies’ room of a bar in Coconut Grove,” Donna says. “This was shortly after he had a single breast implant, on the left side. After the wedding, he had the implant removed.”

“Hang on,” Freddy says to me. She raises her hand. “Sorry, Donna? I’m going to have to ask you to stop.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re making this up,” Freddy says. “You must be.”

Donna folds her arms and gives Freddy a look like, Google it, bitch. Freddy whips out her phone. So do a couple of other people.

“Well?” someone asks.

“It’s true,” Freddy murmurs, scrolling. “Every word.”

“Where do you see that?” a man asks, staring at his phone.

“Try ‘Gregory Hemingway boobs,’” Freddy tells him.

He types. His eyes widen. “Holy crap.”

Freddy puts her phone away and smiles at our guide. “Apologies, Donna. Please proceed.”

Eventually, Freddy and I drift away from the tour and head outside. We wander over to the carriage house and take the steps to the second floor to see Hemingway’s study. We stroll through the gardens. Freddy is patient, waiting for me to start talking.

The swimming pool is sparkling in the sunlight. A dozen elephant statues stand around the perimeter, gazing at the empty water. I step over the white plastic chain and kick off my sandals. Freddy follows me. We sit at the edge and dip our feet into the warm water.

I turn to her. “Want to get something to eat?”

“Stop stalling,” she says. “You’ll feel better after you tell me.”

“It’s so hard to begin. I keep this stuff locked up.” I kick at the water. “But I feel like if I tell you, I’ll have somebody on my side. Somebody who knows everything.”

“I’m always on your side,” she says.

“I know, but … okay. Here goes.”

Deep breath.

“This probably won’t come as a big surprise, but I was a troublemaker growing up. A real screwup. Not drugs or drinking or sex, believe it or not. That was normal down here, and it didn’t interest me. Not back then. I was just … wild. Disobedient, disruptive in school, always mouthing off. A real pain in the ass.”

“Like most kids,” Freddy says.

“Most kids grow out of it. I only got worse. And I had a partner in crime.”

“Teddy,” she says.

“We were born only a few weeks apart. Our mothers were old friends from high school. After Dad left, they got really close—Teddy’s mom was raising him alone, too. She was a nurse. Mom and Mrs. Bennet used to take turns watching us when the other was working. I knew everything about him. He never had a lot to say, but I knew what he was thinking. Always.” I dab a foot into the water, making ripples.

“And we were awful. We were well on our way to being complete delinquents before we even broke into double digits. We sprayed graffiti. Skipped school. Egged cars. Shoplifted. And we got away with it. I mean, we got caught occasionally, but we usually escaped real punishment. I could talk my way out of anything, and I had Gran to back me up. She’d rant and rave at me, and Mom would cry and ground me, but they’d get the school or the police or whoever off our backs. And Teddy was this … angelic child. He was so quiet and calm. Nobody ever believed that he could do the things he did.”

“You sound like quite the pair.”

“We were so bored. Don’t get me wrong—we weren’t on some perpetual crime spree. We went to the beach, and we rode our bikes. We fished and swam and all that. But this island is so tiny. And it gets old fast. Causing trouble was exciting. And we had no fear. None.”

“Sounds like you haven’t changed.”

This is about the last thing in the world I need to hear right now. “Please don’t say that!”

“Okay, okay,” Freddy says. “Sorry. Keep going.”

So I do. I tell her how Teddy and I goaded each other, constantly. If I stole a bicycle, Teddy would steal a scooter. If he snuck into a strip club, I’d sneak into a massage parlor. As we got older, it got worse. We
stole cars and drove them around in the middle of the night. We broke into vacation homes and made breakfast, or ordered AA literature, or repainted the walls.

Freddy bursts out laughing. “You did not!”

“We were crazy. When we studied the Vikings in school, we cut a sailboat loose from the docks and set it on fire. While we were on it.”

“Wow,” she says.

Wow is right. I take off my sunglasses and squint in the light reflecting off the water. We had so much fun. Every day was an adventure. I hate myself for enjoying these memories, because of what came after, but I can’t help it. I close my eyes and for a moment, I remember. Me and Teddy, together.

“I don’t know the particular moment when everything changed. When my … feelings for Teddy changed. It wasn’t like a bolt of lightning or anything. There was no sudden realization that the boy I’d known all my life was actually way,
way
more than my best friend. But by the time I was fourteen, I couldn’t hide it from myself any longer. I was in love with him. Totally and completely. Desperately. World-endingly.”

“As only a fourteen-year-old can be,” Freddy remarks.

It was bad. When school let out in June that year, I went up to visit Ana for a week in DC, and then to see Dad and Jane in New York. I missed Teddy the entire time. I obsessed about what he was doing without me. Counted the days until I’d be with him again. Compared him to every other boy I saw, and found them all lacking—not as smart, not as funny, not as interesting. He wasn’t a cute kid anymore—he was beautiful. His sea-grey eyes. His crooked smile. His sly wit. And he had such physical grace. Such presence, even at fourteen.

“I don’t know what I expected to happen when I got back,” I tell Freddy. “Maybe that he’d see me again, and a lightbulb would go off. But it didn’t. I came home and nothing changed.”