Big Daddy Sinatra: There Was a Ruthless Man(69)

Charles was attempting to contain his anger. She could have gotten one for no deal, no cost, but she decided she didn’t want his help.

“Anyway,” she said, “how’s everything going with you?”

“How do you think?”

He was going to be belligerent about it, she could tell. He wasn’t interested in seeing her side of the coin at all. She decided to move on. “How’s Susan? Have you heard anything?”

Charles hesitated. She had changed subjects on him, and it was too important a subject for him to ignore. “She’s still in ICU,” he said. “They believe she’s going to pull through, but it’s going to be a long road to recovery for her.”

“What about the baby?”

“The baby’s okay, thank God. But it could have been a very different story.”

Jenay still couldn’t get over how badly beaten Susan had been. “And your son? Heard from him?”

“He calls as often as they allow him. He wants me to get him out on bail.”

“You’re not going to?”

“No. Hell no. This is one mistake I’m not fixing. This is going to be all on him.”

Jenay knew it had to be hard for Charles. “Have a seat,” she said to him. “Would you care for something to drink?”

“What’s this about, Jenay?” he asked her.

Jenay exhaled. In true Sinatra fashion, Charles did not have time for the sideshow. He wanted the main event. “I needed my own place,” she said.

“You had your own place.”

“I was staying in your VIP suite in your B & B. That wasn’t my place.”

“So I’m the bad guy for making it easy for you? You work there, you live there. How could that be problematic?”

“It wasn’t problematic. And you aren’t the bad guy at all. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Charlie, I really do. But I need my own.”

“Why all of a sudden?” Charles was distressed. “Because I suggested we might move in together? That scared you that badly?”

“It didn’t scare me,” Jenay pointed out. “It woke me up. I can’t ever again allow myself to dance to somebody else’s tune. Because if we hit a sour note, I’ll be the one out in the cold. And I can’t risk that again. I may not have another comeback in me.”

Charles stared at her.

“I accepted your job offer because I knew it would give me great experience, but also because I did, and still do want to give our relationship a chance. But there has to be some boundaries, Charlie. I’m still getting to know you. There’s still a lot about you that . . .”

Charles waited for more. She didn’t go on. “That what?” he asked.

Jenay shook her head. “The way you treat some of these people around here, the way you show such lack of compassion sometimes. Even with your own son.”

“My son? Did you see what that boy did to his wife? His pregnant wife?”

“Yes! It was awful. No matter what the reason, it was awful. But what you did to him was awful too, Charlie.”

But Charles was still livid. “I didn’t raise a punk,” he said. “No son of mine is going to beat up a girl, a pregnant girl, and get away with it.”

“He was arrested,” Jenay said.

“I couldn’t let him get away with it,” Charles yelled. “I’m not talking about the law. I’m talking about me! I couldn’t let him get away with it.”

Jenay realized that such a father-son problem went far deeper than that one night.

“I’ve always been there for my boys,” Charles went on. “But Donald was constantly in trouble. Always in a jam. And I always got him out of it. But when I saw what he had done to Susan, and I saw the rage still in his eyes, as if he didn’t give a fuck, I knew right then that if anybody was going to finally scare him straight, it was going to have to be me. It had to be me. I’m the one he listens to. But the problem is, instead of telling him what to do, I smothered him. I ruined that boy.”

Jenay stared at him. “Why him, and not the others?”

“He was four years old when I divorced his mother. He loved her so much. The rest of my sons wanted to stay with me. But Donald wanted his Mom so the courts gave her custody of him, and gave me custody of the other three. A year later, she fell in love with some guy she met on the internet, and brought Donnie back to me. You would have thought she had died, he was so devastated. But she left town, and went and started a brand new life with her new man. She would phone the boys periodically, not nearly as often as she could have, but Donald wouldn’t take the few calls she did make. He was through with her. And I stood in that breach.”