by Julia Kent
“I’ll get water for you, honey! Just a minute!” Carol tells him. She says quietly into the phone, “He’s incarcerated. The pay is from his wages at a prison in Ohio.”
“WHAT? Does Mom know?” For years Mom has made jokes about Todd finding his way to prison, but we all wrote her off as just being angry.
“Not yet. I’ve barely found a way to manage all this filthy lucre. Let me breathe a few times before tackling Mom and Dad’s reaction.”
“Don’t run out hiring financial planners just yet,” I crack.
Her bitter laugh makes me cringe. “Yeah. Right. Now his back support obligation is reduced!”
“Eleven dollars? Oh, Carol. That won’t even buy a pack of diapers.” Mom and Dad help her as much as possible, but…
“That’s why I need to get Tyler toilet trained,” she says with a resigned tone.
I feel myself weighed down by the weight of her weariness. Suddenly my date with Declan feels trivial. A bit flighty and selfish. I want to tell Carol I’ll help her.
“I can’t tonight,” I tell her. It feels icky, like I’m rubbing her nose in my happiness and romantic promise.
“No, no, Shannon, don’t feel bad!” she protests. “You should go out with him! What’s he like? Does he have a helicopter?”
What is it with the women in my family and their obsession with men who ride in helicopters? “He’s hot,” I whisper.
“Hot Guy!” Amanda shouts from behind me.
“Hey!” I shriek. “Josh is the one who does that to people!”
“Hot Guy!” he says in a falsetto, standing right next to Amanda when I turn around, heart thudding out of my chest. Assholes. Maybe they’re both part vampire. And not the hot, sparkly kind.
“I am having a private conversation,” I say archly.
“About Hot Guy,” Greg says, poking his head in my doorway. Now all three of them are staring at me.
“Hey!” Who knew private was code for everyone flood Shannon’s office and turn into MI5 spies?
Carol is laughing hysterically on the phone.
“You can talk about Hot Guy whenever you want on company time, Ms. Three Point Seven Million,” Greg croons. Eww. It was so much better when he made us reuse plastic silverware and groaned about toner ink costs.
“What does he mean, three point…huh?” Carol asks as I wave Josh and Amanda off like they’re evil spirits. Greg hovers. I pull a tampon out of my purse and he scurries off like a vampire walking past an Italian restaurant in Boston’s North End.
That trick works every time.
Carol’s words sink in. Discomfort slams me with full force. “Oh, uh…Declan’s company gave our company a multimillion-dollar account.”
“Because you slept with him?” Carol gasps.
“I did not sleep with him!” I shout.
“Good girl,” Greg calls back.
“Did you seriously just call her a ‘girl’?” Amanda says. I hear hushed arguments through the thin walls as Carol emits a long stream of words that sound like my mother, minus the rabid need for billionaire grandbabies named Thayer Spotterheim “Scoochy” Mayflower Vanderbilt Kennedy III.
“—and you don’t need to give it up for a business colleague just to land an account!” Carol finishes.
“You take after Dad,” I mutter. “Because Mom seems to think I should give it up so she can have her Farmington Country Club wedding.”
Carol snorts. “She didn’t like the fact that I eloped with Todd.”
“‘Eloped’ sounds so elegant. You ran off to Vegas and got married by a transgendered Elvis impersonator who moonlights as Elvira. Those pictures were…um…” I shudder.
“I know,” she sighs. “Thank God you and Amy haven’t been as stupid. Yet.” She sounds so beaten down that a wave of guilt hits me, even as I stare at the clock. 4:29 p.m. Should I be a good, supportive little sister or fake another call so I can get her off the phone and rip out of here to get home and look better for Declan?
Amanda solves that dilemma for me. “Is Carol still on the phone? And talking about her wedding?” she shrieks as she walks up behind me. “The word ‘Elvira’ must mean yes.”
“Yes.”
“Then tell her you have to go for your hot date! You have a billionaire to boink.” She makes a shooing gesture toward my door. Carol and Amanda adore each other. They have a mutual interest in mocking me endlessly whenever they’re together. I’m so glad I help people bond.
“Go! Boink! I’ll call Amanda and trick her into babysitting for me,” Carol says.
“Ooooh, good one!” I hang up before Carol changes her mind, and grab my purse. Amanda’s phone is ringing before the outer door closes behind me. I walk down the concrete hall bathed in blinking fluorescent lights and look toward the main door’s blast of sunlight through the window, the way a tiny vegetable shoot searches for the sun after it breaks through the outer shell of a seed.
And then—
I’m free.
My stomach flips like it’s an Olympic diver, and my eagerness drains as I reach my car because…this is real. Serious. I have a date with a man who wouldn’t have noticed me if he hadn’t found me hiding in a men’s-room stall with my hand down a toilet.
And yet…he’s an intelligent, respected, gorgeous man with eyes that go hot when he looks at…me? I steady my breathing and let the rush of warmth fill me.
Even as I thrust the screwdriver into the lock and turn the car on, the burst of excitement that comes from knowing that he really wants to get to know me better turns into a tingling anticipation.
Because.
Because.
I’m free.
Chapter Seven
I’m not five minutes into driving home when my phone buzzes with a text. A few months ago I decided not to answer my phone while driving, so I ignore it like Simon Cowell at a preschool holiday choir festival. Driving with a cell phone pressed to your ear isn’t illegal—yet—in Massachusetts, but I can’t climb into a limo without ripping my skirt, or walk across a room in heels taller than a grasshopper, so should I really try to manage a two-ton vehicle and a mobile call at the same time?
My hands feel like bricks—white-knuckled bricks—by the time I pull into my parking spot and ding a plastic trash can as I slam the car into park and grab the phone. Three messages.
All from Steve.
“Blah,” I say, tossing the phone back in my purse. As if I have time to even think about Steve right now. Somehow, in under an hour, I have to go from an ogre to a princess. And I’m no Cameron Diaz. No amount of effort is going to transform me from Plain Old Shannon to Imaginary Perfect Woman when it comes to this date with Declan.
Deep breath.
My mind seems to know this. I am enough. I—as I am—can have a wonderful time with a man a few years older than me, considerably more sophisticated, excessively more successful, and I can go toe to toe with him in the boardroom and the bedroom.
My entire body tightens. And not in the good way.
Can I?
Twelve deep breaths. That throat-tightening feeling, the ribcage that is a little too small, the spacey eyeball-floating thing—all of it recedes a bit. I am freaking out in my crappy car with minutes ticking away before Declan will show up, and somehow the only thoughts I can experience are those that undermine me. Ridicule me.
Invalidate me.
Who do I want to be? This? Quivering Shannon with insecurity issues, stuck in some kind of purgatory from Steve and filled with his ideas about who I am? Goofy Shannon with a hovermother and two sisters who view me as comedic relief?
How about I start seeing myself as Declan sees me. But what, exactly, does that mean? He’s funny, intense, handsome, accomplished, and interesting. The only way to know what he thinks about me is to spend more time with him and to experience it. Tonight I will do exactly that. We’ll talk, we’ll walk, we’ll dance that careful dance that crosses boundaries between our distinct selves as we perform a ritual.
Fo
r millennia men have pursued women with varying signals and women have responded with a plethora of replies. We’re just a man and a woman with a spark between us. Whether it lights something on fire depends entirely on how strong that connection really is.
Or whether we can rub something hard enough to light a blaze.
Bzzzz.
Steve again. I smack my forehead with a quietly-muttered “Aha!”, because that’s my answer. I keep asking myself what on earth makes Declan want to date me.
And Steve, of all the people in the world, is the key.
Mr. Invalidator is undermining me by simply communicating with me. It’s not even intentional. The content of what he’s trying to communicate doesn’t matter. Our shared past means that even being bzzzz’d by him carries an emotional message.
I snatch up the phone and, without reading his texts, delete them all. Then I delete Steve as a contact from my phone.
It feels like flushing a deeply clogged toilet after working for hours with a plunger and a snake to reach the goal. Whoosh!
Should have done that last year, but I couldn’t. It felt like cutting off the stump of an amputated limb.
I close my eyes and feel. Feel. The air goes in as I inhale and I imagine breathing with Declan, our air mingling, intentions and suppositions and hopes and interest all swirling before us in an atmosphere of mutual enjoyment.
My eyelids flutter and as my eyes drift around I can see him, casual and smiling, laughing and quiet, nuzzling against me, my view obscured by the soft wave of his hair, by the layout of his eyelashes against his cheek, the look of light stubble across an iron jaw.
I inhale deeply and remember his scent, the mix of citrus and spice and something deeper, fragrant and infused with promise. The taste of wine on his lips, how fire and grapes mixed in our kisses to make a kind of ambrosia I want to experience again. And again.
And then I run my fingers lightly across my arm and remember the weight of his hot skin against mine. His arms claiming me, hands hungry to touch more of me, to combine our flesh and to revel in the nuance and the carnal.
How it felt like finding my way to a home I never knew I had.
Tap tap tap. I turn to look toward the sound and there’s my mother’s face pressed up against the window, her makeup smearing the glass as she presses a bright red kiss on my already-dirty window. The fact that it’s off center annoys me even more.
“Hi, honey! We’re here to make sure you go on your date looking good!” She lifts up her makeup bag. It’s bigger than most NHL player duffel bags. Pink with silver buckles, that thing has more chemicals in it than a Monsanto pesticide lab.
“And my new mascara came. Four layers of color!” she squeals.
Four layers of torture and doom.
“Great,” I say weakly, grabbing my purse and climbing out of the car. “My eyelashes will cross into three states.”
Four days ago I was walking down the same apartment stairs I’m now walking up. I wore an elegant black dress, my mother embarrassed me thoroughly, I split my skirt, and I rode to one of the finest restaurants in Boston with a man I’d met just twelve hours earlier in a men’s bathroom.
And now here I am…getting dolled up again for a date with the same guy. My eyeball has barely recovered from Mom’s game of Pin the Eyeshadow on the Donkey on Monday.
She yammers a steady stream of words about Dad, yoga class, something involving the words “vaginal ultrasound” and “banana” and “online condom site.” Because none of those words should ever be uttered in sequence, I have to block it all out. My dreams, though, will be vivid tonight, because the subconscious is like Chuckles.
Eventually you pay the price for simply existing.
I walk in my front door and a lovely surprise greets me. Chuckles is smiling—smiling!—with his eyes closed and ears tucked back, sitting in my dad’s lap.
“Dad!” I shout, rushing to him. He stands and dumps Chuckles on the floor. The look Chuckles gives me convinces me that he has Feline Borderline Personality Disorder, and a chill runs through me. I’m about to be the target of one hell of a character attack.
Too bad, kitty, I think. Daddy’s little girl always prevails. I glare back at him over my dad’s shoulder as we hug and Chuckles slinks away. Ha. Score one for Shannon.
Pretty bad when the highlight of my day is beating my cat at being loved by my own father.
Dad looks…different. He’s two years older than Mom, and has that middle-age paunch all the fathers of my friend have, except for Mort Jergenson, who runs ironman triathlons and makes my dad mutter about “showoffs” and how “only a trust fund baby could do that marathon shit” under his breath.
He conveniently ignores the fact that Amy does that marathon shit, too. She didn’t qualify for the Boston Marathon last year, and everyone was sad for her when she got the news. Mom, however, was a sobbing mess on race day when the bombings happened, and for two hours no one could locate Amy, who had been in the city along the race path to cheer friends on. Fortunately, she was fine and back at mile twenty in the crowd.
This year she did run. And Dad couldn’t be prouder.
If there’s one thing my family has taught me, it’s that being a hypocrite is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, some people polish their badges and wear them like an award.
“Dad, what did you change?” I scrutinize him as we stand in the living room. He’s beaming at me and Mom scowls.
“Look closely,” he urges. Mom says nothing. That, alone, sends chills down my spine.
I frown and squint. Something about his face has changed. The clothes are the same—old jeans and a faded blue polo shirt. The same scuffed brown boat shoes he’s owned since I’ve been alive. His hair is squirrelly and full of tight auburn curls, as always. Eyes are warm brown and hooded slightly by sagging eyelids that all my friends’ parents seem to be getting. Except for the mothers who can afford lid tucks. Then they just look REALLY EXCITED ABOUT EVERYTHING. You can tell them the tag on their shirt is showing and THEY ARE JUST SO JAZZED.
It’s like looking at a meerkat nonstop.
He rubs his chin. Then I see it. “You have a goatee!” I peer closer. “And it’s red.”
“Red” doesn’t quite describe it. Dad’s had a scruffy beard on and off for years. Gray took over at least since I was in third grade. This is a young man’s color, a vibrant red that almost belongs on a punk skateboarder.
“He did it himself,” Mom spits out, as if she were shooting a hocker ten feet in a contest. “Tell her what you used, Jason.”
“Kool-Aid!” Dad says, crowing. He plants his thick, callused hands on his hips and beams at me, proud and glowing. It dawns on me that he only comes over to our apartment when something is broken or when Amy and I invited him and Mom over for dinner. Dad doesn’t just drop in like Mom does.
“Kool-Aid?” I eye the clock on my coffee maker. 5:17 p.m. Damn. I want to talk, but…
“Yep! It looks great. Jeffrey says I’m the hippest grandpa around. And Amy agrees. Said I look like a hipster a decade ahead of my time.”
“Dad, I don’t think that was a compliment.”
He looks like I slapped him. “Why not?” The sudden look of insecurity on his face makes me feel so bad, like the day I took the car cigarette lighter to the new leather seats in his Mustang to make pretty circles. It was his first brand-new car. I was five then and didn’t know better. But now…
Mom touches his arm gently, with a great deal of pity, too. “Because ‘hipster’ means you’re trying too hard.”
“How would you know?” he growls at Mom, his eyebrows furrowing together into one big semi-gray caterpillar. He’s hurt. Why does this stuff mean so much to him? To me? Why do we change ourselves in an effort to get approval from other people? And when we don’t—or, worse, when we’re mocked—why does it trigger so much pain?
I look at the clock. 5:20.
Why am I analyzing deep philosophical questions when I have a billionaire to dry hump in f
orty minutes?
“Amy’s called me a ‘hipster’ more times than I can count,” Mom says. “Especially when I showed up for Parents Weekend at her college freshman year in an outfit from Hot Topic.”
That snaps me back to reality. “You didn’t!” Poor Amy. She never told me that story. Probably repressed it.
Dad gets a hungry look in his eyes as he combs over Mom’s body from toe to head. “She sure did. You looked like a sex kitten. Like a blonde Adrienne Barbeau. Sophia Loren. Raquel Welch.” His hand reaches for her and she steps in toward him. His palm lands on her ass. I turn away.
“Jason,” Mom coos.
Chuckles starts to gag. He’s back on the chair where Dad was sitting with him.
“See? Even Chuckles can’t stand it when his parents do this,” I mutter.
And then Chuckles vomits all over my recliner. Half a mouse’s body emerges.
“Oh, gross!” I shriek. Chuckles looks up and squints, like he’s asking me what the hell is wrong with me for not being grateful for the offering. If Clint Eastwood were a cat, he’d be Chuckles.
Go ahead. Make my day.
“Don’t you feed that poor cat?” Mom asks. Her hand is on my dad’s ass now, too, and they’re both massaging each other like asses are an endangered species and the only way to keep them alive is to rub them.
“I have a date,” I choke out. “In less than forty minutes. And if I have to watch you two making love to each other with your hands, I am going to join a convent and never touch another man for the rest of my life. But before I do that, I’ll take Chuckles’ lead and vomit.”
“We’re grown adults with a healthy sexual appetite,” Mom chides. Dad just gives her a look that makes Larry the Lounge Lizard seem prim.
But they stop touching each other. Whew.
“You’re my parents,” I snap back. “You have three kids. That means you had sex three times with a sheet covering you with a hole in it as far as I’m concerned. I can’t have images of you being all squishy and touchy-feely in my head when I’m kissing Declan!”
