Cold Feet (25 page)

On that Sunday morning, however, as I watched the threatening commercial, I didn't feel happy or safe. I felt panicked, although I
wasn't even old enough to correctly identify the emotion. Was that why we lived with Danny? I wondered. Why we didn't have a house? Had we done the bad things warned of in the commercial?

I sat frozen, deep in thought, until I heard the key turn in the door. The second Caro opened it, chatting with Danny and gripping a cloth bag of vegetables, she could see the fear in my eyes.

“What's wrong, sweetie?” She quickly handed the bag to Danny and settled next to me on the couch and he headed back to the kitchen, flashing me a sweet smile on his way.

I told her what I'd seen, slightly nervous about being caught eating cereal in front of the TV, which was discouraged if not verboten, but somehow I understood this was bigger than that. “Mom, did we not pay back our mortgage?” I asked carefully, pronouncing it with the
t
. “Is that why we live here?”

“Our what? Oh, our mortgage? Where did you hear that?”

“On TV. They said if you don't pay your mor . . . mort-gage, or your in-ter-est, then you don't get to keep your house. Is that why we don't have one?” I gripped my small hands into tight balls as I said this, terribly afraid that saying it out loud would make it true. Caro gave me a long look, reaching for the remote to turn off the television with one hand, while she rubbed my back with the other.

“Emma Moon, you are a smart girl. Too smart for your own good. I don't want you to worry about those things anymore. We live here because it's fun and because Danny likes having us here. Right, Danny?” Caro called into the kitchen. He shouted something back in the affirmative, half drowned out by the drumbeats of “Cecilia.”

“Now, will you please help me with the minestrone? I need an
assistant and those zukes aren't gonna chop themselves.” Caro gave me a kiss on the forehead and got up, leaving me sitting there with a nagging feeling in the back of my head. What she said sounded good, but even in my child's mind I understood that there was something missing from her response; there was something she wasn't saying. That she hadn't quite answered the question.

Carefully unlocking the door with the spare key I'd grabbed on the way out, I slowly opened the front door to Dusty and Carrick's apartment.

“Hey, where have you been? Are you okay?” Dusty asked, walking toward me and taking in my expression. “Who was that at the door?”

I shook my head.

“This was too fast, wasn't it? I freaked you out. I'm sorry.”

“No, you don't need to apologize, it's not your fault. The thing is—” I tried to think of the best way to put it. “We don't really know each other very well. I don't even know how you got your scar,” I half joked, trying to make light of the serious words I was saying.

“I know, Emma. But that's the point. We're getting to know each other. That's how it works when you start a relationship.” He looked nervous as he said this, as if he knew he'd let his hand show. “And I got the scar ‘sledding' on my bunk bed ladder when I was five. Yes, my twin sister and I had bunk beds, and yes, it was adorable.” I laughed slightly at this. “Look, I know this weekend will be hard for you. Why not go away to Sonoma with me? It's
beautiful there, and the September harvest has the best chardonnay. Or, if you're not into that, maybe we could go camping in Big Sur.”

Chardonnay? Camping? In a flash, the reality of what I was doing rushed toward me like a freight train. This guy didn't know me
at all
. I hated chardonnay with a passion, and after a harrowing trip to Joshua Tree in which we'd forgotten to bring water, Sam and I vowed never to go camping again. I felt my chest constrict and the truth wash over me. It wasn't the overly sweet wine or the fear of dehydration. It wasn't even Dusty. It was Sam. I still loved Sam. Despite everything, my heart still belonged to him. But it's too late, said a small desolate voice, it's too late for you and Sam.

But it wasn't too late to make things right with Dusty, to do the right thing.

“Dusty, I can't begin a relationship with you. I'm already
in
a relationship,” I said gently. He looked down, away from my glance. “At least, I was just in one. I'm ending one. But for better or for worse, it has to end properly. I'm sorry, but I have to go back to Los Angeles.”

CHAPTER 25

T
he law of the Attempt is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting laws of them all. Attempt is a concept with which we are all vaguely familiar, but like so many things in life that make logical sense until lawyers get involved, I didn't fully understand it or its consequences until Professor Gray's first-year Criminal Law seminar.

“Attempt is the name you give to a crime when someone takes the steps to commit an illegal act and they are thwarted in some way,” Professor Gray explained eight weeks into the class. “One can be charged with attempted murder, attempted arson, or attempted anything, as long as the defendant did everything in his or her power to commit said crime.” As we learned, the tricky part of the concept
is, you really have to have almost done “it”, the illegal act, in order for the charge to stick.

You can't be charged with attempted arson for buying the kerosene and driving to your worst enemy's house with a grudge and a book of matches. You can't be charged with attempted carjacking because you stand on a street corner with a gun in your pocket. You have to actually light the match and have it blown out by an inconvenient gust of wind, or brandish the gun and instruct the driver to hand over the keys to the Jag before the victim recklessly drives away unharmed, for the law of attempt to truly be satisfied. You have to have done everything in your power to commit the crime. You were going to do it, you took the steps to make it happen, but something intervened and prevented you from getting it done.

As the plane's violent turbulence—which, surprisingly, failed to cause me even a moment of fear—smoothed out and the tattooed woman sitting next to me released her grip on the armrest, I considered my crimes. If this was a court of law, I would definitely be found guilty of Attempt to Bang Dusty. I felt undeniably awful about it. Maybe it wasn't technically cheating, since I'd called off my wedding the day before, but there had to be a relationship law somewhere on the books that I'd violated.

Because, the truth is, if Caro hadn't knocked at that particular moment, I would have gone through with it. Sitting across the aisle from her on the plane, I gave her a silent thank-you for showing up. With everything else in my life shot to hell, Caro walking up to that door felt like the one thing I could be grateful for. I may
have been liable for attempt, but I sure was glad I hadn't committed the crime.

“I was in love with him, you know,” Caro intoned. I turned, startled by her sudden declaration. She had been silent since we took off. “It wasn't some cheap affair. I was in love,” she repeated.

“Who are you talking about?” I asked, knowing the answer full well but wanting to hear her say it.

“Mike. Your father.” My guess was she'd never said the words aloud before that moment. They certainly didn't sound practiced.

“Are you going to tell me the story now? Here?” Across the aisle on a 737? I added silently. Maybe the turbulence had scared her into thinking she better tell me before we crashed and it was too late.

“That was the deal, right?” Caro said wearily.

I nodded slowly, afraid to make a sound lest I wake her out of whatever confessional coma she'd been thrown into from the choppy flight. I guess everyone within earshot of row 7 would hear the story along with me.

“We met in the oddest way,” she started. “While getting our hair cut.” She paused to let this sink in and I did my best to picture the bizarre scene.

“On the way back from class one day, I stopped to get a trim. I was meeting Hunter for dinner and I wanted to look nice. He hadn't shown much interest in me since we got married, and I was willing to try anything that might help.” Dear God, I silently pleaded, please don't let her go into detail about the honeymoon ganja sex. Thankfully, she skimmed over the details. “Hunter was,
and is, a wonderful man. I wanted things to work, even though deep down I knew I could never make him happy.

“There I was, sitting in one of those swivel chairs, and I made eye contact with the man in the chair next to me in the mirror. We were in those funny black cloaks they make you wear, wet hair, no body parts showing. We both looked ridiculous. I'll never forget it: He looked me dead in the eye in the mirror and he winked. I don't know what it was about that wink. It was intimate, strange as that may seem. I know it sounds silly, but it made me bashful. That's the only word for it. He made me smile, and what's even stranger, he made me blush, for the first time in years. I fell for him a little bit right then and there.”

Caro paused as the flight attendant walked by offering us water, which she waved away. “Through the rest of the haircut, I didn't look at him again. I was embarrassed. Then we went to pay at the same time and ended up walking out together. He held the door for me and asked me how much I'd tipped the stylist. He said he never knew how much to tip at these types of things. Was it like a cab? A restaurant? I couldn't help but laugh. He asked me if I wanted to get a coffee, and just like that, I canceled dinner plans with Hunter. That should have been the first sign. We went to coffee that night for four hours. I was up for the rest of the night. From the caffeine, of course, but mostly because I couldn't stop thinking about him. Couldn't stop running through every detail of the day in my head. Why I chose to get a haircut at that time, at that place. At what point I noticed him sitting next to me. Every
word he'd said at coffee. I wanted to remember it all, every minute of the day.”

“I know that feeling.”

Caro looked up as if she was surprised to see me sitting there. I hurriedly brought her back to the story to avoid breaking the spell. “What did Hunter say when you didn't come home? Did he notice you were acting differently?”

“Oh, I don't remember. Probably nothing. He was pathologically understanding,” she said, dismissing the question with a wave of her hand. Wasn't that typically a positive attribute? She shook her head, as if recalling a litany of pet peeves, and then looked at me directly. “Emma, I want you to know this. Mike and I were honest with each other from the start about the fact that we were both married. No one was being deceptive. When we met we were both wearing rings although I suppose you couldn't see them under those silly capes. The point is, neither of us was trying to hide anything. Neither of us had any idea where everything would lead.”

“If you knew he was married, and he knew you were, why did you even start anything to begin with?” I asked, softly. I wasn't trying to judge. I really wanted to understand. What happened. Where I came from. Why I existed. “Why didn't you just say good-bye and never speak to each other again?”

“That's a good question. I'm not sure. Because I loved him, I suppose. Guilt may trump happiness, but I guess love trumps guilt.”

“Like rock, paper, scissors,” I murmured sadly, feeling the crushing complications of life weigh heavily on my soul. Was that why Sam did what he did?

“Also, neither of us had children at the time. Both of us were unhappy in our marriages. Neither seemed permanent, at least not from what we told each other. But really, it was pure, unexplainable love. He always used to tell me that his favorite thing about me was my feet. My beautiful feet. If that's not love I don't know what is. But the real thing that got me was . . .” Caro stopped. Maybe she was worried that she'd gotten carried away and this wasn't an integral part of the story.

“What?” I urged.

“He used to tell me that he thought I was the nicest person he'd ever met.” That I was not expecting. Beautiful? Yes. Smart? Of course. But nice? It wasn't the primary descriptor I would use to describe my tough-as-nails mother. “I know you're surprised. But you try growing up with Mickey Rigazi throwing you around and see how sweet you turn out. I chose tough over nice every day of the week. But Mike Madigan . . .” She sighed, as if saying his full name took a great deal out of her. “He was the first person who saw me for who I truly was, a scared twenty-two-year-old girl from Philly who was starting to realize that her husband didn't want her and she had no one in the world to rely on but herself.”

This image of my vulnerable, injured mother didn't compute. I tried to make sense of it while she continued, explaining that she and Mike fell in love and were debating leaving their spouses, when she got pregnant—
completely
by accident, she stressed.

“Despite the surprise, when we found out I was pregnant, we were thrilled in a way. This was the excuse we needed to take the plunge. Mike took me out to dinner and gave me a beautiful pearl
ring. He said he wanted to get me a diamond but then everyone would know it was an engagement ring. We planned to tell them both that weekend, get a quickie divorce, and remarry before anyone could do the math.”

The pearl ring from the pawnshop. It was like rewatching a movie you'd already seen a thousand times, but all the other times you'd missed the first scene.

“Hunter and I were going away for Labor Day and I decided to tell him then. I called Mike from a pay phone on the side of the road for a pep talk, although honestly I wasn't even that nervous at that point. I was more excited than anything. Everything finally felt as if it was falling into place. The pregnancy felt like a sign that we should be together, and that all of our actions were worth it, that they were justified. Then, out of nowhere, right there on the call, minutes before I was going to tell Hunter I was leaving him, Mike broke it off. For the most horrifying reason possible. His wife was also pregnant. He couldn't leave her like that. I was . . . devastated. There's no other word for it. I thought I would die. The worst part was, in an incredibly sad twist, a few months later she ended up losing the baby. Of course, she had three more later, your half brothers.”

I hadn't even considered that. The Madigan boys were my brothers. I decided to hold on to that piece of information until later, when I could properly digest it.

“After the phone call, after he told me they were starting a family, there was no reason to continue the relationship. I was very angry. And when she lost the baby he blamed himself. He thought God was punishing him for the affair.” She shook her head at this.

“When we broke up, my heart broke in half. I could barely imagine a reality in which we wouldn't be together. But after a little time passed, things changed. I started to feel better. I loved being pregnant. Every day I woke up picturing you growing inside of me. First, a little bean, then a banana, a kiwi. Odd that a kiwi is larger than a banana.” I nodded in agreement. I was well acquainted with the fetus-fruit scale, thanks to my many pregnant Facebook friends.

“I felt that because I had you, everything was going to be okay. My family wasn't that supportive, no shock there. I think they suspected something was off. But I didn't really mind. I remember thinking, I don't care what anyone else thinks. I have a daughter.” I felt myself turn away slightly, embarrassed by her uncharacteristic display of emotion.

“When Hunter told me he wanted a divorce, I gave him my blessing to go, live his life, and be happy. I didn't want anything from him.” She paused, laughing sadly at herself. “Although after what I did, of course, I wouldn't have been entitled to it. All I asked was that we keep his name, and that he stay until you were born. That way there would never be any question surrounding your background, or your birth.” But didn't that bother my father? Didn't he care? I hesitated, but forced myself to ask.

“Didn't Mr. Madigan, I mean, Mike, you know, what did he think about that?” I asked, stumbling on what tense and designation to use to identify my neighbor/father.

“He knew he didn't have a right to an opinion,” she said firmly. “I told him not to contact me, that no one could ever know the truth.
After his wife's miscarriage, he agreed we shouldn't have any more contact.” She shrugged sadly. I noticed Caro didn't use Mrs. Madigan's name when she referenced her. What was it? I struggled to remember. Debbie? Donna? Were we somehow related? I didn't think so, but I'd have to make a diagram when I got home to make sure.