“I did, I swear it. I was...walking...and, uhm, I fell.”
She grinned widely to reveal a small gap in her teeth. “That’s stoopid!” She started laughing.
I couldn’t help laughing as well.
We laughed so much it actually made me forget about how horrible it had all been.
Then, “Did your mom fall down the stairs as well?”
Lead sunk in my chest. I looked at Johnny, then at Daniela. It’s amazing how much a ten year old actually sees. “Uhm, no, no, she, uhm, just isn’t feeling well.”
I could tell she didn’t fully buy it.
But like all good little girls, she decided to respectfully drop it.
I was grateful.
-2-
A few days later...
“And here I thought your dad was finally liking me.” Johnny’s statement came out of nowhere. We were lying in the dark of his room, staring up at the ceiling. His right hand was on my thigh, my neck on his left arm. His window was slightly open, and the winter air blew in cool and crisp.
“He does like you.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“He was just drunk, Johnny. Forget what he said. He’s grateful for you helping me at that party.” But even then I remembered all the hints my dad had dropped over the years.
“He was probably mad that I took you to that party in the first place. Maybe that’s why he got mad at your mom.”
“He got mad because...because he’s...going through shit!” I wanted to say because he was an asshole. But I just couldn’t. He was still my dad. And he’d done a lot more good in his life than bad.
Johnny cleared his throat. He moved his arm from under my head and sat up, rubbed his eyes.
“Hey.” My voice was a whisper. “You OK?”
I sat up behind him and rubbed his back over his gray shirt.
“He caught me once, when I was sixteen, before you and I started dating.”
“Hmmm?” My hand stopped rubbing, and the wind from the window was suddenly too cold.
“With Nicole. Nicole...Ferman. In...” He stopped.
“In what?” My hand was on my lap now, and I caught myself looking over at the glow of lights from my own house across the street. Do I really need to know this?
“In...the yard...behind the house. We were...”
Silence. I cleared my throat, and it was the sound of a rusty pipe.
“We were...making out. And my hand was...down there. She was groaning—loudly. And she was...well, it was all a little crass, let’s put it that way. And then she gasped suddenly, like she’d seen an axe murder, and she went stiff and pulled away from me. My heart stopped, and I turned to see your father, a six pack in his hands. ‘Maybe you two should take this inside, don’t you think?’ he said.
“‘Y—yes, Mr. Ramsey,’ I said.
“And then he left us.
“He’d come by to watch a game with my dad. He’d heard some noises in the back and had come to inspect it. Nicole and I...Nicole and I were hiding there because from inside you can’t hear noises from the yard so good when the TV is loud. I never thought of anyone coming by the house outside at that time of night.
“Nicole must have been pretty loud for your dad to have heard.”
I said nothing. The image of Nicole’s groans and Johnny’s fingers touching her impressed itself into my mind like a scene from American Horror Story.
“Cat, you listening?”
I looked up from the thread on the quilt I’d been playing with, looked at Johnny. I felt the lack of blood in my cheeks.
I had no reason to be jealous, but I felt the sting of it in my heart anyway.
I forced a smile. “Yeah, sure, I’m here.”
“He never told my dad. I don’t think my dad would have cared, but he would have been embarrassed because his friend had found us. I would have embarrassed my family. And I was grateful to...your father...for never telling him.
“But I’m sure he thinks I’m just trying to get into your pants. I’m sure he thinks I’m just some horny teenager looking to get laid.”
Get into your pants—I had that sudden flash of Nicole’s body again, and the idea was nauseating.
“Or maybe he thinks I don’t know how to treat a girl right. And he’d be right—back then. But I learned from that. It was then that I started thinking that maybe Nicole wasn’t right for me, because I didn’t respect her. And I don’t think she respected me, either. It was all about getting it on. And I realized, afterwards, mortified as I was, that I would never take, say, someone like you outside in the dark. With you, well...
“Anyway, but he obviously doesn’t see that. He sees a horny kid, who he caught with his hand down a girl’s pants out in the back yard. And now you’re my girl.
“I see where he’s coming from, is all I’m saying. If I were your dad, I’d hate me as well”
“Right,” I said, “I see your point.” There was a gust of wind and it howled through the eaves. “And...are you? Just trying to get into my pants, that is.”
Johnny’s touch sliding inside me was something I often dreamed about when thinking of him. He was always gentle, parting his two fingers, then easily pressing inwards with one of them, just a tip to madden me. He never went too deep because it made me uncomfortable, but the orgasm on my part was always sharp and riveting.
And when I came, I always held him while my body convulsed and shuddered out of control. In those moments, with me under his hand, I felt always exposed, as if naked under a storm, or jumping off a plane and letting someone else open your chute for you.
He’d press down, and keep twirling, letting me fall off that cliff with no worry.
Until it was over, and I’d be gliding to the ground, chute wide open and thermals warming my skin, and I would inhale deeply the scent of his cologne or his aftershave. And hold him afterwards for a few minutes.
And I would know that he loved me.
“I’ve already gotten into your pants,” he said, no mockery in his tone.
“Not completely.”
“Do you really need to ask me that, Cat?”
“No, I’m sorry.” I rubbed his back with my left hand, the one with the broken finger.
“You know we’ve been dating almost a year now,” I prompted.
“Yeah, and?”
And I think it’s time we took the next step. “I’m just saying.”
I put my hand around his neck, pulled him down onto the bed with me.
And I let his hand get into my pants.
-3-
A light breeze blew into the room. My body was rested and relaxed from what Johnny had just done with me. A slight smile formed on my lips, and the euphoria of spent passion clouded my mind so that I felt like nothing was wrong anywhere.
A soft yellow glow filtered out from our kitchen across the street. Mom would be coming over soon. The bruises on her face had healed somewhat, and those that were left could be covered up to a degree with make-up. Besides, Daniela was wise to the scene now anyway. She was a good kid. We were going to have dinner at the Abreus tonight. Just like old times.
Johnny held me. I’d come to feel relaxed at feeling him stir below when he got turned on. I’d come to feel relaxed about a lot of things with Johnny.
Safe is more the word.
In this post-orgasmic state, my mind drifted, my thoughts wandered to thinking of the sun, an ocean, the beach...
“Tell me about Portugal, Johnny.”
“Portugal?” His voice was so manly by now.
“Yeah, Portugal. Tell me about it. Tell me about the people, the weather, the clothes. Everything. Tell me.”
“Well, it depends where you go. Lisbon is an old city, people sing fado on the street—the music of melancholy and sadness, of broken hearts and unrequited love.
“The streets are cobblestoned. Men sit at cafés and drink coffees and smoke cigarettes and read newspapers, sometimes all day.”
“And ‘coffees’ are really espressos,” I adde
d, remembering some of his tales from years before.
“You learn quick.
“The sun shines almost all year in the south. It’s almost always warm there, more like hot.
“Lisbon is a sprawl of ancient houses climbing over hilly ground and winding in and out of alleyways and shady corners. Fish is always fresh, lobster and crab and prawns and dourada are the meals of the day. Garlic bread, olives, red wine, and great, stinking cheeses!”
I laughed, grabbed his arm tight to my chest and inhaled deeply.
“Tell me about the beach.”
“Which one?”
“Any one!”
“Well, the Algarve is too touristic. But then there’s Cascais, the French Riviera of Portugal with multi-million-Euro houses facing a dream view of a west-facing ocean. Balconies with late sunshine, and the bleeding glow of a red ocean sunset. There’s the Estoril Casino only two or three miles away, where the rich throw their money away and glamour rules the day, men in thousand dollar tuxedos, women in fine, glittering eveningwear, expensive jewelry, exquisite hairdos—”
“Hey! Enough about the women!”
Johnny caressed my hair, kissed me on the cheek. He whispered in my ear, “There’s the tourist village in Cascais, fine stores and cobble-street alleys, nooks under rocks facing the crashing waves where two people could hide...and kiss...and touch.” He kissed my ear. My stomach tightened.
Behind me, he stirred, and it pleased me that he did.
“Fine restaurants, small fishing boats, and plenty of sangria. That’s Portugal, Cat.”
The light from our kitchen went off outside. Mom was on her way over. I turned to face Johnny. His oceanic eyes were bright with wanderlust. “I want to go there. I want to get to know it.”
His eyes broke into an unspoken sorrow. “We’ve offered. Your parents said no.”
No, my father said no.
I looked down, nestled my forehead against his chest. “It sucks being young.”
He said nothing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
~ “I’m ready” ~
-1-
My dad went into rehab. It seems he wasn’t only dousing the fires with booze but playing with a particular powder so common to high-level executives in the state of New York.
Again, I wondered how long that had been going on without me noticing. Had I ever seen him sniff excessively? Had I ever seen powder on his nose?
None of it mattered anyway. And all of it was bluntly real, and all of it happening to me.
Mom didn’t talk to me much during winter recess. She hit a major depression from what I could see. Often I’d find her sleeping on the couch, a glass of something alcoholic sitting on the table while the TV murmured on. One night she was so drunk that I almost had to carry her to bed.
“You know we love you, don’t you, baby?” The words were a jumble.
“Yeah, I know, mom.”
“We would never do anything doo hurtchoo.”
“Yeah, sure.”
She kept talking when she hit the bed, her eyes bloodshot. Her hands looked old and wrinkly.
Each day, Iliana would come by and sit with mom. When she was here, mom was cool. But the second she left, mom started boozing—just like dad had done. I remembered what my dad said to me on the porch about his whiskeys. They made me feel good, you know?
When school started again, Iliana noticed my unspoken concern—she promised she’d look out for mom every day when I was gone, and that I didn’t need to worry about her while I was at school.
A ten ton load lifted off me.
School was a blur when it started again. Of course, I still had a splint on my finger, and Viv and Nance asked me about it immediately. They were all bubbly about Christmas and how great it had been.
I told them I fell down the stairs on Christmas day, and they laughed much like Daniela had laughed when I’d told her.
But Daniela’s laugh was contagious. And although Viv and Nancy’s laugh wasn’t meant with any spite, I just couldn’t laugh with them.
My heart hurt.
And my mind hurt.
When Nicole got wind of the story—somehow—the whole school suddenly knew. And the story took on various hues and embellishments as it traveled from person to person.
I didn’t care about being the talk of the school.
I did care about being reminded every day about something that was hurtful to me.
My dad was a drug-addict, violent, abusive. My loving, beautiful dad who taught me how to ride a bicycle and who held me when I was five after I’d fallen and grazed my knee. That dad.
And my mom was depressed, boozing herself now to help her fall asleep. She looked damn-near suicidal.
That people found this a subject to gossip about only made me want to go into the girls’ bathroom and lock myself in there until the tears were dry.
I was a social outcast. My family’s secrets had spread and grown wings. If I hadn’t been gregarious to start with, I was a complete recluse now.
Johnny kept me sane.
Johnny kept me alive.
Johnny got me through.
-2-
Mom and dad had both dabbled with a bit of coke in college. “That and a few other things,” she told me.
We were sitting in the TV room, the lights dimmed. She wasn’t drunk, but she had a stiff drink on the side table that she kept nursing.
I listened.
I had come home pissed that day, and I wanted to know. I wanted to know all of it.
So I asked her. Maybe knowing it would help me deal with it.
Listening to what was unraveling, I started doubting my theory.
“We did it all through college, babe. Not loads of it, but enough for it to be ‘unhealthy.’ And then we graduated, the ‘negative influences’ went away, dad got a job, I got a job, and we kind of...just ‘forgot’ about it all. We were ‘grown ups’ now.” She made the air quotes, then took a sip of her drink and wrinkled her nose.
“When I got pregnant, your dad was earning good money already, and we decided I’d stay home and take care of you.
“Maybe he was under a lot of pressure, hon.
“Well, in closing big deals, he’d go to parties. You know how these high society parties go. Sometimes he’d do a line.” She waited, not believing she was telling me this. “Anyway...he didn’t stay hooked, but his craving for coke led him to the booze. And instead of coke, he drank.
“This was all fine until the last two years or so. He lost a deal, a big deal. He’d just bought a car, we were tight in general from some overindulgences, and the pressure got to him.
“I think, also, well...” She looked away.
“What, mom?”
“I think...he also wasn’t ready to deal with...you growing up. I think it stunned him. He wasn’t ready for it. It was too much change. You were a woman suddenly.
“He and I had had our share of problems when you were growing up. But you always kept us together. No matter what went wrong, we always kept it together for your sake because we wanted to make sure you had a good family growing up.
“Well, when the ‘evidence was in’ that you weren’t a little girl anymore—Johnny, I mean—the facade came crashing. It wouldn’t be long before you were independent. You wouldn’t need us—”
“I do need you!”
“I know you do, sweetie. I’m not talking about rationality here. I’m talking about what happened. The mind is a funny thing. When it sees threats...well...it becomes irrational.
“Our own problems came to the forefront. We realized...we realized...oh, God...we realized we no longer...‘did it’ for each other, if you know what I mean. We were done for. We’d been done for for a long time, in all honesty. We should have faced it earlier. We should have gotten counseling or something, earlier. But by then it was too late.
“We started...” She shook her head, reached for the drink and then decided against it. “We started...seeing other people. I mean, we were actual
ly separated long before your dad moved out, honey. That we slept in the same room meant nothing. We had made a tacit agreement that it was over, and that when you moved off to college, we’d go our separate ways. I’m sorry to tell you this, but it was simply all a big...fucking...lie!” Her words were laced with bitterness. And I realized she was telling herself it was a lie as much as me.
“Dad said he...cheated on you. But you knew?”
She looked up at me with hollow eyes. “He...did. He cheated on me. But I also cheated on him, sweetie. I’m ashamed to say it, but you asked, and I think it’s time we gave you the truth. I won’t go into the details, but the first affairs on both our parts were secretive. Later on, once we’d faced the fact that we were headed for a possible...divorce...one day, well, then we just simply accepted that we would be seeing other people.
“We agreed, openly, that we’d never bring that other person home. We didn’t want to confuse you.
“Fat good it did. I think we confused you more by holding onto the facade.
“We imploded. Everything imploded. You can’t be sleeping with someone else and still sharing a bed with your spouse. Consensual or not, it destroyed us. It was a cancer that ate us up from inside. We felt guilty, we felt guilty about all of it. We felt guilty about how we’d failed you as parents, and we felt guilty to each other. That’s when your dad’s boozing got out of control. And that’s when he started doing the lines on his own—not only a random one every six months or so.
“I’m as much to blame as he is, honey.”
She sobbed desperately. She looked at her liquor glass for a second, then up at me. “Could you get me some water? And...” She grabbed the glass and gave it to me. “And pour this out. I think I’ve had enough.”
I held my mom on the couch after that, and she fell asleep in my arms.
The next morning, mom was already up when I got out of bed. She’d made pancakes and set them in front of me. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d cooked me breakfast. It had been cereal for so many years.
She sipped a coffee while I ate.
When I was done, she kissed me on the forehead, then held me. I felt her trembling as she did it.
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