by Celia Jerome
Damn my pale coloring for the blush I could feel spreading across my cheeks. “I’ll be sure to do that. I was going to change before my, ah, friend came over.”
“He’s a lucky guy.”
The devil made me say, “Just a friend.”
And the devil rewarded me with another burst of sunshine from Officer Donovan Gregory’s smile. “I’ll let you know if I learn any pointers from your book,” he said.
“Be sure you do that. I’ll look forward to a review from a real hero.”
“And they say this is a thankless job.” He left, whistling.
I locked the door after him, then leaned on it, wanting to whistle myself. Then I ran to the window to see if I could spot him in the street. Instead I saw a reminder of the damage and destruction as haulers towed big dumpsters onto the sidewalks. Somehow I’d forgotten about the horror of the day.
I guess that’s what everyone else was trying to do, by naming a trolley as perpetrator. I took my files out of the locked drawer and studied the notes and sketches. There he was, my Fafhrd, right down to the gap-toothed grin he’d sent me before disappearing, but with fewer lines on his face. The only other difference was the swag of fabric I’d colored in around his loins so I could get the library sales. This creature of mine had smashed parking meters like matchsticks, put a massive fist through glass storefronts, lifted a car by its bumper, squashed a bike like a bug, shoved people and street signs and garbage pails aside as if they were cobwebs.
And no one saw him but me.
I was not God, not Frankenstein jump-starting his creation with a bolt of lightning.
No, I was crazy.
CHAPTER 4
GOING CRAZY IS ANOTHER ONE of those things I’m afraid of. Nana Bess, my father’s mother, went insane. I’m not certain she was ever not crazy, but she definitely got worse over the years when I knew her. She had pen pals all around the world by then. The problem was, she didn’t have a pen, a phone, or the Internet. She just sat in her room, wrapped in shawls, talking to her distant friends. They answered her, too. She swore they told her things, which no one ever believed, of course, until they proved true. Coincidence, everyone said.
She got angrier and angrier that no one believed her, until no one—no one real—wanted to have anything to do with her. She’d shout and scream, then cry and grieve, so the relatives kept the grandchildren away from her. Finally my father and his brothers and sister found a place for her with a cousin in England. They told me she died in her sleep, content.
Which sounded a lot like what they told my cousin about her dog going to live on a farm when everyone knew the dog was put down after he bit the mailman.
Being like her, lost in your own world, with no one understanding what you’re trying to tell them, scares me.
I know, so does Lou, and having strange men come to my door, and maybe trolls. And a lot of other things, which sometimes makes me wonder if I am already psychotic. I went to a therapist a couple of times. She said my fears were all normal. Like everyone in New York being afraid of the subways at night, or getting stuck on an elevator during an electric failure. And she swore that fear was a survival instinct, so avoiding molesters and marauders and rats was natural. So was the general trepidation of nuclear war, tsunamis that could wipe out Manhattan, and the return of the Black Plague.
I don’t know.
Everyone worries about finances and health and family; that’s a given. But fear is different from worry. Here are some of the other things that keep me awake at night:
What if I choke on a bone and no one will be around to perform the Heimlich maneuver and I’ll lie here dead until the rent check is late? Or worse, my mother comes and finds me?
I’m afraid that I’ll never have another good idea. Or I’ll have a great idea but no publisher will buy it. I’ll lose the apartment and have to move back to Paumanok Harbor with my mother and her mother. Oh, God.
Thunder and lightning, hurricanes, pit bulls—no matter how many nice ones I’ve met—are all on the list, along with snakes—and I’ve never met a single one of them, thank goodness. Speaking in public? I’d need a prescription. Going alone to a cocktail party? I can feel the sweat drip down my back now.
I’m terrified of getting sick like my cousin Susan did. She’s had surgery and chemotherapy and radiation. And she still might die, with no hair. Then there’s AIDS, not that I don’t practice safe sex, but you can never be a hundred percent protected, can you? And Alzheimer’s.
I fear taxi drivers with eye patches and gold teeth who don’t speak English. I have nightmares about them, but the therapist said that’s just insecurity about going new places. Also due to being shifted around as a kid.
I’m terrified of becoming like my mother, who spent her life trying not to be like her mother, but she is: interfering, demanding, critical, unless it comes to animals or herbs. My mother can do anything with dogs and cats, and her mother writes books about natural healing. They’re both difficult, eccentric, and authoritative. Not that I don’t love them, of course.
Falling in love petrifies me. I’ve never done it. Maybe I can’t. Or if I do, what if he doesn’t like my weird family? Or they hate him? Worse, what if he doesn’t love me back? Or does at first then changes his mind, to love someone else? The therapist said many children of divorce have the same concerns, which didn’t help me one bit. I stopped going.
You know what scares me worse? The idea of never falling in love at all. Watching my friends get married, have children, become part of a bigger entity outside themselves while I am left alone. On the other hand, I think wanting to be alone when you are with your supposed loved ones must be the worst of all.
I’m afraid I’ll never have the right answers.
Like now. I’m almost sorry I asked Arlen to come over. I don’t want to be by myself, but suddenly Arlen feels like a stand-in, a settling for something I haven’t found. Which is cruel and conniving and something I am not proud of. I am not, in general, a user. At least I try not to be. I have principles.
I do like Arlen, and I do like being with him. Of course, I liked him a lot better before he didn’t come in a hurry when I needed him.
I liked Arlen a lot better before I met Officer Gregory, too. Ten minutes with the off-duty cop had me smiling and blushing and feeling pretty and feminine. And crazy, but that wasn’t his fault. Now that he was gone I felt panicky again, which also wasn’t his fault, but made me realize how starved I was for that kind of attention. Officer Gregory made me happier when he came, and sadder when he left. I don’t think it’s a good sign when a woman is more attracted to, and feels more comfortable talking to, a perfect stranger than a man she’s been seeing for months.
According to my friend Sherrie, she of the second marriage, a woman never needs to stop looking at men, or liking them. Men keep looking, and lusting, married or not, so why shouldn’t a woman? I have no idea if my father truly wandered before the divorce. His eyes did. My mother thought he did. Now he has more lady friends in Florida than I can keep up with. Marilyn cooks lasagna, Myra is a good tennis partner, Monique is teaching him French—and those are just the M’s.
Maybe it’s another relic of my parents’ divorce, but I really believe in fidelity in a marriage, and even before. I mean, if you can’t trust the guy you’re sleeping with, why are you sleeping with him?
Well, for the sex and the companionship and movies and dinner out and someone to go to your friends’ weddings with. Okay, maybe I am a user. But I don’t date two men at once, not after the third or fourth date anyway. And not once we’ve established an intimate relationship. That’s another principle.
Sometimes you have to overcome your fears. Other times you have to overcome your principles.
“Yes, I’d still like some company tonight,” I told Arlen when he finally called. I took a shower. He brought sushi. He told me about his day. I asked him if he believed in the power of imagination. He asked if I wanted to be on top again.
T
hat was about as far as Arlen’s mind could travel into the unknown. But I admired his grounding, his stability. I thought we balanced each other. He thought sex would help me relax. Then again, he thought sex helped keep him fit and focused, centered. Like taking his vitamin supplements.
Tonight that suited me, pure arousal, an out-of-mind interval with no troubling thoughts. I should have known better.
Arlen knew all the right places to touch and kiss and caress. Except he smelled and tasted like seaweed. I ignored that and managed to fall into bliss without once thinking of eels. The problem was, what Arlen considered foreplay, was enough for me, for tonight. Now I thought I could fall asleep without nightmares. I was ready to drift off, pleasantly satisfied.
Arlen wasn’t, naturally. Like a good camper, I tried to rise to the level of his, ah, ardor. But, damn, I shouldn’t have thought of those eels.
“Arlen, you know, I don’t like sushi.”
He was grunting and kind of sweaty. He paused in his efforts. “Of course you do, dear. We have it all the time.”
I grunted to show I was working with him. “But that’s for you. You like it, I don’t.”
He raised himself on his arms and looked down at me. “Can we discuss this tomorrow? Better yet, you can get whatever you want next time.”
I moved my hips and clenched my internal muscles. That’s only fair, not to ruin his mood. I even reached down and held his sac. I know how he likes that.
He was right back into the moment, pushing and pumping with vigorous intent. “Oh, baby. Oh, yes.”
I squeezed a little harder. “Arlen, the next time my skull hits the frigging headboard, you can kiss these boys good-bye.”
He put his hand on the top of my head to keep me in place. Now I felt kind of squashed and suffocated. This wasn’t working, either, but I knew it was my fault—I guess I am too easily satisfied—so I moaned a few times, urging him on. Of course I did. The sooner he was done, the sooner I could go to sleep.
Afterward, he wasn’t tired. He rolled over and turned on the light. “Why didn’t you say anything about the sushi before?”
I tried to shield my eyes from the lamp’s glare before I was wide awake again, but he took my arm so I had to look at him. “I wanted you to be happy.”
“Past tense?” Of course he’d pick up on that, with his logical mind.
“No, of course not. I’ll always want you to be happy.”
“But you’re not?”
“It’s been a rough day.”
“And you wanted something more exciting? What did you expect me to do, come up with whips and hand-cuffs?”
“Good grief, no.” I couldn’t imagine him going docile and subservient, and I have a better imagination than most people. I certainly wasn’t into pain, which was where this conversation was leading. “I just—”
“You and your damned imagination. Can’t you give it a rest?”
I was wide awake now.“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I keep thinking you want me to be one of your superheroes, and I never measure up.”
“I don’t—”
“You do. You live in some kind of fantasy world where people can leave their jobs in the middle of the afternoon, where they can fly over buildings to get to your side, where doodling and dreaming can pay the rent.”
Well, my doodling was paying the rent, and the price of his damned sushi, since I’d said I’d treat.
“Let’s not argue, Arlen. I’ve had enough upset today, what with the troll and all.”
He was sitting up, putting his clothes back on. We both knew there’d be no invitation to spend the night. “The what?”
“The, ah, trauma of the traffic mess. I even had to be interviewed by a cop.”
“Ah, that troll.”
“No, he was nice about it.”
He was dressed and ready to go. I pulled the sheet up so I wasn’t the only naked one. He leaned over to kiss me good night. “I’ll see you on the weekend.”
“Uh, no. My cousin is coming, remember? She has a CT scan at Sloan early on Monday, so I invited her to stay for the weekend.” Memorial Sloan-Kettering was the cancer hospital in New York. That’s where you want your family, even if it was almost three hours away from where they lived.
“You hate your cousin.”
“No, I don’t.” And even if I did, no one else was allowed to criticize my family.
“You always complained when she came in for chemo.”
“I was upset at all the time it took from my work to go with her when her mother or father couldn’t. And no, I wouldn’t let her go by herself. She was a snotty kid, that’s all, eight years younger than me, and tattling to her mother and my mother about every bad thing I did. I never figured out how she knew, except for snooping. Susan’s older now. Besides, she has cancer. The least I can do is give her a place to sleep and a friend at her side when she comes for treatments and stuff.”
“So you let her stay here because you feel sorry for her?”
“I ask her to stay because she is family. There is no question of her taking the bus back to the Hamptons when she’s sick or tired.”
“And I can’t see you when she’s here?”
“Well, I am not about to be making love with her sleeping in the next room over. Or go out and leave her alone when she might need help. I thought I’d take her to a museum, if she feels up to it, or the park.”
“And I am not invited.” That was a statement, not a question, so I did not have to answer.
“Well, call me when your new best friend leaves and you have time for me.”
I figured we both knew that wouldn’t be for a long while.
CHAPTER 5
I WAS OKAY WITH LOCKING THE door behind Arlen. Both ways. I guess Arlen was okay with it, too, because he didn’t call to talk later, or the next day, either. I didn’t call him, not even when my cousin left a message that she wouldn’t be coming into the city until Sunday evening. There was a bachelorette party Susan wanted to go to at home in Paumanok Harbor, out at the edge of Long Island’s South Fork. I was glad she felt well enough to go.
Mom was glad when I told her about Arlen.
“He was never good enough for you anyway. Once a pig, always a pig.”
This came from my mother who trained dogs and sometimes fostered a couple of shelter animals. Ever since leaving my father and Manhattan, where no dogs are permitted in the apartment, her house at the beach was always full of dog hair and sand. One blot on the scorecard of my sink and Arlen was Attila the Hairy, an unworthy warthog.
But maybe I was judging Mom too harshly, because she went on, “And there was no smile in your voice when you talked about him, no sighs or secret whispers when I saw you together.”
I was touched she noticed, but said, “Mom, I’m not in high school, giggling in study hall.”
“You never seemed excited to be with him.”
How could I be when I was waiting for my mother to go for his jugular? She insisted on being the dominant member of her own pack. That’s hard enough for me to take, much less for a man who did not care for dogs. Which was another black mark against him in Mom’s book. And mine, now that I thought about it. I’d have a dog in a minute, if I were allowed.
Anyway, my mother had gone on to her favorite topic, after the four-footed variety. “Now maybe you’ll meet someone who’ll push you out of your comfortable niche, who’ll make your head spin.”
I already had, but I don’t think Mom meant a troll. To stop her before she could explain how it was my duty to keep the entire race from extinction, I told her, “Actually I met a nice guy this afternoon. A cop.”
“A cop? Oh, that mess in the street.”
“Yes. He came to ask me if I saw anything, and he was a real charmer.”
I thought I heard Mom lick her chops like Georgie, a huge Bernese mountain dog she sometimes boarded. Before she started to drool, I said, “He’s black. African-American.”
Now I thought sh
e said, “Jesusmaryandjoseph,” but we’re not remotely Catholic. Then she rallied, good liberal that she is. “Well, it’s early days. And he must be a nice man or you wouldn’t have mentioned it. Unless you want to ruin my day.”
“No, Mom. He just showed me what I was missing.”
“Well, good for him. And for you.”
“Yeah, I think so.” Then I decided to see just how open-minded my opinionated mother was. I knew her liberal leaning stood foursquare erect when it came to fidelity, adultery, women’s rights, animal rights, and good housekeeping. “Mom, have you ever seen a troll?”
“The guy who brought me his Airedale might count as one. He had hair on his arms and growing out of his ears, big bushy eyebrows.”
“The guy or the Airedale?”
“The owner. He treated his dog like shit.”
“That’s an ape, not a troll.”
“What about the tourists in East Hampton, driving their Hummers and Jags? They don’t stop for pedestrians when they’re driving, but cross the street in the middle when they’re walking, holding up one manicured hand to stop traffic. And they let their kids spit their gum on the sidewalk. Do you know what it’s like to try to get that out of a dog’s foot? And their poor pets—trophy dogs, all of them. I had to break one jerk’s window before his fancy designer dog died of heat stroke inside his fancy car.”
My mother could go on forever about dogs, and about tourists to the Hamptons. She lived in one of the last almost untouched villages of Long Island’s peninsular tip, between Amagansett and Montauk, but on the “wrong” side of Montauk Highway. The south, or ocean side was where the money was. The north, or bay side used to be for farmers and fisherman, but the moneyed crowd was encroaching, to the dismay of long-term locals like my mother.
“I meant a real monster, not an uncouth Hamptonite.”
“Come on, Willow. You’re just trying to distract me from the black man. That is, the policeman. Is he going to call? Have you made a date?”