24. Keeley
KEELEY
O n Saturday night, we put on our rings and take the elevator downstairs to the garage. I come to a complete stop when I realize he’s driving a Volvo SUV.
“If you showed up for a date in this car,” I tell him, “you’d never get a second one.”
“Given how far you apparently go on the first date, I wouldn’t need a second one.”
I laugh. I like that I can give him shit and he always gives it back.
He holds the door for me and carefully shuts it. Being raised by a single mom clearly had its drawbacks, in his case, but he certainly is good about all the dumb little rules.
“It’s just a rental since there’s no point in owning a car in New York,” he says when he climbs in. “It was the only SUV available that was rated high for safety.”
“You just made it so much hotter, what with all the concern about your safety.”
“It wasn’t about my safety,” he mutters. “It was about yours.”
By which he really means the baby’s , but it’s still kind of sweet.
“Okay,” I say after I’ve plugged in the address for my dad’s new home, which I’ve never even seen, “let’s get our story straight.
How did we meet? I’m thinking we tell them you saw me working in the hospital when I was a resident and became obsessed with me.
You followed me all over the country until I gave in—”
“Or we could just tell them the far more likely truth , which is that we met through the union of your best friend and my brother.”
I sigh. “That’s so normal .”
“Keeley, tonight is going to be hard enough without asking me to keep up with some ridiculous story you’ve concocted. Besides, I’m too cheap to follow anyone around the country. You know that.”
I laugh. This is true. I could be his soulmate and he probably wouldn’t even shell out for an Uber from Santa Monica to midtown.
“Fine. What did you fall in love with first?”
He rolls his eyes. “How careful you are financially.”
This is going to go disastrously. Graham can’t even be bothered to assure me I don’t look big . There’s no way he’s going to convince Shannon he’s in this situation by choice.
“What do they do for a living?” he asks. “Ostensibly, that’s the kind of thing I’d already know.”
“They’re retired now, but they were both English professors. That’s how they met. Oh, and he dumped Shannon for my mom, so that’s touchy too.”
“Wait a minute,” he says with an incredulous laugh. “Did you seriously just tell me that your father and your stepmother were English professors?”
“Is that really so hard to believe? It’s not like I didn’t finish high school. I am a doctor.”
“The last thing I saw you reading was ‘ The Cast of Dawson’s Creek: Where are they Now ?’ So, yes, I did not expect you to be the child of an English professor.”
“Well, you’d have gotten a little burned out on reading, too, if every time you picked up a book as a kid you had someone making fun of you for it.”
I’d almost forgotten there was a time when I enjoyed reading, back before there were too many instances of Shannon making fun of me. “ Anne of Green Gables ?” she’d say, looking at her daughter or my dad with that gleam of amusement in her eye. “By the time I was your age, I was reading Milton.”
Eventually I just gave up. I guess I’d be a little closer to the person Graham thinks I’m supposed to be if I hadn’t.
“They’re older, by the way,” I warn as we pull up to the house.
He gives a low laugh. “Were you worried I’d announce that they both look old?”
“Well, I doubt anyone’s called you tactful. Barely a day’s gone by that you haven’t mentioned my weight.”
“That’s not true,” he argues as I climb from the car. “I was trying to console you, and you look fine.”
“Right. You look fine is exactly the kind of compliment women love to hear. Anyway, since my dad was so much older than my mom, I guess I always felt like I needed to warn visitors.”
“How much older?” he asks as we approach the house.
“Twenty-seven years.”
He raises a brow at that but says nothing since we’re nearly to the door.
People—at least the people in this house—always want to cast my mother as this femme fatale.
No one ever suggests that maybe it was fucked up for a forty-seven-year-old man to be sleeping with his twenty-year-old student.
Maybe it’s simply what Shannon has to tell herself, since she’s the woman he left behind.
The door opens before I’ve even rung the bell.
I haven’t seen my father since the holidays, right before Ben and Gemma’s party.
He’s more stooped and gray than he was the last time, and it makes me sad.
As much as I hate the way he hurt my mother, I recognize that somewhere under it all…
he actually cared about us both. That, much like Graham, he was trying to do the right thing.
He probably got tired of feeling like the bad guy all the time.
I ignore Shannon, grumbling as she approaches, and turn to my father.
“Dad,” I say as we step inside, “this is Graham. My husband.”
“Husband,” he repeats, saying it as if the word is new to him—some crazy made-up thing all the kids are saying and he’s not sure he understands.
“ What? ” barks Shannon. “You got married ?!” The note in her voice is less surprise than it is accusation, and Graham steps closer to me, wrapping his arm around my waist as if he thinks I’m at physical risk.
“Yes,” I reply, my gaze flicking toward her before it returns to my father. “We got married last January, actually, but with my training and his job we—”
“ January?! You’ve never even mentioned him!” Shannon snaps.
Graham raises a brow at her and the arm around me tightens as he extends his free hand to my father. “Graham Tate,” he says, shaking my dad’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”
I stare at him in wonder. He’s so smooth and suave and masculine right now when I expected nothing but awkward silences and uncertainty.
Graham Tate is apparently good at hiding what he feels.
“Jim Connolly,” my father says. “I…this is a surprise, obviously.”
“I believe you know my sister-in-law, Gemma,” Graham continues.
“I don’t understand,” Shannon snaps. “It’s June. How could you have failed to tell us you were married for five months?”
I open my mouth to reply but Graham speaks first, squeezing my hip.
“Perhaps we could sit? Keeley’s been on her feet all day.
” There’s a hint of a reprimand in his voice directed at Shannon.
Do you always make your guests stand in the foyer while you hurl accusations?
that voice asks, and something warm and sweet blossoms in my chest. As long as I’m carrying his child, Graham Tate isn’t going to let anyone hurt me.
Sybil, Shannon’s daughter from her first marriage, and Sybil’s husband, Karl, are seated at the table when we enter the kitchen.
“She’s married,” Shannon says to her daughter.
There’s a whole world of shade in that flat pronouncement to Sybil, a can-you-believe-what-she’s-done?
With a side helping of I told you she was crazy .
It’s been par for the course with Shannon and Sybil my entire life, toward me and my mother alike—the news that my mother had auditioned for a part could spawn an entire evening’s worth of shared glances and snickering at the dinner table, even when I was small.
Anytime my mom wanted me to audition…the mockery was entirely open.
“ I wouldn’t hold my breath there, Jennifer Aniston ,” she’d say.
“So, uh, how did you two meet?” my father asks as we take our seats.
My eyes meet Graham’s. I still think my obsessed hospital stalker story would sell this better.
“We planned the party for Ben and Gemma together last fall,” I reply.
“I had to go back to New York and Keeley was getting ready to leave for DC,” Graham continues, “and we didn’t want to wait so we took off for Vegas as soon as the festivities were over.”
“You got married in Vegas ?” Shannon says from the stove, not trying to hide her disdain. In even my earliest memories, she was making me feel like I’d done something wrong and this time, I actually have. I can’t wait until she learns I’m pregnant.
Graham tenses at her tone, and then, beneath the table, his hand squeezes mine. A shiver runs through me—he has nice hands. Huge hands, to go with the huge rest of him. I think, once again, that it’s a shame I can’t remember just how huge the rest of him actually is.
“Not ideal,” agrees Graham. “I wish I could have given Keeley the wedding she’d been planning, but it was still very special.”
Wow. I don’t think Graham can lie to me, but he sure can lie on my behalf. I give his hand a quick squeeze to say thanks .
“Well, that’s certainly a Melinda way to go about things,” Shannon says.
My mother has been dead for fourteen years, but Shannon still can’t miss an opportunity to trash her.
The topic turns to Karl and his law degree, to Sybil and her crusade to get a speed bump placed in front of her house. For ten minutes straight, she and Shannon discuss how unfair it is that her efforts haven’t worked and how the people cutting through her neighborhood are going to kill someone.
When the subject of speed bumps is finally exhausted, my father turns to me. “So how was your thing at NIH?” he asks.
“I can’t imagine that’s anything we want to hear about right before we eat ,” says Shannon.
Graham’s head turns toward her, his jaw locked tight. It’s embarrassing to have a witness to all this, but I’m used to it, so I ignore her.
“It went really well—” I begin.
“Let’s go into the dining room,” Shannon cuts in. “Dinner’s ready.”
My father winces but follows her to the formal dining room, where a glass of wine sits at each place. People claim that when you’re pregnant, the things you’re not supposed to have don’t appeal to you, but I’ve never wanted a drink more in my life.
“So, congratulations, Karl, on beginning law school,” Shannon says, raising her glass once we’re all seated. “And I suppose we need to congratulate Keeley and Graham, for as long as it lasts, anyway.”
Graham stiffens, then lowers his wine. “Excuse me?”
“You do know what we call her, right?” Shannon asks, and something sinks in my stomach. Here we go .
“Shannon—” my father begins quietly.
“The baby bolter ,” Shannon continues. “It’s from this Nancy Mitford novel…the Bolter is this woman who bolts from one man to the next, just like Keeley’s mother did. And we call Keeley the baby bolter because she never sticks with anything or anyone for long either.”
I’m used to this nickname. I barely notice anymore, but I hate that Graham is hearing about it. I hate that it’s probably reinforcing every negative thing he’s ever thought about me himself.
“She’s stuck with medicine for eight years now,” Graham says. His voice is sharp—a warning.
“She stuck with school ,” Shannon corrects, turning to me. “You’ve only been at that job for a few months, right? If the boredom hasn’t set in yet, it will.”
“Shannon,” my father begs quietly, but goes no further in my defense. He couldn’t stop her anyway, and she’d manage to find fault no matter what I did.
If I’d chosen to leave med school, I’d have been a quitter, but I stayed and yet I’m still a quitter.
I could remain with Beverly Hills Skin for a decade, and when I finally moved on, Shannon would say, “I knew that wouldn’t last.” But she’s also…
right. I don’t like my job and would leave if I could and even if I could list a thousand reasons why, I also know how little that means.
Every time my mom dumped someone, every time she decided a job just wasn’t working for her anymore, she had a whole list of reasons. Maybe mine are no more valid than hers.
I stare at my plate, feeling leaden, and quietly pick up my fork, preparing to ignore what’s been said and just get through the night.
But Graham’s hand lands on top of mine, telling me not to. I look up to find his shocked gaze on me, and I worry he’s just seeing me through Shannon’s eyes—all my gross irresponsibility, my genetic ineptitude.
“I’m not putting up with this,” he says quietly.
“And neither are you.” He rises, tugging my hand to join him.
“My wife, a doctor , has been in the same field for eight years. And, as I believe I mentioned, she’s my wife , so in the future, I’d suggest you keep the nicknames and comments to yourself.
Which you might want to do anyway, Shannon, because they make you look petty… and jealous.”
He pulls me out of the room, his fingers wound tight in mine, and I allow myself to be led, stumbling and shocked until he’s got me bundled inside the Volvo.
I can’t believe we just left when dinner had barely begun. Even more than that, I can’t believe he did it to defend me.
“I’m sorry,” he says, once we’re both inside the car.
“But she shouldn’t be allowed to treat you like that, and you shouldn’t be allowing it, either.
I mean, what the hell, Keeley? If I casually suggest you try eating vegetables, I’m waiting for a knife to be thrown, but you let Shannon say whatever she wants. ”
“You know why I’m a doctor?” I ask him with a sad laugh.
“Because on her deathbed, my mom said she wished she’d gone to medical school.
And when I mentioned it later, Shannon said, ‘as if your mother could have stuck with anything that long’ .
How fucked up is that? I chose my career just to prove something to a woman I don’t even like, on behalf of a woman who’s dead, and it didn’t make a dent anyway. ”
He reaches over the console to squeeze my hand.
“Keeley, people do all kinds of things for the wrong reasons. You think you’re the only person who got a degree to prove something to a parent?
It doesn’t take away from what you’ve accomplished, and you can’t allow her to take away from it.
No matter whether you stay at that practice or not, you’ve achieved something many people aspire to and very few attain. ”
A slow smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “You called me your wife in there.”
“Well, technically you are.” Two spots of color grace his cheekbones.
I decide to let it go. I decide not to tell him what I was thinking as it all went down: that he said it like someone who meant it. Like someone who cared. And for a moment I almost thought he did.