Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale (5 page)

Chapter Eleven

Tony’s breakfast shot from belly to toilet fast as the favored horse in this year’s Kentucky Derby. Their au pair—who he thought needed to concentrate her efforts on Noah alone—stood outside the door tsk tsking.

A shower and change of clothes later had still left him reeking of alcohol.

“Antony?” She called through the slab of wood in her slaughtered Russian English, robbing his first name of its critical blend. “Antony, I called the physician. He will take good care. I verified credentials.”

Tony retched wildly into the toilet, spewing with a jerk of his body what he hoped was the last of his Jägerbombs.

“I’m OK,” he managed and flushed down the filth. The second he did, he vomited again. “I’m OK,” Tony repeated, with less fervor.

A night with Lila ended like this, with Tony groping for memories and spewing up foreign substances. Beer, rum, tequila, he’d even tried ecstasy once, though he’d take third world prison conditions over admitting to any of his friends or family. Anyway, once had been more than enough, as doing the stuff had blurred his vision and doused him in paranoia.

His girl, the Caribbean Amerindian who cursed in Dutch, was as turbulent and majestic as a summer storm, and as prone to jamming a flower in her hair as she was to drowning in vodka and tearing off her shirt. Lila Dahl wasn’t the sort of girl a guy made plans to hold on to; she was the girl you chased without hope of ever catching.

For now, that was plenty enough.

He was her soft spot, she always said. The boy who sped her pulse and slowed her heart, the one who made her feel and think. Sure, he was a teenage boy with all the hormone-induced hang ups of one, but he hadn’t let that consume them. He was different in that way, she said.

They met last summer in Oranjestad, on a vacation that had been uneventful before then. Like usual, Tony had resented the insistence on summering that people with money tended to have. A sullen evening of souring over the absence of Lizard and Wendy sent him out into the city, looking for who knew what where. Lila had been waitressing at the restaurant he wandered into and asked him if he wanted a beer. Him, at 17? A beer? Unable to resist the offer, he agreed, only to choke on the first swig. Lila laughed, laughed this sultry booming sound that weaved through him and up turned the corners of his lips. Tony went from not caring that a girl was laughing at him, to wanting her laughter even more.

He’d asked her out with his hands ringing under the table and his gaze flitting as if to flee. She accepted on condition that he ask again, that time while looking at her.

He took her to all the wrong places when she got off work, places where cash reigned and the walls glinted like gold. Through his nervous chatter on music and musicians, her yawns sliced like foreboding: he was on the fast tracked to friendship land, for sure.

But then she asked him out the next night, that time to Loose, their eventual favorite club. Pulsating reggae and calypso, strobe lights and grinding, made the possibility of him and her skyrocket to a promise. They went out again the next night, and by the third, they were making out on the dance floor.

“Antony!” His au pair rattled the door, yanking him from the reverie. “Antony, talk to me. Tell me if you are conscious.”

What kind of 18 year-old had a nanny? He could drink in Aruba, smoke cigarettes and vote in America, yet according to his adoptive mother, he needed milk and a nap. ‘College’ was the word he used to rouse him from annoyance. A few months more and he’d be away from the fretting and hand ringing of his mom and babysitter.

“Go away,” Tony said in a voice like granite. “I’m an adult. Go find a child to look after.”

He journeyed to the sink to freshen up, knowing she’d be there when he opened the door.

Chapter Twelve

Tak headed upstairs just as people began to drift from the ballroom. He sought out his oldest son, sent the au pair on her way, and waited for the hurl fest to cease.

When Tony opened the door, he froze at the sight of his father.

“I—I’ve got a bug, I think. Probably ate something wrong at the airport,” Tony said.

Tak sniffed.

“Drank something wrong is more like it,” he murmured.

Tony shook his head in protest, only to wince at what had to be scissoring pain.

“Grab a V-8, take another shower, and come spend time with your family. I really don’t care what your head feels like. Next time you show up smelling like a wine cellar, I’ll put the au pair on night shift.”

Tak gave his son’s shoulder a squeeze, looked him over discreetly, and then headed downstairs.

He could have handled that differently. He could have screamed and raged and reminded Tony of what they expected from him. But Anthony Tanaka was no longer the terrified eleven-year-old Anthony Hammond. Soon, he’d be leaving for college, where alcohol and worse abounded. So, Tak practiced trusting his son and reminded himself to have faith in the job he’d done—even if there hadn’t been time enough to do it.

Tak made it downstairs and immediately wished he hadn’t.

“Sexuality can hardly be defined by the neat categories presupposed for us,” Lauren said. “It’s mass brainwashing and socialization that forces the choice between boy and girl, man and woman. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are prisons of the same design.”

Jesus Christ.

Lauren sat across from Deena’s aunt Rhonda, her wife Mary Ann, and a blank-faced male cousin of Deena’s. Everyone stared back at her, wide-eyed.

“So…you’re…bisexual?” the guy ventured.

“My God. You’re imprisoned by labels! Enslaved by propaganda. Society is polluted by the insistence on categorizing only so they can marginalize. You have to reject these norms outright.” Lauren nibbled on some toast.

“What’s happening?” Deena said, appearing at Tak’s side with coffee in hand.

“Lauren’s happening. Lauren Tanaka.”

“If you insist on a label,” his cousin continued, as if such a thing were a sign of limited intelligence, “then pangender works fine.”

Rhonda and Maria exchanged a look. Deena’s cousin leaned forward.

“Does that mean that you’re…with both parts?”

“It means that I refuse your labels. Although, I do have a vagina, since you’re doing inspections.”

Deena choked on her coffee. Tak mulled over the best way to shut Lauren up. He considered tackling her, but dismissed it.

“Mia’s room,” Deena gasped. “She’s in it.”

“Not anymore,” Tak said.

Mike showed up with a broad smile, on special reserve for Tak’s wife.

“Regular little freak show isn’t she?” he said and took a massive slurp of OJ.

“Yesterday,” Mike said, “she went on about how sex was an inherent good that should be practiced as frequently and with as many partners as possible.” He shrugged. “Can’t say I argue much with that. Though your grandmother looked pretty sickened by the discussion.”

Deena buried her face in her hands.

Chapter Thirteen

Deena’s thoughts were on her mile-high skyscraper again. While family drifted from the ballroom to the terrace and beyond, she stood stoic, hoping to make her presence known long enough that she wouldn’t seem rude once disappearing. When all but a few stragglers remained, she went for her grandmother, parked in one corner, and offered to wheel her outdoors with the others.

“No,” the old woman said, as if she’d be content to watch the help clean.

“Well, are you ready for a nap then?” Deena said.

Grandma Emma shook her head, yet kept silent.

Deena wasn’t very good at this. In fact, she sucked at being a nurse. She hadn’t the patience for the careful ministrations it required, or the ability to anticipate every need.

“Let me take you outside, OK? You can sit under a tree and—”

“I’ll sit with you,” she said.

Deena exhaled. Things would be fine. If her grandmother wanted to spend beautiful days, maybe even her last days, ball and chained indoors, so be it.

Her last days. Air seeped from Deena’s balloon of annoyance with the realization, leaving only the quiet unease of reality. Her grandmother would be dead soon. For once, sketched dreams could wait.

Deena bounded around to Grandma Emma, crouched before her, and took both papery hands in hers. They would do whatever she wanted, however she wanted, as long as she could possibly stand it.

She opened her mouth to say so and was assaulted by a snore.

Of course.

With a sigh, she gathered up her grandmother, her drafts, and a copy of Frank Lloyd Wright’s A Testament, and wheeled her into the study.

Outside, the sounds of family traveled muted, but near euphoric. Splashing, squeals and then the slicing in of up tempo bass as the hired DJ went to work. In a crowd of thousands, Deena could make out the thrilled laughter of her son, Noah, always tinged with an air of mischief. A streak of self-appointed superiority set him apart, making him ringleader no matter the number of troublemakers. That was what she heard out there, the gratified cackle of a boy getting away with something, possibly even everything.

Deena stared at the steel sliver she’d committed to paper, a design representative of heights man had yet to reach. Bold, sleek, empowered, sexy, she’d coined it The Stiletto; though it was an endearment she’d never admit to.

The Stiletto was a technical challenge, comprised of riddles about load bearing, oscillation, and cost. Each one pulsed Deena’s temples and throbbed the bridge of her nose. If only—

“You got your whole life to draw,” Grandma Emma said. “Spend some time with your family.”

Deena looked up from her corner drafting table and tried to blink away wayward brown tendrils. When that didn’t work, she swatted the hair from her face.

“One lifetime to design is hardly no time,” she said.

Her grandmother’s eyes snapped to attention.

“You know, your granddaddy—”

“Don’t—”

Deena clamped down on her retort, twisting it till it buried belly deep. A measured exhale later, had her back at her center of calmness.

“He was a hard man,” Grandma Emma said. “Too hard on you, I suspect. But he loved you and he—”

Deena smashed her drafts so they sailed airborne. Then she stood and strode out the room.

She didn’t talk about him, wouldn’t talk about him, not to her grandmother of all people. The man her father called father. How much of her self-worth, her uncertainties, had been enslaved to what that man thought? What would it have taken for her grandmother to stand up to him even once? She pushed away the thought. Gone was the girl who feared truth in that man’s message; in her place was a woman who knew better.

Deena went to the billiard room in search of a moment to exhale. She opened the door and froze at the sight of her mother-in-law behind the bar.

Tak’s mother gulped Belvedere straight from the bottle. It ran rivers from the corners of her mouth, darkening her emerald blouse and pooling at her feet.

She dropped the bottle when their eyes finally met.

No. This couldn’t be. Not after so much. Not after forgiveness had been given.

She went wild at the thought. Tak, her husband, had done what Deena never could. He’d swallowed past the pain of his mother’s polluted love, never retching when it made him sick. Every day for more than a decade, his mother, this addict, walked out on her children anew. But she had cleaned up for him, gone sober on the day that her son nearly died.

“He loves you,” Deena said. “When your husband called you a worthless common drunk, Tak stood by you. He defended you, though God knows you never earned his loyalty. You can’t even figure out how to be conscious for him, let alone anything resembling a mother.”

Hatsumi Tanaka stared, gray eyes glistening and watery, nostrils flared, lips hammered shut. Then her gaze dropped to the Belvedere and Deena’s brain fractured. She snatched the bottle and hurled it at her mother-in-law’s head.

Tak’s mother ducked. A thousand shards and sprayed liquor burst against the wall like fireworks. Deena grabbed another bottle and another from the bar, hurling top shelf liquor, glass chunks, anything, at that same stretch of wall.

This woman didn’t deserve Tak. She didn’t deserve a son who could forgive neglect, indifference, and isolation, or a son who would protect a mother who had never protected him. She was a wound, a heartache, a nothing. Deena screamed it with all the fury suffocating pain could muster.

Chapter Fourteen

A stumble step away from Tak’s mother and away from the reek of liquor, had her wading through molasses, stomach lurching, vision convoluted as collapsed into the wrong someone.

“Deena?” Mike said. “Deena, what’s happened?”

She heard voices, growing closer too soon. Knowing what she looked like, what she smelled like, and the mess she’d left behind—

“Mike, the door. Don’t let them see.”

He scurried to the single exit, hit the lock, and returned quick, hands at her elbows, holding her up.

“Jesus, Deena. You’re bleeding. What’s happened?”

She looked down at her hands. Blood painted one, a shard embedded in the other.

The door behind Mike rattled and he shot it a worried look. His gaze swept left, then right, before he pulled Deena away, down a side hall as shouts and laughter closed in from another direction.

“Upstairs,” Mike decided, and up and away they went.

Mike locked the bathroom door and led Deena to take a seat on the toilet. After testing the latch, he opened first the medicine cabinet, then the cabinets underneath, in search of a first aid kit. He came away with a telltale white box affixed with the Red Cross logo.

“What happened?” he said. “Who did this to you?”

His gaze drifted down to her hands, halting at the shard streaked in blood. After murmuring something about not knowing how he could miss that, he turned on the running water, rinsed her hands, and yanked the glass free in a single move. Armed with a compress dressing, he applied pressure to her sliver of a wound.

“You’re shaking,” he said, slight fingers wrapped round her wrist. Like Tak, he had the hands of a man meant to be an artist, slim long fingers suited for music, art, leisure.

“I’m angry,” Deena said. “So hurt and angry I can’t think.”

She was shaking, balling her toes, grinding her teeth, and wishing she could have another go at her mother-in-law. All she could think of was assault.

Her eyes met Mike’s. Narrowed and far more set back than her husband’s, they had the look of someone frozen in uncertainty. A curious look, Deena thought. For the first time, she felt no pressing need to look away.

She took in his features. The lines and shape of his face stood sharp as a rough sketch, and his eyes—she’d misjudged them—they were lighter and softer than expected. Not a midnight brown, but a soft walnut, ringed in a tinge of sienna. And the downward turn of his mouth. Was it a constant, as sure as this hue of his eyes, or was it because of her and the state he’d found her in?

Mike swallowed, cheeks red as if they’d been rubbed. He dropped his gaze, steadied, then looked up at her once again.

“I think,” he said and rummaged in the first aid kit for cotton swaths. “That when people upset us, really upset us, the person we’re most angry with is our self. For not seeing, being smarter, or anticipating some flaw or eventuality. We punish ourselves because it gives us a sense of control; it usurps someone else’s power. We go from ‘you did this to me,’ to ‘I let you do this to me,’ which is far more reassuring than the idea that things just happen to us and we can do nothing to stop them.”

Water on, Mike stuck both her palms in for a rinse. Together, they watched as crimson became pink and pink became clear.

“I see you with your family,” Mike said, earning a jerk of the arm from her. He shot her a look, meant to steady and scold, and she went back to stillness for the meantime.

“I see you with your family,” he repeated. “And I see that you and I are more alike than I ever anticipated.”

Deena’s underwater hand clenched into a fist. Finger by finger, Mike unraveled it.

“Growing up, I hated when Tak came to visit,” he said. “John would throw me off and run straight for him every time. His ‘best friend’ was what he called him, never mind that I was his brother. They had secret toys and special games and jokes I couldn’t understand. Everyone—and I mean everyone—has always treated him like the prodigal son come home. It’s Tak that makes me invisible on a good day and intolerable on a bad one.” Mike turned off the water and fed her an even stare. “Which one does that to you, Deena?”

“My mother,” was what she finally said.

Mike went to work dressing her wounds. If her revelation startled him, he hid it well.

Despite the volume of blood, Deena had only the one cut that required any serious attention, all others took only antiseptic.

“You never told me what happened,” Mike said when he rose from the work he’d done.

Deena looked down at her hands. He’d taken his time with them, tending each wound with gentle deliberateness. Oddly enough, she’d been reminded of her own mother and her childhood, reminded of the way she’d touch each hurt as if wanting it for herself instead. Deena opened her mouth without realizing it and launched into the discovery of Tak’s mother.

When she finished, Mike dropped onto the edge of the tub, heavy with the weight of speechlessness.

“I have this old memory,” he said, “old enough to make me wonder if it’s true. Snippets come as smoke sometimes, as screaming, shattered glass, and pain. In the dark, a baby cries—he cries enough to suffocate. I want to help him; I want to reach him, but I can’t, because my shoulder’s shattered.”

“It’s a dream,” Deena whispered. “A recurrent fear of some unknown thing.”

Mike yanked aside the collar of his shirt.

There, from shoulder to neck, was a thin white scar of careful design.

“I sustained a broken collarbone at some point in my life,” Mike said. “Clearly, I’ve undergone surgery. Though no one seems willing to tell me about it.”

He released his shirt and the simple tee went back to hiding old wounds.

“My aunt doesn’t drive,” Mike said. “She doesn’t even own a car. I asked her once, when I was small, if she wouldn’t like the independence that one would bring. She answered that some people lose independence for a reason.”

Deena had the sudden, irrepressible urge to clamp hands over her ears, to stave off the certainty of impending horror.

“The Internet is a wonderfully fascinating thing,” Mike said. “A search on Tak’s mother turned up a record—a very old record—for 3rd degree DUI felony with serious bodily harm.”

Her gaze dropped to the ghost wound on his shoulder. Air, she realized, was extremely hard to find.

“She hurt…you?”

It didn’t seem right to say aloud, didn’t seem even possible, yet somehow those words were the only words she could manage.

The bathroom door rattled off its hinge. Deena swallowed her leap of fear and glanced around wild for what she’d been meaning to do. Mike, one step ahead, hurriedly shoved first aid supplies back in their box.

“Who’s in here?” Tak demanded through the door.

She remembered her smell of alcohol and splashed water onto her face. Mike, who moved as harried as her, dampened a washcloth and dabbed at her face.

“There,” he said, breathlessly. “Like new.”

She could feel his heart, hammering away at his chest, and hers, just near it, tearing its way to her stomach.

When the door rattled again, Deena hurled it open.

Her husband sucked in all the air.

They stared at each other, man and wife, smoldering uncertainty between them. Should she try to explain? Should she wait for him? Could she even keep her thoughts together?

“The door,” Tak said. “It was locked.”

Lies bubbled up to the surface. Easy lies, simple lies that could hurt no one and nothing. So, her mouth moved. Oh, did her mouth move. But not a single sound came out.

“Excuse me,” Deena finally said. “I have to…I have to go.”

She squeezed past her husband and scurried away, only to pause at the top of the stairwell. She straightened her dress, hesitated, and thought, I probably shouldn’t have done that. Just a few steps behind her, Mike squeezed past Tak, head down and hurried to get away.