Tangled Truth (8 page)

All I did was tie her up and fuck her
, he told
himself sternly when he found himself contemplating installing ring bolts in
the sides of his bed frame.
It’s not like we got engaged. It’s only been a
few dates. We’re having fun
.

Eva texted him a smiley at lunchtime. He texted back a
bigger capital-D smiley, the huge dopey grin he had been concealing for hours.
Instead of deleting her text as he usually did, Drew hesitated with his finger
over the phone screen.

He suspected it was a defining moment when he selected Eva’s
smiley and hit “archive”.

* * * * *

“I really don’t know why. She just says she wants to meet
you.”

It made no more sense now than it had the first time Eva had
told him, a few minutes earlier.

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I’m so far from okay with it, I can’t even tell you.”

“Well, that’s something, I guess. But you still want to do
it.”

Eva’s mother. Her whackadoo and possibly evil mother. Taking
them out to dinner on Christmas Eve, because she would “happen to be in town”.

Drew pushed his linguini around on his plate, noting that
the clam sauce was starting to congeal. They had both wanted something rich,
some cold weather comfort food, but now he regretted his order. The heavy meal
had been so much more appetizing ten minutes earlier.

“I think ‘want’ is far too strong a word,” Eva objected.
“But I do think I probably need to go. She
is
my mother, and it’s
Christmas. I only wish she hadn’t found out I was seeing somebody. You really
don’t have to come though. Have dinner with your family. I can meet your
parents another day. They’re staying with Seth until after Christmas, right?”

“Right. Would you have told me about it, the thing with your
mom, if I hadn’t asked you to spend Christmas Eve with me?”

Eva frowned at her minestrone, looking about as thrilled by
it as Drew was by his pasta. “I don’t know. Probably, at some point. I mean,
you’d have to meet her some time, if we—I don’t mean that I’m expecting a
long-term relationship just because of the other night, but if—”

“I am.”

“I guess it’s…oh. Oh.”

Nothing like a declaration of intent to bring a conversation
to a roaring halt.

“And not just because of the other night,” Drew added after
a few moments of torrid silence.

“Do we have to go back to talking about my mother now?”

The waiter cleared his throat, interrupting their overloud
burst of shared laughter, to ask if their meals were satisfactory. When he departed,
Drew reached across the table to twine his fingers through Eva’s.

“I really did want to bring you to Seth’s for Christmas Eve,
but you have to do what you think is right. Obviously you think the right thing
is to have dinner with your mom, so I will come with you and protect you if
necessary.”

His tone was light, but he meant what he said. He felt
protective of Eva in general, lately, wanting to keep the rest of the world
from spoiling the fresh, childlike wonder that had started to emerge as her brittle
shell dissolved. She had been shy about sharing it with him at first, but now
she would relate the beauty of a new painting in the gallery, or her joy at a
snow-covered field that reminded her of Currier & Ives, and he loved it.
Like a kid offering up a noodle painting she’s worked on all afternoon, she
presented these glimpses into her soul, and Drew cherished each one.

* * * * *

Wherever that sense of joy and wonder had come from, he
decided later, it hadn’t come from Eva’s mother.

Dinner with Carolanne Damron, formerly Godfrey, turned out
to be an exercise in forced civility. Drew suspected Eva had just as much
difficulty remaining polite; he could swear at one point during the meal he saw
a vein throbbing on her forehead, like a visible indication of an impending
migraine. Was Eva’s mother evil, Drew wondered, or simply nuts? Or possibly a
combination of the two? He kept himself as entertained as possible by debating
the question with himself. He had to do something to distract himself from the
conversation, that was for sure.

“So Mr. Brantley, you’re one of those computer people?”

“Yes, ma’am, kind of. I supervise a lot of those computer
people, at least.”

“Supervise?” The older woman tapped her fork against the
edge of her plate, putting Drew in mind of the way a lawyer might twirl a
pencil. “I heard—that is I gathered, from what Eva said, that you were an
independent consultant. Isn’t that code for being between jobs, these days?”

The smirk on her face might have angered Drew if he hadn’t
recognized the look. It was Eva’s nervous smile, the same edgy, lopsided twitch
of the lips, and it was more than a little eerie to see it on a face that
looked so much like he suspected Eva would in thirty years. She was still quite
beautiful, the former Mrs. Godfrey, with the figure of a much younger woman and
skin that had been jealously guarded from the sun. But Drew hoped Eva would
never have the look of suspicion and potential for malice that made her mother
look almost ugly despite the good bone structure and fine features.

“It may be,” he acknowledged, “but in my case it means I own
a company that employs consultants. And they deal with computer systems at
other companies. As long as they’re doing good work, and as far as I know they
are, then we all still have jobs.”

Eva, clearly mortified, interjected. “Mom, who did you hear
that from? It wasn’t me. Are you talking to Dad again?”

“Emailing now and then,” her mother replied with a careless
laugh, as though email correspondence was a frivolous game. “I still can’t
stand to look at him or talk on the phone unless I absolutely have to, but
somehow it’s not so bad through email. It’s like it isn’t really him.”

“Like Monopoly money,” Drew volunteered. Eva glanced at him
with a quick smile, but it was pretty clear the analogy was lost on her mother.

“I know Dad is familiar with Drew’s company, we’ve talked
about it. I can’t think why you got the impression he was unemployed.”

“Well, it isn’t as though your father is the most
trustworthy source of information. I hate to say mean things about him behind
his back…”

Drew said it in his mind before Eva’s mother actually spoke
the word.
But
…

“But you know, I wouldn’t have put it past him to
exaggerate, to make the whole thing sound better. More respectable.”

It was like an optical illusion, he decided, fascinating by
the difference between Ms. Damron’s genteel, almost coy tone and the implied
sting of her words. Her quick sidelong glance at Drew however, strongly
suggested she wasn’t really talking about the respectability of his employment.
She suspected him of something. It was clear from her posture, from the tight
set of her lips as she maintained her false smile. She might not know what it
was she suspected yet, but she obviously wanted to find out. Drew wondered if what
he and Eva had enjoyed over the past few weeks even remotely approached
whatever level of depravity Ms. Damron imagined.

“Drew is perfectly respectable, Mom. Dad didn’t have to make
anything up. I’ve never known him to make things up.”

“You remind me so much of him sometimes,” her mother said,
in a fond tone that almost hid the implied insult. Almost. Drew was leaning
toward mean, not merely crazy, as a diagnosis. But he was still undecided.

“Thank you,” Eva said, as if she’d been paid a compliment.
Gracious. Drew admired her spirit, even as it unnerved him to see her playing
this dysfunctional part so very well. “So are you flying home tomorrow, or
staying in town for the holiday?”

“Flying home tomorrow. My sister Barbara lives here,” she
explained to Drew. “In fact she would have been here tonight, but she had to go
make sure the nativity scene at her church was still intact. They’ve had a rash
of vandals. Should I even ask if you’re planning to attend a late service
tonight, Eva?”

“Mom, don’t start. Please? Let’s have a nice dinner.” Eva
was starting to look stiff again, with all her guards up. Drew hadn’t seen her
looking so cold since before their first date. She looked astonishingly like
her mother, he realized.

“Do you attend church, Mr. Brantley?”

“Mom!”

“Where exactly did the two of you meet, again? Eva’s father
wasn’t clear.”

Things were escalating fast, despite Eva’s valiant attempts
to keep the conversation light and pleasant. She’d been pretending all evening
long that her mother wasn’t being catty. Her mother had been pretending, too,
but not quite as well, because she couldn’t really hide the hostility beneath
her words. She loved her daughter, Drew thought, and she was possibly genuinely
concerned for her soul. But she didn’t like her. She wasn’t proud of her,
obviously didn’t respect her. She didn’t seem to see Eva as the beautiful,
strong, amazing woman Drew knew her to be, and under such censure Eva was
freezing up again.

Drew wasn’t sure how to answer. He didn’t want to lie but he
didn’t know what Eva would rather he say. He wished they would both stop
pretending. It was ridiculous, this hinting around the edges. Better to lay it
all out on the table. But that wasn’t his call to make.

“We met at an exhibit of photography by some mutual friends
of ours. I help them out on photo shoots sometimes.”

“Oh, you’re interested in photography?”

And then, for a pleasant if surreal twenty minutes or so,
Drew and Eva’s mother discussed photography like any two people might discuss a
hobby they had in common. Eva relaxed visibly as she joined the conversation,
and Drew felt some of his own strain dissipate. He was surprised by her
mother’s knowledge about photography and art in general, and to learn that she
was a former professional photographer. For some reason it had never occurred
to him that Eva’s artistic predilections came from her mother’s side. He
associated artists with open-mindedness, a willingness to accept alternative
points of view.

Perhaps that willingness was really the important thing Eva
had inherited from her father. It wasn’t the kink, it was the mindset that
allowed for a world in which variance from the norm was an acceptable option.
She’d had to overcome her mother’s influence in order to accept that trait in
herself.

And she had started to overcome it. Drew had worried about
this evening, worried he wouldn’t like watching Eva struggle to gain approval
from her mother. He knew enough to know that adults who still seek that sort of
approval are never able to find it, and the quest could be soul-destroying. But
Eva’s goal, he came to realize as he watched her field her mother’s remarks,
was not to fulfill some thwarted childhood need for praise. As far as he could
tell, she simply wanted to maintain a connection with this lovely woman who charmed
the waiter without even trying, who talked about art and fine wine with such
clear enjoyment. This part of her mother, the good part she had kept. He could
see that it was worth it to her, that at least for now the cost of dealing with
the bad part was high but not impossible.

The cordial tone, once established, made it harder for Ms.
Damron to revert to her earlier mean-spirited digs. All in all, the remainder
of the dinner was much more pleasant—or at least less openly hostile—than Drew
could have hoped for.

Chapter Eight

“I almost outed you,” he admitted to Eva later, when they
were back in his apartment and snuggling under the heavy duvet on his bed.
“When she asked about the photography exhibit. It was on the tip of my tongue
to tell her exactly what kind of photography.”

“Thank you for restraining yourself. Although I think a part
of me wanted you to.”

“Seriously? Because I could call her up. You have her cell
number, right?”

“No, she’s at church with my aunt now, remember? Midnight
service.”

“Midnight…” Drew looked at the bedside clock, confirming the
time. “Merry Christmas, then.”

Eva giggled softly, a fluting sound of happiness that seemed
to warm the space around them nearly as much as the touch of their bodies. “I’d
actually forgotten. Merry Christmas.”

“Do you want your present?”

“You mean there’s a real present, other than the one that
keeps bumping my thigh?”

“Yep. And you’re supposed to be pretending to ignore that.
Pervert.”

She pushed at his chest. “Go get the gift, funny boy.”

Drew shivered as he dashed to his computer desk, where the
brightly wrapped package sat. He detoured to bump up the thermostat a few
degrees.

“Yours is at the gallery,” Eva told him when he returned to
the bed and reclaimed his spot beside her. “I’ll get it for you tomorrow. Later
today. Unless you’re planning to spend all day at Seth’s?”

“Not all day. Only the morning. They’ll open presents, and
everybody will want to see the ring.”

“Oh, that’s right, he proposed tonight. How did it go, I
wonder?”

“Since he didn’t call me asking to go out and get wasted, I
assume it went well. Here, open this. It’s not a big thing. I thought about
getting a bigger thing.”

“I think we’re at that awkward in-between stage where you
aren’t sure which way you should go with things like that.”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “Although since you just said that and
I knew exactly what you meant, I think that officially bumps us into the stage
where I should’ve gotten you a bigger present.”

“That’s also the stage where I can say, ‘there’s always next
year’, right?”

“Ooh, that was smooth. I like how you did that.”

“Thanks. Is this a CD?” She was working the ribbon off the
corners of the flat, square package, and Drew watched her face for her reaction
once she finally got the paper off. It took her a second to register the name
of the band, and then she flipped the package over and trailed her finger down
the list of tracks until she saw
Madman’s Honey
.