by Karen Reis
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “Are we friends?”
I swallowed and nodded. “Sure.”
Sean took his hand from my shoulder and held it out to me. He wanted to shake my hand. “We’ve already met,” I said in confusion as I placed my hand in his. Once more I noticed how nicely his hand encompassed mine. He was warm too, while my hands were like ice.
Sean smiled. “I know. I just want you to know I’m not going to bite.” He shrugged. “I know I’m not the cuddliest looking person on the block.”
I couldn’t help but giggle. “I know that. Now.”
Sean’s smile grew. “Of course, now that we’re officially friends, I get to bully and lecture you about not chasing after bad guys.”
I couldn’t help but grin at his maneuvering, which made me relax, which was something of a small miracle since he was still holding my hand. “I also have mace. And I know how to take a man down. I took a class.” I was more than a little proud of that.
Sean let go of me then, which I found I did not like, and folded his arms across his chest. He looked me up and down skeptically. “Really?” he asked. There was a touch of playful sarcasm in his voice. “You took a class?”
I glared at him in mock indignation. “For your information, it was a series of classes which I passed with flying colors.”
“Have you ever used that stun gun on a real person?” Sean asked me.
“Yes I have,” I said imperiously, hitching my chin up. “It was part of the class. A couple of young guys, who I assumed were seriously strapped for cash, were paid to come in and let us shoot them so we would know what it’s like to pull the trigger and be able to do it under stress. We did the same thing with the mace. The guys wore goggles over their eyes.”
Sean didn’t say a word after my little speech. He simply looked me over, his smile fading as his eyes raked over me from my head to my toes. It made me feel very vulnerable. “So,” he said slowly. “You’re a tough girl.”
I shifted uncomfortably. I was no such thing. Still, I couldn’t help but raise my head hight and say firmly, “When I have to be.” I couldn’t help but add sheepishly, “But sometimes I’m afraid that I’m weak. Sometimes I wish I could be strong all the time.”
Sean looked at me steadily. “I think everyone fears and wishes the same thing.”
“Even you?” I asked jokingly.
“Even me,” he replied softly. He reached out and stroked my cheek with one large, stained thumb. “But that’s why we all have friends; to give us a little support and maybe some flowers when we’re sad.”
I was frozen under his touch. I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t curl my toes. I could only stare into his eyes, and he smiled a small smile at me as he traced my cheek bone down to my jaw. His touch was light and intimate. I wanted to flinch, but I forced myself not to.
“You know those dancing lessons that Genny’s forcing us to take starting tomorrow evening?” he asked quietly as he took his hand away.
Now that he wasn’t touching me, I could move once more, and I nodded. Genny wanted everyone in the wedding party to learn to waltz so we could look as good as possible for her wedding video. At her own expense, she’d booked several appointments for private group lessons at a dance studio in her neighborhood and told us that we had to go or else.
“We could ride over there together,” Sean suggested persuasively.
“It would save on gas,” I managed to say, trying to sound practical.
Sean chuckled. “Yeah, it would. So that’s a yes?”
“Okay,” I squeaked. I cleared my throat and said more normally, “That sounds like a good plan.”
Sean laughed. “See you at seven then?”
I nodded firmly. “At seven.”
I turned to go for good, terrified that Sean would touch me again, hoping that he would. But he didn’t reach out, and he didn’t say another word. He just watched me with a very satisfied look on his face as I left his apartment. I for my part was shaking from head to toe as I closed his door, and I leaned back on it and took a deep breath. What had I gotten myself into? My heart pounded as I made my way back to my own home and locked the door securely behind me.
Was I happy? I asked myself as I mechanically got ready for bed. I was too out of my depth to understand what I was feeling at that moment. Nervous, yes. Scared, yes. Hopeful?
Yes.
At the very least I knew that Genny was sure to happy over this news.
Dear Dad,
Do you know what it’s like to have the things that you love taken away for no good reason other than the fact that someone is jealous of you? Most parents would love for their kids to have a passion for books, but Nancy didn’t. Reading was difficult for her, and she admitted to me that she was jealous of my sisters’ and my own ability to lose ourselves in a book for hours on end. But instead of relishing that we could do something that she could not, what did she do? She banned books from the house. She banned the library. If we were caught with books, they were thrown into the trash, whether we owned them or not.
Music was also banned. The radio could not be turned on while we did house work. Nancy thought that that would distract us from our labors and we would slack off. She thought music promoted laziness. She thought it was a bad influence on us. But you know what kind of music we listened to. It was country music for Christ’s sake! Country music from the 90’s. I wouldn’t exactly call George Strait or Alan Jackson bad influences.
But I digress.
Laughter could also earn us Nancy’s wrath. God forbid that us girls have a good time or play together. How dare we have some measure of joy in our lives or enjoy the fact that we had a relationship with each other.
Do you know that Nancy actually told me that I have an ugly laugh? An ugly smile? Do you know that that’s the reason I don’t laugh like a normal person? I trained myself to laugh silently because I believed her. I laugh with no sound. I just simply shake as if with mirth and cover my mouth with my hand so my smile does not show.
I cry silently for the same reason. Tears would make Nancy violently angry, so I learned to cry with no sound. I hold the sound of my sobs inside. When my husband holds me when I cry, he tells me to just let it go, to let it out. He thinks that I’m trying to hold back my tears. He’s partly right. I’m ashamed to cry, but I also don’t know how to cry any other way. I’ve been too thoroughly trained.
Worse of all though, Nancy took away people that we loved. Since we couldn’t find acceptance or peace or love at home, we sought it elsewhere. And we were smart about it. We didn’t go out and hook up with guys and have sex in an effort to find love. No, we went to people who could be mother figures to us. And Nancy hated that. I personally don’t know what I would have done without Judy Sutherland. She kept me sane when otherwise I think I might have gone insane. She loved me. She listened to me. She told me hard truths sometimes. She was the parent I didn’t have at home.
I wouldn’t let Nancy drive her off, so Nancy drove me off instead.
Does that even matter to you? Do you even care?
With Much Confusion,
Your Daughter
Chapter 5
The next morning, maintenance crews came by to paint over Charles’ and Glen’s door and to board up their front window until its replacement came in. The glass was swept up, and their cars were put into the shop. I walked across the street to the drugstore and picked up a card with a happy thought inside of it and stuffed it under their door, and then I went to work. Sean wasn’t far from my thoughts all day and I wondered how it would be to dance with him. Would he step on my feet? Would I step on his? The very thought made me go into a cold sweat.
Unfortunately, while I wasn’t going to be seeing him till that evening, I had to see Dan Doherty for eight hours straight. Dan hovered nearby as I checked in books, and he watched me from across the library as I set aside books for patron holds. He didn’t talk to me; he just watched like a lousy, jingling hunter. Finally
when I was on my lunch break, he sauntered into the break room, where I was eating a tuna fish and pickle sandwich on Russian rye, sat down across from me at the table and nonchalantly opened up a can of diet orange soda.
“I’m on my 15,” he said when I gave him a questioning look.
“Hmm,” I grunted in an uninterested voice and took a bite out of my sandwich. I went back to trying to ignore him, as I’d been doing all morning.
“Sooo,” Dan said after a few minutes had passed where I refused to make eye contact with him. He put his hands on the edge of the table and tilted his chair back on its rear legs. “About our date last night…” he began.
I glanced up at him and waited for him to continue, hoping against all hopes that he had gotten the message when I said that we should just be friends at work.
“I had a good time,” he said, and my hopes died. “And I’d like to see you again. Maybe tomorrow night?”
I took a deep breath in through my nose and wracked my brain for a tactful way of telling Dan I had no interest in him romantically or otherwise. “Um,” I said around a mouthful of tuna. “I can’t. I’m going to be very busy.”
Dan’s chair legs came down with a sudden thump. “Busy. How about the night after that? Or this night? Can you go out then?”
I shook my head and swallowed my tuna. “I have dancing lessons tonight.”
Dan’s head started bobbing and he sucked in his bottom lip. He was starting to look pissed off. “Dancing lessons,” he said bitterly. “Right. Like I really believe that. Look, Carrie, if you don’t want to see me again just tell me. Don’t feed a line of bull. ‘I’m busy,’” he said in a falsetto voice. “I’ve heard that before. Just tell me the truth, okay?”
I cleared my throat. The tuna was making my throat dry. “I did.”
Dan’s brow wrinkled. “I said not to play games with me, Carrie.”
I leaned forward in my chair. “I’m not. I told you last night before I got into my car that I didn’t think it would be a good idea to see each other outside of work. I was very clear. No bull attached.”
Dan wrinkled his brow. “I don’t remember that.”
“Well it happened,” I said.
Our supervisor walked into the break room at that moment. Susan Babinski was an older woman with a sharp tongue and a nose for gossip. She gave the two of us one look and knew something was going on. “What’s going on here?” she demanded to know, her long nailed hands placed firmly on her hips.
“Nothing,” both Dan and I chimed at the same time.
Susan shook her head. “I don’t think so. Lover’s quarrel?”
“What!” I said, shooting into a standing position. “No! What makes you think that?”
Susan waved a hand at us and started walking again, towards the refrigerator. “You two were getting awfully cozy in the theater last night. I know. I was watching.”
Regretfully, I panicked, because I didn’t want to lose my job. Susan didn’t care one way or another what we did, but the head librarian, Ms. Zeltwietzer, would. “I was not getting cozy with Dan,” I said harshly. “Why would I even think about going out with someone like him? We both just happened to be watching the movie, and we sat together because we’re coworkers, nothing else.”
“Uh huh,” Susan said. She grabbed a soda out of the fridge and began to leave. She eyed Dan critically as she passed him. “You gonna’ let her talk about you like that?” And then she was gone.
I glanced over at where Dan was still sitting. He was red in the face. I had embarrassed him, and I knew it. “I’m sorry, Dan,” I began contritely. “I shouldn’t have s-”
He wouldn’t let me finish though. He jumped up and said in a rush, “You’re damn right you shouldn’t have said that, and you will be sorry, Carrie. You’ll definitely be sorry!”
And he ran out of the break room.
“Crap,” I said, and I wondered if I should take his threat seriously. Dan couldn’t kill a spider or a stand the sight of blood, but then again, you never know about people either. Kids who took guns to school and started spewing bullets were usually the mild mannered ones; the ones who got bullied usually.
“Oh, crap,” I repeated. I got my mace out of my purse and stuck it in my pocket. Just in case.
The walls of the break room began to close in on me as I began visualizing all the different ways that Dan could try to get his revenge on me for humiliating him. Needing to breathe, I went outside to sit on a bench in the sun.
I sighed in relief at the open space around me. And then my phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered it promptly, eager for a distraction.
A harsh, grating voice screeched in my ear. “Carrie, what the hell were you doing on the news with a bunch of gay men?”
Okay. No greeting, no ‘Hi, how are you?’ or ‘What’s going on?’ Nope. As always, Nancy went straight for the accusation. All thoughts of Dan went out of my head at once and I silently cursed the news media.
“Oh, the vandalism of my nice neighbors is on the noon news, huh?” I asked Nancy, sounding calmer then I was. Channel 6 News at 11:30 was the only way she could have found out.
“Yes, it hit the news,” she said testily. “Now answer my question. What were you doing with them?”
“Well, mom, they are my next door neighbors,” I said in a patient voice. “When I heard the brick shatter the window, I was naturally concerned for them, and I came outside to give the police my statement of what had happened.”
“But are you actually friends with them?” she pressed. “I can’t believe what you said about them on public television.”
“What? That they’re nice people?” I said stiffly, feeling myself getting angry. “That they’re good neighbors?”
“They are homosexuals,” Nancy said hotly.
I pursed my lips, struggling for calmness. “So?” I asked.
“So? So? You ask, ‘So?’ They are bad people, Carrie. They are breaking God’s laws, and you let one of them, the one with all those horrible tattoos and ear things, stand near you and touch you.”
Sean? She thought Sean was gay? I rolled my eyes. “You do know what they say about people who live in glass houses, right?”
“What are you saying?” Nancy demanded hotly.
“It means that maybe instead of judging everyone else you should take stock of your own life and personality.”
Nancy sputtered, and I took a deep breath, proud of myself for saying what I wanted without breaking down into tears of frustrated anger like I so often did. “Look, Nancy,” I added before she could recover. “I’m sorry I’ve offended your sensibilities by being a nice neighbor, but I’m an adult, I no longer live under your roof, and I can associate with whomever I want, be they homosexual, bi-sexual, or heterosexual.”
Nancy gasped. She actually gasped. “You’re going to go to hell for that kind of talk, Carrie.”
I frowned. “I’ve never believed in hell. It certainly doesn’t scare me.”
There was a slight pause, as if Nancy was trying to digest what I was really saying. What was she thinking? I wondered.
“This is why I knew your moving out would be a bad idea,” Nancy finally said, turning the tables back on me. “First Judy takes you away from us, then you stop coming to church. You spend all your time with Genny the Whore, whose been around the block at least a dozen times, and don’t tell me that her influence hasn’t rubbed off on you. You’ve probably had sex with every man at work haven’t you, surrounded as you are with all those pornographic romance novels.”
My mouth hung open for a moment. Had Nancy really just said what I heard her say? Did she really think I was a whore? What kind of a person did she think I was? I had no idea what to say to Nancy, and her accusation was deeply insulting to not only me but to Judy and Genny. Where did Nancy think she could get off saying things like that?
Unfortunately for me, Nancy took my silence as an affirmative. “You disgust me,” she said coldly. “You’ve always bee
n a disappointment to me, Carrie, the way you stubbornly go your own way. I wash my hands of you. Don’t even think of crawling back here if you get knocked up or diseased. You’ll be on your own. You’ll no longer be part of this family; I can guarantee that, Missy.”
Angry, silent tears blurred my vision. Desperately I tried to clear my throat so that I could give her a decent comeback. Words welled up in my mind. “You’re absolutely right, Nancy,” I wanted to say in a cold fury. My whole body was shaking as I struggled not to let her know that I was crying silent, furious tears. “I’ve been humping my way through life ever since I was 14 years old, and now that I’m in the great wide world, my eyes have been opened to greater possibilities. In fact, I’ve had wild, monkey sex with all the men and women at the library.”
But I couldn’t say that to Nancy. Not only would my throat not work around the lump in it, but I’d been taught to be respectful to her under any circumstance. Also, I did love her, even if at the same time I hated her. So I just hung up the phone on her. I sat motionless for several minutes, my face in my hands so that anyone walking past wouldn’t be able to see me quietly crying and struggling to get control of myself. It took a long time for me to do so.
When I finally did get ahold of myself, I wiped my eyes, took a few deep breathes and glanced at the clock on my phone. I still had ten minutes till I had to clock back in. Deciding that I needed a treat, I walked across the street to a small frozen custard shop and got myself a bowl of chocolate custard. I ate it on that same bench outside the library’s doors and tried to forget Nancy’s words and my own inability to fight back when it counted most.
I felt like such a coward, such a failure as an adult. As a daughter.
I finished my custard and threw the container out. I forced my mind to happier thoughts: learning the waltz with Sean, Genny’s wedding that was only a few weeks away now, the gorgeous dress I was going to wear that day. I refused to play Nancy’s words over in my mind and gradually I could feel my blood pressure go down, and then I was able to smile at customers again. Dan stayed far away from me, which helped keep me from going over the edge.
