Dirty Blonde

CHAPTER 52

The August sun burned hazy and low, dipping by this time of the afternoon behind a leafy maple tree. Cate and Gina sat on the elevated wood deck in gym shorts and tank tops, side by side in plastic beach chairs, soaking their feet in the warm water of an inflatable baby pool. Warren sat in the shady side of the pool, watching the dappled light on the water’s surface, turning from baby to boy before their very eyes.

“Happy birthday!” Cate said happily, hoisting a jelly glass of Miller, golden in the sunlight.

“Thank you, girlfriend.” Gina grinned, raising her glass, and they clinked in the middle, making a sloshy, satisfyingly low-rent clunk.

“I’m younger than you now.” Cate took a sip of cold beer, tart and perfect on her tongue.

“By twenty minutes.”

“Older is older.”

“How can it be my birthday? I feel younger, and happier.”

“It’s the sex.”

“No, it’s the beer,” Gina said, and they both laughed, while she drained her glass. Cate wiggled her toes in the pool water, which was cloudy with Waterbabies sunblock, hiding Mickey Mouse’s black eyes and Gina’s red toenails.

“Open your present, kid.”

“Yo, I’m woozy.” Gina frowned. Her hair was back in its paintbrush ponytail, because she’d cut it too short again. “I forget, did I eat lunch?”

“No. You were doing You and Me with the baby. You didn’t even have your birthday cake.”

“I will later.” Gina set down her empty glass and picked the wrapped gift from her lap, shaking it with vigor. “A present! Yo, did I tell you Justin got us a treadmill?”

“Yo, three times.” Cate smiled. “You’re so in love.”

“You, too.”

“True.” Cate thought of Nesbitt. “We both have great men. Wonder how long it will last?”

Gina checked her watch. “Ten minutes.”

“Five, according to my shrink.” They both laughed again, and Cate said, “Open your gift.”

“Happy birthday to me!” Gina tore off the flowery wrapping paper, threw it on the grass, then tore off the box lid and threw it on the deck, and unfolded the white tissue paper. She looked inside the box and yelped. “I love it!”

Suddenly there was a splash, and Cate looked up as Warren tried to stand in the pool, reaching out for the deck’s wooden railing.

“Warren, no! You’ll fall!” Gina shouted, leaping up from her chair, dumping the sweater off her lap and onto the deck, and splashing through the pool to Warren. She scooped him up, and he burst instantly into tears.

“Gina, relax,” Cate said, surprised. “He wasn’t going to fall.”

“How do you know?” Gina turned and snapped, tears in her eyes. She cradled Warren’s head against her shoulder as he cried full-bore. “It’s all right, it’s all right, baby. I have you, it’s all right.” She rocked him until he finally stopped sobbing, then wiped his pink cheeks with her fingertips. Warren blinked, his eyelashes clumped, and he pointed to the pool with a chubby index finger. “You want to go down, Warren?” Gina asked softly, then set him back down in the water, and he sat peacefully, looking at the leaf shadows on the water’s surface, as he had before. Gina returned to her chair, shaken, her T-shirt wet from the baby.

For a minute, Cate didn’t know what to say.

“Sorry, I guess…sorry I yelled at you,” Gina stammered, leaning over to the deck and picking up the new sweater, now wet from the splashing. “It’ll dry.”

“Sure, no problem.”

“It’s okay. I guess I drank too much.” Gina folded the sweater and put it back into the gift box. Then she moved her bangs from her damp forehead, her eyes still wet.

“Are you okay?” Cate set down her glass and leaned over. “Geen?”

“It’s nothing.” Gina’s eyes glistened. Her lower lip trembled. She seemed to be losing control.

“He’s okay now. He wasn’t anywhere near the railing, which is five feet high anyway. What were you worried about?”

“The deck was wet.”

“He couldn’t have slipped off.”

Gina wiped her eyes. “I never told you,” she said, after a moment.

“What?”

“I thought it would compromise you.”

“What would?”

“You’re a judge.”

Cate didn’t get it. “Tell me what? You can tell me anything. I’m your best friend.”

“I know I didn’t do anything illegal, or criminal, that much I remember from law school. I just feel terrible about it, still. It’s awful. Morally, it was wrong. It is wrong. I think of it all the time. I even pray about it.”

“What?” Cate asked, bewildered.

“That night, the night you went to that motel. The night you called me. The night you almost got raped. When you didn’t get home right away. Remember? I was there waiting for you.”

“Okay.”

“You called me and told me you were at a pink motel on Ellsworth Avenue, by the airport. Then you got the flat tire and were late. But I didn’t know that.”

“Right. Because I couldn’t reach you. Because you left your cell.”

Gina nodded, biting her lower lip not to cry. “Well, something happened.”

“What? You’re scaring me.”

“That night, when you didn’t come home, I was worried about you, so I went to the motel. You told me where it was, it wasn’t hard to find, and it’s not far from here. I went to the office and asked where you were, a classy blonde, and he knew, a really skeevy guy, he told me the room. I think he thought I wanted to join you. So I went to the room looking for you and that man, Partridge, he was in there drinking with the door open, watching TV.”

My God. Cate felt her eyes widen. She put a hand on her friend’s back.

“I asked what he did to you, I guess I was yelling, and before I knew what he was doing, I mean, he came at me.” Gina’s eyes welled up again. “He attacked me!”

Cate gasped. “Gina, no.”

“I tried to fight him, and he covered my mouth, and he started to tear at my jeans and he was angry, really angry.” Gina’s voice quivered, and she fought to maintain control. “And I thought, he’s going to kill me, so I broke away and ran outside but when he came after me, I pushed him away and the balcony was wet and all of a sudden, he kept falling backwards and he went right over the railing and off the balcony.”

Oh no. Cate froze. A chill numbed her, despite the hot sun.

“And I looked over and his neck was broken and I knew he was dead, so I ran away. I ran to my car and drove to your house and calmed myself down until you got home. And I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d feel terrible or maybe even turn me in, even though it was self-defense. I swear it was.” Gina was crying now, hoarse, choking sobs, bent over in the plastic chair, her elbows on her bare legs. Her back shuddered under Cate’s hand. “I feel awful about it. I have nightmares. It’s a sin. I killed a man.” Then she looked up, her face tear-stained, her red eyes boring into Cate. “What will you do, Cate? Will you turn me in? Do you have to?”

Before Cate could answer, a splash came suddenly from the baby, and they both looked over. Warren splashed the water with his small, flat hand, then watched the pattern of dark and light. Then he said, “Mommy.”

Mommy. Cate felt a chord struck inside her chest. She had heard that sound before, long ago, in that identical little-boy register.

Gina’s mouth had dropped open, and her tears stalled. “Did you hear that?” she asked, her voice thick.

“Yes.”

“Did he say ‘Mommy?’”

“I heard it, too.” Cate couldn’t keep the thrill from her voice. “He said, ‘Mommy.’ Just like he used to.”

“That’s me! I’m ‘Mommy’!” Gina rose, set the gift down on the deck, and walked through the pool to the baby. “Warren, Mommy’s here. I’m Mommy. You’re Warren.”

“Mommy,” Warren said clearly, without looking up.

“Warren!” Gina scooped him up again, joyfully this time, holding him close as she stood in the baby pool. “Warren, it’s Mommy. Warren, it’s Mommy! Mommy loves you! I love you, Warren,” Gina said over and over, happiness lifting her voice. She rocked him in her arms, and Warren’s large blue eyes looked up at the sky.

Cate bit her lip, her emotions in tumult. What will you do, Cate? Will you turn me in? Do you have to? The beer soured in her mouth. She could imagine Gina bursting into the motel room, demanding to be told where she was, screaming at Partridge in her fear. Unknowingly walking into a nightmare. All for Cate.

Cate kept her eye on her friend, rocking her baby back and forth, the two of them a solitary silhouette against the leafy maple, the sun peeking through, here and there, in the most unexpected spots. Cate watched the patterns a minute, considering. The leaves were in the way, but the sun was there all along, abiding, giving warmth and light. Sometimes it would be hidden by a tree, or a cloud cover. By winter, or even by pain or hopelessness. But it was always there, and always would be.

Cate felt her heart wrench to look at them, mother and child, wrapped for just a moment around each other, and she knew that no courtroom or law would ever punish Gina more than she herself did now, and would forever. And all of a sudden, Cate understood something that she hadn’t before. That at certain times, everything will fall surprisingly into place, even on a humid summer afternoon, with her feet in a baby pool.

And in those times, justice and love will look so much alike that they will become the very same thing.