Chapter Ten Barb
Chapter Ten
Barb
I arrive at Café Collage before Tessa and her son, so I locate an empty table in the far corner, conveniently the most private, and settle into an uncomfortable metal chair.
Other than the hands from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco adorning one wall, this place is short on decor.
It’s a commodity coffee shop, meant for a quick cup of joe.
I have no idea why Tessa wanted to meet here.
My phone rings. It’s Linda. I debate picking up. I know she’ll think Tessa is a bored housewife eager for a little drama to fill her empty days.
“Hey, you,” Linda says when I answer. She doesn’t ask me how I am. She doesn’t need to. Instead, she lets me talk. I tell her about that smug Officer Gonzales, the tequila, Regina’s girlfriend. Hesitantly, I tell her about Tessa.
“Well.” Linda drags out the word as she decides how best to advise me not to be lured in. “Maybe she saw something. Or her son did. What’ve you got to lose by hearing her out?”
And this is why I adore Linda. I chide myself for assuming she would ever doubt me.
I sense Tessa before I see her, the rush of the door thrown open, the hurricane of her entrance.
Her hair is falling out of her bun, and her son leans so far over in his stroller, he’d tumble out if not for the safety belt.
The cashier glances up at them, nostrils flared.
I can’t tell if he recognizes them or if the presence of children generally irks him.
“She’s here,” I whisper to Linda as Tessa wheels Jasper to the counter. Before Linda hangs up, she makes me promise to call her every morning to let her know I’m okay. “Sure, Mom,” I tease, secretly grateful.
Tessa surveys the café, relief washing over her face as her eyes land on me.
She motions to the menu, asking if I want a smoothie, and I mouth that I’d like strawberry.
I covertly watch as she interacts with the surly barista, rocking the stroller back and forth to occupy her son.
She’s blond and slim, like Regina, but everything else about her, from her sleek maternity clothes to her diamond studs to her good posture and her motherhood, is different.
They wouldn’t have been friends. Not because they were in such opposing stages of life.
This woman doesn’t have the scrappy fight my daughter had, the spirit that tells me Regina couldn’t have died without a struggle.
Yet she’s the only one searching for my daughter.
Once Tessa’s seated across from me, she bites at the corner of her mouth, her eye contact fleeting.
Her foot taps beneath the table, and I resist the impulse to put my hand on her knee, silencing it.
As Tessa decides what to say to me, I bend over and bop her son on the nose, pretending it’s a horn.
He echoes each of my beeps. I laugh, then catch myself before it becomes a cry.
I never thought Regina would have children.
The impossibility of being a grandmother now forces me to acknowledge that a small part of me, however naive, was waiting, hoping.
“He doesn’t usually take to people so quickly.” Tessa ruffles his hair. “The day your daughter died, we saw her here. Jasper . . . it’s easier if I just show you.” Tessa unbuckles her son and pulls him onto her lap. He immediately lunges for her phone as she holds it out and scrolls to something.
“Jasper, who’s this?” She shows him the picture of Regina all the news outlets are using, the one that makes her look like a different sort of woman, as if it’s only a tragedy when the deceased is prim, hair free of dye, arms unadorned by ink.
He grabs the phone from her hands. “Gigi.”
A spark zips up my spine, an electric current down my limbs. No one has ever called Regina Gigi. Still, my entire being understands. This boy, Tessa’s son, he knew my daughter.
“My husband keeps saying I’m making something out of nothing. The way he was calling to her, and then when she was outside our home. It can’t be a coincidence, right?” She peers up, not hopeful but hoping.
“It’s not a coincidence,” I say coolly, even as my mind rages. It’s not a coincidence.
“I’m sorry.” She tears up. “It’s not my place to react like this.”
“Let’s not worry about whose place it is. If my baby knew her, I’d be terrified too.”
The barista calls Tessa’s name, and I pop up to grab our drinks, thankful for a moment to collect myself.
After a career in human resources, I’m a good judge of character.
I like Tessa. She’s warm and genuine. Confused and scared.
I feel that familiar maternal pull, the one I developed with Jessica at the firm, the one I had to resist with Regina: the urge to help when no one has asked.
I bring our smoothies back to the table, where Tessa resumes her power struggle with Jasper, now over the pink drink instead of the phone. He wins, and she lets him hold it while he sips greedily from the straw. Or maybe she wins because he’s entertaining himself.
“Regina was sober. She hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol in seven years,” I tell Tessa. “She’d never jeopardize that.”
“So you think someone . . . that she was . . .” Tessa hesitates, unable to vocalize the word. Murdered.
“There’s no way she got drunk and drowned. I can’t go home until I find out what happened to her.”
Suddenly, something cold and wet dribbles down my leg. I see Jasper giggling, his hand flapping as he splatters smoothie across the table. I jump up, my kneecap burning in protest. It’s too late. A line of pink trickles down my white pant leg.
“Jasper, no!” Tessa pulls her son away more forcefully than she intended. It surprises him, and he starts to cry. Tessa hugs him, kissing his forehead. “It’s okay, sweetie. It was an accident. No one’s mad at you.”
She scans the café to see if anyone is watching.
Besides the two bored workers, there’s no one here.
I’d forgotten this part of early motherhood, how you constantly feel judged, how society tells you you’re going to screw them up—and you will, but not because you lost your temper at a coffee shop.
It’s internalized, this maternal guilt, and it never goes away.
I inhale deeply. I’m doing it again. Taking on her injustice as my own. I do the breathing exercises my therapist taught me, the mantras that remind me I don’t have to fix the world. I’ve never fixed anything. I got fired for trying. Excommunicated by my daughter.
“I’m sorry,” Tessa says to me, rocking her boy. She holds out a container of wet wipes, and I take one to be polite, even though dabbing will further set the stain.
“You like to make a mess, don’t you?” I tickle Jasper’s belly, then remember that you aren’t supposed to touch children anymore without first asking permission.
To our surprise, Jasper laughs. He pokes me back, roughly, and I pretend it tickles, causing him to cackle in delight.
Tessa still seems worried, so I tell her, “Really, there will always be more pants.” This sounds like a motto.
“You were saying that you can’t go home yet?” Tessa asks, still rocking Jasper.
I’d forgotten what I was saying before the smoothie incident. This is how conversations unfold for her. You have to be able to hold the thread through distractions.
“I live in New Jersey. As soon as I heard, I took the first flight out.”
“I would have done the same thing.” Of course she would. Any mother would.
“The police mentioned a girlfriend. Do you think . . . Would it be intrusive if I tried to talk to her?”
“She would know, right? If someone was after Regina, her girlfriend would know.”
Every muscle in my body unclenches. She believes me.
“Do you know this place? The Brig?”
Tessa nods. “It’s a bar on Abbot Kinney. Is that where she’d been drinking? Allegedly, I mean. The police said . . . Was she at the Brig?”
“I know how it sounds. I get why they’d think she relapsed.
” That’s all they see in my daughter. An alcoholic, and addict, who slipped.
That’s all they can see because they don’t know her, the stubborn, determined woman who never would have welcomed me back into her life if she hadn’t been steadfast in her sobriety, bulletproof against me, her greatest trigger.
“The bartender must have gotten it wrong.”
“Would it help if I—” And there she goes again with the fidgeting, passing her son from hip to hip. “You shouldn’t have to do that yourself. I can go see the bartender?”
I hear what Tessa is really asking, the question she can’t articulate for fear of rejection. In a mystery, this is the moment where Tessa becomes my spunky sidekick, only I’m not sure she’s ever anyone’s supporting character.
“That would be a big help,” I tell her.
Outside, we trade numbers and plan to meet here, at this awful, now ominous, coffee shop, tomorrow afternoon.
Tessa and Jasper disappear around the corner.
She isn’t doing this only to help me. She needs to know what happened to Regina as badly as I do.
This doesn’t just involve my child anymore. It’s about her son too.