by Cathy Lamb
I had been working seventy-to-eighty-hour weeks since I arrived in Trillium River. I was often sleeping on the floor of Grandma’s room because she kept trying to leave in the middle of the night. As she grunts in her sleep and yells, ‘Turbulence!’ it is difficult to get much sleep.
I was spending time with Henry, too, and the girls, who needed both me and Janie, clearly, in their lives, along with their mother, who was still a volcano of exploding emotions.
I was exhausted and trying to fight the black, but I could tell the black was winning.
On Sunday morning Cecilia told me I resembled beige shit and I should go home to Portland for a couple of days.
I argued.
Janie told me I was pale and sickly and offered me her Indian music tapes, Jane Eyre, incense, and the peaceful photo of her therapist. ‘Get some rest in your loft, Is. We’ll be fine.’
I argued. They argued.
I lost. I got in my Porsche and headed back to Portland.
I drove along the Columbia River. The more miles I put between me and Trillium River, the more uncomfortable I felt, the more alone. The more lonely. I am used to those alone and lonely feelings but hadn’t experienced them so much since arriving in town.
I tried not to think about that wrench. Missing Trillium River, or my life there, was not in the plan.
But neither was getting strangled or having my face pummelled.
Good thing we don’t know what’s coming down the pike for us or we’d never get out of bed.
We agreed that I would check in on Momma at the retirement centre in Portland on my way to my loft. I made an appointment ahead of time. She was wearing her pink robe and shawl, her head on the pillow, when I arrived. She moaned like a champ and I heard the same complaints.
‘I’m getting sicker.’
‘There’s something wrong with me.’
‘I can hardly move. I ache like I’m being eaten.’
‘I feel like I’m dying. I am dying.’
Now these comments initially alarmed me, somewhat. So I met with the director, Sinda Phillips. Sinda is half Mexican and half Asian. She’s six feet tall.
When Momma first met her, she said to Sinda, ‘You’re a brown giant with cat eyes.’
Sinda had laughed.
I had nearly died.
‘I’m going to hate it here.’ Momma swung her bell-shaped hair. ‘I don’t want to be here. I feel like a prisoner. My daughters are forcing this on me. Forcing it on me.’ She sniffed.
‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Mrs Bommarito,’ Sinda said, sweetly, her voice almost music in itself. ‘I think you may come to like it here.’
‘That will never happen, young lady.’
The conversation sped downhill from there, as Momma listed her complaints, much like a go-cart zooms brakeless down a hill.
‘So how is my dear momma?’ I had asked Sinda after she’d been there about ten days.
‘Your mother is…how shall I say it?’ Sinda mused, cupping her face with her hands.
‘Don’t bother gussing it up. Spit it out.’
Sinda laughed. ‘She doesn’t like her room. Too small.’
‘Too small, too dirty, too bright…’ I held my hands palms up.
‘She doesn’t like all this talking and laughing.’
‘Yes, that would be a problem. Laughing especially.’
‘She hates to eat with the other people in the dining room. Too noisy.’
‘Noise, noise, noise.’ I sighed.
‘But the biggest problem was that people were coming up to her and asking her to go on the outings. To the waterfalls. To the shopping centre. An overnight at the beach. A picnic. A museum. Too many invitations.’
‘How sad for her,’ I droned.
‘But a miracle occurred,’ Sinda said, pointing both pointer fingers up in victory.
‘A miracle?’
‘Your momma tried one of the trips to the shopping centres. She bought two blouses. One white, one blue.’
‘Good.’
‘She went on the picnic the next day. She became slightly inebriated on the vodka that old Mr Ricker snuck in Thermoses.’
I tried to imagine The Viper inebriated. Couldn’t do it.
‘She did a dance for the residents.’
I cringed. ‘What kind of dance?’
‘She made them all get up and get a partner and waltz around. They loved it. She had more vodka. Other people shared Mr Ricker’s bounty.’
I laughed.
‘She also decided that she would join Wily Women’s book group and chess club.’ Sinda looked proud. ‘Your mother is an outstanding chess player.’
Momma’s father had taught her how to play chess before he’d toddled off the cliff, but I’d rarely seen her play. ‘Play like you want to kill your opponent,’ she’d told me her father told her.
‘She joined the Wednesday afternoon activity group and the Saturday Evening Out and About group. We take them to plays, concerts, things like that.’
‘Ah.’ I got it.
‘I believe she is fitting in perfectly, though the youngest person here.’
‘She would like that. Being the youngest.’ I thought for a second. ‘So when we come to visit and find her in bed, complaining, in grave pain, saying she’s so sick we should put her out of her misery?’
Sinda coughed. ‘I believe that your mother is sometimes suddenly uh…’ She coughed again. ‘Uh, suddenly stricken with sickness when she knows you girls are coming to visit. Her sickness causes her to scramble into her robe and into bed and become, well, ill. Quite ill.’
I blinked.
‘Rest is good, though,’ Sinda said, pretending to be stern. ‘Especially with her schedule. Yesterday she did the Mt Hood Timberline lunch. Afterwards, the ladies all went to see Keanu Reeves’s latest movie. They think he’s sexy.’
‘Ah.’ OK I got it. ‘Keanu Reeves is wicked sexy. I’m in love with him myself. I think I understand the situation.’
‘Yes,’ Sinda told me, smiling. ‘She’s a clever one, your mother.’
She was that, indeed.
‘Remember to send me the bills.’
‘Your sister, Janie, told me to send her the bills.’
I laughed. ‘We’ll take care of it.’
Some mothers drive their daughters to drink with their behaviour. Momma drove me, often, to my favourite spa. It smells like vanilla, it’s classy and elegant, and I love it.
The gal who always does my massages did a double take. ‘You look like shit,’ she told me. Graciella is half French, half Chinese, and totally gorgeous. She was wearing a blue kimono with a gold dragon on it.
‘Did Cecilia tell you to say that?’
‘Who’s Cecilia and no she didn’t I thought of it all by myself what’s been going on why haven’t you been taking care of yourself you’re too skinny and your skin needs help have you not slept in, like two years or something? You need the full treatment especially on your face what the heck is wrong with your nails you been sharpening them with a knife I’ll help you.’
First I hid myself in a hot steam room that smelt like roses. Then I had an hour and a half hot-rock massage with Graciella. Next came a European facial with orange citrus, a pedicure with foot rub, a manicure, and the salon fixed up my braids.
I went home and went to bed. I slept seventeen hours straight through. Ladies, do this.
Life is too rough and tough and sucky to go through it without taking yourself to a spa. Trust me. You deserve it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I didn’t feel like I fitted in my loft anymore.
It was as if I were in someone else’s home and I was a gawking stranger. It was stark and modern, stuck between the high-rises, with my photos of people with despairing, haunted eyes hanging floor to ceiling.
I saw that cushy bed of mine and remembered the men and that’s when my depression took another whirlwind and started moving in on me like black clouds. I could feel my mood dip, as if it were on
a roller coaster ride.
I headed to a bar around the corner from my loft, which was my first gargantuan mistake. It was as if the darkness was reaching for me again and my own lurking darkness reached back, and together we created a colossal disaster and a strangulation.
Before I left I slipped on my new white bra with black swirls and matching underwear. I wriggled into a short black skirt, sexy heels, and a slinky red tank top. I hated myself.
I pulled my braids back into a ponytail and matched my lipstick to my shirt. I hated myself more.
I attract men. This is not a bragging statement. It is a fact. I’ve got good bones via Grandma and I’m thin. I know how to wear clothes and I have long braids, biggish lips, and cat eyes. Men come swirling around me. They have no idea what a head case I am.
I hate that head case part of me. I hate myself, the head case.
I found my man that night.
He was a head case, too.
It is a wonder that I have lived to write the rest of this.
‘Nice taste in food,’ he said to me.
The bar was expensive, high up in a pink building, and classy. I was having crab cakes, clams with butter and garlic, and my second vodka.
I glanced up. I’d been sitting at the bar for eight minutes and here he was. This was not quick for me. Usually it takes less time to get a man on a stool next to me than it does for a chicken to squawk.
‘Thanks,’ I said. I held my braids away from the butter/garlic sauce.
He reached over and did it for me.
That was a little surprising, but not much.
I pulled my braids back, kept eating.
‘Here by yourself?’ he asked.
‘Spare me,’ I snapped. ‘Can’t you think of a better line? One that might require a larger and more creative vocabulary?’
He wasn’t taken aback by that. ‘Sure. I’d like to hold your braids in my hands all night and stroke them.’
I stared at him through the mirror over the bar. He stared back.
I knew by the next day I would hardly remember the colour of his hair. They’re all a blur.
But this one was white, brownish curly hair, skinny. Had an intense face, as if he spent much of his time sucking on a lemon. Eyes closer together than normal, biggish nose, high cheekbones, a scar on the left one.
I turned to face him, our knees touching. His eyes…there was something funny about them, I noticed. They were too bright…too intense…too off. Something.
‘So. Can I?’
‘Can you what?’ I asked.
‘Can I hold your braids all night?’
I turned around and started eating again, signalled the barman to bring me another vodka. ‘You’re not entertaining me,’ I told him.
‘I can.’
He said this suggestively.
I made a disgusted sound. ‘I’ve heard that before.’
‘But I’m telling you the truth.’
‘I’ve heard that, too. Men are mostly talk, you know. Show-offs. Macho-maniacs. They puff out their chests and then…nothing.’ I wasn’t kidding with him or trying to be argumentative. I was stating a fact. I drank the vodka.
‘Can I have dinner with you?’ He ordered what I was eating. He tried to make small talk. I mainly ignored him and continued my drinking.
The darkness swirled, helped by the vodka, into a moving mass.
‘Let’s go,’ I told him when I was done eating. I didn’t know how much time had passed. I’d lost count of my vodkas. I grabbed my purse, threw some money on the bar to cover my meal and a generous tip. ‘Pay for your own dinner,’ I told him. He took out his wallet and slapped some bills down.
He put a heavy arm around me when we were almost at my loft. I shrugged it off. I felt nauseated and exhausted. I stumbled a bit and almost fell to the ground. He hauled me back up from behind and tried to kiss my neck.
‘Gross. Wait, will you?’ I said, pushing his pointy lemon-face away with my hand as we neared the entrance.
He moved in and kissed me again, super-aggressively, like a machine that wouldn’t stop a certain function no matter how much you pushed the Stop button. I wrestled out of his spindly arms and pushed on his chest twice, but dizziness hit me again and I ended up leaning against him for balance. ‘Wait,’ I snapped, but my voice sounded thick, foggy.
In the elevator up to my loft, he pressed me against the corner and tried to stick a sticky, sweaty hand up my skirt.
I pushed his hand away with both of mine, my head fuzzy and swirling. ‘Damn it, I said stop.’ I picked my men carefully. I liked the cheerful, loud, funny guys with kind eyes and big smiles.
I clearly had not done so good tonight. Too much vodka.
The elevator swooshed on up. I was familiar with the feelings of self-hatred that assailed me. I was familiar with the feelings of degradation that wrapped around me, tight, so tight. I was familiar with feelings of dread, too, like death flying in on a cape to settle on my shoulders.
I tried to ignore these feelings, as usual, but they were stronger this time, more insistent, louder than they’d ever been. Plus warning bells were clanging through the fog, and the weird light in this guy’s eyes was making my nerve endings screech.
When he tried to hug me again, hard groin grinding into my stomach, I shoved him away. He lounged at the other side of the elevator, staring at me. I met his stare. He had eyes like a ferret’s, lips like barbed wire, and a skinny body like a tightrope walker without the amusing pole.
I stumbled down the hall to my loft and he put both arms around me and manhandled me up against the wall, his barbed-wire lips trying to find mine. I fought him off. He panted and grinned. He tried it again and I fought him off again.
I bent my head in front of my door, my braids falling towards my face, my keys in my hand.
The word no came from a distance, as if it were swooping down a tunnel through the vodka-sponginess of my brain. I heard it, and for the first time, I listened to it.
‘No,’ I said. I turned towards him. ‘No.’ I said it louder.
‘Yes,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘Yes.’ The whisper sent shivers zigzagging over my spine.
I wriggled away. ‘No!’ Through the fog a rational voice. ‘No!’
He moved so quick, I couldn’t even respond. He grabbed my braids, whipped me around, and smashed me face-first into my door, pain splintering through my entire head. I dropped the keys, he grabbed them, unlocked the door, lifted me through, and slammed the door.
I sprawled in my entry, my balance weak, blood gushing from my nose. He dropped his whole weight on my back and I heard something crack. My breath rushed out and the edges of my vision blurred.
He yanked my braids until I imagined the roots being torn out of their tiny sockets, then giggled, high-pitched, a giggle right out of one of Janie’s books. ‘You said I could come home with you and stroke your braids all night long,’ he said in a singsong voice. ‘That’s what I’m gonna do.’
‘Get out!’ I said, trying to scream, but my voice came out a wheezy whisper. ‘Get out!’ I struggled but he twisted my hair harder, leaning his weight against my back, his knee forcing my legs apart.
‘See here, bitch. You invited me up here. You want it. I’m here. Take your clothes off.’
Ever feel terrified? I mean, bloodsuckingly terrified? This is what it’s like: you can feel your body draining of blood, as if your blood is too scared to be there anymore. Your kidneys and liver feel like they’re origamically folding up. Your mouth goes approximately as dry as the Sahara desert. Your eyes feel as if they’re going to bug right out of your head and drop to the ground because panic is pushing them out of your skull.
Oh, and you can’t breathe and your heart wants to leave your body it’s so panicked.
That’s only the start of it. Because you know the worst is yet to come.
‘Off go your clothes…’ He sang these words so melodiously, like he was a member of a church choir. He hauled me up by my braids to my
knees with two hands, twisted me around, and smashed my face to his dick.
‘Eat it,’ he sang, loud and high. My insides were shaking with fear, my whole body rocking.
He giggled. He let go of a fistful of braids and pulled on his belt.
I tried to get up and he lifted up his knee and smashed me in the chin. I heard another crack and my head went flying back. Instantly my neck ached. He tossed my head like a ball, and it crashed into a corner of my wall. I could actually see white stars, green stars, black stars, all these stars colliding together before my eyes. Blood gushed hot and sticky over my shoulders, joining the blood from my nose.
He yanked his belt open and the button of his pants with one hand, then dragged me back up to the kneeling position again so through dizzy, rolling eyes I was staring at that bulge again. I tried to breathe, and couldn’t.
‘Here we go, Isabelle.’ He yanked his pants to his knees, his boxers still on, then reached in and pulled that log out. Through crackling, vibrating pain, and my own internal, frantic screams, I could smell the urine, the sweat, and a rotting scent. It brushed my cheek on its way out, hot and throbbing. I would have fought, but I could hardly see straight.
‘Taste that, cunt.’
I hate that word. I hate it.
The log was sticking straight out, and while he sung a high-pitched song, he swung my head back and forth, like a Ping-Pong ball, from one hand to the other.
I tried to get up and he slammed me back down, his fist in my gut. My body shook in agony.
‘Here’s your dinner,’ he sang. ‘Dinner’s ready! Come and get it! Din-din!’
And that was it. I knew where my mouth was gonna be in about one second and I would rather die than do that. And somewhere in that rampaging pain, the fog of my throbbing head, I knew I would be raped after that and probably dismembered.
A vision of my family flitted through my head. Momma declaring the doctor a midget, Grandma saluting in her flight uniform, Janie smiling across the conference table at that weasel Parker, Cecilia teaching her kindergarteners, Kayla and her burka, Riley and her current devotion to alpha particles and atomic masses.