had before. And Francesca’s father and Avery came to Easter dinner, where Marya prepared a splendid ham and decorated the table with Easter eggs, with a gigantic chocolate egg in the center of the table, which she allowed Ian to eat for dessert. He went to see his maternal grandmother several times, and Chris was good about getting him there, but it was in the house on Charles Street where Ian felt the most loved and had the most fun. The women in the house were devoted to him, each in her own way, and Ian loved them.
Chris beamed as he watched the child blossom, and it was an agonizing day when he had to go back to court in May when Ian’s mother claimed to be back on her feet, and was out of rehab again. She wanted Ian to come home. Chris looked gray when he left for court, and worse when he got back. She had done it again with her father’s help, and convinced the judge. Chris had to take Ian back to her the next day, and return to the visitation schedule they’d had before she OD’d. It was his worst nightmare come true again. She had appeared angelic and remorseful in court.
Ian looked painfully subdued when he said goodbye to all of them.
“You’ll be back next weekend,” Marya reminded him. “We’ll make almond cookies then. See you soon, Ian,” she said as she kissed him goodbye, and Francesca had a lump in her throat the size of a fist when she hugged him. Eileen gave him her own teddy bear to take with him. All three women were crying when they walked back into the house after he and Chris left in a cab. And Chris looked devastated when he got home after dropping Ian off. He looked sick, and Francesca knew he was. He went upstairs and went to bed, and stayed there for two days, while Marya brought him comfort food on trays and he refused to eat. He was morbidly depressed that weekend and worried sick. What if something happened to Ian? Or she used and put him at risk? Chris could hardly function until Ian came back for the weekend the following week. The child had been sorely missed, and the house felt like a tomb once he left on Sunday night.
Without Ian, the house took up its old more adult rhythm again. Marya went to Vermont to check on things there. Eileen started dating more again, and was out almost every night. She had slowed down for a while. During Ian’s time there she had stayed home more than usual, and enjoyed being with him. She had been through several boyfriends in the past few months, and she got involved with someone new in June. And Francesca was trying to force herself to think about dating too. Everything had been on hold in all their lives while Ian lived with them. Without him, they became single adults again with lives of their own to lead. But on the weekends he was there, they all concentrated on him. It touched Chris’s heart. They had acquired a new family at the house on Charles Street. And he had three good friends to help him through tough times. And at least for now, his ex-wife was clean according to the tests, and being responsible with Ian. But judging from past history Chris knew it wouldn’t last.
June was a busy month for all of them. Marya was working hard on her new book. They had new dishes to try every night. Chris loved to tease Marya about it. As time passed, he seemed more relaxed and less anxious about Ian, although still skeptical about his ex-wife’s ability to stay sober long term.
“If I don’t come home to a five-star meal every night, I feel deprived. I think I’ve gained ten pounds since I moved in,” he complained to Marya with a grin.
“You needed it.” Marya smiled at him. And she was teaching Ian to cook when he was with them on alternate weekends. So far his mother was behaving, but Chris knew it was only a matter of time before she screwed up again. He had been through it with her for ten years. He had discovered her addiction to drugs before Ian was conceived. He had seen her through two rounds of rehab and then she got pregnant. The only time she had been totally off drugs was while she was expecting him. She fell off the wagon again three months after he was born. He no longer believed that she could clean up for a reasonable amount of time. He was sure she’d start using again any day. He just hoped that when it happened Ian would somehow be spared the agony of it. Chris was waiting for the other shoe to drop and he knew it would. The only question in his mind was when.
Eileen showed up with her new boyfriend, and Francesca was discouraged to see that he was one of the ones with pierces and tattoos. She seemed to ricochet between preppy young men who worked in ad agencies or banks, were school teachers, or had other traditional jobs, and wilder ones who worked on the fringes of the arts or related fields. This time she had gone a little further off the beaten path, and her new man was a motorcycle mechanic. Francesca couldn’t stand him and thought he was intolerably rude. He was handsome, there was no denying it, and sexy, she could see his physical appeal, but there was an underlying current that made everyone uncomfortable, and he wanted to control everything that Eileen did. It infuriated Francesca whenever Eileen talked about it. It seemed as though his wanting to control her flattered her, and she mistook it for love. It reminded Francesca more of abuse. And he didn’t hesitate to put Eileen down in front of them and belittle her. He had just done it one morning, after Marya had made breakfast for all of them, and Brad, the new boyfriend, made a nasty comment to and about Eileen. Francesca bristled immediately, but didn’t say anything. And then he did it again. This time she called him on it, while Eileen looked mortified and stared into her plate. She didn’t like to upset him.
“Why do you say things like that about her?” Francesca challenged him. She had only seen him a few times, but she didn’t like anything about him.
“What’s it to you?” He glared at Francesca across the table, intending to intimidate her. He didn’t. It just made her angrier at him.
“It’s mean. She’s a wonderful woman, and she’s nice to you. We’re her friends. Why would you say something like that about her?” He had called Eileen a dummy, repeatedly, which she certainly wasn’t, except maybe about him. And he hadn’t said it affectionately.
Francesca and Brad had an encounter at the coffeepot a few minutes afterward, when he grabbed it away from her, still angry about what she had said to him. He felt humiliated. And a little bit of the hot coffee splashed onto Francesca’s hand, which he had intended. She gave a sharp shout as it burned her, and gave the coffeepot up to him.
“Oh, did it burn you?” he asked sarcastically with a grin. “Sorry, dear,” he said as he poured it into a cup and started back to the table, and walked right into Chris, who stood looking at him with murder in his eyes.
“Don’t ever do anything like that again. Don’t even think about it,” Chris said to him. “This is a family. We stick up for each other, and you’re lucky to be here. So you’d better be nice to everybody while you’re here, and that includes Eileen. Got that, mister?” Francesca was stunned when she saw the look that passed between the two men. Chris was shaking with anger, and Brad took one look at him, threw his napkin down, and stormed out of the kitchen. Eileen stayed just long enough to apologize to everyone, and then ran after him. They could hear him shouting at her at the front door, and a moment later his motorcycle roared off.
“I don’t like that guy,” Chris said through clenched teeth. “He’s dangerous. I don’t know what she’s doing with a guy like that.” No one did, but he was sexy and she was young, and so was he. The bad-boy syndrome. Maybe she was going out with him just because she could, and she figured she could handle it. Francesca was thinking about asking her not to bring him to the house again, but it was Eileen’s home too. She wondered if Chris’s outburst might keep him in line, or maybe he wouldn’t want to come back either. She was touched by what Chris had said, and she loved the family feeling they now shared.
Francesca started dating someone too that month. She had only been out with him three times, and he seemed nice enough, although she wasn’t in love with him. But he was nice to go out with.
He was an artist, but not one she represented. She had a good time with him, although she wasn’t serious about him. He had very left-wing ideas, and he thought her father was a sellout for becoming successful and charging big prices. He thought artists should do their work for the people, which was a little too out there for her. But he was intelligent and fun, and slightly irresponsible. In some ways he reminded her a little of her father when he was younger. He had something of his looks and charm, and he was a little vague the way her father had been in his youth. There was something very familiar about him. She knew the type, although she didn’t have Avery’s patience with it. She had no desire to reform him. Dinner with him was enough. More than that would have been too much. But he was really the first person she had dated since Todd. It was good practice, but she knew she’d never be serious about him. He made her laugh, which was nice, and feel like a woman again, which wasn’t bad either. But she had no chemistry for him whatsoever. He was naive and unrealistic and seemed like a child to her. She didn’t want to date a boy, she wanted to go out with a man, if she took that step again with anyone. She knew the type, a lot of the artists she knew and represented acted like children. She didn’t want to mother him.
The day after Chris’s run-in with Eileen’s new boyfriend in the kitchen, Marya was going to try out a new recipe on them. They had all promised to be home for dinner, and they were looking forward to it. And just before they sat down, Eileen called Francesca on her cell phone and said she had a terrible cold and a fever. She hadn’t come down
