by Julia Kent
“Yes. Jane got it into her minivan for me and we went to the fair. Calvin had a booth. We started to chat and he invited me to come over to his business and see his stuffed lizard—”
“That’s what he calls it?” I cracked.
Silence.
“Oh, Darla Jo,” she said, starting to giggle. “More like a stuffed Gila monster.”
Great. Now we were comparing my future stepdaddy’s cock to reptiles. I couldn’t win.
“Anyhow,” I said, cutting her off with a nervous glance at everything in the room, “he proposed? Isn’t that sudden?”
“We been datin’ for six months. When you’re my age, that’s like two years in your twenties. He’s a sweet man and he’s lonely, too. His wife died of cancer a couple years ago. We need each other. We love each other,” she said shyly.
All my sadness went gooey on me. She finally said something I understood, completely.
Sometimes you just love someone and that’s that.
“Mama, I’m so happy for you,” I said, really meaning it this time.
Her voice choked up. “Thank you, honey. I’m happy for me, too. Mike moved out to go live with his woman, and now it’s time for me to move out and go live with my man.”
The world spun again. I wished it would stay in one place. When did the fucking planet get ADHD and start bouncing all over the place?
“You’re moving out? Of the trailer?” Could Mama change my life any more? Damn.
“Yep. I’m moving in with Calvin. He has a real house and it’s handicapped accessible.” She said that the way Joe talked about his new Beemer, like it was a luxury option like heated seats.
“That’s great.” And it really was. “But what about the trailer?”
“I’m selling it to Jane.”
“Jane? Jane? Her asshole husband’s coming to live in my old house?” No way I wanted Jared the abusive fuckface here.
“No. Just Jane and her kids. No husband.”
That news felt like a thunderclap in my head. “What? She finally left him?”
Mama sighed. “Not quite. Boy, it’s a long story, and I’m getting tired. Only so much excitement this old woman can take.”
“Wait! You can’t leave me hanging like this, Mama! What happened with Jane?” The whole reason me and Jane stopped being friends was because I couldn’t stand how her husband treated her. Seeing the bruises on her and watching her make excuses was just too much.
“Jared finally took things too far,” she said simply. “He beat the shit out of Jane so badly she passed out, then he took off. Those poor babies were alone for hours. Her three year old was found wandering along the interstate by Davey. The other one’s not quite two.”
My body went cold. “The boys okay?” I remembered sweet little Lucas, who wasn’t even two when I moved to Boston. Jane was pregnant then. Knowing she had two boys made me feel old. And guilty. Because maybe Mama and my friend needed me more than I realized.
Her words came out in a rush of relief, “Yes, thank God. Davey’s a fucking hero around here now. His head is the size of the Goodyear Blimp.”
Davey was my ex. My aunt Josie’s ex, too. Don’t ask. He’s a mall cop who caught me fucking Trevor at a rest area the night I picked Trevor up while he was hitchhiking naked.
See? I said don’t ask.
“Davey found little Lucas wandering on the road? Then what happened?”
“He knew right away it was Jane’s boy. Took him straight home. Found her other baby, Dominick, crying in a playpen and Jane all bloody on the ground. Called the police and got her to the hospital. Thank God, too, because she was bleeding. Bad. Would have bleed out and died if Davey hadn’ta got there.”
I wanted to climb through the phone, come to Ohio and track down the piece of shit myself and beat him to death. “Jared beat her that bad?”
“Bad enough for her to miscarry. That’s where the bleeding came from.”
“Oh, God.”
“And Davey’s been right by her side this whole time. Won’t leave her. Jared’s gone and disappeared, and Jane don’t want to live in her house no more. Can’t afford it, neither. So she and Davey want to buy this trailer and live here.”
“She and Davey?”
Mama snorted, then inhaled. Her next words came out like smoke rings. “Yeah. See what I mean? You never know when love’s gonna hit you. Can’t pick who you fall in love with.”
No kidding.
“Davey’s gonna live in my old house?”
“Get over it, Darla. But now that you mention it, I’ll be selling this place, so you need to come home for the wedding and also to get all your shit outta here.”
“My shit? I moved it when I came to Boston.”
“Not all of it. You got your Beanie Baby collection and everything out in the potting shed.”
Dumbstruck. No other word for how I felt. “Wait a minute. Hold on. Mike moved out. You’re getting married. Jane and Davey are together and now I have to clear out my childhood home because—” I couldn’t finish my own sentence.
“Because people change and life goes on, Darla,” Mama said, like some wise old woman on a television sitcom where most people get their advice these days.
“It’s not right.”
“You’re not the only one who gets to go off and live your life.”
I digested that for a couple seconds. My stomach growled.
“I know,” I finally admitted.
“And now you got an excuse to come home and see me. And Calvin. And your new stepsister!”
“Huh?”
“She was in school with you. Says she remembers you. Nice girl, if a little weird.”
“Weird?”
“Jenna dresses up as video game people. I don’t understand it, but Calvin says it’s harmless. Something about costume play.”
A shiver ran through me. “She don’t dress up in life-sized animal costumes, does she? Like chipmunks and rabbits and stuff? And go to that big convention in Pittsburgh every year?” If the taxidermist’s daughter turned out to be a Furry, so help me God.
“No,” Mama laughed. “Not that. She just dyes her hair different colors and wears green hats and tutus and something called ‘steampunk.’”
“Cosplay?” I asked.
“Yes! That’s it. She does cosplay. Whatever the hell that means. She’s nice enough, but quiet. Works at the Walmart and goes to Cleveland all the time. Wants to go to art school some day and make video games.”
Good for her. Man, it was hard enough growing up in Peters as the daughter of “poor Charlie and Cathy,” and as Marlene’s niece, but can you imagine being the daughter of the town taxidermist?
Wouldn’t everyone tell you to get stuffed, like, a thousand times a day?
“You need to bring your boyfriend when you come to my wedding,” Mama declared.
Which one? I nearly blurted out, but thank God I was too shocked by everything else I’d learned on this fine phone call to actually say it.
“My boyfriend?”
“Yes. You need a proper escort.”
How ’bout two?
“Is Trevor free? Can he leave law school for a week and come here?”
“When you gettin’ married?”
“Early May.”
“That’s soon!”
“We don’t want to wait.”
“Why? This a shotgun wedding, Mama? You pregnant?” She had me young, and I knew technically she could still have a baby, but damn.
She laughed, the sound wheezy and uncomfortable. “Hell, no. No more babies. We use condoms.”
I did not need to know that detail.
“But not the mint ones. Boy, learned that the hard way. You were right about that, Darla. I wish I’d listened to you last year when you told me those were for going down only. Boy do those things burn—”
AAAAIIIIIEEEEEE.
“Mmmm,” was all I could manage.
“Anyhow, we just want to make it official. Nothing fancy. We’re get
ting married on a Friday afternoon. Potluck reception at the church hall. We’re honeymooning at Niagara Falls. Got to leave early Saturday morning ’cause we got a great rate on a hotel room for Saturday and Sunday only.”
Honeymoon. My mama said “honeymoon.”
“This is really happening,” I whispered.
“Yes, it is,” Mama said back quietly. “I can’t wait to see you and Trevor. I’m about to call Josephine next and ask her to come, too. Bring that wonderful doctor she’s marrying.”
Josie needs that Darth Vader bad news ringtone, too.
“I’m sure she’ll just love that,” I said.
“Marlene has been itching to get her hands on Alex,” Mama confessed.
“I’ll bet she has.” Oh, Lordy.
“Darla Jo, I hope this isn’t too much of a shock.”
Understatement of the fucking century.
“Uh...”
“But I’m happy. And I want my only daughter to be here and see me get married off. And get your shit out of my house.”
My mama always was practical like that.
“Will you be there?” she asked.
A thousand thoughts filled my brain so fast they pushed into my blood, refugees from a mind that couldn’t hold them all in. The messages coursed through me, seeking absorption and integration, to be heard and known and felt and understood, all impossible tasks for a simple, single body like mine. I was reeling. Absolutely reeling, and yet the answer was right there.
I knew what I had to say.
“I wouldn’t miss it for all the world, Mama.”
Trevor
Some phone calls are harder to make than others, and this particular phone call was nearly impossible to make. My fingers hesitated over the glass screen, finally, grudgingly, pushing the one button needed for the most-used contact in my phone.
Darla.
My mom’s text was clear.
Dinner. Their house. Bring my girlfriend.
My girlfriend.
Fuck.
They knew about Darla. Mom and Dad had met her at a handful of concerts we’d performed, especially once they heard that Liam’s dad, Garrett, had gone to our big show. It just wouldn’t do, then, to appear unsupportive, so suddenly the world I’d carefully compartmentalized began to cross over.
The lines blurred.
The divisions became messy.
Law doesn’t allow for that kind of mess. Society can be chaotic. Civilization and its discontents isn’t just the name of a book by Sigmund Freud; it’s the entire reason for law. When I sit in a class or work on a case, I know that I’m making order out of chaos. It’s just enough like being a lesser god that it feels divine. I’m the boss. I’m in complete control of my own analysis, my flawless (I hope) logic carrying the day.
And if I’m wrong, I regroup, reanalyze, and push forward.
Having Mom and Dad push hard against my boundary between them and my relationship with Joe and Darla doesn’t have a series of court cases to provide precedent.
My entire threesome with Joe and Darla is pure vigilantism.
I’m an emotional outlaw.
“Hey, babe. You naked? Something wrong? Why you calling. Need some phone sex?”
“Hi, Darla? This is Garret McCarthy calling,” I joked.
“Oh, fuck me with a chainsaw, Mr. McCarthy! I didn’t mean to say all that a minute ago,” she said. Then I heard her pause.
“You knew it was me,” I said.
“Caller ID. Can’t prank anyone anymore when you have an avatar and everything. What’s up? You only ever call me for phone sex. Otherwise you just text.”
“I, um, had a talk with my mom today,” I said.
“Everything okay? Something wrong with Rick?” Darla loves my older brother, who is autistic and in a local group home. She’s been teaching him the piano parts to go along with a bunch of our songs, although you don’t really have to teach Rick. He can hear a piece of music a couple of times and then play it nearly perfectly. He’s a savant.
“No, Rick’s fine.”
“Then why do you sound like someone’s died?”
Because that’s what this feels like.
“My mom wants me to bring my girlfriend over for dinner.”
“Okay, so bring her over,” Darla joked.
I snorted. “This is awkward.”
“It is?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Just what are you getting at, Trevor? Are you saying you don’t want me to go? That I’m not your girlfriend? I live with you and Sam and Amy now. It’s kind of a thing.”
“No, it’s not that. I want you there,” I protested. “It’s just...she has no idea about Joe.”
“Duh. You two won’t tell your parents about me.”
“That’s not true,” I growled back. “I did tell my parents about you. Mom asked for you by name.”
The pause that greeted me made me hold my breath.
“Fair enough. How does Joe feel about this? Is he upset about not going?”
“I haven’t told him.”
“He’s going to blow his fucking stack.”
“I know.” Joe’s jealousy was, to put it mildly, an issue. He was in his second year at Penn Law and a six hour train ride away. He hated that Darla and I lived together and he was the tag-along third. That wasn’t true emotionally, no mater how many times we tried to explain it to him. By now, I’d expected him to bolt and break up with us.
As we got older and our relationship matured, one thing stayed true: we never knew what Joe really felt.
“If you start presenting me to your parents as your girlfriend—and only your girlfriend—it’ll cause waves.”
“Too late.”
She sighed. “I’ll go to dinner at your parents’ house. Sure. A good home-cooked meal ain’t something you turn down,” she joked. “But why did you feel like you needed to call me for something like this?”
Because I needed to hear your voice.
The words stuck in my throat, raging and hard like a boner you can’t control. Why couldn’t relationship dynamics line up like revised state code?
“Because you sound like a woman who needs to be told to take off her clothes,” I said in my best phone sex voice.
“Now?”
“Do it,” I commanded.
“Okay,” she said slowly, “but I don’t think the cashier at the grocery store here is going to like that one bit.”
The sound of electronic beeping came through the phone as Darla snickered.
What a coincidence. I was at the grocery store. Actually, the liquor store. Same thing. I was walking to the cash register with my two six packs. “Do it,” I demanded.
“You’re kidding.” Her voice went from playful to serious.
“If you loved me, you’d strip naked right now in front of the melon display.”
“If I loved humankind I would not strip naked in front of anyone. It’s April. People will be blinded by my white belly.” Darla’s voice projected loudly out of my phone.
The cashier gave me a funny look. I stared back, hard, and gave her a smile that didn’t touch my eyes. She looked away and rang up my beer nervously.
“I’m not really gonna get naked and weird in here,” she said to me. The person behind me in line perked up and began to listen in that fake way, where they pretended not to listen.
The cashier swiped my card and gave me a shaky smile.
“I’m just having phone sex with my boyfriend,” I heard Darla say to someone.
“Are you telling them we’re having phone sex?”
The cashier’s jaw dropped. Someone behind me whispered, “Isn’t that the singer from that band? The one we saw last week? The night you puked all over the side of Matt’s car?”
“Trevor Connor?” a girl’s voice behind me whispered.
Oh, shit. Caught. Going out in public in our neighborhood near the colleges in Boston was becoming a landmine these days. As the band grew in notoriety, our privacy shrunk. T
hat’s the trade off. A guy couldn’t try to get his woman off using a phone while grocery shopping without having a group of fans attack him.
“Hi,” I said, turning around and flashing a group of giggling young women a quick smile.
“Who you ‘hi-ing’?” Darla’s voice sharpened. I sighed on the inside.
Joe wasn’t the only one who could get insanely jealous.
“Mrs. McCarthy. Just ran into her.”
“She grab your ass and tell you what a bad girl she’s been?”
I snorted as the cashier ripped the receipt from the register and handed it to me like I was robbing her at gunpoint and the receipt was a pile of money I demanded. “No, she did not grab my ass.”
Giggles turned to snorting and the sound of fingers smashing against glass.
Great. I was being videotaped from behind.
“I’ll grab your ass if you’re feeling neglected, Trevor,” someone said. My skin began to prickle, my ear attached to my phone, and if Darla could have teleported herself through my operating system she would have given the owner of the mouth that made that comment a smackdown.
“You being ogled?” she asked.
“Something like that,” I mumbled as I pinned the phone between my shoulder and ear and snatched the two six packs off the counter. The parking lot was packed as I made my way down the road, neck starting to ache. I was only two blocks from the apartment.
Shuffling sounds behind me made me stop and turn.
Five. There were five of them, following me.
What the fuck?
I turned away and kept walking. They stayed a respectful ten feet or so behind me, like I was the king and decorum required it.
“Trevor?” Darla’s voice softened. “You okay?”
I couldn’t walk quickly with the phone like this while carrying two six packs. I shoved one under my arm and grabbed the phone with my now free hand, picking up my pace.
“Spare change, man? Got fifty cents so I can buy a beer?” a street beggar asked as I paused to shift my load.
I looked at all the bottles in my arms. Fuck. Normally they bag everything, but the cashier had been a wreck and I just took them by the handles. I pinned the phone to my shoulder again and grabbed the neck of a bottle, handing it to the guy.
“Here.”
“FREE BEER!” The beggar’s gravelly voice called out, street people coming out of cracks in the sidewalks. I swear, that’s what it seemed like. They appeared as if summoned by a demigod.
