Losing Control (29 page)

“She’s got an amazing body,” I counter, but when I get the attention of the two I regret speaking up immediately.

“It’s a hard body,” Richard agrees and Cecilia glares at him.

The rest of the evening is spent eating small bites of food brought to our table every ten minutes or so while Ian and I are treated to an unending critique of nearly everyone in the restaurant from Cecilia, who clearly thought that Rich would join her.

The foreign language-speaking table is too loud, she complains.

“Internationals, what can you do?” Rich grins at me as if we’re sharing a secret laugh. Cecilia scowls again and then quickly rearranges her face as if emotions cause aging.

Cecilia remarks that the boobs on the model wearing the tank top are much too large. “She must be a prostitute,” Cecilia says. “No runway is going to let her walk.”

After a while even the delicious food loses its appeal under this wearying critique. Each time she makes a comment, she looks at Rich for support. He only gives her a pained smile and then, when he thinks she isn’t looking, he shrugs at me as if to say he doesn’t have any control over her attitude.

When she isn’t talking and he isn’t sneaking looks at me, his eyes are everywhere. On the stark expanse of skin that the model shows every time she stands up to adjust her tube top. On the nearly naked bottom of another patron who is wearing hot pants and high heels.

“Is the food not to your liking?” Ian eats his dishes and mine because my appetite is gone.

“Too rich,” I say, but I see understanding in his eyes.

Finally when the last item is served and coffee is being distributed to Ian and I, with two after dinner ports for Sissy—that’s what they call her—and Richard, Ian asks Richard what he’s doing at Catch. “It seems like such a coincidence.”

He laughs. “Not at all. I heard you were interested in investing in Sean Price’s new food venture and that you were down checking out his business. I guess eating at Le Cirque every night gets tiresome?”

Ian shrugs. “I live down here. I haven’t eaten at Le Cirque for months. Too far uptown for me.”

Rich makes a tsking sound. “Still in that warehouse. That seems so déclassé. But maybe you’ve always had a little of the commoner in you.”

“Always,” Ian replies dryly, but beside me he is vibrating like a speaker box turned too loud. His hand has a vice grip on my thigh. “Some would blame it on my mother. She wasn’t even from the city.”

Rich’s eyes dart toward me and then Ian and back again. He laughs and wipes his mouth twice. Obviously nervous, he taps his fingers against the side of his bottle. “I didn’t know your mother well. Most of my dealings were with your father.”

Cecilia scrunches up her nose at Ian. “This type of conversation is very low class. Perhaps we could move on.”

“Of course, Sissy,” Ian says smoothly. Underneath the table, his fingers are almost bruising me. Whatever wrong Richard Howe has inflicted upon Ian, it is serious and powerful enough to cause him to lose his vaunted self-control, both at the Aquarium and then here. We’re able to finish dinner together, but it might be the longest meal I’ve ever sat through. Despite the chef’s culinary wizardry, I ate almost nothing.

“T
HAT
WAS
UNPLEASANT
,” I
SAY
when we get back to Central Towers. As expected, Mom is asleep. She can’t make it past eight in the evening most nights. “I don’t understand how he can make a play for me one night and then show up with his wife another.”

“He’s testing you. He wants to know if having a wife is going to be a problem. I bet in a couple of days, you’ll get more texts.”

He drums his fingers on the side of the sofa as he has a glass of wine to unwind. That was my suggestion. He’s agitated, and I’m afraid he’s not going to be able to sleep tonight.

“At least it’s just texts.”

“For now,” he says sourly, his hand gripping tight around the stem of the glass. A vision of him throwing the tumbler against the wall at the Aquarium flits through my mind. He catches me eying the glass and downs the contents in one swallow. Standing up, he pulls me to my feet.

“Let’s table this for now. It’s been far too long since I’ve had a taste of you.”

He makes love to me as if the devil is riding him. His hands are rough and possessive. He’s in the grip of some madness, but the need in his eyes is obvious and unmistakable. Whatever he needs, I want to give him.

“I want you,” he growls.

“You have me,” I say, “in whatever way you need me.”

In the aftermath of the storm, with the sheets tossed on the floor and the pillow wet from stifling my cries of completion, we lie entangled with each other. The tension that started building from the minute Howe showed up still hasn’t left him, even after the sex.

“Won’t you tell me?” I ask, stroking the sweat-soaked skin of his back. “I want to understand. If this,” I gesture between us, “is truly something that matters to you, then you can’t leave me in the dark.”

He’s silent for so long that I believe he’s fallen asleep. But his sex-roughened voice interrupts the quiet.

“Four old-moneyed families sent their sons to Harvard. My father was one of them. Richard’s father, Edward Howe, was another. The two others aren’t important for this story. They are friends, business partners. When Papa Howe’s son Richard needs a job, he asked my dad for a favor. But Richard’s expensive lifestyle—and I don’t know if it was drugs, gambling, shitty investment decisions or prostitutes or what—leads him to embezzle money.

“My father covers it up, but then the market crashes and he’s leveraged to shit. The embezzlement is discovered and the blame is pinned on Dad. Howe won’t come forward. My dad has a heart attack, which results in us losing all of our possessions from foreclosure and bankruptcy. My mom is unable to hold her head up and even if she could she didn’t have the money to play. She takes us to New Jersey, where she hooks up with a gambler. He gets her addicted and soon . . .” his voice trails off.

“Like Malcolm’s mother,” I say softly.

“You know, then?”

I nod. “Yeah, for a while. I mean, that’s why he deals and I guess is in with the other stuff. He’s always bailing her out, but the addiction is too strong.”

“My mother was never meant to have to support herself. Addictions use you up fast. She was doing. . . stuff . . . to get money. Anything.” His voice is strained. “I was ashamed of her. Pretended I didn’t know her. Then I hated her. Finally . . . I felt relief, and that was the most guilt-inducing emotion of all.”

Curling my body around him, I stroke every inch of his body I can reach, as if to protect him from his memories.

He burrows his forehead into the side of my neck. His voice is muffled but his words are clear. “She got arrested for solicitation when I was fifteen. By that time I was working, hustling on the boardwalk and then taking every cent I had and playing poker in the casinos. I easily passed for twenty-one because of my size, my scruff. I was earning money, not as fast as I’d like and not in as big amounts as I’d want, but I’d had to lay low, not draw attention to myself.

“I was saving money, socking it away, thinking that I’d buy us a nice beach house and send my mom to an expensive clinic and it’d all be good. But it was too late. She didn’t last more than a night on the inside. She asked me to bring her something, a Hermes scarf my dad had given her on their fifteenth wedding anniversary. Like a dumbshit, I brought it. She kissed me and then I left. Later I learned she’d bribed a guard with sex to let her bring the scarf into her cell.”

He didn’t have to finish.

“I’m so so sorry.” I choke back the tears, knowing he won’t welcome them.

“Yeah, me too,” he sighs heavily and then, to my surprise, he turns into my embrace and allows me to give him comfort.

S
EEING
ME
WITH
I
AN
AGAIN
ONLY
renews Rich’s pursuit. He sends me text messages which I have voice transcribed or Ian will read to me. Afterward, the muscle in his jaw clicks. And invariably he feels the need to touch me, usually someplace very intimate.

But other than this texting game I’m playing with Rich, which hasn’t progressed beyond mild flirtation, nothing truly scandalous, my life is pretty good.

Mom is doing really well after her last chemo treatment, but her doctor has advised her against going out too frequently. Her immune system is very low and he says that even a cold could be dangerous. Ian orders dinner from Le Cirque to be delivered to Central Towers in lieu of going out.

“Tiny says your parents have passed.”

“Yes. My father died of a heart attack when I was thirteen and my mother passed away when I was fifteen.”

“I’m so sorry. You were required to assume responsibility far too early.”

“It’s what made me,” Ian replies, shrugging as if having to spend the latter part of his teen years on his own was normal and easy.

“I hope you won’t take it wrong, but I’d like to give you a bit of advice. Not about Tiny, of course. I wouldn’t presume to go there. But life advice.”

“Sure,” he squeezes my hand to let me know that the inquisition and the advice don’t bother him.

“Life is fleeting, ephemeral almost. Don’t waste a minute, even a second, on anything that’s not important. And if you do have something important, do everything to hang on to it. Don’t assume that tomorrow will bring you something better. Treasure the now.”

“I will, Sophie. Thank you for caring enough to share with me.”

She flushes with pleasure at the compliment, and I glow inside at how he understands that it is because she loves me—and perhaps because she is beginning to care for him—that she is brave enough to voice her concerns.

On the Sunday before her chemo day, I take her to the Frick Museum. She says she wants to spend time with me. It is our favorite museum, and not because on Sundays they have a policy of “paying what you wish.” Today I drop in a fifty to cover all the other visits when we paid nothing. The Frick is a treasure chest of a museum, only two floors with everything from Fragonard—my mother’s favorite—to Whistler. We walk around the museum, arms clasped around each other, and end our tour in the atrium.

The fountain is working, the water quietly gurgling over the stone bowls and into the pool below. The foliage helps to soften the stone walls and the tall pillars. The atmosphere and the glass ceiling are so calming that the stone benches actually feel comfortable despite their hard surfaces.

“It’s hard to believe someone lived in this place. Can you even imagine having a reflecting pool in your living room?”

“I can’t imagine the upkeep.”

Then we smile at each other because this is the same conversation we have at the end of every visit.

“I’m so glad that you have Ian,” she says.

“I’m not sure that I have him so much as I’m being dragged behind one of his fancy cars as he speeds toward some destination only he knows.”

“I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned in the last three years, and that is you need to seize opportunities for happiness when they present themselves to you. Don’t close this one out. Give him a chance.” She squeezes my hands and glances out the window that shows the tops of the trees of Central Park. “I don't want you to end up alone.”

“I won’t.” I lean over and kiss her on the cheek, ignoring the paper-thin feel of her skin. “I have you.”

Steve is idling illegally on Fifth Avenue when we depart.

“Not having to wait for a taxi or bus is certainly worth extra effort.” Mom winks at me. Steve gets out and helps Mom into the car, carefully propping up her feet on the extended leg rest. The venture out drained all her energy and she’s asleep before we hit midtown. He must have called ahead because Ian greets us at the curb.

“Thanks, Steve. I’ll see you in the morning.”

It takes both of us to help my mother up to the apartment. He shoots me a worried look as he supports her slim weight, but I refuse to acknowledge the concern in his eyes.

“She’s fine,” I mouth to him.

“Lie down with me, Tiny,” she says when we step into her bedroom. I ignore Ian’s worry and help Mom into bed.

Using the remote, I shut the drapes and roll onto my side so I can cuddle with my mom as we did when I was a child. Because it was the two of us, we often slept together even as I grew older. Lying here with her now, though, I feel as if I’m the protector and she’s my child.

“I love you, Mommy,” I whisper, laying my hand on her chest.

“Love you too, dear. More than all the stars in the sky.” Her cool hand covers mine, lightly gripping it as she drifts off into sleep. The steady, even sound of her breathing is comforting and I let my cares drift away, cocooned in the expensive comforter inside this lush apartment and holding my mother’s hand while my lover waits for me.

It is everything I could have hoped for.

But while I sleep, a cold drifts over us, waking me. My mother’s hand is ice cold and there is blood coming out of her nose, dripping onto the pillowcase. There’s a dark, ugly pool on the side of her face.

“Ian!” I scream, shaking my mother but she is non-responsive. “Iannnnn!”

He’s at the doorway and then at my side.

“I already called 911.” He has the phone in his hand.

He slides a finger into her mouth and then tips her head back to clear her airways. Then he blows into her mouth. Once. Twice. He pumps her chest, one hand folded over the other. Blowing and pumping over and over as I grip my hands to my mouth to keep the screams inside me.

I don’t remember the ambulance arriving or the trip to the hospital. I only recall the sounds. The shrill whistle of the sirens as we sped uptown toward the hospital. The digital beeps from the machine. The thud of the crash cart. It’s a macabre symphony playing a funeral march. And the drum beat that I want to hear never comes.

I know she is gone before anyone comes to the waiting room. I suppose I knew it when we were at Frick and she was telling me goodbye. I didn't want to acknowledge it was goodbye, so I shushed her. I wasn’t ready to hear her talk of death, even though that was what she needed—whether it was to prepare herself or me, I’m not entirely sure.