Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
A few days later, Ainsley and I take advantage of an early fall sunny day and go lie in Central Park together. A hundred feet past our feet there’s a mossy, green pool teeming with turtles. A hundred heads past our heads there’s a horde of shirtless middle-aged men galloping after a Frisbee and shouting things like, “You gotta lay out for that, Irv!”
“Hey, Ains.”
“Yeah?” She rolls over and looks at me, Game Boy about two inches from her face.
I pillow my hands under one cheek. “Do you like Miles?”
“Sure.” She shrugs. “He’s my uncle.”
“Do you…remember when he first came around?”
Ainsley sits up and picks at her shoelaces. “Yeah. It was right about the time that PopPop died.” She tugs harder at her shoelaces. “He was kind of scary.”
“Your pop-pop?”
“No,” she laughs. “Miles was.”
“Why?”
“He and Mom yelled at each other a lot. And…he doesn’t laugh or smile much.”
I nod. “I can understand why that would be scary. And he and your mom need to stop doing that, for sure. But, you know, none of that is because he’s mad.” She picks more at her shoelaces and I can tell she’s listening intently. “He does that because he’s nervous.”
She doesn’t say anything so I continue. “Sometimes when someone is nervous they can’t really have fun or make jokes.”
The Frisbee players break into a cacophonous argument that ends in raucous laughter, and Ainsley and I turn to watch the hubbub.
“He doesn’t have to be nervous around me,” Ainsley says almost absently. Now she’s got hold of my shoelaces too. She’s diligently tying us together.
“Let’s teach Miles how to take care of kids.”
“You and me?” she asks, looking at me suspiciously.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think you can teach that to a grown-up.” She rolls to her back and tosses a small handful of grass into the wind. It lands in a clump on my face.
“You definitely can!” I remove the clump of grass from my face and toss it onto hers.
She laughs and brushes it all away, spitting some out of her mouth. “What would I have to do?”
“Mmm. Hang out with him when you want to? Tell him if he’s being weird or awkward?”
She pulls a face. “That’s rude.”
“Not to him. He’ll appreciate the feedback.”
“He had this badminton idea that seemed fun,” she says with a shrug. “He brought a bunch of stuff over and put it in our closet. But then he never came to do it.”
And then what? What is he waiting for?
The next day I sidle up while he’s sorting Reese’s recycling.
“Hey, what’s the deal with the badminton thing?”
His brow furrows and the cans clank. “What do you mean? You were there at the store when we bought it all.”
“No, I know that. I mean what’s your plan for the whole thing?”
“Oh, nothing really. I showed her the stuff and said that I’m down if she ever wants. So…” He shrugs and starts breaking down a pizza box.
I take the pizza box and set it aside. “So, what?”
“So, the ball’s in her court.” He picks up another pizza box.
“The ball’s in her court? She’s seven.” I take that pizza box as well.
His brow is even more furrowed. “I take it I did it wrong?”
Impossibly, there’s now a third pizza box in his hands. I snatch that one too. “Good lord! How much pizza are they eating around here? No, you didn’t do it wrong. Just go do it better. Dig up the badminton stuff and knock on her door and invite her to the courtyard to practice.”
“Right now?”
“No time like the present. Carpe diem. Now or never. Et cetera, et cetera.”
He’s pausing, hands in his pockets.
“Go!” I command, and now I’m raising my arms like a mantis, ready to Karate Kid him into listening to me.
He’s got two hands up in surrender and is backing away. “Okay, okay. But if she says no, it’s your fault.”
Three minutes later I watch both of them file past the kitchen toward the front door. Miles is clutching all the badminton crap in one hand and carrying a sweatshirt for Ainsley in the other. She’s saying something to him and he doesn’t even glance my way, he’s listening so hard.
I can’t decide which one of them is cuter.
I get some pasta on the stove and am just dressing a salad when the front door slams open. I hear some clomping, a paper bag tear, and a bunch of somethings tumble to the ground.
“Shit.”
I find Reese squatting in a mini-mountain of produce.
“Bag broke,” she says, squinting up at me from a three-point stance. I bend to help her clear them up and she starts listing to one side. Her forehead catches her slow-speed fall against the wall. She groans. I do believe this lovely lady is three sheets.
“I’ll get this,” I tell her.
“No, no. I got it.” She insists on helping but I spend more time making sure she doesn’t fall over than I do picking up produce.
Finally we’re settled in the kitchen and I serve her a bowl of the pasta I just made. Normally she waits for Ainsley to eat, but tonight I think she might need something in her belly other than whatever has one of her high heels hanging off her big toe.
“Didn’t mean to get so drunk,” she says, eyes closed, her temple resting against one fist while she chews. “I was out with clients and they just…kept drinking.”
“And then you went grocery shopping?”
She groans. “Who even knows what I bought. Where’s Ains?”
“She’s down in the courtyard playing badminton with Miles.” I try to say it lightly, but even so, she’s actively frowning at that news.
“Oh, good,” she grumbles. “With any luck he’ll arrive from babysitting my kid and find me drunk. He’ll have enough ammo for a year.”
I’m taken aback by her wrath. He wasn’t kidding when he said they had a really long way to go.
“He thinks you’re a good mom, Reese,” I say gently. “And I don’t think he’d judge you for accidentally getting drunk with clients.”
She scoffs. “He thinks he knows what it takes to be a parent. Everyone’s an expert when they don’t actually have to do it themselves.”
I’m honestly confused. This is more than just her seeing him in a bad light. This is her literally seeing him wrong. “He…definitely doesn’t think he knows how to be a parent. Seriously, part of the reason why we even hang out together is because he wants to learn how to take care of Ainsley. He’s fully aware he’s starting at square one.”
She turns and really looks at me, brings me into focus. “You like him.”
“I do.”
“I’d probably like him too,” she says low, and tosses her fork back in with her pasta.
I clear my throat. “If…”
Either she’s been waiting to talk about this or she’s too drunk to know where I’m guiding her. “Did you know that Miles is almost exactly nine months younger than I am?” she asks.
I do some quick math. Even to a layperson, nine months younger to a different mother…That’s not the kind of algebra you want to know about your own dad.
“Ouch.”
She laughs humorlessly. “Yeah. I see he told you we’re related.”
I nod.
“There’s this big, famous story about my dad.” She’s slumped forward, pushing pasta around the bowl. “He had to do this music show. And he got snowed in in Denver when my mom was in labor with me. All the planes were grounded so he went out to the highway and hitched a ride with a truck driver to get back across the country to be with me. He wrote an entire album about the experience. I mean, the drama, the dedication, the Americana. It went gold, that album. He won a Grammy for the title track.” She pushes the food away, leans back in her chair, and crosses her arms. “Turns out, the whole thing was bullshit.”
“Bullshit how? He didn’t get snowed in?”
She laughs and drops her head back to look at the ceiling. “No. He did. But apparently he missed the last flight out before the storm because he was with Miles’s mom. He missed my birth to be with her. And then he felt so guilty that he scrambled to find any way back east. And then nine months later Miles was born.”
“Ouch,” I repeat.
She gets up, walks to the stove, and serves another bowl of pasta. “Reese,” I call, “you still have some left over here—” I cut off when she slides the new bowl in front of me.
I eat my pasta and she dissolves toward the table in stages. Her forehead is flat against the place mat and her arms are laced across her belly. “My dad was really sweet, you know. If the only thing you knew about him was that he got some other woman pregnant on the night I was born, you wouldn’t understand…”
“People are complicated.”
“Sure, but my dad didn’t feel complicated. Like, he was just a genuinely nice guy who made everybody feel good. People loved being around him. He was gentle and thoughtful and…I was always so proud that I was the one he loved best in the world.”
I’m just reaching a hand across the table to pat her shoulder when she suddenly sits up.
“And I’d probably like Miles too if he weren’t such an asshole!” she asserts all at once, fire in her eyes.
Oh. Well, when she started that sentence at the beginning of this conversation, that is not exactly how I thought she was going to end it.
“Miles is—” I start, but she’s already swerving back in.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with being an asshole.” She’s gesticulating wildly now. “Plenty of people are assholes and it’s charming. But it just bugs me.” She pounds one fist, once, against her chest. “It bugs me that he’s nothing like my dad at all. And why would he be? My dad wasn’t there for him.”
“Reese—”
“Do you know what one of the very first conversations I ever had with Miles was?”
“I can only imagine. He doesn’t make a great first impression.”
“He knocks on my door, and Dad says, Reese, this is your younger brother you never knew you had. And then twenty minutes later, Miles is pulling me aside and berating me for how bad Dad’s condition was. How could I not see it? he wanted to know. And worse, how could I be letting Dad take care of Ainsley in his condition.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Yeah.” She leans back and drops her head to look at the ceiling. “And the worst part, the part I really can’t forgive him for, is that he was right!” She laughs though nothing is funny and props her elbows on the table and her forehead on her hands. “I was too close to really understand just how rough a shape Dad was in. And he insisted to me that he was fine. That he could still help with Ainsley. But then, secretly he’s calling Miles in to come be reinforcement. And I’m stuck looking like the woman who didn’t even notice that her dad was too sick to take care of her daughter.”
“Oh, Reese.” I reach across the table to squeeze her hand, but she ends up just giving me a few efficient pats.
“The two people I loved the most in the world and I couldn’t take care of them. And the person who called me out on it is, you know…”
“Mr. Personality,” I supply, and she laughs.
“Exactly. And now he’s got this idea about me. That I can’t see what’s in front of me. That I can’t make the best decisions for Ains. That I wasn’t kind to Dad when he was failing.”
“Reese, I really, really don’t think that Miles is judging you like that. I think he’s just trying to figure out where he’s needed in your life. And he’s not…graceful.”
“Not graceful…” she muses. “Every single thing he does reminds me that my wonderful, perfect dad totally hung him out to dry while devoting his life to being a father to me. To helping raise Ainsley. And what am I supposed to do with that?”
The question hangs there. She can’t accept Miles for who he is, because it’s painful. And the Miles she’s created in her head is constantly judging her. This would all be so much easier if she could let herself like him.
The front door bangs open. “Mom!”
“Shit,” she murmurs, standing suddenly and swaying a little.
“I’ll cover for you,” I offer her. “I can stay with Ains.”
She blinks at me. “Are you sure? I feel terrible making you stay late just because I—”
“Pay me double, then.” I flash her a grin and turn just as Ainsley and Miles enter the kitchen.
“Why was there a tomato in your shoe?” Miles asks me, holding up the offending produce. “Oh. Hey, Reese.”
“The bag broke when Reese got home.”
“Ah.” He walks the tomato over to the fruit basket and then busies himself with putting all the badminton stuff away in the hall closet.
Ainsley is on Reese’s lap, eating the pasta from her bowl. I know Reese is drunk because she didn’t make her wash her hands first.
“How was badminton?” I ask them.
“Miles can hit the shuttlecock four stories into the air,” Ainsley informs me, her cheeks flushed and her hair static clinging to the air. “I could only do two. But then he hit it so hard that it banged into Mrs. Greer’s window and she leaned out and yelled at us.”
Miles, washing his hands at the sink, turns back to Ainsley. “I wouldn’t say yelled. ”
Ainsley purses her lips. “She called you a delinquent.”
I burst out laughing. “Ah, yes. Badminton. Sure sign of a true delinquent.”
“Maybe we learned that badminton is a park sport,” Miles says. He dries his hands on a dish towel and fully faces the group and, friends, I’m pretty sure this man is pleased as punch.
He catches my eye. Badminton worked! he says to me telepathically.
Badminton totally worked! I agree with my eyes.
Reese yawns loudly, messily, uncharacteristically, and Miles’s eyes dart over to her, his head cocking to one side as he studies her.
“Hey, Miles?” I ask, stepping into his eyeline. “Help me with something? Over here?”
He’s not getting the hint, his eyes still on Reese, so I take it upon myself to plant two hands on his back and force him out of the room.
“What? What?” he demands, swatting me away when I nearly steer him into the door of Reese’s office.
“Okay, so Reese is drunk right now.”
His brow furrows. “Too drunk to take care of Ainsley?”
I snap my fingers. “Listen to me! You just had a great afternoon with Ainsley, right?”
He blinks. “Yes.”
“So don’t get into it with Reese, okay? Don’t ruin it. Just get outta here.”
“But—”
“Don’t worry. I’m staying late to help out.” My number one goal right now is getting Miles out of here before he has a run-in with Reese.
His brow furrows. “But you’ve been on since this morning. You must be exhausted.”
His eyes are searching my face.
My heart is squeezing.
Reese is so freaking wrong about Miles.
“That’s okay. Ainsley’s bedtime is in an hour. I can do another hour. No biggie.”
“All right. Well, come upstairs before you go. I’ll have some dinner for you.”
“Oh, I already—”
“Miles.”
The two of us jump six inches in the air when Reese appears at the doorway of the office like an unexpected zombie when you thought it was finally over.
Her eyes narrow while she focuses on him. “Miles,” she says again.
“Yeah?”
“Sorry I yelled at you. With the rubber band thing.”
“Oh.” His hands slide into his pockets. “That’s all right. It happens.”
A silent moment passes.
“Is your eye okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. It was just a little cut on my eyelid. Healed up after a few days.”
More silence.
“Okay,” Miles says. “Okay, I’ll get going, then.”
Reese is blocking the door but she doesn’t seem to realize it until Miles walks up and taps the back of one of her hands. Then she jolts backward, tips to one side, and catches herself just in time. Miles looks torn between wanting to shepherd her to safety and getting himself the hell out of Dodge.
I poke him in the back to encourage him in the right direction. It works. He heads down the hall, popping his head into the kitchen to say goodbye to Ainsley.
Reese takes a shower while Ainsley and I clean up dinner. She’s a little sobered up by the time Ainsley is practicing her back float in the bathtub. Reese sits on the toilet and chats with her while I get Ainsley’s pajamas ready.
I say good night to Ainsley, and then Reese does, tucking her into bed, and the two of us head down the hallway together.
Reese groans and covers her face with her hands. “Something tells me I’m going to be really embarrassed tomorrow.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong!” I insist.
“I dumped my sordid family business all over you.”
I shrug. “I could do the same if it’ll make you feel better. My great-uncle Murray fell in love with my great-aunt Lorraine’s manicurist. Now all three of them live together in a throuple. Pretty mod if you ask me.”
She laughs but then dissolves down into looking completely wiped.
And frankly, I’m about ten seconds from being a cracked egg on the floor.
“Thanks for everything tonight, Lenny. And for everything always.”
“You got it.”
“I’m serious,” she says, drifting after me while I toe into my now-tomato-less sneakers. “Thanks for staying after that first weekend.”
Something occurs to me. “Reese, you know you have Miles to thank for that, right?”
She recoils. “What?”
“Yeah. He came and found me and asked me to stay.”
“Oh.”
She looks shocked, confused. I’m hoping her worldview on Miles is in a sudden state of radical flux. “See you tomorrow.”
I give her a salute and head out.