Reunion (26 page)

“So, Mom, remember that thing I told you I would be doing with Dad this fall? The TV project?”

“What, that Hemingway thing?”

“It’s Hemingway and several others. A whole series is what he’s got planned.”

“Okay.” She cleared the dishes and turned on the water to wash them right away.

He got the dish towel and stood beside her. “Right, so, I stopped off at Daniel and Lynn’s before coming home—”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“No, well, it was just for the weekend. Really, it was completely last-minute. Dad was there to check out some Hemingway-related stuff and, coincidentally, Blue Reynolds was there—”

“Doing her show on location, I know. I saw some of that! They had Jimmy Buffett on—he did that funny song, the cheeseburger one.”

“So, it turns out she and Dad go way back, and, long story short, she thought she could help him with the series—”

“Way back to when?”

“What? Oh. I guess to when he still lived here in Chicago.”

This information stopped her questions for a moment. She stood very still, looking at him but
not
at him, then she said, “No; the show’s just ten years old, they did an anniversary special last fall.”

“It was before the show, when she was pretty young, Daniel said. Anyway,” he pushed on, wanting to get her off whatever anxious track she was poised to go down, “Blue’s production company—”

“Harmony. Her company, it’s called Harmony Productions, the logo’s at the end of every show. Wait—” She put her hand out. “Just hold on.”

Oh hell, here she goes.

“Don’t tell me
she’s
Harmony Blue … something. It wasn’t Reynolds … but what was it? Something Polish or Italian …” She looked up. “Right? Am I right? Harmony Blue is her real name?”

“I gather,” he said, puzzled by the tack she’d taken. What did this have to do with anything?

“She was the one he was dating the winter before he moved,” she said, nodding. “I can’t believe I never put it together before—but why would I? God, it was at least a dozen years later …”

“What was?”

“The show. And I didn’t start watching until, oh, maybe the fourth season. It never even crossed my mind—the ‘Harmony’ Productions, and the ‘Blue’ …”

Julian was sure she was about to discover her way right off a cliff—but instead, she drew him back to the kitchen table. “Come sit down. I have to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago.”

Nothing had been going right that winter when he was ten, she said. She’d slipped on the icy back steps and broken her wrist just before Christmas, which meant she couldn’t work (she was doing temp secretarial work then) which meant she couldn’t pay her January bills until at least February, which would lead to trying to catch up February’s and failing to cover March, April… who knew where it would end? Yes, she got child support and his father was paying half the mortgage, but she didn’t have a stable income let alone a career;
he, Julian
was her career, and he was being difficult, too. Always wanting to know when he could see his father, making her feel so inadequate, making her angry at Mitch, making her want to punish both father and son, even though she knew it was wrong.

She said, “Why did
he
get to be your favorite, that’s what I couldn’t understand. So, you know, I thought, well, if you saw less of him and more of me, you’d remember how much fun we had together when you were little, before you went to school.”

“Mom … I didn’t—I mean, it wasn’t like …” He stopped. What was he supposed to say?

“No, honey, listen, it wasn’t you. I’m trying to say, I did the wrong thing, but that’s how I was thinking at the time.”

Sometime in January or February, his father had come over unannounced. Fed up, but calm. He had a right to see his kid
every
weekend, it was part of their divorce order and if he had to, he’d bring in the sheriff to enforce it. What was her problem anyway, he wanted to know.
He
had gotten on with his life long ago, he told her, and she ought to get on with hers. Date. Go back to school. Something that would take her out of the walled world she’d built for herself.

“I demanded to know who he was seeing—as if I had the right, you know? I made a lot of noise about how his choices affected your well-being, and they did, but really I was just seething with jealousy—seven years after our divorce, and I still wasn’t over it. Oh, I was awful.” She’d made him tell her everything about the woman. A nineteen-year-old who worked for Lynn, whose name was very odd, she’d thought. Harmony Blue, like a flower child, a hippie with no morals and no shame.

She’d latched on to that image, she said, and even though his father assured her that this young woman was in every way a good person and would be a good influence on a young boy, she had made him out to be a pedophile.

“I told him I would get a restraining order, can you imagine? I’d go back to court for full custody and demand supervised visitation. Oh, I was awful, waving my cast around and threatening that if he kept carrying on with a
child
, he’d never see you again.”

She put her hands on the table, leaned down and pressed her forehead to the Formica. Julian stared, unsure what to do, what to say. It was awful, what she’d done to his dad, to Blue—who must have been devastated. It was awful all the way around.

With her head still down, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, no, not
okay
.” She sat up again and looked at him. “Not okay. It gets worse. I blabbed it to the head of his department, to the dean, to everyone at Northwestern whose name I knew. I said they couldn’t trust him, that I knew for a fact he’d slept with several of his students.

“It was pure vindictiveness, not a bit of truth. I was … way out of balance. It’s not okay, but, it’s done. The counselors have always said, accept the crime and its unchangeability Then accept that from this minute, I can choose a crime-free life.”

“Mom, you’re not a criminal.”

“Oh no?”

He shook his head, though with less conviction than he’d intended. So many things were coming clear to him now. “That’s why Dad moved, then?”

“That’s why. His boss said they couldn’t risk any scandals. Anyway,” she sighed, “I’ve done better since the breakdown. Haven’t I? No, I know I have.”

Which was true. No “crimes,” or none that he knew of, in any of the years since. She’d accepted his decision to remain in Key West even after her release from inpatient treatment; she’d supported his career choices; she’d ranted a lot less about his father … and she’d made a life for herself, with her support groups and her work. He still worried about her—it was ingrained—but he didn’t fear for her, and that was a small grace they could both appreciate.

“You have done better,” he said. “So. Do you want to know the rest, about Dad and the TV thing?”

“Yes, yes, tell me. Is Harmony Productions going to produce his show?”

She looked so sincerely eager that he wanted to ask,
Are you on new medication?
He held his tongue and told her it was possible.

“I suppose they’d pay him a lot of money,” she said.

“I suppose they would.”

“Good.”

New medication, or his real mother had been abducted by aliens and this look-alike was her replacement.

She was nodding as she said, “I always wanted to meet her. Blue, I mean.”

“Maybe you can.” He told her they’d made the pilot, and that he had another day of editing ahead of him before his father arrived Friday
evening to review the finished film. “Come by the studio and I’ll introduce you.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t—not now, when I know what my actions did to her. God, she must have been heartbroken when he ended it—don’t you think? I can’t meet her now, I’d be mortified! What she must think of me …” She looked like she might cry. Then she brightened a little, saying, “Did you know she’s donated something like twelve million dollars to Illinois mental health programs?”

“No, I guess I didn’t.” He tipped his chair back onto two legs as he fit this new information about Blue into the puzzle she still was to him. A sought-after celebrity; a business mogul; a focused, professional television personality; the girl whose life had been upended by his mother; a generous philanthropist… She was many things.

Yet in his mind she was primarily the quiet, barefooted woman who loved Key West so much that she’d bought a house there purely on impulse. On instinct. If a man wasn’t careful, he could fall for a woman like that.

She was much more than that, though. Too much more, when he included
possible prospect for his father.
How possible? Hard to tell. The wind did seem to be blowing that way, though.

His mother sensed it too: “Wouldn’t it be great if now your dad could put things right with Blue?”

“No.” He sat up, banging the chair’s front legs on the tile floor.

“No? Why not?”

“I—well, that is …”

She gave him a penetrating look. “Don’t you think he’s entitled to some happiness?”

He avoided her eyes. “Of course I do.”

“You’re
jealous,”
she said, and when he glanced at her again, her eyebrows were raised.

“I’m not. I’m—I’m concerned.”

“I don’t think so. Look in the mirror, Julian Forrester. I know that expression, God knows I saw it on my own face enough times. You want his attention all for yourself, is that it? Or wait—is it
hers
that—”

“It’s fine,” he said, standing up and returning to the sink. “If that’s what they want, then it’s fine.” He grabbed the sponge and started scrubbing a bowl that didn’t need to be scrubbed. “It’s good. It’s all good.”

But it wasn’t
all good.
It was in fact no good. Waiting for the train back into the city, he pointed his camera at his fellow travelers’ feet and photographed loafers, sneakers, pointy-toed high heels, and allowed himself to think it through. He did want his father’s attention, up to a point. The real trouble was, he also wanted Blue’s, wanted it viscerally. His want was a hunger.

Well, he’d gone hungry before. “Deal with it,” he muttered as the train pulled in.

t took most of the week following the Key West trip for the crew to get over their sunburns and hangovers and for
TBRS
to return to its clockwork flow. Blue was glad when Friday afternoon finally arrived so that she could begin to unwind. There had not been a single day this week when they weren’t running right up to the edge with some issue or another. The worst had been on Tuesday, when a severe thunderstorm knocked out their power and their generator system failed to start up immediately.
The joie de vivre
from Key West fell apart quickly when so many dollars were at stake.

Second worst was Julian’s presence—or that was Blue’s unspoken opinion. Everyone (herself included) found him more engaging and interesting than even the most comely of the interns they got each season. Even amidst the chaos she was acutely aware of him being there, down the hall from the main studio, editing the
Lions
pilot exactly as she’d offered. The offer had been meant to help Mitch, to give her more opportunities to think about
him.

Julian was a distraction. Unwelcome. Unsettling.

Today, same as every day this week, she’d left for the gym at the earliest possible moment. When she got there, Jeremy had her weigh in.

He frowned when he saw she was still two pounds heavier than she was supposed to be. “How much water did you drink today?”

“I have no idea. Not enough, I’m sure.”

“All right then, I want you to do eight ounces right now, and I’m adding fifteen minutes of cardio.”

“No time for extra cardio,” she said, taking a bottle of water from the cooler. She went to the elliptical machine, where she always began. “I have a six-thirty appointment.”

“It’s two pounds, Blue. I can see them clear as day on your hips and belly.”

So could she; she just couldn’t bring herself to care about them as much as he did. The extra couple of pounds made her hip bones seem … friendlier. While Jeremy programmed the machine, she said, “Let’s just stick to the usual,” and pretended she didn’t notice him shaking his head.

Halfway through her workout, she was ready to quit. Two-thirds of the way through, she did. “That’s it, that’s all you’re getting out of me today,” she said, toweling her face. She ignored his protests as she went to shower, allowing the diva moment to play out only in her head:
I don’t pay you to lecture me. There are five hundred people waiting in line for your job.
It was satisfaction enough.

As soon as she was dry and dressed, she was returning to the studio to meet up with Mitch and, unfortunately, Julian, for an after-hours welcome tour. She’d brought her favorite broken-in jeans and a lime-green Key West T-shirt, hoping the color would lift her up.

Her mother was always talking about clothing color and its effect; this week, her talk had been tailored to the developing wedding plans. Blue and Melody would have the choice of fuchsia or yellow bridesmaid dresses—one daughter in each color, no fighting. Nancy would not be dissuaded by Blue’s worries that she and Calvin were rushing things. “Remember how on an impulse last week you paid two million dollars for a tiny, dated house?”