The Ninth Step

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  “That girl is thirteen and all she wants is a baby. The mother’s mad because the girl keeps having sex with her mother’s boyfriend--that’s him on her other side--trying to get pregnant.” Delia stubbed out her cigarette, picked up her highball glass, finished off her drink. Her mouth was distorted through the thick bottom. If Livie asked her what she was drinking, Delia would say water.

  Livie looked at the television. She thought of Ed McPherson. McPervert, Kat had called him. She’d have to tell Kat what they’d missed. They should have been on Maury Povich alongside their mom and McPervert.

  Delia picked up the remote and switched off the set. People ought to keep their dirty business to themselves,” she said.

  “I’ve heard from Cotton,” Livie said.

  #

  I’ve tried writing this a hundred times, a hundred ways. . . .

  The words popped from the screen of her laptop. Livie hadn’t meant to sit, the sink was full of soapy water, her dishes from breakfast and dinner, but she dropped into a chair as if she’d been grabbed, as if Cotton had reached out and pulled her into it. She didn’t need a signature to know the message was from him. She’d been expecting another one; she’d been waiting, anxious, ever since the letter had come. Now her eye bumped over the words, caught them in clumps, as if she couldn’t stand taking in the whole of their meaning.

  . . . I wrote before . . . an apology . . . half-assed . . . so damned wrong . . . had to try again. I figure you’re . . . well, hell, I don’t know what to figure. . . .

  Livie bit her lip to the point of pain, scanning to the end.

  I pray for so much more than I deserve . . . that you’ll write back to me, that somehow you’ll agree to meet me. I would come anywhere . . . want to explain, make it right, if I can . . . I need to see you . . . know I can’t force myself . . . God, I owe you . . . so much . . . .

  Cotton.

  Livie sat back, her palm pressed hard over her mouth. She stood up, went to the sink. A smear of blood where she’d bitten the inside of her lip netted the creased cup of her hand. She put it down into the cooling soapy water, fished around and found the washcloth, picked up a plate, clinging to it as if she could anchor herself to what was ordinary and routine. But her mind wouldn’t cooperate. Her mind wanted to remember things . . . the crazy way they had met, for instance, in a near collision over a parking place at a crowded restaurant. Livie had gone there to meet Kat. Cotton had been meeting a date. They’d both been late, both been in dire need of the single available parking space. She had thought Cotton was so gallant when he backed up, and with a sweeping gesture of his arm and a wide grin, indicated she should have it. Livie had been so impressed that to Kat’s open-mouthed dismay, she’d detoured by Cotton’s table after lunch to thank him. He’d stood up at her approach; he seemed to have eyes only for her. She took his extended hand and at once felt a fine tingling in her fingertips, a tight warmth of desire low in her belly. She wanted him to kiss her; she wanted to brush her nipples against his chest, to flatten herself against him. The sensations had been so vivid and absurd, and so unlike her.

  But from the beginning, he had opened doorways to mysterious rooms within herself she hadn’t known were there. The first time they made love it had been in the upstairs bedroom of a furnished model home of all places, where she’d been working as a sales representative for a friend who, like Cotton, was a builder.

  She hadn’t been expecting him; he just came there late on one rainy winter day when the light was going. There’d been no other traffic all that long afternoon and she’d been surprised to find him waiting for her when she’d walked from the kitchen into the dining room where she officed. He’d brought her beignets that by then he knew were a particular favorite and a bottle of white wine, a crisp refreshing Riesling called Bloom--he had thought she would appreciate the name more than its quality, he’d said--and more unbelievably, he’d presented her with a dainty bouquet of violets wrapped in a ribbon-tied lace doily. He’d never told her where he’d found them and it was later in their relationship, when she was teaching him the language of flowers, that she explained their meaning, that violets meant faithfulness.

  But on that day, she had called the gesture romantic and been touched when he blushed. He said he hardly recognized himself around her and made her promise not to tell anyone what a sappy fool he was, especially she wasn’t to tell her boss, Cotton’s competition. It might give him ideas that Cotton was losing it, going soft in the head. He made her laugh. That was his gift. One of them.

  He awakened her to desire and at first, her response to him had disconcerted her. She couldn’t understand how it was that she allowed him to overcome her natural reserve and lead her into the master bedroom of the model home where she was employed, lay her down on the king-size bed against the soft bank of silk encased designer bed pillows and undress her. Livie had had boyfriends, she’d had sex, but she wasn’t experienced; she wasn’t impulsive or daring.

  She had never known it was possible to take delight in her own body, her own nakedness, not until Cotton took such delight in touching her. He had begun so slowly, taken her so carefully, watching her as he trailed his fingertips from her cheek down into the hollow of her neck.

  Asking, “Is it okay?” and waiting for her nod before he went farther down to outline the contours of her breasts, number her ribs, trace the inner curve of her thigh. He explored her with his mouth, tasting her as if she were some exotic dessert and she shivered, forgetting herself, becoming the aggressor, guiding him into her, and still, when he entered, he came gently as if she were sacred ground. There were sounds, she heard them, guttural moans, animalistic moans, and she knew they came from her, but she didn’t care until afterward when her mind and vision and sense returned, when she became aware again of where she was. Aware of herself, that she was at work, in a compromising position, quite possibly ruining a silk duvet worth more than one paycheck. But that was the least of it.

  She still held Cotton inside of her and she held his glance that was so full of something--some craving, an appetite, a need even, that she couldn’t define, that she felt at a loss to fulfill. But maybe what she saw mirrored in his expression was her own craving for him. The notion half frightened, half disgusted her and she averted her eyes, felt him slip out of her, felt his weight shift as he settled himself alongside her. He cupped her chin, bringing it around, making her see him.

  “What’s wrong?” He searched her gaze. “Did I hurt you?”

  She shook her head, a confusion of pure lust mixed with mortification swimming through her brain. Images floated, a watery rush of men’s hands fondling her mother, Gus’s throaty laughter. Watching them covertly, Livie had taken a kind of sick fascinated pleasure in her arousal then, too.

  Cotton traced her lips with his fingertip. “Please tell me you don’t regret this.”

  She could have said yes, but not in the way Cotton meant.

  He searched her gaze and Livie could see something huge working in his eyes, that he was trying to find the words for it and when he began again, his voice staggered. “This--you--” he ran his hand from her breast to the dip of her waist, along her hip-- “you’re so beautiful and I don’t mean only the sex--aaagh-- Damn it.” He broke off, began again. “The thing is I don’t want to screw this up and I’m scared as hell that I have.”

  She brushed back the hair at his temple, cupped his cheek, turning to him, opening herself, wanting him again, willing for the first time in her life to give in, to be lost. For the first time feeling that it was all right. Cotton did that for her. It was another of his gifts. He made her feel safe, treasured.

  Adored.

  The next day, he had sent her a dozen Japanese irises, because they were her favorite flower and she had begun instructing him in the language of flowers even as he instructed her in the language of love. And every time they came together after that, it had seemed magical to her. It was as if he had given her a key to an enchanted land where she could
be herself, act without shame, without fearing she was like her mother. She had believed that he had done this out of love for her.

  She finished doing the dishes, let the water out of the sink and wiped the countertops. Her mother said sex and real love were mutually exclusive and when it came to a choice, she’d take the sex. A man’s penis was a more reliable organ than his heart, and anyway, last she’d heard, nobody had invented the pill that would cause a man to make a commitment the way Viagra could make a man hard.

  Kat said that was bullshit. She pointed out that their mother also believed a certain amount of exposure to adult nudity and sexuality was good for children and, in Kat’s book, that was bullshit too. Just another way Gus got around having to admit that when it came down to a choice, she preferred screwing a bunch of men to being a decent mother to her own daughters.

  What Livie knew for certain was that she’d let Cotton have her, body, heart, mind and soul, and he’d betrayed her. Now here he was again, asking to come back into her life. Why? What did it mean? She sat down at the table in front of her laptop, scrolled the mouse button until the arrow hovered over the delete button, but she couldn’t follow through and closed the computer instead with an emphatic snap, then almost immediately, she reopened it and after hitting reply, she typed, Dear Cotton,

  Your mother is. . . .

  Hateful? Unreasonable? A complete bitch?

  By the time they became engaged, Livie had known all about Cotton’s terrible childhood. She had understood how his deep resentment of his mother could be tempered with love and warped by shame. Her own feelings for her mother were in a similar tangle. Rather than being put off, Livie had been convinced she could fix it. Livie the Fixer, Kat said. Go get ‘em Glinda the Good. Livie didn’t care. People didn’t become bitter and vindictive overnight. Delia hadn’t. Misery had overcome her in increments, through the vagaries of circumstance. And the fact remained that sometimes all a person needed was someone to listen, someone to remind them about hope. Someone to say they cared. Delia had done that for Livie. They’d done it for each other.

  Once.

  Livie looked again at her computer screen, backed the cursor over what she’d written, sat a moment longer pondering, then typed: Your mother needs to hear from you. I showed her your letter, but she doesn’t believe it’s from you, that you would write to me. She says you left because you didn’t want to marry me. Maybe that’s true. I don’t know, but if you really want to make it right . . .

  Livie raised her glance, fingertips hovering. What you did was so cruel. The words blazed a hot streak across her brain. What difference did it make what his motive had been, or what Delia believed? Cotton’s mother wasn’t less devastated, nor could Delia be in more obvious denial. Livie bent her head.

  Put a period after true, deleted everything that followed and wrote: But regardless, you need to contact your mom. She has suffered a great deal in the years since you left and she needs you. I don’t think we should meet. Too much time has passed, I can’t imagine what we would have to say to each other now.

  Livie typed her name and clicked send before she could change her mind and she felt she’d done the right thing, but in a matter of seconds she was just as certain she hadn’t. She closed the laptop and left it, wandering through the house, locking doors. In the dining room, she switched light off and on three times, waited for Charlie’s answering signal. She thought of calling him, asking for advice, but it was late.

  She took a shower and climbed into bed imagining in every moment that Cotton was reading her response, sending a reply. She had to restrain an insistent urge to check her email again. She was convinced she would never sleep, but she must have drifted off and when she woke up, he was standing in her room, at the foot of her bed.

  Or she thought he was; he seemed too real to be a dream. Oddly, she wasn’t frightened, only bewildered and filled with yearning. She sat up and said his name, “Cotton?” but he didn’t answer. His gaze, inscrutable, intense, held her as visceral as any embrace, but for no more than a moment and then he--or his image--was gone. The creak of the floorboards under what sounded like retreating footsteps wove into the night song of crickets. There was the squeak of the screen door being opened and in the space before it closed again, as improbable as it seemed, she heard the flutter of moth wings beating against the porch light. Livie swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  Went to her open bedroom window, held back the billowing organdy drape and when she saw the shadow moving swiftly down the drive, her blood quickened, hammering a staccato tattoo through her veins. That was real, the shadow of a real person; if she had been dreaming before, she wasn’t now. She heard a surreptitious click as if someone latched a car door without actually shutting it; there was a sound of tires cutting through gravel, a bump as they came into contact with the smoother moon-washed asphalt surface of the county road.

  She waited, holding the curtain, listening to the motor noise until it faded, until the night wind was burdened with nothing more alarming than the velvet-soft chirr of insects, the peep of tiny tree frogs. Livie turned from the window. She switched on her bedside lamp, padded barefoot into the front hall and checked the door. Closed and locked exactly as she’d left it. Of course she had dreamed it. Probably she’d dreamed the moving shadow, too, and the sounds. Everything. In the kitchen, she drank water from her cupped hands, patted her face with her damp palms. The window over the sink captured her ghostly reflection and that of the clock above the oven behind her that read two-forty-six. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes.

  On her way back to bed, she checked her laptop, but there were no messages. She thought she should be relieved, but she wasn’t.

  #

  She told Charlie about Cotton’s email the next morning when he came for coffee and she was sorry to hear herself, the worry in her voice. There was work to do. They didn’t have time for her personal issues, but she couldn’t seem to keep herself contained. She watched Charlie as she spoke, repeating what Cotton had written to her, how she’d worded her reply, and when she was finished, she waited for Charlie to say she’d done the right thing. She needed his reassurance, but he only swallowed the last of his coffee and straightened from where he’d been leaning against the kitchen counter.

  He went to the sink. “You get a chance to look at those blueprints for that lake house up at Sam Rayburn?” The water came on. He spoke over the sound. “I’m thinking if we don’t do something different with the grade, we’re going to run into big problems with the drainage.”

  “I have some ideas.” She waited one perplexed heartbeat, then two, but couldn’t stop herself from asking: “Did you hear me? About Cotton?”

  Charlie faced her, drying his hands. “Usually, if you want somebody to go away, the best thing to do is ignore them.”

  “You think I shouldn’t have answered him?”

  “I think if he was any kind of a man, he would have come to you and explained himself long ago.” Charlie draped the towel over the oven door handle. “But maybe he’s ready to do his talking now.”

  “If he is, he needs to talk to his mother. She called me a liar when I showed her his letter. She said I wrote it, an apology to myself.”

  “You can’t make up for what Cotton did, Livie. Can’t give him back to her and that’s what she wants.”

  “I know.”

  “Look, if you change your mind and decide to see him, do it in a public place, okay? Or do it here and tell me beforehand so I can keep an eye on you.” Charlie paused beside the screen door and waited for her to acquiesce.

  Livie thought of saying she’d already seen Cotton, last night in a vision, but she’d gone far enough. Charlie would think she’d lost her mind. It almost made her laugh to imagine the look on his face.

  He lowered his brow at her, ready to insist, but when the telephone rang, he was distracted. “It’s your brother-in-law,” he said reading the Caller ID.

  Livie frowned. “Why is he calling?” />
  Charlie shrugged, handed over the receiver, mouthed he’d see her later and she waved, wishing she were going with him, that they’d already left.

  Tim wasted no time on pleasantries. He wanted to set the record straight, he said. He didn’t want Livie thinking he was staying at La Colombe d’Or, spending wads of cash, living the high life. He sounded worn out, miserable.

  “Why would Kat lie?” Livie wondered.

  “I was there, but only for one night. I was pissed. I just thought I deserved-- I don’t know, luxury, peace and quiet. Something--”

  “Oh--”

  “I’m bunking in with one of my partners now, sharing a bathroom with thirteen-year-old twin girls. It’s no picnic, let me tell you.”

  Livie didn’t say anything.

  “Look, leaving my home wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I don’t know how else to get through to Kat. Goddamn Prada tennis shoes! For a seven-year-old. C’mon. You’re a business woman. How would you like working your ass off to foot that bill?”

  “I don’t want to be in the middle of this, Tim.” Livie felt off-balance. She might agree with him; she might even sympathize, but to say so would feel disloyal to Kat.

  “I know, I’m the bad guy, the tightwad.”

  Livie winced.

  “It’s not like they’re starving. They aren’t running around half naked. Does it look to you as if they’re suffering?”

  “It’s not my place to judge.”

  “But you do; you think I’m hard on Kat. She has everything, you know.”

  Except her freedom, Livie thought. Her independence.

  Seconds of silence fell, tiny ticks of time.

  Tim said, “You don’t know her as well as you think.”

  “What do you mean?” Livie asked in spite of herself, in spite of her sense that Tim was right, she didn’t know Kat. Not as well as she once had and it hurt to be reminded, the way a bruise hurts when you press it with your finger.