Objects of My Affection (19 page)

“That's good. There's nothing worse than a man who wants a woman to do all the work. You'd be surprised at how many great men are dreadful in the sack.”

I'm dying to ask her the juicy details:
What great men? Did you sleep with anybody I'd know? And what made you suspect there was something between Daniel and me?
Too chicken to do so, I instead say, “These paintings are stunning. Do you have a favorite?”

She gazes about, as if she can't recall what's in here. “I suppose that's rather like choosing a favorite food. It depends upon one's mood.”

“How about
Woman, Freshly Tossed
? Is that here?”

“No.” She picks up the paper again, briskly opening it with a snapping sound—a clear signal that our conversation has ended. “That one is not here.”

M
y phone is fully charged. I'm sitting on the couch in the bungalow. Five minutes to go until I call Ash. I've told Niko—who has had the crew packing up the theater room all afternoon while I'd itemized—that no one is to disturb me from five o'clock to five ten.
When he cracked a joke about how it couldn't be that hot a date if it was only ten minutes, I couldn't resist telling him the real reason. Sort of. I may have edited out the part about rehab. The essence, anyway, is that I haven't talked to my son in a long time, and I will be. In five minutes.

Four
now.

At last I call and get through to Dr. Paul. “I've got Ash with me here. I'm going to put you on speakerphone. The two of you can talk. I'll be here if you need me.” There's a clatter, some clicking, and then Dr. Paul again. “Can you hear me?”

My mouth has gone dry. “Yes.” I'd been anticipating a one-on-one with Ash. Now this feels like a performance, with Dr. Paul as both audience and judge. I'm playing the role of Mom, and I can't remember any of my lines.

“Hi, Ash,” I say.

“Hey.”

“It's nice to hear your voice. I'm glad you were willing to talk to me.”

“Yeah. Okay.” This is mumbled.

Now what? I was close enough to this boy at one point that I once licked melted Popsicle off his face when I didn't have a cloth—now I haven't a thing to say to him. Although I could start with an apology for licking his face.

“How is everything going?” I ask.

“Cool.”

“How do you like the food?”

“It's cool.”

“Do you have a roommate?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like him?”

“Yeah, he's cool.”

I'm dying here. I'm covered in flop sweat. Only about twenty seconds into the conversation—one I've been looking forward to for weeks—and I can't wait for it to be over.

I put in an appeal. “Dr. Paul? What are Ash and I supposed to be talking about?”

“Whatever you'd like,” he says.

Whatever I'd like. I'd like for our conversation to be less awkward. But it doesn't appear that's going to be happening anytime soon.

“Everything is going well here,” I say. “I have a new job. I'm helping a woman clean out her home. It's super-cluttered.” I give a weak laugh. “You remember what a neat freak I can be.”

“Yeah. That sounds cool.”

I decide to wait Ash out—if I don't say anything, he'll step up and do more than give me one- and two-word answers. A solid minute ticks by with neither of us saying a word. Finally, Dr. Paul takes pity on me. “Ash, maybe you want to talk to your mom about what we were discussing right before she called.”

There's a low mumbling between the two of them.

“Lucy,” Dr. Paul says. “Can I confirm for Ash that he's free to say anything to you?”

With loins girded, I say, “Sure.”

We observe another near minute of silence. At last Ash says, “I'm starting to understand why it is I got into drugs.”

“You are?”

Please don't say it's because of me … please don't say it's because of me …

“I do it—that is, I
did
it—because I didn't have a dad around.”

Whew. It's not my fault. Thank you thank you thank you …

“And you weren't strict enough,” he continues, “like a dad would have been. If I'd had one.”

Crap.

“And you never noticed what was going on. Ever. Even when it was so frigging obvious.”

“Like what?” I ask, though I'm already mentally ticking off a list of what I hope he doesn't say. The foil on his windows he said was because the streetlights bothered him … the white powder that was “caffeine” … his ability to stay awake for days on end …

“Come on, you didn't see a two-foot bong in my room?”

“Oh, I saw it.” I sound defensive but, darn it, somebody needs to defend me. “At the time, it seemed the lesser of a lot of evils.”

I hear more mumbling, and then “I guess what I'm saying is that I'm pissed I got into any of it at all. And when I did, that you didn't stop me.”

“You're mad that I didn't stop you from doing drugs.”

“If you had, I wouldn't be an addict now.”

Addict.

It's the word I've been avoiding through all of this. Even as I was sending him away, it was for his
drug problem
, his
drug use
. At the time, Ash certainly didn't think he had a problem.
I
had the problem for not understanding that he was just a guy that liked to party. Now he's using the
A-word.

He's faced it, and I suppose it's time I did, too.

Ash is an addict. I'm the mother of an addict.

“Ash, I
tried
to stop you. I did everything I knew to—”

“You tried too late.”

Dr. Paul finally decides to earn some of that money I'm paying him and pipes in, “Ash, I'm going to challenge what you said. I don't believe you. You're here. Making progress on your recovery. So why would you do that if it's too late?”

I press my lips together, resisting the urge to answer for Ash, to supply the answer
I'd
like to hear.

“Nah, it's not too late,” Ash replies at last.

W
e finish the call soon after, ending on what I consider a high note. In celebration, I grab a yogurt from my minifridge. Being cherry-cheesecake-flavored, it's the closest thing to a treat I have on hand. I pop it open and take a spoonful, immediately pitying anyone who thinks this is what cheesecake tastes like.

As I eat, Ash's words run through my head.
It's not too late.

Until I heard him say it, I hadn't realized how badly I needed
some acknowledgment from him that he believes he can succeed in rehab. Since sending him off, I've been shouldering the hope on my own. With those simple words, even with all the crap that preceded them, I at last feel that Ash has hope, too. He's the one that actually has to do the work—as much as I'd love to jump in and do it for him, I can't—so this feels like an important step.

I'm chucking the empty yogurt container in the trash when there's a knock on the door. I open it, and Niko is standing there, smiling so broadly that it's as if I peeled back the curtains to let in a ray of sunshine.

“I was leaving for the day,” he says. “Thought I'd stop by to see how your call went. You were so excited about it.”

Since I'm still enjoying that Niko doesn't know about Ash's situation—freeing me from having to worry about whether he thinks less of me because of it—I merely answer, “Fine, thanks.”

“Just fine? You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

He nods. “You know the best way to not talk?”

“What's that?”

“Drinking. Come on, let's go. There's a great pub just a half a mile from here. I'll buy.”

Out of habit I'm about to protest—tell him all the reasons I can't go with him. Then I think, why not? I'm a single woman—in fact, I'm an empty nester, although no one would ever call this cluttered bungalow empty, except perhaps Marva. I'm finally feeling freed of some of my fears about Ash, at least for the moment. He'll be back soon enough, and my focus will have to be on him again. I suppose there's no reason I can't squeeze in a little fun while I have the chance.

“Sounds great,” I say. “Let me grab a sweater.”

N
iko taps his beer bottle against mine. “Cheers!” He has to shout to be heard over the band. “Here's to not talking about whatever it is we're not talking about!”

I hoist mine before taking a swig. “I'll drink to that!”

After that, there's no point in attempting conversation. I sit back and pretend I'm enjoying the band. They're not bad—your typical rock-and-roll band of the quality one might find during happy hour at a pub located between a dry cleaner and a dog wash. I'd prefer that they either not play at all (so I can distract myself by talking to Niko) or play louder (so I can't hear myself think).

Unfortunately, I am left to my thoughts, which keep going back to Ash.

It's been months of ups and downs—although whom am I kidding? Mostly downs. Ever since that moment I realized Ash's problem was bigger than I could handle—and certainly bigger than I'd let myself see.

I'll never forget it. It was five in the morning—Daniel had moved out months before. I woke to Ash shaking me, telling me I needed to go pay a cabdriver. Grabbing my wallet, I stumbled outside, confused and muddled with sleep. At least Ash took a cab. I'd asked him to do that—told him if he was ever unsafe to drive, he shouldn't. Take a
cab, I'd said. I'll pay. I knew plenty of parents who've told their kids the same thing.

The driver was a stocky, swarthy man wearing a Members Only jacket and a furious expression. Before I could apologize for taking so long—I was half-asleep, cut a gal a break—he said, “Fare's fifty-three bucks. Was that your kid?”

“Um. Yes.”

“You have any idea where I brought him back from?”

I shook my head as I rifled through my wallet. I found three twenties and held them out to him. He grabbed the money from my hand and gave a snort of disgust. “Your son was in a place he had no business being. It doesn't bother you that he's in a crack house? You come out here and pay for his ride like nothin' happened?”

“I … uh …”
Crack house? Did he say crack house?

“He's a sharp-looking kid. This is a nice neighborhood. And you're a damn fool,” he said, climbing back into his cab while I stood there, unable to do anything else. “It's time you wake up, lady, before you find that kid dead.”

I push the thought from my head, draining the last of my beer. That was then, this is now. In my new and improved now, the band is announcing that they'll be taking a short break. Niko excuses himself to go grab another round.

While he's at the bar, I give in to my inner twelve-year-old and text Heather.

I'M HAVING DRINKS WITH NIKO!

She texts me back within seconds:
OMG! GO FOR IT!

Go for what, I'm not entirely certain. As I see Niko approach the table—the appreciative gaze of more than one woman on him—I suppose I could come up with a thing or two.

I feel myself flush. I'm so out of practice having sexy thoughts about a man—even one as blatantly attractive as Niko—I'm afraid that my doing so made a horrible, creaking noise as something rusty and unused in me gave way. Like the opening of an ancient crypt. And that was only because I'd noticed how his biceps flexed beneath
his T-shirt as he held a pitcher and glasses. Imagine if I thought about him tugging off that shirt and …

Creeeeeeeak.
Hmm, perhaps this isn't the time to entertain such thoughts. “A pitcher, huh?” I say. “What—you think you can come crawling in late tomorrow because the boss will be gone?” Marva is going to be at the hospital having some procedure done. As long as she's out, I've asked Smitty to pick up the first round of auction items.

“I'm gonna miss having her around,” Niko says. “She adds such a nice touch of crazy to the place.”

“You have to admit, it's never boring.”

“How about yesterday when Torch found the broken statue?”

I groan at the memory of it. Marva was there in the living room when Torch, Niko's cousin with the muttonchops, unearthed a fertility-god statue—and let's just say, the part that broke off was key to its fertility. Torch fell apart laughing. That was, until I snapped at him to stop because I could see Marva was failing to see the humor. She stormed off, and it took me an hour to talk her out of insisting that Niko fire Torch. She was convinced his carelessness had broken the statue. “It was buried underneath a bunch of boxes,” I'd said. “Frankly, it's a miracle we haven't found more that's damaged than we have. As we go on, we will.” When that didn't get through to her, I said, “Look, it's a broken penis. There are worse things.”