Chapter 10 #2
“Hello. That’s good.” He nodded and then they stared at each other in silence.
“What do you like best about the team?” I asked the boy, and then he had a lot to say. We talked until the waitress arrived with our food and his parents called him back to his seat.
“That conversation sounded more like you. More like the Zoey from before,” Everett told me.
“I like kids a lot. Most of them,” I amended. “He was sweet.”
“I didn’t really know how to talk to him but you did.” He looked over at their table and smiled when the boy waved. “He’s about same age as Eris’s son.”
“Has anything changed with that?”
“The attorneys are still fighting and she’s trying to prove to everyone that she’s a good mother.
Look.” He opened his phone again and showed me some screenshots.
They were all of the incredibly gorgeous actress he’d been married to.
There was also a beautiful little boy, about four or five, and the woman I’d also seen before, the nanny who had been with them for years.
I scrolled through this new batch of pictures.
The mom and son were both striking and perfectly dressed but they also looked…
awkward. There was one in a tropical setting, with Eris in a bikini.
She was trying to smile but her expression seemed strained, like maybe it felt unfamiliar to her.
She was also holding up a piece of fresh coconut to her son’s mouth.
I guessed that she was attempting to get him to try it, but he appeared repulsed and also very uncomfortable.
In the background, the nanny already held a napkin, which I further guessed was for him to spit that coconut into.
In another picture, he and his mom rode a bicycle together, with her on the main seat and him jammed into a small carrier seat behind her.
He was big enough to ride on his own, maybe a push bike?
And again, he looked very uncomfortable, which made sense since that seat was meant for a much smaller child.
The nanny stood next to him, ducking down but clearly holding on to the bike so that it didn’t fall with him strapped into it.
“You said that Eris and her son never spent much time together,” I noted, and he nodded. “It shows.”
“Like I said, this isn’t real. It’s performative for the family court judge.”
I thought about him asking for information about the schools here to show that he’d be a better guardian, and I thought it wasn’t much different. I flipped to another picture. “I’m still glad to see these.”
“You’re glad that she’s faking it? Why?” he asked me.
“It doesn’t matter why she’s interested in him, whether it’s real or not. I think that it’s better for him to have her around. Wouldn’t you rather have someone pretend to love you, instead of being lonely and sad? It’s really awful for a kid to have a parent who doesn’t care.”
“I know that,” he answered. “My parents never cared about me and I had my grandma, but you’re right. I probably would have liked it if they’d pretended to be interested.”
I’d developed some ideas about his early life, like when he’d discussed his brother and sister getting so much attention and also how he had his own bedroom at his grandmother’s house, as if he’d lived there.
Even when he’d talked about why he wanted to get custody of Eris’s son, saying that she was a terrible mother—I still wasn’t sure how much I trusted in his reasoning, but the idea that she was a bad parent had sounded personal to him.
“Why was it like that in your family?” I asked.
“I always got the feeling that I was a mistake. They had Jasper and Gwenyth right in a row, and then five years later, I came along. They had just finished building a new house, really modern and big, with a giant suite for themselves and fun rooms for my brother and sister. They didn’t bother with guest areas because they didn’t want other people to visit, so in a ten-thousand square foot house, there were three bedrooms. There was one for my parents and one each for my siblings. ”
“What about for you?”
“That’s what I mean about thinking I was a mistake.
If they were planning for another kid, they probably would have built a place for him.
They turned an office into a room that I shared with the nanny.
It was half the size and on another floor from the rest of the family.
Then they ditched the nanny so there was no one to watch me, and I ended up with my grandma a lot.
Or getting into trouble. I glued the doors in the house closed and I ended up gluing some of my fingers together.
” He flexed them on the table. “I had to go to the hospital to get them separated.”
“Geez,” I marveled. “I never did anything like that.”
“I can’t imagine you doing anything bad,” he told me. “Your parents probably thanked their lucky stars to have gotten a daughter like you.”
“No, not at all,” I said immediately. “My mom was very disappointed by me. She’s extremely pretty—well, she used to be, but she smokes and she parties too hard, and that started to show on her face. Also, she’s very angry. That shows, too.”
“Angry at you? And why do you think that she was disappointed?”
“She’s angry at the world and specifically, at my dad. He’s been dead for a few years but it doesn’t matter to her. She’s still furious. And she was disappointed because I’m so different from her,” I explained. “For one thing, we don’t look alike.”
“You take after your father, and she’s pissed at him so that makes her pissed at you. What kind of stupid-ass logic—”
“It’s not that. I look like him in a way, because I have his blue eyes.
So does Willow, but she’s gorgeous and she always had so many friends.
She also got a lot of attention from boys and my mom would have preferred if I was more like that.
Pretty and popular,” I stated plainly. “But she doesn’t like Willow either, for other reasons. ”
“Your mom sounds like a bitch,” Everett said. It had come out a little loud, and I glanced over at the table with the little boy. Fortunately, they were far away and hadn’t caught the swear word.
And he wasn’t wrong about that, so I nodded. “Your parents don’t sound any better. I’m glad you had your grandma.”
“I wish that I still did. We both knew that the end was coming but when she died, I couldn’t believe it. I think I was in shock last summer. I don’t even remember training camp.”
“And that’s when you got married,” I pointed out. When he hadn’t been thinking straight.
“I guess it seemed like a good idea but about a minute later, it fell apart.”
People acted weird from grief, which I’d seen for myself. “I think you feel better now?” I guessed, and he shrugged.
“I miss her a lot. I miss talking to her,” he said. “I thought that was how marriage would be, having someone to talk to.” He twirled his fork. “I sound like I’m the same age as that kid over there.”
“No, it makes sense to me,” I said. “I would like that, too.” I hadn’t seen it with my own parents, but some couples had that.
“What you’re saying about Willow doesn’t make sense.”
“You didn’t know her before everything happened with Boyd,” I said. “She’s getting back to normal now, but for years she was so sad. Now she’ll be the life of the party again.”
“I mean that you two look just alike,” he said. “No, your hair is different.” He reached and tugged my ponytail. “Hers is lighter.”
“She’s blonde,” I agreed. “I guess that there’s a family resemblance between us.”
“It’s more than a resemblance. If she wore a wig, people wouldn’t be able to tell you apart,” he said. “Her personality is very different from yours. You’re hardworking and careful. You think about other people.”
“Willow does, too,” I assured him. “She’s very thoughtful about Boyd’s needs and feelings and I imagine that they’re very happy together.”
“You imagine it?” He looked at me. “You don’t know?”
“I haven’t seen her since they moved in together.
I guess they’ve been planning it for a while, and it’s funny because that’s exactly what my mom did, too.
She gradually moved stuff out of our house and then poof.
She was gone.” Yes, it was funny. “My sister had been bringing more and more of her clothes and hair stuff to his place, which I was actually pretty grateful about because we didn’t have a lot of storage. ”
“Your whole apartment is the size of a closet,” he pointed out, and maybe that was the kind of closet he was used to.
“Boyd had been living with roommates but he rented a new place for himself, and he and Willow are there now.”
“That will make it easier to leave your apartment behind.”
I nodded. “There’s a lot less to carry in my car.”
“Get movers,” he suggested, and I didn’t bother to argue with that. No, I would not get movers, because movers were expensive and now I had three jobs but they were still all part-time. “Where are you going next?”
“I’m not sure yet. The motel where we lived before is full, but with schools downstate starting soon, most people will have to get back to their lives and it will free up space for me.”
“You’d go to motel? For how long? You mean, until you can find a better apartment.”
I shrugged. Maybe, or maybe I would just stay there. It didn’t really matter. “I signed a ten-month contract with the school. Then I could try to get a teaching job somewhere else in Michigan, even somewhere far away. I don’t have to limit myself to a few districts.”
“Zoey, what the hell? I asked you about that months ago, and you said that you couldn’t leave the area.”
“There’s no reason for me to stay anymore,” I explained.
Everett was quiet. Then he bent closer to me, peering into my eyes. “Are you about to cry?”
“No. This is ok, it’s going to be ok.”