Gold Hill (13 page)

“
No,” she began to sob.
“No. No. No.”

He pulled her to him and
she collapsed.

Chapter One Hundred and
Ninety-Five

Fathers

Thursday morning — 8:15
A.M.

“
We’re prisoners in our
own house!” Mike’s voice echoed through the Castle from the main
living room. Valerie gave him a wry look from her spot on the
couch. Jackie was asleep in her car seat next to Valerie. “This is
ridiculous!”

“
This isn’t new,” Valerie
said.

“
I can see if they want to
take pictures of me or you or the dog or whatever, but she’s not
even a day old!” Mike’s face was marked with desperation. “She
needs to see the doctor and we can’t even leave the
house.”

“
We can go by the
tunnels,” Valerie said. “You and Jake created the access for this
exact problem.”

“
I’m not taking my baby
into those tunnels!” Mike looked horrified.
“They’re . . . dusty . . . and
spirit . . .
and . . . ”

“
Spirity?” Valerie
smiled.

“
Are we ready to go?”
Delphie asked, as she came into the room. “Are you coming
Mike?”

“
He’s thinking of waging
war against the paparazzi,” Valerie said.

Delphie went to the front
window and peeked out the curtain. A wave of shutter clicks went
through the throng pressed against the fence outside.

“
They do seem a little
wild today,” Delphie smiled at Mike and received his worried scowl
in return. She looked at Valerie. “What’s wrong with
Mike?”

“
He’s feeling protective,”
Valerie smiled.

Delphie laughed.

“
Don’t laugh at me,” Mike
put his hand over his heart. “I
feel . . . ”

“
Crazy,” a man’s voice
came from the kitchen.

Agitated and on alert for
predators, Mike whipped around toward the voice.

“
I felt that way when you
were born,” Perses, Mike’s father, smiled.

“
How . . . ?” Mike asked.

“
How did I get here?”
Perses smiled. He turned his palms up as if to say, “How do I get
anywhere?”

Delphie hugged him in
greeting.

“
But . . . ” Mike started.

“
I think your first child
is impossibly hard,” Perses smiled. “Or I should say, it was harder
with your sister, Megan. I think of my life in terms of pre-Meg and
post-Meg. Your mother too. I’m sure it will be the same for
you.”

Unable to come up with
words, Mike stared at his father.

“
Come on, we’ll do it
together,” Perses put his arm around Mike’s shoulder. He looked at
Valerie, “Are we ready?”

“
Ready,” Valerie said. She
stood from the couch and picked up the car seat.

“
But the
tunnels . . . ” Mike said.

“
We’ll do it together,”
Perses said. “Take the baby from your Valerie.”

Perses gave Mike a little
shove on the shoulder. Mike took the car seat from Valerie. Perses
herded them out of the living room.

“
I wouldn’t allow your
mother to drive in a car with you when you were a baby,” Perses
laughed. “Too dangerous.”

They made it to the tunnel
door and Delphie punched in her code. She held the door for
everyone and followed them into the tunnels.

“
Oh, your mother was mad,”
Perses laughed. He imitated her accent, “You t’ink you can control
every leettle t’ing!”

“’
e steell does,” Mike’s
mother, Anjelika, mocked Perses from the bottom of the stairs. She
hugged Mike and said hello to Jackie. She hugged Valerie and asked,
“How are you feeling?”

“
A little tired, but
good,” Valerie said. “She’s a really good baby.”

They began walking along
the tunnels.

“
Do you mind if we join
you?” Anjelika smiled.

“
I don’t know how you’ll
fit in the car,” Valerie said.

“
Perses brought one of
those big government cars,” Anjelika said. “But we don’t have to
go. I just thought . . . ”

She nodded her head to
where Mike and Perses were walking ahead of them. Perses had his
arm around Mike and the men were talking.

“
Mike’s been crazy since
Jackie was born,” Valerie said in a low voice.

“
I’m not surprised,”
Anjelika said. “His father went completely nuts when the kids were
born.”

“
But why?” Valerie
said.

“
Because he knows what’s
out in the world,” Delphie said, as if it was obvious.

“
I think it’s harder for
men like my husband and my son,” Anjelika smiled. “They’ve seen the
worst the world has to offer.”

“
Was Dad like this?”
Valerie asked.

“
Was? He’s waiting for us
at the garage,” Delphie laughed. “Wanted to make sure the doctor
didn’t screw anything up.”

Anjelika
laughed.

“
You should have seen him
when you were born,” Delphie chuckled. “It was mayhem.”

“
Crazy men,” Valerie
said.

“
What would you do if you
felt someone was going to hurt Jackie?” Anjelika asked.

“
No one’s going to hurt
Jackie,” Valerie growled.

“
That’s the difference,”
Delphie said. “We women know what we’re going to do.”

“
Yes,” Anjelika laughed.
“This is one time that we know we’re powerful and men feel
powerless.”

Valerie and Delphie
laughed.

“
There you are!” Sam said
from the stairwell to the garage. “We’re going to be
late.”

The women
laughed.

~~~~~~~~

Thursday afternoon — 1:15
p.m.

“
I don’t know why we’re
here,” Jeraine said. “Miss T did some sleep walking last night and
now she won’t have anything to do with me.”

He walked into their
couples therapist’s office and dropped down on the couch. The woman
smiled at Tanesha and closed the door after them.

“
Thank you for making time
for us,” Tanesha smiled and sat down on the opposite end of the
couch.

“
What’s going on?” Their
therapist looked at Jeraine and then at Tanesha. “The last time we
met, you were doing really well.”

“
We were last night. We
were yesterday. We were doing well the day before that and the one
before that and . . . ” Jeraine made a
frustrated gesture. “Now she won’t talk to me. Just says we need to
come here. So here we are.”

“
What happened?” the
therapist asked.

“
She did some sleep
walking and . . . ” Anxious, Jeraine responded
quickly.

“
Tanesha?” their therapist
asked.

“
I can’t do this,” Tanesha
said.

“
What?!” Jeraine jumped
out of his seat.

“
Jeraine, please.” The
therapist indicated that he should sit down. “What is it that you
can’t do, Tanesha?”

“
I can’t do this
relationship,” Tanesha said. “I feel like I’m sitting around
waiting for him to kill himself. Why pretend to build a life with
someone when he’s just going to betray me, destroy our life and
himself? Again.”

“
How the
hell . . . ” Jeraine started.

“
Jeraine,” The therapist’s
stern manner and powerful presence were reasons she’d been so
helpful for them. “Remember what we do here?”

“
We listen until the
person’s done talking,” Jeraine mumbled. “But
she . . . ?”

The therapist gave him a
hard look and he shrugged.

“
Please Tanesha,” the
therapist said. “We’re trying to understand what you’re
saying.”

“
Yeah,” Jeraine said.
“Trying to understand your insanity.”

“
It’s not like it hasn’t
happened before,” Tanesha crossed her arms and gave him an angry
look. “How many times have I seen you destroy yourself? Me? Our
life? A million.”

“
I guess what’s confusing,
Tanesha, is that all of this was true when we started working
together,” the therapist said. “You were living with your
grandmother and seeing that doctor. Jeraine was just out of rehab
and living in New York. What did you say then?”

“
I said I would wait to
see where it would go but I didn’t promise anything,” Tanesha said.
“Now I know where it’s going to go. He’s going to kill himself and
leave me with all the responsibility for our screwed up life. One
way or another, these addicted folks end up dead and everyone else
has to pick up the pieces.”

The therapist gave Tanesha
a long probing look.

“
I feel like I’m repeating
myself, but I really want to understand,” the therapist
said.

“
See! She doesn’t make any
sense,” Jeraine said.

The therapist gave him a
hard look.

“
Fine,” he said. “I’ll
shut up.”

“
This is what I know,” the
therapist said. “I get weekly reports on Jeraine’s progress. His
therapist called me last night to tell me about the brain scans. It
sounds like the tests confirm what you’ve suspected all along,
Tanesha. He has some brain damage. Is the confirmation of the brain
damage what happened?”

“
I don’t have any money
anymore,” Jeraine said.

“
But we knew that,” the
therapist said. “Or suspected it. Tanesha, you were talking about
it the last time you were here alone.”

“
You knew about the
money?” Jeraine shook his head at her. She nodded. “Why didn’t you
tell me?”

“
I did,” Tanesha said.
“Remember when we sent the files to Schmidty? What did I
say?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
I said, ‘I’m glad we’re
getting this looked at but don’t be disappointed if you have less
than you think,’” Tanesha said.

“
I have a lot less than I
thought,” Jeraine said.

“
So if it’s not the money,
and it’s not the brain scans, what is it?” the therapist asked.
“What is causing this sudden change of heart?”

“
I just woke up to
reality,” Tanesha shrugged.

“
What reality?” Jeraine
gawked at Tanesha. “What’s different?”

“
Let me,” the therapist
smiled at Jeraine. He shook his head and looked out the window.
“What woke you up to reality?”

Tanesha opened her mouth
and then closed it. She glanced at Jeraine and then at the
therapist.

“
Why don’t you tell us
about the sleep walking?” the therapist asked. “If this is a
reality, and you know what’s going to happen, what do you have to
lose?”

Tanesha shot the therapist
an icy glare.

“
I mean, you’re leaving,
right?” the therapist asked. “That’s what I hear. Rather than wait
for him to kill himself, you’re leaving, right?”

“
That’s exactly right,”
Tanesha nodded.

“
So what do you care?” the
therapist asked. “Tell us your story and you can leave.”

As she and the therapist
stared at each other, Tanesha felt Jeraine look at the therapist
and then at her.

“
Fine,” Tanesha
said.

“
Have you ever sleep
walked before?” the therapist asked.

“
When I was a child,”
Tanesha said.

“
She did it our first
whole night together,” Jeraine said.

“
That’s the last time I
sleep walked,” Tanesha said.

“
So you were seventeen?”
the therapist said.

“
Sixteen,” Tanesha said.
“Remember, I was emancipated at fifteen so I could get those
scholarships. That was the night after we got
married . . . a week before he left. His parents
were at the Aspen Jazz festival.”

“
Okay,” the therapist
said. “So it’s been a while.”

“
A little more than ten
years,” Tanesha said.

“
What triggers the sleep
walking?” the therapist asked.

“
I don’t know,” Tanesha
said. “Probably him.”

“
Okay,” the therapist
said. “What do you remember about last night?”

“
I woke up and Jer wasn’t
in bed,” Tanesha said. “I went looking for him and found him on the
balcony. He said a bunch of foul things about how everything was my
fault and jumped off. He said he was going to the day
before . . . and then he did.”

“
He jumped off the
building,” the therapist’s eyebrows shot up.

“
Fell all twenty floors,”
Tanesha said. She glanced at Jeraine. He was staring at her like
he’d seen a ghost.

“
Did you look? Was it
him?”

“
It was definitely him,”
Tanesha said. “His head was all caved in, blood and brains
everywhere, a woman was screaming, and . . .
“

“
How horrible.”