Turn My World Upside Down: Jo's Story

by Maureen Child

  “But maybe,” he said softly, and the big retriever lifted his head and perked his ears as if he were listening to the boy. Jack grinned. “Maybe tonight they’re gonna kiss and get all mushy together and then I can show Jo and Cash that it’d be good to have me around and then maybe they could get married or something and then I could live with them. What d’ya think, Bear?”

  The big dog snorted, laid his head back down, and closed his eyes. Jack ran his head over the dog’s smooth head and smiled. Didn’t really matter what Bear thought, he told himself.

  It was a good plan.

  “What happened?” Cash kept his voice quiet, careful.

  Her mouth twitched, then flattened out again just before she took another sip of wine. When she’d swallowed, Jo cupped the glass between her hands and Cash saw the straw-colored liquid slosh against the sides of the glass as her hands trembled.

  “It was a long time ago,” she said softly.

  “It was yesterday,” Cash argued.

  A moment ticked past and then another. Finally, she sighed. “You’re right. Ten years ago and it’s as fresh to me as if it had happened last night.”

  “Tell me, Josefina,” he urged, keeping his voice low, hardly more than a whisper. Tentatively, he cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand, and stared into her eyes. “Talk to me, Josefina. Trust me.”

  She sucked in a breath and slowly released it again as she shook her head gently. “Trust isn’t something I’m long on, Cash. Not anymore.”

  “Can’t say as I blame you—but I’m not him.”

  “No,” she said, stepping away from him and taking another long drink of her wine. “You’re really not. You irritate me sometimes, Cash,” she said, forcing a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “But you don’t scare me.”

  He hated knowing that she’d been scared before. That she’d had to fear anyone. But he felt only relief to know that she didn’t fear him. “Glad to hear it.”

  “He didn’t, either,” she said. “Scare me—at first.” She walked, taking slow steps, around the edge of the sofa closest to the window, to the far wall where she stared up at an abstract painting—vivid splotches of red and blue paint bisected with swirls of green. “We’d been dating for three weeks. Spent almost every day together. He couldn’t seem to see enough of me. He was gorgeous—tall, funny, charming. He said all the right things,” she admitted, and turned around to look at him.

  Moonlight washed over her, making her face look paler, her soft blue eyes nearly silver. Even from a distance, Cash felt the pain rippling off her in thick waves. It took everything he had to keep from going to her. But he knew it was more important to give her the room she needed to keep talking.

  “He took me to a party at his frat house.” Jo shuddered, took a long sip of her wine, and wrapped both hands around the glass, her fingers smoothing up and down the heavy crystal. “Every kid in school was there, I swear. Could hardly move for all the people. Music blaring, guys shouting, girls laughing. I can still smell it. Beer, perfume, cigarettes, and sweat.”

  She shook her head, blew out a breath. “He said he wanted to show me something up in his room. A surprise, he said.” She lifted one hand and rubbed her right temple gently. “I was excited. Happy. God. His room was a wreck,” she remembered. “I actually thought it was cute. Guy, pigsty. Didn’t realize it was the personification of his soul.”

  She shook her head and got back on track. “He closed the door and grabbed me. At first, I thought, Ooh, manly. So strong, so sexy. God, how pathetic. I kissed him back—I kissed him back and then he tore my shirt and told me that it was time. He’d waited long enough.” She frowned. “I remember being confused.” She choked a laugh. “Jesus. Confused. And asking him what he was talking about. What he was doing. I’d already told him that I was saving myself. Stupid, I guess, but I was like the last living virgin in California. Too much Catholic school probably, but—”

  Ah God. Empathy washed over Cash and did battle with the fury crouched inside him. He wanted that bastard’s face beneath his fists. Wanted to hurt him as he’d hurt Jo. Wanted to make it all go away and erase the shattered glint in her eyes.

  And he couldn’t.

  “Josefina—”

  Her head snapped up, she took the last swallow of wine and met his gaze. “No. I started this. I’ll finish it. He laughed at me. I still hear him in my dreams sometimes. That laugh, as he pushed me onto the narrow bed.” Her eyes glazed over and there was a faraway tone to her voice, as if she’d slipped into the past and was trapped there. “The sheets were dirty and bunched up under me. The room smelled like stale sweat and rotten food. The music pounded up from downstairs, shaking the windows. I heard them rattle behind my head and I remember thinking that whoever’d built the place had done a crappy job. Stupid thing to be thinking while being raped, but—” She shrugged halfheartedly. “He unzipped his jeans, tossed my skirt up, and tore my panties off. I screamed then, but he hit me and told me to keep quiet.”

  “Damn it, Jo—”

  She shivered, a bone-racking chill that sent a matching cold to the pit of Cash’s stomach.

  “No one had ever hit me before—” she said. “The pain . . . blossomed, kept getting bigger, but I was too shocked to really feel it. But I kept quiet. Really quiet. I was screaming inside, but stayed quiet so he wouldn’t hit me again. I remember I kept thinking, This isn’t happening. Not really. It’s just a nightmare. Wake up, Jo. Wake up! But it wasn’t a nightmare and I couldn’t wake up. Couldn’t get away.”

  “I’m so sorry . . .”

  “He used a condom.” She spoke up quickly, avoiding his sympathy as if she were dodging a bullet. Then she coughed. “At least he was a careful rapist. He was on me in a second and while he—he grunted in my ear. His breath felt hot and smelled like beer.”

  She wrinkled her nose in memory and Cash knew she was back there. In that tiny room. Reliving every moment of it all.

  Cash felt his chest tighten until breathing was nearly impossible. His heartbeat thudded heavily and the roaring in his ears almost drowned out her voice. God, he wished he didn’t have to hear this. Wished she didn’t have it to tell.

  “It seemed to last for years,” she said, her voice hardly more than a sigh. “And when he was finished, he stood up and looked down at me. I was crying. Still quiet, though, because he still seemed so mad. I was sure he was going to hit me some more. But he didn’t. He zipped his jeans and he told me to get over it. It was just sex. Everybody did it and God knew I was nothing special. Then he left me there and went back to the party.”

  She cupped one hand across her mouth and looked at him through eyes brimming with tears that tore at him.

  “I don’t even remember how I got back to my dorm room across campus,” she said. “But I did.”

  “You didn’t report him?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I—couldn’t,” she murmured, and set her empty wine glass down onto a nearby table. “I showered for a few hours, and then the next morning Papa called to tell me Mama was sick.”

  “Jesus.” He couldn’t even imagine. He hadn’t had a close family, but he’d seen Jo’s in action and there was none closer than the Marconis. They had a bond that could withstand anything. That would have encircled Jo with the kind of love and support she so desperately needed. Yet she hadn’t told them.

  “I couldn’t tell them then,” she said, walking again, back to the windows overlooking the lake. She stared past her own reflection at the night beyond. “When Papa called, the whole world shifted. But—”

  “But what?” He took a chance and walked over to her. Every step measured, Pounding loudly against the hardwood floor. She didn’t back away, didn’t turn from him or raise her defenses. And a part of him was sorry. If she’d taken a battle stance, she would have been the Josefina he knew. This woman was fragile, ready to splinter into a thousand pieces, and Cash didn’t have a clue what to do or say.

  She glanced
at him, then turned her gaze back to the moon-washed lake outside. Bending her head forward, she rested her forehead on the cool glass and closed her eyes. “The rape—that’s not the worst part.”

  “Jo—”

  “When Papa called,” she whispered brokenly, “and he told me that Mama was so sick, all I could think was, Thank God.”

  Surprise flickered through him. “Why?”

  “Because it gave me the reason I needed to leave college. To run away. To run home.” When he didn’t speak, she turned her face to him and, with tears swimming in her eyes, she said, “Don’t you get it? I was grateful that my own mother was sick. How twisted is that? How hideous is that? I used my mother’s pain as an excuse to run from my own problems. I’ve always felt guilty about that. It’s like her dying was partly my fault.”

  “That’s nuts.” He grabbed her, but she yanked free of his grasp instantly.

  “No it’s not,” she said firmly, “it’s karma.”

  “You can’t seriously believe you’re responsible for your mother’s death.”

  Jo’s brain snapped back into focus at the incredulous tone in his voice and for one brief moment, she wanted to kick her own ass for opening this little can of ugly worms. But too late now, she told herself. She’d opened her big mouth and told him things she’d never said aloud before. Had barely admitted to herself before.

  Maybe he really was some kind of hypnotist.

  “Not logically,” she said, feeling an inward twist of fury at the situation, herself, him. “I’m not an idiot. I know I didn’t cause my mother to die just by being a coward. But there’s that little voice inside me, the one that keeps me from walking under ladders, that has me knocking wood for luck. The same voice that halfway believes Nana really can cut a storm in half by clacking two sticks together. That part of me believes.”

  He cut through everything she’d said and homed in on one thing—one word—that had been buried in the avalanche of words. “How are you a coward?”

  Jo wanted more wine. Actually, she wanted a vodka tonic with extra lime. But as shaky as she was at the moment, she so didn’t need liquor on top of it all. Instead, she’d face Cash down and finish this. She’d say it all. Everything she’d felt, everything she’d lived with for ten long years. And when she was finished, she’d lock it away again.

  Flipping her hair back behind her shoulder, Jo lifted her chin and met his gaze. “I’m a Marconi,” she said, her voice flat, quiet, despite the decade-old fury clawing at her insides. “I should have fought him.”

  “You did what you could.”

  “No I didn’t. I just lay there and cried.” Bitterness filled her mouth and she swallowed it down like a vile medicine she was too accustomed to taking. “But he didn’t win,” she murmured now, feeling fire erupt in her belly, snaking out tentacles of heat to chase back the bone-deep cold. “I didn’t let him win. He didn’t turn me away from men completely. He didn’t take my life. Just my virginity. I didn’t hide away,” she said, her voice firming, her breath quickening. “I have sex every few months. Whether I’m interested or not. Just to prove to myself that I beat him. That I won, in the long run. He was nothing more than a bad blip on my radar screen.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “What?”

  “I said you’re wrong,” Cash repeated, reaching out to stroke her hair back from her face. “He’s still winning.”

  “He’s won nothing. Weren’t you listening?” Her features twisted and her eyes flashed.

  “I was,” he said, “but I don’t think you were.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, and by the way, what the hell do you know about it?”

  “I know you have sex and don’t want it,” he said, capturing her gaze with his, staring at her until she felt as though she were tumbling forward into the rich, dark depths of his eyes. “You don’t—won’t—enjoy it.”

  “Who says I don’t?” she whispered, and heard the strain in her own voice.

  “I say it.” Cash cupped her face between his palms. “I felt it. Your body was here, Josefina, but you weren’t.”

  And he was the first man who’d ever noticed. What did that say about her?

  About him?

  She reached up and plucked his hands from her face, while at the same time stepping back and away from him. It was the only safe thing to do. The only smart thing to do. She couldn’t allow herself to have strong feelings for him. Couldn’t let herself wonder what her life might have been if she’d never dated Steve Smith.

  Shaking her head, she kept backing up, until she was nearly at the door of the great room. She needed to go. Needed to get home. And if that was running away, then she’d just have to live with it.

  But as a Marconi, she had to take the last shot.

  “Did you ever stop to think that maybe you’re the reason I didn’t see the ‘stars’ during our little encounter?” She watched his eyes narrow, then delivered the last barb. “Maybe the great Woman Whisperer finally found a woman he couldn’t reach.”

  Twelve

  The worn-out shingles on the Meyerses’ roof bit into the seat of Jo’s jeans and made her shift uncomfortably in the hot sun. She glanced skyward and winced at the brassy beauty of the cloudless expanse of blue.

  Spring was already shaping up to be a warm one, which could only mean that summer was going to be hot. She scowled a little at the thought, since usually summer in Chandler was just about perfect. This year, naturally, would be different.

  Just as too many other damn things in her life were different these days.

  She drew her knees up and dangled her hands between them, idly swinging her favorite hammer in a metronome fashion. She dropped her gaze to the scarred, metal head of the hammer and blindly watched as the sun glinted off the metal like stray sparks from a downed electrical wire. Her eyes felt gritty and she was bone-tired.

  But then, that’s what happened when you lanced open a puddle of poison in your insides, then stayed awake all night reliving it.

  Sex with Cash was supposed to have been recuperative, for chrissake. The man was an artist, according to all reports.

  A Mozart in the bedroom.

  The modern-day Don Juan.

  A freaking walking orgasm.

  She’d expected . . . Hell, she wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Maybe just to get through another sexual encounter with her pride intact. But no, not Josefina Marconi. Why settle for something subtle when you could go all out, make a complete ass of yourself, and then leave? Never let it be said that a Marconi did anything in a small way.

  “Oh God, I can’t believe I told him,” she muttered, and realized that she was beginning to sound like a tape recorder stuck on repeat. She’d been saying the same thing over and over again all night long and through most of the morning. And every time the words left her mouth, she saw Cash’s face again. The shock in his eyes. The fury—and then the pity.

  She’d given a hard blow to an ego that had to be the size of Mount Everest by now. Every other woman who’d spent time in his bed had not only seen the stars, they’d run off to save the world. Not Jo, though. Her, he hadn’t even been able to reach.

  And wouldn’t you know he’d notice?

  “Hey, need some help?”

  Jo’s gaze snapped up and she watched her sister Sam’s head pop up over the edge of the roof. She grinned at Jo from between the rungs of the aluminum ladder. Sunlight caught the red streaks in her sister’s hair and for a brief moment made it look as if her head were on fire.

  “What’re you doing here?” Jo asked, fighting down the spurt of worry that jolted up inside her. “And why the hell are you on a ladder, for God’s sake?” She scooted toward the edge of the roof, sliding the soles of her boots along the raggedy shingles.

  Sam only grinned and slowly handed over a tray bearing two coffee cups and a paper sack with the Leaf and Bean logo on it. “Are you gonna help with this or what?”

  Jo took the tray then watched as Sam spri
nted up the last few rungs of the ladder and stepped out onto the roof with an ease that spoke of years of practice. Glancing at the two-story drop-off, Jo then shifted her gaze back to her younger sister. “You sure you should be up here? This is no place to get dizzy.”

  Sam waved a hand at her, then walked up the slope of the roof to its crest. There she plopped down and drew her knees up, as at home as she would have been on the sofa in her living room. “I feel great,” she said, flinging her arms wide and grinning up at the hot sun. “Woke up this morning and it was like the baby just decided, Hey, let’s cut Mom a break.”

  She did look better, Jo thought. For the first time in months, Sam didn’t have a green tinge to her face. And her eyes were a clear, pale blue, unlike her own that were as red streaked as a closeup shot of a city map.

  Walking back up the roof to take a seat beside her sister, Jo made herself comfortable and pulled one of the cups out of the cardboard tray before handing the other one to Sam. “Latte?”

  “God, yes,” her sister said on a heartfelt sigh. “The doctor said I could have one a day. And this is the first day I’ve felt good enough to enjoy one.” She took her first sip, sighed dramatically, then reached into the paper bag for a cinnamon roll. Only after she’d taken her first bite did she really look at Jo. “So what’s with you?”

  “What?”

  “Nice try, but you heard me,” Sam said, and frowned as she chewed and swallowed. “You look like shit.”

  “Gee, thanks for stopping by.” Jo took a long gulp of her latte and felt the hot milk sear her throat.

  “Spit it out.”

  “The latte?” Jo asked, deliberately misunderstanding. “You must be nuts.”

  “Back atcha if you think that little stalling tactic is going to throw me off. Now tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Would it do any good to tell you to mind your own business?”

  “What do you think?” she asked with a snort of laughter.

  “I think life would have been much simpler as an only child.”