Sticky Kisses

by Greg Johnson

  “Thom, your darling sister wouldn’t care about that,” Connie said, cutting his eyes in Abby’s direction. He must have glimpsed something in her face, for he bit his lower lip, primly, and reached for another piece of corn-bread. Abby noticed the way her brother had leaned in toward the table, with his eager, boyish smile and glinting blue eyes. His irritation with Connie had vanished.

  Connie shook his head, giving a mock shudder. “No, I dare not reopen those wounds. Such a trauma, that was.” He gave them a quick grin. “My shrink got a lot of mileage out of that one,” he added with an impish tilt of his head. “The overweight stripper was a stand-in for my father, or some such thing, and when he sat on my lap, nearly pulverizing my poor thighbones in the process, it gave rise to a castration anxiety of operatic proportions. God knows, it didn’t give rise to anything else.”

  Thom laughed; Connie was cackling softly.

  “Connie loves to make fun of his therapist,” Thom said, “but he couldn’t live without him.”

  Connie pressed his lips together. “That’s probably true. But Lord, how I’d love to try.”

  Between them, Thom and Connie narrated the history of Connie’s “adventures in therapy”; Connie arched an eyebrow when pronouncing that phrase. Six or seven years ago, Connie told Abby, he’d sunk into a clinical depression for no particular reason and had first visited a woman recommended by his internist.

  “She was a darling little Chinese lesbian with a Buster Brown haircut—I mean, it was exactly as if her butch lover put a soup bowl over her head and did the job—and she wore the usual dyke uniform of flannel shirt and jeans. And Hush Puppies. Delia Dong, I swear that’s her real name. It’s on her diplomas and everything. Well, Delia seemed to think my depression could be cured by hugging.”

  “Come on, Connie,” Thom said.

  “I’m serious! We would hug, she informed me, at the beginning of each session and at the end of each session. Sometimes she would come over and hug me in the middle of a session. Pretty soon, everything I said in therapy was designed not to inspire a hugging fit from Miss Delia! Most of the time I was sitting there, sweating in my clothes, saying to myself, ‘Please don’t hug me, woman. Please.’ If I hadn’t known she was a dyke, I’d swear she had a thing for me. And her hugs were not charming. She’d simply wrap her arms around and hang on, like I was a giant redwood or something. What was worse, she wore Old Spice cologne, which was sort of cute but way too butch for me. And she told me I have a hang-up about my father!”

  “Delia Dong does not wear Old Spice, and you know it,” Thom laughed.

  “She does,” Connie insisted. “Extra-strength, I believe. Your brother always encourages me to talk,” he told Abby, “and then he contradicts me. But I’m sure you’re familiar with that trick.”

  Abby smiled. “So you stopped seeing Delia?”

  “Yes, I had to. I’m just not a hugger, I’m sorry. When did that vogue for hugging start, anyway, around the mid ‘80s? Now it’s running amok, in my opinion. People hug perfect strangers on the street. On TV, Clinton hugs everybody. He hugs senators, even Republicans. He hugs that dyke attorney general—what’s her name, with the Hitler haircut? He’d probably hug Saddam Hussein if he had the chance.”

  The waiter arrived to ask about dessert: Thom and Abby ordered coffee, but Connie couldn’t resist the blueberry cobbler.

  “I’ve been good all morning,” he said, glancing off.

  When the waiter had left, Abby said: “You forgot to tell me about your therapist. The newer one.”

  “Oops, he must have slipped my mind! Does that count as a Freudian slip? Well, Abby”—he patted her forearm again in his intimate, confiding way—“we all have our addictions, don’t we? And mine happens to be therapy. I’ve been going to this pretentious fellow named Michael Purvis for several years now, and after the first few months all we’ve done is have the same five or six conversations over and over about my five or six most fascinating problems. Once a month, Dr. Purvis sends me a bill for $480—that’s $120 per session, if you please, and of course a ‘therapeutic hour’ is forty-five minutes—and I send him a check. Sometimes he gets lucky and there are five Mondays in a month, so he gets $600. Getting checks in the mail from unwell people—that’s his addiction.”

  “Tell her about the letter he sent you,” Thom said. He grinned at Abby. “This just kills me. It tells you everything you need to know about Michael Purvis.”

  Connie gave a mild, faraway smile. “Yes, poor Dr. Purvis sent me a letter one time, because evidently I’d neglected to send his monthly check. It had just slipped my mind, you know? So he sends me this polite letter about the bill, and he signs it, ‘Dr. Michael Purvis, Ph.D.’Well, Abby, I was a journalism major, and I have this bad habit of correcting people. So, the next week I told Michael that he could sign his name, ‘Michael Purvis, Ph.D.,’ or ‘Dr. Michael Purvis,’ but that ‘Dr. Michael Purvis, Ph.D.’ was redundant. I thought he’d appreciate the tip, you know? But no, he stiffens in his chair and says he’s been told that before, but he prefers signing his name that way. ‘I worked hard to become a doctor,’ he said. And I said, ‘But you’re not a doctor. An MD is a doctor—you’re a psychologist.’ And he turns red in the face and asks if I’m envious of his ‘achievement’—yes, that’s the word he used. I mean, the man got a doctorate from Georgia State, for God’s sake, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist for that.”

  Abby blinked; the psychologist did sound awful. “But you’ve kept on seeing him?” she asked.

  “Michael? Oh, yes,” Connie said, dismissing the matter with a wave of his hand. “We’re just like an old married couple. But listen, Abby, enough about me! I want to hear all about you!”

  Thom laughed. “Too late,” he said. “I’ve got an appointment. Besides, I think we’ve overstayed our welcome.”

  Abby and Connie glanced toward the entrance, where a throng of people huddled in small groups, waiting.

  “I guess you’re right,” Connie said, glancing down as he pushed away from the table. “Oh, I didn’t realize the bill had come.”

  The waiter had placed the check near Connie’s arm at least ten minutes earlier, and Abby was sure he had seen. She took up her purse, but as he’d been doing all week, Thom put his hand over hers.

  “Connie and I are splitting this,” he said, laying a twenty down on the table.

  “For heaven’s sake, yes,” Connie said breathlessly. “We’re taking you out for lunch.” After frowning at the check Connie took some bills from his wallet, handed them to Thom, and the three of them made their way out of the restaurant. Both Thom and Connie spoke to the hostess as they left. “The cobbler was fabulous!” Connie called out, blowing an elaborate gourmet’s kiss with his fingertips.

  Outside, the air seemed colder; the clouds overhead had turned a darker gray, like tufts of soiled cotton.

  “My goodness,” Connie exclaimed, shivering. “Do you think it really will snow?”

  As Thom and Abby turned toward the parking lot, Connie abruptly reached out his hand. “The lot was full when I got here,” he said, taking Abby’s extended fingertips and giving an affectionate squeeze, “so I had to park on Cumberland. By the way, Thom, congratulations—I saw that UNDER CONTRACT sign on Jim and Randy’s house.”

  “Thanks,” Thom said, crossing his fingers. “Let’s hope it goes through. See you tonight, Connie.”

  “Bye now,” Connie called over his shoulder, already hurrying down the driveway toward the street with his arms crossed against the cold.

  “Thanks so much for lunch!” Abby called back.

  They’d arrived at Thorn’s Accord, and Abby stood there waiting for him to unlock the doors; she gazed idly down to the street where Connie was hurrying along, a bright turquoise beacon among the passing traffic and the freezing wind, and that’s when she noticed the tiny flakes swirling through the air.

  Inside the car, Thom bent over the ignition, gunning the engine and muttering, “Damn, it’s cold
.”

  Within seconds the flakes had grown larger, and now Abby, feeling a sudden childlike exultation, reached across and tapped her brother’s shoulder.

  “Look, honey, it’s snowing!” she cried.

  Disbelieving, Thom looked up, squinted out the windshield, a smile of delight already creasing his face as instinctively he leaned sideways to receive the quick, impulsive kiss Abby planted on his cheek.

  The snowfall had lasted for less than an hour, and none of it stuck. The temperature hovered in the middle thirties all day. That evening Abby stood in the kitchen, shaking her head as she watched the six o’clock news on the small set perched on the counter beside the refrigerator. This special one-hour report called “Snow Jam ‘98” featured the same group of stories the local channels reported (even when Abby was a small child, hoping for a day free from school) whenever there was a chance of snow in Atlanta. One reporter interviewed A & P customers, who were “flooding the aisles” and “stocking up” in case a significant snowfall materialized. Shots of empty racks where the bread had been; empty dairy cases where the milk had been; live interviews with customers in checkout lines who invariably grinned sheepishly into the camera and mumbled that they “didn’t want to take any chances.” Then came interviews with city officials, claiming they were “prepared for the worst,” and with truck drivers who had spent the day covering area bridges with sand and salt. There were videotapes of the last major Atlanta snowfall, two years ago, that showed a car fishtailing on Interstate 20 and a MARTA bus careening into a ditch along Northside Drive. Then a series of “live shots”—one from Interstate 85, one from Midtown, one from Buckhead—in which bundled-up reporters excitedly informed the public what the public already knew: some big, slushy flakes had fallen for an hour that afternoon, there were no driving problems “yet,” and only “time would tell” whether Atlanta would wake up to a “winter wonderland” in the morning.

  Thom strolled into the kitchen, whistling, fresh from his shower. Mitzi and Chloe raced behind him, lunging at his heels. “What are you snickering about?”

  “These weather reports,” Abby said.

  Now the weatherman and his map filled the screen; he was solemnly calibrating the likelihood of more snow that evening. There was a fifty percent chance the city could get several inches of “the white stuff,” the weatherman said. Everything depended on the temperature, he said slowly, with a long, searching look into the camera.

  “The gist of the story,” Abby told her brother, “is that it might snow tonight. Or it might not.”

  Thom squeezed past her, briefly grasping her waist. “Excuse me,” he said smartly, a phrase Abby remembered from their high school days. He bent over, opened the oven door, peered inside; he’d put together some leftovers from the dinner Abby had cooked the night before. They’d decided to have a quick bite before Pace’s party and not bother with another restaurant meal. Straightening, Thom said: “Now stop making fun. Just because you’ve become a sophisticated Easterner.”

  “Someone visiting from Minneapolis must be in stitches, watching this,” Abby said.

  She turned, feeling self-conscious as her brother looked her up and down, appraisingly. While he was showering, she’d changed into the nicest clothes she’d brought on this trip; in fact, the only really nice outfit she owned, a black velvet jacket and skirt over a dressy white silk blouse with frilly collar and sleeves. The skirt fit a little tighter than she liked, and was a little shorter than she liked, but she’d bought the outfit despite herself, the week after her first date with Graham Northwood last January. For Valentine’s Day, her mother had given her jewelry specifically for the dress: necklace and earrings of red and black enamel trimmed in gold. Though she knew the outfit was attractive, it felt more like a costume than something the real Abigail Sadler—whoever that was—would wear. She’d dabbed some lipstick and mascara onto her face (since arriving, she hadn’t bothered with makeup) and had brushed her hair vigorously in the attempt, probably futile, to give her tired pageboy a bit more shine and energy. She was conscious of a mild blush rising along her throat as her brother stared, assessing.

  “You look nice tonight,” he said. “The cutest date I’ve had in years.”

  That reminded her: Thom did have a date.

  She said, “What about your friend from Athens? Isn’t he driving over?”

  Thom glanced away. “Chip? He left a message on my machine. Held up by some graduate-student function at school. He might come tomorrow.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” She glimpsed the disappointment in his eyes.

  “No problem.” He turned back to the oven. “I’d rather take you.”

  While Thom finished preparing dinner, Abby went back into her room to fetch her purse, and that was when she thought again about Marty Luttrell. She dug out the bit of paper where she’d scrawled his number, then edged quietly into her brother’s room. Mentally she rehearsed once again the apology she would deliver to Valerie Patten. Punching the numbers, she saw that her fingers were shaking.

  This time, after several rings, an answering machine did pick up. The message, delivered in a man’s voice, was perfunctory, the tone as monotonous as if read from a card: “You have reached the Luttrell residence. No one can take your call. Leave a message at the beep.” When it sounded, Abby took a breath and opened her mouth, but didn’t quite know what to say. She hung up.

  An hour later, heading down Piedmont Avenue on their way to Pace’s, Thom said: “So, did you call Mom?”

  They’d been silent for several minutes, and her eye had drifted out to the damp, darkened street, where the traffic moved with a bewildered slowness through the moisture-thickened air; the lighted buildings, the streetlamps, the headlights of other cars blurred and wavered in the foggy darkness. More of the oversized snowflakes were falling, and Thorn’s windshield wipers batted them in a lazy, monotonous rhythm. The flakes melted the instant they hit the street and were not even sticking on the grassy strips along the sidewalks.

  “Mom?” Abby said blankly.

  “I noticed you went in my room, so I figured you must be calling Mom again.”

  His tone was so casual, it seemed almost affected, she thought. As if he’d run the words through his mind before saying them.

  She shook her head, relieved that he couldn’t see her face in the darkened car.

  “No, I—I was calling someone else.”

  In fact, this was the first day she’d neglected to call Lucille. After returning from their lunch with Connie, she’d thought about her mother but reasoned that she had all afternoon. She’d drifted into Thorn’s cozy living room with her now-raggedy copy of Wide Sargasso Sea, which she’d been reading unusually slowly, ten or twenty pages each day. Mitzi and Chloe had curled up with her on Thorn’s bedraggled sofa with its faint, pleasant smells of hair oil and men’s cologne, and soon she’d gotten drowsy and napped for a while. Thom was home by four o’clock and woke her—“Hey, lazy”—and her mother’s scowling face popped at once into Abby’s mind. Just as quickly she banished it. She tried not to blame her mother for the enervating awareness that she must return to Philadelphia on Sunday, resume her stale, accustomed life, endure her mother’s litany of stored-up complaints. With Thom there, Abby reasoned, she might get a breather, though she could imagine that her function as a buffer between Thom and Lucille, if not as a referee, might sap her energy even more than her role as the child who lived at home, the child who listened patiently. She was so accustomed to listening, she thought, that she could no longer hear her own voice.

  She supposed she was avoiding today’s call to Lucille because yesterday, when Abby had waited until after lunch, her mother had been more truculent than usual.

  “What took you so long, honey?” she had demanded. “I’ve been worried to death all morning.”

  Abby had explained about going with Thom to show one of his listings. “We’ve been staying really busy,” she said airily, as if this were an ordinary vacation. “I’ve enjo
yed being with Thom—it’s been a good time.”

  “A good time?” She heard her mother’s quick expulsion of smoke. Shortly after they’d left Atlanta, her mother had taken up the habit she’d abandoned when she got married (George Sadler had detested the smell of cigarette smoke) but now practiced avidly, two to three packs of Salem Lights each day. She claimed that because they were “Lights” they did no real harm, and in any case she insisted—with the wry twist of her mouth she used when trying to be witty—that she didn’t inhale. She’d even done a needlepoint cigarette-and-lighter case decorated with pink rosebuds, as if facilitating one harmless habit with another. Abby could now imagine her sitting by the silent phone, twisting the ends of her newly tinted cinnamon-red cap of hair, smoking fiercely. Her makeup, recently updated to coordinate with the hair, would be freshly applied, as would her nail polish. Around the time she’d gotten her new haircut Lucille had started dressing younger, too, favoring sleeveless silk or linen shifts in bright stripes and paisleys, outfits that showed off her still-slim figure. Sometimes she wore these at home, even when she had no plans to go out, claiming they cheered her up. Abby favored anything that cheered her mother up, and often complimented Lucille on her appearance, especially when her feathers needed smoothing. Yesterday that hadn’t been an option, and in fact she’d heard herself blurt out, “Yes, do you mind? If I have a good time while I’m here?”

  Her mother had paused. Abby heard the long, contemplative drag on her cigarette.

  “Of course not, honey. You know I’m just—I’m just anxious, I guess, with both of you there and me stuck here by myself.”

  Relieved they weren’t going to argue, Abby had reminded her that Sunday was a few days away, after all. Improvising, she added that Thom was looking forward to the trip and at that point she’d stopped herself, confused and vaguely embarrassed. She wasn’t good at lying, but fortunately her mother veered onto another topic—something about Aunt Millicent, who had invited Lucille to join her and several other women for a Caribbean cruise shortly after New Year’s, but of course Lucille couldn’t go, now that…. Abby had stopped listening. She stood there in Thorn’s bedroom—for some reason, she’d wandered in here instead of using the kitchen phone—and her eye caught on the framed photograph of herself on her brother’s bedside table. It dated from the party celebrating her master’s, but the woman in the snapshot looked like a high-school girl playing dress-up. She’d worn a crimson blouse her mother had given her, and her eyes (normally a milder blue than her brother’s, but somehow brightened in this photo) were spiked with more mascara than she’d probably worn since, even for her dates with Graham Northwood. A three-quarters shot, with her shining auburn hair looking so ample and healthy—what a contrast, she thought, to the meek little pageboy she’d worn the past few years. And how frank and forthright, her too-bright smile for the camera! That girl seemed ready for anything, and she wondered if Thom, with the photograph there beside the bed, still thought of her that way.