War (29 page)

              “However, you took it out on me.”

              “I used you to take it out on Laura. And for that I’m sorry.”

              “You sent naked pictures to my priests,” Danny says as she leans into the table. “This is the man that I have to see every day until the day he dies. This is the man that christened me. This is the man that confirmed me into the Catholic faith. This is the man that I see every Wednesday for confession and every Thursday for Mass. This is the man that directs my son’s Christmas and Easter plays.”

              “Danielle,” Lola says, her voice filled with desperation, “what can I do?”

              “Nothing, Lola. Nothing. You can do nothing.” Danielle’s voice starts to rise.

              “Danny,” I say quietly. She stares at Lola and then sits back in her seat.

              “Listen,” Lola says, “Cadence and I are having a girl.”

              “Oh congrats!” I say. Danielle shoots me a nasty look. “Shut up,” I tell her. “The kids have nothing to do with our shit, you know that.” And it’s true. Nicky and Roman both come here to DC to spend a week with Lola and Cadence each summer. Danielle rolls her eyes at me.

              “And
you
just had a little girl,” Lola continues. “And though Laura has daughters, they’re older. What I’m saying is that our little girls will be the same age and they’ll be first cousins. These are Cadence and Malcolm’s only girls. Can we please try to work our issue out? For our girls?” Danielle takes a sip of her champagne. She’s not the forgiving type, she’ll tell you that in a heartbeat, but her weakness is her kids. Lola just played her cards right. Silence falls between us as the clatter of the restaurant hums around us. A waitress comes to us to take Lola’s drink order. She orders Pierre with lemon, I order another champagne and Danielle orders another glass as well. Then our table is silent. Just the brief flash of cameras surrounding us. I believe this is the first time Danielle has ever sat down and talked to Lola about that incident so long ago.

              “Have you had a baby shower?” Danielle eventually asks, her voice low.

              “Some of the Republican senators’ wives will be throwing me one next weekend,” Lola says with a shake of her head. “I’m sure it’ll be boring.”

              “You can bet on it,” I say. I’m a Republican because I was born one and because I married one, who was born one as well. But make no mistake, I’m a certified RINO, a republican only because it’s good for the Blair family business.

              “Well, maybe we can pull the girls up here to DC,” Danny says as she takes a casual sip of her champagne. “Winnie, me, Jacob’s sisters, Dena. If you have some of your family or sorority sisters you want to invite, you can let Winnie and me know.”

              “Oh my God!” Lola says as she gives a little clap. “That would be amazing!”

              “Hell yeah,” I say. “We’ll shut this damn town down.”

              “Then it’s settled,” Danielle says. “Week after next we’ll be back up here. I’ll find the place and get the invitations out. Tell Cadence to head up to Boston. We’ll make a weekend of it.”

              “Thank you,” Lola says with her eyes filling with tears and her voice cracking.

              “Glad that you two are on the mend,” I say as I down the rest of my champagne. “Very inspiring. But I’m about to leave the only man I’ve ever loved so can we move on to business?”

              “Absolutely,” Lola says as the waitress returns with our drink orders. We wait for her to place our drinks on the table and leave. “So, if you’re anything like me, you both hate and love Jacob. You want to leave him but then again you don’t. And you want some advice from me, a woman whose marriage had been fucked up for a while until one day I looked at Cadence and said: this is where it ends.”

              “Sounds about right.”

              “Well,” Lola says before taking a sip of her Pierre. “Let’s start at the beginning. You
do
know that Jacob only married you, for the same reason Cadence married me, right? Because he was forced to. Can you admit that, Winnie? Can you admit, just as I have, that our husbands didn’t choose us but that their parents did? That they did not love us first, as we loved them?”

This is about to be a tough conversation.

MALCOLM

We’re at Nicky’s voice lessons.

              “Could be better,” Roman says. He’s sitting on the right of the teacher’s piano, on a stool, peeling an orange, the trash bin right below him.

              “Roman, I’m working,” Nicky warns him. He’s sitting on the teacher’s piano stool
, next to his teacher,
as she plays the chords to
Mary Had a Little Lamb
.

              My brother-in-law, Cameron, who’s five years old, pats me on the arm. I look at him, watch him close his
Highlights Kids
magazine and place it gently on his lap. He then discreetly motions for me to come closer. I do as instructed. Ginger, who’s on my lap, looks like she’s leaning in too.

              “Blair,” he whispers in my ear, “since I’m Nicky’s uncle, I don’t want to tell him that he stinks, but…”

              “Really? I thought he was getting better,” I whisper back.

              “No,” he says gravely. “No. He is not.”

              “How about we do one more run through?” Miss Neely, Nicky’s twenty-year-old piano instructor, says. She’s a junior in Harvard’s music program. “Dad, is that okay?” she asks me.

              “Take all the time you need,” I say.

“
Please
,” Cameron adds.

I sit back and get comfortable.

We were supposed to meet Jake, his kids and Uncle Preston for dinner at Burger Jukebox, a 60’s inspired burger joint across the street from Harvard that plays nothing but Motown, but looks like plans have changed. Nicky’s working.

              “Again,” Roman says as he rallies Nicky for a better rendition of the popular nursery rhyme. Nicky’s reprised his role as Jesus for the Easter play. He’ll be singing the first, third and fourth verses of
Mary Had a Little Lamb
. Did you know there were four verses? Neither did I.

              “Roman,” Nicky warns him as Miss Neely plays her opening chords. “
Mary had a little lamb, little Lamb, LITTLE LAMB!! Mary had a little lamb…
”

Ginger kicks her sock off. Today’s a big day for her; it’s the first day that she’s been outside without a hat on. Roman has chosen to mark the occasion by constantly blowing on her head. He does this every half hour or so, give or take. She’s been giving him her signature ‘Cut it out already’ look. These past eight weeks I’ve learned that there’s not much that amuses her. In that respect she’s a lot like Red; she has no tolerance for bullshit. Even Nicky’s voice lesson is starting to wear her thin. I know this because she keeps kicking off one of her socks. Red and Ginger’s relationship is much better these days, simply because they act a lot alike. And as you know, if there’s anyone in the world who can handle Danielle Rouge, it’s me. So Ginger and I get along marvelously. One person Ginger will laugh with, without fail, is Rena. This is, of course, a bad sign. Rena likes to joke that it would be nice if Cadence were having a girl, that way his baby and mine could be Red and Rena, The Sequel. I can assure you, no one wants this.

But life is pretty hectic these days. For instance, Nicky will be Jesus next Sunday but he’ll also be coming along on our family vacation that starts on Monday and ends on Friday. “Five days without my vocal coach,” Nicky had said when Red told he
was
coming on our vacation. “I don’t know,” Cameron had agreed. But Nicky knew he never had a choice. Red’s parents, my parents, Red, Nicky, Roman, Cameron, Ginger and I will be going away for Easter break. Last year Cameron chose the Phillipines, so this year was Roman’s choice.

“I hear that Hawaii is
wonderful
right now,” Roman said over dinner a month ago. “
Wonderful
. Uncle Cadence taught me that.” Hawaii it was. Truthfully, Red and I can’t wait to leave all three of the children with our parents for a day or two. We need the peace and quiet. Trust me. She and I have more people in our house than before.

My mother and father have moved in.

My mother refused to allow us to get a nanny, claiming that nannies are the work of the devil. She presented us with homicide cases that involved nannies and kids. “It’s an epidemic,” she said as she summed up her Power Point presentation. (Before Queen Angie became the wife of an ambassador, my mother was Angelica Sorenson, the executive secretary of Attorney Wynston Blair. ‘Had a set of gams on
her
…’ my father usually says as he recounts the moment they met.)

So, my parents stay in the spare room in our condo and that’s where they’ll remain until Ginger can ‘tell us what’s going on’ for herself. For some reason, after the fight in the hospital, they have found both Red and I to be inadequate role models for our children. Red, surprisingly, enjoys the arrangement. Our condo’s spacious so there’s plenty of room for us all. The best part about it is that my mother takes the night shifts with Ginger. And my father
,
who is secretly an amateur chef, cooks dinner each night. As a matter of fact, I’ll send him a text now.

             
Me:
Dad, we won’t make the burger spot. Can you cook something up for the boys?

             
Dad:
On it. Your mother wants to know how Sunday Simone is.

             
Me:
She’s good. Relaxing …

             
Dad:
Your mother wants you to bring her home immediately.

             
Me:
Ok.

             
Dad:
Right now, she says.

             
Me:
Got it.

I put my phone back in my pocket and get comfortable in my chair. My parents really are heaven sent. I know, I can’t believe I’m saying that, either. Not only do they babysit and cook, but when Red and I want to be alone they take all of the kids down to Cadence’s condo for the weekend.

“If they ask to leave, I’ll chain the doors,” Red told me one evening over wine on our balcony. “Is that a bad thing?”

“False imprisonment? Yes.”

“I swear, you lawyers have a word for
everything
.”

Sometimes Red and I will go to my parents’ place for a weekend away. We’re bona fide condo dwellers, having a home to roam around in is a luxury for us.

I guess what I’m trying to say is life is good right now, as hectic and crowded as it may seem. My two boys are by the piano, my girl is sitting in my arms, my parents are at home preparing food, my wife is in DC with Winnie on a girls’ weekend and there’s a Celtics game on tonight. Life is good.

I guess I should call Jake and tell him that we can’t make the burger spot. I dial him, and before he says hello, I hear The Supremes singing in the background.

“Yo,” he says, his voice low and dead, just like it’s been for about two months now.

“We’re still at Nicky’s lesson, don’t think we can make dinner,” I tell him.

“No problem.”

“How about I get my parents to have dinner at your parents tomorrow? I can bring the kids. My father can bring something.” Jake has Sunday dinner at his parents’ every week. Winnie is always gone before he arrives and still gone by the time he leaves.

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll call Aunt Pammy and warn her that my mother is coming.”

“Alright.”

“Jake.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll get your wife back. Okay?” He says nothing. Something’s going on with him. When he and Winnie were divorced five years ago, he was never sad. He was filled with too much anger over Demetrius and perseverance about getting Winnie back. He was scheming and planning, wooing and charming. He was filled with energy and drive. He was going to get his woman back. I never had any doubt that he wouldn’t. But this time is different. He’s despondent. He’s not there. His admin, Sandi, notices it, I can tell. I’m sure she notices that Winnie hasn’t come to his office in two months. She notices that Jake no longer takes a lunch, but eats in his office, instead. Boxed noodles and frozen dinners. In fact, she brought in a caterer for him without him asking. She notices that Winnie isn’t calling the office. She notices that Jake has to leave the office every day at six p.m. regardless of what’s going on.