10

       The Delaney House

      Dear Mason and Rebekah, though once upon a time, you were Ethan and Layla,

      To pick up where I left off last: I was giving my mother a pedicure on her deathbed. It was the August after I’d graduated high school, top of the class, I might add. It was the day a pregnancy test came back positive in the restroom of a Roy Rogers. It was the day my mother died.

      “Vanessa, I’m scared.” Before that, I wasn’t sure if she knew I was there. There were a lot of things that weren’t there. Her voluminous hair wasn’t there. The meat on her bones wasn’t there. Her will to live wasn’t there. But I was there. I was there until the very end.

      “Don’t be scared, Ma.” I tried not to drown in my own words, tried to be strong. “I won’t forget the cuticle cutter this time.”

      And that was it. Poof, she was gone. She never got to learn I was pregnant. Perhaps that was a good thing. She never did approve of those Delaney boys.

      That was around the time your father decided to join the NYPD. I was suspicious at the sudden transition from lifting cars and sipping 40s to being a cop.

      “Imagine the dope you could score in arrests,” Lynn would push. Oh, yes, your grandmother was a fucking gem. Lynn, this stocky woman with bad teeth and a huge fucking mouth … never mind. I shouldn’t talk bad about your grandmother. That’s for you guys to assess without my editorializing. Maybe one day you guys will see for yourself if she’s still around.

      The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. I think that was Mark’s plan all along: become a copper to score dope, to demand respect. He was always one who felt he deserved respect, even if he didn’t earn it.

      After Mom died, we spent a few months with the Delaneys until we’d gotten our own place, a house we bought on Huntington Drive with the money I’d inherited from my mother, an inheritance that turned all of the Delaneys into my best friends overnight. But on one particular night at the Delaney house, I was about four months pregnant, Mark didn’t come home.

      See, your father and I were kids at the time, excited at the thought of playing mom and dad at such a young age without knowing what parenthood really meant. Lynn Delaney was the only parent Mark was familiar with, so the recipe was already toxic. I was just too young to see it at the time.

      It was the night before his graduation from the NYPD academy, and the neighborhood was already preparing the party. Not a bad idea to know a cop on the inside, the delinquents around the block would say. The rest of the Delaneys were fast asleep, but for your uncle Peter, the only one of your father’s brothers that I ever cared for. Peter was this brilliant and kind man confined to a wheelchair, and probably the best friend I ever had in all my life. I miss him from time to time, think about calling him once in a while. But that would breach my contract with the whippersnappers. Peter and I talked about anything and everything, from our disagreements with the Delaneys to the unpleasant changes of pregnancy, from politics and science to movies and comics.

      But anyway, it was close to 4:00 a.m., and in walked a stumbling Mark, a nightclub stamp on the back of his hand, the smell of peppermint schnapps and cologne seeping from his skin. I should note that while at the academy the past few months, the eyeliner and leather was traded in for CK One body spray and button-downs. He toppled a side table on the way in, ash and cigarette butts scattering on the floor.

      “Mark, where the hell have you been?” I shushed. “Your graduation is in a few hours.”

      “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business, you slut,” he said, his mouth wet from drink and eyes glassed over. “Whose baby is that, anyways?”

      “You sh-sh-shouldn’t talk to her like that,” said Peter.

      “Oh, yeah?” And there, for the first time, I saw your father with this particular look, one that turned his eyes to black, one that sent a chill through my bones. He leaned over and reached under Peter’s wheelchair. He wanted to humiliate Peter, and he succeeded when he pulled a black pouch from under his chair, a pouch full of Texas catheters. He took his car keys and began to stab the bag that held Peter’s urine. The bag burst on Peter’s lap. Your father burst out in laughter.

      “What the hell are you doing?” I slapped his shoulder.

      “Get away from me.” He pushed me hard enough that I fell backward.

      I should have left right then. Rebekah, take this advice. The second a man touches you like that, run as far as you can. But I was a stupid kid, a stupid kid who stayed. With my mother dead, I had nowhere to go. And in my head at that time, I’d thought that staying with an asshole was a better alternative than raising my child without a father.

      After he stumbled back to his bedroom, I helped Peter in the dark, but I could feel his face burn red in the night. “How could you be with a monster like that?” He tried not to cry. “How could you let a man like that father your own flesh and blood?”