Jennifer smiled. ‘No, everything was great, Dad, thanks.’
‘Hey, your mom did most of the work. Thank her.’ Tony reached over and patted Lynn’s thigh.
Tony and Lynn glanced at each other, and then Lynn said, ‘We have another surprise for you, Jenny,’ handing Jennifer a little wrapped box with a white bow.
Jennifer stopped eating, put down her milk, wiped her mouth, looked at her mom and dad, and picked up the little gift. She knew what it was. So when she ripped the wrapping paper, opened the box, and took out a pair of keys, Jennifer summoned all her powers to open her eyes wide and to put on a big surprised smile on her face.
‘Dad! Mom! What’s this? You know, I already have a pair of keys.’
Tony and Lynn were grinning. ‘Yes, darling, it’s what you always wanted,’ Lynn said.
It’s what you always wanted rang in Jennifer’s ears as they went outside and her father opened the garage door and showed her a huge white bow, this time wrapped around a brand-new baby-blue Camaro.
To match my eyes, thought Jennifer wearily.
‘To match your eyes,’ said Tony as his daughter stood and stared. She then effused sufficiently. Hugged and kissed them both. But did not take the car for a ride just then and spent the rest of the morning in her bedroom, sitting on her bed in utter silence, not moving at all.
‘I told you they were gonna get me a car,’ Jennifer said when Julie called at nine-thirty.
Julie squealed. ‘A car! A beautiful car! Your car! You can take us all everywhere in your car!’
‘Hmm. What are you so happy about? You didn’t get a car.’
‘I should’ve been so lucky,’ Julie answered.
‘Well, maybe if your mom and dad didn’t have twenty kids, you might’ve,’ commented Jennifer.
‘Five,’ said Julie. ‘But why were you so sure it was going to be a car?’
Because it’s what I always wanted, Jennifer thought, and wearily said so.
‘Going to St Mark’s, Jen? My grandmother wants me to take communion today.’
‘Not today, Jule, okay? I really gotta help clean up.’
They talked about Tully a little and hung up; afterwards Jennifer sat back down on the bed with hands folded on her lap and waited – until Robin called.
‘Jennifer, I want to take Tully out,’ said Robin.
Jennifer sighed. The only phone calls she had received were from Julie and now from Robin to ask permission to see Tully.
‘Go right ahead,’ said Jennifer. ‘By all means.’
Robin was pacing around his bedroom. He could tell Jennifer was not listening to him, and hated finding himself in a ridiculous position of having to confer with a seventeen – no, eighteen-year-old. But he remembered Tully’s face and sweet lips as she kissed him. He would have been delighted with her lips alone. The rest of their encounter confounded him. Robin felt vaguely that unwittingly and unknowingly, he was being sucked into some bottomless mire. That last night’s encounter with Tully felt like he had been had. With no choice in the matter. Simply sucked in, and had. Tully seemed like a mosquito in the summer that sucked just enough blood to feed itself but not to kill him, and when the mosquito was swollen and bloated with the little it took, it buzzed off, to digest Robin’s blood and then feed off some other poor slob. Still, Robin felt persisting for Tully was the right thing to do. It felt like the right thing to do.
‘Jen, can you help me out a little, please?’
‘What can I do for you, Robin?’
‘I want to take her out.’
There was a short pause.
‘What would you like me to say?’ said Jennifer.
What’s she like? Robin wanted to ask. Is there something about her I should know? Do you think I’m her type? Is there something that’ll scare me off her? But he already knew the answer to that one. She was scary as hell, devouring him as she did, on a whim, unexpectedly, and then patting him on the back, sort of like, good boy, Robin, good doggie, now sit. But all Robin asked was, ‘Well, is she going out with someone?’
‘No,’ said Jennifer. ‘But you are.’
Robin ignored her. Gail was strictly short-term.
‘She said her mother is sick. Is it a chronic thing?’
Another pause, slightly longer. Robin sighed into the phone. Dentist visits were easier than this.
‘Oh, it’s pretty chronic, all right,’ said Jennifer.
Robin was silent.
‘Robin,’ said Jennifer. ‘Tully is not the easiest person to take out, you know.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. I was hoping you’d tell me.’ Pause. ‘She told me to come in the afternoon to her house and take her for a drive,’ he said finally.
‘She did?’ Jennifer seemed to liven up.
‘Yes, uh-huh.’
Jennifer chuckled. ‘She didn’t mean it.’
Robin’s circular pacing around his bedroom speeded up.
‘How’s your dad?’ Jennifer asked him.
‘Fine, fine,’ he said. That was not strictly true, but he really did not want to talk about his dad at the moment. ‘What’s Tully’s dad like?’
‘He’s not,’ said Jennifer, ‘around.’
‘Not at all?’ asked Robin.
‘Not at all.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jennifer.
‘How long has he been not around?’
‘Ten years,’ said Jennifer.
‘Jennifer, will you do me a favor?’
He heard Jennifer sigh. ‘Robin, I kinda gotta go. I’m expecting a phone call.’
‘Jennifer,’ said Robin. ‘If he’s going to call, trust me, he’ll call back – now please, would you?’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Call Tully, find out if she really wants to see me again, and if she does, please find out the best way I can get to her. Can you do that for me?’
Jennifer quickly agreed, and they hung up. Robin sat quietly for a few moments. He was thinking of Tully, of the way she held on to him last night and of her soft needy moans. Then he inadvertently remembered how upset Gail was with him and how he meant to apologize. Robin thought of calling Gail up but decided against it. He did not want to be talking to Gail while he was thinking of Tully.
Tully was the first girl whose smell and taste and expression affected him enough to humiliate his date at a party for a mutual friend. Robin hoped Tully was worth it.
When Robin was twelve, six months before his confirmation and seven months before his mother’s death, he found out that he and his younger brothers were all adopted by Stephen and Pamela DeMarco from some adoption agency that had managed to palm off all three little male siblings to one set of parents. Sort of like a kitten litter. Robin had been three, Bruce a year and a half, and Stevie three months.
Robin had been looking for his birth certificate because he wanted to open his first savings