The Year Everything Changed (8 page)

Chapter Nine
Jessie

Jessie rose from the leather chair Lucy had had moved in from her office and went to the window. He stood there for a full minute before he touched the wall for balance. The need for a cane would come next, but not for a month or two, not until pain became stronger than pride.

Outside the window, Capitol Mall was quiet, even for a Saturday. No smartly dressed women walking with determined strides as they shouldered the responsibility of keeping the State’s business in order. No men with cell phones pressed to their ears so caught up in conversation they missed the pleasure of watching the women who passed them.

The capitol stood to his left, its green copper dome rising above a sea of verdant trees as old and stately as the building. Jessie had spent enough hours in the capital lobbying for one cause or another to know the governor and several legislators in the back-slapping, meet-and-greet way someone came to know people who moved in the social and business circles created by money and influence. But for the most part, if politics didn’t directly involve him or one of his companies, he stayed away.

He glanced at the walnut door behind him, soundproof by its sheer size, anxious to get started. If his daughters were anything like him, he was in for a rough ride. Expecting heavy doses of fireworks and hostility to be an integral part of their righteous indignation, it was the reason he’d decided to gather everyone on a Saturday, when they would have the office to themselves. He wanted them to vent. Hell, he was looking forward to it.

The waiting wore on him. He glanced at the door before he dug in his coat pocket and withdrew four dog-eared photographs. His hands shook as he fanned pictures already embedded in his mind’s eye—Elizabeth in the fifth grade, Rachel at nine, her hair in pigtails, freckles dotting her nose, Ginger at four, leaning back in a swing, her legs stretched out in front, a grin that stole his heart, Christina at three, her eyes dark and questioning.

Jessie slipped the photographs back into his pocket. It didn’t matter what any of them looked like now. They could be tall or short, fat or thin, could look like him or their mothers—or neither of them—and it wouldn’t make any difference. The only thing that mattered was finding a way to make them understand he hadn’t stayed away because he didn’t care. Too late he’d come to realize how important it was for them to know this. The regret had become its own cancer.

He went to the sideboard to get a glass of water before returning to his chair. He’d give Lucy five more minutes to put on the show her way, then he would take things into his own hands. The door opened before he’d settled into a comfortable position. Lucy moved to the side and mouthed that she would be right back.

Jessie stood to greet the three women who came into the room single file and on guard. He smiled and tried not to stare or show disappointment that there were only three. Elizabeth had rejected him again. Even in his death she could not reach back and find a glimmer of the love they’d once shared.

Overcome with emotion and momentarily speechless, Jessie motioned to the chairs gathered around the table. He waited until his daughters were seated before he joined them. Careless in the excitement of the moment, he sat down too hard and sent a searing pain shooting through his hip, a brutal reminder.

“I tried to imagine what you would look like as grown women, but I see now I didn’t do any of you justice.” He offered a smile. No one responded. “You’re nothing like I’d pictured.” His hand shaking, he started to reach for the photographs in his pocket but changed his mind. It was too soon.

“You’re wondering why I asked you here.” It was everything he could do to keep from staring at Christina as memories of her as a little girl caught him in the same compelling web he’d experienced watching her onstage in Tucson. So close now he could reach out and touch her, he could see that she was not the slightly altered version of her mother he’d believed. Instead, when she tilted her head and nervously touched the river of black and pink hair that flowed over her shoulder, he saw his sister, Rose.

“I want to try to explain something to you, and to apologize. I know it’s not enough, nothing could be enough after all this time, but I thought it might help you to know that I only left each of you because I thought it was the right thing to do.” This wasn’t what he’d planned to say. “It doesn’t make sense now, but at the time I believed I was doing the right thing. There were so-called experts who thought so, too.” He was trying to defend something that was indefensible. “They’ve changed their minds since then, of course,” he went on, digging the hole deeper. “For all the good it does any of us now.” Now he was rambling.

While Christina appeared wary at his stilted speech, the other two, Ginger and Rachel, looked at him with equal amounts of hostility and negative curiosity. Jessie had hoped for a connection, the kind he’d read in books and laughed at in movies, the kind where strangers latched on to each other because it just seemed right. But beyond an intriguing familiarity in Ginger’s eyes and a propensity toward freckles that Rachel had inherited from her mother, his daughters remained the strangers they were in reality.

“But then maybe you’re not here because I asked you to come,” Jessie added, giving them an opening. “Could be you’re here for reasons of your own.”

Again, no one responded. The air thickened with anticipation. Finally, taking charge, Rachel came forward in her chair, her hands splayed against the edge of the antique pine table, a gold Gucci watch exposed beneath an exquisitely tailored sleeve. Her voice was deceptively calm when she said, “I don’t know about the others, but curiosity brought me. I wanted to see what kind of man you are.”

“Go on,” Jessie prompted, admiring the way she was ready to take him on.

“Frankly, I’m disappointed. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this. You look so. . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know any other way to put it—you look
ordinary
. I can’t imagine what my mother saw in you. What
any
woman would see in you.”

Jessie smiled at her show of spirit. “Ordinary is a good way to put it. It’s how I’ve always thought of myself, too, Rachel. But you shouldn’t take that to mean you come from common stock. The Reeds and Boehms have produced long lines of extraordinary women. My mother—”

She stopped him. “What about the men? Are they extraordinary, too? Or are the women exceptional because they have to be when the men abandon them and their children? How many wives did your father have? Do I have half-uncles and -aunts scattered everywhere, or was infidelity your specialty?”

She’d gone too far. “I’ve been with a lot of women, but I’ve never been unfaithful to any of them.”

“Oh?” Rachel pointed to Ginger. “Then how do you explain her?”

Jessie’s eyes narrowed. There was something going on with Rachel that had nothing to do with him or her sisters. “Her name is Ginger,” he said. “Her mother and I were friends.”

“Friends? That’s supposed to make it all right that you were screwing around on my mother? That’s your idea of fidelity?”

He had never explained himself to anyone, and it was hard to do so now, no matter how much Rachel deserved an answer. “What makes it all right is that your mother had moved out weeks before I was with Barbara. When she left, she made it clear she wasn’t coming back.”

“Because of
Barbara
, I assume.”

“Not even close.”

“Then why did she leave?”

“That’s something you’ll have to ask her.”

“So let me get this straight,” Ginger interrupted. “You never loved the woman who gave birth to me. You were just ‘friends.’ I was an unfortunate accident, the consequence of some night out on the town? Were you drunk? Or did you just figure, what the hell, haven’t had sex in a while, might as well stick it to a friend.”

A flash of rage gripped Jessie. For an instant he was young and strong again, ready to do battle to protect the memory of the woman who had given herself to him and in doing so, saved his life. But with whom should he fight? Barbara’s daughter? The child she’d agonized over, the fetus she’d refused to abort? What sense did that make?

Did Ginger have a right to an explanation that superseded his right to privacy? He met her gaze, matching her outrage. “Barbara took the bullets out of the gun I was going to use to kill myself the night you were conceived. She stayed with me until I understood that dying wasn’t the answer.”

The statement was like a hand that touched Rachel’s shoulder and pushed her back in her seat. Anger turned to confusion. “You were going to kill yourself because my mother left you?”

Anna’s leaving had been the one bright spot in his life that fall, but that wasn’t what Rachel wanted or needed to hear. “Let’s just say it wasn’t one of my better years.”

He turned back to Ginger. “I would have known you anywhere. You’re the mirror image of your mother.”

She gave him an icy look. “My mother and I don’t look anything alike. But then,” she added pointedly, “I don’t look like my father either. My real father, that is. He has red hair and blue eyes.”

Jessie smiled. “I didn’t ask you here to try to insinuate myself into your life, Ginger. We both know nothing I do or say can change the way you feel about Delores and Jerome.”

“So why did you want to see me?”

“I wanted you to hear about the woman who gave birth to you from someone who knew her.” Such an easy lie because it was wrapped in truth, a truth he hadn’t realized until that very moment. And so much easier to say than his own plea for forgiveness.

“What possible difference could it make now?” Ginger asked.

“None, I suppose. It’s just something I feel I owe her. And it’s something you have a right to know.”

“Wait a minute.” Rachel held up her hand, the Gucci watch flashing in the sunlight coming through the window. “Are you saying you gave—” Rachel looked at Ginger. “I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

“Ginger,” Jessie supplied.

“That you and Ginger’s mother gave her up for adoption?” She shook her head in wonderment. “This just keeps getting better and better. Well, now we know why you brought
her
here. You want to apologize for screwing up her life so you can die with a clear conscience. But why me?”

Ginger turned on her. “What makes you think my life is screwed up?”

“Are you saying it isn’t?”

“If it is, it’s no more screwed up than yours.”

Rachel bristled. “My life is fine. As a matter of fact, it’s never been better.”

Ginger purposely studied Rachel. “What happened to your wedding ring? Whatever it was, it couldn’t have happened very long ago. There’s still a mark on your finger. Was it your idea? A case of like father like daughter?”

Rachel exposed herself in her fury. “You don’t know the first thing about—”

Christina’s eyes widened at the bruising exchange. She’d perched on the edge of her chair, giving no clear clue whether she was fascinated by the people around her or ready to flee from them.

Jessie sat back and folded his hands in his lap. He’d anticipated fireworks, not the Fourth of July, and certainly not directed at each other instead of him. God, he had missed so much with these women. How had he let himself become such a coward? The justifications he’d used seemed so insignificant in hindsight that they no longer offered so much as an emotional handhold.

“If what Ginger says is true, I’m sorry, Rachel,” Jessie offered. “I hope you can work things out—if that’s what you want.”

“What I want is none of your business.” She turned on Ginger. “Or yours either.” She reached for her purse. “I was an idiot to have come here.”

Ginger put her hand on Rachel’s arm. “I’m sorry. I was out of line.”

Rachel hesitated and then yielded. Several seconds passed in an electrically charged silence. “You had no idea you were adopted?”

“Not until I got the letter to come here.”

“Wow,” Christina said, speaking up for the first time. “That must have been a killer.”

Jessie looked at his youngest daughter. In the twenty-three years since Carmen had convinced him that his irregular appearances in Christina’s life were hurting, not helping her, child psychologists had made his calculated disappearance from her life an emotional crime. There was no way now that he could make her understand or believe that he’d abandoned her out of love.

“And you, Christina? What did you come here to find out? What questions do you have for me?” The pain in his hip shot to his side, settling under his ribs and burrowing in. This was something new. And frightening in its force. Yesterday he wouldn’t have cared. Today, cruelly, time had become important again.

Christina hesitated, frowned, started to speak, and then stopped. Finally, in a rush, she said, “I thought you were dead. My mother
told
me you were dead. Why would you let her do that?”

“I was sixty-two years old, and in the middle of an ugly lawsuit that I eventually lost that bankrupted me again. When your mother moved back to Mexico I couldn’t have bribed or blackmailed a judge into giving me custody. Then she married Enrique, and he wanted to adopt you.”

“He didn’t, you know. He just made me take his name. My mother decided it would be better not to muddy my U.S. citizenship.” Christina stared at him, blinking to keep from crying. “I loved you. How could you turn your back on me?”

Christina pulled her sweater cuffs over her hands and wiped her eyes. When she’d finished, she tucked her hands under her legs and from somewhere found a dazzling smile. Like a sleight of hand in a magic show, the vulnerable child disappeared. In her place sat a composed, reserved woman. “So, Dad, just how many kids
do
you have?”

It took a second for Jessie to follow Christina through the abrupt transition. “You have three sisters.” He cleared his throat. “You had a brother. Frank. He was killed in the war before the three of you were born.”

It was time to show them the pictures. He dug them out of his pocket and put them on his lap.

“Which war?” Christina asked.

Was it that she was so young or that he was so old? “Vietnam,” he said simply.