Ordinary World (32 page)

            “Thank you, Mrs. Santino,” I said.

            “Marjorie, please.” 

            “Marjorie.”

            She stood on her toes and kissed her son on the cheek as we entered the foyer. “Hi, honey. You always smell so nice.” David blushed. We moved ahead to the living room as he handed our coats to his mother, who took them away. He was dressed in his usual Versace, while I opted for a plaid wool pencil skirt, knee-high suede black boots, and a teal sweater twinset. Joannie then came out of the kitchen with a tray of dishes and coffee cups. She looked exactly the same from when I last saw her, only this time she wore cranberry corduroy jeans and a white button-down stretch shirt. She said hello, then put down the tray to extend her hand to me.

            “Amber?” she said.

            “Andi,” I corrected. David looked mortified.

            “I’m sorry. Hi, I’m Joannie.”

Just then a young girl flew down the stairs, her flaxen hair cascading behind her. She looked to be about thirteen.

            “Who’s here, Mom?” she called halfway down the stairs, jumping from the last three, and came to a halt when she saw us.

            “Hey Missy,” David said, giving her head a tousle.

            “Oh, hey Uncle David. Wanna see what I found on You Tube? You’ll like it—it’s from the
eighties
,” she taunted.

            “First I want you to meet someone.”

It took me a moment to realize that this was Meredith, the little girl with whom I had colored pictures that evening following David’s father’s funeral. She was barely six years old then; thus, I didn’t expect her to remember me. Still, my face lit up when I saw her.

“Wow! You’ve grown up so much since the last time I saw you!”

“That’s right!” David said as the memory came to him, and he shared it. Meredith shrugged her shoulders either out of shyness or disinterest.

“Are you going to be my new aunt?” she asked. It was nice to see her blunt honesty was still intact. I glanced at her uncle and raised my eyebrows, as he raised his arms in defense and donned a don’t-look-at-me expression. Joannie invited us to sit in the living room while she served apple pie and coffee. David and I sat on the sofa together, our legs touching and his arm around me, and Joannie and Marjorie sat in chairs flanking the sofa on opposite sides, forming a conversation nook. Meredith slouched on the sofa next to David, preoccupied with her pie and milk.

“So,” Joannie said, “tell me again how you met? I’ve forgotten.”

David and I exchanged nervous glances. “We met at a cocktail party,” I said. I looked at him. “Eight years ago, yes?”

“You weren’t one of his…”

“Please,” Marjorie interrupted, either to keep a fight from coming on or from bringing up his shady past in front of Meredith, or both.

“No,” he lied, his voice curt and sharp. I almost expected him to tack on, “Well, not exactly…”

“But you got married shortly after our father died—isn’t that right?”

“Well, I left New York shortly afterwards, and got married about a year later.”

“So how did you and David get back together—I mean, how did you meet again?”

Her questions felt more like an interrogation than getting-to-know-you.

“Would you believe in Rome?” I said.

“Where?”

David and I exchanged glances again.

“I turned around and there she was,” he responded. I let out a small cough to stifle my laugh before taking a sip of coffee.

“Sounds romantic,” said Joannie. But Marjorie squinted at David as if she knew he was withholding a crucial detail. How do mothers know these things?

“Well,” she said to her brother, “it’s nice to see you’ve finally met someone you can actually bring home.”

“Don’t start, Jo,” he said, annoyed.

“I’m just saying—”

“—Say nothing.”

“This pie is delicious,” I interjected, and turned to David. “Wanna split a second piece with me, Dev?”

It took less than a nanosecond for me to catch myself, but a nanosecond too late to stop it from spilling out. I started to gasp, but caught that too as David squeezed my arm.

“
Dev
?” said Joannie.

“Dave,” he said in an attempt to yank out the foot I’d just rammed into my mouth.

“
Dave?
” she and her mother said in unison.

“Since when do you like to be called ‘Dave’?” Marjorie asked.

“I heard ‘Dev’,” said Joannie.  

“It’s a nickname,” I said. “You know, like a pet name.”

“Why ‘Dev’?” his sister interrogated.

“You call Meredith ‘Missy’,” David said.

“You always hated ‘Dave’,” said Marjorie.

“She didn’t say ‘Dave’, okay?” he said, raising his voice.

“Who, Annie?” said Meredith.

“
Andi
,” David and I said at the same time.

“What does he call you?” Joannie asked me.

“Cupcake,” I said. Which was, in fact, the name Maggie used from time to time.

“
Cupcake
? That is so degrading,” said Joannie.

“I don’t call her ‘cupcake’. I don’t call her anything.”

“I
love
cupcakes,” said Meredith.

“Me too,” I concurred.

“Shall we start over again?” David asked.

“Who’s on first!” I said.

Meredith hopped up. “Do we have any chocolate cake left?”

I hopped up too. “Can I help you look?”

“Sure.” With that, I followed her into the kitchen.

Almost two hours later, as I was coming down the hallway from the bathroom, David ambushed me from the opposite direction, pushed me into a dark room and closed the door behind us, kissing me hard at the same time.

“Cupcake?”

I laughed and then quickly covered my mouth. “I am so sorry.” I said softly. “It just slipped out. Do you think she knows now?”

“They never knew my escort name.”

“Well, how far-fetched can it be, then? You’ll think of something, schmooze-boy.”

“Well, you’re off the hook for now, Hot Lips—”

“—See? You do have a pet name for me.”

“—but next time I’m gonna have to kick the crap out of you.”

“I didn’t know metrosexuals could do that.”

He laughed and kissed me again, making an “Mmmmmm” noise. Hi mother was right; he smelled really good.

“Ever do it in someone else’s house?” he asked. He had me pinned against the door and moved his hand along my thigh and up my skirt while my memory flashed to Sam doing the exact same thing right before he went out for the damn cider.

“Sam and I did it in his office at school one time.”

I wasn’t sure if I was getting more turned on by the memory or David’s present moves.

“Wanna do it now?” he kissed me again and touched me. I started breathing heavily.

“Won’t we be missed?” I asked, undoing his fly.

“They’re doing the dishes.”

“Where are we, anyway?”

He started grinding me. “I think it’s the guest room.”

“You
think
?”

“I hope it’s the guest room.”

“Isn’t your mother staying in the guest room?”

“Shut up.” He kissed me hard again.

Shortly thereafter, we came out of the room, got our coats, and said our goodbyes, both of us trying to hide our elation. I felt flushed and kept fixing my hair, convinced it had become tousled and unruly. David had to take my hand away and hold it.

“It was so nice to finally meet you again, Andi,” Marjorie said.

“Yes,” I said. “I had a wonderful time.” David squeezed my hand.

“Come any time,” said Joannie.

With that, David and I exchanged glances one last time and burst out laughing. “We will,” we said in unison.

When we pulled into the driveway of my mother’s house, he leaned in and kissed me again—I could still taste the apple pie and coffee on his tongue.

“Have I told you lately how great a lover you are?” he asked in a dreamy voice.

I smiled slyly. “Tell me again.”

“You’re fantastic.”

“I had a good teacher.”

He returned the same sly smile. “Thanks,” he said.

“You’re very proud of yourself right now, aren’t you.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I had actually been thinking of Sam as the teacher. And yet, I knew that had it not been for him, for
Devin
, Sam never would have had the chance.

And I loved them both.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Christmas Eve

           
“C
OME TO MIDNIGHT MASS WITH ME TONIGHT,” David begged. “Please? You don’t have to sing or pray or receive Communion. Just be with me. You can consider it a present to me.”

            I sighed in surrender. “Okay.”

            I hadn’t been to any church since Sam’s funeral. Before that, a handful of baptisms and weddings (including my own), and David’s father’s funeral. Before my father’s death, we hadn’t missed a single Sunday of church—we’d be the first to arrive and the last to leave, and God forbid Joey or Tony or I fidgeted or talked to each other during the mass—my father would give us hell. My brothers never went for it—they found Catholicism too constraining for their nonconforming ids, even though I had argued early on that Jesus was both a rebel and a rock star in his day. After my father died, however, my mom stopped going. She ignored the phone calls from the pastor and avoided the parishioners who attempted to say hello to her in the supermarket. I suppose she blamed God for my dad’s death, and I understood this all too well. And yet, since Sam’s death, I was still sticking to the idea that there was no God to blame—or, at least, no God that gave a damn whether I blamed him or not.

My dread intensified with every minute leading up to midnight mass; but David rarely, if ever, asked anything of me, and I thought it’d be a good way to make amends for all my self-absorbed grief by doing something that meant so much to him.

            “What made you go back to church in the first place?” I asked him earlier that afternoon at a café.

            “I’m not sure, exactly. I was in Italy a few years ago, heard the chimes from a nearby church, and it was like they were calling me, hokey as that sounds. So I went in, and something about it felt good. Peaceful.”

            “Can we sit in the back?” I asked as we turned the corner and approached the church. It was a frosty twenty-five degrees outside and we strode quickly and closely together for warmth.

            “Sure,” he said. I thanked him and took his gloved hand into mine as we entered the crowded sanctuary. My heart tightened and went into my throat; the image from Sam’s funeral—the sea of black—flashed before my eyes. However, unlike the somber faces from that day, this congregation was jovial and bright, decked out in furs and wool and fleece coats, kids trying to keep their tired eyes open with anticipation of coming home to a bountiful tree, and gleeful faces all around. Some even approached David and wished him Merry Christmas. “My gallery patrons,” he said of a few. Others he knew solely from attending mass each week.