Under the Influence (17 page)

J
uly was almost over when Ollie came back to spend the rest of the summer with me. I didn't bring him over to Folger Lane that first night he returned. Nor did I invite Elliot over. I thought we should have some time together for just the two of us, the way it used to be.

But the next day there was no keeping my son away from the Havillands' house. He wasn't past the door before Swift put him in a wrestling hold. “What took you so long, buddy?” he said.

Then came the sound of Ollie's laughter. Swift had pulled his shirt up and was tickling him. Around his ankles, all three dogs were barking. Rocco was actually licking his hand.

“I hope you like brownies,” Ava said.

“You think I'm sharing your special brownies with this no-good bum?” Swift said to her. He had Ollie in the air now, upside down.

“Say uncle. Say uncle,” Swift told him. “Then I'll let go. Maybe.”

More shrieks from Ollie. Happy ones. “Uncle!” he yelled. “Uncle!”

“All right,” Swift said. “I guess I'll release you. But you must understand, I am your mighty and all-powerful leader. You do as I command.” He set my son back on the floor. His voice was deeper than normal and his eyes narrowed.

Ollie was bent over from laughing so hard. I worried he might wet his pants—a problem in the past—but he didn't.

“Repeat after me,” Swift said. “‘I promise to obey you, my all-powerful leader!'”

“I promise to obey—”

“—all-powerful leader,” Swift reminded him.

“All-powerful leader.”

Ollie was still catching his breath, though I knew he loved this. He had the same look I sometimes observed on Sammy when Ava took out his leash and the special tool she used to throw his tennis ball farther than normal, meaning he would be going to the park. Excitement, not fear. Though I knew what this amount of excitement would bring about later, back at our apartment. I wouldn't get Ollie to sleep tonight until way past his bedtime. He'd be too wired.

The table was set for us out on the patio. At Ollie's place there were two packages: a snorkel mask and fins, and a watch.

“It's waterproof,” Swift told him. “Good up to a hundred meters. That should do until you and I get into some serious scuba diving. Cooper and I did a lot of that when he was just a few years older than you.”

Ollie had ripped the packaging off already. He was trying to set the time.

“And there's a timer,” Swift said. “So we can clock your speed from one end of the pool to the other. Or holding your breath.”

“I always wanted a watch like this,” Ollie said, his voice a husky whisper.

This was news to me. But Swift revealed a whole new side to my son I had not experienced before. A kind of swagger and bravado. Around Swift, he even seemed to lower his voice when he spoke, though he was still a few years from the age when it would happen on its own.

The next day was Sunday. Elliot showed up at my apartment at eight thirty in the morning with a gift for me: a staple gun. He'd noticed I didn't own one. I was in the shower, so Ollie answered the door.

“That guy's here,” my son called out. “The one that threw up.” I pulled on my bathrobe and went out to the living room.

“I thought I'd take you two out for breakfast,” Elliot said. “I know a place that makes the best French toast.”

Ollie was still in his pajamas. He'd been eating cereal and watching cartoons on television. I had promised myself that while Ollie was with me we'd have our meals at the table, not sitting in front of the TV, but for now I was just happy to let him hang out and relax.

“Good morning, Ollie,” Elliot said. He offered his hand. My son looked up at him a little blankly, but shook it.

“We weren't expecting you,” I said. He was trying to be spontaneous, probably—a little crazy, like Swift—but it didn't come naturally. Elliot had to plan his spontaneity.

“I already ate,” Ollie said.

“Well, how about this, then? We load the bikes on the back of my car and go for a ride? I brought mine along.”

“I think Ollie might like to hang around at home for a while,” I said. “Actually, so would I.”

He had set the staple gun down. I looked at the coffee pot. Empty.

“I could make another pot,” I said.

He shook his head. “I should have called first,” he said. “All I was thinking was how much I wanted to see you two.”

“Why would you want to see me?” Ollie said. “You don't even know me.”

“Well, that's true,” Elliot said. His voice, which had been, very briefly, playful, returned to the usual somber tone. “But I wanted to
get
to know you.”

F
rom the moment he heard about the Donzi, my son had been after Swift to take him out on that boat. He'd never even heard of
Miami Vice
or Colin Farrell before meeting Swift, but now Ollie reminded me this was the same boat he drove in the movie. The Donzi could go faster than a speeding bullet, Ollie told me. Warp speed.

When Ollie had asked Swift if he could drive the Donzi, Swift had given him an uncharacteristic response. “When you're older, you can,” he told Ollie. “But you really have to know what you're doing to drive the Donzi, or you can get into trouble. That's why I waited till Cooper was seventeen until I bought it, and even then I wouldn't let him take the controls unless I was right there next to him.”

If Ollie was disappointed by this, he didn't show it. Swift's words on the subject only added to the Donzi's mystique.

“The Donzi used to belong to bad guys that used it to carry drugs from other countries to America,” Ollie told me. We were driving over to Folger Lane when the topic of the speedboat came up, as it frequently did.

“Also machine guns,” Ollie added. “Then they got arrested, and the police sold the boat, and Monkey Man bought it.”

I didn't know this, I told him. Leave it to Swift to take ownership of a cigarette boat formerly owned by cocaine smugglers with guns.

“When I grow up I want to be like Monkey Man,” Ollie said. He made his voice go low and narrowed his eyes, checking his reflection in the mirror.

As I saw my son do this, a realization came to me. Though I had been the one who introduced Swift into Ollie's life—and though I loved spending time with Swift, and called the Havillands the nearest thing I had to family, I didn't want my boy to be like him when he grew up. Swift entertained and amused me, and I had come to count on his generosity and protection, but I realized with a sudden clarity that I didn't entirely respect the man. If I were still working at that catering job and he'd attended some party where I was passing around the trays of appetizers, my old friend Alice would probably have written Swift off as an asshole, and I probably would have agreed with her.

Now in the car with me, heading over to the Havillands', my son was once again launched into a discussion of Monkey Man's speedboat.

“Monkey Man says the Donzi can go a hundred and fifty miles an hour,” Ollie said. “One time he was going so fast, this girl on the boat lost her bikini top.”

My hands tightened on the wheel. “If we go up to Tahoe with Swift and Ava someday, and you ride on that boat, I can tell you he won't be driving that fast with you,” I said. “I'll make sure of that.”

“You're not the boss of him,” said Ollie. “Nobody's the boss of Monkey Man.”

M
y ex-husband had agreed to let Ollie stay with me for the remainder of the summer, with occasional visits back to Walnut Creek. All of this sounded so civilized, I was actually thinking I might not need to enlist the services of Marty Matthias at all, which may have been just as well since Swift seemed not to have gotten around to calling him yet. Maybe, after Labor Day, Dwight and I could sit down and have a reasonable, friendly conversation about custody, and we could talk about the possibility of Oliver coming to live with me again.

“It sounds as if Dwight might be open to that,” I told Swift and Ava. “Maybe he and Cheri are a little burned out from juggling a toddler and an eight-year-old.”

Meanwhile, the defiant behavior Dwight had complained about was not in evidence with me. Every night now, when we got back to the apartment, Ollie would have his bath and then climb into bed to read with me, as if all the old bad times had never happened.

On the first weekend in August, I drove Ollie up to Sacramento for a visit with Dwight's family. The McCabes, who had once embraced me as their new daughter, stayed inside when I dropped him off at their house.

That same weekend, the Havillands were going up to their Tahoe house. In the past, Ava would have asked Estella to watch the dogs, but Rocco had taken a strong dislike to her—stronger even than his dislike
of me, which had actually lessened over time—and anyway, Ava said, the idea that Carmen might accompany her mother to the house had left her uneasy about having Estella over on her own for a whole weekend. So Ava asked if I'd stay there.

I knew Elliot would have welcomed this opportunity to spend a couple of nights with me. This was true with or without Ollie on the scene, but Ollie's presence that summer—and my reluctance to be around Elliot when Ollie was there—had severely curtailed our time together, and virtually eliminated any possibility of sex.

I could have called Elliot and invited him to join me at the Havillands'. But when I thought about it, I realized that what I really wanted was to be alone in their house.

As always, I offered to take care of whatever errands or odd jobs Ava might need done, but other than walking the dogs and checking in with Evelyn Couture to make sure she was doing all right, she told me not to bother, just to enjoy myself. “Take a nice long soak in the Jacuzzi and slather yourself with La Mer,” she told me. This would be her three-hundred-dollar face cream. “And I left a great piece of wild salmon in the refrigerator.”

“Give me a job to do,” I told her. “I might as well be useful.”

“Just pick up my dry cleaning,” she said.

On my way over to Folger Lane from the cleaners', I turned the radio up high to a hard rock station. Not my usual choice, but I liked the feeling of singing at the top of my lungs. I stopped at the market where Ava shopped and picked up a couple of imported cheeses and a baguette. No doubt the Havillands' refrigerator was already well stocked with great delicacies, but it felt good to choose for myself. I added a large slice of dark chocolate cake to my purchases and a croissant for the morning.

I had considered the possibility that Estella might have dropped by, so I was glad to see that mine was the only car in the driveway when I pulled in. With the pile of clothes over my arm, I turned the key in
the lock, bracing myself slightly for the dogs I knew were on the other side. As usual, Lillian and Sammy jumped all over me with excitement as soon as I stepped into the house. Rocco hung back, but no longer growled at the sight of me, though he bared his teeth in a way that always set mine on edge.

Something came over me then: the knowledge that for once I could do whatever I wanted in this house.

I set the clothes down. Opened the refrigerator.

I'd sat on the patio with Ava and Swift a hundred times while they drank wine without it bothering me, but for some reason this evening, the sight of their French rosé and the good chardonnay chilling beside it made me hesitate a moment. For just a few seconds, I let myself imagine how it would feel to sit out by the pool by myself with the runny cheese and a plate of Ava's special crackers and a large, chilled glass of wine. I closed the refrigerator.

With Ava's clothes in one arm and a bottle of Pellegrino in the other, I made my way up the stairs to Ava's dressing room.

I was going to just pull the plastic off the clothes I'd picked up and hang them on a hook for Estella to put away later on, then head downstairs to cook my fish, but something made me linger. I let my hand pass over one of the cashmere sweaters. I kicked off my shoes. Counted out loud, in high school French, the number of silk blouses in Ava's collection.
Quatorze.

I studied a particular gown from among those I'd just picked up, which Ava had recently worn to a dinner in the city—one of the intimate gatherings Swift had hosted for BARK benefactors. This dress was made of hand-painted silk, with diaphanous butterfly sleeves. The dress went down very low in the back, though because she had been in her wheelchair the whole time she wore it, this feature must have been lost on her tablemates. Only Swift and I would have known Ava's dress was backless and that she'd worn no underwear to accommodate it.

“Sometimes, driving home,” she'd told me, as I helped her get ready, “he takes his right hand off the wheel to touch me.”

“On the freeway?” I said.

“Only his right hand. He's a good driver.”

There was a stereo in Swift and Ava's bedroom, naturally, with a stack of compact discs beside it. I picked up the top disc. Andrea Bocelli. That blind Italian singer.

I put the disc into the player and turned the music up loud, so I could hear it in the dressing room. Andrea Bocelli was singing in Italian, of course, so I had no idea what the words meant, but it had to be about love—passionate, possibly desperate. This was the kind of song that probably made Andrea Bocelli's fans throw themselves at his feet and beg to go back to the hotel with him, even if he was blind. Maybe that made it even better.

I touched the sleeve on a velvet jacket and brought it to my cheek. Took a sip of my mineral water, imagining it was champagne.

I wondered how one of the fourteen silk blouses from Paris would feel against my skin, especially if I had nothing on underneath. I considered what I'd wear with it. A pair of the Thai silk pants, maybe. Or nothing else. Just the delicate, beautiful blouse.

The shirt I was wearing came from the Gap—cotton, button-up, white, basic. I unbuttoned it. Took another swig of the Pellegrino. Dropped the shirt on the floor. Unhooked my bra.

My breasts were fuller than Ava's, but if I left the top three buttons undone, the French blouse would fit. I started to lift it over my head, then realized I should have unbuttoned the cuffs first.

I pushed my hands through the cuffs and a button popped off. Not a Gap shirt button. This one was mother-of-pearl.

Andrea Bocelli was on to another song now, even sexier and more tragic sounding than the one before, if this was possible. I sang along with him, as well as a person can who doesn't speak Italian and had never heard the song before.

The shirt was tighter on me than I'd expected, so I unbuttoned it all the way. I placed my hand on the part of my skin left uncovered by the shirt and stroked my left breast. Brought the Pellegrino to my lips again. Pretended I was in Italy.

The song on the CD wasn't exactly danceable, but I started dancing anyway. I must have reached for one of the cashmere sweaters—the arms, both of them. I pulled them toward me as if there were a person inside, embracing me.

“Tesoro, Tesoro!”
I sang.
“Ti amoro fino alla fine dei tempi.”

I had no idea what I was singing.

I kicked off my shoes. Stepped into a pair of green kid leather slippers. Pulled a scarf from one of the accessories drawers. Twirled around the room, making the silk of the scarf flutter like a kite string.

I made my way into the bedroom. Ava and Swift's room. I lay down on the bed, crosswise. One slipper fell off my foot. A person might have thought I was drunk, but I was just feeling a strange and wonderful kind of freedom, all alone in this house I loved.

At first, all I saw when I opened my eyes were the dogs—all three of them lined up like a panel of judges. Lillian's head was cocked slightly to one side. Sammy was barking. Rocco just bared his sharp little teeth in that way he had that made you imagine the row of bright red blood spots they'd leave if they sank into your skin.

Then I realized there was a person in the room too. Estella.

“I
was just fooling around,” I said to her. “I didn't mean anything.”

“We don't go in Mrs. Havilland's room,” Estella said. “This room is special.”

I knew that, too. Nobody ever had to say it. You could just tell.

“I was putting away the dry cleaning,” I said. No point in continuing. There had been no need to linger in the bedroom.

“I don't say nothing,” Estella said. “I know how it goes sometimes.
You see all the dresses. Me too, some days. I stand here with the iron and I wish my daughter has a blouse like that for graduation. A special necklace. Nice shoes.”

A wave of relief washed over me. For a moment I had imagined Estella telling Ava about her crazy friend Helen, dancing in the closet with her four-hundred-dollar sweater. Lying on her bed in the room no one was supposed to enter besides Ava and Swift. How could she ever understand, after all she'd done for me? But it turned out Estella did.

“Ava's so generous,” I said. “She's given me so much. And Swift, too, of course.”

“Mr. Havilland. He's not like her,” Estella said. “Be careful your boy don't get too close.”

“Ollie loves Swift,” I said. “I know he acts crazy sometimes, but he's got the biggest heart.”

“Mr. Havilland is my boss,” she said. “Not good to talk about it. I just tell you be careful.”