Chasing Stanley (34 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Your parents. I can see why you wound up being so nervous and shy. Anytime they open their mouths, it's big-time drama.”

“No kidding. It's like
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
without the booze.”

“I saw you trying to make yourself disappear at the table,” Jason said softly.

Delilah's eyes burned. “You did?”

“Of course. Your folks suck all the oxygen out of the room; there isn't space for anyone else.”

As Jason held her close, Delilah slowly became aware that the shouting in the dining room had ceased. She paused, listening. There wasn't a sound: no talking, no sound of china clinking against a plate, nothing. Terror struck her heart.

“Can you excuse me a minute?” she asked Jason.

“Sure.”

Back stiff as a poker, she walked back into the dining room. Her parents were kissing. In fact, her mother was sitting on her father's lap.

“What the hell is wrong with the two of you?!” Delilah shrieked.

Her parents broke apart guiltily. “It was just a kiss for old time's sake,” her father offered lamely.

“Oh, that's nice! I wonder what Brandi would think if she found out you were kissing Mom!” She couldn't believe it; she'd actually been put in a position of feeling sorry for Brandi. If that wasn't proof of how screwed-up the situation was, what was?

She heard movement behind her and turned. Jason was standing in the dining room doorway, looking completely disconcerted.

“Please go back in the kitchen,” Delilah begged.

“We're all adults here,” said her mother, rising from her father's lap.

“I'm not so sure about that,” Delilah snapped. An image flashed in her mind of herself as a little girl, sitting between her parents on the
Dr. Phil
show. “You need to get with the program!” Dr. Phil scolded them. “Or you're really gonna mess this child up!”
Too late,
thought Delilah.

Her father's face was flushed. “Leelee, you need to understand.”

“No,
you
need to understand! Get back together, or leave each other alone!” Delilah continued angrily. “This is ridiculous! My nerves can't take it anymore! And while we're at it, it would have been nice if one of you tried to engage my boyfriend in conversation at some point! But no—you were too caught up in the ‘passion' of your own stupid melodrama!”

“I'm sorry,” Delilah's father said to Jason.

“Me, too,” said Delilah's mother, though she didn't really look it. Delilah hated the way she was smoothing her blouse, as though she were fresh from a roll in the hay.

“I'm back,” Eric announced, strolling into the dining room with a great, big smile, which slowly faded as he picked up on the tension in the room. He peered at everyone in turn. When his eyes got to Delilah's, she jerked her gaze away, unable to stand the sight of him. “Did I miss something?” he asked.

“Armageddon.” Delilah held out her hand. “Keys, please. We're leaving.”

“Delilah hates me,
doesn't she?”

Jason wasn't even sure he wanted to dignify Eric's question with a response, since the answer seemed pretty obvious. The ride back to the city following the Hanukkah debacle was spent in abject silence, Delilah doing her impersonation of a powder keg about to explode behind the wheel. Both Jason and Eric were smart enough not to strike up conversation. When they got back home and Delilah said she was tired, Jason decided it would be wise to take a rain check on giving her her Hanukkah gift. He was tired, too, which made Eric's insistence on coming with him on Stanley's final walk of the night all the more annoying.

“Jace?”

“What do you want me to say, Eric?” Jason gently tugged Stanley away from a small stack of moldy newspapers sitting by the curb. “You invite yourself to dinner at her mother's, then you take off and fuck her father's fiancée. How do you think Delilah feels?”

“I didn't fuck her!” Eric's voice rose in protest. “She just needed to talk.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I'm serious.”

“And she just decided to pick you to bare her heart to, huh?”

Eric glanced away. “We know each other vaguely.”

“I saw the eyes you were making at each other. I was tempted to tell you to go get a room.”

“I'm telling you,” Eric insisted, “she's confused.”

“Boo-fucking-hoo.”

Confused?
thought Jason.
A double D cup disaster was more like it.
They were all wrecks: Delilah's parents, Brandi, his brother, him, and Delilah.

“Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have been so eager to drive her home,” Eric eventually conceded.

“And nothing happened?”

Eric hesitated. “A few kisses.”

Jason shook his head disgustedly. “I knew it.”

“I swear to you, bro: it was mainly talk. You want to hear something sad? She's not sure Delilah's father loves her.”

“Which means what? It's okay for her to fake a headache so she can slink off to suck face with you? Think about this: if she's cheated on Delilah's father, she'd cheat on you, too.”

Eric arrogantly tilted his nose up in the air. “I think not. For one thing, I'm about thirty years younger than Sy. Better looking. Possibly richer.
And
I don't have man boobs.”

“Yet.”

“Fuck you.”

“Seriously, Eric: can you blame Delilah for being ticked? She might not be thrilled about her father being with Brandi, but she doesn't want to see the old man hurt, either.”

“That old man can take care of himself, believe me. He survived life with Delilah's mother, didn't he?”

Jason just groaned.

“What the hell was going on there when I got back to the house?” Eric continued.

“Nothing.” Jason turned up the collar of his coat. He wished Stanley would hurry up and do his business; it was beginning to get seriously cold outside. “Delilah was just having a disagreement with her parents.” No way in hell was he going to give Eric ammunition by telling him about Sy and Mitzi's bizarro canoodling. Plus, he couldn't do that to Delilah. The look of humiliation on her face when he'd wandered out into the dining room to see what was going on had broken his heart. How vulnerable she'd seemed standing there, facing off against her parents. It made Jason want to scoop her up and shield her in his arms.

That's when it hit him: he would invite Delilah to spend Christmas with his family. His parents were flying in from Flasher for the holiday, beside themselves with excitement at coming to New York for the first time. His mom was planning to cook a big dinner with all the fixings at Eric's. It would be the perfect opportunity for Delilah to see how a relatively functional family interacted.

Jason decided to feel out his brother. “How do you think Mom and Dad would react if I asked Delilah to join us for Christmas dinner?”

“I think they'd be fine. I also think you're nuts if you do it. You bring a girl over to meet Mom at
Christmas
, and by New Year's she'll have knitted three pairs of booties for your firstborn child.”

Jason ignored the wisecrack, though it wasn't far from the truth. “I just thought it might be nice for Delilah to spend some time around a normal family, you know?”

“Normal?” Eric chortled.

“More normal than her parents.”

“True.”

“And you know Mom: she'll make a big fuss over Delilah, it'll be great.”

“If you say so,” said Eric, sounding doubtful. “But don't come crying to me when Mom starts calling you with suggestions for baby names.”

 

 

“ I can't believe
you're saying you can't. Can't Marcus watch the dogs?”

Delilah glanced away, unable to take the disappointment in Jason's eyes. He'd been so excited when he'd shown up at her apartment, a little boy bursting to tell a secret. Delilah had been excited, too. Then he asked her to spend Christmas with his family, and she'd had to spoil his fun.

“I told you,” Delilah said gently as she turned back to him. “It's not that I don't want to; it's that I can't. The holidays are my busiest time of the year, Jason; they're right up there with summer vacations. Not only am I walking the maximum amount of dogs, but I have the maximum amount of boarders. It's a twenty-four-hour thing.”

Jason's lips pressed together in a thin line. It was something he did when he didn't like what he was hearing. “Like I said: can't Marcus spot you?”

“Marcus has a family, too, you know. He goes home to Virginia at Christmas.”

Jason took her hand. “Delilah, this is really important to me.”

“I know, but . . .” Delilah searched for an alternative. “How long are your parents in town for? Marcus usually comes back the day after Christmas. If your parents are in town for the whole week, maybe I can meet them then.”

She smiled encouragingly; even though the thought of meeting Jason's parents brought on the itchy feeling. She couldn't help thinking back to that one failed foray to meet a boyfriend's family, when she'd mistaken a painting of Jesus for a member of the family. Things would probably go worse with Jason's family, since Jason meant more to her than that boyfriend ever did.

“They're in town until the twenty-eighth, but that's not the point. I wanted you to spend
Christmas
with us.”

Over the years, various friends had invited Delilah to join them for the holiday, and until she started her own business, she often accepted, though sometimes she did feel a bit like an outsider with her nose pressed up against the window. When she was little, she didn't understand why her family didn't have a tree or sing carols or attend Midnight Mass or believe in Santa Claus. Christmas dominated the culture. It was everywhere: on TV, in the stores, in school.

“I would love to spend Christmas with you and your family,” Delilah said softly. “But I can't. If I were only taking care of my dogs, then maybe I could get away for a few hours. But I'm going to be taking care of other people's dogs, too, and that's my first priority. How would you feel if you boarded Stanley with someone, and something bad happened, and you found out the person you'd hired to watch him hadn't been doing their job?”

“I'd be pissed,” Jason admitted reluctantly.

“There you go.” She ran her thumb back and forth across the top of his hand. “I have to confess something to you. Remember when I let Eric watch my boarders for a few hours while you and I went to dinner with your friends?” Jason nodded uncertainly. “I was wrong to do that. And I'm sure it's part of the reason I was so uptight that night. It was an irresponsible thing to do.”

“You're allowed to have a life, Delilah.”

“I do have a life.”

“Not enough of one to accommodate a serious boyfriend.”

Delilah swallowed. “What do you want me to do, Jason?”

“I don't know.” He ran a hand through the dark, unruly mop of his hair, the hair Delilah loved trailing her fingers through. “There's got to be some way we can work this out.”

“I told you: I'd love to meet your folks later in the week if they're still here.”

“We'll see.”

It pained Delilah to be the source of his dismay, but she didn't see any way around this. Sometimes she longed to say to him:
Excuse me, you're a professional athlete who makes tons of money! Not all of us do! Some of us have to pay ourselves a salary, pay others a salary, and carry our own health insurance!
But she didn't want to sound shrill, or worse, bitter. Jason had worked hard to get where he was. But so had she. She'd started out by posting a card on a bulletin board in a pet food store. Now she had to turn clients away. It was a dream scenario, except when it came to her and Jason.

Shiloh was pawing her for affection, so Delilah leaned over to scratch her behind the ears. “We haven't talked about the other night,” she said tentatively.

Jason's voice was quiet. “I got the impression you didn't want to.” Seeing Shiloh get attention, Belle and Sherman headed over to Jason and Delilah. Jason began petting them both, one with each hand.

“I'm sorry about what you were subjected to. I had no idea my father would be there. Or Brandi.” Delilah could barely hide her displeasure as she asked, “Did your brother have any comments about that?”

Jason sighed. “He said they just talked.”

“Oh, please.”

“He said Brandi's not sure if your father loves her.”

“As if she loves my father!” Delilah exclaimed.

“That's a whole other issue.”

“True.” Delilah analyzed the situation. “I think my dad loves the ego stroke of having this young, hot babe on his arm. But I also think he's still in love with my mother. And I think she's still in love with him.” She shuddered. “Not that I want to think about it.”

“Why did they split up, then?”

Delilah sighed heavily. “My mother thought he was having an affair with his secretary, Junie.”

“And was he?”

“God, no. I also think my mother thought they'd be happier apart, so she cooked up this stupid affair accusation. And then she realized she missed him, but she had too much pride to ask him back, and my father had too much pride to ask to come back. Plus, as you can see, they love the thrill of the fight.”

“Why didn't they try couples therapy?”