Summer in the Land of Skin

by Jody Gehrman

  “Where?”

  She sighs impatiently. “Sequim! Come on! I have to get out of here today or I’m going to die.”

  “Why Sequim?”

  “I have to see my mom. She’s been begging me to come. And I need to get away from this—Arlan—the whole scene. Please, Anna, you have no idea what this means to me.” She stares at me with that face she shows so rarely—begging—and already, against my better judgment, I can feel myself giving in.

  “I’m supposed to meet Bender at the shop.”

  “Tell him you can’t make it,” she suggests.

  “He’ll be disappointed,” I say. “I hate to let him down.”

  “We’ll only be gone a couple days.”

  “But the Hawaiian koa’s supposed to arrive tomorrow.”

  She squints at me. “Are you fucking that guy?”

  I nearly choke on my coffee. “Gross! No way!”

  “Then there’s no excuse. We have to go. He’ll just have to understand.”

  By my second cup of coffee, I surrender, though something about this day makes me very uneasy. We made it through Friday the thirteenth, but barely, and today feels bleaker, more ominous. Though Lucy chatters happily as we burn toast, pack, brush our teeth and shave our legs, there’s an edginess to her that verges on manic. It reminds me of my mother after a triple espresso; a switch flips, and the world goes explosively bright. She’ll prattle on gaily about computers, cars, the news, all the while flashing that stiff, practiced grin. I’ve learned from experience that these bursts of cheer can get scary; what goes up in flames must eventually fall in ash. Lucy has that fragility this morning. She radiates the artificial glow of someone who’s fooling herself.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Edge of the World

  On the road to Sequim, I feel very briefly that today is in fact a good day, not a bad one, and the ominous pressure in my head dissipates, leaving me almost giddy. The sun is shining, I’ve learned there’s a ferry on our journey, and we’re passing onto an island now, via a great expansive bridge. People huddle on its edges, snapping photos, their hair whipping wildly in a wind that is so strong I can feel it banging against the truck, tempting the wheel this way and that.

  “Deception Pass,” Lucinda says, gazing out the window, raising her voice to be heard over the wind. I nod. We drive on. It seems we are very young right now. I concentrate on the smell of wet, green fields and of ocean air, of burning tires on the semi in front of us, and the cigarette smoke trailing as always from Lucy’s fingers.

  By the time we’re in line for the ferry, though, optimism has leaked out of me for no particular reason, except that the man two cars ahead who gets out to stretch reminds me of Bender. This yanks me out of the moment I was accidentally floating in. I think of his face when I stopped by to tell him I had to leave town. His eyes went instantly distant. “Just for a couple days,” I’d insisted, but he was already turning his back on me, misting a blade with WD-40. I gushed an apologetic little monologue, but he was unmoved. He just kept bending over the blade, studying it as if it held some secret in its greasy teeth.

  “I don’t believe in monogamy,” Lucy says, as I turn off the engine. “Coupling is evil.”

  “Then why are you doing it?”

  “What?”

  “Coupling.”

  “I’m not, really. Arlan and I live together, but so do you and I.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” I say, feeling very tired.

  “I’m all about the community,” she says, lighting a fresh cigarette. “We’re not meant to go off in pairs. The Noah’s Arc story is fascist propaganda.” She examines her teeth in the flip-down mirror. “I don’t care if you fuck Arlan. Go ahead.”

  I massage my forehead. “Lucy, stop talking like that.”

  “Honesty really rubs you the wrong way, huh?”

  “Did you drag me out here to tell me this?”

  She laughs. “Anna! Don’t be so afraid of me! I’m not conspiring! I’m only saying, you can have what you want. Why shouldn’t you? I take what I want, don’t I?”

  “I’m not in the mood for this,” I say. And then, because it seems like something to do, I add, “Let me have a drag off that.”

  “You want one? I’ll give you one of your own.”

  “Okay,” I say, but with a hint of repulsion, remembering the taste in my mouth last night, the violent coughing. She fishes one from the pack and lights it for me. I cough the first couple of drags, but after that it goes down easier, and seems almost pleasant. Lucy watches me, looking rather satisfied.

  “You’re not really inhaling,” she says.

  “Leave me alone!” I scream, laughing. Before long I’ve got a serious buzz going; I feel dizzy and clear-headed at once.

  “Grady never really did it for you, did he?”

  “He’s nice,” I say evasively.

  “But you two never did anything, huh?”

  “No. Not much chemistry, I guess.”

  “You think he’s gay?” She’s back to the mirror again, this time trying to get her eyelashes in order.

  “Never occurred to me.”

  “Anyway,” she says, flicking the butt out the window, “Arlan’s the only one worth having.” Then the line starts moving toward the ferry, and I hurriedly snuff out my first real cigarette.

  The ferry drops us off in Port Townsend, where Lucy insists we get a tripmocha.

  “A what?”

  “Tripmocha. Come on, we’re on the road, the sun is shining, the wind is crazy, we need a mocha.”

  “Oh—a mocha.”

  “Tripmocha.”

  The town itself is adorable, in that tourist-infested, desperately quaint sort of way. Its main street is lined with old brick buildings. On one side, cliffs reach straight up to the sky, and on the other, the Sound churns quietly, dotted with sailboats and kayaks. We find an old-fashioned ice-cream shop packed with middle-aged people wearing fanny-packs and baggy shorts, yelling at their children. We buy mochas there, though it takes forever. When at last we’re back on the road, I’m glad to leave Port Townsend.

  I don’t know what comes over me. Maybe I’m just a little bored. As we turn onto Highway 101, I ask, “Who’s Nick Ferrari?”

  She looks at me. Looks back at the road. Looks at me again. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Just wondering.”

  She shakes her head. “Goddamn Bellingham,” she says. “I need a city. I need to be a whore in a sprawling, anonymous place where I can do whatever I want, get paid for it, and expose all their stupid fucking Christian, virgin-worshiping mythologies. Jesus!” She lights a cigarette. “You want to know what disgusts me? Hypocrisy! I would rather eat a pile of human feces than deal with their double-talking bullshit—”

  “Whose?”

  “Arlan, Bill, Grady, all their stupid groupies! The whole town! The whole world!” She shakes her head sadly. “Arlan’s proposed to me—okay? More than once. But I don’t say yes because I don’t believe in that shit! I have no interest in ownership. It makes me want to hurl, seriously.” She exhales smoke out the window, reties her ponytail tighter.

  “Nick Ferrari, if you must know, is a boy. Okay? He’s fifteen. Younger brother of this guy we know, Colin. Anyways, I fucked him last winter, because he begged me to, and it was fun. But then Colin walked in on us and suddenly we’ve got the whole town talking. I mean, who gives a shit? Everyone was high and it was a good time and then later it becomes this horrifying secret or something. Scarlet Letter city. I don’t give a flying fuck who knows. I really don’t. They can drown in their own dogma, for all I care.” She stares straight ahead in silence, as if daring me to speak.

  “Okay. I was just wondering.”

  She turns toward me now, her voice shifting to a soft plea. “You understand, don’t you, Anna? You know we have a right to do what we want?”

  I consider this for a moment; I’m all for liberation, and Lucy’s open rebellion fascinates me, but is she being fair to A
rlan? “I just don’t understand why you hold on to a boyfriend.”

  “I told you—fuck him if you want to!”

  “That’s not the point.”

  She takes a big swig of mocha and cries out, “Ow! I burned my tongue.” She examines it in the mirror before continuing. “I’m not possessive! Don’t you get it? I play by my rules, not theirs. Arlan’s good for me, but we don’t own each other.”

  “And do you tell Arlan when you’re with someone else?”

  She hesitates. “Arlan knows everything. He’s fluent in my language.”

  We ride in silence the rest of the way to Sequim. Even when we see a bald eagle hovering near the water, wings spread wide like he knows he’s beautiful, she points him out in silence. I guess we’ve said all we need to, for now.

  Lucy’s stepfather is terrifying. One look at him and instantly the prophetic lump I’ve been carrying in my gut since this morning makes sense. He smells of motor oil and cheap cologne. His face looks like half-cooked dough—raw, pale, lumpy. His eyes, set close together, are small and glassy.

  “Hi, Dad,” Lucy says, as we enter the cramped trailer. It is furnished with endless knickknacks sprawled across every surface: ceramic dolls, music boxes, tiny vases, statues of little boys peeing carelessly here and there. Living amidst these decorative items are bits and pieces of functional (or once functional) objects: corroded batteries, filthy car parts, spools of thread, severely abused kitchen utensils. I feel right away that I am suffocating.

  “Dad” doesn’t respond immediately. He is carefully attaching two pieces of wire with a bit of duct tape, which apparently takes all his attention. When he does finally look up, he laughs. His cheeks vibrate slightly. “What are you doing here?”

  “Came for a visit,” Lucy says, yanking open the refrigerator. “Where’s Mom?”

  “No hug for your old dad?”

  “Nope,” Lucy says flatly, biting into an apple. Then she goes to him and wraps her arms around him fast, lets go. She looks at me over her shoulder, and announces, her mouth full of apple, “This is Anna.”

  “Anna,” he says, nodding slowly. I try to smile, but I don’t get very far. I feel a little sick. “Your sister’s supposed to be here,” he says in an unnaturally loud voice.

  “Shit. Are you serious?”

  “She said so. Looking for cash, sounds like. Her old man dumped her.”

  “Good.” Lucy spits out a bite of apple in the trash. “Ew! That was gross.”

  “Mind your manners,” he says, going back to his wires.

  “Why’d he dump her?”

  “You think anyone tells me? All I know is, she’s sniffing around here for handouts.” He attaches the pair of wires to a battery and suddenly there’s the flash of a bright white spark, along with a loud popping sound; it makes me jump, and my elbow hits a small pewter castle, which knocks over a glass of lumpy milk. It spills onto the plywood dresser in misshapen, grayish blobs.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Do you have a paper towel?”

  “Leave it,” the dad says.

  “I should at least wipe the—”

  “Leave it!” he repeats in a weird, hollow tone.

  In the gloom of the trailer, it is easy to imagine he has no chin at all. I pull my cardigan closed against the chill.

  “Where’s Mom?” Lucy asks. He shrugs. “We’re going downtown. See you later.” He doesn’t respond.

  As soon as we leave the trailer, I feel relief flooding my body like a cool drink of water.

  In downtown Sequim, there are a few bars to choose from; Lucy picks what has to be the darkest, the most depressing, the one that reeks the strongest of stale beer and decades worth of cigarette smoke. It’s been here forever, you can tell. I try to picture what it was like in the 1950s, when girls like us would be at home in curlers, painting our toenails, and men could tell their jokes without us, indulging in their melancholy fraternity. I rest my hands on the old wooden bar and think of all it’s seen—all the sadness and celebrations it’s witnessed, all the lost souls that have leaned against this very spot.

  “Get me a Tanqueray and tonic,” Lucy says. “I’m going to go pee,” and she disappears down a shadowy hallway. There’s a TV mounted above the bar. I watch as a slim, toothy game show hostess raises one hand gracefully to indicate the categories lighting up near her fingertips. The host drones on in a soothing, oily voice; the bartender squeezes the remote control and the room erupts with the sound of a bright, irritating polka as a dancing couple glides across the screen.

  I order our drinks and take them to a table in the far corner. There’s more people here than I’d expect—maybe ten or twelve, all men—but I don’t really look at their faces. I just sit down and study the ice in our glasses, watching the bubbles swim rapidly for the surface. I try not to be afraid of this town—the doughy stepdad, the ominous sister, this bar. I think of Arlan and a pang of homesickness assails me. I want to be in Smoke Palace, drifting on one of his long, elegant riffs. I can see Bill accosting teenage girls out the window and hear Grady talking excitedly about something exotic clipped from his Argentinean newspaper. The thought of that house and the smell of Arlan’s body—sweat, paint, smoke—makes me want to cry.

  When Lucy comes back, she downs half her drink and says, “You hate it here, I can tell.”

  “What makes you say—”

  “You’re so painfully obvious, Anna. Don’t ever play poker.”

  “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  “We’ll leave first thing tomorrow,” she says.

  “We just got here.”

  “Let me get drunk enough to go home and face my mother. Then we’ll pass out and drive back in the morning.”

  “Didn’t you want to come?”

  “I don’t know what I want half the time.” She puts her face in her hands briefly, then downs the rest of her drink. “Anna, if I don’t go to college I’ll kill myself. I need to get as far away from this rat’s asshole as I can.” She chomps on her ice. “Only sometimes—I can’t explain it—I have to come back. Like needing to see your blood when you cut yourself, you know? Some kind of morbid trip like that.”

  “You need another?”

  “Yeah. And smoke a cigarette with me, will you please? I love you, Anna, I swear to God.”

  Lucy quickly accomplishes her goal; by the time we’re ready to leave this dank place, she’s on fire with Tanqueray. Her eyes are not focusing properly, and her walk is so lopsided I have to slip an arm around her waist to get her out to the car. I prop her up with one hand as I unlock the truck. “Why do you always lock everything?” she complains. “Like an old lady.”

  “It’s not mine,” I say. “I’m trying to take care of—”

  “Whose uz it?” She tries again. “Whose is it?”

  “My aunt’s. I told you that. Can you get us back to your mom’s? I’m not sure I remember.” She gets in on the driver’s side and sits there, staring blankly at the windshield. “Scoot over.” I giggle. “I’ve got to get in, too.” She slides over just enough for me to wedge myself into the driver’s seat. As I slam the door and turn to her, she kisses me sloppily on the mouth. “Okay,” I say, pulling away. “Now I know you’re drunk.”

  “Don’t you want to kiss me back?”

  “Maybe some other time.” I’ve never kissed a woman before, and the feel of her lips on mine is at once familiar and foreign. Bewildering. She starts kissing my neck very softly. “Um,” I say. “Lucy? I don’t know if this is—”

  “Shh,” she says, and kisses me on the lips again. This time she pushes her tongue against my teeth and I can taste the gin on her mouth. I give in a little more—I’m still stiff and awkward but I turn toward her slightly, mostly because I don’t want to offend her. I feel oddly removed, like I’m outside myself, watching two girls kissing, thinking, “How odd—look at that.” She puts her hand on my breast, and that startles me out of my trance. “Listen, Lucy, you’ve had too much to drink, is all—”
/>
  “Check this out!”

  I jerk around and see a man’s face practically pressed against my window—a small, pinched, hairy face with hateful eyes. Behind him are the muted colors of other people—a green baseball cap, a brown leather jacket—and the sound of men laughing; a beer bottle clatters to the pavement. I push Lucy away from me and, panicky, terror-stricken, I slam down the lock on the door. One of the men yells, “Lesbos!”

  Lucy starts yelling in a rough, drunk voice, “Fuck your mothers, motherfuckers!” This gets me giggling. She starts giggling too, and repeats the battle cry several more times. The man with his face pressed to my window clambers toward the passenger side door. The fear that flushes through me makes my laughter catch in my throat; I lunge for the lock. I get it down just as the man tries the door. He pounds like an orangutan on Lucy’s window with small, furry fists. I stab at the ignition with my keys, somehow make the right one fit, and pull away as Lucy starts up with her chant again: “Fuck your mothers, motherfuckers!”

  This is not turning out to be a restful getaway. We spend the night curled up in the cab of the truck, freezing. We park near the trailer but we never go inside. When Lucy sees that her mother still isn’t home, she refuses to leave the truck. I’m not thrilled about sleeping in the cab, but I’m not anxious to go in, either. Her stepdad’s lumpy profile is visible through the tiny trailer window, illuminated by the eerie blue flicker of late-night TV.

  Not surprisingly, I have a hard time sleeping sitting up. I spend hours replaying the fuzzy home-movie of the evening over and over again in my mind. I wonder why Lucy kissed me. I’m not quite naive enough to imagine that she’s been carrying a torch; I suspect she came on to me because she was bored and drunk. The thought irks me so much I’m tempted to wake her up and tell her what a jerk she is. Sometimes I feel like I’m just second-rate entertainment for a restless, cruel little queen. I thought I was outside the realm of her sexual playthings, and more intimate with her precisely because I’m not someone she can kiss when she’s sloppy drunk and there’s nothing better to do. I suppose I might be flattered, under different circumstances, but tonight, slumped before the steering wheel in a ridiculous parody of rest, I’m mostly just pissed off.