Madeline
Chapter Thirteen - It's Not Just Me
Lizzie
I looked curiously at Gordo as Miranda led my brother out of the room leaving the two of us in the room with Madeline. "Okay. . .this has to be something big. What's going on?"
"Lizzie, first off just let me say that I don't know how in the world you ever made it with all this parenting stuff on your own. I've never been so freaked out by anything in my life as I was today when she wandered off and. . ."
"She wandered off? My God Gordo, you can't take your eyes off of a five year old! What were you thinking! And where in the world were you at for her to wander off?" I knew the words came out way more angrier than I felt, and that he had every right to actually leave my house with his daughter, in fact I liked the idea that he was actually willing to do just that, but I was a mother after all and the irrational fear seemed to come instilled with the giving birth package.
"Lizzie, I feel horrible about it all, trust me. It scared me to death and made me think about where I stand right now in my life with all of this. You know what? I realized that there's no way I could ever be prepared or capable of being the perfect father. There are things that I'm going to do completely wrong and it might take me a few times to figure out how to do them right. I don't have the time for a family and a directing career in the perfect world. . ."
"Gordo, stop. I know all this, okay? It's why I said no to you last night. Well, one of the major reasons anyway. You are right though, I'm afraid to turn out like my parents. They hate each other, Gordo, and I could never live with hating you. It would kill me. But mostly I don't want to ruin your life by tying you down to me and Madeline. You being her father is what she needs, not us being married. Like you just said, you can't have both in a perfect world." Gordo waited until I had finished before continuing where I had interrupted him.
"Wait for a second okay? Let me finish this time." I nodded my head as he took a steadying breath. "As I was saying, I don't have the time for a family and a directing career in the perfect world that I created in my mind and that I always thought I wanted, but I've never lived in a perfect world and I'm not about to try now. Any world where I'm not with you and our daughter is no world I'm going to live in, and it's the same with directing on some levels. Only, it's what I love to do, it's not what I live for."
I could feel the warmth of tears rising to my eye lids and beginning to escape onto my eyelashes and cheeks. Gordo stepped closer to me and reached a hand to my cheek. As he brushed my tears away, I turned into his hand and kissed his palm, looking up into his eyes. I couldn't help but feel like I was seeing the answers to all my fears and worries staring back at me from his soul. There was a truth and a feeling of rightness pouring over me before we broke our gaze.
"Lizzie, I live for you. I always have and I always will. You have always been my reason for crawling out of bed, no matter how much I'd rather not face the day. Now, I have a daughter who means the world to me and I would give anything for. I've got as perfect a life as I think is possible." He leaned into me and I accepted his offered kiss, enjoying the taste of our mixing tears and tender feel of his mouth against mine. "There's only one thing that could make things better, and that's waking up next to you every morning for the rest of my life. I love you Elizabeth McGuire. Will you marry me?"
Again a flood of fears came screaming into my head as they had the last time he'd asked me those words, but this time my heart was bursting with too much love to stop and pay attention before it answered. "Yes." It was soft and simple, but my one whispered word seemed to do for him what every word he'd said over the last five minutes had done for me.
"Are you sure?" I stared at him, thinking honestly about his question before answering.
"Not at all, but there's nothing else I want more in life." We kissed again and lost ourselves to the outside world. I'm not sure how long we stood there sharing the most passionate kiss of our lives, but after a few eternities I was pulled back into my world by an insistent tugging on my pants leg. I broke our kiss, gasping for the air I had forgot to inhale and looked down at my daughter. "What is it honey?"
"What ya doing?" If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn my five year old child was being sarcastic. It almost looked as if she already knew the real answer, but wanted to hear what I would try and describe to her. Unfortunately for her, my mind froze at the thought of what I was getting myself into and what I'd just said yes to. Gordo however seemed to have all his mental capabilities intact and answered her as he picked her up.
"We were just talking about something really important, Madeline. Something that will have a big effect on you, as well as me and your mom."
"Is that how mommies and daddies talk? Eww." I smiled at my daughter's revulsion and let Gordo put everything into words for his daughter. He was getting the being a father thing down pretty fast I had to admit to myself, other than the incident today and whatever had happened.
"Sometimes, baby. But this is something important I have to tell you, are you listening?" He waited for her cautious nod before continuing. "Well, your mom and I are going to make us a real family. We're going to get married and then I'll live with you and everything."
I almost felt bad for the boy when Madeline answered. Whatever response he'd been expecting, he was definitely not prepared for her to burst into tears and ask, "You mean we're not real?" I watched the utter confusion and regret at making his daughter cry flash over his face and decided it was time to step in, being that I was a little more experienced with how to tell a five year old something as important as this.
"Madeline, honey." She looked at me as I rubbed her back, still held in Gordo's arms. "Do you remember how you, me and Uncle Matt lived in our old house? How we were a family?"
Eventually she slowly nodded yes and I plowed on. "Well, daddy's going to become a part of that family too because you and I are going to marry him in." I smiled big when she scrunched up her tiny face and looked back and forth from Gordo and me.
"I can't marry daddy! Uncle Matt said that's bad, it's in chest."
"Mads, that's incest, not in chest." My brother corrected my daughter as he happily strolled into the room and gave me a hug and a kiss before going over to the refrigerator and pulling out the orange juice, about to take a drink out of it, when he was stopped in mid movement.
"Matthew McGuire! You touch your lips to that carton and you can forget about bothering with asking Lizzie anything." Miranda saved me the words, which wouldn't have worked anyway, when she followed after him into the room and caught him just in time. I watched Matt debate the choice over in his head, the carton of orange juice held inches from his lips in the air.
"Fine! It's better out of a glass anyway, mom! You're just as bad as Lizzie. I bet Steven Tyler can drink out of his orange juice carton and not get grief about it. Once I'm a rock star, you can all kiss my straight from the carton drinking a. . ."
"Language." I stopped him from slipping as usual in front of Madeline. "And just when did the subject of incest come up with my daughter?"
He looked at the expressions on all three of our faces and pretended to act shocked that we didn't appear supportive of his choice in subject matter when talking with a five year old.
"What, every kid should know that stuff, it saves them from having to figure it all out the hard way later." I lowered my head, still staring at him, letting him know that hadn't explained anything at all. "Okay, gees, we were watching a very touching and moving episode of Springer and these two guys were fighting over this girl and one of them was her brother and then her dad all comes out and says that he's. . ."
Again Matt was interrupted by Miranda, and I smiled at being reminded of when we were all kids and she would jump in and defend me from anything Matt could come up with. "Matt, you let a five year old girl watch Springer, and then tried to explain to her why all those nut jobs are freaks?"
"Hey, if she'd just stayed in bed at two in the morning when they were rerunning it, then she wouldn't have been in my room watching it. Can I help it if my beautiful niece needs to be protected from her nightmares?"
"Two a.m.? You kept her up at two in the morning?" I sighed and then started to laugh at myself. As Madeline grew older, I found myself sounding more and more like my mother, well at least as she had before letting her true emotions out. "Let's just stop while my brother can still climb out of the hole he's digging." I decided that there were much worse things that my daughter could be facing in life than an uncle who lets her watch trash TV. at two in the morning, much worse.
"Thanks, Liz. That's why you will always be my favorite sister. Oh and speaking of having a question to ask you, how would you feel with Miranda moving in to that spare room we have and living with us?" I could see Gordo make the face he'd always done in preparation for me and Miranda to start screaming happily about something, and I figured I should not let him down.
"Miranda! Oh my God that would be great!" As the two of us acted like sugar high preteens hopping in place as we hugged and screamed next to our boyfriends I was again warmed by the memories it brought back, and I cursed the missed years none of us would ever get back.
"So. . .I'm guessing that is a yes then?" Miranda rolled her eyes at Matt's question.
"Nice work there Captain Obvious!" Gordo jumped into the conversation, which was still on the slippery slope of becoming an all out Matt bashing.
"Okay, that'll be enough of that. It's like when we were kids and you guys would all gang up on me. I used to cry in my room over the things you guys would say you know."
Miranda turned away from me and faced Matt again. "You mean you used to plan your revenge. The cameras never caught you crying, we would have used that against you if they had."
"The cameras. . ."
"You aren't the only one who knows how to rig a room to catch people in their most entertaining moments." We all three laughed as Matt stared in shock at Gordo.
"I can't believe. . ."
"If anyone in this room can't believe anything it's me with the way you could break dance when you thought no one could see." As Miranda spoke, Matt's eyes grew wider and his face tuned a few shades darker red than I'd ever seen it. "Seriously though, break dancing was old before you were even born McGuire, what was that all about?"
Again the three of us were laughing at my brother's expense and memories were flooding into my mind along with each fresh burst of laughter.
"Wait a minute, how often did you see me dancing, because. . ."
"Yeah, we saw that. And I have to say I'm glad you made the switch to boxers long before I ever saw you with no pants on in person. I promise that if you'd still been wearing those cute little whitie tighites our first time, I would have laughed to hard to have ever done anything."
We were reminded that our conversation was being absorb by a young mind when Madeline called out, "Whitie tighties!" and giggled in Gordo's arms. The three of us lost it again and tears began clouding my eyes as I laughed.
"Oh great, now you've even got Madeline to turn against me, I hope you're all happy. I should report you for watching a child dance in his underwear."
"Matt, take my word for it, we didn't enjoy it." Gordo said through his laughter.
"Speak for yourselves, I tried to sneak the tape home but Gordo erased it before I had a chance to." Matt stared open mouthed at his girlfriend before giving into the contagion that is laughter.
