Lover Girl
A woman grapples with the complexities of motherhood, relationships, and personal identity as she navigates a tumultuous new romance while raising her young son. When a moment of rage leads to an irreversible breakdown, she finds herself facing the consequences of her actions. This story explores the emotional fragility of family, the search for self-worth, and the painful realities that can emerge when we fail those we love.
By the time she was forty-three, beautiful, green-eyed Cecily Caldor had had six hastily enacted marriages, three in her twenties, three in her thirties, and no one who knew her was particularly surprised. As a teenager growing up in a wealthy Dallas family, she’d had a steady stream of boyfriends, all of them helplessly enamored because, along with her looks, Cici, who knew how to lower her creamy eye lids and bat her thick black lashes, was sexy and flirtatious, her body, which seemed always to smell of wild flowers, as graceful as a cat in a tall green field, getting ready to pounce. Simply put, she had power over men, which made members of both sexes nervous whenever they were around her. Cici’s mother, Lilly Pearl, had been a southern debutante, too delicate to do much more than give orders to the cook and attend expensive ladies’ luncheons, while her father, Craig, an influential lawyer, was the one who could be counted on to spring his daughter from even the worst of situations, including her many marriages. For that she was beholden to him.
But they had an odd history, Cici being the favorite of Craig’s three children. In the sprawling red brick mansion in which they lived, Craig’s word was law and only Cici was allowed to wander in and out of his office without knocking first. He expected decorum from his children, but didn’t seem to mind the fact that Cici, whose body had matured early, went around the house in bra and panties, and would have gone around naked if she’d been permitted. Perhaps because of this, Lilly Pearl encouraged her daughter to leave the parental fold at the earliest possible moment. Cici completed her studies at Rice University in three years, and then, with money she had inherited from her grandparents, immediately booked a flight to Paris.
There, in a drawing class, she met her first husband, an artist named Sebastien who lived in a cramped, sloppy studio in Montmartre. The marriage lasted eight disastrous months and Cici’s father had to fly to Paris to help dissolve it.
A year later came Dieter, whom she met in Berlin.
And then, four years after that, a British architect named Martin, whose acquaintance she made as they both gazed at a painting at the Tate.
At age thirty-two, in her fourth marriage, she moved to Rome where she fell head over heels with a public relations executive named Massimo.
At thirty-six she married again, this time to a thoracic surgeon named Leonard who owned a property near the Clintons in Chappaqua, New York.
And then, finally, just as she was about to turn forty-three, she sat beside a handsome businessman on a bumpy flight from L.A. to Austin and found herself so attracted to him that she promised a dinner date well before the plane began its descent. His name was Daniel Richmond and of all her previous husbands and connections, he was the one who excited her most.
By now she had a son, a seven-year-old boy named Luca who had been conceived in Rome and whose father had disappeared from Cici’s life before she even knew she was pregnant.
She would have had an abortion (not her first) if her older sister, Jeannie, hadn’t talked her out of it. “One of us has to have children,” said Jeannie, who had three goldendoodles but no offspring. “And clearly it’s not me.”
Not understanding how much harm it might cause, Cici had shlepped her little boy through two difficult relationships before attempting to settle down with her latest conquest, Daniel, the man she met on the plane, a forty-two-year-old energy broker who badly wanted to start a family.
Daniel was good-looking, with longish, slicked back blond hair and a lithe, athletic body that brought to mind tennis, hiking and touch football. He was only an inch or so taller than Cici, and he had an air about him that said he had money (which he did, in spades). Cici had vivid fantasies about him the first hour into the flight.
The next day he called Cici with plans for dinner the following evening. An hour before the appointed time, Cici took her son over to her sister’s. He was a gloomy little boy who did well in school, but didn’t have many friends. Cici struggled with a suspicion that Luca preferred staying at his aunt’s house to her own. This, she reasoned, was because Jeannie had dogs and also a genial professor husband who could sometimes be talked into taking Luca to basketball games at the university. Cici’s own house, situated in the Hyde Park section of Austin, was neat as a pin, while her sister’s was extremely messy, unwashed dishes in the sink and the trash taken out at the last minute. Cici didn’t want her son around when Daniel came to pick her up.
“Nice house,” he said, stepping through the doorway. He wore a white linen suit that looked expensive. Also a lemon yellow tie. Cici offered him a glass of wine and showed him around her home. When they were in Luca’s room, he exclaimed, “Ah, you have a son! I can’t wait to meet him.”
At dinner they made mostly small talk, discovering that each had a passion for art, literature, the currently horrible state of politics. Daniel drove a recent model Porsche and after dinner they zoomed up into the hills of Austin, where he parked at the edge of a canyon and took Cici into his arms. For the next half hour, they made out like teenagers, groping and kissing till Cici’s lips were raw. Daniel’s mouth tasted fresh and wonderful – had he spritzed it in the men’s room at the restaurant? Cici learned he’d grown up in L.A. and worked for his father, a hedge fund guy planning to open an office in Austin. “Right now, I live in a studio apartment downtown,” Daniel told her. “But that’s temporary. I’m remodeling a house right near here in the hills. Wanna see?”
Cici nodded and he drove her to a house on West Rim that had a huge dumpster in front of it. The house was tall with a circular driveway, but they couldn’t go inside because the flooring hadn’t been put in yet and it was dangerous. Cici could easily picture herself lolling on cushions in one of the bedrooms. Back at her own house, Daniel kissed her on the doorstep and invited her out for another dinner the next evening. She liked him. She liked him a lot. He was the right age, the right profession, and she sensed deep in her tricky soul that this was the man who would bring her the happiness she so deserved.
On their second date they had full-on sex. Cici hadn’t planned on this, but once she was in his arms and felt his penis growing hard against her, couldn’t help herself. Afterwards, they lay on the sheets and Daniel talked in some detail about his recent, terrible marriage to a classy real estate broker who hadn’t wanted children.
“So you want kids?” Cici asked.
“Oh god, yes! I can’t wait to start a family. How about you?”
The last thing Cici wanted was another child.
In recent years, she’d struggled with her weight, following a strict regimen of Pilates, Yoga, weight training and daily ten mile runs through the city. Her body was where she wanted it to be now, and she couldn’t bear the thought of putting it through nine months of gestation and all the inconveniences that followed. Besides, at forty-three it wasn’t that easy to conceive. Not that she brought this up to Daniel, who was unaware of her exact age. “My dream is to have more children,” she breathed mendaciously. “Luca is a sweet child, but he’s lonely and could use some siblings.”
Daniel gave her a look that said, I’m your man. Or was that her imagination? She smiled at him and changed the subject as quickly as she could.
Cici loved her little boy, but found him irritating. She didn’t like being tied down, and the idea of attending PTA meetings or standing on the sideline among a dreary throng of parents during little league games bored her stiff. Luca had a habit of shrinking away from her when Cici was with him. She’d reach for his hand and he’d quickly snatch it away as if she were an embarrassment (which she wasn’t; he just didn’t like physical contact). He was a child who suffered from chronic allergies – persistent dark circles under his eyes, sallow skin, a nose that was constantly dripping. When they were alone in the house together, Luca would stay in his room playing video games while Cici chatted on the phone or shopped for clothes online or wrote in the journal she’d kept since she was ten years old. She hadn’t brought a new suitor home in over a year, but after three weeks of dating Daniel, decided it would be fine to introduce him to her son. “I’ve been seeing this nice person named Daniel,” she told Luca. “He’s coming to dinner tonight and I’m excited for you to meet him.”
Luca raised an eyebrow at Cici in a vague smirk. He’d already been exposed to a number of Cici’s lovers, and thought of them as jerks who played nicey-nicey with him, without ever bothering to get to know who he really was. Anyway, none of them ever lasted long.
At dinner that night, Daniel bent over backwards to make Luca like him. He brought the boy a starter set of Trestle Tracks for which he paid $17.95. (He would have bought a more expensive set had he been certain the relationship would last long enough to be worth it.) “I hope you’ll like this,” he said to Luca who would have preferred a video game, but mumbled “thanks.” Cici had set the table with the colorful china she’d received as a gift for her last marriage. She poured wine for herself and Daniel, who immediately began to question Luca about his favorite subjects at school.
“Math, I guess,“ said Luca.
“Really?” said Daniel. “I wouldn’t have figured you for a numbers guy.”
Luca looked at him blankly, the slightest hint of contempt in his downsloping eyes.
“Your mother being so arty, I would have thought that would rub off on you, too,” Daniel explained.
Cici, who wrote an antiques column for the local paper, didn’t think of herself as particularly arty. She wore wide black jeans and flowy see-through tops and kept her hair pinned in a messy bun on top of her head. All day long, she would apply and reapply a shade of Revlon lipstick so dark that it appeared moisty prunish, and tonight, all through the meal, she couldn’t stop smiling at the two males at her table. Luca excused himself as soon as dinner was over, rinsing his plate and glass in the sink before placing them in the dishwasher. “What do you say to Daniel?” prodded Cici as the little boy turned to leave the kitchen.
“Very nice to meet you,” said Luca.
“Maybe next time we’ll go out to a restaurant,” replied Daniel.
“That’d be nice,” said Luca, heading quickly for his bedroom.
Cici stared after her son. “He’s shy. It takes a while to get to know him.”
Daniel lifted her hand and pressed it to his lips. “I’m sure I’ll win him over,” he said,
A few weeks passed. Cici would leave Luca with her sister and spend three nights a week at Daniel’s. When Daniel’s house was ready, he asked Cici to move in with him. “What about Luca?” she asked.
“Luca would move in, too,” he said. “That goes without saying.”
It turned out that Daniel, at the last minute, had outfitted a room especially for Luca. There were bunk beds, a wide desk, wallspace for posters, a private bathroom that had shower curtains with tiny rocket ships printed on them. When Cici went in to kiss him goodnight the first time he stayed there, Luca said, “I don’t like it here. I want to sleep at Jeannie’s.”
“That’s only because you want to play with her dogs,” said Cici.
“No, it’s because it’s scary here. I’m not used to a room this big.”
Cici gazed at him a moment. “Do you want to sleep with us?” she asked.
“Yes!” cried Luca, his face softening. He was in a T-shirt and boxers and Cici gestured for him to bring his pillow and stuffed dinosaur to the bed she shared with Daniel. Once he was there, she pointed to a place between herself and the edge, indicating that was where he should sleep. At some point in the night, however, Luca shifted position so that now he was burrowed between Cici and Daniel, waking each time Daniel tried to touch Cici and batting his hand away.
Over breakfast the next morning, Daniel asked Luca if he’d like a little brother or sister.
“Why?” said Luca. “I’m happy the way things are.”
“Well, because we’re going to be a family,” Daniel said. “We’re all going to live under the same roof.”
Luca looked uncertainly at his mother, who wrapped her arms around him and said, “Oh, honey, we’re going to be so happy. You’ll see.”
“Are you going to get married again?” Luca asked.
There was an uncomfortable silence. After a moment, Cici said, “Things like that take a long time to decide. Right now we’re just enjoying ourselves and seeing how things go.”
This might not have been the best answer, but at least it was an honest one. Later in the day, Daniel phoned Cici. “Is Luca always going to be a guest in our bed?” he asked.
“Good lord, I hope not!” said Cici.
But she was uncertain. Luca had never tried to share a bed with herself and lovers before; this was a first.
The next night, after Cici and Daniel had fallen asleep, there was a knock on the door and Luca crept in with his pillow and stuffed animal. Without either of them being aware, he climbed into their bed, wriggling around until he was comfortably ensconced between his mother and her new boyfriend.
This repeated the next night and the next and the next until finally Daniel said, “I can’t do this. He has to sleep separately. Perhaps he needs some time back at his own house.”
Cici’s old house was still filled with her furniture and possessions. She was waiting to see how well she and Daniel got along together before leasing the house out or selling it. Now, unhappily, she packed a few bags, loaded Luca into the car and drove to their former home. Walking through the old rooms, she was filled with familiar dread: What if she were stuck here forever, a middle-aged, single mom who would never find a man to both love her and accept her son? But of course she would find another man. She’d been through enough relationships to know there was always someone.
As for Luca, he was ecstatic to be back in his own home. He ran to his room where he pulled toys down from shelves and rolled around on the carpet, pretending he was swimming in the ocean. That night he had no trouble sleeping in his own bed. Cici was extremely peeved with him. “You can sleep by yourself here, but not at Daniel’s? You better get used to it, buddy, because I’m selling this house and we’re moving into Daniel’s new one.”
“I don’t like Daniel.”
“Oh stop it! You don’t even know him.”
“Well, you don’t either! Not well enough to move into his house.”
Cici felt a wave of anger run through her. “How dare you say that!” she exclaimed, biting off each of the words separately.
“Anyway, it won’t last,” said Luca with strange wisdom for a seven-year-old boy.
Mother and son glared at one another. Through tight lips, Cici spat: “You’re just a child! You can’t tell me what to do.”
“If you’re gonna sleep with that guy, I’d rather stay at Aunt Jeannie’s.”
“I’m your mother. You have to stay with me.”
“I don’t even like you. You’re a mean, dishonest bitch.”
Cici took two steps toward Luca, flung out her hand and slapped him hard across the face.
The boy stared at her in shock. Tears began to form in his eyes, but he remained white and silent, his mouth a dismayed O above his stiff chin. Almost immediately the shape of Cici’s hand rose on Luca’s smooth skin. It was her whole hand, four fingers and a thumb perfectly formed, pink at first, then growing an angry, damning red that was there for the world to see. “Oh god, I’m so sorry,” whispered Cici. “I didn’t mean that, I really didn’t.”
Luca backed away from her. It was just after breakfast, a school day, but Cici knew she couldn’t send him to school, not with that mark on his face. She couldn’t take him to Jeannie’s either, or to the library, park or grocery store; in fact, not anywhere in public. She’d just have to leave him home all day with orders not to open the door to anyone. She’d never done that before, but it would be okay – the boy would just stay in his room with his toys, and she’d be home by lunch to make him a sandwich. In the meanwhile, she put a baggie of ice on his face. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Sometimes you say things you shouldn’t and it hurts my feelings.”
“You say stuff, too,” countered Luca.
“Because I’m your mother and that’s my job.” When she was finished with the ice, Cici checked to see that the doors and windows were locked and the stove was off. Then she picked up her keys and handbag. “I’ll be back in three hours,” she told Luca. “While I’m gone, I want you to sit right here at the kitchen table and do the vocabulary list for your English homework. Understand?”
Luca nodded.
“If and when you finish the list you can watch some TV.”
Luca nodded again. He grabbed a pencil and his workbook, but as soon as he heard Cici lock the front door, he ran to the bathroom to study his face in the mirror. The bright outline of his mother’s hand on his cheek was as visible as a neon sign. Wow, he thought, anger and misery erupting within him. He knew what his mother had done was wrong, so he felt no compunction about abandoning his homework, unlocking the front door and sitting down on the steps outside.
And that was where Daniel found him when he stopped by half an hour later to drop off a book. The man nearly tripped over his feet when he saw the vivid red mark on Luca’s face. “Oh my god, what happened to you?” he cried.
“My mother hit me,” Luca said with tears in his throat.
“What? Why?” Kneeling down so his face was level with Luca’s, Daniel gingerly touched the slap mark.
“She was angry because I don’t want to sleep at your house.”
“Well, that’s no reason to slap someone, especially a little boy.” Daniel helped Luca to his feet and led him carefully into the house where he went to the freezer and took out a bag of frozen peas. “Here, put this on your face,” he said to Luca, sitting him down on a kitchen chair. The sight of the injured child upset Daniel greatly, but he kept his tone neutral as he asked, “Is this something your mother has done before?”
Luca hesitated and then nodded slowly. “Never this hard,” he said. “She usually just whacks me on the bottom or around my ribs.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Daniel said. “I thought the two of you were close.”
Luca shrugged a bony shoulder. “Mom has anger issues.”
“Well, that’s a problem,” Daniel said. “When is your mother getting home?”
“Around lunchtime.”
Daniel checked his watch. “I have a meeting in half an hour, so I can’t stay with you. Is there anyone I can call?”
“Just my aunt Jeannie.”
“All right. I’ll be in touch with her. In the meanwhile, you sit here with that bag of peas on your cheek.”
Daniel hurried out of the house to his car. He felt terrible for the boy who, habitually somber though he was, didn’t deserve physical punishment from his mom. Before switching on the engine, he took a sip of the now-cold latte in the cup holder and thought about his options. In his experience, Cici was warm and magnanimous, always doting on her son and treating him with tenderness. Was this false? Daniel remembered moments here and there when Cici’s composure had cracked and she’d become shrill with her son, staring at him darkly as she sent him to his room for some minor infraction. But a slap on the face? As Daniel sat in his luxurious car, he realized his feelings for Cici had seismically shifted and that now her name was coupled with distaste, even horror.
This was definitely not a woman he wanted to start a family with. In fact, his feelings had shifted so drastically that he didn’t think he ever wanted to see her again.
But what about Luca? Could Daniel just walk away, knowing the little boy’s life was so precarious? He decided against calling Jeannie; that would only prolong the status quo. Instead, he pulled his cell from the console and looked up the number of Child Protective Services. After hesitating a few seconds, he dialed. When a concerned male voice answered, he spat out the whole story. The man at the other end asked for Cici’s address and all pertinent details. Then he said, “Okay, we’ll take care of the situation. This call will remain anonymous. In the meanwhile, we advise you to have no contact with Ms. Caldor or her family.”
No contact? As far as Daniel was concerned, with the phone call he’d just made he’d washed his hands of Cici and her family, and was ready to walk away.
When Cici returned at lunchtime, there were two men on her doorstep, one wearing a shiny gray ill-fitting suit and the other in jeans and a navy T-shirt. They introduced themselves as officials from CPS and asked if they could come inside.
“Why?” asked Cici, color slowly draining from her face..
“We received a call that there were problems with your son and that you’d been rough with him, " said the official in the suit.
“That’s a lie! My son and I are extremely close. Whoever made that call has a vendetta against me and just wants to get me in trouble.”
“Whatever the reason, we need to come in and have a look around.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“Why not?”
Cici bit down on her lip. “My house is a mess,” she said finally. “I don’t want anyone inside there.”
“Ma’am, it doesn't matter what your house looks like. We’re duty bound to go in,” said the T-shirted man.
“What if I refuse?”
“Then we’ll call the police.”
Cici began to cry. The CPS guys waited as she pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. They waited as she glanced at her neighbors’ houses and looked over her shoulder to see if there was anyone in the street. Then she sighed and took out her key. “There’s really no reason for you to go in there,” she said. “In fact, my son has Covid and I don’t want him disturbed.”
“We have masks,” the T-shirted official said.
“Well, then please wait here while I put a mask on my son.”
“No need,” said T-shirt. “We’re protected.”
Cici watched in alarm as the two men adorned masks. “Ready?” they said in unison.
“No!” shouted Cici. “I don’t like strangers in my house.”
“You have no choice, Ma’am,” the official in the suit said.
“I think I want to call my lawyer,” said Cici.
“That won’t be necessary,” said the T-shirted man. “This is just a routine visit. We’ll have a quick look around and then be on our way.”
Cici’s hand shook badly as she took out her key.
Already she was conjuring up an explanation for what had happened to Luca. She would put the blame on Daniel, saying he was a new boyfriend who’d gotten physical with her son.
That was reasonable and no one would know the difference. If they questioned Daniel, it would be her word against his.
As she led the CPS workers into her house, she realized that the slap mark on Luca’s face was the size of a female hand, not a male’s. But perhaps they wouldn’t notice. “Luca,” she called ahead. “Some nice men are here to see you.”
There was the sound of footsteps and when they entered the kitchen, Luca was seated at the table doing homework. The red slap mark on his cheek reminded Cici of the Scarlet Letter. Oh Jesus, I’m screwed, she thought. But she pretended to look shocked as her eyes fell on Luca. “Darling!” she cried. “What happened to you? Did Daniel hit you?”
Luca threw her a spiteful look. Cici’s hope was that he would play along with her and agree that it was Daniel who’d done him harm. They were a team, after all.
But instead, Luca looked her squarely in the eye and said, “You slapped me, Mom. Remember?”
The man in the T-shirt jumped in quickly. “Why’d your mom slap you?”
“She got angry when I said I didn’t like her new boyfriend.”
“And why don’t you like him?”
“Actually I like him better now because he was nice to me when he came over to drop off a book this morning.”
“See?” yelled Cici. “Daniel was here without my permission. He’s the one who slapped Luca while I was gone.”
“That’s not what your son says, Ma’am. We’re going to bring in a social worker. In the meanwhile, since this is an abused minor, do you have a family member Luca could stay with?”
“My aunt Jeannie!” Luca exclaimed joyfully.
The two CPS workers glanced at Cici, who nodded, her face pinched and wretched.
In the end, there was no good explanation for what Cici had done. Her sister stopped speaking to her for a while. Luca moved cheerfully into his aunt’s house and said he wanted to stay there forever. He liked the social worker who came to talk to him and felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his poor little shoulders. (Magically, his allergies vanished after two weeks of living with Jeannie.)
As for his mother … After her fall from grace, Cici was diminished, her face drooping and her hair losing its sheen once the news of her bad behavior got out to friends and associates. No longer could she hold her head high, and her brave facade crumbled when, to her great embarrassment, she was forced to take anger management and parenting classes. Once the classes were over, she rented out her house and booked a flight to Prague, where she’d never been and no one knew her.
A year passed before she returned to Austin, and when she did, she was with a new man, a Czech author named Marek V. Cerny who was fifteen years older than Cici, and very wealthy. He would do for the moment, Cici thought. At least until she grew weary of him and began the tiresome search for a replacement.
There were always new places to visit and new men to meet. All it took was a little money, a vivid imagination, a thirst for travel, some elegant clothing and a strict beauty regime that would keep her body race-fit.
She could live without her son who didn’t love her anymore and was better off with her sister.
What it all came down to, she decided, was that she was a fabulous girlfriend but a terrible mother. No shame in that. She just wasn’t cut out for the role.