“Thanks, Jon,” I say.
Once Jon is gone, Portia hugs me fiercely. “That’s the last time you go rogue on me, right? I’m giving you one pass because your sister died. Just one and only one.”
“I swear to God, Portia. I swear to God,” I say as I hug her back with equal ferocity, both of us trembling.
The next morning Tommy asks if he was in a car the night before, and we tell him he must have been dreaming, which he believes without asking further questions.
Kirk Avery calls me back later that day. “I saw you tried to reach me last night. I was out on a friend’s boat overnight fishing, and I forgot my phone charger. Ran out of juice. Of all the nights for you to call. Please tell me you weren’t jonesing. I’d never forgive myself.”
I think about the needle stuck in the tree—my shooting a perfectly good heroin hit into the night air—and I finally know for certain that I will never ever use again.
“I’m fine,” I tell Kirk. “Catch anything?”
“Oh, thank god,” he says, and then goes on to tell me about the “big one” that got away, like it always does.
And I wonder how many lies it takes to make the world go around.
CHAPTER 31
It’s late May when Portia finally calls her husband to begin the divorce proceedings. Apparently he’s now engaged to the young woman Portia caught him screwing a year or so before. He also says that he has sold his pornography business, conquered his sex addiction problem, and now wants to take his life in a radically different direction. He’s had a lawyer draw up the divorce papers, and without Portia even asking, he offers her what I consider an obscene amount of money if she will only fly to Florida immediately so that he and his new “love” can begin to move on with “the next phase of their lives.” And then he invites us—Portia, Tommy, and me—to Tampa Bay as his guests, all expenses paid. All Portia needs to do is sign the papers in person. Ken’s even agreed to pay for any lawyer she names to review everything on her behalf.
I’m shocked.
“It doesn’t seem right,” Portia tells me in our kitchen while she is overwatering yet another spider plant. She’s killed three already this year. “I keep feeling like I’m walking into a trap. This is not the man I know.”
“If he wants to move on so much,” I say, “why wouldn’t he have tried to contact you before?”
“Oh, he has,” she says.
“What?”
“Ken’s been calling my cell once a day for months now, leaving these pathetic messages, practically begging for me to ‘give him closure.’ His lawyers have sent legal notices to my mother’s home too.”
“And you’ve been ignoring it all?”
“Yep. Fuck him. This will be on my terms.”
“Why haven’t you told me about this before?”
“You never asked,” she says. “And I didn’t want to make it weird for you.”
It’s true that I’ve avoided asking about her husband, maybe because I didn’t want to push her, or maybe I hoped that she was taking care of the divorce quietly and would just surprise me one day with the news, giving it to me like a present.
When it’s clear I’m not going to say anything else, Portia says, “I don’t have much experience getting divorced, you know. I knew it would mean going back to Florida and seeing him again, and I didn’t want to do that until I was ready, okay? This isn’t an easy thing for me.”
“Listen,” I say, “who cares why he’s being so generous? I’m thrilled. Let’s go. The sooner you get divorced, the sooner we can get married.”
“Should I take his money?”
“Isn’t it your money too? You were married.”
“I don’t know that I want money made from misogynistic porn, especially since the girls were never fairly compensated.”
I think about how she’s been spending Ken’s “misogynistic porn” money for the past year and wonder what the difference is now, but I don’t say anything about that. Portia seems conflicted, and I just want her with me. Period.
“I’m behind you regardless of what you decide about the money,” I say. The truth is, I have very mixed feelings about how much Ken Humes has already funded my life.
“I can’t believe he’s going to marry Khaleesi.”
“Khaleesi?” I say.
“His new little whore. She’s about twelve years old.”
“Why do you care who he’s with?” I say, before I can stop myself.
“You’re okay with men in their forties dating twelve-year-olds?”
“She’s not actually twelve.”
“Oh, she’s probably twenty by now.”
“Okay, gross. But you’re going to be free and clear of him soon, right? And then we can move on.”
We take Tommy out of school, and I beg the Crab to let me use my three annual sick days. Because I have perfect attendance and the Crab wants me to marry Portia so that Rocksford Catholic Elementary’s first-grade teacher is officially a family man, Mother Catherine reluctantly agrees, but bargains for me to do some upcoming curriculum work for free in exchange for the time off.
And then we’re at the Philadelphia airport, which blows Tommy’s mind, because he’s never flown before. I’ve only traveled by air a handful of times in my life, but Portia is a veteran, negotiating everything with confidence and ease.
“Why don’t we have to wait in the long lines like everyone else?” Tommy asks.