It Began with a Crush

She laughed, seeming delighted by them, as most people were. The color in her cheeks grew pinker, and she bent and rested her palms on her thighs for a moment, so she could greet them at eye level. They were small for their age. “Hi, Maddie. Hi, Holly. I bet you were a bargain!”

They hadn’t been. They’d cost him a fortune in medical and legal costs over the past seven years, and he was still paying off his debts, but of course he wasn’t going to tell her that. The girls laughed at the idea that they’d been a bargain in a two-for-one sale, and he wasn’t going to tell them the truth about what they’d cost him, either.

Not yet.

Not until they were much older.

Not unless they asked.

They did ask, occasionally—a child’s version of the question. “Tell us again, Daddy. Why don’t we have a mommy?”

“Because she couldn’t take care of you.”

“Why couldn’t she take care of us?”

“Because she just couldn’t.” Because she’s a drug-addled, unrepentant mess, and her boyfriends are all dangerous. One of them put you in the hospital for a week, Maddie, and there was no way I was ever, ever letting her have either of you back after that. “And so we decided that I would take care of you on my own.”

Well, a series of judges decided. It had taken a while.

“Where is she, our mommy?”

“Far, far away.” In La La Land, and trust me you don’t want to go there.

“Is she sick? Is that why she can’t take care of us?” One time when they’d asked, he’d told them she was sick.

“Yes, she’s sick,” he had said in answer to this question ever since, because addiction on such a self-destructive level was a kind of sickness, wasn’t it?

“Isn’t she going to get better?”

“No, my sweethearts. She doesn’t want to get better. That’s the problem. If she wanted to, things might be different.”

“How could she not want to get better?”

This one defeated him, every time.

“We’ll have to wait until you’re older before I can explain all that, okay? It’s too hard to understand when you’re seven.”

Mary Jane would understand. Mary Jane might be shocked. He wasn’t going to tell her.

In the next room, at the dining table, the girls were counting pasta plates. “One for Daddy, one for Grandad, one for the lady.” A whispered consultation. They’d forgotten her name.

“Mary Jane,” he called out.

“One for Mary Jane,” Holly said.

“One for me,” said Maddie.

“And one for me,” Holly finished.

“I’m sorry, it’s going to be very hard for me to tell which one of them is which,” Mary Jane said.

“That’s okay. It’s hard for everyone, until they know them. There’s a trick, though. Maddie has a scar right at her hairline, and it makes her parting fall a slightly different way from Holly’s.”

“I’ll try to remember that!”

The ravioli had floated to the surface in its big pot of boiling water, and the pot was bubbling fiercely, about to overflow. He turned down the gas, spooned up a piece of ravioli and held it out for Mary Jane. “Want to see if this is done?”

She smiled a little hesitantly. “Okay, sure.” She stepped up to the spoon, which he held steady and level with her mouth. She blew on it, a strand of hair falling around her face and threatening to get in the way, and he realized this wasn’t what you did when you had a near-stranger to dinner, a grown woman of thirty-five, a ripe, pretty woman who’d already drawn your eye. You did not hold out a spoon of ravioli and invite her to test it. It was something he did with the girls.

And the girls didn’t blow on the spoon with such a full, kissable-looking mouth, shaped by the blowing into such a perfect kissable shape.

He veered his thoughts away from this dangerous observation so fast that if they’d been car tires, you would have heard them screeching.

But then, with insidious intent, the thoughts crept back again, against his will. Out of an old habit that he hadn’t fallen into for a while, he found himself assessing her desirability and availability as a bed partner. It was what guys did when they were players, and he’d been a player from his mid-teens until the age of twenty-six.

On both counts, Mary Jane scored a thumbs-up. She wasn’t his usual type—if he had a usual type, these days—but, as he’d noted before, she was attractive, in a quiet kind of way. She had a very nice body, trim yet curvy. And he was pretty sure he would be able to get her into bed if he tried, despite all those glaring, frozen looks she used to give him all the time in high school. There was an innocence about her, and something in her eyes. Heat and hunger. Wistfulness.

Do. Not. Go. There.

He was not looking for a quick hookup, or even a longer-term connection. He wasn’t looking for anything. He’d be crazy to, despite his bouts of loneliness. He was way more cautious than he used to be, and way too committed to the girls and their future. He had too much on his plate right now. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, or hurt himself, or confuse the girls, or worry Dad.

No. Just no.

“Um, it seems cooked to me,” she said.

He took a firmer hold on himself. Mary Jane’s mouth rounding itself to blow gently on pasta was just a mouth, not a disaster. “Good. I’ll drain it, then. Garlic bread’s in the oven, if you want to grab a hot mitt and take it to the table.” After the spoon-blowing incident, asking her to help with ferrying the food didn’t seem like such a big deal. She’d already helped herself quite cheerfully to juice, as he’d invited her to do. “Girls, call Grandad.”

Dad was probably out of the shower and freshly dressed by now. He still showered at around this time every day, even when he wasn’t washing off a day of engine grease. Dad’s lifelong habits, and Mom’s, had driven Joe nuts when he was in his teens. All that routine had seemed so boring.

He’d vowed he would shake this place as soon as he could and head for California, but by the time he’d graduated high school, Mom had gotten ill and her heart would have broken if he’d left. He’d been pretty egotistical and self-absorbed back then, but he had enough good Italian sense of family to override the ego when it came to Mom.

So he’d stayed on. He’d gotten an associate degree in motor maintenance to please his parents, “So you’ll have something to fall back on if the acting thing doesn’t work out.” Although, of course, he’d secretly vowed never to need a fallback plan.

He’d worked with Dad in the garage until a year after Mom’s death and then he’d finally gone to make his fortune in Hollywood when he was twenty-two. Dad had still had Joe’s three older brothers reasonably close by—Danny an accountant in Albany, John a paramedic in Burlington and Frank a lawyer in New York City.

Thirteen years later, his brothers were still doing those same jobs in those same cities, each of them with a family, and Dad was still showering before dinner, but now the routines and the habits and the settled lives seemed precious and meaningful and good, compared to the seven years of chaos and fear and heartache and anger and relentless work that Joe had just lived through.

If he could build something like this for himself and the girls, he would feel as if he’d struck gold. He’d just spent six years busting his gut to get through a California law degree part-time, while working to support himself and the girls, and he was taking the reputedly grueling New York state bar exam at the end of July. Having barely studied in high school, he now spent more hours at his desk in a single night—every night, after the girls had gone to bed—than he would have in a month twenty years ago.

Life really was a funny thing.

Mary Jane reappeared in the kitchen doorway, having deposited the garlic bread on the dining table as instructed. She stood a little awkwardly, looking as if she was waiting to be given another task, but there was nothing more for her to do. The girls had transported the salad and the grated cheese. Joe had the big blue ceramic pasta bowl in his hands. “Sit,” he told his guest. “We’re ready to eat.”

* * *

The word Mommy wasn’t spoken.

Mary Jane kept waiting for it. Surely she would have to hear it eventually, and the context it came in would answer some questions. So far, nothing.