Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (64 page)

“It’s fine, ma.”

“You should talk to him about it.”

“Hey,” I said to the bartender. “Two Jameson’s, rocks.”

“I’m not having any,” Mom said.

“They’re both for me.”

She smiled and punched my arm. “Jon. Always the joker. Listen to me. This radio silence with your father isn’t productive. I mean, he did agree to have the engagement here.”

“You insisted.”

“To save him embarrassment. This thing with him has put me in the middle and to be truthful, it’s stressful.”

She knew how to feel stress, my mother. The management of anxiety was an art form with her, necessitating the use of a cocktail of medications and hospitalizations when she misjudged her secret alcohol intake. Poor Mom. Really. A willing captive in a house as big as an island nation.

It was my turn to flick an imaginary piece of lint off her shoulder. “He took my future in-laws for everything, blew a chunk of it and passed a few million back to them. Not enough for them to get a decent lawyer.”

“It was twelve years ago and it was a legitimate business deal.”

“Legal. It was legal. Not legitimate.”

Despite earlier denials, she took the glass of whiskey, holding it but not putting it to her lips, as if it was a prop. I remembered she drank wine in public and whiskey in private. I was getting muddled already.

“I know they’re your family now, the Carneses. But don’t forget where you came from, young man.”

As if I ever could.

***

The last family party my father and I had attended together had been seven years earlier. Sheila’s birthday had an unfortunate proximity to Christmas, so every one of her birthday parties became Christmas parties. Her house in Palos Verdes perched on the edge of a sheer drop to the ocean. For a mile in each direction, a beach as wide as a sidestreet ribboned at the base of the cliff. But toward the end of that year, the beach disappeared under rushing tides as it rained for twenty days straight.

Children toddled underfoot, with nannies running bent-kneed behind them. Extended family on top of extended family, most drunk or on their way there, myself included, even at sixteen. I did what I wanted, like all my friends. Nothing could happen to us that money couldn’t fix, so no one paid attention.

I had no self-control at that point. I was a loose cannon of temperamental fits, drunken rages, and risky behavior. The last incident had been driving my father’s new Maserati into South Gate to drag my friend Gordon out of a meth house. I’d thrown him into the driver’s side and hit the gas from the passenger’s side to wake his sorry ass out of a stupor. We’d sideswiped his dealer’s Escalade, four-thousand-dollars’ worth, and in the end, Gordon had gone right back to using, but my addiction to nearly dying had been sated for a month, at least.

Then, the week before Christmas, Sheila’s birthday. Los Angles had already had twenty-two inches of rain since school started. There was a rumor Death Valley would have a once-in-a-lifetime bloom, come spring. My friends and I were planning a road trip in Charles’s Hummer just to mow our path over fields of poppies.

I was drunk already, bullshitting with my cousin Arthur over which Ivy League schools we were going to stroll into. Which had the best clubs, where the legacies were. Arthur was a douchebag. The last time I’d driven down Sunset with him, he leaned out of his BMW to make some noise at a girl, which was bad enough. But when she flipped him the bird he shouted, “Man, I bet there’s some guy out there so tired of fucking you.”

“Arthur, really?” I felt like getting out and apologizing to her, but the light turned green and we were gone.

“What, Jon? Look at her. All legs and shit. Fuck her.”

That was the last time I went out with Arthur. But at a family party, as long as we kept to schools and baseball, I could hold a conversation with him.

Sheila’s party graduated from family thing to some kind of pre-Christmas fuckall event, and the kitchen got crowded. I was less and less inclined to move. People I knew came in and out, most not related to me at that point, and aunts and uncles kissed me goodbye and left.

I don’t even know what I was drinking. A bong went around. It was lead crystal and totally illegal, even if the bud wasn’t, and the liquid inside was chartreuse absinthe.

Just because.

The movement of the party shifted down the hall, through the library and into the living room, where I saw my father was still there.

And Rachel had shown up.

***

Was there ever something you wanted, but could only wish for, Jonathan?

I wish I wasn’t raised by crazy people.

Something for the future. That you want, but don’t think you’ll get.

Yes, I—

Don’t tell me. That’ll ruin it.

***

Jessica was nowhere to be found. She didn’t answer my texts or calls. Margie, who had taken her out for the “girl thing” with three other sisters, said my fiancé had left the spa in her Mercedes the hour before.

“Did she have an accident?”

“I don’t know little brother,” Margie said, grabbing a glass of wine before the first guest arrived. “She seemed fine. The usual.”

“What does that mean?” I felt a stab of anger. Seven sisters. A couple were bound to dislike my wife.

“Charming and polite. Warm, even. But not.”

“Howdy!” Leanne came across the empty backyard, grabbing a glass as soon as the bartender poured it. The emerald of her dress brought out the fire engine in her hair. “You should see Jess’s nails. She got a French with an airbrush. So cute.”

“Did you see her out front?” I asked.

“Nope. Are those the cufflinks you’re wearing?” Leanne fixed the flowers in her hair by the reflection in the window. She wanted to make clothes, so Dad had bought her a factory. Another money-losing proposition. Next to Deirdre, the still devout, chronically depressed Irish poet, she was the most creative in the family.

“No,” I said. “I just wore these to offend you.”

“He wants to know how Jessica looked.” Margie said.

“Cool and collected. She’s a rock, you know.” Leanne squeezed my cheeks. “You did good.”

Leanne, who was habitually single at twenty-six because she was a workaholic, had no business judging, even when I agreed with her.

***

I was fifteen, and Rachel was a year and a half older when we began seeing each other, if that’s what you could call it. Discretion was absolutely necessary, so she didn’t come to any family parties. I didn’t want her near my father, period. End of. She knew why. I knew why. No one else did. Her old affair with my father when she was too young and impressionable to know better was a secret bought and paid for with jewelry and electronics. I kept it for her because she wanted it that way, and though I would have loved to tell the world about what kind of animal my father was, the understanding between myself and a few of my sisters, was that Mom would break into a hundred pieces if what she knew in her heart was confirmed. My father was, so far, the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.

Rachel and I were rarely seen in public together unless she went to a Loyola ballgame I pitched, or if I happened to show up at a play she was in. It was hard to stay away from her, but necessary. We didn’t talk about a future past the possibility that we could attend the same college, provided she got a scholarship.

We met in my car, late at night after Mom was passed out. Dad was gone often and he would have let me out the front door anyway. The staff didn’t care, or expected no less: another irresponsible rich brat, in a society full of them, slipping out to debauch himself on school nights.

Rachel had a harder time of it. She had a tough home life. Her stepfather went into a controlling fits, locking her and her mother in the house at night. The windows were barred and the deadbolts had inside keys he slept with. In her closet, Rachel found a trapdoor to the crawlspace under the house. I met her on the corner. Seeing her walk even a block in the dark in that neighborhood twisted my stomach in knots, every time. I never got used to it. Usually, when she got into the car, I laughed from released tension and the sight of cobwebs in her hair.

She attended Marlborough on a hefty financial aid package which was still a stretch for her parents, and was required to maintain a GPA of 3.75 or face the budget cuts and substandard educational opportunities of the LAUSD. She was in the home stretch. Smart, diligent, studious, and yes, beautiful; she would be the first in her family to attend a top school and get a medical degree. I’d have followed her anywhere. Business schools were a dime a dozen, and Dad would buy me entry to the university of my choice, even if I never told him why the choice was made. In this case, Rachel and I chose University of Pennsylvania and crossed our fingers, she for Perelman School of Medicine, and I for Wharton a year later. It was Ivy League, which was easy for me, and hard for her.

All this meant she didn’t have the time or permission to drive around in my Mercedes, or run into hotel rooms with me. But we were young, and infatuated, and on the cusp of freedom, or in her case, death.

***

What do you mean by “wish” then, Rachel?

Like, hope you get something you know is impossible, but hope anyway.

I wish I could be with you like a normal person.

What’s normal to someone like you?

***

The backyard buzzed with activity. Fiona, never one to miss an opportunity to invite Deirdre’s scorn, had managed to book psychics, tarot card readers, crystal healers and a hypnotist for the cocktail hour.

The black baby grand had been brought onto the patio, and the four musicians Dad had plucked from some music school in central LA set up stands and instruments. Piano, two violins, and cello. Except the first violinist wasn’t tuning a violin. She was tuning a viola. Hardly worth making a fuss over, except she was stunning, with full lips and long, dark hair. She had to be five-ten in flat feet, with a chin that pointed upwards as if daring the world to hit her on the jaw.

“She’s magnificent, no?”

My father’s voice beside me, admiring a girl who was probably in high school. I looked away quickly.

“Jail bait, dad. Ever hear of it?” I turned to face him. In his late fifties, he was still a good-looking guy. His red hair had turned completely silver five years earlier, and stayed fully attached to his head. The girls loved him. And when I said girls, I meant just that. Girls.

“You’re avoiding me. I was looking for some common ground.”

“Uh-huh.” I didn’t know where to start with him. Common-ground wise, we had Rachel. That was awkward enough. I glanced around. We were relatively alone, a situation Mom never let slide if she could.

He spoke quietly, barely moving his lips. “You never stop wanting them that age. Every man fantasizes about the dew on the flower.”

“You’re sick.”

“Were you not just looking at that girl? She can’t be a day over fifteen. On the evening of your engagement, no less. It’s time to accept reality, son. The need is biological. You can fight it your whole life if you want to, but it will be a fight.”

He looked like he’d wanted to say that to me for a long time. Like it was some kind of big talk every man gives their son, and it had been denied him by my avoidance and Mom’s intervention.

“We aren’t having a meeting of the minds on underage girls.”

“Except the one,” he said as if we had some delightful shared history.

“I’m going to need you to stay away from my wife, and if there are children, especially if there are children—“

He got that look. The one like he was being electrocuted. It was hard rage directed forward. I’d only seen it once before, days after I found out what he was and I saw him touching Theresa’s arm when he spoke to her.

“Do not ever presume that I don’t have boundaries, son.”

Much as an animal won’t shit where they eat, he’d never touched any of my sisters, but when I flew at him I didn’t know that. We may have been evenly matched the day he laid a chaste touch on Theresa, but at my engagement party, I was older, taller, and less fearful.

“You will never be alone with my children,” I said. “Those are
my
boundaries.” I took a gulp of my whiskey. Too much. The drink would never last if I kept doing that. But I needed to do more than let the liquid touch my lips when I stared at him over the glass.

“I wanted to just elope somewhere far away,” I said, seeing Mom coming up behind him, “so there would be no problems with Jessica’s family. But it wasn’t possible. I’m sorry you’ve been insulted in the process. Truly.”

He smirked, because he knew the kinder tone and change of subject must have come for one reason. He and I had come to blows after Rachel’s accident, and I’d taken a handful of pills. Mom didn’t let us alone in the same room if she could avoid it. Over the past seven years, she’d run a pretty tight interference. I had to admire her aversion to conflict. It had kept her in a state of blissful, drunken ignorance that my sisters and I had sworn to protect until death.

Dad took the opportunity to clap me on the back just as the string quartet started warming up.

“No worries, son. No worries. It was just business. Can’t win at it and make friends, too.”

I smiled, not mentioning the tens of millions in payoff money that had drained him to the point where only shady deals kept him afloat. Nope. It was all smiles when Mom reached us. Dad put his arm around her and I made it a point to shake his hand like a gentleman so she would enjoy the rest of the evening.

“Jonny! Come over here?”

“Come on!”

“This is perfect!”

It was the sound of a gaggle of sisters. Four rushed up in green dresses and varying shades of strawberry chignon. Margie, Sheila, Leanne, and Theresa. Their voices became a cheering chatter.

“You have to see the hypnotist.”

“He’s going to relax you.”

“You’re too tense.”

“A teepee and a wigwam!”

“It’ll only take a second.”

The drink was taken from my hand and I felt myself being pulled to a guy in a fedora and handlebar moustache sitting by one of our chaise lounges.