Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

“And,” came Carmen’s voice, strong and certain. “I wouldn’t let Rafi continue to tutor you unless he swore not to tell you. That was my job.”

“Well, it’s a big fat fail, isn’t it? You not good at your job? Big freaking too bad.” Mariah turned a bitter, angry face on her mother. “You know what’s best for everybody, but it’s all lies with you. I don’t ever want to see either of you again. You should have stayed lost,” she yelled to Rafi as she charged down the hall to the bedrooms, the two cats fleeing from her clomping platform shoes.

A door slammed, then slammed again.

“I need to talk to her privately,” Matt said. “Someplace away from you two, out of the house. In the yard?”

“There’s a swinging bench on the back porch. In the shade.”

“A swinging bench, Carmen? Really?” Matt asked. “You don’t strike me as the type.”

“I’m not. It came with the house.”

Matt eyed each of them in turn. “Both of you two settle down, drink a little beer, exchange some low-key recriminations and realize you only did what you thought best at the time and Mariah is going to have to grow up fast to see that. I’ll do my best to get her there.”

“Why did you drag me out of the house?” Mariah lounged almost off one end of the double-seated swing set, as if Matt had rabies.

Matt was amazed to think how fast a guy could go from hot to not with a teen girl.

“The one thing you don’t want to do now, Mariah,” Matt told her, “because it is so clichéd and a Disney heroine would die before doing it, is to throw yourself across your bed, sob your heart out, and call all your BFFs to B&M.”

Her eyes widened in the dark, owl-like makeup outline of what he’d seen advertised as “the smoky eye”.

“Can a priest even say those initials?”

“Ex-priest. I assume you’re referring to Bitch and Moan. I just did. And I can also tell you that Best Friends aren’t Forever and last about six minutes at your age. You’ve already got a cool singing gig going and the green eyes in school are out there looking for you. Envy is a Cardinal Sin and it runs wild among tween and teen girls.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“I spent eight years at a parish school that went from kindergarten to senior high school and I would rather fight Isis than Mean Girls, who are shortly going to gang up on you in junior high because you’ve got ‘too much’.”

Mariah did not look enviable, though. She was a mess. Her hair was tangled and looked “over” everything. Her red-rimmed dark eyes had a horror movie poster rawness and any makeup she used had smeared.

“Am I wrong?” Matt prodded.

“Everybody lies to me. Did you know about Them before?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know why until your mom ’fessed up to me this afternoon.”

Mariah’s ridiculously high platform shoes easily reached the concrete patio floor and pushed the swing into gentle motion.

Las Vegas was hot in the summer, but not very windy. Dry desert air pressed down with the sensation of ironing, although Matt knew Mariah wouldn’t know the clean, sharp smell of it. His mother had always had an ancient steam iron swathed in its electric cord at the back of a shelf in a closet.

It was a pity some hearts and minds were sometimes consigned to the back of shelves and wouldn’t ever be smoothed into a wrinkleless state.

Matt’s shoe toe scuffed the concrete to keep the swing’s soothing maternal rhythm going. “Your mom didn’t know her own father. Hasn’t. Ever,” Matt said.

“You’re kidding.”

“I didn’t know my birth father until I found him several months ago.”

“And you’re a priest!”

“Was a priest. That’s part of the reason I became a priest. My mom was ashamed of getting pregnant out of wedlock, so she married the only creep who’d have a woman with a kid.”

“My mom didn’t marry anyone.”

Matt nodded. “My mom’s quite a bit older than yours. She didn’t have a way to make a living and support a child. So she married an abusive man.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yes, it was. I try hard not to blame her for her decision.”

“He hurt you too.”

Matt nodded. “People didn’t talk about domestic violence then. I know, Mariah, girls get told the facts of life early nowadays, so you know that girls and women can get ‘caught’ without ‘protection’. A lot of single mothers now are wary of letting men live with their children.”

“But Rafi is my father!”

“It’s complicated. It was a tragic case of miscommunication. Each one was trying to do the best thing, but they were young and under pressure. Your mom will tell you it’s her fault. I know she was acting on the most instinctive motive women have: to save and protect her child.”

“Rafi was abusive?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, nooo. I mean he’s been really standing up for my singing with my mom…oh. Because she lied , she was afraid to have him around. How did that happen? He said he didn’t know who I was at first.”

“I’ll say it plain and simple. They’d been thinking of getting married, but their jobs were shaky because they were both minorities. They wanted to postpone kids. Your mom got pregnant, and thought she saw evidence Rafi had sabotaged the birth control so she’d have to quit her job.”

“So he wanted me.”

“But for the wrong reason, she thought. So she ran, Disappeared. He didn’t know why. She could have been killed. He was devastated and left the L.A. police force, drifting until he ran into you and found a reason to pull himself together again.”

“Wow. That’s a Lifetime movie. And I brought them back together again. Do you think they’ll get married? That would be even cooler. I could star in the movie.”

“They’ve both been through whole Lifetime movies separately. It’s hard to say what they’d want to do now. What would really be cool is you giving them a chance to make peace with each other and you.”

She nodded, her distant eyes envisioning the autobio pic.

“And you can start, Mariah, by dropping the diva act. You’re a smart, pretty, talented girl, on the way to wise, if you understand you now have what your mom and my mom and I never had, real parents trying to do the best for you.”

Mariah regarded him sideways. “I think you’re leaving something out.”

“No. What?”

She gave him a small smile. “I think you think I was being pretty dumb and spoiled and that all the rest of those good things don’t matter if I go that way.”

“A-plus.”

They did a high five.

“I’m sorry I dumped you for the Dad-Daughter Dance, especially since you and your mom had a hard time early on. You really are pretty cool and cute, but I think it’s better if I go with my father.”

“I do too,” Matt said.

“Did you like your real father?”

“Yes. He’s a great guy. My mom remarried. She married his brother.”

“No! That is so Lifetime movie un-be-lieve-able.”

“Anything can happen with those crazy adults.”

“I guess,” said Mariah. “We just have to understand they’re going through a stage.”

When Matt took Mariah back to the living room, Rafi and Carmen were lounging in separate chairs, looking away from each other.

Matt had no idea how to start the conversation back here in the common yet emotionally claustrophobic living room.

“Do you have any questions, Mariah?” Rafi asked. He looked at Carmen, desperate for a clue.

Mariah shifted her weight on the tippy platform shoes, uneasy for once at being the focus of everyone’s attention.

Then she ventured a response.