Page 2 of Crying Shame
My always-stressed and suddenly happy little brother.I pressed my fingers to my temple and sat at the kitchen table. “No, what’s going on?”
“Ali said yes. So next year, we need to plan on going to Paris for the wedding.”
Gerard, Warren, Joel, Cyrus, and Arman were all content because they’d found the perfect women. I’d had mine and shoved her out of my life. “Maman must be so happy.”
“She wants to talk to you.”
I stood. Sitting on Clarissa’s furniture felt wrong. I massaged my skull as though that might calm me down. “I’ll call her soon. Jeff, what kind of sample besides saliva do you need to run a paternity test?”
“Paternity? You’re a doctor, so you know,” he said.
I grabbed a dish in the sink and headed to the bathroom and the boy’s room. “Look, Clarissa has an eight-year-old,” I said as I collected hairbrushes and combs and returned to the kitchen to find empty soda cans.
“And you think it’s yours?”
“I was an asshole when I was twenty. I need to make this right, for everyone.”
Since then, I’d strived to be the perfect role model for my family. My son had a trillion-dollar inheritance, and Clarissa never needed to work ever again to afford her life by sweating in a costume in the hot sun.
I would fix everything. Maybe then I could sleep at night.
Jeff said, “That’s why she doesn’t come home… Maman and Pedar are going to be disappointed in you.”
They didn’t deserve to be hurt, but neither did Clarissa. I closed my eyes and wished I could go back in time and shake some sense into myself. “I… when I was twenty, I was so afraid of turning into my biological parents and doing the wrong thing that I took it out on Clarissa. I need your help, Jeff.”
“Always. That’s what family does.”
One day, maybe I could return the favors I owed him and all my brothers. All I knew right then was that I might be a good doctor, but clearly, I sucked at being a human being.
After I disconnected the call, I grabbed a plastic bag from Clarissa's pantry and put my collection of items inside. I’d come to apologize, but I realized I needed to do more, starting with putting a million dollars in her bank account.
Hopefully, Clarissa would accept my apology for pushing her away and understand I hadn't done it because of her but because I was afraid of ever falling in love. She was the best woman I’d ever met.
1
Elon
A few weeks later
I still hadn’t found Clarissa, so I was home waiting for a call or text or email. Yet in Virgin Cove, life was one party after another. Granted, tonight's party wouldn't be the Great Gatsby type filled with random people. It was a family gathering that would feel like a party as most of the guests were related in our large, richer-than-most-people-can-ever-imagine world.
My parents were at the center. They were the only parents I remember and wanted to remember. However, before coming to them, I remembered feeling dirty, hating the color green, and screaming.
So I’d done everything to prove to Maman and Pedar that I was worthy of being adopted. I owned a chain of women’s health centers with plans to go national soon, though finding doctors who were also entrepreneurial was harder than it seemed.
Not that I had worked much since finding out I had a son. I was pretty useless right now.
The cake was brought out for Pedar’s birthday, and I headed through the crowd and hugged him tight. I was frazzled and unshaven compared to my father, who was impeccably styled in his black leisure suit.
He was the rock of our wealth, and Maman was the heart. I’d be no one without them. I backed up, realizing the rest of my brothers wanted a moment to congratulate him.
My brother Kir came over to me. We looked different and thought differently, but I knew he and everyone in my family were on my side. He’d just made a sound investment that earned the family ten times more than it usually made in a day. So the second he came over, I whispered, “Congratulations.”
He patted me on the back. “How was Orlando?”
My entire body stilled. I swallowed and only said, “Enlightening in some ways.”
“That’s cryptic.”
