“How did it all go?”
“She lasted for about six months afterward, but she was a lot younger than your mother.”
“She’s your mother, too!” I practically screamed.
Roxy barely smirked. She looked away and then turned back, shaking her head. “It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she put off her own health issues to service the general.”
“What do you mean?”
“Avoided her annuals, whatever. He always came first,” she said as the waitress brought our lattes.
“Can’t you stop hating him for a few minutes?”
She smiled and sipped her latte. “Hating him is what kept me going, M. That was his gift to me. You think it’s easy to leave someone you don’t hate? I kept myself alive thinking I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of failing or dying. It worked. With a little luck, of course.”
“What about Mama?”
“Je suis ici. I’m here, n’est-ce pas? Bien que je préférerais être aileurs. Even though I’d rather be somewhere else,” she translated. I didn’t need it, but I didn’t say so.
“How did you keep up with French?” I didn’t want to tell her about the day Chastity and I had followed her and Chastity had heard her conversing easily in French.
“Someone who helped me a lot after I left home just happened to be French, or should I say ironically was French. She’s technically my boss,” she added. She continued drinking her latte. I sipped some of mine. “Speaking of French, did she call anyone in France about this?”
“No.”
“Just like her not to look to any other family for help,” she said. “She’s still used to having him around, I suppose.”
“She has me,” I said, fixing my eyes squarely on hers.
She smiled. “Tough kid, huh?”
“Yes, I am.”
She laughed.
“I am!”
“Oh, really? What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had, M? A pimple on your chin, a boy you like ignores you, your boobs aren’t big enough?”
“They are, too,” I said, and she laughed again.
Then she paused to study me a little. Whatever it was, it brought another smile to her face.
“What?” I asked.
“That expression on your face reminded me of how upset you would get when he came after me. You did all my crying for me back then. Maybe just because of you, he was less severe.”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t an angel, Roxy. There was a lot going on that I was too young to know about back then.”
“He talked about me, did he. Described my sins in detail?”
“Not often.” I didn’t want to stress how forbidden her name had become. “Almost never. Mama told me the most. Then he found out more about you himself. You had a coworker of his as a . . . what do you call them? Clients?”
“Get to the point.”
“One of Papa’s coworkers called and got you, didn’t he? You picked him up outside the offices, and Daddy saw you in the limousine.”
“How can I forget?” She looked away for a moment and shook her head. “The guy was pathetic. Well, maybe he wasn’t as bad as I made him out to be. I couldn’t help it. Despite myself, I kept thinking about the way he looked at me.”