Tommy Gabrini 4: Dapper Tom Begin Again (9 page)

“Oh
please!” Rodney said.
 
“Who do you think
you’re talking to?
 
I’m a banker and your
mother is an attorney.
 
We aren’t
fools!
 
We know good and well that if you
wanted to be here you would have turned that cell phone off and got here,
events be damned!
 
You didn’t come
because you didn’t want to come, so stop pretending otherwise!”

 
“I don’t pretend.”

“Like
hell you don’t!” Rodney shot back.
 
“Your
ass is the great pretender and you’re pretending you don’t know it!”

“You
know what,” Chelsey said, as she turned toward the stairs.
 
“I’m getting out of here.
 
I’m not standing here taking this shit.”

But
as she turned to leave, Rodney flung her back around.
 
Tommy immediately made steps toward the
threesome when Rodney handled Chelse so roughly.
 
Which pleased Liz, but it surprised Sal and
Gemma.
 
Dapper Tom was not the kind of
man who would interfere in a family dispute.
 
He would often let adults battle it out for themselves.
 
But he was about to step to Chelsey’s
defense, and it stunned both of them.
 
But not nearly as much as it stunned Tommy.

But
Cassie intervened before he had to.
 
“Just stop it, Roddy!” she said firmly, pulling him away from
Chelse.
 
“Stop it right now!
 
She came to see us.
 
She came thousands of miles to see us.
 
We should be grateful for at least that.”

“Grateful?”
Rodney asked.
 
“Grateful for what?
 
That she made some grand appearance?
 
That she finally showed up?
 
She doesn’t give a damn about us!
 
You know it and I know it too!
 
She’s a cold, calculating, selfish bitch, and
I can’t stand the sight of her!
 
I wish
she was dead and that’s the honest truth!”

It
felt like a sucker punch to every soul in that room.
 
Especially to Tommy.
 
He remembered when Rodney Jones had grave
misgivings about Gemma’s decision to marry Sal, even after Sal had saved
Rodney’s life, but he thought that was just an overly concerned dad being
dad.
 
But he’d never seen this side of
Rodney before.
 
Not ever.
 

He
looked at Chelsey.
 
While Gemma was
saying
Dad don’t
, and Sal was saying
you don’t mean that, Mr. J
, and while
Cassie was admonishing her husband as well, Chelsey wasn’t saying a word.
 
She was the recipient of Rodney’s venom, but
she didn’t say a word.
 
She stood there
staring at her father as if she was seeing him, not in any new light, but in
the same light magnified.

Liz
moved closer to her friend, and placed an arm around her.
 

But
if anybody in that room thought Rodney was sorry for his harsh, venomous words,
they were grossly mistaken.
 
He didn’t
double back.
 
He doubled down.
 
“This is our thirty-fifth wedding
anniversary, Cass,” he said to his wife, as if she was the only one who
deserved an explanation.
 
“Our
thirty-fifth anniversary.
 
One of the
most cherished days of our lives.
 
And
she pick this day to show her face again?
 
This special day?
 
Why is that,
Cass?
 
If she isn’t the bitch we know she
is, why is that?”

And
then he ran his hand across his dark head, as if he knew the answer as surely
as he knew his name, and it was an unpleasant knowledge.
 
And then he headed out of the living room,
and then out of the house altogether.

But
if that wasn’t enough drama in a day, Cassie turned, not to run after her
husband, but to scold her daughter.
 
“Go
to him, Chelse,” she urged with an almost desperation in her voice.
 
“Go apologize to that man.”

“Apologize?”
Liz asked suddenly, astounded by Cass.

“Stay
out of this, Liz,” Gemma said.

“I
will not stay out of it!” Liz shot back.
 
“Let’s call a thing a thing here.
 
Your father has treated you like a princess and Chelse like shit her
entire life, and every one of us have sat back and allowed it.
 
Chelse allowed it too, but that doesn’t make
it right.
 
You’re his shining light,
while Chelse is his disgrace.
 
Let’s call
a thing a thing here!”

But
Gemma wasn’t ready to throw her father under anybody’s bus.
 
“Careful, Liz,” she said.
 
“I hear what you’re saying, but that’s my
father you’re talking about.”

“But
what about your sister, Gem?” Liz asked her.
 
“She doesn’t matter?
 
Only he
does?”

“They
both matter and you know it.”

Then
Sal pulled Gemma closer, as if to remind her that this was not her fight.
 
Her father could stand up for himself.
 
Her sister needed to do the same.

Cassie,
however, was all-in with Rodney.
 
“Apologize to him,” she said to Chelsey again.
 
“For once in your life stop being so stubborn
and go talk to that man.
 
Comfort
him!
 
Behave the way a daughter
should.
 
None of this is his fault!”

Chelsey
frowned.
 
“But it’s my fault?” she asked
with incredulity in her voice.

“It’s
not his fault,” was all Cassie would commit to.
 

Tommy’s
heart grew faint.
 
Because he knew the
signs.
 
He’d seen it all his life.
 
The lines had been drawn, probably years ago,
between her daughter and her husband.
 
Somebody had to win, somebody had to lose.
 
Her daughter didn’t win.

“Go
talk to him,” Cassie said again.
 
“Go
tell him that he’s right and you’re wrong.
 
Beg his forgiveness.
 
Get on your
knees and beg that man if you have to!”

Chelse
smiled that smile of astonishment and looked at Liz.
 
“Can you believe this?” she asked her.
 
“She says I should beg him.
 
I should go to him!”

“You
should go all right,” Liz suggested.
 
“You should go up those stairs, get your shit, and get the hell out of
here!
 
That’s what you should do.
 
That’s what I would do.”
 

Sal
stepped up too.
 
“You’re out of line,
lady,” he said.

“I don’t
think I’m out of line at all,” Liz shot back.

“You
need to shut it,” Sal said.

Liz
placed her hand on her hip.
 
“Make me,”
she said.

“It’s
all right,” Chelsey said. “She didn’t say anything I wasn’t going to say
myself.”
 
Then Chelsey began heading up
the stairs.
 
“I’m getting out of here.”

Liz
followed her up the stairs.
 
Tommy was
pleased with Liz for standing up for her friend, and Chelsey for standing up
for herself.
  
That’s right
, he found himself saying to himself as they walked up
those stairs.
 
Don’t let anybody diminish your humanity
!

Gemma
broke away from Sal and followed Chelsey and Liz up those stairs, which pleased
Tommy too.
 
A man who would call his
daughter the names that man called Chelse, didn’t deserve her presence.
 
Gemma had to know that.
 
He was proud of her.

Then
he looked at Cassie.
 
He knew she was
only fighting for her husband’s dignity, and she might have even agreed with a
lot of what he said.
  
But she loved her
daughter too.
 
Not nearly as much as she
loved Rodney apparently, but he could see the love.

He
looked at Sal, who was standing there as if he was as lost as Cassie.
 
He saw the irony too.
  
Only people like he and Tommy had family
drama like this.
 
Rodney and Cassie
didn’t deal in this kind of dirt.
 
They
were the salt-of-the-earth as far as Tommy and Sal were concerned.
 
What was happening here?
 
It flipped the script on them and neither one
of them liked it.
 
Because they both
knew, from vast experience, that there was true trouble in paradise when even
salt could lose its’ flavor.

“You
okay, Ma?” Sal asked his mother-in-law.
 
Sal wasn’t the touchy-feely type, and didn’t like to be put in this
position.
 
Tommy knew it too.
 
He went over to Cassie, and placed his arm
around her.

“I’m
okay,” Cassie said with an attempt at a smile.
 
“Roddy and Chelse, they just don’t mix.
 
They’re both stubborn and set in their own ways and half the time I
can’t get a word in edgewise.
 
It can be
very unsettling.”

“Certainly,”
Tommy said.
 
“But,” he added softly, as
if he was a man who truly knew how to comfort a woman, “it’s been my experience
that you have to let adults be adults.
 
You have to let them make, and also live by, their own decisions.”

Cassie
looked up at him.
 
He always seemed like
such an easygoing, likeable man to her.
 
So
much so that she used to secretly wish Gemma had chosen him instead of
Sal.
 
Not that she didn’t find Sal
likeable.
 
She did.
 
She loved her son-in-law!
 
But where Sal was still rough around the
edges, Tommy was already smooth.

But
then Chelsey and Liz came roaring back down the stairs, only this time Chelse
had her suitcase with her.
 
Gem was far
behind
 
them.

Cassie
moved away from Tommy toward her charging daughter.
 
That smile that Tommy had suspected all along
was plastered on Chelsey’s face to get her through this day, was gone.
 
She was dead serious now.
 
Sal walked toward the stairs too when she saw
Gemma, who was hurrying down behind her sister, looking anguished too.

“You
can’t just leave, Chelse,” Gemma was insisting.

“Watch
me,” Chelsey said defiantly.
 
She
inadvertently brushed against Tommy as she hugged Cassie’s neck, and kissed her
on the cheek.
 
“I’ll call you, Ma,” she
said.

“But
what plane are you going to catch?” Gemma asked.
 
“You weren’t leaving tonight.”

“I’ll
stay in a hotel until tomorrow,” Chelsey said firmly.
 
“I’ve got to get out of here .”
 
Then she actually looked at Gemma.
 
She saw the distress in her sister’s eyes.
 
She went over to her.
 
“I know you mean well, Gem, I know you
do.
 
But I made a mistake coming
here.
 
I shouldn’t have come.
 
I should have stayed away.
 
But I thought . . .” Then she shook her head
as if she was dismissing such a thought.
 
“I shouldn’t have come.”

“It
was just all such a surprise, dear,” Cassie said.
 
“Your father wasn’t expecting you today.
 
It threw him, that’s all.
 
Why don’t you stay longer, like you planned,
and try to work things out?”

Liz
looked at her.
 
“Work things out with a
man who hate her guts?
 
Work things out
with a man who wishes she was dead?”

“No
thanks,” Chelsey said firmly, and she and Liz headed for the front door.

Tommy
knew he shouldn’t get involved.
 
He knew
he should have let them sail their asses out that door exactly the way they
were doing.
 
And if it was just Chelsey,
he probably would have stayed out of it.
 
That daddy-daughter drama was between daddy and daughter as far as he
was concerned.
 
But Liz was with
her.
 
And as much as he hated to admit
it, he wasn’t ready to let her go.

“Chelsey,
Liz,” he said.

Liz
and Chelsey both stopped, which surprised Sal and Gemma given the way they were
so determinedly charging out of there, and then they turned around.