Deadly Beloved(72)

She bolted from the room. Bennis levered her legs up onto the couch, stretched out, and rolled her eyes. She really looked quite well, Gregor decided, although she was a little pale. He wondered what kind of painkillers the doctor had given her and whether she was actually taking them. Bennis didn’t like painkillers. She was famous at a hospital in Boston for having been the first person in its 165-year history to have gone off Demerol less than twenty-four hours after having her gallbladder removed. She claimed Demerol made her head fuzzy.

“Anyway,” Bennis said, throwing her head back onto the soft arm of the black leather couch, “as you can tell, we’re having a crisis. We’re going to have a bigger crisis if Russ finds out about Peter, which he hasn’t yet.”

“I would have thought Donna would have told him first,” Gregor said.

Bennis waved a languid hand in the air. “That’s part of the reason I know she doesn’t really mean it, about Peter. I mean, the real problem here is not that Donna thinks that Peter Desarian’s sperm is so important that it ought to override everything the man is—if you can call him a man, I’ve known twelve-year-olds who were more responsible—”

Donna came back from the kitchen carrying a plate of kefta and a fork. She gave the plate and the fork to Gregor and sat down on the ottoman again.

“Whether she wants to believe it or not, I am worried about the sperm problem,” Donna said. Then she blushed. “I don’t mean the sperm, exactly. It’s just that you read all these things in the magazines, you know, where it’s so much worse for the child with a stepparent, especially for boys, they don’t relate as well and the stepparent doesn’t ever love them the same way a real parent would—”

“How does Peter love Tommy?” Bennis demanded. “Peter never sees Tommy.”

“He must love Tommy somewhat, Bennis. Otherwise it wouldn’t matter to him so much that Tommy might have a stepfather.”

“He’s just acting like an adolescent again,” Bennis insisted, “and a mean-spirited bastard of an adolescent in the bargain. He doesn’t want you and he doesn’t want Tommy but life is not all right if the two of you don’t want him.”

Donna said, “I just don’t see how that argument applies here. I mean, this is not a joke, offering to come back to Philadelphia and marry me and give Tommy a real family. I mean, you don’t do that kind of thing out of pique.”

“Peter would. Or he’d at least promise to do it. And not out of pique. Out of spite.”

Gregor finished one of the oversized meatballs and put the fork on the plate and the plate on the floor.

“Just a minute here. Let’s see if I have this straight. Peter has found out that you’re marrying Russ, but he doesn’t like the idea, so he wants you not to marry Russ and to marry him instead.”

“What he actually said,” Bennis put in, “was that if Donna was so neurotic about her need to be married that she had to go bring some stranger into Tommy’s life, Peter would just as soon marry her himself, since that was what she really wanted anyway and it would be better for Tommy. Of course, it isn’t what she really wants anyway—”

“Of course it isn’t,” Donna said. “I even hate talking to him on the phone.”

“If you hate talking to him on the phone, you will not like being married to him,” old George Tekemanian said. “This goes without saying.”

“It doesn’t matter because he won’t marry her anyway,” Bennis said. “Peter isn’t trying to marry her. He’s just trying to keep her from marrying Russ.”

“I don’t believe that,” Donna said. “I don’t believe that even Peter could be such a—such a—”

“Bastard,” old George put in helpfully.

“Let me ask you this,” Gregor said. “Have you told your mother about all of this?”

Donna Moradanyan looked at her hands. They were sturdy, bluntfingered hands, with the nails cut short and square. They looked like the hands of someone who had played field hockey too.

“Ah,” Gregor said.

Donna Moradanyan blushed. “It’s not that I don’t get along with my mother. It’s just that she—fusses so much all the time. It’s hard to think in peace when she fusses like that.”

“I’m just pointing out that if this was something you really wanted to do, you probably would have said something to her by now,” Gregor said. “And if this isn’t something you really want to do—”

“She wouldn’t approve of it if I did it,” Donna said quickly. “She hates Peter with a passion.”