"Lucas," she murmurs drowsily, turning toward the left side of the bed. She half expects him to materialize; she calls his name again, summoning him. "Lucas." Nothing. Marlowe sits up, rising to clearer conscious thought. Lucas is in Virginia. "And I'm here," she mumbles, her eyes traveling disinterestedly around the impersonal guest room.
Need is its own authority; it bows neither to reason nor persuasion. At best, it can be put off for a time, pacified with promises of future satisfaction. But still it growls and makes demands and thereby changes a woman's priorities. Marlowe can no longer remember why she came to Atlanta so soon; she can't figure out why she didn't go to Virginia instead. In the way of all lovers, she has forgotten her previous transgressions; was there ever a time when she was not absorbed in Lucas? Surely not. Marlowe rises purposefully from bed in the same shorts and t shirt she wore yesterday; she stretches and moves to the door. She needs to eat and she needs to make a call. Her heart trips lightly along despite her heavy head as if to say, I won again.
"Hey."
Tamara looks up from a plateful of runny scrambled eggs drowned in ketchup. Her wedding ring sparkles as she twirls her fork around, chewing silently, looking at Marlowe. "Thought I was gonna have to come get you," she says finally, reaching for her orange juice.
"What time is it?"
"Quarter after nine."
"Oh." Marlowe rotates her shoulders. "I was so tired."
"Mmm hmm," Tamara comments over a mouthful of eggs.
Marlowe hesitates in the threshold of the kitchen, waiting as though her open invitation has been rescinded. Something is off; something has wedged tightly into the silence that she left between them last night.
"Whatchu waiting on?" Tamara asks. "Your sticks and twigs breakfast is in the refrigerator. Twiggy."
The slam doesn't roll off of Marlowe's back the way it usually does. Her joy is at half mast and so is her strength. Need is a kind of virus; it infects every cell in the heart, damaging old walls of protection. Marlowe pads quietly across the kitchen on her bare feet; the tile is ice cold beneath her toes.
Her lack of response irritates Tamara, just as much as last night's feeble hug, just as much as the comment about where Marlowe should be instead of here at the house. But those things are second to the searing fact that Marlowe is moving on, moving in with Lucas, and skipping over Roderick and Tamara yet again. "So - you wanna talk about that bomb you dropped last night?" Tamara asks before shoveling another forkful of eggs into her mouth.
Marlowe turns slowly from her inspection of the refrigerator. "Excuse me?"
"You're excused, after you tell me what's going on," Tamara replies flatly.
Marlowe doesn't like this tone; it makes her feel like she has to defend herself. Here we go, she thinks darkly. The bullets are already flying. "What bit you, Tam?"
"Me? How you gonna walk in the house with some news like that and act like it ain't nothing?"
"Nothing," Marlowe repeats coolly. "It's everything, Tamara. I thought you would be happy for me."
"I am."
Marlowe scoffs. "'Well, damn, okay then'?"
"Yeah," Tamara exclaims. "Well, damn. Last time I talked to you, you were going to meet his uncle. Here it is a week later and ya'll are shacking up. What am I supposed to say, Mo?"
"Tamara, you told me to hook up with him! You were all down my throat about what a good man he is and how stupid I am to pass him up."
Tamara narrows her eyes. "It ain't about that, Mo. You walk in the door like . . ." Tamara stops and heaves a breath. "How would you feel if it was me?"
"You and Roderick lived together before . . ."
"No, Mo," Tamara interrupts, putting up her hand. "How would you feel if Roderick bust in the door with me talking about, 'Well, we got married'. Shazzam. Lucas is gonna be here in a week; ya'll are just gonna be together, and don't nobody know the first thing about it. How does that look?"
"Tamara," Marlowe intones impatiently, "you said you liked him. What is the problem?"
"Mo! You just don't do it like that. C'mon now!" Tamara snaps. "I know you been in D.C. for awhile, but dang, girl. How you think Roderick is going to feel?"
Like he ran into a brick wall - that's how Marlowe feels now. She has forgotten about the weight of gestures, the little acts of love like calling, visiting, announcing your intentions. The heartbeat of the South is tradition; the thing so tightly wedged between them is tradition. The links that Marlowe has neglected to repair over the years are rusted and weak; planks have fallen out of the bridge between her and her family. One misstep and a woman falls through.
"Oh, Tamara," Marlowe wheezes, dragging out a chair and plopping down next to her sister in law. She thought she had segregated her problems into manageable units. Unexpectedly, things have crashed together again. "I didn't mean it like that. I was tired; it just came out."
"What about Roderick?" Tamara insists. "He's gonna bust something if he finds out about this."
"Where is he?" Marlowe asks.
"At the hospital. He's been working like a slave ever since we got back; they called him in Thursday night. Most of the time I don't even hear him come in, and then he's gone before I get up." There is a fine line of strain in Tamara's voice, an old tension that she has born for years, a tension that Marlowe didn't know anything about.
"He's gonna be mad, huh?" Marlowe rests her forehead against her hand. "I knew it."
"Mo, I swear to God you have the thickest head. Not about Lucas," Tamara snaps. "About you. All this ducking and dodging you been doing. Roderick ain't gonna see this coming from a mile away. His best friend and his sister, and you didn't even tell him?"
"It happened so fast, Tamara. I didn't have time."
"You never have time. That's the point. He has to beg you to come down here. You should have seen his face when I told him you were coming down for a week. The boy felt bad because he has to work!" Tamara shouts. "He's gonna be happy for you, Mo. But he ain't gonna be happy that something this big is going on and he's the last to know. Think about what that says."
You don't matter - that's what it says. You're just an afterthought. "Err," Marlowe growls, rubbing her forehead.
"Why couldn't you pick up the phone, girl? You could have called anytime last week and said, 'Roderick, me and Lucas are going out'. That's it. He would have been jumping up and down. Just because you told him," Tamara emphasizes.
"I can still tell him. When Lucas gets here, we can both tell him."
"You better. You better make it good. Because 'we're moving in together' isn't gonna cut it." Tamara raises an eyebrow to Marlowe's confused expression. "He's your brother, Mo. Best friend or not, he's gonna give Lucas the talk. You know your brother!"
She does. Roderick is as tall as a tree and just as protective. "Damn, damn, damn."
Tamara picks at her cold eggs with the fork. "I'm sorry I was fussing at you," she murmurs, wrinkling her nose. "When you said it like that, and then started talking about how you should be up North . . ." Tamara stops, sighing. "You know I love you, right?"
"Yeah," Marlowe replies wryly. "I love you, too."
Tamara's round whiskey colored eyes search Marlowe's for reassurance. "I just um, I don't know," Tamara says, shrugging her shoulders. "I was thinking about holidays, a wedding. I was gonna be the matron of honor," she says wistfully, brightening somewhat. "I thought we were getting kinda closer, Mo. I thought you would have called me."
Marlowe purses her lips and grabs Tamara's hand; she squeezes. She wouldn't have called. She would have lived in her thoughts and not told anyone if Caris hadn't barged right in. But everything changes, and a woman's need for love expands to the need for family. She begins to realize that she must tighten her circle of loved ones, even though it means that old loves will be neglected, will fall by the wayside and then fall away. Time moves on, and an old way of loving moves irrevocably out of reach.
Right after breakfast, Marlowe excuses herself and goes out to the car to get her luggage and to have a cigarette. The moment she is out of the house, she digs her phone out of her pocket and calls Lucas.
"Klein."
"Hey," Marlowe says. She clenches the phone between her shoulder and her ear and pulls out her pack. "Are you at work?" she mumbles over a cigarette.
"No. Are you smoking?
"Yes."
"Quit."
Marlowe pauses, quirking a brow. "Didn't I tell you not to boss me?"
"Quit before I move in," he warns softly. "You won't like it otherwise. Trust me."
"Is that a threat?" Marlowe grumbles, flicking her lighter.
"Yes."
She exhales loudly against the phone. "Bring it on."
Lucas chuckles, but her tone concerns him. Every time she gets smart with him, something is going wrong. "How are you?"
"Terrific," she snaps over the filter. "You?"
"Fine. What's going on?"
"Drama." She sits down on the cement steps and lays her legs out like timbers. "Tamara lit into me because I didn't call and tell her about us. Because I didn't call," Marlowe emphasizes. Her voice betrays her deep anxiety and guilt.
"What did Roderick say?"
"I haven't seen him. And check this out: Tamara says he's going to be pissed because I didn't call him. So I don't know how we're going to tell him." She pops her cigarette into her mouth and thrusts her fingers into her hair, scratching her head and squinting against smoke.
Lucas frowns. He's been so preoccupied with Marlowe that he forgot to check in with Roderick. Until yesterday, there wasn't anything to report. "Don't worry about it. We'll tell him together."
"How? When? He's working all the damn time."
"Don't worry."
Not worrying is not on Marlowe's list of abilities. But something in Lucas' voice reassures her; for the first time, she allows herself to be reassured. Her strength ratchets up the mast a few notches. "When are you coming down here?"
"Friday after work. I can't take anymore time off right now."
There is an apology in his voice that warms Marlowe through and through. He would have come for her if he could. "The party's on Saturday."
"I know."
"Nate's coming." She falls silent, listening. She expects to hear something, jealousy perhaps, or apprehension, something that she would feel.
Lucas reclines in his rocker and pushes off, swaying in time to his thoughts. "You're okay with that?"
Marlowe purses her lips. She wasn't expecting compassion, as though he sympathizes, as though he understands. "I have to be. He was Roderick's friend before he was mine. That ain't changed."
"Why did you break up with him?"
Marlowe frowns. "How do you know that I broke it off?"
"Why?" Lucas repeats quietly, rocking to and fro.
Marlowe shifts into a cross legged position. She scrapes her cigarette along the stair, sanding it off, brooding. "You know what? I only know that it was the right thing to do because of what happened afterward. Before that . . ." she trails off, squinting, peering into the past. "Nate loved me, okay? I can't act like he didn't. But it was like, he loved me because I was his woman. He didn't just love him some Marlowe Ross, know what I'm talking about?"
"Yes," Lucas replies quietly.
"So at first I was like, I really messed up. I even wanted to get back with him for a minute." She blows out a breath that rustles the curls poised over her forehead.
"Until the thing at church."
Marlowe's brows draw together. "How do you know about that?"
"I asked."
"Who?"
"Tamara."
Lucas is a good man, Mo. Marlowe exhales another deep breath; she unfolds her legs, crossing them at the ankles, rocking them back and forth. "Yeah, that."
"When's the last time you saw him?"
"At the funeral. You know what he said to me? 'Don't cry too much; you'll shrivel up.' I wanted to pop him."
"You want me to?"
Marlowe snorts. "No. Would you?" she exclaims in a rush.
"Yes, if I had to."
"Why would you have to? Nate ain't done nothing to you."
"Anything he does to you, he does to me," Lucas replies soberly.
Loyalty - that's what he said in the pool that time. Her legs rock and rock. "What if Roderick doesn't go for it?"
"That won't happen."
"But what if it did? Or your family or somebody? What would you do?"
Lucas shrugs. "Nothing. They wouldn't be my family anymore."
Marlowe flinches. She doesn't think she can follow that cold hard line. "Even Roderick? He's my brother, Lucas."
"He's my brother too."
She blinks, taken aback. "So what if . . ."
"That won't happen."
"What if it does?" she insists. "You would choose me over him?"
"Yes," Lucas replies quietly. "I love Roderick, but I need you."
Love is measured by need, not by blood, not by convention. Even though they are good and worthy, some bonds are not needful things. They must always be renewed and repaired while others strike hard and cannot be escaped. "I miss you," Marlowe says softly.
"Me too."
"Did you dream about me last night?"
Lucas' rocker thuds hard against the wall behind his head. "Yes."
"Was it a love situation?"
"The first time." It was pure lust after that.
"How many times were there?"
Lucas brushes his fingers over his mouth, sighing, wishing he could smell her. "Two. Three if you count this morning in the shower."
She laughs. The giggles come slow and coarse out of her belly.
"That's funny?"
"Yeah," Marlowe replies, snickering. "You got problems, boy."
Lucas nods gravely. "I'm undersexed. It's not funny," he adds plaintively when she breaks into another fit of giggles. "You'll pay for that," he warns, chuckling.
Marlowe smiles through her laughter. She notices suddenly the change in him, the way he talks to her and laughs with her. Her heart swells; she feels that she is doing something right. "I'm good for you, Lucas Klein."
"You're the best thing that ever happened to me, Marlowe Ross."
