A Slow Twisting Place
Chapter One,-- Chicago, 1979
On the
coldest day in February, just two months shy of my fifth birthday, my chance
for a normal life disappeared forever.
Ignorant
to this fact, I was playing by myself in the backyard of Edward’s mansion,
shivering underneath the oppressive bulk of my snowmobile suit, when Edward’s
ex-wife Julia appeared before me. She
was holding my little Snoopy bag, and she looked like she’d been crying. “Come on, Rachel,” she said. “You’re staying with me and Michael
tonight.”
I
followed her out to her car, where Michael was waiting in the backseat,
fiddling with his backpack. During the
drive to the house Julia was strangely quiet.
Normally she couldn’t shut up even when she had laryngitis, but neither her
10 year old son nor I dared to ask what had accomplished the impossible. This
meant the monumental silence remained unbroken until Julia shepherded us into her
kitchen. The huge bowls of ice cream she
proceeded to shove underneath our noses made it official: whatever she had to
say, it was bad.
This
didn’t stop me from diving into the ice cream with gusto, however. I almost forgot Julia was in the room until
she noisily blew her nose. Her voice
muffled by the tissue, she said, “I have something to tell the both of you. It’s about Edward.” At the mere mention of his name, her eyes
filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled,
“but he passed away this morning.”
I
looked at Michael. Michael looked at
me.
“That
means we aren’t going to see him anymore,” Julia helpfully supplied, but I had
figured that part out on my own. The
Saturday we’d discovered Michael’s goldfish floating on top of its aquarium,
I’d participated in the ceremonial toilet flushing that had served as my
introduction to the concept of death. I
understood that by dying Edward, too, had been flushed down the proverbial
toilet.
But this
realization did not cause me to burst out into the torrent of tears Julia’s
manner seemed to indicate was appropriate.
Not even Michael, the sole child in the room who could claim biological
connection to Edward, seemed especially broken up by the alleged tragedy. Only after Julia detailed for us how Edward’s
secretary had found Edward collapsed in his office, the victim of an apparent
heart attack, did Michael say something—and his “Wow!” betrayed not grief so
much as awe. I couldn’t blame him, really. It was kind of impressive.
Julia,
on the other hand, must have been expecting a different reaction. As her eyes darted between the two children
at the table, searching for signs of what simply was not there, Michael and I
resumed shoveling the ice cream into our mouths. “Isn’t this horrible?” Julia prompted. “Aren’t you sad?”
Michael
shrugged. I shrugged, too.
For a
second there Julia looked like she feared for our moral development. But abruptly her face cleared, and she nodded
in a knowing sort of way. “Of course,”
she said, “you’re in shock. But, Rachel,
you don’t need to worry about a thing.
You’ll just be living with Michael and me full-time now.”
I
looked at Michael. Michael looked at
me.
“No
kidding,” he answered, and held out his bowl for another scoop of vanilla fudge
swirl.
Well,
Michael may have taken Julia’s statement for granted, but from an adult’s
perspective there was nothing obvious about it.
Legally I meant nothing to Julia.
As far as I knew I meant nothing to any
of them, and that included Edward. My time
with him had been the result of an obscure chain of events that only Edward
understood in full, and which, to my vast regret, he had omitted to share with
me or his ex-wife before his untimely demise.
In our
one conversation on the subject a few months earlier, Julia had admitted to me
that she only knew my mother had once been Edward’s maid, and that Edward had
taken me in as a favor to this maid, with the intention of keeping me forever. Where my mother had gone to, or why she would
pass her toddler off onto her employer, were mysteries no one could solve. There was but one fact that Julia could
impart with absolute certainty: Edward was not my father. In telling me this Julia acted like I might
be disappointed, but I was thrilled to hear it.
My unknown paternity allowed me to fantasize that my real father might
be a dashing European count, pining away for his lost daughter in a spectacular
seaside castle—not the aloof old man who I’d been living with for three
years now.
If
anyone should have understood my non-attachment to Edward, it was Julia. While Edward’s motives in opening his home to
me might have been above reproach, the execution of those motives left much to
be desired. Perpetually stunned to find
me sitting at his dinner table, he celebrated his new role not by reducing his ridiculous hours at the
fancy law firm he chaired, but by increasing
them. This almost wholesale abdication of
parental-like duties propelled his appalled ex-wife Julia—also an attorney, but
a substantially younger one with a different set of values—to pick up the
slack.
And there
was a lot of slack. It was Julia who
looked after me whenever Edward traveled for business, Julia who took me to the
doctor, Julia who purchased my clothes, and Julia who brought me with her and
Michael on vacation. By my third
birthday I was spending at least half of my time with her, whether or not
Edward was in town. This allowed Edward
the space he needed to get drunk on top-shelf cognac while he cried over a
leather-bound photograph album that I never did manage to see up close.
So because
of how things were with Edward at the time of his exit, I don’t think I
considered my change in life circumstances as unwelcome, per se, or even much of a change. Now that he was out of the picture I could
stay in the little girl room Julia had long ago established for me in her house,
complete with frilly day bed and pink-striped wallpaper, and never have to
leave again. “I’m going to adopt you,”
Julia told me, “and then you’ll officially be one of the family, instead of
just emotionally one of the family.” It
all sounded good to me. Edward might
have been dead, but my life would go on—with possibly even more benefits than
before.
***
Jed
Meisler, the executor of Edward’s estate, arranged for the wake to take place
on Saturday evening. Not having any
idea what a funeral was like I lobbied hard to go, on the grounds that if
Michael got to, so should I. But on
Saturday afternoon Julia told me that I would be staying at home with the
nanny.
Julia
and Michael got home from the wake just in time for the opening segment of “The
Love Boat.” The nanny tore herself away
from the T.V. and went out to greet them but I, in the middle of a crucial
wardrobe change for my Barbie, remained where I was; hearing Julia snap at
Michael to go upstairs might have had something to do with that. But then a few doors slammed, the dog barked,
and Julia was in the family room with me, reeking of cigarette smoke. When I smiled at her she began pacing back
and forth in front of the stereo. “I
have something to tell you,” she said.
In the
dramatic hush that followed I pondered the heady issue of what color gown
Barbie should wear for her night out on the town with Michael’s G.I. Joe. I was leaning toward a red sequined cocktail
dress, when Julia blurted out, “You’re not going to be living here after
all.”
This
was not what I had expected to hear.
Then again, I hadn’t really been expecting to hear anything. So I just replied, “I’m not?”
“No.”
“Okay,”
I answered, and started to strip Barbie of her purple skirt. Surely all Julia meant was that I would still
be living in Edward’s house—just without Edward there, which, let’s face it,
was not much different than how it had been before he died. While not wildly pleased by that change of
plan, I could handle the disappointment.
“I
don’t think you quite understand what I mean,” Julia said, with one of those
worried frowns that made her forehead look squidgy. “Edward designated his son Bryan to be your
guardian. That means you’ll be living
with him now.”
At this
my Barbie hit the floor with a definitive thwack,
but Julia was now too busy glaring at the wall and puffing on her cigarette to
notice. “Not that Edward had any
right—you weren’t even officially adopted yet,” she muttered. “You still belong to the state. Besides, I
was the one who took care of you all of these years, goddamn son of a bitch,”
she spat out, and I wasn’t sure whom she meant, Edward or Bryan. “You remember Bryan, don’t you?” she asked me
in a slightly more neutral tone. “He was
home last December.”
Oh,
yes. I remembered him, all right.
The by-product
of Edward’s marriage to his much-mourned first wife, Bryan had distinguished
himself by scaring the hell out of me.
Within five minutes of his arrival, Bryan Jennings—tall, dark, and
sporting a ferocious scowl—made it known he hated his father and everything
Edward stood for. He overcame this
repulsion just long enough for the impromptu holiday visit that could have been
clocked with a stopwatch. The cuddly
stuffed panda bear that he presented to me on Christmas morning hadn’t fooled
me for a minute into believing he might have a kinder view toward me than he
did his dear old dad. Just how the
oldest son barked at me to get away from the electrical cord connecting the
Christmas lights to the outlet was enough to make me grateful he’d moved out of
Edward’s house two years earlier. And
now Julia was telling me that I had to live with him? There would never be enough ice cream in the
whole wide world to make that okay.
“He’ll
be here in the morning,” Julia brutally concluded. “He’s skipping the burial, the ungrateful
little toad. That means tonight I have
to pack up what you need to take with you to Boston.”
“…Boston?”
“It’s
in Massachusetts,” she said, as if that should clear things up for me. Julia paused to take a deep drag off her
cigarette; her eyes, still fixated on some point over my shoulder, had gone
moist again. “I’m sorry, Rachel. This isn’t how I wanted it to be.”
That
made two of us.
***
Coping
with Edward’s death was nothing compared to watching Julia pack a suitcase for
me. “Why can’t Rachel stay here?”
Michael asked her from the floor of the closet, where he and I were camped
out. “Bryan’s not even that old. He’s only in college. It’s not fair that he gets her!”
“I know
it’s not fair. But there isn’t anything
we can do about it. We just have to
accept it.”
“He’s
not her father, is he?”
Julia
let out a sharp laugh. “Heavens, no!”
“Then why
does he get her?”
“You
wouldn’t understand.”
“But
he’s mean!”
“He’s
not mean. He’s just—Bryan. I’m sure he’ll be very nice to Rachel.” Julia pasted a brave but thoroughly
transparent smile on her face. “And
Rachel will still get to visit. It will
be fun.”
Well,
Julia sounded so unconvinced of how fun
my impending doom with Bryan Jennings would be that it was impossible to
believe her. Neither did I agree that we
should passively accept the fate that had befallen us. It was me,
after all, and not her who would be going off with the oldest son bright and
early tomorrow morning.
Tortured
by that knowledge, I tossed and turned for much of the night. Once I finally did drift off, it was only to
dream of a giant, dark ogre—his eyes glittering black and cold as he dragged me
off into a cave from which there was no escape.
This
nightmare had begun to fade into another one involving giants when a familiar
voice broke into my consciousness.
Rachel! You have to get up!
My eyes
fluttered open. Julia was sitting on the
edge of the bed, dressed in her green velvet bathrobe. A cigarette dangled out of the corner of her
mouth. “I know you’re tired,” she told
me, “but it’s time to get up.”
I
blinked at the traitorous sun streaming in through the blinds. With a start I bolted into an upright
position.
It was
morning.
I
stared at Julia in mute horror as she cast a nervous glance behind her to the
empty doorway. When she returned her
haunted eyes to me, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up on
end. Instinctively I pulled my blanket
over my mouth, in anticipation of the Poltergeist
moment I knew must follow. “Rachel,”
Julia hissed. “He’s here.”
There
was no question this time as to which “he” she referred to.
Bryan. The
oldest son.
Downstairs.
Waiting.
Waiting
for me.
“Don’t
make me go,” I begged Julia, but she, enveloped in a cloud of smoke, just hugged
me hard. “It’s okay,” she croaked
out. “You’re going to be just fine.”
Yeah,
right. That reassurance might have been
more credible were I not about to be carted off to a far-away land called
Massachusetts by the right hand of the devil.
Even old Edward—a pretty scary guy himself, judging from how the surly
cook always scurried from the kitchen whenever Edward stomped in—had shown real
relief back in December when Bryan had blown back out of town almost as quickly
as he had blown in. No one wanted this
Bryan person around. No one wanted me to
live with him. Yet Julia had plainly
abandoned all attempts to save me. I had
no choice.
Wriggling
out from Julia’s embrace, I hit the floor and started running.
“Rachel!”
Julia cried. “Come back!”
I
ignored her. She would never catch
me—she couldn’t even climb a flight of stairs without wheezing.
Normally
I was a shy, submissive child, remarkable only for my willingness to do
whatever adults asked of me. But
desperate times called for desperate measures.
If I had to spend the next three weeks hiding out in the prickly bushes
in Julia’s backyard, relying for subsistence on berries, then that was just
what I would do. At my last doctor’s
appointment I’d heard the doctor tell Julia that I ranked in the bottom growth
percentile range for my age group. If
anyone could survive on the occasional piece of stale bread, it was me.
And if
hanging out in the bushes failed, maybe I would get saved by a pack of wolves,
or be abducted by a crowd of friendly aliens.
It happened in Disney movies all of the time. Why couldn’t it happen to me? There was at least a chance. There had to be. Because I would not go anywhere with him I
would not go anywhere with him I would
not go anywhere with him…my frantic determination rocketing me forward, I
rounded the corner of the hallway.
And ran
straight into a pair of legs.
The
momentum of the crash was so powerful that it sent me bouncing back toward a decorative
table embellished with one of Julia’s many antique flower vases. My arms span like an out of control windmill
as I seemed destined to smash both it and myself to smithereens—until a pair of
hands reached out and caught me just before I made contact with the table. Stunned but otherwise unharmed, I curled my
fingers around jacket sleeves I did not recognize.
“Hey, little girl,” a male voice said from
above. “Where are you going in such a
hurry?”
I
looked up. When my rescuer smiled at me
I blinked hard.
The man
lowered himself to the floor; deep blue eyes studied me closely. “Did I hurt
you?”
I shook
my head—although if he had hurt me, I wouldn’t have cared. Because here before me knelt the most
beautiful man I had ever seen.
Obviously
I was still dreaming. There was no way
this man could exist in the real world.
The chiseled features, the dark hair, the olive skin…my god.
I reached out and touched his face, certain that the mirage still
holding onto me would vanish into a poof of air.
And yet
he didn’t. He remained very much in
front of me, as I traced a line over his sculpted cheekbone, down to his
freshly-shaven chin. Without thinking I
let out the breath I’d been holding. He
was not a hallucination. He was
real. “Hi,” I whispered. “Hi,” he said back, and smiled again.
I had
met this man before. I even knew his
name, and why he had come here. I just
could not believe it. Otherwise it would
be impossible to reconcile how what I’d been told, let alone what I remembered,
could be so completely wrong. This man
seemed much too safe, and smelled far too good, to be the person we had all
been bemoaning for the past twelve hours, not to mention the holiday visitor of
fleeting duration. Now, in the
protective fold of this man’s arms, I felt something so different from fear
that it nearly throttled me. He was not
the same person. He couldn’t be. And yet, he looked exactly like him! Unable to
make sense of this conundrum, I asked him, “Who are you?”
“You
know who I am,” he answered, and with that the last vestiges of my fear
vanished forever. The immediate love I
felt for Bryan Jennings was as inevitable as it was baffling.
“Let’s
get you dressed, missy,” Bryan said. He
then kissed me on the cheek and turned us toward the bedroom, where Julia was
standing in the doorway. Something about
the expression on her face let me know she would hate the man in her hallway
forever. “I’m sorry,” she began, but
Bryan cut her off cold. “I told you last
night what time I was coming. Rachel
should have been ready an hour ago.” His
words left little icicles in their wake.
My life with Bryan
Jennings had begun.
**If you enjoyed this, check out my new novel The Abduction Myth, now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KI6XNJU#nav-subnav
**If you enjoyed this, check out my new novel The Abduction Myth, now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KI6XNJU#nav-subnav
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