The way she looked at the picture of Max and me made my heart warm.
Paula said, “I have something for you, too.” She went to the Christmas tree and retrieved a small wrapped box.
“You really shouldn’t have, Paula.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said as she made her way over to the couch and sat down beside me. “I have that stocking with your name on it hung by the chimney with care” — she smiled and winked — “and even though I wish you were going to be here with us, I know how important it is to be with your family.” She held the box out.
I opened my hand and took it. “Thank you.” I started to unwrap the paper, thinking the box was just the right size to hold a watch or bracelet.
But it was neither. I opened the rectangular box to find a sterling silver spoon.
“This,” Paula said, “was Max’s spoon when he was a baby.”
I took a deep breath, suddenly having realized I’d been holding it in. “It’s beautiful,” I said, “but…why?”
Her head turned quickly to look from the spoon to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it to sound ungrateful. I’m just…surprised. Don’t you want to keep this?”
“I’ve had it for years, and it’s one of my most precious possessions, but I want you to have it. When Max and I left his father, I didn’t bring much with me. But this was one of those things. In the back of my mind, I thought it might be of value in case we had to sell it. Sterling silver might have fetched a hundred dollars or so, and it would have been good in a pinch, but thankfully I didn’t have to sell it.”
I thought back to Max telling me how he had blackmailed his father before leaving, and that was the money that kept them afloat for a while. I wondered if his mother knew that, but there was no way I was going to ask.
“Oh, no,” I said, genuinely feeling sorry for her, but also at the thought of the two of them trying to make a new life away from the abusive man she married and who fathered the man I loved.
I was feeling a bit unworthy of taking this amazing gift, but I also knew I couldn’t reject it. That would have been an insult of the highest order.
I reached out for her and we hugged.
“I want you to have it,” she said, “because you’re going to be Max’s wife and the mother of his children.”
I pulled back from her, my arms still on her shoulders. I could feel my eyes drying out quickly from being open wide and not being able to blink.
“Relax,” she said. “I don’t know when it’s going to happen. I just know it is. I can read my son. Trust me. And I don’t know when you’ll have your first child. I may not be around to see the day.”
EIGHT
Six days later I was back in Ohio, in my parents’ house, and within the first hour or so I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy stay.
Things were still not smoothed over from everything that had happened since I’d moved to LA, and more specifically, since all that happened when my parents and my sister Grace were visiting.
My father — clearly the leader of the family — had seemed to come to peace with it after meeting Max in the hospital, but I guess he and my mom forgot all of that when they got home.
I was staying in my old bedroom. Every time I went in that room was like walking back in time.
Posters of my favorite bands and actors from my high school days covered almost every inch of the walls. My old desk in the corner still held some books from English classes. All of my old clothes were still in the closet and in the dresser.
Despite the fact that I had been a college graduate the last time I slept in that room, this time I felt like I was back in high school. Like I was a teenager who had run away from home, only to come back to the concentration-camp-like setting I’d so desperately wanted to escape for years.
Okay, so it sounds dramatic. But being in that teenage girl mindset, of course my view on things was over the top. I would only be here for a few days, I reminded myself over and over, and then I’d be the adult Olivia again once I got back to my real home in Malibu.
Not helping matters on this trip was the fact that I flew home on Max’s jet. My parents would have much preferred to pick me up at a commercial airline terminal, but instead they waited in the small lobby at the far north side of the airport where all the private jet traffic came and went.
The first night I was back, my parents cooked a big dinner. Grace and her husband came, and of course my little niece and nephew. And, once again, the babies provided a nice distraction from what would have been an otherwise entirely contentious evening.
That didn’t start until later, when the kids had drifted off to sleep. I helped Grace put them in the guest room, which mom and dad had converted to a room just for the little ones.
Back in the den, we all sat around sipping hot chocolate. Mom, as usual, had decorated the house for Christmas in great style. The tree was beautiful, and with the lamps dimmed, it provided soft lighting as we talked.
It was mostly small-talk to begin with, but then mom asked when or if I’d be moving.
“Where?” I said.
“To your own place.”
I sighed. I looked at Grace, who had a look of solidarity on her face, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m not.”
My father got up and went through the swinging door to the kitchen.
“You’re making enough to do that, right?” Mom said.
I decided not to answer that question. I wanted to cut straight to the heart of the matter. “I thought you guys saw how good Max is to me after all that went down. That should count for something, right? Or am I really going to have to live the rest of my life making decisions based on what makes you happy rather than what makes me happy?”
My father came out of the kitchen, holding nothing, so I knew he hadn’t gone in there to get anything, he had done it just to get away.
“Don’t speak to your mother like that,” he said. “She’s only concerned about what’s best for you. We all are.”
I looked at Grace, who spoke up: “I think she’s going to be okay.”
Grace’s husband, Terry, was an auto mechanic, a quiet guy, always nice enough and I liked him, but there was no way he was taking sides in this. He examined his drink with undue intensity.
I excused myself, went up to my room and lay down on the bed. I felt 15 again.
. . . . .
Grace and I spent much of the next day with Krystal. It had been months since I’d seen her, and she was looking much better — she’d put on some much needed weight that she’d lost while jacked up on coke, and the swollen blackish/purplish bags that used to be under her eyes were no longer there. Her hair was shorter and no longer dyed. She looked like an average, everyday young housewife and mother. That’s what came to mind, anyway, strange as it may be, because she wasn’t married and she had no kids.