Retreat to Love

by Greene, Melanie

  “Are you frightfully sad?”

  “Oh, Sweetheart, I just can’t say. If it had been when Niall was still here, I think I’d have raged at him, but now …. A child there, too. A man, now. He’d be older than your uncle Dermot.” She stood. “Well, I’ll need time to digest all this, and stomaching it with a plate of enchiladas is as good as anything else. Don’t let me forget the gift, it’s on the hall bookcase.”

  “I’ll put it with mine right now.” She patted my shoulder as she passed on the way to her bedroom, and I sighed. The telling of it was over, which was my hard part. Now the onus was on Gran, and she had stooped under it’s weight, though I watched her square her ever-more-sloping shoulders. Willing her pain to rest on me instead, my own heart sank a notch. I went to my shower.

  It was a typical Frank and Bernadette evening—with the glorious addition of onlookers. I do know they love me. But she talks about me like I’m a kid being indulged in this silly little dream of quilting for a living, despite the fact I’ve managed to support myself through college and since, and Frank kicks in with his ‘oh but she has some real talent, our little girl.’ You’d think they’d never been hippies, hadn’t been stuck in the 70s for decades. Meanwhile we all heard at length about Zach’s wise career moves, his big success, his promising future. It amazed me they didn’t tweet screen shots of his tax return.

  Usually, of course, I have Gran to back me up, or at least appreciate my attempts at self-deprecating comic relief. But she wasn’t taking in the celebration with her habitual three-sixty field of vision. I shuddered with the epiphany I hadn’t endured Frank and Bernadette without either Gran or Zach at my side for close to eight years. Damn, I thought, am I afraid of my parents? Well, probably not Frank. But maybe Bernadette.

  Zach nudged me. “You look lost. Where’d you go, FireWind?”

  I nudged back. “I wish. No. You wanna take a quick walk?”

  “Think we’re allowed?”

  “We’re adults, you know,” I said, not without irony.

  “Easy for you to say, you’re bunking with Gran tonight.” But he followed me out to the verandah anyway. “S’up?”

  “Shitloads. Night of revelations.” I sighed. “I’ll tell you the Gran thing on the way back tomorrow. But tell me something. Do you think I’m scared of Bernadette?”

  He laughed.

  “What?”

  “Bernadette’s scared of you, is what.”

  “You’re full of it.”

  “I kid you not.”

  “She said that?”

  “No, of course not. And maybe, yeah, it’s less fear than ....” He was cut off by Frank bellowing out the door, “Kids! Candle time!”

  “Goody, goody!” Zach jumped up. “Last one in’s a rotten egg!”

  But I got him with the old swerve and curve move, so he was the rotten egg and had to give me the bigger plate, so there.

  Bernadette’s friends had put together an aromatherapy massage spa day for her, which sent her into dream land, and not even Zach’s first edition of The Power of Non-Violence could top that. When she opened Mama Bear she said, “Oh, Ashlyn, what a lovely blanket!” and passed it over to Frank for his perusal.

  Ah, well. At least the presents signaled the end of the party.

  But then of course was the return home with a silent Gran. She wanted to sleep on it all, so we headed off to our rooms without further re-hashing of the Pappa story. I fell into dreamless sleep pretty much instantly, that’s how decidedly my brain wanted to avoid dealing with another thought by then.

  All the FireWind breakfast duty had conditioned me to be up early. I made coffee and slipped back into Gran’s sewing room, locating her stash of scraps and sorting through them for border pieces for Patchy Men. I would assemble blues and deep greens as if they were actual patches on an old army blanket, the one I’d snagged it from Uncle Dermot a few years before, knowing someday it’d come in handy. I was always doing that; going to thrift stores and estate sales to collect other people’s junk I wanted to turn into art. My favorite form of recycling.

  But again, I was avoiding.

  So I made her favorite tea and looked in on Gran.

  I guess people don’t tend to think their grandmothers are beautiful. Age and all. But something about Gran made it easy to stare at her face, though it was just as wrinkled and spotty as those of the rest of her generation. Her cheekbones still highlighted her eyes, and her lips, once almost over-full, had wrinkled down to a gentle cupid’s bow that was still rosier than her browning skin.

  At a recent check-up her doctor had told her she had the spine of a fifty-year-old. But her posture was deceptive; I let her strong appearance and strong personality fool me into taking her resilience for granted. And after last night, seeing her so still and mechanical after our talk, I knew with finality Gran was not as rock solid as she seemed. I closed my eyes and sank the welling moisture of my tears and bent to kiss her forehead.

  “Wake up sleepy-head. Zach’s gonna be here in two hours and I don’t want him to catch you lolling around in your night clothes.” Gran’s apple-green dressing gown was like her second skin; Zach called her Granny Smith whenever he saw it, which was pretty much whenever he saw her.

  Gran yawned and smiled. “I need you to move back home, sweetheart, so you can bring me my tea in bed every morning.”

  “Just give me a month,” I promised. Gran had practically thrown me out after college—she’d re-subscribed to the Houston paper just for the ‘For Rent’ listings.

  We sat over breakfast, not talking. Still, it wasn’t like it was out of nowhere when Gran said, “Don’t tell Zach.” We both knew what was on our minds.

  I swallowed. “You sure?”

  “He’ll only talk to Bernadette. And then she’ll talk to Matthew and Dermot. And where would be the good in that?”

  “But the kids, or grandkids, whatever they are? Are we?”

  “Just going to leave them in Ireland? Yes, we are. What possible joy could it bring to their lives to know their grandfather deserted them before their da was even born? And they wouldn’t even have the chance to get to know Niall if they wanted to. He’s gone.”

  “So, you’re...”

  “Going to leave it be.” She held up her hand to quiet me. “No, sweetheart, I thought about it all night. It’s a miserable thing, a thing that does no one any good.” Then she squeezed my hand. “Except me.”

  “How?”

  “Because I know that, receiving this burden, you trust and love me enough to share it with me. Even guessing how it would hurt, you did what I would have wanted you to do.”

  I was back to crying. Gran sighed. “There is one thing I thought I might do.”

  I used the heel of my hand to squeegee my face. “What?”

  “I thought if you could find the number for that wicked Kitty O’Connor, I’d ring her up and give her a piece of my mind for letting Niall’s baby grow up without knowing how deeply good his father was. And for letting Niall think his family had turned their backs on him, when really it was just her and her stupid stupid schemes.” Gran sighed again. “But I don’t think I want you to. I think just an evil minor part of my soul feels it would be justified, but the rest of me knows it will serve no purpose.”

  Zach’s car turned in the drive. “I’m gonna find her number anyway, Gran. You’re too kind now, but if you wake up in the middle of the night sometime bent on vengeance, you’ll have it and know it’s morning time in Ireland.”

  Finally her face softened into a smile. It wasn’t as rich as her usual, but it wasn’t hollow, either.

  Then Zach came in and teased us about being a couple of sour apples and we teased him about rushing us so he could get back to his Rebecca faster and I loaded up my bags of treasure and the alcohol requisitioned by the others at FireWind, and we group hugged before hitting the road.

  Zach was annoyed by my not telling him the Gran secret, but our in-depth analysis of when, based on the birthday bash, would
be a good time to spring Rebecca on Bernadette and Frank distracted him from my sealed lips.

  “And what the Freud were you talking about with this ‘Bernadette is scared of me’ crap, anyway?”

  He snorted. “Like you didn’t know.”

  “Oh, yeah, I knew. That’s why I’ve never mentioned it and am currently looking at you like you’re destined for the madhouse.”

  “You did too.”

  “Quit arguing with me, you big baby, and tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s only the same thing as always your whole life. Bernadette knows you love Gran better, she knows you prefer her company, and it scares the crap out of her she can’t relate to her own daughter in a meaningful way.”

  “But I only spent so much time with Gran when we were little because Bernadette was too busy with work and with treating you like the king of the universe.”

  “But she only treated me like the king of the universe because I responded to it, and whenever she tried it with you, you acted like she was, as you so eloquently say, destined for the madhouse,” he countered. “Plus there’s the jealousy.”

  “Excuse me? The what?”

  “You’ve heard the word before. You know, the little green-eyed boogie monsters all over the place because Bernadette’s mommy treats Bernadette’s baby like the child she’s always dreamed of, excuse the obvious pun. Bernadette just can’t measure up to the Dream Girl.”

  I didn’t know how to begin to contradict him, but I threw in a “You’re so wrong,” just to let him know I wasn’t convinced.

  “Seriously, Ash, you never thought about this? When like forever you and Gran have been bonding over the story of how you only stopped crying as a baby when Gran held you?”

  Okay, we did keep that one active in the family lore. I sighed. “But I thought Bernadette just didn’t like me much.”

  “Now I know you’re the crazy one. Ask Frank how many times she’s wondered when you two were finally going to become real friends.”

  I shook my head. Bernadette had never displayed an iota of this frightened jealousy of me as far as I could remember. All the way past Columbus I moped over the idea Bernadette had secretly longed for me all these years. You’d think she could have found some way to let me know, other than the obviously doomed strategy of building alters to my paragon of a brother. Which Zach now claimed was a misguided attempt to show me how rewarding it would be to be Bernadette’s friend, so I would try harder to connect to her. As if. He was just attempting to hide his decades-old embarrassment at the preferential treatment he’d lapped up like an eager puppy for a good long while there, try as he might to deny it.

  In this sulky manner we reached FireWind. Fortunately Caleb came over before we were done unloading the car, and Zach got to mutter, “Take her, but don’t say you weren’t warned about her loose grip on reality.” And Caleb looked confused and I laughed and then I was able to admit to Zach he might, in a very twisted and obscure way, have a point about me and Bernadette. Probably not, but there was a faint faint hint of logic in his argument I was willing to examine.

  “You do that, sis,” he said and hightailed it back to Austin. Or, most likely, to Rebecca.

  Caleb, showing an endearing level of perception, smothered me in a hug and ordered me inside for a back rub. Funny how walking back into the cabin with him felt like coming home.

  “You look on the verge of collapse,” he fussed as I sank into the sofa.

  “Yeah, I’m not surprised.” I closed my eyes. “It’s good to be back with you, though.”

  I could feel his smile warming the room, though my lids were still shut. “Who knew I’d miss you in one day?”

  “I knew.”

  “Yeah?”

  I moaned as his fingers dug at a knot in my muscles. “Course. Just look at how adorable I am. What did you expect?”

  “What, indeed?” He began to kiss the arc of my skull, moving towards the nape of my neck. “So, missions accomplished?”

  I didn’t know if he meant my talk with Gran, my surviving the birthday party, or my run for supplies we wanted to procure without Margie’s explicit knowledge. But I nodded yes for all three of them. Over my massage, he agreed to keep what he knew about my grandfather a secret from Zach. “And your parents, of course,” he added, leaning in to nuzzle my spine.

  I opened an eye. “Were you planning on having many private conferences with Frank and Bernadette?”

  “You never know.”

  I rolled over, pulling him down beside me. “True enough,” I smiled. He tasted so good—mint and sun and a hint of sweet coffee. An overwhelming desire to seize him and absorb him just as he was took me and I think he was a little startled when I dashed into the studio for a length of silk and used it first to blindfold him while I took his shirt off—slowly, slowly—and then to bind his wrists to the headboard. But unless it was a moan of protest, he didn’t mind.

  I moved over him almost desperate to memorize his body, his reactions, his desires. I didn’t want to think about anything other than Caleb Kendall and the energy between us. He was ticklish just under his ribs, but not unbearably so—that was reserved for the backs of his knees. When I tongued the hollow at his sternum he wriggled with voracious pleasure. His pelvic bones were sharp but his abdomen strong within them, and his pubic hair arced gently and beautifully upwards towards his belly. He was an innie.

  As I took neat little bites of his shoulders and chest, he wrapped his thighs around my waist and trapped me, “Hey!” I protested, but he claimed turnabout was fair play and swore he wouldn’t let me up until I reached up to untie him. Of course as I wriggled up to do so, he enveloped my nipple with his mouth and slid one leg in between my two for a meltdown of contact. And then when I was collapsing against him and his hands were free he flipped us over and twisted my wrists into the silk.

  Before I could tug them out he had me bound to the corner of the bed and was grinning like he’d just won first prize in the county fair chili cook-off. “Well, what have we here?” he whispered deep into my ear. “A little lesson in equality for you, ma’am?”

  I twisted a bit, just so he’d know I was objecting, but it only made the way his pelvis was pinning mine more liquid. “You may as well give in,” he added, talking now to my clavicle, “it’s no use struggling.” His fingers brushed my thighs, his palms cupped my hips. He kissed lower, nibbling in a spiral that sent my breasts into a taut frenzy to be sucked. But Caleb ignored my whimper, and lay his head on my stomach, breathing gently across my pubic mound as he told me it wasn’t very nice of me to have trapped him earlier. I started to apologize but had to stop when he murmured, “Shushhh, shush,” against my crotch.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks and into my ears, and I thrashed my head to clear them. My hips were thrashing for another reason, and Caleb straddled my legs up over his shoulders and clamped my abdomen against the bed with his hands. He wasn’t strong enough to still my bucking crotch, though, and his occasional bites to my inner thighs didn’t do anything to convince me I should stay still. All I wanted in the world was for his mouth and tongue to follow the directions of my arching hips, but he kept whispering, “Now, now, who’s in control here? Settle down,” and pressing me back against the mattress. So I clamped my thighs against his head and held it in place, my will to move against him stronger than his to keep me still. After explosion four hundred and sixty-three, Caleb finally pulled himself away from me, and kneeled straddling me as I panted.

  “My, my, my,” he grinned. “I missed you, too.”

  “Prove it,” I managed to breathe, tugging at my ties. He moved forward to lean over my head and untie the knot on the headboard, which gave me a chance to ensure his erection was about as hard as it was possible for it to get. He froze in place, so I sat up enough to wrap my still-tied arms around his neck and lower us back to the sheets. He reached for a condom, moving quickly again as I teased him with kisses on his earlobes and gentle brushes of my soaking cr
otch against his. He moaned as he came into me and again I thought of how right it felt to be in a room with him.

  I was drained by the time with my family, but Caleb was doing enough work for the two of us. Soon I found my legs and back responding independent of my brain, which thought we were taking a break. Our urgency grew and grew and grew and it wasn’t long—not too short, but not long—before we imploded together.

  Wow.

  I lay there leaking silent tears, feeling a little like a shallow fool when the word ‘love’ kept flashing through my brain, as if incredible chemistry in bed was the main criterion. Fortunately Caleb’s eyes were glistening, too, as he looked at me, so I cheered up. He eased my hair behind my ears with some sweet soft touches and asked what I was thinking. I just smiled and sighed.

  “No fair holding out, lady. I’m here for more than just the awesome sex, you know. I wanna know what’s on your mind.”

  “Just stuff about us. About chemistry and biology and history and psychology.” I laughed. “Sounds like my senior year of high school, huh?”

  “What, no cheerleading practice?”

  “Naw, that was for the pretty, big haired girls. I was in the Latin Club, though, does that count?”

  “Absolutely.” How did he still taste like mint? I made a mental note to check what brand of toothpaste he used.

  Footsteps on the path past my window to my door. We were just acing our timing. I shut the bedroom door all the way as Lizzy let herself into my sitting room.

  “Ash?”

  “I’m in here,” I answered. “Not alone, though.”

  The strides towards the bedroom stopped.

  Caleb’s sudden transfer of a pillow from under his head to over his crotch made me laugh. “You want me to come by in half an hour?”

  “Uh, sure, that okay?” Lizzy asked through the door.

  “Yeah, I’m just going to shower and I’ll head over. Oh, your beer is there in the box on the counter if you want to take it.”