38. Planting the Seed
Summer
Exactly half an hour after Lola and I had left the party, Roman walked into the café. I was sure he’d wanted to wait longer, hoping she’d be gone, but he hadn’t. That strength of will … it was something. What Roman was—he was a full-grown man.
He slid into the seat opposite me and said, “In the toilets, or gone?”
“Gone,” I said.
“Oh. Fireworks? I probably shouldn’t have let you take care of this. Not your responsibility. I realize that.”
“Or I was the right person for it,” I said. “A neutral corner. Let me point out that you’ve done a lot for Delilah and me. What was this? A half hour of my life. And it wasn’t too bad. She cried a little, and I sympathized. Roman?—”
I hesitated, and he said, “Less of the tact offensive, please, and more of the strop. Go on. Tell me.”
“You could want a coffee,” I said, “before I drop any more Truth Bombs on you. Want me to order you one? And where’s Delilah? Are we picking her up after this?”
“In the car, staying out of the line of fire. And, no, I don’t want a bloody coffee. Just tell me. I don’t need coddling. You know how to tell the truth. Do it.”
“You mean you told Delilah she could stay in the car so she wouldn’t add fuel to the fire,” I said. “Which was probably wise. All right. My impressions once again. It’s not easy to be your mum.” When he snorted, I said, “You think it’s easy, because you support her and she doesn’t have to do anything but shop, and I can see why you think so. But you don’t know the—the terror for a woman who’s relied on her looks and charm all her life, once her looks and charm start to go. People have been telling her how pretty she is as far back as she can remember, and giving her leeway for that. So much, and so automatically, she never even recognized it. She just knew she was special. Even when she was struggling to raise you, and I’ll bet she did struggle, because being a single mom isn’t easy, she had that cushion. She was beautiful. She was desirable. I’ll bet she got presents, and a whole lot more, from men. She got jobs easily, and she got more forgiveness when she messed up. And now she looks ahead, and what does she see? She can’t hold age off forever. She doesn’t have a career. She doesn’t have a husband. Her skin is starting to look crepey no matter what she slathers on it, and when she takes off her clothes, things sag. She’s losing everything that made her special. All she has left is you, and she feels your exasperation. That makes her cling harder, and the clinging makes you want to push her away more.”
“So it’s my fault,” he said. “That she didn’t try harder to do a single bloody thing else. To find a career that would give her something to focus on. Something to be other than pretty. Other than somebody’s girlfriend. Other than my mum.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “Of course it’s not. She should have tried harder, maybe, not made that mistake, put all her eggs in that basket, not let her life be this … empty, but we all fail. That’s the bottom line. We all fail. Do you know why she left the party?”
“Not because I told her to, I’m guessing,” I said.
“Because she didn’t want to face you. Because she felt humiliated. Should she have come? No. But she did, looking for some of that … connection, that meaning, and she felt foolish. She can blame you, she can blame Daniel, but underneath it all? She knows some of it was her, and she’s fighting knowing it with everything she has.”
“If it isn’t my fault,” Roman said, “what am I meant to do about it?”
I hesitated, then said, “Can I just say—minds hate looking at things in new ways. They hate it. They try to bar the door and keep that new idea out. But not you, have you noticed? You listen. You hear. Your mind is open. Do you realize how rare that is?”
“Stop buttering me up and finish it,” he said, but there was a smile lurking there somewhere. “You’re possibly the most tactful woman I’ve ever known. Can’t quite sort out how that can be, when you’re usually telling me what I’m doing wrong, but go on and tell me again.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, that’s helpful,” he said, and I laughed and said, “I know. Just—be aware, maybe? Check in with her a little more? There’s this … pattern that happens when one person clings too hard, and the other person pulls away. Like—action, reaction. It’s normal, but if you can shift it a little, if you take a step toward her instead of a step back, and she starts to relax, she won’t have to try to hold on so hard, and you won’t feel as exasperated. It might change the dynamic. So maybe—call her at a regular time. Every Sunday evening, or whatever works for you. Encourage her to—I don’t know. Volunteer, maybe? Even get a job.”
“You think I haven’t encouraged her to get a job,” he said. “I’ve tried. I’ve given up.”
I could have argued, but arguing didn’t work. You planted the seed, and then you walked away. I said, “I know you have. You’re a good son. I see that. I got frustrated with my mom plenty. Now that she’s gone, I say only nice things about her, but did I wonder why she didn’t try harder to get ahead, especially when I could have sent her back to school, or whatever? Of course I did. I felt responsible for her and guilty about her and frustrated by her, and all of those things made me want to pull away.”
“But you didn’t,” he said.
“Not entirely, but it was easier than it is for you, because she really did try hard. She really did have major obstacles, and her heart was in the right place. Your mum seems vain to you. Selfish. Even lazy. It’s hard to respect that, but maybe you can understand it, at least a little, when you think about how little her life resembles what she thought it would be. And maybe that’s enough for now. Maybe that helps with the … the contempt. That’s the relationship killer. Contempt.”
His eyes had been steady on me all along, but now, they got even sharper. “You say that like you know.”
“I do. I was married.” Since I didn’t want to discuss that—it’s so much easier to tell somebody else what to do than to talk about your own failings—I stood up, took my purse off the chair and set it over my shoulder, and said, “I’m sure Delilah’s ready to get this day over with. Ready to go?”
He didn’t do what I’d expected, but when had he ever? He put his hand in his pocket and handed over the key fob. “Yeh. Ready for you to drive, too. Delilah drove us down the hill. I’m probably not over the limit, but I’m not risking it.”
I balanced the fob on my palm. “You are a surprising man.”
“I try to be. Let’s go. Give Delilah some beach time. Did you bring that bikini?”
Some more of the intensity behind the casual words. There was something in him—maybe his posture, maybe the set of his jaw—that told you how deeply he felt things. Or was that just my stupid heart, too trusting even now? I could have wondered. Instead, I gave him the tiniest smile, the most deliberate sidelong look, nothing like the straightforward woman I was working on being and everything like the teasing, tempting siren I definitely wasn’t trying to be anymore, and said, “I did. Because you asked me so nicely, on my card. And because I know you’ll keep me safe.”
“I’ll keep you safe,” he said. “Always.”
It didn’t even sound like a line.
Roman
Summer had looked good in that dress. That was nothing, though, to how she looked in her bikini. I’d have said the image was imprinted on my brain from the first time, but she still knocked me sideways.
She came upstairs in the very modern, extremely flash, fully stocked luxury home on Marine Parade—Esther had come through in spades—to join Delilah and me, and there it all was, appearing one glorious centimeter at a time. The face. The … shape. The legs. The skin, smooth, pale, and creamy against the deep purple fabric of the bikini. The thighs. Pretty much all of Summer was my favorite, but her thighs? Those had star quality, that perfect firm roundness that made your hands want to explore every bit of them, then keep on going.
“I just realized I don’t have a coverup,” she said when she reached me, possibly sounding a little breathless. “I know the beach is right across the street, but it seems a little exhibitionistic to walk out there like this. Can I borrow a T-shirt from you? Or even better—do you have one of those dress shirts in your luggage? I’ll wash and iron it afterwards.” She was doing her best to be matter-of-fact, but there was some pink in her cheeks. This was like the other time we’d gone swimming, and it wasn’t. Maybe the effort she’d gone to in order to look that spectacular for the party had made her more conscious of how she looked, or maybe it was pretending to be my girlfriend.
Or maybe it was how I was looking at her.
“Yeh,” I said, unsticking my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “Let me get it for you.” I finally remembered Delilah. “Do you need one?”
“Gee, you remembered I’m here,” she said. “Nope. I’ve got this fabulous men’s extra-large navy T-shirt with the stretched-out neck, see? A dollar at the Op Shop six months ago, and I’ve worn it, oh, about fifty times since then. I think my glamour quotient is met.”
Summer flushed a little more at that, and I caught her biting her lower lip, which made me wonder if she really had left her coverup at home. She’d never played any games. I should resent her playing them now, but sad to say, I was chuffed about it. About the shirt, and about what asking for the shirt might mean.
I brought out a white one, because she’d said before that the white shirt showed too much, and God help me, but I wanted to see too much. It was folded from the cleaner’s, and just the sight of Summer unfolding it, then pulling it around her and buttoning a few buttons in the middle, the flash of thigh beneath, had some more of that dark excitement trying to flood my veins. Like I was eighteen, but worse, because these days, I knew what to do with a woman. And then she pulled her plait of blonde hair from under the collar of the shirt, shook it into place, and said, brisk again, “Let’s go. So you can start keeping me safe again.”