Family Dynamics: Pam of Babylon Book #5 Read online

  “OK, call’s made, message left on her machine,” he said, walking into the den. Ashton was going through a pile of paper, filling a recycling basket with printed recipes and junk-mail catalogs he no longer wanted. Ted went up to his lover and put his arms around his waist, hugging his chest to Ashton’s back. “I love you, Ash. Sorry this spoiled our homecoming.”

  “It didn’t spoil anything,” Ashton said. “It’s just life that we have to deal with something we don’t want to deal with.”

  Ted made the decision that he was going to be honest about his feelings, no matter what the response might be. “I think I might be kind of excited about it,” he admitted. Ashton turned around in Ted’s arms and looked at his face, into his eyes.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “I think so. If it’s true, we have a kid,” Ted replied. “Someone else to love, to share our life with.” Ashton stifled his laughter. Could my husband be that stupid?

  “You might be naïve, my friend. What if she’s a homophobe who just wants money?” Ashton asked.

  “Oh stop,” Ted said, laughing “If that’s the case, we’ll deal with it. I’m starving. What’s for lunch?” Ashton couldn’t believe his ears.

  “You can think about food at a time like this? I’ll make you a sandwich,” he said. That man can only think about his stomach. The kitchen was a light-filled space in spite of being in the middle of the apartment with no windows, a trick of good lighting and light-reflecting colors. Ashton liked working in it, and as he prepared some lunch for Ted, he was reminded what a great life they had together. They had jobs they liked, enough money to travel whenever they could, a great apartment in the best city in the world. Why do I feel threatened? He poured glasses of iced tea and took them to the dining area of the living room. The sun was out, and he could see a lot of activity on the river as he viewed it through the buildings on First Avenue. As he was walking back to the kitchen to get the plates of food, the first wave of fear washed over him. The feeling slowed him down, and he moved over to a bar stool to sit and catch his breath. What the hell was that? Without looking for it, or even thinking of him, Jack’s voice echoed in his brain: “You won’t want to live without me.” It was a lie of the devil. Get behind me, Satan, he thought. You have no power over me. Jack, you ass. He wasn’t going to allow his dead, former lover to have any control. It isn’t that uncommon for people to have children appear out of nowhere, is it? You read about it in the paper all the time.

  “Come eat!” he said. Ted walked out of the den, his eyes glazed over. Ashton, in a sudden rush of compassion, went to him and hugged him. “We’ll be OK. I’m sorry I was sharp.”

  “No one would ever accuse you of being sharp,” Ted replied with a hint of sarcasm. He leaned in and kissed Ashton on the mouth.

  Chapter 2

  The Department of Public Works began tearing up Mercer Street after Memorial Day to repair an underground problem. Natalie Borg left her apartment early in the morning to drop grades off at school and pick up a few things she didn’t want to leave in her office over the summer. She was gone only four hours, but by the time she got back to Mercer, the jack-hammers were already at work, filling the air with a tooth-jarring din and sending up clouds of concrete dust. It was going to be a long summer.

  She trudged up the stairs of her building after navigating the mess out in the street, her socks in Birkenstock sandals filthy. The mail had arrived, and although she didn’t feel like dealing with it, she stopped at her box and pulled a bigger-than-normal pile out. She was covered in sweat when she reached her floor, weeks of overeating having finally taken its toll. The key turned easily, and she pushed the door open to her safe haven. Glad for the necessity to leave for work every day, she knew she was a potential hermit if she ever lost her teaching job. It was cool inside. She threw her purse and briefcase down on a chair by the door, taking the mail into the kitchen. It was the apartment where she grew up. Her parents had taught at NYU until their retirement. She’d made the tough decision two years earlier that they needed to go to some type of assisted-living situation. They’d tried having someone come in, but it didn’t work out; either the worker wouldn’t show up or would come under the influence, and finally the worst—her parents grew to love the caretaker, and she’d had a heart attack while in their apartment.

  Natalie visited several places and decided Manor House in Queens was the best. It had friendly staff, was clean and modern, and would be an easy commute to visit once a week or more if she could manage it. She was guilt-free because she knew it was for the best. Not normally melancholy, she made decisions based on facts and then rarely looked back. Lately, however, depression had set in. She wondered about the usefulness of her life and thought of the simplest way to kill herself. Natalie Borg was in this frame of mind when the letter from Penny Able arrived.

  She didn’t recognize the address or the name but figured nothing from an attorney could be good news. Outside of her parents’ wills and other trust-related issues, the only thing she could think of was maybe her building was going co-op, which would force her to get the hell out of Greenwich Village finally. She turned the burner under the teakettle on and went into her bedroom to take off her dirty socks. She had the legal-sized envelope with her. She put it on the desk in her bedroom and went into the bathroom, stripping her socks off. The cold bathroom tile felt good on the soles of her feet. She went to the sink to wash her hands, taking an unwelcome glimpse into the mirror above. Awful. She was getting so fat and hairy. It was almost out of her control. All the walking she did and she was still as fat as a pig. She grabbed a ponytail holder and pulled her curly salt and pepper hair back into it.

  The teakettle hissed when she got back to the kitchen. She’d picked up a letter opener off her desk, and after she poured the water over her tea bag, slit the envelope open. It was similar to the one Ted Dale received that day, but this one was scary, blasting away at a stonewall she’d erected eighteen and a half years ago. The child she’d given up for adoption, the same one she named Ted Dale as the father of, wanted to meet her. She was an honor student at Rutgers, it went on to say, a lovely, mature young woman who had the blessings of her adoptive parents to seek out Natalie and Ted. A rush of heat came at her, adding to the fear. Peggy Able had also contacted Ted Dale. Did he even know who she was? They’d had a one-night stand. Natalie had tried contacting Ted several times after they’d spent the night together, and when she discovered she was pregnant, tried again. But he never answered her calls. It was the most humiliating, heartbreaking experience she’d ever had. Everything they said about sleeping with someone you don’t know came true. And because she didn’t date much, she’d built a sort of fairy tale about Ted Dale and began writing him long love letters in her journal, pretending they had a love affair and the feeling was mutual. Now in her mid-forties, she shed a few tears for that awkward young woman, so lonely and without self-respect that she would pick up a guy in a bar, bring him back to her family home, lose her virginity to him on her schoolgirl bed, and then concoct a fantasy about their love affair. She remembered even telling a workplace acquaintance about her new boyfriend, Ted. Long ago, she’d destroyed the journals written full of her make-believe scenarios. The horror of it, of being pregnant with a phantom boyfriend’s baby, was realized when her mother found and read the journal. The shame of it, and then the embarrassment of not just getting caught, but having to admit that it was a one-night stand and not the product of a long, loving romance would long be remembered. Before her parents demanded that she give the baby up for adoption, she had already decided to. It was too late for an abortion, but she wouldn’t have been able to do it anyway. She cupped her hands over spiders and mosquitoes she’d caught, taking them to the window of her bedroom and letting them out on the ledge rather than smashing them with a paper towel like her mother did. Getting rid of the baby wasn’t an option. And now here in black and white was proof of it. Deborah Phillips. Honor student at Rutgers. She drank down her te
a, which had grown cold. It was Friday. She’d call the lawyer, Penny Able, and tell her she’d see Deborah. Walking into the living room to get the phone, she saw a blinking light on the answering machine. She picked up the receiver, pressed all the buttons, and then heard the voice. It was obvious that Ted didn’t remember her or that she’d tried to reach him all those times. He left his number, and she listened to the message twice to get it written down correctly. Hearing Ted’s voice again, the reality of him, made her physically ill. She tried to remember each detail, his looks, what his body felt like, every sound he made when they had sex. Later, she would stalk his aunt, also a teacher at NYU, becoming friends with her, fishing for invitations to her apartment. It would all fail miserably, never yielding a glimpse of Ted.

  Now a complete stranger was providing a method for Ted to be ushered into her life again. Seeing Deborah was secondary. Not even—she had no interest in her, having pushed any thought of her down deep. Yet she would do it to see Ted. Reaching for the phone to call Penny Able, she felt a shot of hopefulness. There was finally something to look forward to again. Maybe Deborah would turn out to be a positive addition to her life, after all.

  Chapter 3

  Deborah Phillips put the last box of stuff from her dorm room into the back of her boyfriend Zach’s car. She’d collected so much stuff this year. Every time she went home on break, there’d be more stuff to pack up from her childhood bedroom. Her mother asked her where she was putting it all when she realized the girl was taking her stuffed animals and old coloring books, too.

  “I like to go through my things,” Deborah lied. “It makes me feel closer to home.” Her mother was satisfied with the explanation, but the truth was, the first Dumpster she came to on the way back to school would get the boxes, except for a few very sentimental items.

  “Why are you throwing your stuff away?” Zach asked, confused. “I thought you wanted it.”

  “What I want is to be finished with my family and any memory of them, or that I ever lived in that house,” she said, bitterness lush in the words. “It will be easier for my mother when I leave for good if she doesn’t have to sort through a lot of toys and mementos.” She’d waited for this moment for as long as she could remember. Never feeling like she belonged in her family, the day her parents told her she was adopted answered so many questions. It wasn’t just the physical differences that had her questioning her heritage, although those traits were enough. She was small-statured and muscular, and her hair was like a Brillo pad. Her mother was willowy and blond. Her brother told her that the boys in his class were jealous of her warrior calves. How was it that she had legs like a football player, and both her parents were long-limbed and thin? She repeatedly asked her mother from the time she was a little girl if she was her real mother.

  “Mom, did you really have me?” she asked. When the day came that Beverly and John Phillips finally had the guts to tell Debbie the truth, she was so convinced that they weren’t her birth parents that all she could do was laugh in their faces. “I told you!” From that moment on, it was an inner battle, one she thought was being waged without their knowledge. But they knew, and it became the uncomfortable topic they avoided, the issue Beverly lived in fear would be brought up during the biggest of family functions. Deborah was adopted, and she was not happy about it. Who were her real parents? She already saw them in her imagination. She must come from Arabic people, or Jews. Her mother would be Earth Mother, with hippie clothes and no makeup, unshaven legs, wearing a denim skirt. Her father was yet to be envisioned, but she imagined he might smoke weed and have long hair. She thought her adoptive parents provincial people. Politically conservative with their blond good looks and hymns played on the car radio irritated her. As she got older, friends told her all teens thought of their parents in that way, but she disagreed; it had never been a good fit.

  The day she turned eighteen, Deborah found a lawyer who would help get her adoption records unsealed. Her mother signed a paper allowing it, never thinking that she may be advocating the end of her relationship with Deborah. She didn’t dream the situation was as bad as it was.

  “It’s just a phase,” she told her husband, John. “All kids go through this at one time or another.” But he disagreed. Something about the way this child related to the family wasn’t right. His wife was an idealist. He knew it would be sooner rather than later that she’d have to face the truth about Deborah. He begrudgingly forked over twenty grand a year for her tuition to the Princeton Friends School, and more for Rutgers, knowing she disliked him and was biding her time until she could escape their bourgeois home life. What bothered John the most is that Deborah never seemed to like them, even as an infant. He’d hoped she might be autistic so there could be some early intervention. But it was just a simple case of a mismatched family. Beverly got pregnant shortly after Deborah’s adoption was finalized, and the love of their life, Greg, was born. Deborah loved him too, but from a distance. She gladly coddled him and helped him as the older sibling, but she knew instinctively that he was the real child, the genetically matched offspring who belonged in white-bread land.

  As they drove away from New Brunswick toward Zach’s apartment in Hoboken, Deborah began to relax. She needed to call the Phillipses to tell them she wasn’t coming home for the summer, or ever, but she would do it in segments. First, she’d tell them she was staying with Zach’s sister for the weekend. No point in rubbing her disobedience in their nose. Then, once she’d heard from Penny Able, she would tell them the truth; she wasn’t coming home. If they withdrew school support because of her rebelliousness, she’d get a student loan. Very few of her school friends went without some measure of financial assistance. She was grateful for the two years she had under her belt. As she sat in the passenger seat with her eyes closed, daydreaming about what lay ahead, her cell phone rang. It was Penny Able.

  Chapter 4

  Exhausted, Ashton and Ted would spend Friday night doing their routine; after dinner, they’d lounge in the den and pop a movie in the DVD player. It would be a quiet, married-couple kind of evening at home. Ashton made a delicious dinner; how he managed to come up with something every night was a mystery to Ted, who’d be happy with a hot dog from a street cart. They drank a great bottle of Vouvray in honor of their trip, going through their phones together to look at the pictures they took. In the coming weeks, they’d weed out the duds and print the best ones. Ted was feeling wonderful, the wine hitting him in the just the right way. They got up from the table laughing, stretching their arms above their heads. Ashton started clearing the table, and Ted joined in, not wanting the moment to pass too quickly, even though Ashton liked cleaning up alone.

  “I want to help out. This has been a nice evening,” Ted said. Their chatter continued as the dishwasher was loaded and the dinner mess cleaned up. They took their wine glasses into the den and curled up together on the couch, the movie timed to start immediately after “48 Hours.” Ted had his arm around Ashton’s shoulders, and he could feel the muscles under his smooth skin. Something about the mix of the meal, the wine, and now being together to spend the evening triggered desire for Ashton. Ted acted on it, not wanting the moment to slip away because at his age, it wasn’t always easy getting ready to make love without pharmaceutical assistance. He reached over with is hand and tipped Ashton’s chin up so he could reach his lips. They kissed tenderly, the desire for one another strong. Ted kissed Ashton’s cheek as he moved his mouth around to his ear to whisper, “Just squeeze my balls a little, Ashton. I want you so badly.”

  Ashton pulled away from Ted, his look unreadable. But it was definitely an Ashton look. “No,” he said, determined. Ted was taken aback.

  “No, what?” he asked, confused.

  “No, I won’t squeeze your balls a little. Good lord! We get home from Paris, run around all day making sure everything is perfect, get a letter that says you have a daughter, and you want me to squeeze your balls? I don’t think so.” Slightly out of breath, Ashton s
urprised himself at his irrational outburst. Why was he acting this way? He wanted to make love. And then, uncharacteristically, he began to cry. “I’m pissed! How could you be so selfish to fuck someone, get her pregnant, and then not realize you had a kid? Are you going to tell me Natalie Borg never tried to contact you? She got pregnant and then gave the kid up for adoption without informing you?”

  Ted felt awful he’d upset Ashton, but he was going to try to remain rational. “Look, Ashton, I was only thirty-five. I may have avoided her. Right now, I don’t recall her trying to contact me. But I assure you, if this girl is my daughter, you have my word I will make restitution to both Natalie and Deborah. What else can I do to make you believe me?” He had hold of Ashton’s hands in his, and although Ashton tried pulling away, Ted wasn’t letting him. It may have been a combination of the wine and the stress of the day, the same things that made Ted want to make love to Ashton, that brought Ashton to a place of unreasonable behavior, but Ted would humor him for as long as it took to get back into his good graces.

  “We’re both tired, and we just finished off a bottle of wine, so tonight is probably not the best time to try having a heartrending conversation. Do you agree?” He had his arm around Ashton, hugging him as Ashton continued to pout, tears rolling down his cheeks. Ashton nodded his head in agreement. Finally, Ted could feel him relax. Without any more conversation, with a small smile, he reached down to Ted’s crotch and gave it a little squeeze.