She meets my gaze steadily. Unflinching.
“Well, that’s a start, but not quite as eloquent as I’d hoped for.”
I pop a cigarette into my mouth, but she gives me a sharp glare and I rip it from my lips, unlit, and toss it with the pack on the bed behind me.
She says nothing. She waits. My turn to talk, it seems.
“Forgive me for not being eloquent,” I sneer. “I prepared myself for something quite different today. There is a lot to take in here. There is a lot to be furious with you over. It makes it difficult to decide where to begin. I think it best I start on the fringes. What the fuck were the lawyers about, Chrissie? I can’t believe you called the lawyers. Why call the lawyers with me?”
Tears fill her eyes. She rises quickly from the rocker to put the baby in the cradle. She stands there staring down for a long time.
She whirls on me.
“Don’t swear around my children, Alan. The swearing needs to go just like the cigarettes did when you are in my house.” Now she is fully bathed by her anger. “As for the lawyers, you deserve to be slapped for what you’re thinking. Do you think I’d file a paternity suit against you? I didn’t know the status of her legal paternity and my options in that. After a rather lengthy discussion of the issues with the Harrises, we decided to leave Jesse’s name on her birth certificate as her father. It is an arrangement we are all comfortable with if you are inclined to keep it that way permanently.”
That sends me from the bed. “Fuck you, Chrissie.”
I don’t want to pace. I know that Chrissie understands what the pacing is about, but I don’t have a better way to keep a tight lid on what is surging for release. A tight lid at least until I sort through all this and have some inkling of what I want my reaction to be.
If I let loose all that I’m feeling now I’ll rip her to shreds and a marginal part of my brain warns that would end us.
“You might as well dump it all, Alan, exactly what you’re thinking—one dump out on the table without bothering to be indirect,” she continues, a controlled attack. “I would, however, appreciate if you passed on the cheap shots. You want a fight from me. You don’t need a fight if you don’t think this is something you can do. I want this resolved however it ends up being resolved. In fairness you should know that if you walk before we resolve this, I won’t let you back in the door. Not ever. That is how I’ll resolve this.”
I sink down on the small sofa. It is the first time Chrissie has ever manipulated me that way and I don’t like that she’s done it. Never once has she used my love for her as a weapon to manage me.
“I know why you feel the way you feel about this so stop being angry with yourself for feeling as you do,” she says quietly. “And stop turning that anger at me. Please don’t make me the enemy because things are not the way you want them.”
The lines of my face harden. “Is that what I’m doing? Making you the enemy? Why is it that is exactly how I am feeling?”
“Fighting isn’t going to change a thing. We have a daughter. I would rather find out where this leaves us.”
“I’m not sure we’re ready today for that much directness, Chrissie. It’s a loaded question. You may not be as ready for the answer as you believe.”
“I come with kids, Alan. If you want to be with me, you’re going to be with kids. Why should it matter if one of them is ours?”
Her words only manage to kick up my anger to something beyond anything I’ve ever felt.
“When you get it wrong, Chrissie, you get it fucking wrong. It’s not paternity I’m having trouble with. I can’t believe you think that’s why I’m angry with you. You didn’t call me, Chrissie. You wouldn’t have let me know about the baby if I hadn’t come here today. I thought we shared something different between us. You let a year pass, Chrissie. A year without even a call. I don’t understand how you could do that. After loving you through every ugly, every fucking insane moment we’ve shared together, this is what you decide you can’t share with me. I don’t even want to get into the decision to leave Jesse on the birth certificate. Let’s just leave that one at you couldn’t have fucked up more and hurt me more on every exposed nerve than you did in this if you tried. Direct? How did I do?”
She starts to cry. Listening to it is like having a nail dug into my spine. But I let her cry and I say nothing. I’ve never done that before.
She cries for at least ten minutes. She looks at me, sniffling and running the back of her hand against her dripping nose. “You were very direct. I did what I thought was right. I never meant to hurt you by any of it.”
“You never mean to hurt me, Chrissie. Somehow you always do.”
She takes in a ragged breath and moves several steps away from me.
“I’ve had a long day, Alan. So if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to stop this and go to bed. You are welcome to stay the night with me if you want to continue this in the morning.”
“I don’t know if I care to stay the night, Chrissie. Are you talking about sex or sleep?”
Her eyes flash. “I have no intention of becoming number fifty-one in your year of self-abuse. I would just be number fifty-one tonight if either of us were angry enough to do that. I have a guest room at the end of the hall.”
“Don’t worry, Chrissie. We might as well fuck tonight. It’s impossible for you to be number fifty-one. You were number one in my twenty years of self-abuse.”
“That was mean, Alan—” Her voice breaks on a sob. More tears run from her eyes leaving harsh tracks on her cheeks. “I don’t have the stamina I used to. If you go for a knockout blow with each angry remark I will probably end this not loving you.”
I can’t rally enough control to relent.
I turn toward the door. “Today, Chrissie, I’m not at all sure I have the stamina to love you anymore.”
Chapter 9
It is a lousy exit point. I’m aware of it. I leave anyway.
Once I’m in the hallway, I’m not sure where I want to go. I can hear Chrissie crying. I can hear the baby crying.
Fuck!
I debate going back in, but stop myself. I feel all jittery as if I’ve just spent a night doing lines of coke: partly paranoid, partly explosive and partly in hyperdrive.
If I go back to Chrissie now we’ll only end up in round three of the fighting and she isn’t up for more. She is so beautiful I often miss details of her face. She looked worn out by the end of it.
I walk down the main hallway and out the front door. The fog has rolled in, dewing my car, and I take from the backseat something to clear the windshield. When I toss it onto the passenger floorboard, I realize it’s a sweater. Aarsi’s sweater. Fuck. Too late. I’ve probably ruined it.
I climb in, put the car in gear, and just want to get the fuck away from here. I definitely blew it during that scene with Chrissie in the bedroom. I shut down my thoughts. I’m not ready to go there yet. Tomorrow. When I’m calmer. Less angry. That’s soon enough to work through how I feel about Chrissie’s latest bombshell to my life.
I exit from her driveway, intending to go back to Malibu. Fuck, Aarsi’s there. I’ve had quite a bit to drink. Everything inside me is edgy and ready to explode and begging for release. I definitely shouldn’t risk being alone with the pretty little Indian girl in my house. Not tonight.
My anger is enough to make me do something stupid, and I don’t know if I’m ready for what I’m feeling now to be irrevocable. The Indian girl would make it irrevocable if Chrissie ever found out. As awful as our reunion went, in Chrissie’s mind since she went to the effort of outlining ground rules, we’re together again. Fidelity rule in effect and we’re not even fucking yet.