Custody (39 page)

“That’s not it at all, Anne. I just had some plans for next weekend.”

“Oh?”

Tessa strained her ears. Silence.

“I suppose it’s a woman.” Anne’s voice was bitter. “I should have realized you’d put your own desires before Tessa’s needs.”

Her father sighed again. “Look, Anne … Oh, hell. I’ll take Tessa to Nantucket next weekend.”

“Not if it’s going to be a hardship for you.”

“Anne, it’s never a
hardship
for me to be with my daughter. I’m just going to have to rearrange some plans, that’s all. I’ll phone Sarah tonight and tell her we’ll come. I’ll see if I can reschedule my Friday afternoon appointments, and perhaps we can leave before the rush.”

“Let me know so I can have Tessa ready.”

“Of course.”

“Good. That’s settled.”

“Anything else?”

“No. Only have Tessa back by noon today.”

“All right.”

Tessa tiptoed back up the hall toward the front stairs, but she could still hear their voices.

“And Randall, do me a favor, would you? When you take her for breakfast, see that she eats fruit. Don’t fill her up on pancakes and sweet junk, please? Every weekend you undo all the good I’ve done during the week.”

“Anne, I’ll say it again. Tessa’s too thin. I’m a doctor, and—”

“And I’m a nurse, and a woman. Oh, I don’t know why I even try. Go on. She’s up in her room.”

Tessa sped up the stairs and into her room so they wouldn’t know she’d been spying on them. That would make both of them angry.

Back at her apartment, Kelly forced herself to focus on her packing. Her fourth and final judicial training session would take place in Nantucket, where the judge often had only two or three days
a month in court. But because there were two acrimonious and complicated divorces on the docket, Judge Calloway had told her to plan on staying the entire week. Still, Kelly tossed in a bathing suit, on the chance that court might adjourn early, allowing her time to get to the beach.

At her desk, she double-checked her Palm Pilot: she had a reservation on the fast ferry for seven o’clock this evening, which meant she had to leave for the drive down to Hyannis no later than five.

If Randall came to her apartment around one, that would leave them a good four hours to be alone together. Long enough for her to share her conjecture about Tessa with him. Long enough to begin a difficult discussion.

A knock sounded on the door. Heading down the hall, she pondered: Jason? No. He was angry with her. He’d told her he was going sailing with friends on the Vineyard today. Randall? Not yet. Donna was in Maine with her parents.

She looked through the peephole.

A Gothic angel stood there, slouching. Thick black hair clouded over a pale face. Black jeans, black turtleneck. In this heat, a black turtleneck. Who the hell—?

Felicity
.

René Lambrousco’s daughter.

Her mother’s other daughter.

Her half sister.

Kelly opened the door. “Felicity?”

Felicity’s eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. Her lipstick was black. In one hand she held a scuffed duffel bag, in the other a suitcase tied with rope.

“Can I come in?”

“Well … yes, of course. Are you all right?”

“I’ve got to live with you.”

Kelly stared at the girl, dumbfounded. The girl stood there, blackly implacable as the thirteenth fairy.

“I really have to pee.” Felicity dumped her bags on the floor just inside the door. “Which way’s your bathroom?”

“Second door. On the left.”

Felicity glanced around. “God, did you just move in?”

“No.”

“Then why don’t you have anything pretty in here? It looks like, I don’t know, the home
of a serial killer or something. It’s way too clean.”

Kelly put her hands on her hips. “I thought you had to use the bathroom.”

“I’m
going
.” Felicity took her stormy self off.

Kelly’s mind raced. She’d seen Felicity only twice in her life, once at their mother’s bedside and again at their mother’s funeral. Where had the girl found the nerve to just show up like this with her impossible announcement?

What a dumb question … Nature had no doubt bequeathed René’s daughter René’s arrogance, while René’s example had taught her audacity as a way of life.

Felicity came out of the bathroom. “I’m starving. What do you have to eat?”

“Not much, I’m afraid … I’m going to be gone all this week, I hadn’t stocked up …”

Felicity peered into Kelly’s cupboards. “You’ve got to have peanut butter.”

Kelly folded her arms and leaned against the folding door separating the tiny efficiency kitchen from the rest of the living space. “Actually, no.”

“Jeez.” Felicity opened the freezer. “I’ll just have ice cream.”

“Look,” Kelly said, deciding it was time she reclaimed her territory, “you can’t eat only ice cream. Sit down. I’ll heat up some soup for you—”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“It’s tomato soup. And I’ve got a nice bit of cheddar left. I’ll make you a grilled cheese sandwich. Okay?”

Felicity plopped down on a chair. “Great.”

Kelly blinked. How had this happened? The girl had been in Felicity’s apartment five minutes, and already Kelly had become Felicity’s servant.

Moving aside a small jar of caviar and a tin of sardines, Kelly took out the can of soup, opened it, poured it into a bowl, and set the bowl in the microwave.

“So. What’s going on?” she asked as she melted butter in a skillet.

Felicity shrugged. Her dark glasses obscured all emotion. “René’s moving to L.A. I can’t go with him.”

“Why is he moving to L.A.?”

“Because,” Felicity said in the patient tone necessary for an imbecile, “Elizabeth thinks he should try to make it in the movies.”

“Elizabeth?”

“His girlfriend.”

Kelly turned from the stove. “His girlfriend? That was fast. He certainly didn’t spend
much time mourning.”

“
Duh
. He was with Elizabeth the whole time Mom was in the hospital.”

“I had no idea.” Asshole, she thought, flipping the sandwich over to brown the other side. “Is he going to marry this Elizabeth?”

“I doubt it. I think René’s decided that marriage kind of cramps his style.”

Kelly punched the microwave on. “Milk?”

“I’m not a kid! Don’t you have some Coke?”

“Did no one teach you the word
please
?”

Felicity glared “
Please
.”

“Fine.” Kelly filled a glass with ice and set it, along with a can of Coke, in front of the girl. The timer on the microwave dinged, and she slid the bowl of steaming soup onto a plate and put it next to the sandwich. Fishing a knife, fork, and spoon from the drawer, she arranged them at Felicity’s place with a paper napkin beneath the fork. She lifted the grilled cheese sandwich, nicely toasted, onto a plate and set it in front of Felicity.

Her fingers had scarcely left the utensils when Felicity grabbed the sandwich up and bit off a savage bite. Kelly filled a glass with ice and water for herself and sat down at the table across from the girl, studying her as she ate. Felicity’s hands were trembling, and her hair, Kelly now realized, was lank and oily. Her skin was specked with red zits and black dots of acne. She was too thin. A terrible and uncomfortable pity moved through Kelly.

“Are you living in the same apartment you were this spring?”

Around the final bite of sandwich, Felicity answered, “Until the end of the month we are. Then Dad says they’re moving to L.A.”

“And you don’t want to go.”

The girl snorted. “
No
. They don’t want me to go, either.”

“Your father doesn’t want you to go with them?”

“Why are you so surprised?”

Kelly blinked. “Well, Felicity, you are his daughter—”

“Big fucking deal.”

“Please don’t use that language. And let me finish. René is your father. He’s legally responsible for you until you’re eighteen.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Sue him?” Her sandwich finished, Felicity slurped a spoonful of soup.

Resting her elbows on the table, Kelly steepled her fingers and leaned on them. “Let’s try
a different approach. How much money did Mother leave you?”

“Please. You must be kidding.”

“There has to be some money. When my mother married your father, she had quite a hefty bank balance, thanks to my father’s parents. It was money, just for your information, that my grandparents intended to go to me.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, they never spent any of that money on me.” Felicity picked up her bowl with both hands and drank the rest of the soup. She set the bowl back down.

“That can’t be true. And you have a soup mustache.”

Felicity swiped at her mouth with the napkin. “We have always been poor.
Always
.”

“Even when you were a baby? Even when you were all living in New York?”

Felicity shrugged. “Maybe not then. Maybe not
poor
. I was too young to remember. Sometimes we were better off than others. For a few years, while I was in elementary school, Dad was artistic director of an actors’ troupe in Ohio. I liked it there. We lived in a real house. Rented, but it was like what I thought home should be. But Dad hated it there. He wanted to go back to New York. Thought he’d never be ‘discovered’ in the boondocks. So we went back.”

“And you’ve lived in Boston how long?”

“We came here last October. Now can I have ice cream?”

Kelly brought her the pint of Cherry Garcia and another bowl and spoon. “Help yourself.”

“Can I have it all?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Then I don’t need a bowl.” Felicity stabbed her spoon into the container.

“If René doesn’t want you going with him to L.A., what does he propose you do?”

“Move in with you, of course.”

“He might have had the courtesy of asking me how I felt about the proposition.”

“He did try. He says you threw him out of the office.”

Kelly nodded. “He wasn’t clear about what he wanted.” Kelly gave a bitter laugh. “He’s got brass balls. First he takes my inheritance; then he thinks he can just dump responsibility for
his
daughter on me.”

Felicity stopped eating. Very carefully she set the spoon on the table. The girl’s nails, Kelly noticed, were bitten to the quick.

“Look,” Kelly snapped, “for God’s sake, take your sunglasses off, Felicity.”

“I know René’s my father, and I know he’s awful,” Felicity said quietly. “But I
am
your half sister. Your mother was my mother, too.”

Kelly stared at the teenager, whose hair was as black as her father’s, whose face and figure carried her father’s lines.

Then Felicity removed her glasses, and Kelly looked into her mother’s eyes.

Mont Madison was up on a ladder, painting Evangeline’s room for Tessa. The girl had chosen a deep green, nearly black, and she’d asked for a carpet in the same deep shade.

“Kind of a strange color for a young girl’s room,” Mont had observed.

“That’s probably exactly why she chose it,” Randall had answered.

Tessa wanted her father’s bunk beds moved into her room.

Randall had protested. “Honey, they’re ugly. Scarred, beaten up.”

“I like them.” Tessa was firm. “They’ll make the room feel like a kind of tree house, and I can have a friend sleep over.”

It was humid today in the room. In order to keep the paint fumes from the rest of the house, Mont had shut the bedroom door, which had sealed the room off from the air-conditioning. The two windows were open, but probably they did more harm than good, for the air outside was tropical.

Mont had always enjoyed painting. It delivered results so immediately, and with such power. He found the act itself soothing, the repetition of dipping and stroking a kind of calming exercise lending itself to meditation.

Randall was hopeful that sometime this fall Tessa would start attending the public school in Concord. Randall seemed optimistic that if Anne won the election in September, which she probably would, she might be feeling happy enough, and busy enough, to allow Tessa to live with Randall and Mont. Their divorce trial was set for next week; too bad they didn’t wait. As far as legal custody, who knew what the judge would decide? Randall’s lawyer had said that for a very young child, there was a “tender years presumption,” that the child would be better off living with her mother. But Tessa was twelve. Also there was a movement in Massachusetts, fathers joining to fight for more equality in custody matters, an issue of which the judges were well aware.