Lost and Found (19 page)

Knowing Jana’s probably outside with the baby, either taking a walk or sitting on the back stoop, I make myself busy with emptying trash cans, piling up dirty clothes, and throwing toys into a basket in the living room. Jana insists Cassie needs the visual stimulation, despite the fact that I have reminded her often that she’s only three months old and probably can’t see past the end of her nose yet. But what do I know. I’ve never had a kid, never even been around one for more than a few hours at a time.

That thought reminds me that I have to take responsibility for this mostly blind, pooping machine very soon. I need to figure out exactly what day it is so I can buy some things. I pause in my housekeeping to send another message out by text.

Veronica, I’m watching Cassie one day in a week or so. Find out the date and order me some stuff on Amazon, delivered to the apartment.

The cell goes back in my pocket and I walk to the back of the house, looking out the windows to try and find my sister.

“Jana?” I push open the back door.

“Shhh, we’re out here,” she says.

She’s sitting on a bench near the small fountain Jeremy built, rocking Cassie gently in her arms.

“She sleeping?” I whisper as I go down the stairs into the micro-sized back yard that’s divided off from the neighbor’s places by a bamboo fence.

She nods.

“The housekeeper will be here tomorrow,” I say softly. “Sorry it wasn’t today.”

She shrugs. “No big deal.”

It’s tempting to say it’s a very big deal, that no one should live in such a mess, but I keep my comments to myself.

“Got you some Chinese,” I said.

Jana yawns. “Excellent. I could use a little MSG pick-me-up.”

I hold out my arms. “Let me have her.”

“No, she’s sleeping.”

I walk over and take the baby anyway. “My turn. Go brush your teeth or something.”

She slaps me on the arm as she walks by. “Rude.”

I smile down at my niece. I know exactly how to get rid of my sister. She’s probably all paranoid now, thinking that I’ve seen something green in her teeth, and she’ll floss for ten minutes over it.

“Don’t ever tease your Auntie Jana about her teeth,” I whisper to Cassie. “She hates that. She also hates when you tell her that her butt looks big in jeans. Only use that comment when you want her to run away screaming.”

“I heard that!” Jana says from the back stairs.

I stand up and turn around, cringing when Cassie’s eyes open a little and roll up into her head. I find myself holding my breath until her lids close again.

We follow Jana back into the house and I sit at the table while my sister takes the food out of boxes and puts it onto plates for us. She uses the paper ones that were in the bag, I suspect because all her regular ones are dirty. The sink is full.

“I talked to the attorney. He’s getting the paperwork done.”

Jana sighs heavily. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” She pulls two sets of chopsticks out of the bag and rips the paper from around them.

“It’s the best idea we have. You need the legal power to care for Cassie.”

“But Jeremy’s going to get upset.”

“Jeremy is not going to get upset, because if he does get upset, I’m going to punch him in the face.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes I do. I’m tired of his shit.”

“No cussing in front of the baby.”

“Okay, fine, I’m tired of his doo-doo.” I smile down at the baby who smiles back in her sleep, her lips winking up at the corners a few times. I’m definitely her favorite. I’ll wait until later to brag about it to Jana.

“He’s just hurting.”

“He’s just self-destructing. I had him committed today.”

She slams down a box of moo goo gai pan. “You
what?!”

When I respond I say it to Cassie, not Jana. I can’t look at my sister’s angry face right now. It might cause me to doubt myself. “I got a call from a police officer who arrested him for public intoxication. They said they could put him on a forty-eight hour hold over at Bellevue, so I told them to go ahead.”

“And how did Jeremy take it?” she asks, her temper somewhat more subdued.

“As you could imagine. He flipped.”

“Did he leave?”

“He can’t.” I move the baby off to the side so I can set myself up to eat. Jana has dumped half of all the food boxes onto my plate and their contents have all bled together. I’m not going to complain, even though this violates my number one rule of eating, namely that no one food should be touching another until I say so. Jana knows this about me, and this is her way of telling me she’s pissed.

“Why because you say so?”

“No.” I grin up at her. “Because he’s tied to the bed.”

Her jaw drops open. “You aren’t serious.”

I lose my smile. “I sure as hell am.”

She’s sputtering, but I cut her off.

“Listen, Jana, do you have a better idea? Because I’d love to hear it.”

“Yes, I have a better idea!”

I sit back and gesture at her with my chopsticks. “Okay, then, let’s hear it. I’m all ears.”

“We could get him into treatment.”

“Not when he’s wasted. He refuses treatment. We have to get him sober first.”

“We could get him sober at home.”

“No we can’t. We’ve tried already.”

“I haven’t tried.”

I laugh bitterly. “And how are you going to do that with Cassie on your hip?”

Jana’s face twists up in several directions as tears well up in her eyes.

I don’t wait to hear her defense.

“Just let me handle it, okay?” I put the chopsticks down and lift Cassie a little. “You’re handling this situation, I’ll handle the Jeremy situation.”

“Cassie is not a situation.” Jana drops down ungracefully into the chair across the table from me.

“She is a situation. A cute, gassy, adorable, one, but a situation nonetheless. She needs to be handled, Jeremy needs to be handled, and this guardianship is all a part of that.” I lean over and plead. “Please, Jana, do this. It’s for Cassie and for Jeremy, even if he doesn’t see it that way right now. I promise you, he will in the future.”

“If he’s even still speaking to me then.”

“He will. I swear to you, he will.”

“Or what? You’ll pound him?”

I nod. “Into the ground if necessary.”

She shakes her head as she picks up her chopsticks. “I never understood the way you guys communicate.”

“Sometimes fists speak more effectively than words.”

“If you’re a caveman, maybe.”

“Urph. Goombala goo.” I growl a little for effect.

“You are a complete idiot,” she says, trying to hold back her smile.

“Ba goo doo rah mah boo.” I frown, poking a chopstick out at her.

She laughs. “Keep joking. We’ll see who’s grunting and caveman talking after your weekend with Cassie.”

“Weekend?” My heart seizes up. “Who said anything about a weekend? I thought it was for one evening?”

She smiles even bigger. “Oh, did I say that? Yeah. I meant weekend. Friday, Saturday, Sunday.”

“Friday?! I have patients on Friday!”

“I already checked with Veronica. You’re done at six. You can pick Cassie up at seven.”

I frown at my lo mein and then my niece. “I think I just got bamboozled, Cassie.”

She squirms and farts.

Jana starts snorting she’s laughing so hard.

I sigh deeply and then stab my chopsticks into my noodles. “This is the story of my life,” I say, before stuffing my mouth full of soy-sauced goodness. At least I have Chinese food.

“I recommend you buy a crib,” Jana says, “and a rocking chair.”

I try to say, “And I recommend you buy a nanny,” but she can’t understand a word of it because I have too many noodles in my mouth.

“Caveman,” she says.

I don’t respond. My mind’s too busy panicking over being a single father for two days. I have no fucking clue what to do with a baby for more than fifteen minutes; what am I going to do with one for forty-eight hours? I have a sneaking suspicion that Jeremy’s forty-eight hour commitment is going to be a lot easier to manage than mine.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I SHOULD BE FULL AND completely sated after my meal and dessert at Jana’s, but I’m back at my condo feeling empty inside. I convince myself it’s a digestion issue and pour myself a glass of whiskey.

The night is perfect. Balmy for Manhattan in the middle of summer, with a sky full of stars. I sit out on my terrace, staring at the buildings across the street from me, wondering about the lives of the people who live in there. My vision’s too blurry to be able to see inside their windows.

The evening spent with the girls has made me sentimental. I miss Cassie’s mom. She was such a great girl. The best sister-in-law a guy could ask for. She was cool. She could pop open a beer top with a lighter and drink it down like a champ, but she never over-indulged. She was a great cook, a real down-home kind of girl who loved to cook and have family gatherings. The Sunday dinners were her idea and before she came into our lives, we never felt so close. She changed us all, and now it felt like we were changing back again, back into the separated cold people we used to be when our father ruled the roost.

My phone buzzes and I take it out of my pocket to see who’s there.

I need to come get my things,
the message says.

Hilary.

I’ve put her clothing and odds and ends in boxes stacked by the front door. Should I let her come get them now? It feels like a bad idea considering the fact that I’m lonely as hell and halfway to drunk. But I type out the text anyway.

Come now if you want.

I stare at the phone, almost hoping she’ll turn me down.

Be there in 20,
she says.

I finish my whiskey and get up to pour myself another. I don’t trust myself to manage this face-off sober.

Hilary arrives forty minutes after her call. As usual, she’s late, probably because she spent a lot of time in front of the mirror and her closet before she came. She looks great and she knows it. As soon as she comes in the front door, I know what she came for, and it’s not her boxes of shit.

“Hey, James, you’re looking fine,” she says, coming close and rubbing her hand up my chest.

I back away one step, trying to get some perspective on this … situation. Everything from my waist up is telling me to get the hell out of here. Unfortunately, everything from the waist down is telling me to stay. That means I have no control of my dick or my legs.

I take a step back closer.

“You smell nice,” I say, recognizing the perfume I bought her for her last birthday. Before she’d told me it was too light, too flowery. She refused to wear it, giving me a list via text of good replacements, should I feel the urge to “try again”.

“It’s the perfume you gave me,” she says sweetly, pressing her breasts into my chest, running her hands up my arms. I always loved the way she arched her back as she leaned into me. She knows this. I’m annoyed that she’s playing me so easily. I’m also turned on.

“I thought I recognized it,” I say, leaning down to kiss her neck. “I thought you didn’t like it.”

Her hands stray down to my ass and she squeezes when she gets there. My dick goes rock hard, knowing it’s close to getting what it wants.

“Sure I liked it. I love it, silly. Why would you say that?”

I pause for a moment and speak against her neck. “Because you told me you didn’t like it. You said it was too flowery.”

“No, I didn’t. Don’t be ridiculous.” She reaches her hand around to the front of me.

I pull away so I can think clearly. My head is swimming a little, but my memory’s as sharp as a razor.

“You sent me a text with a list of perfumes you would have preferred.”

She frowns playfully. “You’re drunk. Come on, let’s go into the bedroom.” She takes me by the hand and tries to lead me away, but finally my bottom half gets on board with my brain train.

My arm extends out with her efforts, but that’s as far as it goes. My feet remain planted.

“Hilary, I think this is probably a bad idea.”

Her smile slips. “Don’t be silly, it’s a great idea. Our make-up sex has always been fabulous.” She winks. “That’s why we fight so much, baby.”

I yank my hand away. “Do you have any idea how sick that sounds?”

Her expression falls into bitch mode. “Oh, so I’m to blame because you like to fuck when you’re mad.”

I never thought of Hilary as anything but a hard-driving, goal oriented woman before, but tonight I’m seeing her in a completely different light. Maybe it’s because I just spent the evening with my sister playing house with a baby, but whatever the reason, all I can think when I look at my ex is that she’s fucking harsh in the light of truth. Harsh and bitchy and fucking cold.

“It’s time for you to go,” I say with a heavy heart. I can’t believe I’ve wasted so much time with this person. I’ll never get those years back. “All your things are in the boxes there. I’ll have Carlos bring them out to your car.” I’d normally do this kind of heavy-lifting thing myself, but decide that the less time I spend in Hilary’s presence, the better off we’ll all be.

She crosses her arms and sticks her chin up. “What if I’m not ready to go?”

I want to be angry at her, but I can’t. This is the worst part of breaking up; when you know it’s the right thing but you still keep fighting it. There’s just no way I can believe that she thinks this is real love. Real love isn’t about battling for every single thing and then enjoying the temporary peace resolution found later in bed.

“It’s over, Hilary. Say goodbye.”

Her expression turns vicious. “It’s not over until I say it’s over!” She rushes at me and slaps me hard across the face, her nails taking some of my skin with them as they slide across my cheek.

I grab her by the arm, but she yanks it away, headed for the door. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” she says.

“I look forward to it,” I say, picking up one of the boxes.

She’s way ahead of me, standing in the foyer outside my door. The elevator is down the hall. I place the box just behind her.

When I turn around to get the other box, I take my phone out of my pocket. Speed dial gets me to Carlos, one of the guys who mans the front doors to the building.