Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
Toni smiled beatifically in the resulting silence, maintaining an impressive show of eye contact which Lee struggled to return.
Lee had noticed Peter was prone to statements like this, which, if taken with anything less than a generous spirit, were on the edge of jerkish.
There was a flexing to them, a shaping of reality that Lee didn’t care for.
And yet Lee liked Peter, or rather, she wanted to like him.
Lee was also used to older fathers; she knew how to handle them.
Halfway through dinner, Peter discovered Jamie had been in Iraq. Peter’s company sold software to the military. “We’re providing on-the-ground solutions,” he said. “Though the technology has applications far beyond government.”
“That’s amazing,” Lee said, although she knew Jamie would likely hold a dim view of whatever Peter’s company did.
“We should have your brother here sometime.”
“I’m sure he’d love it.”
The pinot was finished. Another bottle was opened. By the time Lee went to bed, she was approaching sloshed. Back in her room, she sat on the covered toilet seat in the connecting bathroom. “I might throw up,” she said when Marc called. “My head is all swimmy.”
“I told you it’s hard to match the Lewis drinking levels. Toni in particular is savage. It’s even more impressive when you consider she doesn’t eat carbs.”
“When are you coming back?” She felt as if her head were splitting.
“I’m at the airport. We’re taking off soon.”
After they hung up, Lee dug through her makeup pouch, where she was convinced she had at one point stashed an old candy tin with painkillers inside.
After a longish search, Lee managed to unearth a loose aspirin dotted on one side with eye shadow.
She wiped it with a tissue and stuck it in her mouth.
“I thought I heard Marc,” Peter said, knocking from the doorway. He held a magazine in his hand.
The pill lodged in her throat. Lee coughed and emerged from the bathroom. “I think he’s on his way.”
“Do you have everything you need?”
“Yes, thank you so much.” The aspirin finally went down. Peter had changed into flannel pajamas of the sort Bill once favored. Peter reminded Lee of Bill quite a lot—he was near the age Bill had been when he died.
“Well then, good night,” Peter said. Lee covered her yawn and accepted from him a kiss on the cheek. He sighed and wiped his hand over his brow. “Can I have another kiss?”
At first Lee thought Peter meant another cheek peck—she was still getting used to the air kissing in London.
“Like this ,” Peter said. He came forward and kissed her on the mouth. His breath smelled of garlic.
“You’re drunk,” Lee said, stumbling back.
“It’s not a big deal,” Peter said. “You get that, don’t you?
” When Lee shook her head, he laughed. “I forget what it’s like to be young and believe everything is so important.
Now, don’t be upset .” His mirth was so real, so light, that Lee wondered if she might actually be the one who was mistaken.
“I’m just saying, once you’ve lived some, you realize all those solid lines you laid out earlier were only stopping you from being interesting. ”
When Peter came at her again Lee was ready; she shoved him, hard, and then slammed the door.
After another second she put a chair under the doorknob; this was a technique she’d read about in detective books as a child.
The chair wedged nicely underneath the knob, with two dainty white legs in the air, like a woman falling backward.
There was no movement or noise beyond the door that she could discern.
Lee sat against the wall and kept watch until her boredom turned to sleepiness.
She was still drunk but glad now for the drunkenness, because it allowed her to blot out the memory of Peter.
His wet breath, his bits of beard against her chin.
The sound he’d made in the back of his throat as she stood, frozen, when he pressed close.
She woke to the rattle of the door.
“What the—” Marc said from the other side. Lee sat up and discovered she was in bed. She pushed off the blanket. The chair had proved, at best, a minor inconvenience—Marc simply stuck his hand through the crack and pushed it away.
“That’s weird, this chair got stuck.” Marc dropped his bag. “Did I wake you? The lights are still on. Did you pass out? It’s like you’re in college.”
“Wait,” Lee said before he kissed her. She ran to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. She forgot to put water on the brush, and the paste stuck in her mouth.
Marc watched from the doorway. “My little drunkard,” he said with affection.
She rinsed and spat in the sink. “Your father hit on me.”
“What?”
“Peter kissed me. On the lips. Like how you would kiss me.” Lee kept her eyes on Marc.
She felt the fear and inarticulate numbness of an approaching confrontation—her head pounded and she had the urge to hide, a sensation she hadn’t experienced since the night of the fire.
She could still recall the sweat on Theo’s face, the ridges of the coin in her palm.
Marc shoved his hands in his pockets and paced, stopping to move the chair. He began to change, unfolding the T-shirt he slept in and putting on shorts.
“It seems to me,” Lee said, climbing back into bed, “that you aren’t reacting how I’d expect.”
Marc unbuttoned his shirt. “I don’t know what you want me to do,” he said, not looking at her.
“We’re getting married. Do you think this is an acceptable situation?”
“Of course not.” Marc came and sat on the bed. “I’m not saying it’s acceptable .”
“Well, what should we do?”
In response, Marc rose and once again began to pace.
Lee watched him move. She wanted to cry as, even now, in her expanding rage, she couldn’t help but see it from his side: how much you simply wanted to love your parents.
His mother had died when he was in high school; Lee remembered the first time she told him her father was dead.
How relieved he had looked that he didn’t have to explain.
Was it a big deal? Lee could almost see Peter’s side of things: your wife died and you got a new one. You had an urge and you followed. As Lee had told Joan before: she was an adult. Bad things happened. You recovered.
Lee sighed, and Marc came to her and held her hands. She stared at him—at his kind, beautiful face. This was the person she had moved countries for; this was who she wanted to spend her life with. She’d thought when she met him that she was done.
Marc’s voice was soft and his eyes pleading. “Someday my father is going to die, and I think about that a lot,” he said.