by Cathy Lamb
Toran and I have torrid sex.
It’s the same heavy gymnastics panting sort of sex I write about in my books.
Sometimes he walks into my home and we can’t wait to get to the bedroom, so we use the floor. We indulge in the shower. We stroke and sigh outside at night under the stars, on top of a blanket. We try all the positions that I know about because I have a wild imagination and because I have bought a number of books on sex positions.
I bought the books on sex positions only because of my research for my writing, which goes without saying, as there was no one on my island to do sex positions with.
Our love making is passionate and lusty and I let myself go. If Dan The Vibrator was here I would toss him out and say, “I will not miss you, Dan. I have my own vibrator now. His name is Toran.”
Our foreplay can last a long and lush time or only fiery seconds.
But we laugh during sex, too, sometimes. We smile, we are gentle, we are sweet, and then that passion rocks through and Toran grabs my naked self and lifts me right onto his . . . ah . . . Scottish sword.
The Scottish sword knows exactly what to do as it thrusts and parries and drives in again....
After my first book hit the best-seller list, I felt like I’d been run over.
It was overwhelmingly busy. My publishing house insisted I go on a book tour. I had to talk to people—some on TV, others in a radio station. I had to go to book fairs and conferences. I had to make speeches. I came off stiff, forced, like a dysfunctional robot. Even Maybelle said, “Loosen up, you’re scaring people.” I allowed that robotic, incessant workload to go on for three months.
I hated it. I am reserved and private. I am not socially adept. I know I’m awkward. Polite talk bores me. I don’t like shallow conversations, as they seem pointless. I don’t like being the center of attention. I don’t like people gushing over me. I am not comfortable with praise.
As a whole, I wish people well. As a group, I do not like being around them. I like to be alone.
The only group I’ve been comfortable around, ever, was Clan TorBridgePherLotte, fighters of the Crusading Giants, defenders against the marauding monsters of St. Ambrose.
After three months of the book crap, I was exhausted and shaky. I’d had a scare on a plane. It wobbled in the air, then sank, then landed quick, flight aborted. My flight paranoia bubbled over. I refused to do any more publicity, told my publishing house that they were making a ton of money off of me and that PR and marketing was their job.
I escaped to Whale Island. I bought my house, whale view, and five acres for cash; bought a ten-year-old pickup truck that rumbled and growled; saved the rest; and disappeared.
I watched the whales spouting off and the deer trying to get through my fence so they could eat my garden vegetables. I studied an old raccoon I named Chesterfield as he came out in the daylight, that crazy fool. I grew calendulas and marigolds, purple phacelias and delicate sweet peas, coral fountain amaranth and bachelor’s buttons.
I was entertained by squirrels and chipmunks, seals and red foxes, none of whom wanted me to give speeches or take hugs from strangers who loved my book.
I had an extensive playground built for my cats outside, two story and enclosed by wire so they wouldn’t get eaten by wild animals. There were catwalks, perches, and open areas. I watched them play while I wrote.
I told no one on the island I was Georgia Chandler.
They knew me as Charlotte Mackintosh. No one asked me many questions. The island is like that. We mind our own business.
Sometimes I loved it, sometimes I thought the loneliness was going to kill me down dead. I had McKenzie Rae Dean and my cats and garden, talks now and then with the obsessive-compulsive origami man, and Olga, my friend at the café/art gallery. And I cooked. I cooked all the meals and treats we ate in Scotland, many that my father made. It made me feel closer to him.
My best friend, though, was a woman I hadn’t seen in twenty years whom I wrote letters to and reached by phone now and then. That was pathetic and sad when I thought about it too much, but the truth was, I loved getting letters from Bridget and writing back to her.
And my life went on. Alone.
The woman stumbled in front of Toran’s house but caught herself before she fell flat on the driveway. She yanked herself up, stopped, walked two steps, and braced her hands on her knees.
I dropped my cutting scissors into the daisies I was dead heading and ran toward her.
“Are you all right? Can I help you?”
She didn’t answer, but ambled toward me, swaying like a reed in a pond, pushed this way and that. She was thin, too thin. She was wearing a black knit hat, odd in this warm weather; jeans; scuffed boots; and a plaid work shirt.
She had white-blond hair.
I caught Bridget when she pitched forward and fell straight into my arms. She said one word: Charlotte. She smiled before she passed out.
Toran and I held hands as we watched Bridget sleep in the hospital. It was hard to call it sleep. Bridget seemed half dead. The doctors had been in and out, as had the nurses. They had taken blood, performed their examinations, done their tests. Bridget had hardly moved. When she did periodically wake up, she would smile at Toran and me weakly, then pass out again.
Bridget had scars up and down her arms from drugs. There were no recent marks, though. She had a horrendous scar on her left shoulder that looked as if a crow had dug a claw in and pulled. She had another scar on her collarbone, like an S. She was pale and gaunt. Her fever was 104 degrees, her skin flaky with open sores.
She was horribly ill.
We waited for the test results, for the doctors, for the answers. Looking at her, I knew none of the answers were going to be good. This was not the flu. I braced myself, my hand gripped in Toran’s. I often wiped the tears off my cheeks, then wiped the tears off Toran’s.
My poor man. He was shattered.
Three doctors and three nurses entered Bridget’s hospital room ten days later in full hospital garb. Scrubs, hoods, masks, gloves, booties over their shoes. They were all worried, fidgety. Three stayed as far away from Bridget and the bed as they could.
“What is it?” Toran asked, standing up.
“What’s wrong?” I stood up, too. We had spent the night, again, leaning against the wall, leaning against each other.
One of the doctors indicated a table for us to sit at while another doctor opened the window.
“Mr. Ramsay. Ms. Mackintosh, I’m afraid I have bad news,” the doctor said through his mask. He was about sixty. Overweight, out of shape. Gray hair. Eyebrow cocked.
I held Toran’s hand.
“We were unclear of her diagnosis. We ran many tests, all negative, as you know, so we began reaching further afield.”
“Yes,” Toran said. “And?”
“Your sister,” the doctor said, with doom, “has acquired immune deficiency syndrome. It is also known as AIDS.” He crossed the fingers of his gloved hands together and leaned back in his chair.
Toran and I squeezed each other’s hand at the same second, stricken.
“You may not have heard of it—” The doctor had a pompous tone.
“I’ve heard of it,” Toran and I snapped at the same time.
“By her symptoms I believe she’s had AIDS for some time. Years. It’s advanced, by my diagnosis. She is riddled with it, riddled.”
I slumped in my chair, hardly able to breathe. When I first learned about AIDS, having been married to Drew, a gay man, whose fidelity I became unsure of, I immediately went to get tested.
I was negative. In the ten-day wait for the test results, I studied the disease to its minutest cellular detail, my slight hypochondria swelling in my throat until it dang near choked me.
I knew it killed. I knew there wasn’t a cure. Now, in 1990, nothing had changed from nine years ago when it first burst onto the scene.
I turned to stare at my friend, Bridget, a friend I didn’t know but thought I did, a friend wh
o did not tell the truth to shield me from her shame, a friend who had been crushed by an evil man, along with her health.
My eyes traveled up the tracks of her arms, one needle scar for every emotional torture.
I stifled a cry with my hand.
“AIDS,” the doctor said, with unhidden disapproval now, “is quite contagious. A plague-like disease. She will have to be quarantined. Usually it is only gay men practicing immoral behaviors and their promiscuity who have it, and drug users.” He steepled his gloved hands together, peering at us over the tips. “Your sister, being a drug addict . . . needles and so forth, sharing, becoming drugged together . . . that’s how she acquired it, probably, but it could have been from a man. Promiscuity is common with these types of people. . . .” He wrinkled his nose, a tiny scrunch, disgusted.
An older nurse with gray hair said through her mask, “I hope she hasn’t contaminated us.” She was accusatory, angry, as if we had engineered this tragedy.
A young nurse spoke up. “As long as you don’t have sex with her or share drug needles you’ll be fine. You should know that already, Myrna.”
“We don’t need that type of commentary right now, so don’t make it,” Toran snapped. He was pale white, his shoulders slumped, his face aging almost as I watched.
The old nurse narrowed her eyes.
“We will keep her here in the hospital,” the doctor said. “Away from the other patients, far away, behind closed doors, so they don’t catch it. Could be plague-like, as I said. No one will touch her. We’ll shut off the ventilation to the rest of the hospital from this room. You must shower after seeing her and wear full hospital gear when you visit so you don’t catch it and spread it to others.”
“Catch it?” I said, my brain starting to move. “Do you know nothing about this disease? You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”
He straightened. “Yes, I am. Renowned, if you must know. But this is a new, communicable disease to us. We know little. It started with the homosexuals. The fags. San Francisco. New York. Could be airborne. It could be spread by casual contact, a touch of the hand. Spittle, even.” He shivered, his eyes darting to Bridget, skinny Bridget who hardly made a bump in the blankets. “She could be a threat to the health and safety of our staff and to the village. We need to prevent her from spreading this contagion.”
“You need to educate yourself.” What an ignorantly arrogant piss ant.
“I beg your pardon!”
“I do not beg yours,” I said. “If you are going to practice medicine, practice it by knowing the facts, not indulging in unfounded hysteria and fear. She is not contagious to you or anyone here unless you decide to shoot drugs up her arm and then use the same needle to shoot them into yours. Are you planning on this activity?”
“I will not be spoken to in that tone!”
“And I will not stand by while a frightened old man, who is supposed to be knowledgeable about different diseases, just about wets his pants when discussing one of his patients.”
“Excuse me!” he said, wagging a finger.
“You will need to do more than excuse yourself. You need to study this disease so you don’t engage in spreading rumors about AIDS or demonizing people with it. Surely you can pull yourself together enough to do that.”
My heart was pounding. Not from the irritated, sanctimonious doctor—I was used to old/middle aged, rigidly thinking men like him—but because of poor Bridget. Sweet Bridget and her brother, my beloved Toran, who was now sitting beside his sister, holding both her hands as she lay weak, her eyes closed, a half-dead sleep claiming her. He brought their hands to his forehead. I knew he was crying.
I was going to lose it, too, in about one minute, and I’d be a sobbing mess. Sobbing messes cannot take control of situations. The ability to make sound decisions is curtailed by emotion, and first I would deal with this patronizing doctor.
“It is my job to protect my patients and my staff!” He held up his pointer finger, pompous, predictable.
“Then do your job.” I pointed my pointer finger right at him. “And do it correctly.”
I looked around the room. Several of the medical personnel seemed downright frightened, wanting to bolt. A couple were calm. This was their field, after all. They took care of sick people. They were professionals. One of them winked at me, another smiled. This ego-inflated doctor was another Len Xavier.
The hospital room was sterile, cold. I didn’t like it. Depressing. Lonely. Alone. I could not guarantee that the employees would treat Bridget with kindness or with disgust and disapproval.
I was going to say it, but Toran said it first, his voice deep, strong. “She won’t stay here. We’re taking her home.”
I stood up. “I’ll bring the truck around.”
I saw the doctor’s expression of relief. “Courage, doctor,” I drawled. “Be brave, little man. You’ll be fine.”
“I am not a little man! How dare you!”
He was, in fact, tall. “You’re a little man in your heart. You lack courage, and that’s all that counts, isn’t it?”
He flushed behind his mask. “I will not tolerate this impertinence.”
“And I will not tolerate you and your sluggish mind. Not for one more minute. You are a plague.” I saw Bridget move in bed. Her eyes were open. “We’re leaving, Bridget.”
She nodded. “Take me away, Clan TorBridgePherLotte. We’ll battle the dragons tomorrow.” She mimed sword fighting, weakly.
She laughed, also weakly.
I laughed, too. Couldn’t help it. It was laugh or fall apart.
On our first day home, with Bridget barely conscious, Silver Cat leaped onto Bridget’s bed. She licked her cheek as if they’d been best friends forever and meowed.
Bridget’s eyes widened, then she held the cat’s face with a weak hand. “Father Cruickshank had a cat exactly like this. The cat used to bite him. This cat is a twin to the other one, I swear.” She shivered in remembrance. “He hit the cat once, and later shot it three times.”
Silver Cat settled in near Bridget’s arm and stared up at her.
Silver Cat, from that moment on, would not be separated from Bridget.
14
“How are you?” A week later I reached out and held Bridget’s hand. It was tiny, like the broken wing of a dying bird.
“Feeling better?” Toran asked.
Bridget was in her bedroom, the room that Toran had lovingly designed for her on the second story. Light-pink-striped bedspread, white walls, the window seat so she could read, the wide white desk where she could draw her miniature pictures.
Toran had picked two bouquets of wildflowers for her, one for her dresser and one for her nightstand next to a white lamp. He had also given her several drawing pads and handfuls of colored pencils that he’d stored for her, waiting for her return.
“Perhaps I have been better,” she said, laying her head back on the pillows. She was gaunt, her cheekbones sticking out, lips pale. She had bathed, with my help, and I had washed and brushed her white-blond hair, so it looked neat, certainly better than the ragged mess it had been. Tears streamed from the corners of her blue eyes, so like Toran’s, only a deeper blue, crushed blueberries.
“I’m sorry, Bridget.” We had told her about her diagnosis three days after we arrived home. She was fully awake then, more rested, clean, fed, and she’d asked us what she had been diagnosed with. She had not seemed surprised and said, “I thought I might have it.” I thought she would collapse, burst into tears, but she didn’t. She said, “I love both of you so much.”
Poor Toran. Huge Scotsman, repeat champion in the Scottish games, proud man, crying.
I wrapped an arm around him.
“I am so sorry, Toran,” Bridget said.
“No, no,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t protect you.”
“You did, you did. Char, I am so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I told her, wiping tears off my cheeks
“
I know you’re both furious with me. I lied. I caused you to worry. I didn’t call you.”
“Please, Bridget—” Toran said.
“I have caused you pain my whole life, I’ve been a terrible burden—”
“No, you haven’t. Pain has been caused to you. Years of pain.” Toran’s neck was bent, the tears streaming down. My whole body ached from the pain in that house. “Which caused more years of pain.”
“I should have tried harder, Toran. Should have stopped. Shouldn’t have left all the rehab places you paid for. They reminded me . . .” Her voice pitched, raw and edgy. “Of the insane asylum. I couldn’t breathe. I was so scared there. Out of control. I kept remembering all those people tied down, beaten up, hurt, yelling at themselves, hurting themselves, the staff mean . . . but I should have stayed at the rehab places. They tried there, they cared and they tried to help me.”
“I understand, I do—”
And Toran did, he understood. He was a sympathetic, compassionate man who was introspective and intelligent. He had a mind that could see all angles, with depth and accuracy.
“Those drugs, they . . . I tried to stop, I did, and I would for a while, and I’d keep thinking of Father Cruickshank. I felt his hands on my neck, I could hear him ripping my clothes off. I couldn’t get rid of it. I kept thinking of Legend. Out there. Without me. Gone. I never said they could take her, I never did.”
“I know, sweetheart, I know.”
“Taking drugs was the only thing that took that away.” She tipped her face up to him, then looked at me, sick and hopeless. “Char, please forgive me. Toran, please. I can’t die without you both forgiving me.”
“I forgive you,” we both said together.
“Bridget, we love you,” I said. “I know what happened to you. I know about your daughter. I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through.”
“Aye, me too,” Toran said. “A child gone. Endless heartache.”
“I’ve been clean for a year. I wanted to make sure I could do it, be sober, before I came and saw you again.”