by Paloma Meir
“I’m sorry, Serge. It gets hard sometimes.” Her expression relaxed. “Our whole lives you never had time for me, and now you do. I’m just going to be happy for that.”
“Nothing you’re saying makes sense.” I put my seatbelt back on, took her hand in mine and drove.
“I know,” I felt her lips on my cheek and I liked it. “Where are we going today?”
“My mother’s house for lunch. She misses you and doesn’t understand why you haven’t called her.” I wanted to ask her why she was hiding from so many people but didn’t ask. I thought her morning with Veronica was a good first step in being social again, “But first we need to stop at the drug store. She asked me to pick up some fish oil on the way up.”
“Okay, Serge.” She linked her arm through mine and put her head on my shoulder as we drove up to Sunset.
…
“They’re are so many kinds, Omega 3's, 6's and 9's, EPA's... which one Serge? Should I be taking them too?” She asked on bended knee as she surveyed the array of oils on the bottom shelf.
“Get a 3/6/9 blend, good for your heart, your brain. You don’t need them yet. Just eat salmon three times a week, and you’ll be fine, rich with the fatty oils.” I myself was looking at the top shelf selection of erection enhancements seeing if anyone had bothered to make one that did the reverse. No such luck.
“Come on, Zelda, grab one. They’re not a rack of dresses.” I looked down at her but my eye caught sight of someone standing at the end of the aisle staring at us. I turned around to acknowledge them, catch them in their moment of voyeurism, and get them to look away from us. Strangers were always staring at Zelda, with her model-like proportions, and pure ivory beauty. She never noticed the gawking, but I did and it always made me uncomfortable.
It wasn’t a stranger at the end of the aisle, and it wasn’t someone gawking at Zelda. It was Celena in blue jeans and a tight black sweater as tall as Zelda in her motorcycle boots and skinny again. Her hair she had always worn short was long, close to her waist. She stared at me, the gold flecks in her eyes twinkling, but her body was frozen, unmoving, much like mine.
I had run into her mother the year before. I knew she was okay, and doing her medical residency at Stanford. Her medication worked, only needing a few adjustments now and then. She lived a sane productive life, and until that moment in the drugstore I wished her well. I had forgiven her for Brendan, for all of it.
But looking at her standing calmly, serenely not more than fifteen away I didn’t believe it. Time stopped as I waited for her to shout out rude words, throw her crazed damaged mind my way. This was the moment Zelda popped up in front of me, blocking my view of the predator Celena, proudly holding up her carefully selected bottle of supplements.
“These ones are mercury-free. They’re from the salmon in the North Atlantic.” She looked so pleased with herself, immune to the surrounding danger.
“Good job, Zelda.” I placed my arm around her and pulled her close to my chest protectively, a firm grip I had on her. I stared at Celena warning her with what I hoped were death rays shooting from my eyes, to not come near us.
“Hmmm,” he cooed, “I like when you hold me like this. I feel so safe.” Celena’s mouth opened in surprise as she saw whom I held against me.
“That’s my job, to keep you safe,” I said loudly for Celena, not for Zelda.
Celena blinked and her head jerked back, as if I had wounded her, insulted her by thinking that she was a danger to anybody. You followed Zelda, you stalked her and my sister, hurt Brendan badly, trapped me into a relationship with the omission of your destructive ways I wanted to scream out. I couldn’t though, and I didn’t need to. I could see by the look in her eyes she knew exactly what I was thinking, I knew all about her crippling cruelty of her last summer of insanity.
She looked down at the floor, but still wouldn’t leave.
“Is someone out to get me, Serge?” Zelda laughed, and I pulled her closer, possibly obstructing her breath, “The way you hold me, it's so comforting... All the choices I’m making... I know they’re the right ones... For Louisa and myself... but I question them, as I should. It’s not only me anymore, but Louisa and even Astrid...”
I could not believe this was the moment she was going to open up to me, tell me what was really going on her life.
“I wake-up some mornings thinking I’m still in Madrid, everything perfect, my happy home with my studio across the hallway. I miss my studio and Silviana. Why did my life have to change? It’s my own fault... I don’t miss Paolo, and it hurts me more that I don’t than it would hurt if I did miss him. Maybe my plan is not the right one... being with you makes me question it. No, it’s the right one...” Her mouth moved to my neck, and her words became garbled as I stared at Celena, who was looking up at me again, right in the eyes. I willed her away. It didn’t work. A stone she had turned into standing in the almost empty drug store. “Thank you for not pushing me, for letting me work it out in my own head.” Zelda said as she moved her head back up to my ear.
Celena’s face fell, her eyes watered. She put her hand to heart and mouthed, “I’m sorry," turned and walked away. All well and good. Her apology appeared sincere. She was not the mentally tangled, hurt girl anymore. I had lost my mind, not her, as we had stood in our stand off.
My paranoia and hate for her evaporated with every step she took away from me, but annoyance filled me as I realized the moment between Zelda and I had passed. “I would never 'push you' Zelda," I would if it would work, I thought but did not say, “You know I’m here for you, always on your side.” I released her from my grip and took her hand, “Come on let’s go.”
More mistakes on my part, it wasn’t that hard to get her to open up. It was just that nobody other than my sister liked to do that to her.
…
Paying attention to the conversation at lunch wasn’t something I could do with my paranoid thoughts of Marianne or Jimena bursting through the front door to complete my day of girlfriends past. I didn’t miss much from the bits and pieces that pierced my distracted thoughts.
AA talk. Zelda loved it as my mother’s sober houseguests told their stories of debauchery, waking up inside the homes of old Hollywood producers, nude with drugs and cash all around them not knowing how they had gotten there. It was all a little too much for lunch conversation, but I was used to it. And if it helped them as it had my mother then who was I to question it?
They talked about being grateful a lot. I could get behind that. I was grateful the predatory men who littered our city were not abusing these girls anymore. The men who preyed on the young women who arrived every day to Los Angeles to make their dreams come true. only to be sidetracked by the “glamorous” life they offered.
I’ve been hearing the variation of the same story since coming back from Peru. I could tell it for them at this point, only the insignificant details changed.
Zelda never told her story. Her one contribution to the group was always the same; her final drink at Danny’s house. She would tell it in a big way, exaggerating the details. She would say she drank the whole bottle of vodka, that they had dragged her away in the car as she threatened to kick the windows out, cursing until they had to hold her down, almost sedate her.
None of it was true. She had been caught by Danny’s mother, sat patiently through her intervention, went to the kitchen, took maybe three gulps of the vodka, and docilely went to rehab holding hands with Danny’s dad while singing songs with him on the car ride to the hospital. The whole last drink episode had been harder on Danny than her. She had been relieved to get away, put an end to her destruction and secrets. Danny was left with guilt.
I worried the first time I heard her tell the embellished story when she was sixteen. I went to my mother and ratted her out. I was nervous Zelda would start drinking again by violating the first rule of AA, being honest. My mother assured me Zelda was completely honest where it mattered, in the meetings. She told me not to worry so much. Okay
Mom.
Zelda had been holding my pinky finger in hers under the table for the whole lunch. So it wasn’t too bad. I was relieved when the two girls, Bethany and Samantha left for a photo shoot they had the next day in Palm Springs.
“You’re so quiet, Serge," my mother said.
“I don’t have much to contribute,” I laughed. “I've only been drunk once. It was comical but uneventful. Bad hangover.” I smiled and looked over at Zelda. “That’s quite a story you tell.”
“That’s the way it felt, Serge.” She leaned on my shoulder giggling.
“I remember him being worried about that. He was always worried about you, Zelda, about everybody growing up. It wasn’t easy for him... having me for a mother, but look at him now, so relaxed,” my mother said as my father who had spoken maybe a dozen words the whole lunch, sat beside her.
“I think it’s still hard for him,” Zelda said, “He never talks about it.”
“He doesn’t, does he? I tried to get him and his sister to go to the Alanon meeting when they were still kids, but neither one would go. He told me one day after asking him for the tenth time that me being sober was enough, and as long as I stayed that way he would be fine. Whenever I have a bad day I remember that.” She reached across the table and patted my hand. “Now Carolina... I don’t know if we’ll ever be okay. I try, and so does she...”
“I think that’s the problem,” Zelda interrupted her, “The two of you, you and Carolina, are so loud... Serge gets lost...”
I could not believe they were having this conversation as if I weren’t sitting with them. AA people required a lot of patience. I smiled reminding myself how the program had helped them.
“That’s a good point, Zelda...”
“That’s why he always feels the need to help people,” she interrupted my mother again. I squeezed her pinky hoping to silence her. It didn’t work. “Like Marianne, after we were released from rehab."
“What do you mean, Zelda?”
“He was with her all the time. She was never right for him. She wasn’t very smart... He did all of her schoolwork, and the way she would dress.” She nodded her head and rolled her eyes as if Marianne had committed a crime against humanity instead of wearing jeans and t-shirts.
“Marianne was a lovely girl. That didn’t have anything to do with us.”
“You wouldn’t have thought that before you quit drinking.”
“Zelda!” my mother screeched.
“Zelda, I still talk to her all the time,” I broke out into laughter over how ridiculous she was behaving, cutting through the tension of her feisty outburst.
“I’m sure you do, Serge. What if she needed something? Who would help her?”
“You sound very jealous,” I leaned over and whispered in her ear.
“Oh look, Bernard. They still whisper to each other...” I heard my mother say to my father.
“Hardly, Serge. You wouldn’t notice her if she walked into the room right now,” she whispered back. Her lips lingered on my earlobes. I couldn’t take it anymore, sitting next to her, not being able to touch her.
“Zelda,” I sat up in my chair, “Do you want to come upstairs with me and help me pack up my telescope? I need to take it back to Malibu.”
“Yes.” She shot up out of her seat, my pinky still stuck in hers for my parents to see, pulling me up along with her. My mother couldn’t have been more shocked with the way her mouth hung open, “Come on.” Her pinky hold slipped to a full grip of my hand, and she ran me out of the dining room and up the stairs.
“Slow down, Zelda,” I laughed, as we approached my boyhood room.
“No,” she threw open the door, dragging me in, and shut the door behind her. “Serge look,” she pointed to my bed, “It’s a bed. No more hard ground, no more gear shift between us.” Her black cardigan was off before I could respond.
“You want to do this?” I pulled off my old team soccer sweatshirt. No lock on the door. I took the chair from under my desk and put it up against it, under the knob. “Come here.”
“I want you to kiss me. That’s all I know.” She wrapped her arms around me, our noses touching, our bodies pressed tightly together.
“I want it all, Zelda." I kissed her throat, pushing against her, “All the sugar, all the sweets you are,” I walked her backwards towards the bed as my mouth moved to her mouth.
I kissed her hard on the bed, our bodies grinding against each other’s. Her hands wrapped around my back, her hips raising up, moving gently against my groin, on and on, sighing heavily when our lips would part.
“Serrrrrrge,” she cooed, “I don’t know... maybe... keep kissing me.” Instead of kissing her, I sat up beside her, and looked down at the beauty of her speechless, breathing a little too hard.
She hadn’t worn a bra since the day up on Mulholland when she had taken it off for me. Although I hadn’t touched her that way since then, I could see the outline of her nipples through the sheer white silk t-shirt she wore.
“You’re perfect Zelda, in every way.” I didn’t know where I was going with her as I looked down at her relaxed face, her lips swollen from our rough kisses.
I took my thumb and traced her nipple. She moaned moving her long legs my way, “Do you like this Zelda?”
She didn’t answer as I looked into her dreamy eyes, instead she shifted her hips my way, “I’ll take that as an enthusiastic yes.” I moved my hand away from her chest and ran it up her black stocking covered leg. I lifted up her black pleated mini-skirt revealing that the stockings stopped at the top of her thighs and her underwear, if you could call it that, was a tiny triangle of black silk.
I came close to ejaculating at the sight of her dove white hips framed with the stockings and triangle of silk, “The things I want to do...” I ran my finger underneath the band. My hand so rough against her soft skin. I leaned down to kiss her stomach, my hand ready to pull down the fabric between us, with plans to never leave my old room. So fitting for us to come together, really be together there, but I caught sight of her eyes.
There was no doubt that she didn’t want me stop, but I could also see a trace of anxiety, more of giving into the inevitable, the passion of the moment than it being a clear decision. A choice she was making on her own. “It’s getting late," I leaned down and kissed the area above the line of her underwear, my lips gently caressing her, and pulled her skirt back down, “Let’s go, get you home to Louisa.”
I stood up and went to my bookshelf and took down an old favorite Isaac Asimov book. I opened it to the middle and began to read, hoping to take my mind off of her, calm myself down. I had started wearing tight briefs instead of my preferred boxers a few days before to hide the constant effect she had on me. It worked out pretty well until that day. There was no way I could go downstairs in the state I was in.
“Thank you,” she startled me as I read a passage from The Foundation series.
“No problem, Zelda,” I didn’t look up.
“Why are you reading?” she took the book from my hand.
“Trying to calm myself down before we go downstairs and say good-bye to my parents.”
She put the book on the desk, stood too close to me, and ran her fingers through my short hair.
“That’s not helping me,” I laughed a fake laugh to lighten the mood as she stared into my eyes, a little blankly. I couldn’t read her expression.
“Zelda,” I hesitated, nervous with her intense gaze, “Do you remember the day you left for Spain? When I came over to help you with your luggage? Do you remember our good-bye?” I found myself suddenly shy but pushed through, “Did you want something from me? Did you want...”
“I don’t know,” she interrupted me, her eyes stared hypnotically into mine, “I felt like you saw me, really saw me for the first time.”
“I wanted to have sex with you,” I broke from her soulful staring contest and truthfully I felt embarrassed admitting to any previous carnal feelings for her.
“If that�
��s what you wanted, that’s what you would have done," she stepped away to the little mirror by my closet my mother had put up for her sober houseguests and brushed her fingers through her hair, straightening the mess from our tumble on the bed.
I slipped on my sweatshirt and didn’t contemplate what she had said. I didn’t really understand it. I felt electricity between us as we walked down the stairs. I was sure anyone looking at us would see. I felt a little shaky too. I was sure she felt the same way, but who really knew?
Rounding the bottom of the stairs, I saw my mother sitting on the sofa, looking up at us, her legs crossed, a tentative expression on her face. She stood up as Zelda took my hand, squeezing it as if we were in trouble. “Zelda go to the kitchen. Bernard is making a plate for you to take back for Louisa. A loaf of banana bread too. You’re going to have to bring her over soon. The pictures are not enough.”
Zelda carried around the black and white photos I had seen on the breakfast in Malibu. I never questioned her lack of current pictures. I had decided that the birth of Louisa was the defining moment of her life. I would be right and wrong about that.
