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Drawing myself to my full height, with said heels on, I’m at least at eye level with my stepfather, and when I want to I can put the fire in my eyes. When I turn them on George now, his teeth click shut. I force my hands to relax, again.
“The least you could do,” I say, struggling to keep calm and rein in my fury at the man, “is not be a complete bastard when she’s vulnerable like this, you self-centered son of a bitch. Go the fuck back to work. I can take care of my mother.”
In the typical fashion, George sneers at her, but says nothing. When George Acropolis speaks, people listen… or he pretends not to have spoken in the first place. What a keeper.
“Janie,” my mother whispers.
I bite the inside of my cheek, and draw her toward the back of the living room, to the hallway where the bedrooms are. “You’re okay, Mama,” I say as she clutches her arm for the trip. “Do you have your pills here?”
Gina hesitates before she gives a nervous affirmative.
“Mama, you have to take your pills,” I sigh. “If you take them like the doctor said, this won’t happen.”
“George doesn’t like me on them,” she says. “He says they make me lazy. And they do.”
“No, Mama,” I say, trying not to grit my teeth, “they make you normal. George is… he just needs to understand that.” It doesn’t matter what I say about George, or how often I air my opinion of him to my mother. All it does is make her more agitated.
Almost the same time I open the door to my mother’s room, the front door slams, startling us both. George is going back to work, at least. Hopefully it’s one of the days he works overtime. Or, maybe he has a mistress. I don’t even care as long as it keeps him away long enough for Mom to get some much-needed rest.
As she takes her slippers off and lies down on top of the blankets, I dig through the bedside table for her pills. I find the orange bottle nearly empty, and as I tip one of the little pills out and hand it to my patient, I frown. I grab a plastic cup from their bathroom, fill it with water and bring it back to the bedside.
“Take your pill, Mama,” I say.
She does, and then lies down on the bed, still breathing heavily but no longer quite so pale. It’s like the life comes back into her when George is gone.
He’s the reason she’s been having more and more frequent panic attacks. I get called for the worst of them, but the lesser ones, the attacks she just needs to hear a voice to get her through them—for those she calls my brothers—one of the twins, Chris or Derek. They answer about half the time.
Not for the first time and likely not for the last, I have to remind myself not to try and convince her to leave George and come stay with me. She’d just go back to George in just a few days, claiming they’ve worked it all out and that his temper won’t be an issue again.
No. All I can do is what I’m already doing—being supportive, and helping her cope with her growing list of irrational fears. A list that I worry is one day going to encompass everything.
Chapter 45
Jake
It no longer surprises me to find my father defiling one room or another—any room with a flat surface, at least—with someone who’s not his wife. Once, it did surprise me. The first dozen or so times, in fact. After that, it went from being shocking to merely offensive. That’s what I feel when I slide open the door to the grand dining room on my way to the garage.
I don’t recognize this one. Reginald Ferry manages his regular flings the way some people manage their wine cellars. You drink a fine bottle slowly, and when it’s all used up, you toss the useless glassware that’s left and order in a new bottle from somewhere exotic. This girl looks vaguely South American. Probably a twenty-year vintage. I doubt she can buy her own drinks—not that she probably ever needs to—though she at least looks like she’s legal. Reginald is a narcissist, not an idiot.
My father spots me a heartbeat after I enter the room, but before he can backtrack. He smirks, and pinches the girl’s nipple so she barks a plaintive, but obviously pleasure-filled curse in Spanish.
“Close the door,” Reginald pants, not even slowing down, or letting go of the girl’s tits to cover anything up. “Give us a little privacy, will you?”
With the greatest enthusiasm, I do as I’m told. Then I shove the disgust I feel for the old man far, far down, like I have countless times before. Shocked? No. But I’ll probably never get used to it. Not like my stepmother, Toia. Or “Toy” as my father likes to call her.
Toia had once considered herself the lucky one. Reginald actually married her—with a pre-nup, of course, that left out any mention of fidelity on his part. Once, early on, Toia had run into one of his playthings, and then another, and another. There had been a fight about it and for a moment I thought she might actually leave him.
But she didn’t. Instead, she fell into her place naturally, the way any grateful, over-thirty supermodel who knows there‘s a clock ticking on her figure would do. At least, one with little to no self-respect. A daily diet of spas, champagne, Valium, and yoga probably helped as well.
Now, she probably does much the same thing as I do. Shrug, and move on with life. Reginald’s not about to change for anyone.
There‘s another route to the garage, but it’s long. Three elaborately decorated sitting rooms, two gilded hallways, and one pink marble staircase later, and I’m free.
Sure, I grew up with money. The Ferry estate is pointlessly massive, slathered in gold leaf and marble and antiques that sometimes are hundreds of years old, and carpeted with handmade carpets of fine wool that have to be specially cleaned by people that fly in from across the country once a month.
All of that is just set dressing. I’ve seen people go wide-eyed and gush over one object or feature or another; I know it’s impressive to people who’ve never lived in it before. Those people have never known the confusion of a kid who didn’t understand why they couldn’t sit in a single chair in a sitting room. A chair that was worth three of him. But to me now, the billionaire life is just “life.”
