It was just like any other day at the park.
This vast expanse of lawn, with its hedges of willow trees, its fall flowerbeds, and its lovely monuments, was a true haven. The afternoon sun was glaring down upon the common faces of people kicking back and enjoying their serene recreation. Playful shouts of kids were transpiring from a nearby playground, accessorized with swing sets and play structures. Here and there, some interesting sports activities had turned out a good deal of cheering crowds. And despite the collective cant of birds and bees, one could also hear the trickling sound of water echoing from a water fountain.
Like many other families disseminated across the park, the Greaves had been enjoying themselves over the succulent meal Zoe had put together for the occasion. They were currently sitting on a blanket under a tree, a short distance away from a hussy girl and her zealous boyfriend who seemed a little too wanton for Zoe’s taste. Really, why had they picked a spot so close to them to indulge in their –– business? Had they not noticed the children – her children? But they kept cuddling and horsing around over there on the grass, and given their way, Zoe thought they probably would’ve pushed it.
At one point her contempt was so fierce that she was about to walk up to them and give them a piece of her mind, and a crash course on civilities. And if they didn’t cut it out, she’d verbally dump water on them, so to speak.
Though in her natural state she was lovely and all, Zoe Greaves could also turn into a real pain in the neck, just like that.
“Give them a break – they’re young,” Jeff Greaves said to get her to ease up. “We’ve all been there once. Don’t you remember what it was like to be young and carefree?”
“I don’t recall lacking so much decency like that in my time.”
“For real ––”
Jeff gave her a sidelong look: he definitely recalled her time differently. After a stream of consciousness passed between them, Zoe finally said, “Well, you know what I mean.”
Reuben and Phoebe were reclined on the grass, tossing peanuts into each other’s gaping mouths. They were doing it with as much enthusiasm as an old hamster running up a wheel. So when a squirrel suddenly whizzed by across from them and soared up a tall tree that was arched over a stepping-stone path leading down to the water fountain, they quickly said with one big excited voice, “Daddy… Mommy… did you see the squirrel? Did you see the squirrel?”
Jeff and Zoe peered out over in the direction their children were frantically pointing. They all saw some small furry animal quickly move through the leafless branches of the arched tree.
The children blared in unison, “There…! There…! Daddy, did you see it?”
“Yeah – what about it?”
“Can we go feed it, please Daddy?!” Reuben asked.
“I don’t think it wants to be fed,” Jeff said, plucking a small handful of peanuts from the plastic bag and popping them in his mouth. “And if it’s hungry, there’s plenty of food on the tree.”
“But our food is better, Daddy,” Phoebe explained assertively. “You know that; it’s soooo good!”
She even grabbed for the peanut bag before Jeff could help himself a second time. In many ways, she reminded him of Solene at the same age. Very hotheaded.
Jeff was going to say something but Zoe cut in.
“Alright –– you guys can go.”
Those frigging lovebirds in their vicinity were going at it again. Now it was bordering on public indecency and she didn’t want her children to be exposed to that. She added, “But stay by the tree at all times. Understood?”
Without acknowledging her instruction, the twins had already dashed away with the peanut bag. Now, under the watch of their parents, they began to merrily cast peanuts up the tree at the squirrel.
“Those two are going to require a great deal of work,” Jeff said, shaking his head.
That was not news to Zoe though. She had known so from the day of their inception, to the day of their forceful entry into the world. She had toiled very hard during the delivery, the twins nearly sucking out all the energy there was in her, the forceps extraction causing her to bleed out and almost lose her life. And yet, there they were, five years later, playing at the base of the tree, without any memories of all the pain she had gone through to bring them into this world.
It was a blessing, the fact that children didn’t carry memories of their birth, Zoe thought. Otherwise, their fragile minds would be etched with that early trauma. And from there, who the hell could know how they would turn out in life. Life itself was already a big trauma for any sane person to bear, so just imagining what it’d be like if everyone had that false start gave her the willies.
Maybe Solene had a false start, she reflected again, knowing perfectly well she didn’t want to pursue the topic. How else could she explain the erratic behavior of her daughter?
Solene had always been a very difficult child: fidgety and impulsive. Always acting up for little things, always attracting the wrong kind of attention to herself, always favoring wrongful play over good demeanors; and finally, always excelling in getting herself into trouble, at home or back in the school district where she went during her early education. She was a bright kid though, at least when she applied herself. She was even an honors student at Sacred Boulder, the upstate Catholic boarding school she had been enrolled in at Zoe’s insistence. Solene was just getting out of hand here. Way out of hand. There was no denying that she needed discipline and guidance. Zoe had also attended the same school in her youth, but not for the same reasons. And she had come out a more capable and responsible person. Therefore, she knew the drastic educational methods exercised there would set her unruly daughter straight. And in many ways, Sacred Boulder had succeeded where she had perhaps failed as a mother. Now, Solene was less “untamed.”
Zoe had to smile because she couldn’t think of a better word. The bottom line was Solene was giving them a lot less of grief. But the tradeoff for it was quite pungent to Zoe. Now her daughter hardly communicated with her. She scarcely acknowledged her mother’s presence, even if they were in the same room, and would speak to her only when spoken to. Maybe it was Solene’s way to punish her for sending her away to that Catholic boot-camp of a reform school. And because Solene seemed more open to her father, her show of parental preference reinforced Zoe’s assumption.
Indeed, Zoe wasn’t pleased to be excluded from her daughter’s teen life. Though she rationalized that, sooner or later, Solene would come to grow out of her juvenile mindset and open herself to a working mother-daughter relationship. In the meantime, Zoe would be patient and give her space until she came around. It was a small price to pay to keep her wild spirit excised until whatever remained was close to what a good daughter usually got. Zoe had secretly nourished the hope that Solene would become her baby girl again, just like she once was when she was five.
This was all wonderful indeed; and Zoe would have gladly clung to that wishful fantasy had she not known what she knew now.
It was too bad Solene had refused to tag along for this little family outing. It would’ve been the perfect setup to ease into the subject of what she had overheard the night before. Again, she couldn’t believe it. The words coming out of her own daughter’s mouth, and all that from inside her bedroom.
Upon overhearing the words, Zoe had tactfully pressed her ear against the door, not to eavesdrop, but rather to prove to herself that she had misheard.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t misheard… Those words, they were the nightmare of every mother with a teenage daughter!
“See, they’re leaving,” Jeff said to Zoe, indicating the young couple who’d been fooling around in plain sight. They were pretty much done playing with one another and were now collecting themselves along with the remains of their lunch.
“Diplomacy always pays off in the end,” Jeff said again to Zoe. “You would’ve started a scene a minute ago just when they were about to wrap up.”
Zoe didn’t say
a thing. She just shrugged. She drew a wine bottle and a plastic wine glass from the picnic basket and poured herself a drink. She slammed it down to ward off the bone-deep cold that had crept back inside her. Yet, her mouth was drying up from that uneasy feeling one gets when looking for the right words to break very bad news.
“Honey,” she voiced unrecognizably. “I think we may have a problem.”
“What’s the matter?” Jeff quickly asked. His eyes had become anxious.
“It’s about Solene. I wanted to take the opportunity of being out here, away from the tense atmosphere we got between us at home, to confront her peacefully.”
“Confront her with what?”
“Daddy… Daddy…!” That was Phoebe calling out to him. “Come here… The squirrel isn’t coming down to eat the peanuts!”
“Daddy is tired,” Jeff replied back. And he turned to Zoe. “So, what about Solene?”
“I don’t want to be the kind of mother who has to spy on her daughter to find out what’s going on in her life. I mean she’s completely shut me out.”
“Of course –– she’s a teenager and the first born. Not an easy combination. Besides, do you know of any teenager who’s not alienating their parents?”
“But she lets you in.”
Jeff swallowed to clear the lump in his throat.
“Only because I happen to be around when she feels like talking. Listen, you don’t have to be worried, alright? You’re a good mother.”
“I know I’m a good mother!” Zoe said defensively, sounding insulted. “I don’t have to hear it from you to know it.” She then gave him a square look, which suggested that he was missing her point.
“I’m on your side,” Jeff said patiently. “Just trying to help here. So what was that you wanted to confront her with?”
“Last night ––”
“Daddy!”
Phoebe was now trotting up to them, thrusting her little legs one before the other with drive.
“Daddy,” she said again when close enough. “It won’t come down the tree. You have to make it come down.”
“Alright, I’ll come help you in a minute, alright honey?”
“No,” Phoebe said. Her childish face had taken on a sharp expression. “You have to come now! Mommy, tell Daddy to come now.”
“Phoebe,” Zoe said. “Daddy and I are talking. So give us a minute, alright?”
Phoebe frowned. Biting her lip, she started off unhappily. Then, an afterthought later, she came back around and slapped Jeff’s arm multiple times with the teensy-weensy flat of her hand.
“Bad! Bad! Bad!” She shouted before striding away to where Reuben was.
That whole reaction brought a smile to Jeff’s mouth. Phoebe was definitely taking after her sister’s strong and roguish character.
“So last night,” Zoe resumed, leaning closer. “I was going around collecting dirty clothing for laundry, and when I got to her room she was on the phone with someone…”
Zoe trailed off. You could see she was having a hard time rewinding to that episode. Unconsciously, her hand began edging toward the bottle of wine.
“And so what?” Jeff pressed her.
“You won’t believe the things she was saying. She was talking about sex.”
There was this shift of expression on Jeff’s face. It had been fleeting, because a fraction of a second later his expression was normal again.
“So ––” Jeff started with a serious tone. “It had to happen sometime, right? I mean, what – she’s… um…she reads things… there’s TV, the Internet, there’re books out there, you know, tabloids and stuff. Even at school these days, you can pick up quite a lot on that.”
“No, no, no… You don’t understand. It wasn’t like that. She and whoever was on that phone with her were having some kind of dirty hotline sex conversation. I mean, she was really graphic about the things that they were going to do… I won’t even go into the details… That’s just… that’s just… I won’t even go there. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Jeff understood what she was saying. He understood it more than she knew. All of a sudden he felt a hot wave wash over his body, even though a cool breeze was sweeping through the park at the moment.
“Does she have a boyfriend or something?” Zoe asked. “Is she seeing someone we don’t know about?”
The heat stroke was getting so fierce within his body that Jeff unbuttoned the top button of his round collar shirt. He was perspiring curiously.
“Look, I think we have to talk to her,” Zoe said again. “You and I, as a team. I was thinking that perhaps you could prepare the ground first, given that she’s more open to you. And then I’d come in and we could properly start her, if it’s not too late, with a good sexual education, you know? Because judging from what I heard, there’s so little hope that her perception of it is not totally screwy by now. So we’ve got to saddle up here and... Are you okay?”
Jeff was probably sick-looking by now with that internal heater of his opening up all the way and causing his skin to become moist.
“You’re all sweaty honey,” Zoe said while grabbing a napkin and dabbing at his face with it.
“Zoe, listen…” Jeff said, taking the napkin from her. “Listen… About Solene… Yes, yes, she has a boyfriend.”
“Oh –– so you knew about that. And you didn’t think I should know too?”
“Honey, just let me finish…”
“Who is he?”
“A kid from Sacred Boulder. Now look––”
“But how long have you known?”
“It doesn’t matter… Listen!”
Jeff grabbed Zoe’s hands into his to get her to stop interrupting him. He had to get something off his chest. And the longer he didn’t, the sooner his confession would find a way to settle back somewhere further down his guts where he couldn’t get it out.
“The last time she was home for break, Solene and I had a talk… She asked me about, you know, love and stuff like that…and in a turn on a dime she was suddenly asking about my first time…”
A spiteful reaction flickered in Zoe’s eyes. Jeff found it useful to quickly add, “You were out grocery shopping… And I was cornered. She was asking me all these questions and I didn’t know what to tell her. She wanted to know what my first time was like… And that’s when she told me that… um… damn it. Look, she told me that she did it with Nick… um… Nicholas… Yeah, Nicholas, that was his name.”
“What do you mean she did it?” Zoe said, knowing it was the only thing she could manage to say right in that instant.
“Zoe ––” And with a soft look, Jeff invited his wife to accept his meaning.
Zoe felt numb and slightly light-headed. The latter reaction might have had something to do with her extra glass of wine. On a subconscious level, perhaps she was waiting for the obvious emotion to manifest. Then she experienced it full on. A cataclysm –– a backdraft was shattering through her bones. Her voice was being torn away. Her limbs were being cut off right out from under her. And for one fraction of a second, she had the horrid knowledge that she was going to faint… But she didn’t faint. Instead, after ravaging her mind, the cataclysm gave rise to fury. Zoe glared wickedly at Jeff.
“I can’t believe this!” Zoe said, her voice returning. “This is not happening!”
“Honey, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your apology! We had an agreement… and you betrayed me.”
“You’re overreacting!”
“Overreacting?” Zoe growled, seething with anger. “Your teenage daughter drops something like that on you and you don’t think I should know.”
“She didn’t want you to know, alright? She thinks that…uh, that you’re gonna be judgmental and throw stones at her.”
“And of course, you think the same.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“That’s why you didn’t tell me.”
“Zoe, she expressly said that this –– this
part of her life, she didn’t want you to be involved in.”
“I don’t care what she says!” Zoe exploded. “She’s sixteen, goddamn it! She doesn’t know what she’s doing! She doesn’t know what she wants!”
A couple of heads swung around in their direction. Seeing it was only a mild domestic scene in open air, the heads turned away.
“Keep it down, will you?” Jeff said, looking over at the twins, hoping they hadn’t caught the heated exchange. Thank God that squirrel was keeping them busy.
“I want to meet him!” Zoe said, recovering a bit of her usual countenance.
“Meet who?
“Who do you think? I want to meet the boy who…who…”
Defiled my daughter! is what she wanted to say. But hearing it out loud would only rub salt in her wound.
“Yeah – I demanded the same thing.” Jeff said. “And she said we’d meet him eventually when the time is right.”
“It has to be now! She’s not calling the shots here. And did they protect themselves?”
Jeff slowly nodded his head.
“And how can you be sure?”
“Because it’s the first thing I asked and she said they did.”
“And naturally, you just believe everything she tells you.”
“Come on now – She does crazy stuff, yeah. But she’s not stupid.”
Zoe looked at him. A minute elapsed while a warmer wind was passing. A sour silence divided them and both elected to catch a break from it. Even though it wasn’t visible, Zoe was still immeasurably appalled by the news of her daughter’s deflowering.
This wasn’t how she had expected it to happen. Good Lord! What was she thinking! Her little baby girl was no longer her little baby girl. And she clamped her eyes shut in anguish.
“Listen, I understand you’re mad,” Jeff finally said. “And I was too. But she’s really trying to be responsible here. She didn’t have to tell me about it. And yet she did. So I think we shouldn’t make any decision based on how we feel about it.”
Zoe’s eyes suddenly widened, dire and sinister. They were spitting fire like the exhaust of a missile bomb.
“That lenience of yours is just astounding,” Zoe said, twisting her lips to show her disdain. “You forgive her for everything. Everything she does is –– is alright. She sneaks out in the dead of night and wrecks the car going God knows where, and it’s alright. She lifts money from my bag, and it’s alright. But this one is not alright. This is not okay. She’s underage. And if you’d heard the things that she was saying on the phone last night, you would realize that your lack of firmness is leading her astray. And now I have to be the bad cop to fix it, so she can hate me more and not you. Because one of us has to step up before she comes home next and springs the news on us that she’s pregnant.”
Flabbergasted, Jeff was taking Zoe’s verbal onslaught with some kind of silly obedience. Never before had he seen such admonition spurting from her small mouth like sewer water from an outflow. However, he was putting himself in her shoes. Her outburst was comprehensible. Snarling in front of him was not Zoe the good wife, but Zoe the good mother. That’s why he had quietly let her lay her anger on him.
After Zoe was done fuming, her shoulders sagged. She was evidently despondent. Jeff was going to say something apologetic to her when her cell phone rang. She answered it. It was a call from work. She was an organizer for a Type-A event planner, and apparently one of their top clients had demanded a date change for their corporate celebration. Now, instead of the initial thirty-day deadline, Zoe now had fourteen, and the agency she worked for was understaffed at the moment. So everyone got the same call from the CEO of the company, informing them that all off-duty personnel were being called in, and that all staff were expected to make this matter a priority, starting now.
Jeff sluggishly stared at Zoe. Today was a family day, and they had agreed that nothing should interfere. She could partake in any planning activities tomorrow if she wanted, but not today. They had another place to go to with the twins anyway.
Jeff was waiting for Zoe to find a reason to subtract herself from the pending work so they could resolve their little drama. But to his surprise, she said, “…Yeah… I still have the layouts at home. I can grab them on my way to the office… Alright, give me one hour.”
And she hung up; then drew up on her legs, dusting off her splayed scoop-neck dress.
Overcoming his surprise and shock, Jeff asked, “What are you doing?”
“We have this thing that came up at the office and they need all hands on deck. So I’ve got to go!”
“But what about the twins? What about Legoland?”
“Can’t you take care of that?”
She was already slinging her handbag over her arm, combing her plush hair into a more professional style.
“Zoe –”Jeff called pathetically.
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, her lips still. Her cheeks were flushed, and she said with a rasp, “I need to go. I’m sorry, but I can’t look at you right now. We’ll talk later.”
Then, after watching the twins with affected eyes, she took off. Jeff followed after her. He didn’t want her to leave in her fuming state. He was hoping to smooth things out between them now, in an effort to maximize the chance of their reconciliation later on.
Chapter IX
TWINKLE, DRAGON, LITTLE BALL…
TRAGEDY STRIKES IN THE PARK