Chapter 63

10 p.m. Saturday

"We definitely have to do this more often," Rita Riley said as she sat down at the table with her husband, Camille and Evan. The group had decided to go out on the town for the night and had wound up at a club featuring a one-hit wonder from their young adulthoods.

The singer wasn't any better than they remembered her from the 1980s but they'd had fun anyway.

"You know, I bought her CD for that one song and she hasn't even played it tonight," Camille groused.

"I still have it on my iPad," Rita admitted. "I have a whole folder of songs I liked when I was a teenager. Do you remember Firehouse?"

"Oh, God!" Camille said with a laugh. "I remember the video for one of their songs. The lead singer was so sexy!"

It seemed music was something that crossed socio-economic lines. Rita's family came from money. She had gone to private schools – as had Robert and Evan. Camille was from a lower middle-class farm family and had attended public school.

The musical discussion transitioned to movies they recalled and then to television shows that were popular in the 1980s and 1990s. All the while, they managed to get to know each other better.

"I wish your mother could have joined us," Robert told Evan. "She was so funny. I about wet my pants when she laid down the law on that awful girl."

"That awful girl wasn't much different from Regan," Rita cut in. "She told me last night that she and Andy had their first fight because she was treating Evan and Anne too formally."

"She probably got that from your side of the family," Robert replied with a laugh. The McKenzies were old money and they had been uptight when an upstart like Robert had started to court their daughter.

"Probably," Rita agreed with a sigh. "They've gotten a better over the years, though."

"Slightly better," Robert replied. "I'm no longer 'that asshole that married our little girl.' Now I'm 'that man that married our little girl.'"

"It wasn't that bad!" Rita protested. "Well, OK, it was that bad. My parents had already plotted out my life. I was going to marry a guy from a wealthy family and have many babies. That wasn't what I wanted. The thing is, there was a portion of my trust that said it didn't revert to my control until I had a child. I swear to God, if they tried something like that with Regan I would have slapped them both."

"Wait!" Camille cut in. "Your parents forced you to have a child?"

"They didn't really force us," Robert answered. "They just sped up the process. Rita's trust was ... substantial. We decided after we got married that we'd have children immediately – not only to gain access to funds but so we were still young enough to enjoy them. In hindsight, it was a monumental mistake. We should have waited a few years."

"If we'd have waited, we wouldn't have been able to purchase enough stock in our names to make a difference when it split," Rita countered. "Financially, it was necessary to do it as we did. From a child-rearing standpoint, it was a mistake. The thing is, if we'd have waited, I doubt we ever would have had Regan. We were both so focused on our careers even when she was around. Imagine what we'd have been like if she weren't. Would we have been better parents if we'd waited four or five years? I think so. But we still would have been trying to make a name for ourselves – putting in long hours, going on business trips."

"There is no way to predict how the future might have played out," Evan said. He had been silent through much of the evening's conversation. His childhood in Great Britain had been isolated by boarding schools and a watchful father. He had only a passing knowledge of many of the songs, films or television shows that the others had mentioned. But this topic was one that he'd considered countless times.

"Perhaps things would have worked out better for Regan if you'd waited," Evan continued. "Perhaps your marriage would have disintegrated and she would have been hurt by a divorce. Perhaps you would have found a different way to make your money. There is no way to say. For now, suffice it to say that you're happy and so is your daughter. She's taken away some valuable lessons from her upbringing that she would have missed if you'd done things differently.

"Andy is the same. His life would have been easier if I were in it. But no one can say for certain that it would have been better."

"I can," Camille interrupted. "I can say without a doubt that Andy's life would have been fuller if I had put away my pride and contacted you. You are the sort of person that every child needs as a parent. I can apologize until I'm 80 and it won't change the fact that I royally screwed up."

"But that's the thing you're missing," Evan replied. "There is no way to ensure that I would have turned out as I have without going through what I did. There is no way to ensure that Andy would be the man he is today without the struggles he witnessed as a child and young adult. I've given this a great deal of consideration over the past few days. His life would have been different but there is no guarantee it would have been better. My father was still alive until Andy was about 10. Although I would have stood up to him, he would have put pressure on us to enroll Andy in a British school. Who can say if we could have withstood the pressure? Looking back serves no purpose. Until they invent time travel, it's a fruitless pursuit. Things in the past are always viewed with a rosy-eyed nostalgia that doesn't always represent the reality of the situation.

"Take the music you've discussed. When it was on the radio hundreds of times a day, it grew tiresome quickly. I was a fan of U2 before they became mainstream. The same with Rush. When they became stars, I grew to dislike them ... simply because everyone else liked them and simply because I was inundated with their music on every station. Now, though, I hear a U2 song and I smile. None of us had ideal childhoods. I think it is safe to say that Camille's childhood was far more idyllic than mine – or either of yours. Her father was a good man and, to be blunt, I really didn't mind her mother at the time.

"She didn't become a loon until we grew more serious. I've never been certain if her dislike of me came from my religious upbringing or from the thought that I might one day take her daughter to the U.K. to live. Perhaps it was because I parted my hair in the middle during that time of my life. I only know that she grew to dislike me and she poisoned our relationship with her hate."

"A hate that she transferred to our child, I've grown to realize," Camille added. "I truly never saw it while we lived there. My father would take Andy with him everywhere he went. Now that I think about it, my mother never did. I decided that Andy wasn't going to be raised Catholic. If he chose to go to church when he was older, that was fine with me. He could pick any he wanted to join and I would be OK with it. His grandmother always tried to get him to go with her and Dad would always find something else for him to do on Sunday mornings."

"We worshipped at the altar of the almighty dollar," Robert admitted. He had listened to Evan and Camille have a very private discussion in public and it made him uncomfortable. "I explained to Regan that it was our way of keeping score. It sounds like your mother kept score by how many sins she could confess to. We counted how many cars we owned or how big our house was. I'm not sure either is better."

"No," Rita said with a sigh. "Religion and money, in my view, are both just means to control the masses. The rich really aren't interested in helping the poor. They're too valuable as a cheap form of labor. It's been that way for thousands of years. The wealthy count on the downtrodden to do the sort of jobs that no one else is willing to do. If someone came up to me and asked me to clean out a stable, I'd tell them no unless the price was extremely high."

"But if they came up to me, I'd do it just because we needed the money," Camille finished. "And I'd do it for whatever they offered if I were desperate enough."

"Well, yes," Rita said with reluctance. "I wasn't really thinking of you specifically though."

"You might as well have been," Camille said without rancor. "It's why I wound up working midnights at the Donut Hole. It paid a dollar more an hour than any other shift. I willingly left my child at home alone in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city for $40 more dollars a week. It disgusts me now that I can think about it in those terms. But at the time, $160 a month meant we could afford a car for Andy. It's why he worked that shitty job at AWG. He brought home two or three hundred each month and that was the difference between making it and not making it some months. They paid him minimum wage when he first started – but only because the law wouldn't let them pay him less."

"Now he's the highest-paid part-time employee out there," Robert said.

"He is?" Camille asked.

"Uh, I should apologize," Rita answered. "We had your son checked out pretty thoroughly."

"Don't apologize," Camille replied. "I would have done the same. I did what I could. I Googled Regan's name and your names. That's almost as good as a background check these days."

"I actually spoke to one of the owners at AWG," Robert admitted. "He said Andy's supervisors all came to him last year and submitted him for a pay increase. It seems that he works wherever he is needed out there. The owners know him by name and by reputation. They agreed that it was worth paying him another $1.50 an hour rather than risk losing him to a job that was closer to where you lived. Did he not mention it to you?"

"He said he got a pay raise but he didn't think it applied only to him," Camille said. "He thought it was across the board ... that all part-timers got the increase because they didn't qualify for insurance and some of them had to buy it now."

"That wasn't the impression I got," Rita said, looking to her husband for confirmation.

"Nor I," Robert said. "The owner told me it was done at the behest of those who worked closely with Andy and because they knew they couldn't hire two people to do what he does out there. They were very sorry when he put in his notice but he said that he might be back in next summer."

"I'll be damned," Camille said, shaking her head.

"They also offered him a full-time position after last summer," Rita stated. "He said his schoolwork was too important and he couldn't let that slide. If he were to walk in there tomorrow and ask them for a job, he'd have one in a minute. Of course, if he needed a job, I'd hire him in a heartbeat, too."

"For now, let's let Andy focus on his graduation and starting to college," Evan interposed. "He'll have enough time to worry about where he's going to work after he gets to have a little bit of fun in his life."

"That's how we think of Regan, too," Robert agreed. "I always get a laugh when I hear people say high school is the best time of a person's life."

"Now college... ," Rita said with a raised eyebrow. She left the rest of it unfinished because everyone at the table was already nodding their heads in agreement.

"That was a short dance," Paul said as Andy resumed his seat. The girls had just sat down a few seconds earlier.

"Huh?" Andy asked.

"You're back before the song ended," Regan pointed out.

"She's got problems," Andy told the table.

"She's got Andy-itis," Elizabeth joked. "I told Regan that you disrupted a lot of Leslie's plans when you switched to Stanford at the last minute. I didn't realize why she was going to San Jose State until last weekend. Then it made perfect sense to me."

"It's not that," Andy cut in with a frown. "It's Brian. She said he's been taking PEDs."

"PEDs?" Joy asked.

"Performance-enhancing drugs," Paul clarified. "Steroids. Was she serious?"

"Yeah," Andy said, nodding vaguely. "I think she was. She knows he went into the locker room with Trevor and Willis. She said he's also roaring drunk – which makes his Roid Rage even worse."

"Wait!" Elizabeth cut in. "Why are they in the locker room? That's off limits during school dances."

Andy looked at Chuck.

"That's where Abby went," Chuck answered. "She's ... she's screwing three guys from the football team, I guess. Brian Newton was one of them I saw go in with her. Trevor Baines and Willis Holloway were the other two."

"She might be in a lot of danger," Andy interrupted. "Leslie said the PEDs have had some side effects and Brian hasn't accepted those with much grace."

"What side effects?" Ruth wondered.

"Depending on what he's taking, it could be a lot of things," Paul explained. He had played sports for all four years of high school and he and Elizabeth had sat through the drug lecture before each season. "An increase in temper, the inability to perform sexually, acne, baldness. Those are short-term problems. The long-term is worse: liver damage; heart problems; blood clots. I don't see why anyone would take shit like that."

"Don't you have testing?" Regan asked. Even the tennis team at C-B was subjected to urinalysis periodically.

"Just during their seasons," Andy answered. "At least that's what Leslie just told me."

"It's too expensive to test out of season," Paul said. "I'll bet he's at the end of a cycle and that's going to make it worse."

"She's scared he's going to hurt her," Andy agreed.

"We can't let that happen," Elizabeth pointed out.

"What can we do?" Andy said in exasperation. "She asked me to protect her. If I do that, I'm going to be kicked out school. I wouldn't do that for Lupe and I'm not going to do it for Leslie Amos."

"I don't go to school here," Paul cut in.

"No, you're just an adult and Rick won't be 18 until August," Elizabeth pointed out. "That means that you'll go to prison for assault and get kicked out of Stanford for beating up a minor. I see what Andy's saying."

"We don't go to school here and I'm still a minor," Regan said.

"No!" Andy said sharply. The tone of his voice caused everyone at the table to look at him with wide eyes.

"He's on steroids and he's drunk," Andy went on. "Roids not only make a person volatile, they make him stronger. He wouldn't have any trouble taking a swing at you and then I'd be in a lot of trouble."

"So you're just going to let him hit a girl?" Ruth asked.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Andy said. "If I get involved before he hits her, I'm going to land in a heap of shit. He's the quarterback of the football team and I'm ... me. If I wait until he hits her, I might be able to claim protection of another but I'll still be suspended. What good does that do? I told her that if she wanted us to take her home and stay with her, we would. That's off school property. But she wants to make a big show of breaking up with him in front of everyone here. She said it's because she's worried about her mom's safety but I know it for what it is."