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I also understand his unwillingness to share, and that I have no way of placating him with alcohol to hurry his words along. But he craves what’s real. The things he can see.
So I square my shoulders, take a step back, and show him inches instead of miles divide us. He can widen it and run. But I have faith in the man who put my little boy first before considering what his life would be like juggling us both and becoming a part of a ready-made family.
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“Your mother hasn’t said an unkind word to me, Cary. On the other hand, you’ve found every reason to cut off her questions, jump to conclusions, and treat Davina poorly. You’re not the man who brings out the best in my son right now.”
Underneath my crawling skin, I’m aware of this. Davina could have mentioned Holly’s age, disparaged where she works or insinuated she’s using her son to lure me in.
Holly’s honesty stabs me in the chest. She’s disappointed because she counts on me to show Bhodi how to treat women with respect. This woman had a purpose when she enrolled her son in the mentoring program. I wouldn’t linger in Holly’s bed, let alone in their lives otherwise.
Yet, as soon as Davina and I were in the same vicinity, the shell fell off, exposing the genesis of the person who Rex was trying to groom me into. Underneath it all, I’m a kid who unwittingly watched as his mom deserted him. It happened slowly the same way the rest of what Rex put me through came to feel normal. But it wasn’t and the wedge is still there because I’ve been so focused on making Bhodi’s childhood something he’ll want to remember that I haven’t made peace with my own.
“You don’t know her or what my parents did to me.” My pulse pounds in my ears.
“Obviously not, if you haven’t mentioned it.” Holly’s palms fly to her hips.
We’re silent for a tick, the same awkward way it was in the beginning when I fumbled for reasons to stay and she looked for polite ones to send me away.
Her voice comes down an octave from the antagonism she drew out of me. “I don’t want to fight with you, so why don’t you tell me what you’re fighting against instead?”
I’ve pushed her away, but she’s not so far that I can’t bridge the gap. I nod to the empty space to the right since I don’t want anyone touching me. All the shit Rex paid women to teach me—the things I do to Holly—make me feel dirty and undeserving of her.
“My grandparents were married for ten years when my grandmother called it quits and divorced Grandad. Nobody gave me the reason she left, but he never spoke poorly of her abandoning him with a child.” The same way Holly acts for Bhodi’s sake. “He told me loving her was a choice he made when they said their vows.” Grandma was allowed to change her mind, but Grandad never did.
Davina was young when she met Rex. He worked for Grandad. My mother’s mother discarded her marriage and Davina had nothing to compare her relationship with my dad to. No one to look up to, admire, emulate. Being married was harder than Davina thought. After a few months, she walked out.
One day she went to the dealership ready to come clean to Grandad. Davina slipped around a corner to avoid Rex. She ran into this guy named Powell. He was a business associate from up north who Grandad wanted Rex to foster a partnership with. One thing led to another. Davina and Powell shacked up while he was in Brighton and until the newness of it petered out. It was easy to keep the affair hidden. Davina had been staying in a hotel, too ashamed to admit to her father she was like my grandmother.
Eventually, Davina moved back in with Grandad, lying that she and Rex had just had a fight. Soon later, she found out she was pregnant.
Even though Grandad lost his wife, he was a romantic deep down. He saw me as some sort of divine intervention and a way for Rex and Davina to reconnect.
But the timing didn’t add up and, as soon as Rex put two and two together, my dad was faced with the fact that my mom was carrying another man’s child. She was bold-face lying to her father and, without mom, Rex had nothing to tie himself to the dealerships. He’d be out of a job and my best guess is he didn’t want his reputation ruined as a laughingstock who couldn’t keep his wife out of bed with the competition.
So, he canceled the deal between the companies and yielded what little power he had over my mother. She’d been as concerned about people’s perceptions, especially her father’s. They agreed to stay married, Rex would raise me as his own, and no one would find out about mom’s indiscretion.
Pretending a bouncing baby boy was the outcome of reconciling with my dad and choosing to love him made sense to Davina. That’s what she was taught.
Holly’s brows knit together with intensity. In the recesses of her mind, I was Bhodi’s age in an unhappy household. She has no clue.
“My dad pretty much left me alone until I was in middle school. Spending time with Bhod and Emory, I actually remember it was more like your house. Gradually Rex was home more often and things changed. I’d find porn tucked between the books on my desk. Women would be nice to me, compliment my clothes, or tell me how I was maturing.” I shrug. “All stuff I passed off as normal until it became that. He started paying prostitutes to abuse me over the next few years under the guise of turning me into a man.”
I lean forward, my elbows grinding into my thighs and my back bowed so all I see is the loose gravel on the driveway.
I can’t even look at Holly. I don’t want her to see how ashamed I am that it was a woman her age I lost my virginity to when I wasn’t much older than Bhodi. I don’t want her to think the feelings I have for her are disgusting or that I’m a masochist seeking some sort of perverse gratification. I worry about the humiliation she’d feel.
If I had an any-older-woman proclivity Laurel could have fit the bill. It’s not. I’ve dated enough younger women to understand the connection Holly and I have isn’t based on sex alone. It’s that she isn’t shy about showing me who she is. Like she said, the only thing she has to lose in this life is her son. I’m almost positive the tether to him and only him is what allows her to live free.
“How did your mother not know? Not say a word?” The comparisons between her parent’s marriage and mine are visible in her expression.
“I’m not sure she figured out how bad it was until I was in high school.” By then Rex used girlfriends to cover up my earlier exploits. “It’s not a crime to build your son’s confidence with a pat on the back and a wink. Davina didn’t like it, but she shrank to Rex’s will whenever they argued over it.”
“And when Rex died, she told you who your father was.” Horror laces the words as Holly sums the why up quietly. “Rex used you to teach Davina a lesson for having the affair. He tried turning a child into a deviant. Someone who didn’t have any emotional attachments when it came to sex. Someone who would have an affair like your mother had with Powell to prove you weren’t any better than they were… and make her wonder if her mother was the same way.”
