Secret Shared

19 CASSIE

TRACINA PICKED OUT the baby’s name—Rose Nicaud—in honor of the Café, which itself was named after one of the first African-American female entrepreneurs in New Orleans.

“We’ll nickname her Neko,” she said, cooing into the baby’s tiny forehead, no bigger than a silver dollar.

To say the baby was small would be to describe only a part of what made her so extraordinary to look upon. She was almost translucent; a network of teeny pink veins covered her whole face and body like a pale web, giving her a light purplish hue. When she wasn’t being held, she was splayed in a portable incubator next to Tracina’s bed, a diaper—the size of a coffee mug—completely swallowing the lower part of her body, her fists no bigger than rosebuds. Tracina had a private room, courtesy of her baby’s wealthy father.

“The doctor says she’s going to be fine,” Tracina whispered to me, not because she wanted to keep the noise down, but because her voice was nearly gone from the screaming during the birth, at Carruthers and at Will, both of whom she allowed in the delivery room, just in case.

Now Carruthers, the seeming victor, in hospital greens and a cap, had clearly made a home for himself in the giant armchair, his suit, vest and tie strewn about the place. He slept with his hand resting protectively on the incubator’s glass cover.

“I might have to stay here for a few more days, but there shouldn’t be any complications,” Tracina said.

Medical complications, at least.

Everything else I would learn came later, when Tracina and I inched towards a kind of friendship in the weeks and months that followed the dramatic birth, when I would discover I had a lot more in common with her than I thought.

She told me her insistence on waiting as long as possible before a cesarean was because she knew there’d be a test and she wanted to delay Will’s heartache as long as possible. No one doubted she cared about Will a lot, but it became clear during the delivery and after that Carruthers was the man she loved. Still, she felt that Will would have made a better father—more reliable, more hands-on, less complicated with his love for the baby. Carruthers was a high-powered politician; he had a wife (now soon-to-be-ex) and two college-aged children. And yet, it was touching the way he stayed by Tracina’s side all night, ducking out to take and receive phone calls, even trying his best to treat Will with some kindness, though Will struggled to return the gesture.

That’s why she told all those lies. Like me, Tracina didn’t want to be a wedge in someone else’s relationship. Even though Carruthers had been ardent from the beginning, he just wasn’t ready to leave. Tracina knew how easy it would be to fall into the role of mistress and she wasn’t having it, never wanting to hide and lie, especially when Trey was getting so smart, and a good man like Will was so available. She broke it off completely. Then she discovered she was pregnant. Not having had a father around herself when she was growing up, she wanted to do everything in her power to make sure her baby had one who was. And she felt that as long as she kept her mouth shut, only someone ignorant of her and Will’s family trees would question the paternity just because the baby’s skin might not perfectly match Will’s. He had two African-American grandmothers; Tracina had white relatives on both sides. The baby’s skin color, like her parents’ before her, was always going to be the result of a spin on a blessedly infinite wheel of hues.

Still, a blood test was administered, and the results were immediate. If Will, head hung low, could have dragged a dirty ”blankie” behind him through the maternity ward, Tracina told me later, it wouldn’t have made the scene any sadder.

She tried to get him to stay and talk. Even Carruthers offered to go for a walk around the block with him. But Will kept walking.

I almost missed him while checking messages at the pay phones, my cell phone long run out of batteries.

“Will! Wait!” I yelled, leaving the receiver dangling, unsure of what went down, though it was pretty easy to glean from his face what the test results must have showed.

I called his name three, four times through the parking lot before he finally stopped and turned, and by that time his key was stuck in the lock of his door, again.

“Do you want me to drive? Let me drive you home, Will,” I said, bending over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath. It was officially fall, but the noonday sun was hot as mid-summer hell. We’d both been at the hospital for a full twenty-four hours, taking turns sleeping in the cab of his truck.

Will turned around slowly, leaving the keys dangling.

“Know what the worst part is?” he said, not meeting my eyes, still searching the air around me for answers. “I never wanted kids. I don’t think I ever told you that. All my friends had them—my brother, cousins, all of them—but I was like, Nope, there are just too many of ’em in the world. And I work too hard, and I don’t make enough money to do it the way it’s supposed to be done. My dad owned that café. He was never around. And he was always broke. But I tell you what,” he said, pointing to the whole hospital, “I wanted that baby. Ah … fuck.”

His emotions overcame him, everything he’d been bottling up over the past nine months, all of his doubts and fears about becoming a good enough father for a child whose mother he struggled to love, let alone like, all the while expanding his business on precarious loans and his own blood and sweat, all of it—it came out and he cried. But not for long. In fact, less than fifteen sharp seconds. I threw my arms around him, inhaling the smell of hospital in his hair. He didn’t embrace me back. Instead, he kept his paint-spattered hands tightly covering his face. And when I let him go, reluctantly, he stepped far away from me and shook off the pain, so all you might have gleaned from our body language if you drove into the empty parking spot at that exact moment (which, in fact, Jesse Turnbull had) was that two acquaintances had just had a quick catch-up and were now saying their goodbyes.

That’s why Jesse leaned out the window of his own truck (a newer, better one, of course, than Will’s) and said, “Hey, babe. Thought I’d bring you a coffee on my way to work,” handing me a medium takeout with soy.

He wouldn’t have said “babe” if he knew who I’d been hugging and what Will had just been through—what we’d been through. He wasn’t that kind of guy; he wasn’t boastful, territorial, dickish. And Will was rarely impolite. But in that moment, his skin so thin, his heart so bruised, all Will could do was ignore Jesse, shoot me a pained look, rip the keys out of the lock of his stupid busted truck, whip around to the passenger side and enter the damn thing from there. It was awful and awkward watching him slowly inch from the spot next to us, only to fishtail out of the lot like those idiot show-off teenagers testing their wheels in a WalMart parking lot.

“That your boss?” Jesse asked, handing me the coffee.

I nodded.

“He okay?”

“You know what? No.”

“Sorry to hear that. Can I drop you somewhere?”

“Nah, I’m way out of your way. And I feel like I need a good long walk. Then a good long nap. It’s been that kind of night, and morning.”

“Everything all right?”

“Baby’s fine, mom’s fine … the dad’s fine. It’s Will I’m worried about.”

“I thought … So he’s not the father?”

I winced by way of an answer.

“Ho boy. How about you? You okay?”

I said I was fine, just tired, but I hadn’t really taken my own personal temperature just yet. Hospitals have a way of taking the focus off anyone not on a gurney or bed. But what else could I say to Jesse in that moment? I couldn’t tell him I was happy to see him but that I was also harboring a darker, deeper joy at this sudden turn of events that had left Will free. I was happy to see his face, Jesse with his blue-tinted sunglasses, his hands with their rugged backs, and smooth, soft palms from being elbow deep in coco butter and marzipan all day, the same hands that had begun to make their brilliant acquaintance with every inch of my body. I wanted him even now, my body automatically drawn towards the door of his truck like a big magnet, my face inches from his. He put his hand on the back of my head and pulled me in for a long kiss that tasted like good coffee.

“Okay, babe. I’ll call you later,” he said, and drove off, leaving me with a new round of thoughts now buzzing to life.

I want Jesse. I want Will. Do I want Will? And who’s to say Will even wants me after all this drama, or that he’ll want any woman, for that matter? Besides, he probably thinks I’m now swimming in men. First, a lanky musician comes by the restaurant, and now some other punk drops coffee off for me. I had to laugh right then and there. Imagine if Will thought I was a “player,” or worse, a “slut,” a word that Matilda banned … but still. There was something in his eyes just now that had sent a chill my way.

So I did what I always did when I couldn’t think about a thing straight. I started walking. I walked the ten blocks towards the Mansion and the only person who’d ever offered me clarity.

It was a Sunday, but Matilda was there. And she was alone.

“Know anything about corporate charitable tax deductions?” she said instead of hello.

I followed her into her office, where half a dozen ledgers lay spread out on her desk.

“’Fraid not. Are you in the middle of something?”

“Oh, just cooking the books. Trying to figure out operating costs. How much longer we can stay afloat. How’s the baby? Is she just dreamy?”

“Tiny and cute, yes.”

“Has Dauphine called you yet?”

“My phone was off, the battery’s dead. Oh my god! Her Mark fantasy was last night! I completely forgot! How did it go? Did you talk to her?”

“She left here about an hour ago.”

I noted the time. Almost two in the afternoon.

“An eighteen-hour fantasy? So … I take it went well?”

“Maybe a little too well.”

She filled me in on all the juicy details, and I had to admit I was envious. And though I had known Mark was her type, I had no idea they were both so ripe for something deeper, and so soon.

“It happened to Pauline two years ago with a recruit,” Matilda said. “Same sort of thing. But Pauline stayed. Dauphine’s out, I’m sad to say. Mark too. They both seem very happy … And now I have a feeling we’re going to lose you too. Am I right?”

“You mean to Jesse? We’re not there. Not yet. Or do you mean with Will? With Will, that would be a non-starter.”

“Are you sure?”

I filled her in on the paternity drama and the strange conundrum I faced. Will or Jesse? I couldn’t have both.

“Has Will asked you to be with him?”

“No.”

“Has Jesse?”

“Kind of. I mean, he’s, we’re … it’s good, you know? I really like Jesse and the sex is amazing. But I think … I think I love Will.”

“Have you told Will this?”

“No.”

She steepled her fingers in thought.

“Well, what are you waiting for? You can’t keep catching him between women, Cassie.”

“But what about Jesse?”

“Something tells me Jesse will survive. And he always has a home here.”

My stomach dropped at the thought of him with anyone else. Matilda had a soft spot for him, that I knew. What have I done? What do I do?

“When you have it sorted, let us know. I was hoping you’d join the Committee next. At least with your vote we might finally get a redheaded man past the initial selection round. Meanwhile, these were just mailed to the press and other important guests,” she said, sliding open a drawer. She handed me an invitation. “I hope you can make it. And be sure to bring a date. Either one of them.”

S.E.C.R.E.T. cordially invites you to a public unveiling of our Major New Charity Initiative, Benefiting Underprivileged Women and Children in NOLA

at

Latrobe’s on Royal

Black Tie

I was shocked to see S.E.C.R.E.T. written in that familiar curly font on a public invitation.

“Matilda! That’s the group’s name. I mean, you put S.E.C.R.E.T. out there so boldly! I couldn’t bring Will to this. He’d start asking questions. He’d be all What’s this stand for, Cassie?”

“Oh, that. Don’t worry. We’re giving away the money we raise under S.E.C.R.E.T.’s official name, the one that’s on the books: The Society for the Encouragement of Civic Responsibility and Equal Treatment. See? You can surely belong to that group, can’t you?”

She turned around one of the ledgers to show me where official invoices and receipts indicated its full name, not the one I was used to.

“We pay our taxes. We have a mortgage. We’re good citizens. And when people ask us what we do, we say we improve the lives of women in need. You’re safe to bring someone like Will to a public event like this; we take our anonymity very seriously. And of course, there’d be none of these concerns if you chose to bring Jesse instead.”

“That kind of sums up my predicament.”

“Indeed. But what a wonderful predicament. I’d call it progress,” she said. “Wouldn’t you?”

Indeed.