by Gina Messina
“So you think she was trying to punish you? To teach you a lesson?”
“Who the hell knows. You’re the one who’s supposed to have all the answers. Why don’t you tell me? All I know is that I will never forgive her for that pantry incident. Never!” she declared while recalling the way Stacey had hung up on her when she had attempted to forgive her.
“Do you wish things were different between you and your sister?” Dr. Harrison asked, watching Charlie carefully for a reaction
“It certainly makes life more complicated for me. I have to check with Carrie before any family holiday or event just to make sure Stacey isn’t planning on being there.”
“An inconvenience?”
“Well, she’s the one who made it inconvenient when she decided to blow my husband.” Charlie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, really. I haven’t seen her in years.”
“How’s that?”
“Stacey married a clinical pathologist who specializes in rare forms of malaria. Because of his career, they live in some remote part of Africa and rarely visit, if at all. And if they do come home, we make sure to avoid one another. The only way we communicate is through email and that’s only if it’s a life or death matter.”
Charlie had been relieved when she heard that Stacey had eloped. It would have been physically impossible for her to not show up at her sister’s wedding without having to painfully explain why to her parents. There was no doubt in Charlie’s mind that they would have surely laid all of the blame on Sean. Carrie and Jane were the only two people she ever shared that incident with. She didn’t need her parents feeling sorry for her and the last thing she wanted was to see the ‘I told you so’ look they would have given her if they had known. Stacey eloping and moving to Africa had been a windfall.
“It must be exciting for her,” Dr. Harrison commented with interest, “Living in Africa.”
“You’re joking, right?” Charlie threw back her head and laughed. “She has to be living in hell.”
In December, when Carrie had showed Charlie a Christmas card that Stacey and her husband had sent over the holidays, she’d felt a tinge of sweet revenge. Of course, Charlie never got a card. Just like she never got a call on her birthday or any other holiday. It was a photograph of Stacey standing next to a baby elephant and there was a wreath hanging off its little wrinkled trunk. ‘Merry Christmas from Africa,’ it read across the top of the card in red and green script. Charlie grabbed it from Carrie’s hand and sprinted over to Sean’s desk, then whipped open the drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass. She hadn’t laid eyes on Stacey since the pantry incident three years earlier, so she was eager to get a better look.
When she held the magnifier over Stacey, she thought she was looking at a bag lady. The first thing she noticed that she was barefoot so she scanned down to her feet. And, not only was her sister barefoot, but it was more than evident that she hadn’t had a pedicure in years. Her nails were like talons! It made Charlies skin crawl. Her sisters nails were long and cracked and there was dried mud caked between each of her toes with little pieces of grass sticking up in-between. Even though Stacey had a big smile on her face, Charlie knew better. Who could be happy when their feet look like that?
“Oh my God! Did you get a good look at her feet?” she’d asked Carrie with a self-righteous grin as she handed her the magnifying glass so she could see for herself. “I don’t even think they can be fixed! I mean what manicurist, in their right mind, would even attempt to touch those things let alone file and polish them?”
When Carrie laughed, Charlie felt a strong connection of big sisterly love and gave her sister a warm embrace. “Let’s go get a spa pedicure at Elizabeth Arden!” she offered by way of rewarding her for her allegiance, “My treat!”
“Let’s steer away from Stacey for a moment,” her doctor suggested.
How about forever?
“We know how your family felt about Sean. Why don’t you share with me how he felt about your family?”
“I’m pretty certain he felt the same way,” she snorted, remembering the bizarre car ride home from Nobu the night of her twenty-first birthday and the disaster that followed.
“You mother shouldn’t be meddling in your life,” Sean had adamantly stated while they were making their way across town to her apartment. “You can never be too thin.” He reached over and stroked her match-stick of a thigh with his free hand.
Charlie had tried to ignore his comments as best as she could, focusing instead on the simply wrapped birthday gift she had noticed lying on the back seat of his new luxury car. Sean had just gotten a promotion and the first thing he had done was go out and buy a red Lamborghini. Charlie had thought it was a bit excessive (and flashy) until he pointed to her new Louis Vuitton boots and said that he didn’t want to hear another word about it. She felt it was an unfair comparison, though, because her boots had only cost fifteen hundred dollars and the sports car had cost over a hundred grand. Besides, the kind of shoes one wore made a bold statement, the kind of car you drove showed how insecure you really were. The more expensive the car the smaller the… No one ever questioned the height of a heel.
Sean kept circling the block, looking for parking on her street. Or so she thought. Because the next thing she knew he had his hand around the back of her neck and was guiding her head toward his crotch. “Suck my cock,” he ordered while reaching down with his other hand and unzipping his fly.
At first she thought he was joking. But when he took both hands off the steering wheel of his new sports car, Charlie knew he was deadly serious. He pulled out his swollen penis and began stroking himself.
Sucking him off was the last thing she wanted to do, but out of a sense of duty, she opened her mouth and did exactly what he wanted. After all, he’d probably gotten her a fabulous gift. She figured that the sooner she got him off the sooner she’d be able to get off herself. Opening a present was better than sex to her and she was pretty sure by the shape and size of the box that it was going to be a stellar pair of heels.
“I always did what he asked,” she told Dr. Harrison. To Charlie’s disgust, it made her wet just thinking about it.
“When we finally got to my apartment, I quickly changed into a pair of old sweats and my favorite faded t-shirt and jumped right into bed. I could hear Sean in the bathroom going through his nightly ritual of brushing and flossing his teeth, washing and moisturizing his face. He was always fastidious about taking care of his skin. When he was done with his man-scaping, he came into the bedroom, holding my birthday present in one hand and a scotch in the other. I was so excited; I couldn’t wait much longer. All I wanted to do was grab the gift and rip off the wrapping paper. He walked over to the bed and leaned down to kiss me and I could taste his breath, which was satisfyingly minty.”
Charlie sat with a smirk on her face and ironically recalled the way her own mouth had tasted that night. It had been a combination of Sea Bass with black bean sauce, chocolate cake and possibly come. The memory made her reach into her purse and pull out a breath mint.
“Want an Altoid?” she asked, leaning forward and offering the open tin.
“Charlie, I’m not interested in an Altoid, I’m interested in what happened after you performed fellatio on Sean in the car.”
“Well, I couldn’t wait to open it. I was giddy with anticipation when I held out my two hands. But, instead of passing me the package, he told me that I needed to change. At first I thought he was joking. That is, until I saw the serious expression on his face.”
“Don’t ever come to bed looking like that again, Charlotte,” Sean had said in a commanding voice.
“Come on, give it to me. My birthday’s almost over,” she pleaded. “I’ve been waiting since this morning.”
“You’re going to be begging for me to give it to you in a little while,” he juvenilely laughed, failing miserably at lightening the mood. His mood then turned dark again. “I’m serious, Charlotte, I don’t ever want to see you in s
weats and a t-shirt again. It’s insulting to me.” Charlie felt a chill run down her spine. “Now go put on one of those sexy negligees I bought for you. The black one with the crotch less panties will be perfect.”
“Perfect for what?”
Sean didn’t answer. He just sipped, then stirred his drink with his finger and nodded in the direction of the dresser.
Charlie sulked off and rummaged through the many erotic outfits Sean had lavished her with. It took quite a while to find the one he’d requested because the entire two top drawers of her dresser were crammed full of lingerie. She couldn’t help but to think to herself that although she’d only just turned twenty-one, she felt twice her age. She wanted nothing more than to open her gift then crawl under the covers and close her eyes for a very long time.
“Dr. Harrison, I felt like he was punishing me for something. That he enjoyed making me wait. It wasn’t until I changed into the slutty get-up that he handed over my gift. I knew it was shoes and my mind was racing a mile a minute. Which amazing pair would I find waiting within that plainly wrapped package? I’d been dropping hints all month long and couldn’t wait to see which ones he had gotten me. He always had such good taste when it came to shoes,” she stated. “Except that time.”
Charlie felt as if it were just yesterday. Will it be the red python Jimmy Choo’s with the ankle straps, the Louis Vuitton signature slides with the gold-tone bit buckle or the classic navy caviar leather sling backs by Hermes? she had wondered.
“I could hardly contain myself as I ripped off the lid. And then, well…”
“Well what?”
Charlie shuddered at the memory. “I had no words. I was rendered speechless.”
“Did he get the shoes you wanted?”
“Not even close! I stared, wide eyed, at a pair of six-inch platform heels that were nestled between flimsy brown cardboard and cheap gray newsprint paper. The entire shoe was made of clear plastic, including the too chunky hollow heel which had tacky glitter floating inside a gel like liquid. I was devastated. There was no doubt in my mind that they were stripper shoes!”
Charlie remembered those slinky dime store shoes that were the sorriest looking things she’d ever laid her eyes on. They’d immediately reminded her of the desperate hookers she often saw on her way to school in the early morning hours. The hookers who were still trolling the streets in their skin-tight vinyl hot pants and bright neon tube tops long after the sun had come up and their pimps had called it a night. Is this how Sean sees me? A common street walker? she had asked herself.
“These look like stripper’s shoes,” she whimpered mournfully to Sean.
“They are stripper’s shoes,” he boasted with a boyish smirk then stretched his hand over to the bedside nightstand and with the quick flick of his wrist, switched on the CD player. Sultry, sad jazz music filled the room. “You’re going to dance for me tonight,” he professed into her ear while nibbling her neck. He then lifted the shoes out of their bargain-basement box and placed them skillfully on her two weary feet. They were a perfect fit. She could see the silver glitter sloshing about inside the plastic heel, much like the cheesy snow globes she often passed by at the souvenir shops on Canal Street.
“So Sean wanted you to strip for him?” Dr. Harrison asked, peering over at Charlie with her glasses perched low on her nose.
“That was really just the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
“Yeah.”
Dr. Harrison frowned. “What do you mean by that? The beginning of what?”
“He was testing me. Trying to see just how far he could take things. You referred to it as grooming a few weeks ago. After that night, Sean knew I’d do pretty much anything to please him,” she stated, then nervously self-soothed herself by rubbing a myriad of small circles into her now fleshy thighs. “And the worst thing is-he was absolutely right! I was desperate to please him, more than I wanted to please myself. I mean, it was my fucking birthday, for Christ sake and I’d not only given him a blow job but I also stripped for him wearing those god-awful shoes!”
“So you believe he was grooming you?” she repeated. “Grooming you for what, Charlie?”
“For Lexie. He was grooming me for Lexie,” she quickly answered then lifted her shoulders and stared into Dr. Harrison’s four eyes.
It was all she could do not to flinch. But the time was up after all. It was always up.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Keep your head, heels and standards high.”
Coco Chanel
“What about Sean’s family?” Dr. Harrison asked the following week. “I’d be very interested in knowing a little about them,” she persisted and then lifted her eyebrows and waited.
“What’s to tell. They’re just as fucked up as he is,” Charlie answered bluntly. “You know how they say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? Well in Sean’s case it’s absolutely true, except instead of apples, it was poison blueberries.”
Charlie had been absolutely seething the afternoon she’d first met them for Sunday brunch at Tavern on the Green. His parents were in the city for St. Patrick’s Day weekend and had insisted on treating them to a late breakfast. When Charlie and Sean’s cab pulled up to the restaurant, she’d peeked out the window and immediately recognized them by the pompous clothing they were wearing. They were dressed as if it were Halloween and they were on their way to a costume party. Sean’s father stood by the entrance with his thumbs tucked beneath suspenders covered in shamrocks that stretched painfully over his midsection, and, as if that weren’t bad enough, he had on a garish green bowtie that was tied so tight, it appeared to be garroting him. His mother, one step behind, was a matronly looking woman with untamable graying hair and an obvious lack of fashion sense. I’ll never forget it! She was wearing an emerald green St. John knit skirt suit that was at least two decades old and which did nothing but accentuate her bulky frame. Oh, and the shoes she had on! They were like something out of an excruciating nightmare. And they were green, too! Charlie had been certain she’d caught a whiff of moth balls when she leaned in and gave his mother a chaste peck on the cheek.
“So you must be Charlotte,” they both said in unison. Charlie was convinced she was staring at two leprechauns from the way they were draped in every shade of green-her least favorite colorThey looked like a Pantone color wheel! She looked around, expecting to find a pot of gold at the end of that crazy rainbow. It was confusing at first, being that St. Patrick’s Day had been two days’ prior, that is, until Sean explained that they were diehard fans of anything Irish and always turned the holiday into a month-long celebration. Charlie cringed, not wanting to know how they celebrated other holidays.
“I was so nervous the first time I met them! Sean built them up to be larger than life. His father, Gary, a big shot bond trader at a prominent investment bank. His mother, Trish, the perfect homemaker. They both turned out to be a huge disappointment.”
Charlie trembled with anger thinking about the offensive tone Sean’s father had used when speaking to his wife when they were sitting in the atrium sipping Bloody Mary’s. His father had passed on a Bloody Mary and ordered an Irish coffee instead, but not before taking ten grueling minutes to explain to the waitress, the proper way one is made. It was a long, drawn out tutorial that included the history of the drink and how it made its way to America. Apparently some fool at Shannon Airport had mastered the art of creating the perfect cream, (which must be aged for twenty-four hours and is meant to float on the top ‘as delicately as a swan floats on the surface of a lake,’ at least according to Gary). All the while, Charlie kept thinking to herself, who gives a flying fuck? Gary was like a walking encyclopedia of useless information and she immediately loathed him. It didn’t take her very long to figure out from which side of the family tree Sean had inherited his cockiness.
Normally, she couldn’t pull off a clever comeback on such short notice. But that morning she was more quick witted than usual and rallied fast. “We
ll, did you know that espresso was invented in Milan? And without coffee beans there would be no cappuccino!” Charlie sat back smugly, then quickly added, “And the stiletto heel was made famous by Salvatore Ferragamo, who we all know is Italian!”
She knew she was on a roll but she also knew they were all silently wondering what the fuck she’d been talking about and surely questioning what relevance it had to Irish coffee. It didn't matter to Charlie though. The point had been to let Gary know that two could play the know-it-all game. After all, growing up with Stacey had made Charlie a master at that game. Noticing everyone’s confused stares, she quickly decided it would be best to change the subject. It was clear that Sean’s father could go on about anything Irish for hours and she really had no interest. But, before she could say anything, he slammed his hand on the table top and bellowed out to his wife.
“Trish, you forgot to bring my goddamn blood pressure pills.” Gary continued to berate and insult his wife for five long minutes while she franticly dug in her faux Hermes Birkin bag, (also green) anxiously trying to locate the medication while her husband’s face turned three shades of pink, (Charlie had been surprised it didn’t turn shades of green instead). “You would forget your fucking head if it wasn’t attached,” he continued to rant in an abusive tone that was impossible to ignore, as was the frothy Irish cream mustache he was sporting on his upper lip.
Charlie could tell Trish and the unfortunate waitress were both mortified. Not Sean, though. He was too busy reading emails and texts on his phone to care about what was happening right in front of his nose. But not Charlie. Charlie actually felt sorry for Trish. She felt a familiar knot in her own stomach and quickly tried to lighten the mood in a feeble attempt to deflect the attacks away from Sean’s mother.
“I forget things all the time,” Charlie offered, fidgeting with the edge of her napkin and glancing imploringly at Sean, hoping he would do something to diffuse the situation. “Why, just the other day I ran out of my apartment without my wallet,” she lamely added while detailing how she had made it all the way to the subway before realizing she had no money for the fare.
