She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [75]
“How was the movie?” Kristina asked.
“The plot was, ‘Oh relax, your mother’s a lesbian,’” Celeste said, and laughed.
“Is that a hint?” Kristina asked Justin when they were alone. For months he’d been prodding her, but she hadn’t wanted to confront what was obvious: that Celeste and Tracey were lovers.
“It could be,” he said.
Not for the first time, Kristina was ambivient about it. She liked Tracey, after all. More than once when Celeste screamed for reasons that included not liking the way she and Jennifer looked at her, Tracey defended them. It cost dearly, as Celeste then turned her wrath on Tracey instead of the girls, but she never backed down. Tracey had grown to respect Kristina, too. She saw her as an old soul, a girl who was more woman than her mother. She also found the relationship between the mother and daughter intriguing. Wherever Celeste went, whether the beauty parlor or her appointments with her therapist, Kristina nearly always checked on her, just to make sure she was all right.
“It was like there was an unsevered umbilical cord,” says Tracey.
In many ways, Tracey made Kristina’s life easier. She was someone Celeste trusted and counted on, filling the space Kristina had always occupied—as her mother’s keeper. With Celeste busy, for the first time the girls did the things normal teenagers take for granted. “Everyone goes to movies, but to us it was a big deal,” says Jennifer. “Mom never gave us the time off to do that before.”
Tracey was also someone who took the responsibility for Celeste’s survival off Kristina. By that summer, although she’d kept her hotel room, Celeste was in Dallas infrequently. At times, when she was home, she’d languish in bed all day, saying she was depressed. When Kristina couldn’t get her up and dressed, she called Tracey. Twice while Steve was away from the house, Tracey went to Toro Canyon to coax Celeste from bed. “I can’t stand living with him. Death would be a relief,” Celeste told her.
Whenever Celeste talked of suicide, Tracey’s chest clamped up, like someone had a stranglehold on her heart.
As July drew to a close, Steve must have felt the end of his days as a single dad were finally in sight. After three months, Celeste was checking out of Timberlawn and coming home. Through it all, she’d maintained that she loved him and wanted to be with him. On Father’s Day she even gave him a beautiful sapphire ring. Maybe he believed she truly loved him, for that summer he told a friend, “All we need is time together to reconnect.”
The Friday she took the twins and Amy to Dallas to help her move out of the Sumner Suites, however, she had no intention of leaving without one last fling. Telling Steve they were spending the weekend at Six Flags, an amusement park with acres of roller coasters and rides, she didn’t mention that Justin and Christopher were going along, or that she’d invited Jimmy Martinez and his two nieces.
The ride there was a wild one; Celeste sped along the highway in the Expedition while Jimmy and his nieces followed. She was in one of her wild, talkative moods, entertaining the teens with stories, then rattling off her ex-husbands’ social security numbers, like the answers to unasked Trivial Pursuit questions. She even dropped an enticing tidbit none of them had heard before: She said she’d had a secret husband—one she had never even told the twins about. “We were married just a couple of weeks and then had it annulled,” Celeste said. The teens were intrigued, yet it was something else Celeste said that day that later resonated for Amy.
“You know, when Steve dies, I’ll play the part. I’ll cry and mourn,” she said, laughing as if the thought of his death filled her with delight. “I’m such a good actress that no one will ever suspect that I never loved him.”
Not long after they returned home to Austin, Celeste called Tracey and asked her to do something for her. “Buy some Everclear,” she said. “Kristina’s bringing Steve’s vodka