“Have you been asking Amy about her daddy lately?” Georgeanne inquired cautiously. From time to time Lexie asked questions about daddies and daughters, and Georgeanne would try to answer. But since Georgeanne had been raised almost solely by her grandmother, she didn’t really have the answers.
“No,” Lexie replied around a mouthful of food. “She just tells me stuff.”
“Please don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Lexie’s eyes narrowed; she reached for her milk and raised it to her lips. After she’d set her glass back on the table she said, “Well, don’t ask me questions when I’m chewin‘.”
“Oh, sorry.” Georgeanne laid her fork on the plate and placed her hands on the beige linen tablecloth. Her thoughts returned to John. She hadn’t lied to him about the reason she’d kept Lexie’s birth from him. She really hadn’t thought he’d want to know or that he would have cared. But whether he would have cared or not hadn’t been her main motivation. Her primary reason had been much more selfish. Seven years ago she’d been alone and lonely. Then she’d had Lexie and suddenly she wasn’t alone any longer. Lexie filled the hollow places in Georgeanne’s heart. She had a daughter who loved her unconditionally. Georgeanne wanted to keep that love all for herself. She was selfish and greedy, but she didn’t care. She was both mommy and daddy. She was enough. “We haven’t had a pink tea for a while. I’m working at home tomorrow. Do you want to have a tea?”
Lexie’s smile lifted the milk mustache at the corners of her mouth, and she nodded vigorously, flipping her ponytail up and down.
Georgeanne returned her daughter’s smile as she brushed at crumbs with her little finger. Seven years ago she’d pointed her flimsy mule shoes toward the future, and she rarely looked back. She’d done pretty well for herself and Lexie. She co-owned a successful business, paid mortgage on her own home, and just last month she’d bought a new car. Lexie was healthy and happy. She didn’t need a daddy. She didn’t need John.
“When you’re finished, go see if your pink chiffon dress still fits you,” Georgeanne said as she picked up her plate and carried it to the sink. She’d never known her daddy and she’d survived. She’d never known what it was like to curl up on her father’s lap and hear his heart beating beneath her ear. She’d never known the security of her daddy’s arms or the reassuring timbre of his voice. She’d never known and she’d done just fine.
Georgeanne looked out the window above the sink and stared into the backyard. She’d never known, but many times she’d tried to imagine.
She remembered peeking through fences to watch the neighbors barbecue chicken on burn barrels cut lengthwise. She remembered riding her blue Schwinn with the silver banana seat down to Jack Leonard’s gas station to watch him change tires, fascinated by the big, filthy hands he always wiped on a greasy towel hanging from the back pocket of his dirty gray coveralls. She remembered the nights she’d sit on the hard, age-pocked porch at her grandmother’s house, a confused and curious little girl with a dark ponytail and red cowboy boots, watching the men in her neighborhood return from work and wishing she had a daddy, too. She had watched and waited and the whole time wondered. She had wondered what daddies did when they came home. She had wondered because she hadn’t known.
The sound of Lexie’s bootheels on the kitchen linoleum pulled Georgeanne from her memories. “All finished?” she asked as she turned to take the dirty plate and empty glass from Lexie’s hands.
“Yep. Tomorrow can I serve the petit fours?”
“Yes, you may,” Georgeanne answered as she placed the plate and glass in the sink. “And I think you’re old enough to pour the tea now.”
“All right!” Lexie clapped her hands with excitement, then wrapped her thin arms around Georgeanne’s thighs. “I love you,” she gushed.
“I love you, too.” Georgeanne looked down at the top of her daughter’s head and placed her palm on Lexie’s back. Her grandmother had loved her, but her love hadn’t been enough to fill the empty places inside. No one had been able to fill the holes in her soul until Lexie.
Georgeanne rubbed her hand up and down Lexie’s spine. She was very proud of all she’d accomplished. She’d learned to live with the disability of dyslexia rather than hide from it. She’d worked hard to improve herself, and everything she had, everything she’d become, she’d done on her own. She was happy.
Still, she wanted more for her daughter. She wanted better.
Chapter Eight
Muscle and bone and gritty determination collided, hockey sticks slapped the ice, and the roar of thousands of frenzied fans filled John’s living room. On the big-screen television, the “Russian Rocket,” Pavel Bure, high-sticked Ranger defenseman Jay Wells in the face, dropping the bigger New York player to the ice.
“Damn, you’ve got to admire a guy Bure’s size mixing it up with Wells.” A smile of admiration tilted John’s lips as he cast a glance at his three guests: Hugh “The Caveman” Miner, Dmitri “Tree” Ulanov, and Claude “The Undertaker” Dupre.
His three teammates had originally dropped by John’s houseboat to watch the Dodgers play the Atlanta Braves on his huge television. The game had lasted two innings before they’d shaken their collective heads as if to say, “And they make more money than I do for that!” and had slipped a tape of the 1994 Stanley Cup Championships into the VCR.
“Have you seen Bure’s ears?” Hugh asked. “He’s got great big goddamn ears.”
As blood ran from Jay Wells’s broken nose, Pavel, with his shoulders slumped, skated from the rink, ejected on a game misconduct.
“And girly curls,” added Claude in his soft French-Canadian accent. “But not as bad as Jagr. He’s a sissy.”
Dmitri tore his eyes from the television screen as his fellow countryman, Pavel Bure, was escorted to the locker room. “Jaromir Jagr iz sissy?” he asked, referring to the Pittsburgh Penguin’s star winger.
Hugh shook his head with a grin, then paused and looked at John. “What do you think, Wall?”
“Nah, Jagr hits too hard to be a sissy,” he answered with a shrug. “He’s no pansy-ass.”
“Yeah, but he does wear all those gold chains around his neck,” argued Hugh, who was famous for talking trash just to get a reaction. “Either Jagr is a sissy-man or a fan of Mr. T.”
Dmitri bristled and pointed to the three gold necklaces around his neck. “Chains does not mean sissy.”
“Who’s Mr. T?” Claude wanted to know.
“Didn’t you ever watch The A-Team on television? Mr. T is the big black dude with the Mohawk and all the gold jewelry,” Hugh explained. “He and George Peppard worked for the government and blew up stuff.”
“Chains does not mean sissy,” Dmitri insisted.
“Maybe not,” Hugh conceded. “But I know for a fact that wearing a lot of chains has something to do with the size of a guy’s dick.”
“Bullsheet,” Dmitri scoffed.
John chuckled and stretched his arm along the back of the beige leather couch. “How do you know, Hugh? Have you been peeking?”
Hugh rose to his feet and pointed an empty Coke can at John. His eyes narrowed and a smile curved his mouth. John knew that look. He’d seen it hundreds of times just before “The Caveman” went for the kill and verbally kicked the guts out of any opposing player who dared to skate too close to the goalie crease. “I’ve showered with guys all my life, and I don’t have to peek to know that the guys who are weighed down with gold are compensating for lack of dick.”
Claude laughed and Dmitri shook his head. “Not true,” he said.
“Yes it is, Tree,” Hugh assured him as he walked toward the kitchen. “In Russia lots of gold chains might mean you’re a real stud, but you’re in America now and you can’t just walk around advertising something like a small dick. You have to learn our ways if you’re not going to embarrass yourself.”