“No.” I turned to him. “I wish you had,” I said, and walked out of the bedroom.
“Huh? Why?”
“I’ll wait for you out back,” I said.
Before he could reply, I left. I wanted to be alone for a few moments to argue with myself.
What are you doing? Are you mad? Daddy is waiting. What possible excuse can you give, and what good would even the best excuse do? You would have failed, and Daddy would be in grave danger. Mrs. Fennel and Ava would be furious.
Ava was right. This was too easy. But it shouldn’t be this easy. I shouldn’t be delivering someone as wonderful and good as Buddy. I should be delivering the type of young man Ava delivered and Brianna delivered—lustful, selfish, deceitful men who had hoped to use them for pleasure and leave them. I didn’t have to use any guile or any seductive tricks to capture Buddy. Besides, he had captured me as much as I’d captured him. It couldn’t be. It wouldn’t be.
You’re the one who won’t be, my other self replied. That’s what won’t be if you don’t bring him to Daddy. You will be cast out and be less than an orphan.
“What’s going on?” Buddy asked, coming up behind me.
My heart was pounding. Thoughts and words became jumbled in my brain. A hot flush came over me and was quickly followed by a chill that almost made my teeth chatter. My body was in turmoil, a part of it in rebellion, a part of it opposing that rebellion.
I took a deep breath.
“We don’t have to wait here any longer,” I said. “We can wait for him at my house.”
“Oh. Yeah, I suppose we could. That makes sense. You’re a character. You scared me, jumping up like that. Talk about your impulsive person.”
I turned and looked at him. “It occurred to me that you should have more time.”
“More time?”
“To meet my younger sister, our housekeeper, and even Ava. That way, you’ll be more comfortable when you meet Daddy.”
He nodded. “Sure.” He leaned toward me to kiss me.
“Let’s go,” I said, walking away and into the house.
He followed quickly. “You certainly can be confusing,” he said when I opened the front door. “First, you were adamant about keeping me away from your house, your father, and now you can’t wait to bring me to him.”
I turned to him. “Yes. I know. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I’m just amused. You’re full of surprises.”
We headed for his car.
I’m sorry, I repeated, but only to myself, and under my breath, I whispered, “I don’t think I have the strength not to bring you to him.”
20
Tomorrow Forever
Buddy couldn’t stop talking as he drove. I knew that my abrupt decision to leave immediately disturbed him, even though he agreed it made sense to go to my house and spend some time with my sisters before my father arrived. Try as I would, I couldn’t pretend to be as enthusiastic as he was about our future relationship. I knew most of his effort was going toward getting me at least to sound half as excited as he was.
“Now that I’m going to meet your family, you’ve got to meet mine. Maybe next week, we can take a drive down to Long Beach. You’ll love my mother. She’s pretty hip and very pretty, if I may say so myself. Most of my friends tell me she looks more like my older sister than my mother. She dresses in up-to-date fashions, likes a lot of the music I like, and has a bubbly personality.”
“Bubbly?”
“Yeah, you know. She’s always up, and if something unpleasant happens, she always seems to find something positive to say. You know the type.”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
“Why not? Your father doesn’t sound like a depressing guy. May I ask if he’s seeing anyone? Romantically? I know he’s had some tragedy, with his first wife dying and the mother of your younger sister deserting him.”
I didn’t answer. It was much darker now. Twilight had thinned away, and shadows found every vaguely lit place to invade and occupy. To me, it felt as if they were closing in on us. A sliver of the moon flashed between buildings and trees. For some reason, when the light from cars passing us in the opposite direction illuminated the inside of Buddy’s car, I looked at my reflection in the window and, instead of myself, saw the face of the woman who could be my mother. I imagined her whispering, How are you going to live with the sound of his scream?
When we made a turn onto Sunset, he asked me what street he should turn on to get to my house.
“Just keep going,” I said.
“Yeah, but with this traffic, I’ll need some heads-up. Don’t suddenly shout ‘Turn here!’” he warned.
“I don’t want you to turn. Just keep going.”
“If we keep going, we’ll be in Pacific Palisades, and then we’ll be at the ocean, Lorelei.”
“Good.”
“Good? I don’t get it. You were in a hurry to get home only a little while ago. Now, what’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”
“I want to see the ocean at night.”
He shook his head but smiled. “Women,” he said. “Can’t live without them and can’t live with them.”
“You have no idea how right you are,” I said. I was thinking it and didn’t realize I had spoken.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Man, you’re like a tangram all of a sudden.”
“What’s that?”
“A Chinese puzzle. Pretty hard to figure out most of the time. It’s a dissection puzzle consisting of seven flat shapes, always seven, called tans, which you have to put together to form shapes. You’re given a specific shape only in outline or silhouette, and you can’t overlap any of the pieces. My father likes to do them. He picked it up when he was stationed in Hong Kong. I’m not bad at it,” he said. “Makes Dad proud and happy that his son takes after him, I guess.”
“You sound like you have a very nice family, Buddy.”
“Good as any I know and better than most I know,” he said, nodding. “Which is why they’ll love you.”
No, they won’t, I thought, but this time, I didn’t say it aloud.
We drove through Pacific Palisades and came out on the Pacific Coast Highway.
“Where should I go?”
“Any place you can park where we can look out at the water,” I said.
“Not that easy around here.”
We drove until he found a place to pull over.
“Now what?”
“I wanted to see the moonlight break out over the water. Not that long ago, I walked on the beach in Santa Barbara with my father, and we stopped to look at the moonlight. It was a fuller moon, but this is pretty, too.”
“Why did you get so sad on me so suddenly, Lorelei?”
I tried to hide my face from the illumination of passing cars, because I could feel the tears on my cheeks, but he saw them and reached for me.
“Lorelei, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t take you to see my father, Buddy. Ever.”
“What? Why not?”
“It wouldn’t work out well for either of us.”
“Why are you saying this now? What are you talking about? You’re not making any sense.”
“My father is a very different kind of person.”
I paused to think about what I had said. All my young life, I had thought of Daddy as a person, because almost all the time, he was no different from anyone else. He was talented and very intelligent. He had great charm and was very good-looking, but no one, least of all me, who loved him so much, could look at him and not think of him as a person. Despite everything, I couldn’t think of him as being a creature of darkness. What I had seen him do frightened me, but as difficult as it would be for anyone to believe, I had accepted it, almost the way someone whose father was a convicted criminal might accept his father, love him, no matter what crime he had committed.
Tonight, now that I had been brought to the point of doing what my sisters called fulfilling themselves and giving
Daddy what he needed to survive, I was forced to see him as who and what he really was and not what I wanted him to be. My sisters were able to live with it and go on to fulfill whatever destiny was out there for them to fulfill. That was still a secret for me to learn about myself, and about them as well, but it wasn’t enough right now to comfort me, despite what they might think.
After all, they had not fallen in love with someone, cared deeply for someone, and been asked to deliver him to Daddy. Ava had put me in this position. In a real sense, she had blackmailed me by threatening to tell Daddy I had developed a relationship with a young man, something expressly forbidden. My desperate need to keep Daddy’s love had brought me to this moment, had me bringing Buddy so close.
I did not understand what it was inside me that had caused me to turn around. I felt confident that whatever it was, however, was what made me different from my sisters. Ava had sensed it, and if I thought back hard enough, I think Brianna had sensed that about me as well. Ava implied that what I was to do with Buddy was my only way to show that I wasn’t significantly different enough for Daddy to disown me.
“How different a kind of person can he be, Lorelei?” Buddy asked. He thought a moment. “Is your father into organized crime or something like that? Is that why he’s away so much and why you have hesitated to bring me around until now?”
His suggestion seemed a perfect means of escape for both of us. “Yes,” I said.
“Oh.” He sat back like someone who had just been told he had terminal cancer.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone this far with you,” I said. “This is all my fault.”
“No, no. Look. I’m not in love with your father. I’m in love with you.”
“It can’t be, Buddy. He won’t permit it, and he’s… dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Is he a Mob hit man or something?”
“Something,” I said.
“Well, I don’t get it,” he said, his voice more full of anger than confusion now. “Why did your sister bring you to my uncle’s house? What was all of this about her agreeing to my being brought to meet your father?”
“She’s done things he wouldn’t approve of, too, and I basically blackmailed her.”
Lying and deception were coming so naturally to me, I thought. I really was so good at it that I’d even believe myself. It made me realize that although there was something in me that made me different from Ava and Brianna, there was also much in me that made me the same.
“Well… I don’t care if your father’s a criminal.”
“Your wonderful family will,” I said.
“This is crazy. You spoke so highly of him back at my uncle’s house, Lorelei. You made him sound terrific.”
“I know. I guess that’s the father I wish I had, Buddy. I was fantasizing, just as I’ve been fantasizing about us and everything turning out wonderful.”
“It will,” he insisted.
“I’ve lied to you too much. There can’t be love without trust.”
He was silent for a moment. I hated doing this to him. I could feel the pain in his heart in my heart, and although I couldn’t see his eyes clearly in the darkness, I knew they were glossed with tears, just as mine were.
“Well, what are you going to do, go out with another criminal, marry another hit man? Is that what your father would approve of?” he said, raising his voice. “What is it, one of those Sicilian things? Is he a made man? Does he work for some godfather?”
“I don’t know what will please him. I know he wouldn’t approve of you and me. He’d feel threatened, and Daddy doesn’t like feeling threatened,” I said, hoping I sounded frightening enough to scare him away.
“Okay. So, let’s just keep ourselves secret until we figure something out.”
“It wouldn’t matter, anyway, Buddy. We’re leaving soon,” I said.
“Leaving? When?”
“When Daddy says, but it should be less than a few weeks.”
“Daddy, Daddy. How can you call someone like that Daddy?” he asked, his anger raw now because of his pain.
“It’s who I’ve known him to be all my life, Buddy. He does have some very nice qualities. He loves me and my sisters very much, and as you just said, he has had some terrible disappointments in love himself.”
“How’d his wife die? I mean, really?”
“I told you the truth about her. I know you’re very upset, and I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you any more, Buddy. That’s why I decided we shouldn’t do this. Trust me. I’m right about it.”
“I fell in love with you, Lorelei. I’m still in love with you no matter what,” he said defiantly. He started the car and turned us around. “I imagine you still will permit me to drop you off at your house.”
“Yes, thank you,” I said.
“Where are you going to go? Where’s your father’s next territory?” he asked sarcastically.
“We’re going to Louisiana, but I’m not sure exactly where yet.”
“Yeah, I heard Louisiana has always had a big organized-crime population.”
I was silent. He drove fast, angrily.
“Jeez, I feel as if I was with a schizophrenic today,” he said. He looked at me as though he was really wondering if I had some mental illness.
“Listen to me, Buddy. It’s all my fault. I thought I could have a normal relationship with someone, but I realized I was fooling myself and hurting you. It’s less painful for us both this way.”
“Yeah, I know. You keep saying that. How can you live this way? Don’t you want to have a normal relationship?”
“For now, it has to be this way,” I said.
“Yeah, well, don’t forget to write me when you can have a normal relationship.”
Of course, I understood why he was so angry, but I thought it was better that he be mad at me now than what would come later. We rode in silence for a while.
“Better tell me this time where to turn.”
“It’s not much farther.”
“So, is your father home or not?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“At least that was true,” he muttered.
“The next road on the left,” I said, and he slowed down to turn.
“So, after I drop you off now, I won’t see you again? Is that it?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know?”
“Maybe you won’t want to see me again now, Buddy.”
“From what you’re telling me, I shouldn’t. Unless I just want to have some good sex,” he added. He was quiet a moment and then said, “I’m sorry. I’m just… frustrated.”
“I know.”
“God, you’re calm about this.”
“Turn up here,” I said when we reached our driveway. It led up a small incline. “You can stop here,” I said when we reached the top. Our house was just off to the left.
“Here?”
“Just in case,” I said. I opened the door. “Good night, Buddy,” I said. “Thanks for…”
“For what?”
“Everything,” I said, and got out.
He watched me walk toward the house and then turned around and left. I stood there until his car lights were gone, and I looked at the house. Most of the lights were out, as they usually were in anticipation of an arrival. I felt my legs begin to tremble. It was as though we were having an earthquake and the ground beneath my feet was shaking.
At first, when I entered the house, I saw no one. Then Ava stepped out of the living room with Mrs. Fennel and Marla beside her.
“What are you doing here now? And alone? I saw him bring you to the edge of our driveway.”
“I couldn’t do it,” I said, and turned quickly to the hallway and my bedroom.
She was right behind me. “Are you mad? What do you mean, you couldn’t do it? Don’t you realize how important this is? Get on the phone, and call him back immediately,” she ordered.
I entered my room, trying to close the door behind me, but
she was quickly there preventing it. She shoved me forward, and I spun around to face her. “Stop it, Ava.”
“Daddy is depending on you, on us,” she said, her eyes wide with rage.
“I couldn’t do it, Ava. I love him.”
“Love him? How could you love him, love anyone?”
“I don’t know, but I do.”
She nodded. “You really are a mistake. I was right,” she said, with a cold smile creasing her lips. “Your life is nothing now. When Daddy finds out about this, you’ll be worthless to him. He’ll give you to the renegades.”
I opened the dresser drawer and took out the photograph. “This very well might be my mother,” I said, showing it to her. “I saw pictures of women who could be Brianna’s mother and Marla’s mother, too. Maybe my mother isn’t dead and gone like your mother. Maybe I have a real father, too.”
“Where did you get that?”
“I found it in Daddy’s room.”
“You fool!” she said. “You are a traitor. You really are as good as any renegade. Just stay here and wallow in your misery while I go back out there to bring Daddy what he needs. Thank goodness I had the instinct to train Marla faster.”
She turned and left. I sat on my bed and stared down at the picture with my name written on the back of it. Any moment, I expected to hear Mrs. Fennel’s footsteps in the hallway, or Marla’s. Maybe they would both come to chastise me and threaten me, but minutes passed, and I heard nothing.
I had no doubt that Ava was right. Daddy would disown me now. He and Mrs. Fennel would send me away. There was no point in waiting for it to happen, and besides, an idea floating beneath the surface of my conscious thoughts popped up. I should go find the orphanage and speak to the administrators to see if I could get information about myself and my parents. I had the address.
The idea kept me from sobbing myself to sleep. I began to pack a small bag and made sure I had all of my credit cards and my checkbook. I could get by for a short time with what I had. Choosing what to take in a small bag was difficult. Daddy had given me so many things, had brought beautiful gifts back for me from his travels. Each thing I looked at brought back a cherished memory. I had intended to keep myself from crying by doing all of this, but it had only brought on a flood of tears. How could I not cry? This was the only world I had known all my life. Daddy was the only one who had shown me real love. I hated to think of how much he would hate me now and wanted to run from that as much as from anything else.