The Family You Choose (8 page)

Sometimes, when Richard forgot to be angry
with Michael, when he forgot that he had to take care of Jessie,
when he forgot about how much Miranda couldn’t stand him, Michael
thought that Richard did, truly, want him around. Maybe it was just
the memory of having done so once, but sometimes that was enough
for Michael to feel like a real person with a real family and not
the boy who lived in Alex Sheldon’s house.

Remembering anything about Alex was usually
enough to end any happiness for Michael. When his dad ran away and
hid, he hid with Alex. Alex had been his dad’s refuge. Alex, Alex,
Alex. And dad would come back even more drunk than before. And his
mother would look like she wanted to cry.

But that wasn’t why he hated Alex. It was
that very last memory of his father, and one of the last of his
mother. It was burned on him. Only one of the adults had noticed
what happened, and he knew it too. But it didn’t matter, because
his parents were gone forever. And it was Michael’s punishment to
bear, Michael who hadn’t done anything except be a child, that he
should be with the only other person who survived the ordeal. But
there were other punishments that he could dole out, and soon
enough he would.

If only...well, he really needed to put that
behind him.

Michael realized that he’d walked down to the
basement. When Richard’s parents had lived here—although it seemed
like Lucy had spent an awful lot of time in her apartment even
then—the two boys had played hide and go seek down in the basement.
Inevitably, the game had degenerated into a search for the most
obscure items. One day they’d happened upon a secret room. With a
little bit of lock-picking—Richard had been surprisingly
resourceful even then—the boys finally opened the room. They’d
found a bunch of old clothes their grandfather had left there. They
played dress up, looking in the old, gilded mirror, then flopping
down onto some of the old furniture laughing until they cried. It
had been their secret place.

Michael found the room again, but to his
surprise, it was locked. Now he was curious. It hadn’t been locked
in years. He went upstairs and grabbed the tools from Richard’s
workroom. In fifteen minutes he had the lock picked open. His plane
would be leaving soon, but he didn’t care.

He opened the door, its creaking on its rusty
hinges. All that was there now was the couch and the mirror.
Michael almost left until he saw a clear piece of plastic sticking
out behind the mirror. It was so hard to see in the dim light that
he wouldn’t even seen it if the light hadn’t caught it just so as
he turned.

He walked behind the mirror and carefully
slid the box on the floor. He knelt down and opened it, then gasped
when he realized what he was looking at. When had Richard developed
that habit?

He picked up the bottles. Ritalin. Roofies.
Anti-depressants. Really—all of them? There were more drug names,
but none that he recognized. Then he looked at the names of the
patients on the bottles. None were for Richard. And all of them
were from different pharmacies. What the Hell was this?

Jammed under a bunch of vials was a little
book. He picked it up. It was filled with names and numbers in
different handwriting. Sometimes little notes about who liked what.
Michael closed the book, baffled. These didn’t belong to a user.
They belonged to a dealer. But...Richard wasn’t a dealer, no matter
what was in front of him. Who did these belong to?

Michael called a cab and made one stop before
he got on his plane. For possibly the first time in his life, he
did a good deed for someone.

Or, at least, tried.

~~~

He got off the plane at Logan and went to
collect his suitcase. It wasn’t October, but he’d been away long
enough.

Miranda nearly jumped out of her seat at
breakfast when Alex told her that Michael was back. "You promised!"
Keith walked in with a pot of tea, but turned right back
around.

"I didn’t know until last night."

"So why didn’t you tell me then?"

"You didn’t get in until after eleven."

"So what? You still should have told me so I
could warn my friends."

Alex crashed his fork onto his plate and
forced himself to look away. "I told you, they don’t have anything
to worry about."

"Until the next time…!" She looked away too,
afraid of what else she might say. "Alright, then," she said at
last. "So why did the SOB come back already?"

"I don’t know. He didn’t call me. The
management company called yesterday afternoon and told me that
someone was at the house who claimed to be the owner. I didn’t
know. For God’s sake, I even told him that it wasn’t going to be
ready until October."

"Was that a lie?"

"It was my understanding that with the
exception of running water, it is otherwise uninhabitable."

Miranda smirked involuntarily, thinking about
Michael using a sleeping bag. But no, that wouldn’t last more than
ten minutes. He’d go to a hotel, or-

"I will leave if he comes back here, and if
he goes to Richard’s, you can buy me and Jessie an apartment!"

"Do you think Lucy will let me do that?"

"Please, we both know how persuasive you can
be."

Alex ignored that comment. "He won’t come
back here, I promise."

"And Richard? I know he’s graduated from
college, but don’t you think he’s due a little bit of a break?"

"He isn’t going to bother anyone."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I made a few phone calls today;
he’ll have electricity, cable, gas and wireless by six o’clock
tonight, and the cleaning service and furniture delivery will be in
at ten tomorrow morning."

"God bless a well-placed bribe."

~~~

Emily called Miranda the next day while she
and Mitch were out getting groceries. "Is everything okay? You
sound a little...preoccupied."

Miranda sighed with relief when she heard
Emily giggle at something Mitch said. "It’s nothing. Just some
stuff to arrange for classes. Making sure I get all of my
requirements in, yada yada."

Emily giggled again. "Honey, stop it! Sorry.
Wait, what? Didn’t you say you weren’t taking classes in the summer
quarter?"

"Yeah, I’m not, but I still have to..." Emily
practically shrieked at Mitch to stop whatever he was doing, and
Miranda seized upon the opportunity. "Look, actually, I don’t think
I’m going to be able to meet you tonight after all. Alex had a few
things he wanted me to do—some party he’s planning next week."

"Gee, that’s too bad," Mitch said, obviously
close enough to Emily and her phone to overhear. Miranda laughed
herself.

"Yes, it is," Emily said with some annoyance.
"Zainab backed out too. What, no one wants to be around the
newlyweds?"

"Well, since you’re always in each other’s
laps, I guess no one thought you’d mind."

"I do mind, for the record, and you’re going
to have to make it up to me later this week."

Miranda smiled even as a tear streaked down
her cheek. "Anytime, just not tonight. Look, honey, can I call you
back later?"

"Bye!" Mitch said before the phone hung
up.

Miranda tapped her fingers on the arm of her
chair. Why did Zainab back out?

Thirty seconds later she had Zainab on the
phone. "I was wondering when you were going to call."

Miranda threw her head back. "Argh! Excuse me
for not wanting to be the bearer of bad news—again. But I guess you
know a little bit about that, since you didn’t tell Emily
either."

Zainab clicked her tongue. "And Richard
hasn’t told Jessie. She found a date tonight, thank God, because I
don’t know how he was going to tap dance around this."

"Oh please tell me that means that you’re
going to Michael’s house tonight?"

"Wouldn’t miss it, even if Richard hadn’t
practically begged me."

"Wait, he wants you to come to dinner with
us?"

"Wants is too strong a word. I thinks needs
is a better one."

Miranda nodded to herself. She wished she had
some sane moral support herself, and right now Alex didn’t count.
"Just so you know I’ll be happy to break his fingers if he tries to
touch you."

"Don’t worry. He’s not going to surprise
me."

~~~

Miranda and Zainab were on the bottom stairs
of Michael’s house. Richard and Alex were about ten feet away from
them, speaking very softly.

"Richard, I swear, I didn’t know until
yesterday."

"And you couldn’t call?"

"I honestly didn’t think it was going to be
an issue so quickly."

"It never ceases to amaze me how much you
underestimate him."

"The same might be said for you."

"I would have called."

Zainab and Miranda walked up to them. "Sorry
to break this up," Zainab said, putting her arm through Richard’s.
"But do you think we should go in now?"

Richard looked up at the house and sighed.
"No time like the present."

Michael opened the door and smiled. Miranda
thought it was strange that he actually seemed happy to see them,
but that couldn’t be the case.
No
, she thought as she took
off her coat,
now we just wait for the other shoe to
drop.

"Wow, Michael," Zainab said as she looked
around. "You put all of this together in two days? It looks like a
real home."

"Because that’s what it’s always been,"
Michael said, but not to Zainab. "My real home."

"So," Richard said slowly, "where did you
order in from?"

"Order in?" Michael said with a smile. "I do
know how to cook, you know."

Miranda shook her head. "No, I actually had
no idea you knew how to cook."

"Life is just full of surprises, isn’t it?"
Michael smiled at her, and there was that odd look again.

Alex glared at Michael. "Miranda, I think you
should give Zainab a tour of the house now, don’t you?"

"But it isn’t..." She stopped. It didn’t
matter that it wasn’t her house. "Sure, Z, let’s see what we can
find. Although I’m sorry to say, my tour probably won’t be as much
fun as Richard’s." Zainab knocked Miranda on the shoulder as they
left the great room.

They found a small bedroom. Miranda looked
around. Every other room in the house had been updated and dusted,
but this room was almost exactly as it must have been some sixteen
or seventeen years ago. This must have been Michael’s room. His
childhood bed was neatly made with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
bedspread, and there were quite a few baseball bats, mitts and
balls piled in his closet. Despite herself, Miranda smiled to think
of him as a little boy who liked to play catch, since she’d never
seen him show any interest at Alex’s house.

"Are these Michael’s parents?" Zainab asked,
pointing to some photographs hanging on the wall. They weren’t
posed family photos, but pictures of a smiling little boy with his
parents. Michael was dark-haired then as now, but here he was
skinny, wiry and smiling, as if someone had just told him a joke.
His familiar, handsome, red-haired father with sparkling blue eyes
was smiling too and mussing his son’s hair. His dark-haired mother
was smiling as well, but her smile looked more drawn and for the
camera than for her husband and son.

There were others, such as one of Michael and
his father in the Public Gardens and another of him with his
mother, perhaps when he was four years old, walking to school. His
mother looked happier there, smiling at her son. Miranda looked at
her in both pictures.
What had happened in the ensuing years?
What was she like right before she died?
And then she had a
sadder thought,
what might Michael have been if she hadn’t
died?
That thought had quietly haunted Miranda for years, but
for the most part it hadn’t mattered for the face of what Michael
had become. But here, in this room, was the ghost of the man
Michael could have been. Miranda smiled as she looked at the
handsome red-haired man, whose face she had seen many times in
pictures in Alex’s study. And now he seemed so much more familiar.
She stifled a tear as she realized why. He had the same face as his
son.

Michael burst in. "Alright girls, enough
rifling through my things, if you don’t mind. Richard and Alex are
done with the veiled threats, so I think we can eat now." Miranda
and Zainab rolled their eyes behind Michael’s back as they all
walked out, and Miranda was relieved that Michael had stayed true
to form.

Michael was not a bad cook, but generally it
was difficult to ruin such expensive cuts of beef if you had some
working knowledge of a kitchen. Zainab tried to force some small
talk with Alex and Michael, then gave up and started chatting up
Miranda about summer co-ops and fall classes. But no matter how
much the two of them talked, the tension between the men was
inescapable.

By the time Michael brought out the chocolate
mousse, Miranda and Zainab had given up and simply traded looks,
then looked at the men eating silently. Suddenly Miranda burst out
laughing, and everyone looked at her. She tried to stifle it, but
she couldn’t help it. She apologized and excused herself into the
kitchen. Zainab was right behind her.

"What’s so funny?"

"I just couldn’t stop thinking about Mitch
all of a sudden."

"Maybe you shouldn’t have worked so hard to
put him together with Emily then since he’s off the market
now."

"Oh please. Not that way. I was just thinking
about how angry he was with me," she wiped tears from her eyes, but
still laughed. "I don’t think he could even look at me, much less
talk to me. And now no one’s talking tonight. Do you think Mitch
would get a kick out of that?"

Miranda laughed and cried a little bit more.
Zainab put her arm around her waist. "Hey, Mitch was a jerk, okay?
Emily told me they got into a little fight right after they
left."