She just gazed levelly at me. “Nope.”
I turned my eyes back to the road. “I guess it might be kind of boring. I’m not into, like, rough stuff or choking or tying anyone up.”
“Errol, just tell me. I hope by this point you know you can trust me.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “It’s just one of those things I’ve never trusted anyone enough to bring up.”
“And it is…?”
“Anal.”
She snorted. “Not all that dark, you’re right.”
I shrugged. “You asked.”
She held my gaze. “Interestingly, that’s my answer to that same question.”
“Don’t make things up, Pop.”
She told me everything I needed to know with a single look. “I’m not.”
“I guess for me, it’s partly that I know I’m not…small. And I figure it requires a lot of trust, which I’ve always been short on.”
“I’ve always been too scared of it to even consider it. Yvonne, my former friend and roommate, she used to tell me all the time that I didn’t know what I was missing. She said the key was to ease into it. ‘You can’t go full anal the first time,’ she’d say. ‘You gotta take baby steps. But once you’re there? Hold on, honey.’” She mimicked her friend, using a mocking nasally voice.
I laughed. “Can’t go full anal, huh?”
“Apparently not.”
“I wonder how she found that out.”
She snorted. “Probably the hard way, knowing her.” Her eyes met mine, and we both laughed, somewhere between amused and aroused. “Someday?”
I growled a sigh. “Maybe we’d better get back to having regular sex first, before we discuss that.”
She rolled a shoulder. “Maybe.” Another sultry look. “Any other dark desires you want to share with me?”
“I…um. Not really. That’s it.” I glanced at her. “You?”
“I’ve always had this fantasy of a guy I totally trusted tying me to the bed and just…using me as he wished, for as long as he wanted.” A significant stare. “Obviously, I’ve never trusted anyone anywhere near enough to even think about going there.”
I let out my breath, eyes closing briefly. “You know, I’ve got some climbing rope back there somewhere. Quite a lot of it.”
She shifted in her seat. “No teasing, Errol.”
“Who’s teasing?” I growled. “How well do you trust me?”
She clutched at the seat belt where it passed through the deep valley between the mountains of her breasts. “Enough to know that after this wedding, you and me, Errol? We’re gonna need a cabin in the woods and a week alone.”
“Why a cabin in the woods?” I asked.
“Because I have a feeling you’re going to make me scream. A lot. Loudly. And I wouldn’t want to disturb anyone.”
“Oh.” I throttled the steering wheel until my knuckle joints ached. “Yeah, you’re right about that. A lot of screaming.”
The longest, most interminable part of the trip into Ketchikan was the ferry. God, so bugger-all interminable, it felt like. Nothing to do but sit and talk, watch the waves. Out of sheer boredom, I got out my fiddle and played.
Except for Poppy, I’d not played for anyone in years—I had the instrument with me all the time, but I only ever played alone, to feel some sort of connection to Dad, and usually only when I was in a certain mood.
Of course, as it tended to, playing the fiddle drew a crowd. And the gathered crowd included a towering old fella with a twelve-string guitar and a knowledge of Irish music, and so he and I jammed for a while, keeping toes tapping. He even sang a few, in a rough but tuneful voice, words and verses to tunes I’d never realized even had them.
Poppy sat near me and watched me play, and the bright gleam in her eyes did something to me. Not lascivious, either—for the first time in my life, the way a woman looked at me hit me in the heart, made me want to…to be someone I’d never considered being.
I wanted to play for her just so she’d look at me like that, like I hung the moon and stars.
Later, once the jam session was over and the crowd had dispersed, Poppy and I were sitting alone once more on the top deck away from the spray, in the stiff wind, huddled under my blanket together.
“Why’d you stop playing?” she asked, after a time of silence. “You’re so good.”
I rolled a shoulder. “A lot of reasons, really. It hurt too much, for one. The fiddle was Dad’s. The music was Dad’s. The couple of years I tried filling in for him, I was constantly reminded, mainly by O’Brien, that I wasn’t him.”
“You were a kid, and a kid going through hell.”
I let out a gruff sigh. “I know. And I think he knew, too. But O’Brien was—is—one of the old guard. An Irishman from the countryside, who grew up brawling with anyone who looked at him crossways. He played the bodhran, the hand drum thing, and his family connection to that goes back farther than mine with the fiddle. He’s just…a stone wall of a man. He didn’t know how to deal with Dad dying any more than I did, and knew even less how to show it, let alone deal with me, his mate’s kid, a hurting kid lashing out and acting a fool. I don’t blame him. Not now, leastwise. I hated his guts then, and it felt mutual. But now, with time and distance and a bit of understanding? I get it. I could never be my father. And the shit of it all was that I was too fucked up to properly try, and me failing at that meant the band that had been their livelihood and their life for the last twenty-some years died with Dad, because I couldn’t hack it as his replacement.”
“That’s too much pressure to put on yourself.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I know that…now. But then, it was all just too tangled up. The easiest way through it for me was to put music behind me.” I blamed the sting in my eyes on the wind and the sea spray. “There were other reasons, too, things I’ve come to figure out since. I was never given a choice about the fiddle. I’m a Sylvain, and Sylvains play the fiddle. But he was never home, so the teaching fell to Mum, who didn’t play. She got me lessons in Christchurch, which I hated. But I just…I couldn’t bear the thought of Dad coming home and him asking me what I’ve learned and not having shit to show him. It was the only way I knew to get his attention, to make him proud of me. I think…I think I always thought, deep down, that if I got good enough, maybe he’d stay. Or, stay longer.” Blink hard, breathe deep. “Never worked. And then Mum died and Dad was all I had, and since I’d been playing since I was old enough to hold a kid-sized fiddle, meaning four or five, it was expected that when I was on the road with Dad and the guys, that I’d play. It was never discussed, just expected. Get on stage and play. And when there’s a pub full of half-pissed adults watching you, you don’t dare freeze up. You don’t dare embarrass your dad or his mates. Once a year on Christmas, the whole band would get together, so I knew them all too. Sometimes in the summer between gigs they’d all stop off in Christchurch and they’d have a great old piss up.”
“You never had a choice.”
“That’s why I ended up in photography, even though my talent and experience and training is actually more in the music world. There’s enough folks out there who know my dad, the guys, the band, even me to a small degree, that I could get a gig fiddling. But I chose photography, because I had the freedom to choose it. And I put music aside because it was…it never felt like mine. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the fiddle, and I still play sometimes. Alone, off in the middle of nowhere, when there’s no one listening and no one watching, just because I guess it’s in my blood.” I sighed. “Today was the first time I’ve played with anyone or in front of anyone since Dad died, actually, except for you at the lake, and I think playing for you is the only reason I was able to play today.”
“How’s it feel?” she asked.
A shake of my head. “Dunno, really. Good, and painful at the same time.”
“You know, my…I’m not going to say in-laws. The family, the big group of people we’re going to be with…I don’t kno
w how to quantify their relation to me. Mom’s boyfriend’s family. Mom’s adopted family? Not adopted like legally, more emotionally…” she laughed. “Whatever. A lot of them are musicians.”
I growled. “Great. I’m going to be expected to play.”
She shook her head, rested a hand on my arm. “No, that’s why I’m letting you know. I don’t want you to feel obligated. Mom has told me several times that jam sessions just happen, a lot. So if you ever feel like joining, you can. But I’m not going to put it out there that you’re a musician.”
I laughed, a strange, bitter, confused sound. “Musician. I’ve never claimed that title.”
“Well, you are, and an incredible one.”
“You like it when I play.” It wasn’t a question, more of a leading statement, I guess.
“So much. It’s…it’s beautiful, watching you play. You light up, Errol. You change. I don’t know how to put it. It brings something alive in you, brings out this other part of you. But I understand that it’s all tangled up in a lot of pain, so I’ll never make a big deal out of it. You have to choose for yourself the role music plays in your life.”
I held her hand. “Thank you, Poppy.” I hated the constant onslaught of strong, piercing emotions that was always boiling under the surface now—now that I’d let them out, brought them up, opened the portcullis of the tower holding all the crusty, jagged wounds and pain and ghosts inside. “For seeing me.”
She only squeezed my hand, and gave me space to get some kind of a handle on this roiling crush of emotion.
“How do other people deal with feeling this much, all the time?” I asked, half laughing.
She snickered. “I think most people don’t bury and suppress as much as we have, for as long as we have.”
“Oh.”
“It kind of sucks, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t mean to sound sexist or anything, but women are expected to and allowed to be all emotional. If you burst out crying in the middle of a conversation, so what? It’s normal. At worst, they might figure you’re on your period or something. I know, I know, you don’t have to say it. Like I said, I’m not trying to sound like a sexist asshole. But for men, we’re allowed anger and masculine stuff like that. Appreciation of natural beauty. Lust, and even love, I guess, but that’s a confusing one. Because we have to be macho about being in love. We can’t be all soft and weak about it. That’s the unspoken part of it all.”
She held my hand, turned to face me, brushed fingers through my hair, across my forehead and over my temple. “Well I reject that for you. Letting yourself feel emotions isn’t weakness. Even the soft sappy stuff, like missing your mom and dad, or feeling, like, tender or whatever toward me. It’s not weak and it doesn’t make you soft. And you know what? You can be soft and strong at the same time. Like a spiderweb, you know? Soft and thin and silky and flexible, but one of the strongest substances on earth. I’m not saying be all weepy all the time, but when it comes up, let it happen.”
“I’m not going to sit here and have a cry in public on a fucking ferry, Poppy,” I said, growling a sarcastic laugh. “Not happening.”
She sighed. “I know. I wouldn’t either, honestly. But when we’re alone, you don’t have to, like, hide it, or feel embarrassed about it, or…or whatever. You can just let it out and let me see it, let me have that part of you, and just trust that I still know the strong, tough, capable you also.”
I nodded. “I hear what you’re saying, Poppy, and I appreciate it. All I can tell you is that I’ll try. It’s a lot of conditioning to overcome, though.”
“Believe me, I understand that.”
We were quiet, lost in our own thoughts as Ketchikan approached off the bow. Seagulls wheeled and called, and pine-carpeted hills rose on all sides. It was a day somewhere between cloudy and sunny, patches of blue and moments of brilliant sunlight, and leaden gray clouds scudding low and mixing with puffy white ones soaring higher up. I spotted an eagle tilting on a wingtip off in the distance, and something big splashed in the water near the shoreline.
“Beautiful country, here,” I said.
Poppy nodded. “Sure is.” She seemed…hesitant about something. “I see why Mom settled here.”
“You’ve never been?”
She shook her head. “No. First time visiting her since she moved up here a few years ago.” She chewed on the inside of her lip. “I’d been accepted to Columbia at sixteen, not quite seventeen—I was always a motivated student, mainly because the faster I got done with bullshit school, the more time I had to focus on art. So I crushed through high school, skipped several grades, took some dual enrollment classes at the community college. Whatever. I was shy of seventeen and acting all eager to get to Columbia, move out on my own to big bad New York City. I thought I’d be like Charlie, my oldest sister. She has not one, but two Ivy League degrees.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah. Look up Type-A overachiever alpha sister, that’s Charlie. Goody-goody, followed the rules, the golden oldest. Look at your sister, look what she did, look at her grades. She’s going to Princeton, blah blah blah.” She huffed. “Granted, Mom never actually said any of that out loud to any of us, but she didn’t have to.”
“But you’re not bitter at all.”
She snickered. “Nope. Not me.” A laughing sigh. “Maybe a little bitter. Because I couldn’t hack it. I’ve been telling myself that college just wasn’t for me, that I’m meant to be an artist, to hoe my own row instead of following Charlie’s. But dropping out of college still feels like I failed to measure up to Charlie.”
“Is she the type to lord it over you?” I asked.
“That’s the hardest part—no, she’s not. She’s just sweet and humble, mostly. I’m lording it over myself for her.”
“Well, maybe you ought to put down that burden.”
“Yeah, no shit, right? I’m working on it.” She gestured at the Ketchikan skyline, rising to meet us as we angled for the pier. “Problem is all of them. They’re all waiting for me. They have expectations of me. Mom does, I know. I dropped out, so she expects me to make the most of being an artist. Charlie is successful, Cassie has a whole new life with this Ink dude, and that was after the car wreck ruined her dance career. She was a professional dancer, like in Europe, touring and performing for, like, royalty and shit. Then there was a car wreck and she moved in with Mom, and now she’s successful at this whole new thing. Lexie is marrying a legit, bona fide superstar, and she’s becoming famous herself. Torie is the only one who hasn’t accomplished much, but when I talked to Mom as we were getting on the ferry, it sounded like she was with a guy and things were changing for her. So then it’ll be just me with no fucking clue what I’m doing with my life.”
“You’re not even nineteen, Poppy.”
“By the time you were nineteen, you’d been all over the world as a professional musician.”
“You’re not me. And you’re crazy talented. You just have to figure out how to leverage it into a career. That can take time.”
“You’ve never even seen my real art. The photographs are the just the…base, you could say.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing your finished pieces, Poppy, more than I can say, really. But I don’t need to have seen them to know you’ve got what it takes. You could make a career out of your photography alone, and I say that not as the guy who’s attracted to you and cares about you, but as a professional photographer. And if, as you say, your real bag is painting, then that would mean you’re even better at that. It’s a no-brainer you’ll be totally fucking brilliant.”
She let out a breath. “Thanks. I guess I need the encouragement.”
She tugged on her hair, which she wore loose today, under a floppy fedora hat. Her outfit was clearly meant to impress her family—voluminous, loose, gauzy skirt in an eye-waveringly bright pattern of yellow and red blocks, with a plain white blouse of a type you’d see “tavern wenches” wear at a renaissance fair, complete with a wide leather
belt around her waist which only served to accentuate the bulging overflow of her tits, which the shirt couldn’t even begin to contain. Her cleavage was mountainous, and once again she wore no bra; the thin fabric was nearly sheer, and left just enough to the imagination that I was doomed to sport a middling hard-on all day. Especially those piercings. She even had a nose ring, a diamond stud through one nostril, which I hadn’t realized she had.
“What?” I asked. “You’re still stewing on something.”
“Just nervous. I haven’t seen my whole family in a while. Last Christmas everyone was scattered across the country, and we couldn’t make our schedules work to all meet. I had finals when Charlie had time off, and Lexie and Cassie were…well, it doesn’t matter. We video-conferenced each other and we sent each other presents, but we weren’t together. It was rough, actually. I missed them all, of course. But now I’m showing up with you, and…”
“And we’re a sort of…unknown quantity. Even with each other, in some respects.”
“Right. And on top of that, I’m about to meet a whole slew of new people, and from what Mom says, they’re all like family to her, which means I’m expected to become part of that.”
“And you don’t want to?” I knew I sounded unfairly angry. “I’d give anything to have family, Pop. Especially as much as you have.”
She huffed. “I know, I know. It’s just…it’s a lot.”
“Well, you’re not alone.”
Her smile was relieved and thankful and intimate. “And I’m more grateful for that than I can say.”
“How long until the wedding?” I asked. “Because I have to admit, I’m getting pretty well desperate for you to show me how grateful you are.”
She rested her head on my shoulder, but her posture was tight, controlled. “Desperate isn’t even the word, Errol.”
There wasn’t much else to say as the ferry slid up to the pier and tied off.
Being an orphan, I was always alone. I was always the odd man out, the newcomer, the strange face. So I wasn’t nervous about meeting new people.
Goode Vibrations Page 22
