“Ty? You’re getting lucky? Wait. Don’t tell me. If Cynthia is there, say ‘I am not getting lucky.’”
It was only Austen. His brother. His pain-in-the-ass brother who rated only slightly more higher than a naked-surgery nightmare. “I’m not getting lucky,” he snapped, peeking under the leopard-striped sheets, pleased to localize his boxers. No naked here.
Not anymore.
“Cool! And now Cynthia’s looking at you all soft and sexy, but you can thank me for that later. Do you love the hotel?”
The hotel. The night.
Edie.
Memories flooded his mind, every smell, every touch, every truly awesome touch. Unfortunately, he was now fully erect, facing substantial brain blood-loss, and had to converse with his…
brother.
Difficult, but not impossible. Tyler lived for the impossible. “I hate the hotel.”
“To that, I say—why didn’t you move to the Hilton?
I know you.
Secretly, you suppress these wild impulses. But this way, you have an excuse to cut loose. Best of all, you don’t have to feel guilty because it’s all my fault.”
So why didn’t Tyler move to the Hilton? It wasn’t too late. He could move to the Hilton, but then Austen would be right. Then Edie would be right. Everyone would see him as an emotional coward who chose to run when surrounded by the garish, in-your-face sexual stimuli. And they’d all be right, but if he changed hotels, then they’d know it.
Leopard sheets were preferable.
“Does this cheap chicanery work with the state senators? If so, I really need to rethink my voting choices.”
“You wouldn’t believe how often it works. I am simply the voice of sin and temptation.”
“You are the voice of Beelzebub.” True, his brother was a complete pain, but Austen was his only brother, and theirs was a brotherhood united—although it didn’t mean they had to agree.
“The hotel worked for you, didn’t it, Romeo? What does Cynthia think of the place? I bet she’s impressed with this more spontaneous, more sexual version of yourself?”
“She didn’t come,” Tyler admitted, at which point Austen groaned.
“Oh, dude…what are you thinking? Only of yourself and your own satisfaction? Keep that up and she’s going to be on the first flight back to Houston.”
If only it were that simple.
“Cynthia’s not in New York. She broke up with me.” He rubbed his head. “It’s a long story.”
“You okay?” his brother asked, now appropriately serious.
“I’m fine.”
“You sound fine. Why do you sound fine? Broke up? As in really, truly, not-gonna-call-at-two a.m. broke up?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do to her?” asked his previously caring brother.
“Why does this have to be my fault?”
“Because you’re cold. I hate to tell you, but you’re not the world’s most sensitive guy, Tyler.”
“I am not cold,” insisted Tyler, getting tired of people pointing out his flaws. He didn’t have a lot of flaws. He worked very hard not to have flaws, and people needed to appreciate that. Especially his brother.
“You’re as sensitive as a brick. You don’t get women. They need…delicate handling.”
Tyler was an expert at delicate handling. “I know that. This isn’t my fault. She cheated.”
“Because you drove her into another man’s arms,” responded his brother, making Tyler the responsible party.
“Go to hell.”
“Listen, it’s either that or your bedside manner isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. So which is it, bro? Unsatisfactory sex or you’re a brick?”
Tyler considered his choices. “I don’t think I’m that bad,” he finally replied, although now he was wondering if maybe his brother was on to something. Edie had said the same thing. Cynthia had broken up with him….
Damn.
“You’re emotionally stunted. It’s all Frank’s fault. We both are. I’m just better with the ladies.”
Tyler could be better the ladies if he truly applied himself. He had heroic qualities. More heroic qualities than Austen. All he needed to do was apply himself, and maybe with some guidance… Slowly, Tyler smiled. Guidance from
Edie.
She had offered—yes, it was all garbage, and she knew he knew it was garbage, but the offer was still on the table. Guidance and sex. Edie loved to help people, loved to impart her wisdom to whomever would listen, and to be fair, she did seem to know her way around the male-female dynamic.
It was a win-win. He’d get practical relationship advice, and cock-busting sex, as well. And Edie would get the reinforcement that she needed.
“Don’t kid yourself, Austen. I’m fine with the ladies.”
“Good, because you’re in New York City. Alone. Single. You should live it up. Be free and unattached. I know. I’ll fly up.”
“No.”
Brotherhood only went so far. Austen loved fun. Tyler loved work. Austen loved wild, impetuous, meaningless sex, and Tyler would go to the grave before his brother discovered that Tyler had discovered that Tyler did, too. Good God, if Austen guessed, then he would want to carouse together like some low-budget buddy flick. Tyler shuddered at the thought.
“Think about it. Your birthday is in a couple of weeks. We could celebrate in the city. Two brothers, small-town cowboys making their way in the urban jungle. Lost and alone.”
“We’re not cowboys,” Tyler corrected, knowing that correcting his brother was a mistake, however, such permanently conditioned behaviors were impossible to stop.
“But do the women of New York know we’re not cowboys? I think not.” Nonsensical statements such as that were the primary reason that Tyler needed to stop correcting his brother.
“Stay home,” Tyler pleaded.
“Ha-ha. Don’t want the competition, do you? Think that all the women will ignore you if I’m in the room sucking up all the sexual oxygen?”
“Screw you, Austen.”
“Now
that’s
the brother I know and love.”
Tyler noticed the time and realized he’d only had two hours’ sleep. He blinked rapidly a few times and decided that he’d carried family obligation far enough. “Why are you calling?”
“To annoy you.”
“No. There’s some other purpose because it’s seven a.m. in Texas, and you’re never up before nine.”
“Can’t I just call and shoot the shit with my big bro?”
“No, that would imply sensitivity and thoughtfulness on your part.”
“That’s it. Now I’m definitely flying up there, Ty.”
“Why are you calling?”
“No reason.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Austen insisted. “There is no reason.”
“Seriously?” Tyler asked, not believing it for a second.
“Seriously, seriously. No reason.”
At last Tyler knew. Lack of sleep, jet lag and wild, meaningless,
really great sex
had dulled his normally razor-sharp mind. “She called?”
“She called,” Austen admitted, sounding only a little deflated, and thankfully, he didn’t question why Tyler hadn’t figured it out earlier.
“That’s why you want to fly up here,” Tyler persisted, keeping on the offensive because Austen would stay silent for only so long. Brooke had called Tyler as well, but he didn’t tell Austen these things because it was easier to pretend that Brooke didn’t exist.
“I don’t want to fly up there,” Austen argued.
“You just said you did.”
“I lied.”
“So stay home,” Tyler suggested.
“Tricky, very tricky. Trying to corner me into admitting the truth.”
“You couldn’t admit the truth if seventy cheerleaders attacked you in Jell-O.”
“Tyler! Listen to you. Making the sex jokes as if they don’t make you twitchy and uncomfortable. It’s the hotel, isn’t it? I should come see it. Check it out for myself.”
Tyler wasn’t fooled. There were very few things that Austen dodged. Truth, lasting commitment and the harsh reality of their mother. Tyler, being a rational medical professional, had long understood that their mother had a reason for walking out the door. She had a reason for abandoning them to the paternal pile of bitterness that was their father.
Only eight-year-old Tyler had been there to see her leave. Only eight-year-old Tyler had been there to cry and plead and try to change her mind.
In the end, he hadn’t been persuasive enough, caring enough, or cute enough, and life went on. That was water under the bridge and their mother wasn’t worth the time, thought, or pain.
“Why don’t you just admit your weakness? You want to see her.” Tyler said the words easily, because he didn’t care about his sister. She was a stranger and wouldn’t be a part of their lives because the Hart family had only two members; Tyler and Austen. “You want to see her because you want to know what she’s like, or if it’s all a big con.”
Austen blew a raspberry into the phone. “Sure it’s a con. Dad would have said if Sheila was pregnant when she left us. He would have called her a no-account whore, and then bitterly explained how if she’d been pregnant, the little brat wasn’t his.”
“Maybe he didn’t know,” Tyler suggested, as if the thought had only just occurred to him.
“Nah. Frank knew every bad thing about her. He was very talented that way, almost eerily so. No way that he could have kept it secret. It’s a con meant to separate me from my millions.”
“You don’t have millions,” Tyler reminded him, merely to get his brother back on Planet Earth.
“I don’t have millions
yet,
but my future income potential is limitless. After I convince the East Texas legislators that drilling for natural gas in somewhat porous shale is not only financially viable, but a boon to the state economy, then, as God is my witness, the red Ferrari will be mine.”
Tyler leaned back against the leopard-striped pillows, making himself comfortable now that he was once again firmly in control of his life. Which was exactly where he needed to be.
“Stay home. We’re not going.”
“You’re dying to go, aren’t you?” Austen shot back, the irrepressible irreverence clear in his voice. “I think you’re missing the opportunity of a lifetime here, Tyler. She’s there. You’re there. It’d be easy for me to hop on a plane and join you, we’ll take a car to Cold Springs. It’s perfect.”
“No. Forget it. I need to get to the hospital,” Tyler stated firmly, because there were things that were best left unknown.
Austen argued for a little bit longer, but eventually gave up, and after Tyler put down his phone, he noted the tranquility of the hotel room. The palatial bed complete with Arabian knights canopy, the glass stripper pole, the supersize hot tub, and in the midst of such blatant, cheap sexuality, he felt a sense of foreboding because Tyler was already aching to see Edie Higgins again. Feel her legs locked around him, feel her tongue in his mouth, around his cock.
Quickly, he showered and dressed in a neatly pressed suit, complete with an impeccable Windsor knot. By the time he’d left the garish hotel, Tyler was in perfect control again.
Yeah, right.
Across the street, Edie’s mother was holding a Bloomingdale’s bag. A darkening scowl creased her face. Clarice Higgins didn’t support Edie’s more militant leanings. Completely undeterred by such apathy, Edie waved cheerfully, which only deepened her mother’s scowl. Of course, today was her parents’ wedding anniversary, and if Edie were in her mother’s Jimmy Choos and knew her husband wouldn’t be home until the crack of dawn, then Edie would probably be scowling, too.
Not wanting to cause her mother more undue stress, Edie motioned the union rep over and planned her retreat. “Thanks for coming to us at the last minute, doll,” the woman told her. “What hospital did you say you’re from?”
“St. Jordan’s,” Edie improvised.
“Never heard of it. Want to put in a few more hours? Lacey needs a break, and the Jersey union hasn’t shown. Probably still at lunch, the lazy dogs.”
“Give me a sec and I’ll ask,” Edie said, returning her sign to the woman’s well-motivated hands. “My mother is across the street. She only has one kidney and it’s not good for her to be out in the heat. Malpractice, the bastards. Very sad. It’s the reason I went to nursing school. To prevent these sorts of medical screwups, and to keep the focus on the sick, rather than those hotshot Hollywood docs who have egos bigger than the sun.”
The woman nodded with sisterly solidarity, then bumped Edie’s fist, and waved her off. “Go be with your mother. You never know how long you have. God go with you, and remember—kicking ass for the nursing class.”
Now officially free, Edie jogged over to where her mother was waiting, her Jimmy Choos tapping with the amazing power of the truly upset. “I thought you were going to see your father. Did you pick this meeting spot on purpose?”
“Who? Me?” asked Edie, blinking innocently.
“I take it your father didn’t see you picketing?”
“No.”
Her mother shot a disgusted glance at the hospital. “Damn.”
Edie smiled, pleased to see that beneath the five-thousand-dollar powder-blue suit, beneath the five-hundred-dollar protein hair treatments, beneath the 24-karat gold-plated exterior was the still beating heart of the woman who had danced naked at Woodstock.
“Mom, you little anarchist. You’ve been reading Karl Marx for book club again, haven’t you? Should I tell Dad?”
Her mom tipped her Gucci glasses downward, shooting Edie a death-laser look. “You do, you die.”
“So where are we going for lunch?”
“Someplace with fabulous desserts. Saks?”
“Sounds fab. What are you getting for your anniversary this year?” asked Edie, spying the blue Tiffany’s bag. At her mother’s signal, a cab instantly appeared.
In short order, they were settled in the backseat and jetting off for 5th Avenue. Edie’s mother nodded toward the bag. “Diamond bracelet and matching necklace,” she whispered.
“Dad’s got great taste,” Edie whispered back, knowing that her mother had picked it out, and not quite understanding why her mother didn’t protest more. Clarice Higgins was a great human being, as worthy as Edie’s father, and yet somehow, when weighed on the scales of Jordan Higgins’s priorities, her mother always ended up with the shaft.
“Don’t be snide, Edie. It doesn’t reflect well on my parenting skills.”
“Hey, Dad married you. He’s not all bad.”
Her mother patted Edie’s thigh. “That he did. So let’s go spend his money.”
“We could have champagne.”
“Two glasses each,” added Clarice with what could almost be termed a giggle.
The Friday afternoon traffic was stop-and-start, and Edie didn’t mind, although she did give their driver instructions to the shortcut on Eleventh Avenue, which,
of course,
he ignored. While they sat in traffic, Edie studied her mother, checking for signs of worry, stress or displeasure.
She knew that a small part of her mother’s not-quite-storybook life was due to her daughter’s possibly not-quite-storybook behavior, but comforted herself with the knowledge that her father at least made Edie look like the World’s Bestest Daughter Ever.
“Did Dad even remember?” Edie asked, just as any dutiful daughter would.
“His secretary sent me flowers and a card.”
“So thoughtful of Mary Helen.”
“I thought so.”
There was a long awkward silence wherein Edie considered withholding any comment, but eventually her sense of emotional injustice was so overwhelmed that the words burst free.
“Why do you do it, Mom?”
Clarice Higgins, accustomed to her daughter’s overwhelmed sense of emotional injustice, smiled patiently. “I love him. He’s a doctor. The world demands certain sacrifices from women who marry into the military or medicine.”
Edie shrugged uncomfortably because in Edie’s world-view, Clarice Higgins and Edie Higgins were not meant to live in the shadow of greatness. Every human being had great potential—sometimes untapped—but that didn’t make them superfluous.
“Whatever.”
“How’s the job at the diner?” her mother asked, neatly changing the subject.
For a long moment, Edie considered telling her mother that she’d actually purchased the diner eight months ago, and that it was turning a nice profit for the Women’s Education Project and that the morning cook, Wanda, was now studying to become a teacher and that they had a break-in last week and someone had cleaned out the register. Edie thought it could have been Marjorie, her previous cook who had some personal issues, mostly due to a fondness for certain illicit pharmaceuticals, but she wasn’t convinced that Marjorie had the necessary ambition for a life of crime. Her mother looked at her, expecting no miracles from her daughter because Edie had never really dazzled. When Edie did decide to divulge the details of her life to her parents, she wanted to wow them, amaze them, dazzle them with her greatness.
In the big scheme of things, owning a diner was not big news in the Higgins family. There was only room for one model of godlike deitude in the Higgins family, and Edie wasn’t it.
Finally the cab pulled in front of Saks red awning, and the doorman greeted her mother by name. Clarice smiled politely, handed him a generous tip, and they made their way through the olfactory factory of the perfume counters and then to the elegant wooden elevators at the back.
“Why don’t you come with me to Palm Springs for the week?” suggested her mother as the elevator started to rise.
Edie considered it for a second but her idea of a vacation didn’t involve five-hundred-calorie diets, or four-hour yoga sessions. Edie believed in five-hundred-calorie desserts, and baking in the sun, and hunky cabana boys by the name of Jose.
Or Tyler.
A momentary picture of a sun-drenched Tyler overwhelmed her brain. A flash of Tyler dribbling suntan oil on her bare skin—now that was a vacation, she thought with a secret smile. “Sorry, Mom, got a hot date.”
Her mother managed to restrain her curiosity until they were seated, until all packages were tucked away under the white-draped tables, until her mother removed her sunglasses and could stare at Edie with the necessary intent. “A hot date with whom?”
At first Edie considered not saying anything about Tyler, but it was her mother’s anniversary, and she knew that Tyler would make her mother happy. Not that it meant anything, and she needed to make her mother understand that…before she got her hopes up. “I don’t think you’d like him. He’s a history buff, high education, low-income potential, visiting from out of state, and he’s on the rebound after a really hideous breakup. I’m just trying to help out a friend, get him over the rough spots and then back on his feet.”
“Your father’s fundraiser is scheduled for next month. I suppose you’ve forgotten. You could bring your new friend.”
“I don’t think he’s the gala type, Mom. Sorry.”
“But you’ll be there? I could use the moral support.”
Edie stared at her mother, slack-jawed, accompanied by skeptical eyes. “You need me like Seattle needs rain.”
“Poke fun all you want, but I was being serious. Besides, Dr. Hardy’s wife always brags on her daughter and the precious grandchildren and how they all went together on a cruise to the Bahamas for Christmas. Sometimes I just want to tell her to stick it up her perfectly sculpted ass. Sometimes I just want to show you off.”
Sometimes her mother chose to color outside the lines of reality, too. It was endearing, yet also not very smart. “I’m not very show-off-worthy,” stated Edie, who was meticulously neat about her reality lines. It avoided many problems in her life.
“That’s not true. You clean up very well, and although you don’t have to bring a date, you could bring a date….”
“Maybe you could be my date, Mom. Or, we could really shock Dad and rent a couple of escorts for the evening. Young, studly and hanging on our every word.”
Her mother laughed and Edie felt herself warm just a little bit. They ordered lunch—Clarice: cobb salad, Edie: double-fudge brownie. As they ate, Edie watched as the weekend shopping elite relieved their feet, their pallets and their wallets, all in one fell swoop. Alternatively, her mother waved at friends, chatted about gardening and looked completely at home.
Edie listened attentively, as any good daughter should, but amidst the subdued elegance, her tank top felt a little too tacky and the streak in her hair—today’s color: cerulean blue—seemed more conspicuous than she normally liked. Every now and again, her mother, sensing Edie’s discomfort, would pat her hand, which didn’t do diddly for the discomfortness, but it did make her love her mother even more for trying.
Eventually the plates were cleared, all that was left were the last drops of Veuve Clicquot Brut Yellow Label. Also remaining was her mother’s need to torture her daughter into social conformity. All in all, it was a good strategy for her mom, worthy of the CIA, as she’d peppered the conversation with perfectly timed glances of quiet suffering.
“Bring your date to the gala,” her mother repeated, but Edie, not so unsuspecting, shook her head.
“Don’t think so, Mom. Picture this—you very charmingly interrogate him. And then we have Dad, who will ask him why he’s not saving lives on a daily basis. After a bad dinner with rubberized chicken, all the surgeons will commence their back-slapping ritual, telling great stories in ten-syllable words that absolutely no one can understand. Good times.
Not.
”
Her mother, who much like Edie did not take well to rejection, smiled magnificently, which was a clue to her true displeasure. “I’m sure your father would be very nice to whomever you chose to bring.”
“It’s not that big of a deal, Mom. Tyler’s just one of many. You know me.” Edie smiled, equally magnificently, which loosely translated to Hell Will Freeze First.
Her mother, much more willing to live with rejection than Edie, sighed and looked at her daughter with long-suffering blue eyes. Finally, recognizing the futility of transforming her daughter into anything other than Edie, Clarice dabbed at her mouth with the cloth napkin.
“Don’t let yourself get hurt,” she advised, sticking to a mother-daughter script handed down through generations.
“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m smart.”
Smarter than you,
she thought to herself.
“Yes, you are, Edie. You’re smart, beautiful and you always sell yourself short,” lectured the woman who spent every wedding anniversary solo.
Edie leaned in close. “Can I let you in on a secret, Mom?”
“I live for your tidbits of personal advice.”
Edie took a sip of champagne, letting the bubbles tickle her nose, and then met her mother’s eyes. “If you set the bar low, you’ll never be disappointed.” Perhaps there was a hint of wistfulness in her own eyes that was not quite obscured by the effervescence of champagne.
Then, the woman who had loved and nurtured Edie for twenty-eight years raised her glass. Her diamond rings were blinding in the dazzling light. The glare was almost enough to obscure the wistfulness in her mother’s eyes, but Edie knew better. She had learned long ago to look past the shimmering, pretty things that hypnotized the rest of the world.
At her daughter’s look of sympathy, Clarice took a sip of champagne and smiled because the Higgins women both loved their bubbles. “One day that bar’s going to be so low that it’ll hit you in the head, knock you out and you’ll suffer from amnesia, forgetting all your bad intentions, and instead end up married to a stable, respectable man with a wonderful job, high community standing, who loves you exactly as you deserve. Before you know it, you’ll end up pregnant, and then, when your hormones are raging, and your ankles are swelling, I will look at you and say, ‘Ha!’”
Edie laughed and lifted her glass. “To hell.”
Her mother smiled serenely. “Amen.”