Chapter 4 #2
He ignored that. “Do you remember that woman who was in the movie about the trees?” he asked.
“The trees that were dog-phobic because they held the spirits of an ancient cult of cat worshipers, and then she became queen of the forest and united all animals in peace? It came out about six years ago.”
“I didn’t see it,” I said, “but it sounds familiar. Did she win a bunch of awards?”
“Yes, for the movie and for humanitarian stuff. Eris was really impressed by that woman, by her acting and by the attention she got. While she was filming the tree movie, she had been pregnant the whole time but you couldn’t tell because she never gained any weight, and then she went topless at all the award ceremonies so she could breastfeed and there were blurred pictures of her everywhere. ”
“I do remember that, for sure.”
“I think that Eris wanted to be just like her. She got pregnant right before she started to shoot a movie, but it was never released in theaters. She hasn’t had a lot of hits,” Everett explained, and I remembered looking at the list of acting credits that I had never heard of.
“There weren’t going to be any awards shows to go to, and the topless thing wouldn’t have worked anyway. She didn’t breastfeed.”
“So, she got pregnant to have a prop? For attention?
He nodded. “She was pretty sure that it was the movie that would make her career. The baby was supposed to have been the capper.”
“Oh.” I pressed my thumbs into the bones above my eyes because this story actually made a headache start. “That really says a lot about her character. Did you know all that when you started dating her?”
“I knew that she had a son and when she introduced us, I liked him,” he answered.
“I didn’t know that he was supposed to be an accessory until later and I didn’t think…
I don’t know, I just thought it was kind of weird but not a moral issue.
He’s a funny kid, really nice. His nanny has raised him and if I win custody, I’d want her to go to Arizona too. ”
“Why would she go there?”
“That’s where I live. I rent a place up here, but I’m only around for the season.
It got extended this year because of the Junior Woodsman crap, but I plan to be home for a few months before I come back for training camp.
The real Woodsmen training camp this summer,” he said.
“They give all the Juniors a tryout and I’m going to be there and show them that they made a mistake.
I’m going to make the roster again, and I’m going to be the starter. ”
It was good to have goals. “Why do you think that you would be a better parent than your wife? Your ex-wife,” I corrected myself.
“You keep saying ‘parent,’ but I’m not going to try to replace anyone. I would be the person that he lives with, not his dad,” Everett said.
“If he lives with you, then you’ll be the person who helps him go to sleep, who makes sure he eats, who sends him to the schools you’ve been asking so much about—or maybe to schools in Arizona, if that’s where you’ll be.
You would help him with his problems, support him financially and emotionally, and handle almost everything until he turns eighteen.
You would love him, too. I mean, I don’t know much about the law, but I assume that’s what ‘custody’ means. Right? It’s parenting.”
It was dead silent on the driver’s side.
“Isn’t that what you want?” I asked. “Those are the responsibilities that you’re asking the court to give you.”
“Yeah. Yeah, right,” he finally answered.
“What does your family think about it?”
“What do you mean?” he wondered.
“Well, didn’t you tell your parents and your siblings? They’ll be grandparents and aunts and uncles. That’s a big deal, isn’t it? I would love to be an aunt.”
“I’ll tell them. They’ll be excited. Thrilled. They’ll be overwhelmed with happiness.”
Oh, geez. He sounded just like my sister when she had talked about her ex! No, Zoey, I don’t care about Boyd at all. I don’t think about him, not ever. He never crosses my mind. He’s dead to me!
And tonight, I saw how true that was.
“Why would you be an aunt?” he asked, and that was exactly like Willow, too. Distraction was always part of her modus operandi.
“If my sister had children, then that would be my relationship to them,” I explained.
“I understand how family trees work. I’m asking why you would only be an aunt and you don’t want kids of your own,” Everett said.
“Oh. I will have them, in a way. I’m going to be a teacher so I’ll have a whole class of kids to love, even if Willow decides not to have a family.
She always said that she didn’t want to get pregnant because she doesn’t want stretch marks and sag, but I guess those things don’t have to happen.
Look at that woman from the cat spirit tree movie, right?
She seemed to be thinner and younger after she had her baby. ”
That led him to start talking about plastic surgery, which he knew a lot about due to his wife—ex-wife.
I heard all about scarless rhinoplasty and fillers in various places.
If I’d had the money to do that stuff and hadn’t needed to save everything for a place to live, then I might have gone for it, too—not everyone was as naturally beautiful as Eris the actress.
Or even if she wasn’t exactly the same today as when she’d been born, it sure worked well on her.
It was just another way that people could change, I supposed.
“You really grew up?”
Everett, who had just finished explaining the removal of cheek fat, glanced briefly at me before returning his eyes to the snowy road. “What?”
“I mean, you really matured? You think that you’re a better person now, equipped for adult responsibilities and ready to love and care for others?”
“Uh, yes. Is this a trick question?”
“No, I was just considering that if you changed, maybe Boyd could have, too. Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “Before, he was a spineless, weak—”
“He was not!” my sister suddenly yelled from the back, because apparently, she had been eavesdropping instead of sleeping. She startled both me and the driver and he swerved a little, a scary thing in these conditions. It took a moment to get the truck back on track.
The rest of the ride was full of Willow telling me how I was wrong about Boyd and I always had been, that I had never understood, that I was jealous, that I wanted her to be single because then I could keep smothering her, that I couldn’t understand what love was since I’d never experienced it, and other things like that.
Some of what she said was about how I’d never had a boyfriend and that I’d never even been kissed.
She was embarrassing me and not everything she said was true, so I felt like I had to defend myself.
“I’m not against relationships, not in general. I was against you and Boyd, but maybe…maybe he has grown into a bigger and stronger person. Not muscles, but character,” I said. “I hope so and I hope that you’ll be happy with him. I don’t want you to be lonely and sad because you miss him.”
“Ok, then!” she said angrily, but then she took a breath. “I’m sorry, Zo. I shouldn’t have said all that.”
“It’s ok, but just for the record, I have kissed people.
Two,” I stated. She already knew that because I’d informed her of my short-lived romances.
One had been with a percussionist (he was amazing on the marimba and glockenspiel but our dalliance had only lasted for a few minutes after a halftime show), and one had been with a saxophone player who had laid her lips on mine just before practice, and had startled me into almost dropping my horn and music folder.
I’d had to tell her that I wasn’t interested but I’d added that I was impressed by her embouchure.
“I meant with kissing with tongue, but it’s ok,” Willow told me.
I looked over at Everett, but his eyes were on the road and it didn’t really matter anyway.
We were almost to the motel where I worked, and then we would drive to the motel where we lived and I didn’t have a lot of expectations about seeing him again.
It was strange enough that he’d done this now, showing up tonight to talk to me.
I wanted to ask if he planned to stay in touch, but would that have been a weird thing to say?
I wished that I could ask my sister because she would have known, but it was impossible to do that in front of him.
So he ended up dropping us off at the motel—actually, he said goodbye and helped both of us out, first me and then Willow, and he waited until we got into my car and it started. Then he gestured for me to roll down the window.
“We’re playing at home this weekend, if they can keep the field clear of snow drifts,” he said. “The Acorns are coming in from Georgia.”
“That’s the name of a football team?” I asked.
“Yeah, because they’re the junior Oaks. Get it?”
“How embarrassing,” Willow muttered.
If Everett heard her, he ignored it. “It starts at ten.”
“Ok. Good luck,” I told him, and my sister reached over and punched my arm.
“He’s asking you to go!” she whispered, and I hoped he hadn’t heard that either.
“We would love to come,” I announced loudly, and then we did say goodbye.
He got back into his truck but he waited again for us to leave first, and thank goodness that they had done a thorough job of plowing around here.
We never would have made it back, but it still took a long time and I was so tired when we finally arrived.
That night, I made a decision about something important: in my new place, I would have an oversized furnace, the kind meant to heat a museum or an office building rather than an apartment, because that would be enough to keep things very warm.
The system that served our motel room didn’t seem to be doing the trick, so I had gotten up and spread our coats over the thin comforter.