106: I Have To

Charlie appreciated Jon’s effort to soothe her anxiety, but his light massage of her shoulders only made her edgier.  He was so confident that this was all going to go like a heartwarming movie of the week, when she knew that such was not the way with her family. 

They wouldn’t bundle her into hugs and offer platitudes of reassurance and support.  The Del Vecchios were going to scream, accuse and berate until they’d exorcised their frustration at being unable to have prevented the whole damn thing.

Then, and only then, would they gruffly pull her into their fold and clean the wounds that their manic feedback created.

It was going to be a bumpy ride. 

“What’s going on?” her mother asked when shepherded into the living room, wiping her hands with a dishtowel. 

“Come sit down, Juliana.  Charlie has something to tell us.”   As gruff as her father could be, he also possessed the patience of a saint when he thought his wife was going to be upset. 

“Oh.  My God.  You’re pregnant.”

Charlie helplessly threw both palms in the air and skewered her sister-in-law with a reproving look.  “Vivi, why in the world would you say that?  I’m forty-five years old!  Of course I’m not pregnant.”

The asinine remark and Jon’s soft snort behind her were jarring enough for Charlie to get her shit together.  They’d be mad and they’d be hurt, but in the end, Jon was right.  Everyone in this room loved her and would be on her side in the end. 

“Vivi, sit down and let her say what she has to say,” Izzie directed, herself choosing to lean in the doorway and meet Charlie’s eyes.  “I have a feeling this is something we’ve all wanted to hear for a very long time.”

Radiating insult, Dominick’s wife lifted her nose in the air and pushed aside a decorative basket to settle regally on the end of the coffee table. 

“Charls...”  There was no need to turn her head and seek the source of that voice.  Luke was the only one who called her that.  “Are you finally going to tell us the deal with Owen?”

Inclining her chin almost to her chest before lifting it again, she told him, “Yes.”

“It’s about time,” her mother huffed from the arm of the couch, visually scolding Charlie over Vivi’s head.  “Not that it’s going to matter since you’re divorcing him – thank you, Jon – but curiosity has been eating at me for years.”

“You and Daddy practically marched me down the aisle in that shotgun wedding.  Why is it so hard to believe that I stuck it out because that’s what my parents – and God, as you repeatedly brought up – expected me to do?”

Rising to his feet and restlessly relocating himself in the doorway near Izzie, Vince scoffed, “Don’t act like it’s Ma’s fault.  We’ve known you since the day you were born.  You’re headstrong and determined to exactly what you want, no matter what anybody else thinks.”

She would’ve bounced to her own feet if Jon’s hands hadn’t exerted additional force on her shoulders, keeping Charlie’s backside on the footstool.  Blowing an exasperated breath out her nose while appreciating his silent reminder that putting them on the defensive wasn’t going to make things go smoothly, she evenly informed her brother, “Except my family.”

“That’s bullshit,” came Dom's vehement declaration.  “We’ve been on you for years to kick that idiot’s ass to the curb.  You refused, so don’t lay this on us.”

Her mouth was open to blast back at him when Jon gave her a cautionary squeeze and clarified to the room at-large, “Chiara didn’t come here today to lay anything on anyone, only to offer an explanation.  In the interest of family harmony, I respectfully suggest letting her do it without interruption.”

She knew from his tone – and just because she knew, deep down inside – that he was doing everything in his power to get her through this and get her through it unscathed.  If she didn’t make that same effort for herself, then she didn’t deserve him. 

Charlie closed her eyes and focused on the sturdy warmth of his hands while her dad supported Jon’s stance.  Her brothers each grumbled in different ways that she’d had two decades in which to get the end and she should freaking well get on with it already. 

Inhaling and exhaling deeply, she opened her eyes and individually connected with each person, from left to right – Izzy and Vince both standing in the doorway, Vivi perched on the table, her mom, dad and Luke on the sofa, and Dom in the corner chair.  Each wore a different expression that varied from hope to concern to curiosity to impatience. 

It was time to put all of them – including her – out of their misery. 

“Things were stressful when I first married Owen,” Charlie said loudly enough to be heard over her quibbling siblings.  “I was young and unprepared for marriage or motherhood.  Noah was a colicky baby, you might remember, and kept me up most nights while I tried to study for the Bar and work two-bit waitressing jobs to pay for our crappy apartment.”

“Your mother and I offered to let you live here,” her father reminded testily. 

“Yes, you did, but all the boys had made it on their own without coming back home.  If I did – with a husband and baby…  Well, as you also told me, everything would get better once I passed the bar and got the job I’d been educated for.  I knew you were right, but unfortunately, my situation wasn’t an ideal one in which to take the Bar Exam.  It’s why I failed the first time.”

Memories of getting that awful letter in the mail had her stomach churning with nausea.  Everything was hanging in the balance, and she’d let herself and everyone else down.  Nothing would get better until she could manage to pass that exam. 

“We finally got Noah straightened out, but he still wasn’t sleeping through the night, which meant I wasn’t.  Things were tight, Owen still couldn’t seem to find a job that he deemed good enough, and I was feeling the pressure from both a professional and financial standpoint.  I was studying every waking minute… and then I found out I was pregnant again.”

“If I get through her divorce without killing that lazy sonofabitch, it’ll be a miracle,” Dom muttered to no one in particular.

“It’s about to get more challenging.”  Charlie was the only one who heard the softly sighed words of her boyfriend as his hands slid down to rest at her waist. 

“Owen spent a solid week convincing me that another child was a horrible idea.  At every opportunity, he reminded me that it was going to create more financial strain than we could withstand.  That bringing another child into that situation was cruel and unconscionable.  He… wanted me to have an abortion and I was so mentally drained and fraught that… I finally agreed.”

Her mother’s carpet was a nice neutral beige, and it was where Charlie opted to focus her attention rather than looking at the faces of her family members.  Jon scooted closer to hook one full arm around her midsection, giving her the strength she needed to push aside her mother’s gasp of dismay, her brother’s swearing and Vivi’s confused questions asking if that was Caleb.  Izzie was the only one who remained stoic while patiently waiting.

“Owen made all the arrangements, and I went through with it.”  Even to her own ears, Charlie’s proclamation was flat and clipped.  “But I was so upset and emotionally unsettled that I was afraid I would tank the Bar a second time, and I knew a guy who could get me a copy of the test.  So I got it.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Vince exclaimed lustily.  “You had an abortion and cheated on the Bar?  Who the fuck are you, because you’re not my sister.”

“Back down and let her finish, before you make yourself look like an asshole.”  The menacing voice from behind her was accompanied by another arm around her waist, so that Charlie was folded protectively inside his embrace.

“It’s okay, Jon.”  She said it in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, and agitatedly pushed to her feet.  Taking two steps had her midway between Jon and Dom’s chairs, and she put her back to the cold fireplace to stand her ground.  “I knew they’d be upset.”

“No, it’s not okay!  He has no idea what he’s talking about.  Everybody needs to keep it zipped until they’ve heard the whole story.”

“Not another word from anyone besides Charlie!”  Her father was visibly agitated, and her anxious mother was patting him with a calming hand.  All three boys wore an assortment of disgruntled expressions, but she knew they had enough respect to adhere to their father’s wishes.   A distressed Vivi and impassive Izzie would also honor those wishes, giving Charlie the opening to continue her story.

“I didn’t use the test copy.”  That was pointed directly at Vince.  “I passed that test on my own.  I didn’t find out until after that the abortion had only been partially successful.  Caleb had a twin, and after all the regret that followed the initial procedure, there was no amount of cajoling or threatening from Owen that would convince me to go through it a second time.”

No matter how emotionally detached she told herself she would be, there was still something about acknowledging Caleb’s twin that ripped at her heart.  It required a stabilizing breath before she could continue.

“Caleb was born, obviously, and things were… tolerable for a while, until I realized I just didn’t like Owen.  I started talking about separating when Caleb was two.  That’s when I found out he’d gotten me pregnant on purpose because he wanted an American wife to attain U.S. citizenship.  Since he’d been too uninspired to pursue the paperwork, I was informed that I would stick around until he did, because if I didn’t…  He said he’d tell you all about the test and the abortion so that I’d lose both my job and my family.  Worse than that, he would tell the boys that Caleb wouldn’t be alive if I’d had my way.  So I stayed… until there came a time when I no longer needed to support my children and they were maybe grown up enough to understand what I’d done.”

Without a word, Izzie crossed the room with open arms, taking Charlie into them for a long hug. 

“He’s also the one that kept fueling her guilt over Joey,” Jon supplied quietly.  “Telling her that that you all couldn’t be faulted for blaming her, since it was her fault he died.  Noah overheard that much once, but she won’t tell me what other things were said.”

“Because it doesn’t matter.”  Sniffling and easing from Izzie’s embrace.  “It’s done and over.  Rehashing every last detail doesn’t serve a purpose.”

“Oh, I think it goddamn well does.” 

Vince’s eyes were filled with a wrath…  Well, she’d seen enough Italian tempers in this house to not even notice if one of her brothers was angry.  This was different.  He was positively livid and, when she did a quick survey of the other men in the room, Charlie found them all to be similarly furious. 

“He’s been blackmailing you, Charlie.  That’s illegal, in case you didn’t know.”

“I’m aware, Dom, but since I don’t have any proof, it may as well have never happened.  And, as far as I’m now concerned, it didn’t.  The plan was to tell the boys, thereby eliminating Owen’s stranglehold on me, and then let the rest of you know at the same time I confronted him at that damn anniversary party.  Only things haven’t quite worked out that way.”

Vince directed an accusatory finger at Jon.  “You told us this shit would be over with after that party.” 

“And it will.”  Jon did an amazing job of remaining neutral in the face of her angry brother.  Evidently she was the only Del Vecchio with the power to make him scream obscenities.

“Where is he now?”  The deadly quiet question came from Luke, and was immediately echoed by her father.  Another flurry of inquiries followed from the women in her family, asking if the boys knew, how they’d taken it, what was she going to do now and would there still be a divorce.

It was overwhelming to be sieged by all of them at once, even if that siege wasn’t an angry one.  The questions were hailing like machine gun fire, with everyone trying to make themselves heard, and Charlie reflexively took a step backward. 

Her shoulder blades hit the fireplace mantle and Jon was steadying her almost before she realized she’d lost her balance.  “Okay if I take it from here, Counselor?”

Cutting appreciative eyes up at him, Charlie nodded.  The events that she’d felt obligated to personally relay were out of the way, and shouting over top of this raucous group was beyond her at the moment.

“If I could step in here for a minute.” Jon had no trouble raising his voice to be heard and every dark head turned his direction.  Astoundingly enough, they were all silent while he briefly recounted yesterday’s visit with the boys and Owen’s pre-emptive strike at her sanity.  “I’m personally looking for revenge.  That’s why I asked about your connections, Mr. Del Vecchio.”

Not knowing or particularly caring what he was talking about, Charlie tuned out conversation of admissible evidence, arrests and convictions to once again look over the faces of her family members.  She didn’t get very far in looking for changes in the way they looked at her, however, because the instant her eyes found Izzie’s, the tears began to pool and she was wrapped in another bone-crushing embrace. 

This time she did her own share of bone-crushing in return.

“Tell me you love him,” her friend commanded gently in her ear.  “Because if you don’t, you’re crazy.  Hell, I’m half in love with him and it wasn’t me he was protecting like the Hope Diamond.”

He had protected her as the stars fell from her sky one-by-painful-one.  He'd been doing it for weeks now and deserved so much more than her love, but that's the best she could do under the circumstances.

Charlie retreated just far enough for Izzie to see her smile when expressing, “I’d do anything in the world for him, and he’s done everything in the world for me.  There’s no way in hell I can ever repay it all, so I have to love him.”