Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

“Mom told you, didn’t she,” Mariah whispered while Molina was still in the kitchen.

“Told me what? That you have an even better gig than backing up French Vanilla of Black & White?”

“No, silly. Oh.” She sighed as her mother came in and seated herself on the sofa with Rafi. “I’m sorry. It just seemed right.”

“Whatever it is,” Matt whispered back, “if it seems right at the time, you have to do it.”

“Even if someone might have their feelings hurt?”

“Hurt feelings aren’t pleasant, but you have to face up to them.”

“That’s what you get all that radio money telling people?”

“Depending.”

Molina spoke up, trying to sound jovial and only managing to sound suspicious. Cop talk was hard to moderate. “What are you and Matt whispering about?”

“Oh, Mom. I need to tell him…you know.”

Matt jumped in, sounding as suspicious as Mariah’s mom. “Mariah, what haven’t you been telling me?”

Carmen tried to soften the blow, even though Matt knew what was coming. “I don’t want you to feel slighted, Matt—there’s been a change in plans.”

Mariah overrode her. “You said I had to tell him personally.” She turned to Matt. “I’m sorry, Mr. Devine. I know I promised you forever and forever you could take me to the Dad-Daughter Dance.”

Matt smiled at how she interpreted “pestered” as “promised”.

“Well, yes. I thought it was a done deal,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t go?” he asked.

“Oh, I have to go. Just not with you.”

Matt raised his eyebrows.

“It’s not that you’re not cute or anything else, like that ex-priest thing. But…you’re moving out of town and are doing things like getting married and even though you’re sort of famous, I really, really think I need to ask Rafi because he’s been so cool and is teaching me all sorts of really hot singing stuff to follow up on my Black & White gig with a Justin-Beiber-level breakout music video—we promise, Mom, no Miley Cyrus stuff. I’m still too young for that.”

“What a relief,” Molina said, electric-blue fire in her eyes.

Mariah missed the sarcasm.

Rafi pointed a finger at Mariah. “Disney Clean. That’s where the film breaks are.”

Matt couldn’t believe they were discussing teen career choices.

Mariah turned to him. “See. Rafi knows music business stuff. I’m going to premiere a line-dance song at the D-D-D. I saw you dancing with, uh, Miss Barr, at the club after the B&W show opening, and, sorry, that’s not what’s happening. And, like, she’s way too not the prime age group anymore. Even that Zoe Chloe Ozone shtick is so over…”

Her childish pseudo-sophisticated chatter had shocked her mother almost much as Matt. “Mariah! You’re sounding like a brat.”

Not the way to win over a kid you’re going to knock off her platform shoes any minute now. Matt cleared his throat to intervene, but Rafi beat him to the punch, as he’d done outside the nudie bar not long before.

“Your mom and me are even older than those people.” He took Mariah’s hands and pulled her to stand before him. “What’s bugging you, kid? Everything you want is going great.”

She shrugged, looking down at her purple-painted toenails in their peep-toe platform sandals. Matt smiled at what he’d learned from Temple’s shoe collection.

“I have to do school and all that stupid stuff Disney kid stars don’t have to waste time doing. I’ll be too old to be interesting pretty soon. I guess you’re all so old you don’t get that.” She eyed everyone desperately. “I’m losing time to be discovered.”

“Is that what you think your singing is for?” Rafi asked. “Not for the joy of learning and doing it, but for getting somewhere, anywhere? Anyhow? Your mother never had those selfish dreams that made no one around her good enough.”

“That was ages ago, Rafi. She was never going anywhere. I mean, she was a cop.”

“She’s not ‘a cop’,” Rafi said. “She’s a lieutenant, and a damn good one. I used to be a cop too. Are we both not good enough?”

“No, no! You’ve been great. It’s just that you’re not, like, on the brink of something. Like I am. You’ve brinked out.”

“You’re on the brink of a good kick in the pants of reality.” Rafi’s face was grim. He was speaking generalities, Matt knew, but he’d accidentally nailed the imminent reality for his daughter.

“I’ve gotta do what I’ve got to do,” she was saying. “You’re just too old to understand and maybe I need a more hip manager, anyway.”

Matt found his fists clenching. “Brat” was too kind.

Mariah tossed her product-rich curled and blow-dried mane of hair. “I bet Nilla knows somebody who isn’t just…a, an amateur. If Mom’s your only track record, it doesn’t look good. Nilla says my voice is special. She likes me.”

“Well, we don’t,” Molina said, standing. “Forget me, which you apparently have. You will stop dissing your father like that after all he’s done for you!”

Carmen registered that she was using a trite parental line only after she realized she’d given away the game. She and Rafi locked gazes, each surprised at defending the other, then mutually dismayed.

“Adults always gang up on kids,” Mariah ranted, not even absorbing her mother’s slip.

Matt had forgotten the deep fears and the conflicting overconfidence leavened by self-doubt that drives teens, and he ought to know. He’d seriously wanted to kill someone at that stage.

The household tabby cats, spooked by overwrought emotions, picked that time to race through the living room, bounding over Carmen’s and Rafi’s laps on the couch and using the armrest as a springboard to dig into Matt’s khaki-covered knees.

Amid the diversion and exclamations, including ouch ! Mariah’s stormy expression cleared. “Father?” she said, plucking out the word from the current sound and fury. “Are you talking about Matt? Mr. Devine? He’s an ex-father.”

All three adults eyed each other, obviously eager to use that misconception as an excuse. Molina had simply gotten rattled and referred to Matt by his former title.

“She means me, kid,” Rafi said, rubbing at his black denim-protected knees. “Those cats come armed with switchblades.”

Mariah bent to pick up one of the lean striped cats, now calm. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” It was half order and half hope. She looked back and forth at the couple on the couch.

“I was surprised when I first figured it out too,” Rafi said.

Molina bit her lip and kept silent, wisely not making it a mother-daughter blow-up.

“You? Surprised?” Mariah looked from Rafi to Matt next.

“It’s true,” Matt said.

“Then there’s a whole lot of things that aren’t true!” Mariah looked around wildly, clutching the cat that was about to use its flailing claws to escape her grip.

“What about my dead hero cop father, who died when I was two?” She stared at her mother. “You have that old clipping from a Los Angeles newspaper with the lousy-quality photo. You kept your maiden name because your married name would always remind you of what you’d lost.”

And you!” She whirled to face Rafi. “Why’d you show up so late? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know when I first saw you at the teen reality show. We hit it off, remember? Without me even knowing you were my daughter.”

“But you must have found out, oh, not before long. You didn’t tell me for a long time.”

“No…I wanted to, Mariah, I did, but I’d been, not my best self, and when we started working together, I really enjoyed it and—”