Losing Control

by McClung, Mila

“Will you go there with me?”

  “I can’t yet. I’ve got to straighten out this trouble. I love my company, Fawn. I’ve got to save it, for the employees as well as myself.”

  “I understand. But what will Elizabeth say about all this?”

  “She’s taking sides with the enemy. I never would’ve believed it, but she wants the money she can get out of the sale; hasn’t got one bit of interest in keeping the company going. If they get all of her shares, I’m lost!”

  “You’ll figure something out for him, won’t you, Dad?”

  “I intend to try. And, Fawn, let me again say how sorry I am, about everything.”

  “It’s all in the past; time to wipe the slate clean, and start over.”

  “Do you mean that, Fawn?” her mother asked.

  “Of course I do, Mom. If you can accept me for who I am?”

  “I can; I should have a long time ago. But I let my own sad childhood color every choice I made. It took almost losing you to make me realize how precious you are. Forgive me?”

  “Sure, Mom, of course I do.” She turned to Taury. “How do I get to your beach house?”

  “I’ve hired an ambulance to take you and your mother there. And I’m sending a nurse, old Brisby, to do everything for you. She was my nanny, once upon a time. It’s a great place, Fawn. You’ll be comfortable and safe. And I’ll come for you as soon as possible. I can deal with this mess easier if I know you’re okay.”

  “You’ll call me?”

  “Every day, every night, maybe every half hour; your voice will give me the strength to hang on.”

  “And yours mine. Kiss me?”

  He moved his lips to capture hers; they lost themselves in the sheer warmth and comfort of each other’s arms. Her parents awkwardly averted their gazes; her father scratched his head, her mother twiddled her fingers.

  When they finally broke loose, Taury aimed the deep set blue eyes straight into hers. Without a word she knew what he was saying. She nodded slightly, her hazel eyes glistening with tears.

  “Time for us to go, Mr. Brennan…”

  “Please, call me Kent.”

  “All right. Fawn, the ambulance is waiting but don’t rush. The papers are signed. All you have to do is ease into a wheelchair and ride down to the parking lot. Call me on my cell as soon as you arrive, okay?”

  “Got it!”

  He grabbed his coat, ushered Kent Brennan towards the door. Fawn noticed a heartfelt, wordless exchange passing between her parents. Once the men had left she turned to June.

  “You really do love each other, don’t you?”

  “Of course we do, Fawn. Why would you think we didn’t?”

  “I assumed that you couldn’t love anyone, I guess.”

  “I love him, and you. I loved Connie, too, and my father. It was torture not being able to show it. I still feel uncomfortable trying. Will you help me, Fawn? Or do you think it’s too late?”

  “It’s never too late, as long as you’re breathing!”

  June came to her, there was an awkward moment then Fawn fell into her arms and sobbed like a long lost child who’d just been found.

  The ride to Bodega Bay was slow and tortuous. All Fawn could see from her gurney viewpoint were the stark storm-torn skies through the back windows. The wind was angry, pushing at the ambulance walls. Her mind was on Taury; she was already missing him, asked a couple of times to turn back but the driver had his orders and the stern nurse, Ms. Penelope Brisby, sitting to her left, had hers. June, on her right, tried to talk to pass the time, pointing out odd sights and wondering if the town looked anything like it had when Alfred Hitchcock filmed The Birds there so many years before.

  She didn’t get to find out - they missed the town completely, headed out to a piece of sandy land that jutted out into the Bay. The driver opened the back doors of the ambulance to reveal a charming French cottage made of stone with a cedar shake roof, shuttered windows, ivy-strewn walls and double dormers. The yard around it was lush with low-hanging willow trees, fresh-blooming pink roses and exquisite lavender.

  Fawn was helped out of the ambulance and into the house by the polite but unfriendly driver. Brisby and June carried their bags and hers, following them in.

  The living room was cozy, filled with chunky old chintz chairs and a slip-covered sofa. Fawn noticed lots of quirky little antiques sitting here and there that could only have come from Europe. There were also some beautiful paintings of seascapes and ships that were delicate and fresh though the signature on one revealed it had been painted twenty three years ago.

  Any other time Fawn would have been thrilled to be in a house so delightfully inviting but she was listless, cold, and cranky. What had happened to all that spunk she had garnered at the hospital? She was so helpless now, letting her mother and the sour-faced spinster of a nurse do everything for her. All she did was stare at the sea, which seemed grayer and more troubled than it did in Malibu.

  June took her bags to a guest room upstairs. Brisby lit a fire in the stone hearth, and handed Fawn a cell phone.

  “Call him, now,” she huffed. “I’ll be in the kitchen, making tea.”

  Fawn gladly did as ordered; at the first note of Taury’s resonant tones she relaxed, all the crankiness and misery passed out of her frame.

  “Taury, darling, I don’t think I can stay here.”

  “Why, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but why couldn’t I stay at your apartment instead? Or the penthouse suite in the factory? Then we’d be together.”

  “I don’t want Mother to know where you are. If she did, she’d keep bothering you I’m certain. And she’d never suspect I sent you to the Bodega Bay house. She thinks I sold it a long time ago. She hates that house!”

  “Why? It’s a charming place. I could imagine being quite happy here under different circumstances.”

  “My father used to go up there alone every weekend. Once I found out about Inger, I figured he must have taken her up there a lot. Maybe Elizabeth knew that.”

  “Your father’s name was Jim, is that right?”

  “Yeah, short for James. Why?”

  “I’m looking straight at a tiny portrait of a woman on the mantel; a blonde with deep set blue eyes. The artist’s name is Jim.”

  “Yeah, I put it there. I found it in an upstairs closet. My dad used to paint as a hobby.”

  “So that’s your mom, Inger?”

  “Probably; the resemblance is easy to see.”

  “Did he paint all these seascapes and ships, too?”

  “No, they were done by someone else. If you look you’ll notice they all have dates instead of an artist’s name.”

  “Oh, yes, I did notice that. Is everything okay there? It’s awfully quiet.”

  “That’s because I’m hiding in my office. Everyone else is in the board room. As a matter of fact I’m sitting on the very sofa where we had our candy orgy.”

  She managed a short laugh. “I hope you had it cleaned.”

  “Yes, I did. But I can’t wait to do that again!”

  “I know. Oh, Taury, I hate this! I want you so much and I can’t do a damned thing about it!” She lowered her voice. “As long as I had you near me I felt satisfied to be able to please you with my mouth. My insides are in pain from the operation but I still feel such a need to have you in me. As soon as I think about it I get all stirred up. It’s agony.”

  “For me, too, Fawn. I have an idea. I’ll call you tonight, about eleven. You should be in bed by then, right?”

  “I’m never up past nine anymore. You know that.”

  “Well, when I call I’ll talk you up, sexually speaking, and you do the same for me. It couldn’t hurt. Are you willing?”

  “Sounds wicked good to me.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m getting hard just imagining what you’ll say. I’d better go. Set the phone on the vibrator so I won’t wake your mom and Brisby when I call.”

  “All right. Taury … is my dad being any
help to you?”

  “Sure, he’s had some fine ideas. We’re pouring over any old documents we can find, trying to discover some angle to keep Elizabeth and Ainsworth, and that bitch Harper, from taking over the company. I’ve talked to my sister. She has a few shares but not enough to swing it. I think it’s going to be a rough evening.”

  “Well, I’ll be there with you, in my thoughts. Whatever good that might do.”

  “It does a lot, believe me! Love you, Fawn, talk to you tonight!”

  “Love you, too!”

  She heard the click of his phone, sat staring at the sea again, until the shrill screech of a tea kettle startled her.

  “Tea’s on!” Brisby called in her husky British accent. She brought out a platter with a yellow teapot and cups and some miniature pecan pies.

  June came slowly down the stairs; joined Fawn.

  “Oh, these look lovely! When did you have time to make them?” June asked.

  “Didn’t! Mr. Taurus had the house stocked with food this morning. He had it cleaned, too. Ever the gentleman, that young man is.”

  “Yes, I’m beginning to see that.”

  Fawn glanced at her mother, astonished at the change in her.

  SIXTEEN

  During tea, Brisby made herself scarce, stating that she had some organizing to do in the kitchen. She reminded Fawn of one of those stalwart English housekeepers in old movies – usually played by Elsa Lanchester or Sara Allgood. Round and stern; they either were hiding a heart of gold or a sinister agenda. She wondered which one Brisby might be hiding.

  “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it, Fawn?” her mother asked, sighing. “It’s almost as nice as Connie’s beach house.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll take the bungalow over them both!”

  “Aren’t you going to live in the beach house once it’s renovated?”

  “No, Taury and I talked about that, and decided to live in the bungalow, and maybe rent out the big house.”

  “To strangers?” June seemed upset.

  “Would that be terrible?”

  “Oh, no, I suppose not. Still, it doesn’t feel right somehow. That house has been in ours or Taury’s family since it was built. It’d be strange to see someone else live there.”

  Fawn grew quiet, sipping the deliciously sweet tea.

  “I have an idea, Mom. I know Taury wouldn’t mind. Why don’t you and Dad move into the beach house? He’s going to be working in Los Angeles anyway, so you’ll need a new place…”

  The look on June’s face almost brought Fawn to tears again.

  “You don’t mean it? You’d let me live in Connie’s house, as I always dreamed?”

  “If you want to, why not? I’d kind of like to have my parents near me again. We could talk and cook out, and take walks on the beach. It’d be fun!”

  “I never thought you’d want to live near us again after all the trouble we’ve put you through. I…” June’s hands became shaky; she set down her teacup.

  Fawn leaned over, patted her arm. “It’s okay, Mom. We’ve all made mistakes. Like I said before, it’s time to wipe the slate clean. I think I’ll help Brisby with the dishes, if you’ll carry them in. I hate not being able to lift things.”

  “It’s for the best, you know. We want you to get well as soon as possible. Come on, I’ll help Brisby with the dishes. You sit at the kitchen table and tell me all about your Taury!”

  Fawn smiled, followed her mother into the kitchen.

  Someone had stocked the chubby bookcases in the study with an excellent array of classics. Following her mother’s example, Fawn picked one out randomly on that dreary, rainy evening and began to read it by the fire. It was a strange novel called Escapade, written in the 1920s by a flamboyant young Tennessee woman, Evelyn Scott. Her life story read like a novel itself: she had left Clarksville with an older, married man, and followed him down to South America, where they lived in poverty and squalor, finally returning to the US. She became a well-known writer, the couple separated though it seemed they never quite got over each other. Then Evelyn found other, stimulating romances and intellectual freedom in a time when such things were not the normal course for women. Her prose, which often rose to heights of poetic lunacy, drew an autobiographical tale of a woman lost in heartache and unbearable misery. At times Fawn found herself exhausted from the sheer drama of it.

  The three women enjoyed a simple dinner of fish stew and sourdough bread then each retired to her room. June and Brisby took the guest rooms upstairs while Fawn was relegated to the first floor master bedroom.

  Evelyn Scott’s flamboyant novel inspired Fawn to write some poetic verses once she was alone in her room: “Blue-eyed panther touched me, sweet desire. Stood before me, pale in moonlight. Came inside me, storm and fire. Burned me softly, held me, loved me. Seared my soul, the virgin’s pyre.”

  She giggled, looked for something to scribble it down on, so she could read it to Taury later. She searched through the bedroom dresser and highboy, could find nothing.

  She shrugged, crept through the dark house to the study and turned on the light. A quick examination of a roll-top desk left her frustrated. She perused the bookshelves, found a slip of paper sticking out of a book. Fawn removed the book, labeled as a collection of poems by Lord Byron, and opened it. To her surprise she found that it had been hollowed out as a hiding spot for a small diary.

  Fawn quickly jotted down her poetry on the slip of paper, then set about reading the diary. It had belonged to Inger Sjostrom, obviously the young Swedish maid who had loved Taury’s father, James Trahern. According to the diary they had begun a torrid affair soon after she was hired to clean the Bodega Bay house on the weekends. It had been love at first sight for Inger, who was only twenty at the time and fresh off the plane from Sweden. But she kept her feelings a secret since she knew Jim was married. She described him as a sad, overworked, hen-pecked young man who needed love like a starving baby needs milk. It wasn’t long before the couple succumbed to an intense physical attraction.

  Fawn settled into a comfy wing chair with a soft ottoman for her feet, and lost herself in the story of Inger and Jim, whose passion echoed her own with Taury. Jim was repressed as Fawn had been, and Inger was a free loving spirit, determined to give her man every conceivable pleasure. Fawn would have blushed at reading Inger’s graphic narrative a few months ago but now it was so completely in sync with her own feelings and joys and sorrows that she had an unreserved sense of déjà vu.

  “I wish they could have had a happy ending,” she whispered to the air. “But he’s gone and who knows what happened to Inger.”

  A gentle buzzing sound caught her unawares. She relaxed, answered the cell phone.

  “Oh, Taury, I’d almost forgotten you were going to call!”

  “I’m crushed. Here I was chomping at the bit, waiting to hear you say something dirty in my ear.”

  She laughed. “I still can. It’s just that I found your mother’s diary, and I’ve been glued to the pages. She and your father were so like us, only the roles were reversed.”

  “Her diary? Where did you find it?”

  “It was hidden in a book in the study. I want you to read it. But then, maybe you shouldn’t. It’s very explicit.”

  “Well, I won’t then. I don’t think I want to know details about my parents’ love life. Would you?”

  “No, not at all. I’m glad I discovered it though. The information might help us locate her.”

  “Why would I want to? I told you if she hasn’t come forward by now, she doesn’t care.”

  “But Taury, there could be lots of reasons why she didn’t come back to see you.”

  “Yeah, and most of them involve being paid off. Put the diary away, Fawn. I don’t want to talk about her anymore. I’ve got too many troubles to deal with as it is. Get some sleep. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “What about our plans?”

  Too late; he had hung up. Fawn burst into tears. Her pent-up desires needed sati
ating. And she had a seed of doubt growing in her busy mind, wanted Taury to prove he loved her every minute of the day. She felt ugly and useless and selfish and stupid. Elizabeth’s words began to haunt her – “once he realizes that you are merely damaged goods.” What if he thought that way? She knew deep down inside that he loved her, and he had sworn that it was more than a physical love but what if it wasn’t? What if he couldn’t handle not having her for weeks and weeks?

  She cursed herself for letting Richard talk her into those fertility treatments, cursed her weakness in not being able to have a baby in the first place. Then she railed against her parents for raising her to be controllable; and swore out loud at Richard for taking advantage of that. Finally she twisted up into a ball of pain and defeat, and fell asleep on a damp, tear-stained pillow.

  That night Fawn had a dream - she was lying naked on a gigantic black canopied bed in a bright white room surrounded by a bank of floor to ceiling windows. Taury entered the room, began to stalk her – there was a wild, hungry look in his eyes. She stretched herself out before him like a Playboy model, airbrush beautiful, no scars, or wounds of the skin, heart or soul. He eased out of a pair of black shorts – he was already hard - climbed onto the bed, and started to move his hands over her firm, suntanned body.

  She was a vision of sexual delight, his for the taking; which he did, eagerly. His lips found her nipples and bit at them while his fingers entered her and skillfully brought out her desires. He raised his fingers to his mouth and tasted her juices then he slid down her body and licked at her loins with a fiery tongue. His hips were near her face; she grabbed him, tasted his sweetness, voraciously tried to devour every last drop but he shoved her off. He rose above her, a golden god, his hard flesh pushing into her so unexpectedly and forcefully that she screamed like a banshee – breaking every window in the room. But they were not fazed; kept at it until Taury growled like an animal, sending Fawn into a frenetic bout of orgasms. She woke from the dream, still reeling, clinched her thighs together tightly to finish the job.

  It was morning, yet another gray, unwelcoming day. Fawn dragged her weakened body to the shower, let the warm water fall over her face, dissipating the traces of her tears.