Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (24 page)

So Roman had gone.

He’d gone, and he’d told himself it made sense.

He’d told himself it didn’t matter anyway. They’d never been his family. Patrick was no kind of father, and Samantha wasn’t really his sister. Foster families were for children—a temporary refuge. Roman had become an adult, and he had no family.

He hadn’t really been cut to the quick, cast out into the cold.

Not really.

All of which was bullshit.

Patrick’s rejection had destroyed him, and for fourteen years he’d simply limped along—an automaton cobbled together from coping devices, bottled theories, borrowed ideologies.

Until Ashley.

He was here because of Ashley, and he’d thought he was ready to do this, but he hadn’t spent a lot of time considering what
this
was.

Roman wished Ashley were with him. Every tug of the baby’s tongue against his finger seemed to pull at the knot in his chest, and Ashley would know how to make this easier. She could make it possible.

“You’ve gotten all stiff,” Sam said.

He had. Because he was terrified.

She sighed. “Look, just tell me whatever it is I’m not supposed to say, and I won’t say it. Or tell me why you’re here, what you want, and I’ll do it. I’m not—”

She tugged on her earlobe. Her eyes fell shut.

“Roman.” She sounded near tears again. “I’m so sleep deprived, I can’t think very clearly, or, obviously, stop myself from crying all the time. I mean, it’s not just you. I cried this morning when I spilled sugar on the counter, and when I had to bend over to put on Ava’s shoes and she kicked me in the nose. And I cried when Adam went to work this morning, which is just dumb, because he always comes back, but what if today is the day—” She made a helpless noise and covered her mouth. “God. Sorry. I just did it again.”

“Sam—”

“No.” She turned her back on him and took the bottle out of the water, shaking it vigorously. “It’s just … I can’t not say this. You left. You left, and you never came back. You never called. You didn’t write to me, you don’t get my letters and my Christmas cards or you don’t answer them, you dropped into this
void
, Roman, and then …”

She whirled around. “You know I’ve thought about flying down to Florida to find you? Only what if I found you, and you wouldn’t even know me? I’ve had nightmares about that. I’ve had dreams about you coming here. I have, like, six different speeches I’ve made up, and they’re all really careful and perfect, but I can’t—”

She cut herself off and tugged on her earlobe again. It hit him in the chest, that gesture. She’d always done it when she was nervous, unhappy, lost.

“Roman, I’m so
tired
, I can’t be diplomatic. I can’t. I mean, I recognize that’s what I’m supposed to do, but what I want is to tie you to that fucking chair so you
can’t leave
. I’m supposed to want to hug you and love you but I just kind of want to hit you, give you noogies and dead-leg you or, like,
sit
on you.”

“I’m bigger than you now.”

“You’re taller, but you’re still not bigger. And anyway, I’m too exhausted to do any of that, so right now my plan is to make you keep holding the baby. Then you’ll have to stay. Because who can walk away from a baby?”

He couldn’t look at her. He looked at Miles, who looked back at him, and then Sam socked him in the shoulder with the bottle and said, “Feed him.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You stick it in his mouth. He eats it. It’s not hard.”

“Sam—”

She hit him again.
“Feed him.”

Roman pulled back on his finger. Miles resisted. Roman tugged harder, wiggled to break the seal, and wiped his pinky on his pants before taking the bottle and nudging the nipple into the infant’s mouth.

Miles ate. It was an indecent display—he chugged the bottle, grunting and wiggling like a piglet. Roman watched, transfixed.

Sam shoved cereal boxes, junk mail, and magazines out of the way so she could drop her head onto her folded arms and rest on top of the kitchen table.

“I need a nap,” she said.

“I can’t stay long,” he replied. “I’ve got someone waiting on me in Florida.”

She didn’t lift her head. “Are you married?”

“No.”

“But the someone is a woman.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s her name?”

“Ashley.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you come here because of her?”

“Sort of. What are you, a mind-reader?”

She sighed. “I had a rough time after you left. I dropped out of school. I lived in Chicago for a few years, and I was kind of wild and stupid. I mean, I’m not saying it wouldn’t have happened anyway. But I was mad at Dad, and I was furious with you, and I felt like nobody knew me. Like you were the only one who I knew, who knew me, and if you were gone I hadn’t actually had a childhood, and I didn’t actually have a family.”

“You and Patrick were the family.”

“No, Roman,” she said to the table. “Dad was fucked up. You and I were the family.”

In the lull after she said it, Roman’s world tipped and reoriented itself.

He was starting to get so he could handle that. The adjustments and readjustments that
came with living in reality.

Dad was fucked up. You and I were the family
.

“I figured that out when I met Adam,” Sam said. “Adam, plus a lot of therapy. And Dad has this girlfriend, I guess she’s his fiancée now. He’s different since he met her. So I figured if you were here, it might be because … Tell me why you came.”

“I missed you.”

She didn’t respond. Maybe there was nothing to say.

“I’ve only got a few hours,” he admitted reluctantly. “But I’ll come back this time, if you want. You can call me in Florida. I’ll answer the phone.”

After a few seconds, she sniffled, and Roman thought she might be crying again.

“Do you need a tissue or something?”

“No, I’m using my sleeve.”

“Classy.”

“Shut up.”

He chuckled, and Samantha’s back shook. Laughter or tears. “You know I thought about calling him Roman?”

“Who?”

“The baby, dumbass.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I thought it might be too strange.”

“It’s probably going to be hard enough for him anyway. Without my name.”

That made her look up. “Why?”

“A black kid. In this town.”

“His mom lives in Milwaukee. She picked us. From a whole bunch of other options, she picked Adam and me.”

“You met her?”

“It’s an open adoption. She came to visit, and she likes it here. It’s not the same town anymore.”

He shrugged, uneasy with the subject.

“Miles won’t be the only one,” she said. “There’s a black family down the street. Ava’s preschool class has two Spanish-speaking kids in it—and another one, I think, is from Ethiopia.”

But you’re counting them
, Roman thought.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “Like I don’t know what I’m talking about. I can’t take it. I’m pretty sure there’s a law against looking at the mother of a six-week-old baby that way.”

Roman looked at Miles instead. The baby’s forehead furrowed in concentration, his legs pulled up into his chest.

Everything seemed simpler when he looked at Miles. As if it might be possible to start again from the beginning. Focus on things that were nourishing—love, food, sleep. Cry when you felt sad, grab when you needed to be touched, smile when you were happy.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay. Probably this whole conversation should be illegal. You should come back when I’ve had more than four consecutive hours of sleep. But if you try to leave before I’m ready, fair warning, I really will sit on you.”

“Understood.”

They sat quietly for a while. Miles guzzled and sighed. The music in Ava’s Barbie movie drifted into the kitchen.

“Of course,” Sam said, “Miles might turn out better adjusted if he could call up his cool black uncle when the kids are mean to him at school. And if his cool black uncle sent him really good presents, and, like, took him camping and stuff.”

“Quit calling me his cool black uncle. You’re making me sound like Inspirational Minority Guy.”

Sam snorted. “I forgot about Inspirational Minority Guy.”

They’d invented him in high school. Roman used to act him out, and Sam would always crack up. It got so all he had to do was make the Inspirational Minority Guy face and she would fold over with helpless laughter.

“How could you forget? He died so many tragic deaths for the betterment of his white friends and neighbors.”

“I know! And made so many important sacrifices.”

“And earnest speeches.”

“He was ace at the earnest speeches.”

Their eyes met, and for a second the pain was so huge—the gulf between what they’d had
and where they were now so vast—Roman didn’t think he could breathe.

But he inhaled, shaky, and his lungs expanded.

He exhaled, and that worked, too.

He could live with the pain.

And if he could live with it, he could have this back—his past. His sister.

His place in the world.

Miles spit out the nipple and wailed. Then his mouth screwed down into a blot. His cheeks trembled.

With all the fanfare of a trumpet solo, Miles crapped his diaper.

Warm wetness spread over Roman’s forearm.

“Well then,” he said.

“I guess we know how Miles feels about Inspirational Minority Guy,” Sam said.

She was grinning. Roman smiled.

He smiled, even though no part of this was going the way he’d anticipated.

He’d imagined this reunion, too. Tearful apologies. Histrionic accusations. He’d thought of himself and Patrick, rehashing the argument that had driven him away in the first place.

He’d thought of Patrick, dead in a coffin, and everyone in black suits, somber and appropriate.

Never once in all his imaginings had there been a six-week-old infant guzzling a bottle and crapping in his arms.

Sam studied his face. “He shit on you, didn’t he?”

“I’m pretty sure he did.”

She covered her mouth, but it was no use. He could see it in her eyes, bubbling up. “Welcome home, Uncle Roman,” she said, and then she lost it, dissolving in hysterical giggles that made her slap the tabletop.

Once she got going like this, she could never stop. Especially when she was tired.

Roman had always loved to egg her on.

“You told him to do that,” he said.

She gasped for breath. “I didn’t!”

“You’ve got the little bugger trained. As soon as you saw my truck in the driveway—”

She shrieked, and then he was laughing, too.

Laughing with his sister, and thinking that he couldn’t wait to tell Ashley.

He opened the door to his hotel room wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, and Carmen had to be stern with herself to keep the blush from rising up her cheeks.

It’s just Roman. You’ve seen him in his pajamas a million times
.

But it was different now. Everything was different.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Can I come in?”

He stepped aside, and Carmen walked into his room, which looked exactly like her room, backward. The headboard of his bed butted against the wall, directly opposite her own. That meant they could have had this conversation with two layers of wallpaper-covered plaster muffling their words.

Now that she considered it, it might have been a better approach.

Except that she’d wanted to see him.

She settled herself into the chair in the corner. Roman stood at the foot of the bed, visibly confused about what she was doing in his room at two in the morning when they were supposed to be catching a few hours’ sleep before hitting the road again.

I’m confused, too
, she could have told him.
I have a list of things I’m confused about
.

For example, what am I doing in Indiana, again?

What the everlasting fuck am I
doing?

Take today, for instance. Today was … Saturday now. But before midnight it had been Friday, a workday. She’d spent the morning with her phone turned off, wandering aimlessly around Roman’s hometown. She’d had a vodka tonic at a one-room bar while shooting the breeze with a man named Jerry who had a beer gut and a penchant for reality TV, particularly the shows that involved tattoos.

Her lunch had consisted of breaded fried cheese curds dipped in ranch dressing.

After Roman finally came back to pick her up, they’d driven through the afternoon and well into the night. He hadn’t wanted to stop, because he wanted to get back to Ashley.

He didn’t have to tell Carmen this. It was obvious. He needed Ashley, badly.

Whereas Carmen was sort of hoping never to see Noah again.

Except for the part where that was the largest and most ridiculous lie she’d attempted to tell herself.

“What are you wearing?” Roman asked.

She glanced at her legs.

She’d pulled on pin-striped slacks at the last second, because it would have been wrong to come over here with her legs bare beneath her nightdress.

But then she’d decided the nightdress was too low-cut, too lacy for Roman to see, even though he’d seen it before and managed to keep from turning into a lust-ravaged beast.

So she’d put on her robe.

But left on her pants.

Her clothes were as jumbled as her brain.

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to look like I’d come over here to jump you. Because I didn’t. I mean I don’t. Want to jump you. At all.”

“That’s a relief.”

Carmen didn’t know if he was joking or serious. It could be difficult to tell with Roman.

He sat down on the bed. The covers were rumpled as though he’d been under them, but she could see the backlit screen of his e-reader glowing on the pillow farthest from her, so she knew she hadn’t woken him.

“What did you come over here for?” he asked.

She studied the knobs of his knees beneath his pajama pants. So familiar, those knees. She knew what Roman looked like without his clothes on—the smooth texture of the skin of his back under her hands, the rise and fall of his body over hers. But she’d never been naked with him.