by Schow, Ryan
“Home?” the douchebag says, holding his freshly hit face. I lean in close and, in his ear, I say, “She’s my mother, f*ckface. Thanks for all the damage you’ve done to my family.” I then shove him backwards and he half falls, half grabs a chair to keep from going down.
Jacob, much to my delight, gives him enough of a push on the way by to send him to his ass on the floor. People gasp. People stare. Whatevs. Serves him right.
“Margaret!” I say, chasing after her. I catch her in the parking lot and she’s digging through her purse, searching for her keys. She slumps against her Bentley and really starts sobbing. I could say so many things right now. I could talk about Karma being a bitch, about how I told her so, about how she totally deserves this for all the terrible things she’s done as a mother, as a wife and as a person. Instead, I turn her around, pull her into my arms and give her the kind of love she never gave me. I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I am and she isn’t objecting.
“I’m sorry that happened to us,” I tell her.
That’s all I want to say. I feel Jacob nearby, and he’s saying nothing. He’s just being there for me, which I think is sweet and courteous. Or maybe he’s wondering why I’m hugging Savannah Van Duyn’s over-publicized mother. Maybe he’s wondering why she said she would see me at home when she doesn’t live with us.
I remind myself to work up a plausible cover story, and tell it to him like my life depends on it if asked. Finally Margaret pulls back, brushes her fingertips across her cheeks where her eyes are still hot with tears, and says, “I have to go home.” She manages to find her keys, realizes she doesn’t need them to unlock the car. I didn’t think she would say anything to me, because she gets manic when things start to fall apart, but then her body—which has turned away from me—just stops. There’s a moment when she doesn’t move, and then she does. She turns around to me and looks me square in the eye and for the first time I think I really feel her, a recognizable connection: pain. She looks inordinately fragile.
“Thank you,” she says.
I nod, feeling myself tear up because we’re actually having a real mother-daughter moment. She leans in and kisses me and says, “Will you come over when you’re done with your date?”
I tell her I’ll try, even though I know I probably won’t.
Sufficed to say, my date with Jacob was officially tainted. We head back inside, eat reluctantly, then skip the dessert. The douchebag writer must have taken the back door out. Jacob had other things planned for us, but I ask him to take me home instead. It’s just after ten. He kisses me politely on the cheek then heads next door, to his own home. Fortunately for me, he never asks about Margaret’s and my relationship, so I don’t have to lie.
Sitting in the bathroom on the toilet with a toothbrush in my mouth, I feel bad for not going to Margaret’s, so I send her a text instead.
It reads: NOT TRYING 2 BE A JERK HERE, AND I’M SAD UR HURT, BUT WHEN U LEFT DAD, U HURT HIM WORSE. SIT WITH UR PAIN 4 AWHILE CAUSE THIS IS UR CHANCE 2 UNDSTND HIM. COME OVR TMRW AND WE’LL TALK.
I don’t know if she’ll come over, or if she’ll be even more hurt because I left her alone when she needed me. Maybe she’ll set herself on fire in the middle of the night. Regardless, I finish going to the bathroom, rinse out my mouth then let out my hair and crawl into bed next to Rebecca.
She’s already asleep. I curl up to her; the warmth of her back and legs feels good, comforting, like home. When she feels me against her, she stirs, then turns toward me and groggily asks, “How did your date go?”
“Epic fail,” I say.
“Tell me in the morning?”
I agree and she lays there for awhile. Everything in me is pretty sure she’s asleep, and pretty sure I’ll never get to sleep when she says, “Damien called.”
“What’d you say?”
“Told him you were out with friends.”
“Thanks for covering for me.”
“Mmhmm.”
And that’s that. It only takes me two more hours to fall asleep. Four hours after that my alarm goes off and I’m up and ready to take Brayden in for surgery.
Shoved Face-First into the Abyss
1
Brayden and I get an early start into the city. He’s starving because he can’t eat before surgery, and he’s wired because today—according to my best male bestie—is the last day of ugly. He keeps pointing at his nose and saying things like, “Take a good look, you won’t see this goddamn hideous beak again.” He keeps pointing to his chin and saying, “Good-bye weakness, hello superhero chin.”
Honestly, he’s been making me laugh all morning.
If only he knew I had to drain my checking account, then ask my father for a replenishment, he would have been more humble about the whole thing. The lies I told my father about where I had spent the money actually wounded my conscience. Lying straight faced to your parent, especially the one you like, is enough to stomp the decency right out of your pathetic little heart.
There is something about the whole situation with my father that still bugs me, though. I’m sure he knows I lied. I’m sure he knows and he’s waiting to see how long until I come clean. Either that or he knows and he’s letting it ride, secretly hoping it’ll eat me up. It kinda is and it kinda isn’t. Brayden is practically telling anything that moves about his surgery. He’s saying he’s been saving and now it’s time to indulge.
As for my father, it’s not like he’s going to care. He’s a multi-billionaire for Christ’s sake. I think the Atticus Van Duyn version of my father would be much different than the Christian Swann version. Thank God for Christian Swann, I tell myself.
Before leaving, I check on Rebecca; she’s still in bed. I say good-bye to my father who is on the phone talking secretive to someone, a woman perhaps—which is weird this early in the morning—and then I check on Maggie. She’s getting ready for another day in the recording studio. I catch her sitting Indian-style on the carpeted bathroom floor, blow-drying her hair. She stops the dryer, moves all the hair hanging in her face to the side and looks up at me with bright eyes.
“Your album is going to be great, Magpie,” I tell her. “I’m so proud of you.”
She pats my foot and thanks me for having her stay the summer, then she tells me to wish Brayden good luck.
“He’s going to look like hammered poop tonight,” I say, “so prepare for the worst.”
“Okay,” she says. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Within minutes we’re on the road. The trip to the cosmetic surgeon’s office in San Francisco is most definitely dramatic. Brayden won’t stop talking, and then, just like that, he falls into a deep and lasting silence. I’m like, “What gives?” and he’s like, “I’m so nervous right now I’m pretty sure I have to dump.”
“It’s phantom crap. You haven’t eaten in two days.”
“I know, but it feels real.”
“It’s just anxiousness,” I say, trying to calm him.
“In my butthole? Who the hell gets anxious down there?”
I start laughing then he starts laughing and the next thing I know, he’s listening to the Lithium channel on my satellite radio. He says hard rock calms him.
He says chaos is peace.
The phone rings through my Bluetooth system startling us both, and I see right away it’s Netty calling. I answer and it’s just like old times.
“Hey bitch,” she says.
“Hey bitch back,” I say with a smile.
“I managed to slip out of the office for a few. I’m doing the coffee run this morning and I’m taking my sweet time. Letting them get all spastic. What are you doing?”
“Taking Brayden in for surgery.”
“Oh damn, that’s today?”
“Yup.”
“Is he there?”
“I’m here,” Brayden says.
“Uh, good luck?”
“Jeez, Netty, did you say it like a question?” he says.
�
�Good luck,” she says more definitively, a bit of humor in her voice. I love that Netty and Brayden get along so well. It makes having them both as best friends easy.
“Thanks,” Brayden says.
“Listen Abs, I called to talk, but this is a more private conversation, so maybe I can call you later?”
“Let’s do lunch. I want to talk to you about your new job and your friends. Specifically Chloe.”
“Yeah,” she says, a twinge of hesitation in her voice. “Okay.”
“You know The Market Street Grill? In the Hotel Whitcomb across from the Orpheum?”
“I love that place,” she says. “I’ll call and reserve us a table.”
“Good.” I look over at Brayden and then it’s both eyes back on the road. “How’s noon?”
“Perfect.”
“Oh, and Netty? I like Chloe and all, but…don’t bring her, okay? I really just want it to be you and me.”
“I knew that,” Netty says. I can tell in her voice she’s disappointed I said anything at all.
“Just wanted to be sure.”
We hang up and Brayden waits a few minutes before saying, “Good God. Is it always like this with girlfriends? It’s like you’re walking on eggshells all the time whenever there’s an issue.”
“I know,” I say, feeling like I’m sucking big time in the friendship department.
“Why didn’t you just say, ‘Hey, I want to talk about you being a lesbian all the sudden?’”
“C’mon, Brayden, it can’t be like that.”
“Oh, really?”
“If you think it can, you don’t know shit about girls.”
2
How do you ask your best friend if she’s a lesbian without sounding judgmental and demanding? Hell, I don’t know. The way I’ve been thinking about it non-stop since I hung up with her, it’s not really fair to Brayden. This is his moment. I should be more supportive. More into his drama.
It’s just me and Brayden in the cosmetic surgeon’s waiting room and it’s just after ten. Before he goes under the blade and I never again see his face as I know it, I lean over and kiss him hard on the cheek.
“You’re going to do great,” I tell him.
“I’ll be unconscious,” he says, deadpan.
“You know what I mean.”
He takes my hand and says, “Don’t leave for too long. And make sure Netty tells you about her first girl-on-girl experience in full detail. I want the play-by-play.”
I let go of his hand, smack his shoulder and say, “Ew, I’m not asking that!”
“Pussy,” he says.
“Dick.”
“Wish me luck again,” he says, more serious this time.
“I’ll wish the doctor luck when I see him. You’ll be knocked out for hours. Hours!”
“If there’s a hot nurse involved, tell her she can touch my pee-pee.”
I smack him again and the not-so-hot nurse waiting to prep him for surgery clears her throat. Neither of us knew she opened the door and was waiting.
“You want me to tell her about your pee-pee?” I whisper.
“Hell no,” he whispers back.
Brayden stands and heads in back; I grab my iPhone and start searching the missing person’s sites Brayden has yet to visit. Rebecca’s parents have to be out there somewhere, I tell myself. She’s got to have family dying to know where she is.
Unfortunately, by the time I have to leave to meet Netty for lunch, I haven’t found even a hint of Rebecca’s family. Talk about discouraging! Even worse, with Brayden needing to recover, will he even be up for continuing the search? Will Rebecca ever get back home?
3
Sitting at a table in the packed dining room of The Market Street Grill, waiting for our lunch to arrive, Netty doesn’t even wait for me to ask about Chloe before starting that conversation. I’m grateful she never made me ask.
“About a month ago, before Chloe, I started dating this boy I met at a party downtown. He was nice to me, and cute, and it was all very casual. Not like high school at all.”
“How come I didn’t hear about him?” I say, feigning hurt. I’m leaning into the table, straining to hear her, since the white noise of surrounding conversations is louder than usual.
“Because it ended just as quickly it got started.” She doesn’t look at me as she says this, and her body sort of stops moving, like memories are playing in her mind. It’s like she can’t stop them and they won’t let her go. Right then I get really worried about what she’s going to say next.
The waiter brings her food and I have to admit, it looks delicious. Especially her seafood cobb salad. Me and bacon and bleu cheese go way back.
“We were both at this party drinking,” she says when the waiter leaves. “It was loud, the place was packed and, to be honest, I was having so much fun.”
She hasn’t touched her food yet, let alone her fork. I’m wondering where the heck my food is at this point, but I’m also trying to pay attention.
She says, “So I was saying I was Russian, and I could hold my liquor better than any animal with a penis. He promised to put me to the test. We drank a ton. He turned out to be a good kisser.”
She takes a moment to unfold her napkin and spread it over her lap, but she isn’t stopping to exercise proper dining etiquette. No, it’s something more. The memories in her head, they’re really tearing at her.
“We moved to one of the rooms in back. He started touching me. He was saying the kind of things you only hear in pornos. Things got heated and he was rough. I was drunk, though, so it was okay. At least, that’s what I told myself. Then the bedroom door opened and closed and pretty soon there was another guy on the bed with us.”
Netty takes a moment. She looks around and I get the feeling she’s wanting to see if anyone is listening to us. I don’t know if that’s possible with everyone around us deep in their own conversation. Satisfied, she continues.
“So I’m on the bed and pretty soon there are four hands on me, and two voices in my ear. I think they knew each other, but I was drunk and they were drunk, so I never really knew.”
Just then my food arrives. The waiter cuts Netty off, but holy cow, my dish looks fantastic. It’s unfortunate my stomach is getting upset by Netty’s story. For the record, the dish is a favorite of mine: Smoked Chicken Pappardelle, which is pasta with dried currants, spinach, pine nuts, parmesan cheese—shaved, not grated. I can’t even touch it, that’s how sick this story is making me feel. Is it too much to hope for a happy ending? I mean, really, is it unreasonable?
“That looks amazing,” Netty says, brightening for a moment. Then the waiter leaves and her mood slinks back down into that dark place.
She folds her arms across the table, leans closer toward me. She won’t look into my eyes. This is bad. Her voice changes. It’s thick and Slavic, the heaviest I’ve ever heard her accent. The way I hear so much pain in Maggie’s voice is the way I’m hearing so much pain in Netty’s. Her words are coming faster now, and more intense. Honestly, it’s frightening me. I reach out and take her hand in mine. Her eyes are watery looking, and sad. It’s official, I’m terrified of where this story is going.
“I didn’t know the other guy whose hands were on me, but I pushed him off. He came at me again, really pushy, then the door opened again and it was Chloe. I begged her to get these guys off of me and she did, but not before my shirt was torn. The other guy, and I still don’t know who he was, he was pulling at my bra.”
“So they didn’t—”
She shook her head, and the breath I’ve been holding blew out in a rush. Thank God! After all the grief and guilt I’ve watched Maggie suffer, I don’t know if I could watch Netty go through the same thing, too.
“After that Chloe and I started going out,” she says, the tension in her voice quietly dissipating. “One night she kissed me and it was nice, you know? Loving. Not like the brutish kisses of boys. And I thought, with her I don’t have to worry about the same things I began worryi
ng about with boys. With her, I found safety in her tenderness.”
“You just got the wrong boys,” I tell her.
“Or the right girl.”
“Have you guys even…done it?”
Netty goes as red as I’ve ever seen her, then she shakes her head. “This is all pretty new,” she says.
“But…what’s it like?” I say, keeping my voice purposefully low. Leaning in, talking in an even lower tone, I say, “Touching another woman, I mean?”
“I haven’t been…you know…all the way with a boy, so it’s impossible to know the differences.”
“You and the guy, that jerk, you guys never—?”
“Never.”
“But with Chloe, you’ve been down…south, right?”
Netty’s eyes fall into her lap and she slowly shakes her head. “She wants me to…you know…be intimate with her, but I’m not sure I can do it.”
All the sudden I’m feeling sleazy for having pried so deeply into my friend’s personal life. “I shouldn’t have pressed like that, Netty. I’m just curious is all.”
“It’s okay.”
She starts playing with her salad, pushing the tomatoes over, smearing the dressing across more of the lettuce. Then she takes a bite and chews politely and I know everything will be okay.
“I don’t think I can do it, Abby. Have sex with her, I mean,” she says with food in her mouth. The fact that she’s not always lady-like in situations like this is endearing.
I straighten up, draw a deep breath, then say, “If you need to try it to find out, then you should. But if you already know you’re not down for that sort of thing, then chances are you need a good friend, not a lesbian lover.”
She gulps down her food and it looks like it hurts. Like she swallowed too early. “What if I am gay?” she says, finally looking at me. A tear skims her cheek; she brushes it away.
“Are you?”
